"Cancer Ward" by A. Solzhenitsyn is one of those literary works that not only played an important role in the literary process of the second half of the 20th century, but also had a huge impact on the minds of contemporaries, and at the same time on the course of Russian history.
After the publication of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in the Novy Mir magazine, Solzhenitsyn offered the editor-in-chief of the magazine A. Tvardovsky the text of the story “Cancer Ward”, previously prepared by the author for publication in the Soviet Union, that is, adjusted for censorship. An agreement with the publishing house was signed, but the pinnacle of the Soviet legal existence of the Cancer Ward was the set of the first few chapters for publication in Novy Mir. After that, by order of the authorities, printing was stopped, and the set was then scattered. The work began to be actively distributed in samizdat, and was also published in the West, translated into foreign languages and became one of the grounds for awarding Solzhenitsyn the Nobel Prize.
Solzhenitsyn's first story, which appeared in print, turned literary and social life in the Soviet Union upside down. In the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" (whose original title was "Shch-854"), for the first time, openly spoke about camp life, a life that millions of people lived throughout the country. This alone would be enough to make an entire generation think, to force them to look at reality and history with different eyes. Following this, other stories by Solzhenitsyn were published in Novy Mir, and his play Candle in the Wind was accepted for production at the Lenin Komsomol Theater. At the same time, the story "The Cancer Ward", the main theme of which is the theme of life and death, the spiritual quest of a person and the search for an answer to the question of how a person lives, was banned and was first published in Russia only in 1990.
One of the main themes of the story is the impotence of a person in the face of illness and death. Whatever the person, good or bad, educated or, conversely, uneducated, whatever position he holds, when an almost incurable disease befalls him, he ceases to be a high-ranking official, turns into an ordinary person who just wants to live. Along with describing the struggle of a person for life, for the desire to simply coexist without pain, without torment, Solzhenitsyn, always and under any circumstances, distinguished by his craving for life, raised many problems. Their range is quite wide: from the meaning of life, the relationship between a man and a woman to the purpose of literature.
Solzhenitsyn brings together in one of the chambers people of different nationalities, professions, committed to different ideas. One of these patients was Oleg Kostoglotov, an exile, a former convict, and the other was Rusanov, the exact opposite of Kostoglotov: a party leader, “a valuable worker, an honored person”, devoted to the party. Having shown the events of the story first through the eyes of Rusanov, and then through the perception of Kostoglotov, Solzhenitsyn made it clear that power would gradually change, that the Rusanovs with their “questionnaire economy”, with their methods of various warnings, would cease to exist and the Kostoglotovs would live, who did not accept such concepts as "remnants of bourgeois consciousness" and "social origin". Solzhenitsyn wrote the story, trying to show different views on life: from the point of view of Vega, and from the point of view of Asya, Dema, Vadim and many others. In some ways, their views are similar, in some ways they differ. But basically Solzhenitsyn wants to show the wrongness of those who think like Rusanov's daughter, Rusanov himself. They are accustomed to looking for people somewhere necessarily below; think only of yourself, without thinking about others. Kostoglotov is the spokesman for Solzhenitsyn's ideas. Through Oleg's disputes with the ward, through his conversations in the camps, he reveals the paradox of life, or rather, that there was no point in such a life, just as there is no point in the literature that Avieta extols. According to her, sincerity in literature is harmful. “Literature is to entertain us when we are in a bad mood,” says Avieta. And if you have to write about what should be, then it means that there will never be truth, since no one can say exactly what will happen. And not everyone can see and describe what is, and it is unlikely that Avieta will be able to imagine at least a hundredth of the horror when a woman ceases to be a woman, but becomes a workhorse, who subsequently cannot have children. Zoya reveals to Kostoglotov the whole horror of hormone therapy; and the fact that he is deprived of the right to continue himself horrifies him: “First they deprived me of my own life. Now they are also depriving them of the right to ... continue themselves. To whom and why will I be now? Worst of freaks! For mercy? For charity?" And no matter how much Ephraim, Vadim, Rusanov argue about the meaning of life, no matter how much they talk about him, for everyone he will remain the same - leave someone behind. Kostoglotov went through everything, and this left its mark on his system of values, on his understanding of life.
