The epigraph of the lesson “Will you, a man, remain a man? Will you be able to overcome all the deceitful and unkind that is prepared for you in many worldly trials, where even opposites are difficult to distinguish: love and betrayal, passion and indifference, sincerity and falsehood? V. Rasputin "I love people with whom anything can happen." A. Vampilov
"Fabula" is the sequence of events as they happen. The conflict of the work: it is driving force and defines the main stages of the development of the plot: the origin of the conflict - the plot, the highest aggravation - the climax, the resolution of the conflict - the denouement.
Busygin - a medical student who introduced himself as the son of Sarafanov; Semyon (Silva) - sales agent, lover of Makarska; Andrey Grigoryevich Sarafanov - plays at the funeral, but hides it from the children; Vasenka - tenth grader, son of Sarafanov; Kudimov - pilot, fiance of Nina; Nina - Sarafanov's daughter; Makarskaya - a thirty-year-old woman, beloved of Vasenka and Silva;
Andrei Grigoryevich Sarafanov Writes a musical composition entitled "All people are brothers." This is not just a declaration for him, but a principle of life.
Vladimir Busygin "God forbid to deceive the one who believes your every word."
JUSTICE - "a fair attitude towards someone, impartiality". MERCY - "the ability to help someone or forgive someone out of compassion, philanthropy"
In this regard - and in other plans - Shukshin discovered a very important for everything literary process 60-70s creative closeness to the quest of the playwright Alexander Vampilov (1937-1972), who tragically died on Lake Baikal two years before Shukshin's death, the creator of the plays The Elder Son (1968), Duck Hunt (1971), Provincial Anecdotes (1971), “Last Summer in Chulimsk” (1971), etc. Outwardly, this closeness was revealed, say, in increased attention both writers to the naive methods mentioned above, with which the provinces and the countryside “warmed up”, decorated their life, “poeticized” it.
They were united, as people of the theater, by something deeper: the realization of how plot-driven, stage life is, rich in unmanifested adventures, paradoxes, comic situations, repetitions of the plot.
Vampilov's plays paradoxically combined the tragic grotesque and vaudeville, naturalness and unknown, supposedly previously impossible for the characters, psychological changes and solutions: everything became possible for unsettled, shocked minds.
Such were the highly playful plays (and performances) of this playwright-reformer. A. Vampilov was looking for special marginal characters, attributed by some fatal force to the margins of life, in the interval. “Marginal” does not mean “bad”, “criminal”, these are isolated, confused, naive creatures who often do not know how to “live with wolves and howl like a wolf”. A. Vampilov searched and found ... even entire marginal families, sections of society. His play "The Elder Son" begins with a cruel joke of two young people: somewhere in the suburbs, at night, they entered at random into a random apartment, wanting only to spend the night in it. Seeing that they were about to be kicked out, one of the frivolous hooligans announced that he ... illegitimate son the absent owner of this apartment, the head of the family! In others artistic worlds this unkind eccentric joke would have remained within the framework of an episode, an anecdote: no one would have become such an unreasonable game of two young fools ... play along! But the whole world of Vampilov is so saturated with phantasmagoria, eccentricity that the inhabitants of a random apartment ... believed in a paradoxical trick, then convinced the inventors themselves of the truth of this imaginary sonship, forced them to behave quite humanly in accordance with fantastic logic.
The whole story of the young man Busygin dramatically changes the meaning of everyday life: at first he plays an impostor son, then, turns into a son, assimilates the kindness and naivety of the owner of the house, the elder Sarafanov, begins to sincerely regret and love the “father”. The mischievous person becomes human.
This is - real and fantastic - provincial life and in other plays by A. Vampilov. In the play "Last Summer in Chulimsk" the very world of a tiny town or village on the border of the forest (taiga) and urban civilization is fantastic: it is full of strong, rude passions. Here detached from strong feelings”from past success, investigator Shamanov meets Valya, who really loves him. But this strong, passionate life long time only flowed around Shamanov.
Even the naive Evenk Yeremeev comes here - like a bigfoot ... But this town, where Shamanov took refuge, where he seeks only peace, turns out to live in a deep, fate-breaking dependence on the big "city", on its officials and crooks, he is humiliated this addiction. There is no ideal oasis for “duck hunting”, rest from the inhuman game-life.
It is curious that A. Vampilov does not push action anywhere. The poetics of A. Vampilov not only in this play is close to the poetics of V. Shukshin's "eccentricities", and its characterization almost entirely applies to the "characters" of V. Shukshin. Life in "The Elder Son" is not constructed, but arises, its dramaturgy is not introduced from outside, but is born in itself. Guys who are trying to wait 5-6 hours under the roof of someone else's house, confident that they cruelly cheated others, find themselves in a world that exists in nervous, unadorned forms of life, a world of almost fabulous wonders, a world warmed by cordiality.
Many plot-semantic situations, dramatic states of the characters, a kind of self-awareness (“self-awareness”) by the characters in time connected both the main work of A. Vampilov - the play “Duck Hunt” (1971), and the novelistic cycles of V. Shukshin “Characters” (1973 ), "Conversations under a clear moon" (1975), etc. In essence, the hero " duck hunting» Zilov, whose role in the 70s. both O. Efremov and O. Dahl, an anti-leader character who runs away from serious decisions, deceives all hopes, performed beautifully, and Shukshin’s countless drivers, carpenters, eccentrics and “village Socrates” live by the idea of game, hunting, mischief, challenge. They all need one thing:
We must go somewhere - To hell, even to heaven ...
Vampilov's hero Zilov wanders around the stage - most often in a restaurant, among a flock of pseudo-friends (this is no longer a collective, but an "anti-collective"), realizing both his own and general restlessness. To one of his pseudo-friends, the Waiter, he speaks of his sad discovery:
“Well, here we are friends. Friends and friends, and I, for example, take and sell you for a penny. Then we meet and I tell you: “Old man, I say, I got a penny, come with me, I love you and want to drink with you.” And you go with me, drink. Then we hug, kiss, although you You know very well where I got a penny from.
Where is the friendship, where is the conspiracy, where is the instinct of the pack, the group egoism? As is typical for Zilov’s monologues, the frequent repetition of “well, here we are friends”, “we will embrace you,” he still does not fully believe that everything has faded away, flown out of words about friendship, from gestures of friendship, that liberation from the ideal has come true. Hence - the search for the ideal "on the side", outside the "anti-commonwealth", "gang of friends", where there is "duck hunting".
The hero of Vampilov does not want his passion for duck hunting to be called a "hobby". He talks about the special silence on this hunt: “Do you know how quiet it is? You're not there, do you understand? No. You haven't been born yet. And there is nothing. And it won't." The usual taiga at the hour of waiting for the hunt turns into something sacred for him: “I will take you to the other side, do you want? .. You will see what kind of fog it is - we will sail like in a dream, no one knows where. And when does the sun rise? O! It's like in a church, and even cleaner than in a church... And the night! Oh my God!"
In essence, both A. Vampilov's plays and many of Shukshin's short stories (and especially the fairy tale "Until the Third Cocks") are a confessional space of very lonely dreamers, crushed by life, living among the inanimate world, torn into acts, scenes, this loneliness among hardened simplified consciousnesses.
AT narrative technique V. Shukshin, in his absolute pitch to all the voices of life, the ability of the characters to “call a cue” to a partner, in a sense of the general “stage nature” of life, easily crushed and crushed into shots, mise-en-scène, there were many other influences, findings, besides the experience of A. Vampilov.
And in these scenes, the role of replicas, verbal fractions, and modern vocabulary has sharply increased. "In what area do you identify yourself?" - so asks the candidate of sciences his village fellow countryman Gleb (“Cut off”); "Is your mound in a hole?" - this is one secretary asking another on the phone about the boss (at work or away); “Here our Ivan went to pull rubber and bargain, as the current plumbers do” - this is about the hero of the fairy tale “Until the third roosters”. “I’ll carry it over bumps”, “make her a present for the Eighth of March” (i.e. a child), “a wedding is not yet a sign of quality”, “there is no article for this” (i.e. punishment), “I stopped drinking - there is nothing to fill the vacuum”, “no idea about the culture of the body”, “will you accept (i.e. drink)?” etc. - the richness of Shukshin's remarks is very colorful, mixed, colored with an ironic light.
But, of course, the highest success of Shukshin's novelistic art is associated with stories in which, like A. Vampilov's, there is a peculiar change of faces, biographies, Khlestakov's stay in someone else's mask, in someone else's role. Shukshin boldly intrudes into the sphere of such a Khlestakov-like, extreme "mischief" of heroes, a prank, a mysterious swindle. All of Shukshin's short stories seem to be just a presentation of entertaining stories in an equally entertaining way. This game of entertaining pretense takes place, for example, in the stories "General Malafei-kin", "Mil pardon, madam", of course, in the tragicomic story "Cut off", in a number of episodes from "Kalina Krasnaya", in the fantastic journey of Ivan the Fool for the notorious information about his mind (“Until the third roosters”).
Painter Semyon Malafeikin, an ordinary villager, suddenly started in the train car strange game with fellow travelers: he pretended to be a police general. And what does he, who repaired the dachas, know about the life of a general? It turns out that he “knows” a whole layer of benefits, handouts, complementary foods:
“In vain you refuse to give - it’s convenient. You know, no matter how tired you are during the day, and when you arrive, you flood the fireplace - the soul departs.
Dacha? - Yes.
Of course not! What do you! I have two co-drivers, so one already knows: a quarter to five calls. "Home, Semyon Ivanovich?" - "Home, Petya, home." We call the dacha home with him.
At first glance, these games of bosses, the change of official masks, miracles in the sieve, the jump to other worlds, offices, dachas simply amuse, give the heroes the opportunity to frolic. Bronka Pupkov in the story “Mil pardon, madam!”, burning with impatience, joins any company of newcomers and in once more tells in detail how, during the war years, he tried to “extinguish the harmful candle”, that is, to kill Hitler ... Yegor Prokudin, a former thief in the Red Kalina, as soon as he was offended by the village parents of the bride, immediately selects for himself, puts on a comfortable the mask of the prosecutor, perhaps the head of the camp, the educator, and begins to denounce the old people, skillfully "introducing" typical intonations, arguments, underwear into his speech. He defends himself like a demagogue and amuses himself by ridiculing this demagogic vocabulary.