The central question, the answer to which all the heroes are looking for, is formulated by the title of Leo Tolstoy's story, which accidentally fell into the hands of one of the patients, Efrem Podduev: "How does a person live?" One of Tolstoy's later stories, which opens a cycle devoted to the interpretation of the Gospel, makes a strong impression on the hero, who, before his illness, thought little about deep problems. And now, day after day, the whole chamber is trying to find the answer to the question: “How does a person live?”. Everyone answers this question according to their beliefs, life principles, upbringing, life experience. The Soviet nomenclature worker and scammer Rusanov is sure that "people live: by ideology and the public good." Of course, he learned this commonplace formulation a long time ago, and even thinks little about its meaning. Geologist Vadim Zatsyrko claims that a person is alive with creativity. He would like to do a lot in life, to complete his large and significant research, to carry out more and more new projects. Vadim Zatsyrko is a frontier hero. His convictions, brought up by his father, who bowed before Stalin, are in line with the dominant ideology. However, the ideology itself is for Vadim only an appendix to the only important thing in his life - scientific, research work. The question, why is a person still alive, constantly sounds on the pages of the story, and finds more and more answers. The heroes do not see the meaning of life in anything: in love, in salary, in qualifications, in their native places and in God. This question is answered not only by patients of the cancer corps, but also by oncologists who are fighting for the lives of patients, who face death every day.
Finally, in the last third of the story, a hero appears who deserves special attention - Shulubin. If the life position and beliefs of Rusanov in the novel are opposed to the truth that Kosoglotov understands, then the conversation with Shulubin makes the hero think about something else. With traitors, sycophants, opportunists, informers and the like, everything is obvious and does not need any explanation. But Shulubin's life truth shows Kosoglotov a different position, which he did not think about.
Shulubin never denounced anyone, did not scoff, did not grovel before the authorities, but nevertheless he never tried to oppose himself to it: “As for the rest, I will tell you this: at least you lied less, understand? at least you bent less, appreciate it! You were arrested, and we were driven to meetings: to work on you. You were executed - and we were forced to stand up and clap for the announced verdicts. Yes, do not clap, but - demand execution, demand! Shulubin's position is in fact always the position of the majority. Fear for oneself, for one's family, and finally, the fear of being left alone, "outside the team" silenced millions. Shulubin quotes Pushkin's poem:
In our ugly age...
On all the elements, man -
Tyrant, traitor or prisoner.
And then the logical conclusion follows: “And if I remember that I didn’t sit in prison, and I firmly know that I wasn’t a tyrant, then ...” traitor.
Shulubin's story makes Kosoglotov, and with him the reader, think about another side of the question of the distribution of roles in Soviet society.
In addition to numerous literary studies and articles devoted to the "Cancer Ward", the article by L. Durnov, academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, professor, oncologist, deserves attention. This is the doctor's point of view, an attempt to analyze the Cancer Ward from the point of view of medical deontology. L. Durnov claims that the "Cancer Ward" is "not only a work of art, but also a guide for a doctor." He dwells in detail on the medical terminology of the story, emphasizing how correctly and accurately Solzhenitsyn describes the symptoms of various oncological diseases. “The feeling that the story was written by a certified, knowledgeable doctor does not leave me,” writes Durnov.
In general, the theme of the relationship between the doctor and the patient, medical deontology is one of the leading ones in the Cancer Ward. And it is no coincidence that the role of Vera Gangart (Vega, as Kosoglotov calls her, giving her the name of the largest, guiding star) in Kosoglotov's spiritual quest is great. It is she who becomes the embodiment of life and femininity. Not mundane, bodily, like Nurse Zoya, but true.
However, neither the romance with Zoya, nor Kostoglotov's admiration for Vega lead to the connection of the heroes, because Oleg, who even defeated his illness, is unable to overcome the alienation and spiritual emptiness acquired in prisons, camps and exile. The failed visit to Vega shows the hero how far he is from ordinary everyday life. In the department store, Kosoglotov feels like an alien. He is so accustomed to a life where buying an oil lamp is a great joy, and an iron is an incredible success, that the most ordinary items of clothing looked to him as an incomprehensible luxury, which, nevertheless, is available to everyone. But not to him, because his work, the work of an exile, is practically free. And he can only afford to eat a barbecue stick and buy a couple of small bouquets of violets, which eventually go to two girls walking by. Oleg understands that he cannot simply come to Vega like that, confess his feelings to her and ask her to accept him - such an eternal exile, moreover, a cancer patient. He leaves the city without seeing him, without explaining himself to Vega.