“- See how nicely we settled down to live! Yegor spoke, occasionally glancing sharply at the seated old man. - The country produces electricity, locomotives, millions of tons of cast iron ... People are exerting all their strength. People literally fall from tension, eliminate the remnants of slovenliness and dementia, people, one might say, stutter from tension, - Yegor jumped on the word "tension" and savored it with pleasure, - people are covered with wrinkles on Far North and are forced to insert gold teeth for themselves ... And at this very time there are people who, of all the achievements of mankind, have chosen a stove for themselves! That's how! Glorious, glorious ... We'd rather prop up the chuval with our feet than strain together with everyone ... "
Shukshin achieved the highest skill in playing with verbal cliches, changing word masks created on the basis of newspaper formulas, all kinds of “speech substitutes”, buffoonery that evokes the traditions of folk mockingbirds in the story “Cut off”. In this story, the village mockingbird (and peasant prophet) Gleb Kapustin, who has long involved visiting candidates, scientists, etc., his fellow villagers, his family, who also plays and plays along with him, in his denunciations, really confuses the visiting intellectual with his art . Knocks down from the very first replicas:
“Well, what about primacy?
What primacy? - again, the candidate did not understand.
The primacy of spirit and matter...
As always... Matter is primary...
And the spirit - then. And what?"
Re-read this short story, and you will feel the whole frightening nature of laughter, Gleb dressing up as a debater, “half-learned”: on the one hand, he ridicules the worn-out formulas, the entire flow of information from Moscow, and on the other, he seems to warn that the province is on its mind, that it - not only an object of manipulation, "snuffling" ... In the mischievous, mockingbirds of late Shukshin, including Gleb Kapustin and Yegor Prokudin (his laughter, as it turned out, is tragic, dying, like his own bright impulse to normal life) , and the conditional Ivan the Fool, one cannot see the “unbelted inhabitants”, the “offensive force of rudeness”, the emptiness of people from the antiworld, weighed down by a “spiritual inferiority complex”, which turns into a “desire to show off over others” (L. Anninsky).
This is a very cruel, dismissive assessment. Obviously back in the 60's and 70's. many truths were greasy, covered with a kind of "lime", everything was imitated. Vasily Shukshin was the first to think about a problem of great importance: why is all this rural, grassroots Russia so afraid of ... Moscow, which owns "television power", experiments on itself, coming from the capital? Naive, ridiculous are Gleb Kapustin's attacks on the smart guy from Moscow. Even more naive are the experiments of Alyosha Beskonvoyny on self-defense, salvation peace of mind from the absurdity. The hero of the short story "Alyosha Beskonvoyny" every Saturday drowns the bathhouse, escapes from microbes (washes himself) in its hell. They tried to take away from him this moment of peace, this opportunity to remember and weigh what he had lived, to fence himself off for a moment from the bustle, when he exploded. "What should I cut my soul into pieces?" Alyosha then shouted in a voice that was not his own. And this frightened Taisya, his wife. The fact is that "Alyosha's older brother, Ivan, shot himself like that."
All Shukshin's mockingbirds, as researcher S. M. Kozlova noted, after his appearance historical novel about Razin in some amazing way began to merge with the image of Stepan Razin, just as powerful and naive people's protector, sufferer, creator: “They, like Adam's rib, are isolated from the body of the people. They are tools in the hands of the people who create history ... In this definition, Gleb Kapustin is also a projection of Razin's Shukshin image ... Gleb Kapustin, thus, is the "level of the era", "the slice of time" ... He expresses, reflects time in its contradictions, he "cuts off" one after another the growth of dogmas and lies.
A. VAMPILOV, SOIL DRAMEWIST
This is how it happened in Soviet literature that dramaturgy was the phenomenon most subject to clan influences. Outwardly not advertised, but a clear division into “us” and “them” made it difficult for “strangers” to get into the “dramatic workshop”. 1 And others were disdainful to get there, seeing who one had to be and what to correspond to in order to fit into the “elite”.
The best Russian playwright of the second half of the 20th century, Alexander Vampilov, was perceived by the "elite" as "alien". The consequence was lifetime half-fame and posthumous fame lasting about a decade (70s - early 80s), after which the stage of lasting oblivion set in with a break on duty in 1997, the anniversary year for the writer.
The main reason for such a disproportion between the scale of Vampilov's talent and the place in literature assigned to him by most influential critics (on a par with A. Arbuzov, V. Rozov, A. Volodin, M. Roschin, A. Gelman, I. Dvoretsky, L. Petrushevskaya and others, and even below some of them), - a conscious neglect and rejection of the soil orientation of his plays. Attempts to start a truthful conversation about Vampilov were preempted by historical and literary arguments: “Vampilov did not grow out of the “soil”, he grew up, by the way, from the “youth” literature of the 60s. 2 So what? And Shukshin "grew out of her", and the early Rasputin and Belov were formed not without her influence. Growing up doesn't mean growing up. The 20th century is the era of the crisis of the Russian national consciousness, therefore it is not surprising that even the most big talents went the wrong way.
But the formula famous critic unfair also because in Vampilov's dramaturgy one can find many multidirectional tendencies. Take any of them - and build a concept. L. Anninsky tried to connect Vampilov's work with the "youth" literature of the sixties, and it is possible - with Chekhov, and with the theater of the absurd, and with anything, up to postmodernism. There are objective grounds for such parallels. However, parallels lead away from the highway if they seek to replace it with themselves.
The cunning gift of Alexander Valentinovich often pushed him to the playful form of presenting the Russian idea. Deliberate non-seriousness of tone, paradoxes, humour, irony, clownish vaudeville, liberties with "eternal" themes and plots, free travels in the dramatic tradition, etc. you gave folklore Ivan the Fool in Vampilovo, who is used to keeping the secret under a bushel. Vampilov managed to turn the notorious, chronic for Soviet dramaturgy, conflict-freeness into an elegant artistic device.
However, his acting had a clear limit, indicated by the concepts of "Russian conscience", "Russian soul", "Russian fate". The fundamental insensitivity to them became the basis for the creation of the myth of Vampilov. The extreme poles of this myth were, on the one hand, the excommunication of the playwright from the pochvennichestvo, and on the other hand, the thesis about the unrealization of Vampilov's talent. Our article is devoted to controversy from the first of these positions, and we will say a few words about the second. Outwardly, it is quite plausible (the early death of the playwright, his relatively small creative heritage etc.), it is fraught with an unexpected, to some extent not foreseen turn of logic: if it did not materialize, then it did not have time to express the coveted one. An analysis of Vampilov's creativity testifies that he succeeded.
For Alexander Valentinovich, the main topic was the definition of the spiritual and moral coordinates in which his compatriots-contemporaries find themselves. The playwright sought to find out to what extent today's Russians have retained their connection with their root traditions, how difficult it is to restore and how this connection, which is the key to the identity and vitality of the people, can be restored. Emphasize it: at Vampilov's we are talking first of all, it is about Russian people and Russian problems (and not about Soviet or “common human” problems that do not exist in his work outside the Russian context). For the sake of this, the writer created his works, it was the axis around which the intricate "architecture" of his plays arose. For the sake of affirming the key soil values - conscience, sympathy and mutual assistance as necessary preconditions the existence of the Russian spirit - he showed the relationship of the characters: relatives and strangers, close and distant.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that Vampilov's dramaturgy is based on two contrasting types of personality: conciliar 3 and individualistic. And the types of morality corresponding to them: soil-based, which has Orthodoxy as its source, and pragmatic, which has Western roots and is nationally destructive, from the point of view of the writer, orientation. The conflict between these opposing principles is central to Vampilov's dramaturgy and forms the basis of the essential problems for modern soil studies. historical memory and national consciousness.
In Vampilov's plays, there is a contrast between public life (permeated with falsehood) and private life, where the authenticity of the human soul is revealed. The playwright understands that in the conditions of the dominance of atheism and internationalism, family and life become a stronghold of historical memory and national identity. It is not surprising that he transfers the action of his plays mainly to these spheres, where the heroes are minimally affected by the need to put on the mask of a Soviet person and they get the greatest opportunity to be themselves. And here often there is a transformation of Vampilov's characters, a spontaneous, at first glance, change in their behavior, when fateful decisions are made by them on the go and just as unexpectedly the deep Russian essence of their characters is revealed.
Already in his debut drama - "one-act" "Twenty minutes with an angel" ( original title- "Angel", 1962) - Vampilov spoke about the most relevant. The late version of this play (with the buffoonish genre subtitle "Second Anecdote") was made by the playwright as the final part of "Provincial Anecdotes". The genre of the resulting dilogy was named by the author with irony: "A tragic performance in two parts."
The play "Twenty Minutes with an Angel", starting as a farce, ends with a dramatic collision. Two businessmen with "alcoholic" surnames Anchugin and Ugarov, waking up in a hotel room, suffer from a hangover. They don't have the money to buy alcohol. The corridor hotel Vasyuta and the inhabitants of neighboring rooms do not lend. And then drunkards, having reached an extreme degree of despair, resort to traditional Russian methods of salvation: they turn to both neighbors and distant ones. Ugarov sends a telegram to his mother, and Anchugin starts shouting from the window, calling on passers-by: “Good people! Help!".
It may seem that Vampilov builds the plot of the play for the sake of mockery of the unlucky characters. However, such a conclusion would be superficial. Yes, they are funny in their alcoholic "suffering", but the main intrigue lies ahead. After all, the fundamental question that worries the heroes of most of Vampilov's plays is whether there are people in the world who live according to their conscience. The righteous are searched for during the day with fire, and when they find them, they arrange a “strength test” for them.
This is what happens with the appearance on the stage of Khomutov. He has a "soil" surname and profession - an agronomist (in the professions of Anchugin and Ugarov - the motive of separation from the roots: the first of them is a driver, the second is a freight forwarder). Khomutov offers the "suffering" money, motivating his responsiveness as follows: "It is not easy for all of us, mortals, and we must help each other."
However, Soviet people the ethical motivation of actions is suspect. Therefore, Anchugin and Ugarov, sensing a trick in Khomutov's responsiveness, turn from hangover drunkards into representatives of society. And already, as “public people,” they build versions according to which Khomutov is either a psycho, or a drunk, either from the police, or from the “organs,” or a thief, or a blackmailer. Ugarov is even ready to admit that the money was offered by Khomutov out of the kindness of his soul, but he connects his disinterestedness with faith in God. In the Sovietized consciousness of Ugarov, religiosity is a reprehensible quality, hence the investigator's intonation: “By the way, do you believe in God?<…>Are you by any chance a member of a sect?