Literary allusions and reminiscences play a significant role in the story. Tolstoy's story was already mentioned at the beginning of the work. It is worth noting Solzhenitsyn's other appeals to the topic of literature, its role and place in the life of society and every person. For example, the characters of the novel discuss Pomerantsev's article "On Sincerity in Literature", published in Novy Mir in 1953. This conversation with Rusanov's daughter Avieta allows the author to show a narrow-minded attitude towards literature: “Where does this false demand for the so-called “harsh truth” come from? Why does the truth have to be harsh all of a sudden? Why shouldn't it be sparkling, exciting, optimistic! All our literature should become festive! In the end, people are offended when their lives are written gloomily. They like it when they write about it, decorating it.” Soviet literature must be optimistic. Nothing dark, no horror. Literature is a source of inspiration, the main assistant in the ideological struggle.
Solzhenitsyn contrasts this opinion with the very life of his heroes in the ward of the cancer ward. The same story of Tolstoy turns out to be the key to understanding life for them, helping them to solve important issues, while the characters themselves are on the verge of life and death. And it turns out that the role of literature cannot be reduced either to mentoring, or to entertainment, or to an argument in an ideological dispute. And the closest thing to the truth is Dyoma, who claims: "Literature is the teacher of life."
Gospel motifs occupy a special place in the story. So, for example, researchers compare Ephraim Podduev with a repentant robber crucified along with the Savior. Kostoglotov's quest eventually leads him to a spiritual rebirth, and the last chapter of the story is called "And the Last Day." On the last day of creation, God breathed life into man.
In the "living soul" - love, which for Tolstoy means striving for God and mercy, and for the heroes of Solzhenitsyn - conscience and "mutual disposition" of people to each other, ensuring justice.
Solzhenitsyn cancer camp building
A lesson on the work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn on the topic “Cancer Ward”: the history of creation, problems, heroes” is held in the 10th grade after studying the novel by Leo Tolstoy "War and Peace".
For students of the 10th grade, it is important not only to read the book plot, but also to pay attention to details. The story of AI Solzhenitsyn is considered both in the ideological and political context. Attention is also drawn to the amazing language of the writer's works: precise, poetic, ironic, deeply Russian. The result is a written work “What, in your opinion, is the meaning of human life?”, Offering to think about this issue together with L.N. Tolstoy and A.I. Solzhenitsyn.
municipal budgetary educational institution
“Order of the Badge of Honor” gymnasium No. 2 named after I.P. Pavlova"
Lesson in grade 10 on the topic:
"A. I. Solzhenitsyn's story "Cancer Ward": history of creation, problems, heroes."
Prepared by the teacher of Russian language and literature Belova Irina Fedorovna
Ryazan, 2016
Subject: "A. I. Solzhenitsyn's story "Cancer Ward": history of creation, problems, heroes."
Lesson design : portrait of AI Solzhenitsyn, reviews of the writer, exhibition of books, newspaper publications.
Lesson Objectives : arouse interest in the personality and work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn; tell about the history of the creation of the story "Cancer Ward"; introduce the theme of the story and its characters.
During the classes
The word of the teacher about the history of the creation of the work.
Who is he, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn?
There have always been people in Russia who could not be silent when silence was the only way to survive. One of these people is Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, an outstanding Russian writer, publicist and public figure.
The Russian reader learned about him in the early sixties, after the publication of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” in the Novy Mir magazine.
A. I. Solzhenitsyn did not receive a special literary education, but for the last two pre-war years he studied at the philological faculty of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy and Literature. He was drafted into the army, graduated from the artillery school. Shortly before the end of the war, in February 1945, in East Prussia, Captain A.I. Solzhenitsyn was already accused under a political article, arrested, and then - a prison and a camp.
The camp term ended on the day of Stalin's death, and cancer was immediately discovered; according to the verdict of doctors, he had less than a month to live. It was a terrible moment in the writer's life. In the proximity of death, in anticipation of his fate, AI Solzhenitsyn saw the possibility of posing the most important, final questions of human existence. First of all, about the meaning of life. The disease does not take into account social status, it is indifferent to ideological beliefs, it is terrible because of its suddenness and the fact that it makes everyone equal before death. But A. I. Solzhenitsyn did not die, despite the advanced malignant tumor, and believed that “the life returned to him since then has an embedded purpose.”
In 1955, on the day he was discharged from the cancer ward, in Tashkent, Solzhenitsyn conceived the story "The Cancer Ward". “However, the idea lay without any movement until January 1963, when the story was begun, but even here it was pushed aside by the start of work on The Red Wheel. In 1964, the author made a trip to the Tashkent Oncology Center to meet with his former attending physicians and to clarify some medical circumstances. Since the autumn of 1965, after the arrest of the author's archive, when the materials of the "Archipelago" were being finalized in the Shelter, in places of open life it was only possible to continue this story.