So caricature characters "remembered" their roots. Vampilov shows that it is not easy for Russian people living in the second half of the 20th century to do this. After all, Khomutov answers the question of Ugarov quite in the Soviet way: "In God? .. No, but ...". Nevertheless, he stubbornly tries to awaken a moral sense in his interlocutors, appealing not to conciliar unity, but to blood kinship: “Tell me, are your parents alive?” However, this question only raises further suspicions. And when witnesses invited by drunkards appear in the hotel room, the discussion takes on new shades of sociality. Ugarov, in proof of his Soviet righteousness (and what is the price in the eyes of the author, it turns out from the character’s further remark) says: “... I get toilet bowls for my native city ...”. The parodic style of this saying, as well as the context in which the word “native” is placed, show how negatively the author perceives separation from the “soil”.
For the majority of those invited, the "religious-psychiatric" version of Khomutov's behavior seems the most plausible. Corridor Vasyuta: "Aren't you an angel from heaven, God forgive me." Touring violinist Bazilsky: “Maniac! Do you imagine yourself to be Jesus Christ?” . Engineer Stupak: Brad. And besides, it's religious." In aggressive but friendly attacks on Khomutov - a perverted manifestation of the conciliar feeling. His background: how dare you think you're better than us?
At the same time, a number of statements are being built that affirm the postulates of pragmatic morality. Vasyuta says that “with a car, for example, a husband is better than without a car,” and Stupak is interested in “how much is disinterestedness today.” It would seem that Khomutov is alone, defeated, and moral values are ridiculed along with him. But Vampilov, a virtuoso master of intrigue, helps his hero get out of the impasse. This time (as in most of the playwright's subsequent plays), salvation comes from the female side. Vampilov finds his own use for the well-known imperative “look for a woman”. Stupak's wife Faina believes in Khomutov's sincerity and thus challenges him to be frank. The hero admits that he recently buried his mother, whom he had not seen for six years and whom he was going to, but never bothered to send money. And now I decided to give these hundred rubles to the first person who needs them.
And then everyone rushes to Khomutov with words of repentance and sympathy. The same Vasyuta “changes the record”: “Lord, what a sin<…>Where there is money, there is evil - it's always like that. They really feel sorry for Khomutov. But they also rejoice: he is the same as us, which means that we are also people, which means that we can be considered people without adding special efforts. How important it is for them, Russians, to have a sense of moral worth. And at what a small price they, formed in forgetful times, want to acquire it. Therefore, Vampilov lets his heroes go in a vicious circle, as if saying: until you firmly return to your roots, you will forever wander from the rejected, but inalienable traditional morality to the seductive new one.
At the moment of general unanimity, Ugarov quietly sends Vasyuta for wine, and she fulfills his order, obviously counting on a bribe. And the final "unifier" is the bottle. To celebrate, Anchugin and Ugarov sing to the accompaniment of the touring violinist Bazilsky. It is planned, although it remains outside the plot, a serious quarrel between Stupak and Faina, who saw in her husband's worldly sophistication a morally unacceptable essence for herself.
The result to which Vampilov brings us is disappointing: the Russian people, contemporaries of the playwright, are able to recall their moral foundations ah, just being in extreme situation. And for everyday life, pragmatic morality is also suitable for them. Her burden, like a collar, hangs on the Russian neck. And life turns into an anecdote with a tragic background - this is, obviously, the key to Vampilov's genre "tricks".
The playwright continued the game he had begun, calling his second one-act play "The House with Windows in the Field" (written no later than 1964) a comedy. The house in which the action takes place stands on the edge of the village, which prompts the reader and the viewer to remember the proverb: “My hut is on the edge - I don’t know anything.” But with Vampilov, everything happens exactly the opposite. The main events have been moved to the “house on the edge”.
The plot of the play is simple, almost vaudeville. Teacher Tretyakov, having worked in the village for the prescribed three years, decides to leave for the city. In parting, he goes to his good friend Astafyeva. The heroine's surname is consonant with the phrase "leave him", which, on the one hand, means "let go", and on the other - "delay". This is how Astafieva behaves towards Tret-yakov: wishing that he would stay, she pronounces, skillfully alternating, now parting, now delaying phrases. The teacher, a fat and slow person, follows Astafieva's lead, fully justifying the saying: "To be a bull on a string." Not without reason, according to the author's will, the heroine is in charge of a dairy farm, and the hero has a "cow" surname (remember from folklore: a third-rate bull).
At the very last moment Tretyakov decides to stay in the house with windows in the field. And he utters meaningful, albeit seemingly strange words: “Crazy people are now returning to the city ...”, which can be interpreted as follows: leaving an empty village - a field, primordial Russia - is madness. The weight of this problem is emphasized by the choir present in the play. According to Vampilov, the departure of the intelligentsia (and not only them) from the Russian countryside is an event no less colossal than those described in ancient dramas. It is also significant that in Vampilov's play the choir sings folk songs. Their texts are selected with intent: like the parts of the choir in the ancient drama, they become a commentary on the actions of the characters and the voice of the highest court. Thus, it is unlikely to be a big stretch to assert that Tretyakov's choice was corrected by the voice of the people, by centuries-old traditions.
In the center of the play "The House with Windows in the Field" is an epoch-making problem, one of the main ones in soil literature. However, the heroes do not perceive its scale and tragedy. Therefore, they become actors a work that the author attributed to the comedy genre. Like the characters in other dramas by Vampilov, they do not see the dialectic of the particular and the general: believing that they are solving exclusively personal issues, they are not aware of their contribution to solving the problem of the national level.
In 1964, the turn came for Vampilov's two-act plays. He wrote the comedy The Fair, later known as Goodbye in June. And again, the genre designation hints at the presence of content hidden from a superficial glance. Be indignant and bewildered, reader and viewer, maybe you will be able to dig deeper, Vampilov teases.
The idea of movement in a vicious circle of moral problems - a leitmotif in the work of the playwright - is embedded in the name of the protagonist of "Farewell in June", graduate student Kolesov, in the characters and relationships of the characters, in the ring composition of the play. The work begins and ends with a scene at a poster stand at a bus stop. Kolesov meets Tanya, sympathy arises between them. But soon the hero ends up in the police for an extravagant attempt to invite a classmate to the wedding popular singer with a perfectly chosen "dummy" surname of Goloshubov. The student is in danger of being expelled from the institute.
But suddenly (usually with Vampilov) it turns out that Tanya's father is the rector Repnikov. He did not excel in science, but he reached heights as an administrator. Unlike him, Kolesov is a promising young scientist and an extraordinary personality. And therefore - a living reproach to the mediocre rector, especially as a possible future son-in-law. 4 Repnikov (who knows how to cling to his career like a burdock) decides to teach the obstinate student a lesson, to show him where the "truth of life" is. And he offers Kolesov a test for pragmatism: for a diploma and a place in graduate school, he must refuse Tanya.
The student accepts the rector's proposal. When negotiating, they use the vocabulary of a trade deal. Repnikov is no less free than the characters in the play “Twenty Minutes with an Angel”, who “grounded” Khomutov: “Agree, you and I have something in common ...”. Kolesov's moral rift went through the crack that, in the era of national depersonalization, ran across the Russian conscience. The hero has exchanged human relations for profit. But when he graduation party saw Tanya again, then he was horrified by his compromise and tore up a brand new diploma. The difficult restoration of relations with the girl begins (and will it come true?) With this gesture. However, the betrayal has already taken place. And Tanya throws Kolesova: “No, I don’t believe you. How do I know, maybe you will change me again. In the interest of the business. I can't do that."
The young heroes of Vampilov take not only love, but also marriage lightly. Student Bukin marries fellow student Masha in order to get a place in a hostel for a drinking buddy. The newlyweds perceive the upcoming divorce as an empty formality: "You need to apply to the registry office - just something." Again, a piece of paper (document) becomes the measure of conscience. And again, the relationship of the characters begins to develop in a circle. Addressing Masha, Bukin says: “Before leaving, you always want to make peace. So accepted. Neuro-nicks ". The hero's ironic reaction to what is "accepted" (that is, to the tradition of maintaining the priority of human relations) and to the awakening of his own conscience is indicative. Masha behaves similarly when, explaining the reason for her tears, she says: “I have alcohol ...”.
"Neurasthenia", "alcoholism", "madness", "melancholy", etc. - Vampilian metaphors, signaling the appearance of moral anxiety in the heroes. And if we take into account that Vampilov's characters are predominantly young people, it becomes obvious that the playwright is interested in the "front line" of the struggle for soil values, their present and near future.
Vampilov is not a pessimist. However, he subjects his heroes to constant moral tests. In his dramas, relations between people are not only destroyed or restored, but are also replaced by new ones, and not always the best ones. In the play “Farewell in June”, the resourceful businessman Zolotuev calls Kolesov his nephew and invites him to live with him: “I'm alone, you know. One, like a finger. I’ll write down the house for you, the dacha, the car ... ". once lied, main character acquires a dubious environment. For Zolotuev, who has criminal experience, there are no honest people: “ Fair man- is the one who is given little. It is necessary to give so much that a person could not refuse ... ". Most of all, this pragmatist is amazed by the auditor (an off-stage character), who first refused a bribe and brought the dishonest seller to justice, and then did not accept a large sum just for admitting you were wrong. 5 Here the criminal is also curious, disinterested in his desire to ask the price of someone else's conscience.
Vampilov experienced his highest rise in 1967, when he created the plays "Elder Son" and "Duck Hunt". The first of them, according to the custom established by the dramaturg, was called a comedy and in the initial version was called "Suburb". By the time this drama came out as a separate edition (1970), Vampilov revised it and changed its name.
The plot of the plot of "The Elder Son" is happening rapidly. Two young people, hardly knowing each other, missed the last train and went in search of lodging for the night. As the action unfolds, we learn that Busygin is a medical student and Silva is a sales agent. In Vampilov's system of coordinates, this means that the former is only morally self-determining and is called upon to "heal" human souls and relationships, while the latter has managed to make a choice in favor of pragmatic morality. 6 Already the first words of Silva testify to this choice: he parodies the words of a folk song. And Vampilov does not forgive such jokes to his characters, even in comedy.