I would like to note that the "Cancer Ward" is one of the most important works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn of the Ryazan period. The Ryazan stage of the life and work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn is called "Boldino autumn". Here he writes or begins to write One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1959), Matrenin Dvor (1959), Cancer Ward (1966), In the First Circle (1958), For the Good of the Cause (1963), "The Gulag Archipelago" (1968), "The Red Wheel (August the Fourteenth)" (1969). It was in Ryazan that fame would come to Solzhenitsyn after the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962. The atmosphere of the ancient city, its people, Meshchera landscapes influenced
every work written here. As mentioned earlier, Solzhenitsyn came up with the idea of the Cancer Ward back in 1955, after being discharged from the Tashkent hospital. He returns to him on February 3, 1963. “Alexander Isaevich suddenly felt an irresistible desire to write a story from his “oncological past”. In the evening, when we skied around the square, he was already in his “cancer ward,” writes N.A. Reshetovskaya, the first wife of the writer. This happens at a moment impossible for Solzhenitsyn's entire previous life, when he is at the pinnacle of fame, recognition and good fortune.
In the late spring of 1963, A.I. Solzhenitsyn leaves for Solotcha to prepare for writing a story from his “oncological past”. Preparing and tuning in, he reads L.N. Tolstoy is the very tenth volume, which his heroes will then discuss.
In the spring of 1966, part 1 was completed, proposed to Novy Mir, rejected by it, and sent by the author to Samizdat. During 1966, the 2nd part was also completed, with the same fate.
In the autumn of that year, a discussion of the 1st part took place in the prose section of the Moscow branch of the Writers' Union, and this was the upper limit of the achieved legality. In the autumn of 1967, Novy Mir legalized the acceptance of the story for publication, but could do nothing further. The first editions of the story were published in 1968 in Paris and Frankfurt.
A brief retelling of the story "Cancer Ward", the problems of the work. (Student's message).
The story "The Cancer Ward" reflects A.I. Solzhenitsyn's impressions of his stay in the Tashkent Oncological Dispensary and the history of his healing.
Solzhenitsyn wrote a story about people on the verge of death, about their last thoughts and actions. The time of action is limited to a few weeks, the place of action is the walls of the hospital. One of its themes is that no matter what a person is, good or bad, educated or, conversely, uneducated; no matter what position he holds, when an almost incurable disease befalls him, he ceases to be a high-ranking official, turns into an ordinary person who just wants to live. Solzhenitsyn described life in a cancer ward, in the most terrible of hospitals, where people are doomed to death. Along with describing the struggle of a person for life, for the desire to simply coexist without pain, without torment, Solzhenitsyn, always and under any circumstances, distinguished by his craving for life, raised many problems. Their range is quite wide: from the meaning of life, the relationship between a man and a woman to the purpose of literature.
Heroes and their prototypes. (Teacher's word)
So, the action of the novel basically takes place in the thirteenth (“cancer”) building of a dirty and overcrowded hospital at the clinic. Solzhenitsyn shows disputes, clashes in matters of ideology, the struggle with illness, with death, the inner world of the inhabitants of the chamber: the protagonist of Leningrad Oleg Kostoglotov, a front-line soldier, a former convict sentenced to eternal life; head of the personnel department Pavel Rusanov - scammer; a schoolboy, an orphan Dyomka, who dreams of getting a higher education; a young scientist-geologist Vadim Zatsyrko, on the verge of death, working on a method for determining the presence of ores by radioactive waters; the librarian of the agricultural technical school Alexei Shulubin, a former scientist in Russian biology; builder Ephraim Podduev, who read a book on the verge of death and thought about his own morality.
Some of the characters in the story have real prototypes:
Lyudmila Afanasievna Dontsova ("mother") - head of the radiation department Lidia Aleksandrovna Dunaeva;
Vera Kornilievna Gangart - treating doctor Irina Emelyanovna Meike;
Krementsov - old man Krementsov, academician Pavlov's beard (chapter 17);
Elizaveta Anatolyevna (Chapter 34) - Elizaveta Denisovna Voronyanskaya.
Checking knowledge of the text of the story .