In company with a friend (a superficial understanding of sobornost), Busygin also tries to “shine” with pragmatism. At his university, he studies "physiology, psychoanalysis and other useful things." (The fact that these disciplines are taught without attention to the moral aspect and to the person as a whole person is a passing stone in the garden Soviet system education, Western at its core.) Therefore, the student proposes to “utilize” human relations: “People have thick skin, and it is not so easy to break through it. It is necessary to lie properly, only then will they believe you and sympathize with you. They need to be frightened or moved to pity.
A chain of accidents leads to the goal of friends (Vampilov is faithful to his methods of creating intrigue). They overhear the beginning of Sarafanov's conversation with Makarskaya and show up at Vassenka's just at the moment when he is absorbed in his problems and remains alone in the room. Friends lie in turn. The initiative belongs to Busygin. He is talking with Vasenka, appealing to his soul: “Man is a brother to man, I hope you heard about this.” Silva immediately grabs onto this formula and betrays to the dumbfounded teenager that Busygin is his own brother.
Vassenka believes in this lie not only out of naivety and inexperience. The Sarafanov family is on the verge of collapse. The mother left them long ago. Nina is going to marry a military school cadet Kudimov, who was assigned to Sakhalin. Vasenka himself, dejected unrequited love to Makarska, wants to go to the construction site. But the guilt and pain for the disintegrating family, as well as the shame of the father left alone, remain in his soul. Therefore, for him, the unexpected appearance of Busygin as a close relative seems like a happy way out of the current situation.
And for Andrei Grigoryevich Sarafanov, it is simply saving. Fourteen (twice seven) years since his wife left him, who "turned up one engineer 7 - a serious person." In letters, the ex-wife mockingly calls him blessed, and the children consider him a loser who cannot stand up for himself. He really is like that, if you do not see his human essence. He raised his daughter and son, never finding new wife who could replace their mother; worked in the symphony orchestra of the Philharmonic, but was laid off and now plays at funerals and dances, unskillfully hiding it from children; writes either a cantata, or an oratorio “All people are brothers”, but it does not move beyond the first page - Manilov's pace!
Sarafanov has a soft, gentle character, to match his surname, which comes from the name of Russian women's peasant clothing. He believes that “life is just and merciful. She makes heroes doubt, and those who did little, and even those who did nothing, but lived with a pure heart, she will always console. Sarafanov sees the meaning of his life in children. But this does not prevent him during a quarrel from reproaching them for prudence, which in his eyes, as well as in the eyes of the author, looks like an unconditional moral flaw.
The appearance of Busygin for Andrei Grigorievich means the acquisition soul mate and becomes a cause for celebration. Yes, having learned that the student is not his son, Sarafanov insists: "live with us." And, turning to Busygin and his own children, he says: “I’m bad or good, but I love you, and this is the most important thing.”
great place in the play, as in all of Vampilov's work, the theme of family troubles occupies. It runs like a red thread through the plot of "The Elder Son". We hear its echo in the orphanhood of Busygin, in the mention of the films “Divorce in Italian” and “Day of Happiness” (“also about divorce,” as Vasenka clarifies), in the annoyance of Makarska, who works as a secretary in court, with an abundance of cases about divorce. However family theme for Vampilov, this is not the ultimate goal, but an opportunity to talk about kinship and alienation in the Russian world. Therefore, Busygin is so dear to the author.
Once in a strange family, this hero became its unifier. His moral transformation took place under the influence of Andrey Grigorievich. Busygin calls him a holy man and refuses to continue to play the role of a rogue, motivating this as follows: "No, God forbid, deceive someone who believes your every word." 8 The student talks to Nina and Vasenka, urging them not to leave their father, and they eventually heed the words of their "big brother". The amazed Nina calls Busygin a psycho and a madman, which, according to Vampilov, as we remember, means the most precious compliment. And the main character, having done good to people, decides to leave them for a while, but again he is late for the train. This time, because you can't take time and effort into account when building human relationships.
Plays by Alexander Vampilov "Duck Hunt", "Elder Son", "Last Summer in Chulimsk", "Provincial Jokes" bring to the fore moral issues. The playwright is trying to "push" his characters to comprehend their lives, placing them in memories, dreams, everyday habitual situations.
The author focuses on everyday, everyday situations, which brings him closer to V. Shukshin. Heroes of Vampilov - ordinary people, placed in ordinary events, but manifesting themselves in different ways. The heroes of Vampilov were "christened" "infants" for their specific features character (remember the “vitally” unadapted Zilov, who lives with a dream, but does not want to fulfill it).
It is difficult to determine the genre of Vampilov's plays: they combine elements of vaudeville, drama and even tragedy, which reflects all the vicissitudes of the time described by the author.
The peculiarity of Vampilov's plays is that all his characters are going through a certain turning point, the result of which is the discovery of the moral foundations of life. So, the hero of "The Elder Son", who played bad joke with the owners of a random nightly haven, discovers the warmth of their family, the joy mutual love and worries in which the young man did not believe. Zilov for a moment becomes that romantic and tender young man with whom Galina once fell in love. In Last Summer in Chulimsk, young Valya becomes the embodiment of endless labor for the benefit of creation and goodness that blind people cannot see.
The heroes of the "Duck Hunt" are special in that they, young, thirty years old, have lost moral guidelines; they live for today, for chance pleasures. Few of them have a goal - justified, real. Vampilov, through the mouth of one of his heroines, calls this society “Aliks”, taking into account the fact that they do not disdain alcohol. This is a society of faceless people who have lost their moral orientation. Zilov is also a part of this company, but he differs from others in that he is pretty tired of this society, he knows all his tricks and his psychology; Zilov dreams of going hunting. The symbol of duck hunting is multifaceted: on the one hand, it is a pure desire of a lost soul to escape to the light, i.e. gain true life, freedom; on the other hand, hunting is killing, i.e. death. We also see such cardinal traits in our hero: he can be a traitor, or he can turn ordinary things into memories of a first date, he can love and admire beauty, or he can intentionally bring his girlfriend to a rich friend.
Zilov is also different in that for him the question of the meaning of life has ceased to be an everyday one - another reasoning in a drunken stupor, but has become an existential one - an attempt to truly understand life and understand what he lives for.
The play includes several pictures of the protagonist's memories, in each of which he sees himself as a sower of evil, a destroyer: he lies to his wife, signs fake documents at work, promises a girl who has fallen in love with him unrealizable. Zilov condemns himself (" I'm to blame, I know”), but does not change: the series of his “atrocities” is constantly growing. The hero is so 
disoriented in life, which cannot distinguish cynicism, lies from enthusiasm, high impulse, real human feelings.
Zilov is let down by his own ideals: he wanted to become such a hunter as the waiter Dimka. But Dimka - an alcoholic and a cynic, arrogant and soulless - by definition cannot be a role model. At the end of the play, Zilov accepts the waiter's invitation to hunt, thus confirming his moral degradation and depersonalization: " Whether he cried or laughed, we will never understand by his face". Zilov confirms the conclusions of his creator: often, in fact, intellectuals turn out to be typical ordinary people without the meaning of life and without a goal. Vampilov claims that the atmosphere around him largely depends on the person.
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The beginning of the seventies is a tragic time for Russian literature.
In January 1971, a tragic absurdity cut short the life of Nikolai Rubtsov, a non-capital and non-public poet, whose national recognition as a great Russian poet would come after his death. He was 35.
In August 1972, Irkutsk playwright Alexander Vampilov drowned in Lake Baikal. Before his 35th birthday, he did not live two days.
In early October 1974, Vasily Shukshin, a film director, actor, writer, suddenly and mysteriously died on a film expedition.
This sad martyrology can be prolonged.
Russian culture is martyr. There is a proverb about its best creators: “we don’t keep what we have, having lost it with weeping.”
Why did I limit this sad chronicle to three names? All three were provincials, whom during their lifetime neither the capital's artistic party, nor the then generals and their servile prishibeevs from the Ministry of Culture to any kind creative unions, repetcoms, publishing houses were by no means welcomed.
But after death, metamorphoses begin.
The untimely departed are overgrown with myths, their yesterday's ill-wishers appear as well-wishers, not sparing oil and colors in their false memoirs.
Bronze was not spared for monuments.
Recently I talked about a new book by Alexei Varlamov "Shukshin". Now I would like to dwell on one more novelty of the ZhZL series - Andrey Rumyantsev's book Vampilov. Classmate of Alexander Vampilov Irkutsk University Andrey Rumyantsev, People's Poet of Buryatia, in his declining years pays tribute to the memory of his untimely departed Siberian countryman.
Perhaps the book about Vampilov turned out to be not as bright as Varlamov's biography of Shukshin, but it has both soul and nerve. And bitter reflections about "non-keepers and mourners."
Georgy Tovstonogov, Anatoly Efros, Oleg Efremov speak about Vampilov's dramaturgy in Rumyantsev's book. They enthusiastically talk about the heights of the Vampilov theater, but at the same time, none of the masters admits that at the turn of the 60-70s the Irkutsk provincial and his plays were not accepted or understood by them.
Yes, it was possible to experiment with two one-act plays by Vampilov, combining them into “Provincial Jokes”, but with the stage performance of “Duck Hunt”, “Elder Son”, or “Last Summer in Chulimsk”, everything was much more complicated and dramatic.
Alexander Vampilov is the author of four large and several one-act plays.
But the point is not the quantity, but the artistic level to which many of our classics of socialist realism and current postmodernists are like Chomolungma.
Vampilov's plays today have the most enviable fate. They are played in the capitals and in the provinces. They are always at work, in a constant and different stage reading. They are screened. Broken down into quotes.
They have become classics, but echoes of today's troubled times can also be found in them.
Because the heroes of Vampilov are our Russian province. She hasn't gone anywhere, and she hasn't even changed much. Maybe only hardened, life crumpled.
But the essence remains the same.
“Laugh at these people, resent them, suffer from their multitude. But do not reject them, because this will not make you or them better - this, it seems, is the main motive of all Vampilov's plays, ”the great Russian writer Valentin Rasputin, a friend of the playwright and his fellow countryman, perspicaciously noted.
They were related by love, pain and compassion for their heroes. And this is the only secret of the eternity of their creative heritage.
And bronze for monuments is something else, transient.