Find out the hero of the story "Cancer Ward":
“You won’t be happy with such a neighborhood: he had a gangster face. This is how he looked, probably from the scar (the scar began near the corner of the mouth and passed along the bottom of the left cheek almost to the neck); or maybe from uncombed prickly black hair sticking up and up and to the side; or maybe even from a rude harsh expression.(Kostoglotov through the eyes of Rusanov)
“He obviously listened to his voice and at every gesture and turn he obviously saw himself from the outside - what a solid, authoritative, educated and intelligent person he is. In his native village, legends were made about him, he was known in the city, and even in the newspaper he was sometimes mentioned.(Nizamutdin Bakhramovich, head physician)
“He was quite healthy - he didn’t complain about anything in the ward, had no external lesion, his cheeks were filled with healthy swarthyness, and a smooth forelock was laid out on his forehead. He was a guy at least where, at least for dancing ". (Proshka)
“Clumsy, with an uncombed coal head, big hands almost did not fit into the side small pockets of a hospital jacket”. (Kostoglotov)
« He was strong in the shoulders, firm in the legs and of sound mind. He was not only two-wire, but two-core, and after eight hours he could work another eight as the first shift.(Efrem Podduev)
“Short and very slender - it seemed very slender because she emphasized narrow convergence in the waist interception. Her hair, unfashionably put in a knot at the back of her head, was lighter than black, but also darker than dark blond - those in which we are offered the unintelligible word "brown hair", but to say: black blond - between black and blond.(Dr. Gangart)
5. Conversation on the text.
What is the central question, the answer to which all the heroes of the work are looking for?
(It is formulated by the title of Leo Tolstoy's story, which accidentally fell into the hands of one of the patients, Efrem Podduev: "How does a person live?").
What are the central characters of the story arguing about - Oleg Kostoglotov and Pavel Rusanov? What conclusions does A.I. Solzhenitsyn lead the reader to?
(Having shown the events of the story, first through the eyes of Rusanov, and then through the perception of Kostoglotov, Solzhenitsyn made it clear that power would gradually change, that the Rusanovs with their “questionnaire economy”, with their methods of various warnings, would cease to exist, and the Kostoglotovs, who did not accept such concepts, would live as "remnants of bourgeois consciousness" and "social origin").
Who in the story is the spokesman for the ideas of A.I. Solzhenitsyn? (Oleg Kostoglotov).
Solzhenitsyn tried to show the different views of his heroes on life. What are their life principles?
(To the question “How does a person live?” Each hero of the story answers according to his convictions, principles, upbringing, life experience. For example, the Soviet nomenclature worker and informer Rusanov is sure that “people live: by ideology and the public good.” But he learned a long time ago, and even thinks little about its meaning. And the geologist Vadim Zatsyrko claims that a person is alive with creativity. He would like to do a lot in life, complete his large and significant research, and carry out more and more new projects).
The heroes see the meaning of life in everything: in love, in salary, in qualifications, in their native places and in God. This question is answered not only by patients of the cancer corps, but also by oncologists who are fighting for the lives of patients, who face death every day. Give examples.
(About Gangart Vera: “She so wanted to be killed too! She immediately, leaving the institute, wanted to go to the front. They didn’t take her ... And she had to live. That was all she had: to treat, sick. In that was the salvation."
In the last third of the story, a hero appears who deserves special attention - Shulubin. A conversation with Shulubin makes Oleg Kostoglotov think. With traitors, sycophants, opportunists, informers and the like, everything is obvious and does not need any explanation. But Shulubin's life truth shows Kosoglotov a different position. What is this position?
(Shulubin never denounced anyone, did not scoff, did not grovel before the authorities, but nevertheless he never tried to oppose himself to it. Shulubin's position in fact is always the position of the majority. Fear for oneself, for one's family, and finally, fear of remaining alone, "outside the collective" silenced millions).
Guys, what do you think, how does a person live?
6. Generalization.
The story "Cancer Ward" is one of the most important works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn of the Ryazan period. The author puts in it the eternal problems of the meaning of life, love and death, the morality of the existing system, reveals the sources of the material and spiritual poverty of the post-Stalinist society, reveals whether correction is possible and at what cost it is obtained. The author sees the potential possibility of curing the cancerous tumor of the Soviet society in the dialogues-disputes.
6. Homework:
Write an essay on the topic “What do you think is the meaning of human life?”
It is terrible to touch the work of the great genius, Nobel Prize winner, a man about whom so much has been said, but I cannot but write about his story "Cancer Ward" - a work to which he gave, albeit a small, but part of his life, to which he tried to deprive for many years. But he clung to life and endured all the hardships of the concentration camps, all their horror; he brought up in himself his own views on what is happening around, not borrowed from anyone; he expressed these views in his story.
One of its themes is that no matter what a person is, good or bad, educated or, conversely, uneducated; no matter what position he holds, when an almost incurable disease befalls him, he ceases to be a high-ranking official, turns into an ordinary person who just wants to live. Solzhenitsyn described life in a cancer ward, in the most terrible of hospitals, where people are doomed to death. Along with describing the struggle of a person for life, for the desire to simply coexist without pain, without torment, Solzhenitsyn, always and under any circumstances, distinguished by his craving for life, raised many problems. Their range is quite wide: from the meaning of life, the relationship between a man and a woman to the purpose of literature.
Solzhenitsyn brings together in one of the chambers people of different nationalities, professions, committed to different ideas. One of these patients was Oleg Kostoglotov, an exile, a former convict, and the other was Rusanov, the complete opposite of Kostoglotov: a party leader, “a valuable worker, an honored person”, devoted to the party. Having shown the events first through the eyes of Rusanov, and then through the perception of Kostoglotov, Solzhenitsyn made it clear that power would gradually change, that the Rusanovs with their “questionnaire economy”, with their methods of various warnings, would cease to exist and the Kostoglotovs would live, who did not accept such concepts as "remnants of bourgeois consciousness" and "social origin". Solzhenitsyn wrote the story, trying to show different views on life: both from the point of view of Bega, and from the point of view of Asya, Dema, Vadim and many others. In some ways, their views are similar, in some ways they differ. But basically Solzhenitsyn wants to show the wrongness of those who think like Rusanov's daughter, Rusanov himself. They are accustomed to looking for people somewhere necessarily below; think only of yourself, without thinking about others. Kostoglotov - the spokesman for Solzhenitsyn's ideas; through Oleg's disputes with the ward, through his conversations in the camps, he reveals the paradox of life, or rather, that there was no point in such a life, just as there is no point in the literature that Avieta extols. According to her, sincerity in literature is harmful. “Literature is to entertain us when we are in a bad mood,” says Avieta, not realizing that literature is really a teacher of life. And if you have to write about what should be, then it means that there will never be truth, since no one can say exactly what will happen. And not everyone can see and describe what is, and it is unlikely that Avieta will be able to imagine at least a hundredth of the horror when a woman ceases to be a woman, but becomes a workhorse, who subsequently cannot have children. Zoya reveals to Kostoglotov the whole horror of hormone therapy; and the fact that he is deprived of the right to continue himself horrifies him: “First they deprived me of my own life. Now they are depriving them of the right to ... continue themselves. To whom and why will I now be? .. The worst of freaks! For mercy? .. For alms? .. ”And no matter how much Ephraim, Vadim, Rusanov argue about the meaning of life, no matter how much they talk about him, for everyone he will remain the same - leave someone behind him. Kostoglotov went through everything, and this left its mark on his system of values, on his concept of life.
The fact that Solzhenitsyn spent a long time in the camps also influenced his language and style of writing the story. But the work only benefits from this, since everything that he writes about becomes available to a person, he is, as it were, transferred to a hospital and takes part in everything that happens. But it is unlikely that any of us will be able to fully understand Kostoglotov, who sees a prison everywhere, tries to find and finds a camp approach in everything, even in a zoo. The camp has crippled his life, and he understands that he is unlikely to be able to start his former life, that the road back is closed to him. And millions more of the same lost people are thrown into the vastness of the country, people who, communicating with those who did not touch the camp, understand that there will always be a wall of misunderstanding between them, just as Lyudmila Afanasyevna Kostoglotova did not understand.
We grieve that these people, who were crippled by life, disfigured by the regime, who showed such an irrepressible thirst for life, experienced terrible suffering, are now forced to endure the exclusion of society. They have to give up the life that they have long sought, that they deserve.
The theme of the disease in the work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn "Cancer Ward" in the context of Russian prose of the twentieth century
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn- a world-famous writer, a man with a short biography, a bright personality who entered into combat with the political system of an entire state and earned respect and recognition from the whole world. Studying the life and work of an outstanding writer means familiarizing yourself with the history of your homeland, approaching the realization of the reasons that led society to a political, economic and moral crisis.A.I. Solzhenitsyn was born into a family of wealthy peasants. He did not receive a special literary education, but for the last two pre-war years he studied at the philological faculty of the Moscow Institute of Philosophy and Literature. He was drafted into the army, graduated from the artillery school. Shortly before the end of the war, in February 1945, in East Prussia, Captain A. Solzhenitsyn was already arrested, imprisoned and in a camp. The camp term ended on the day of Stalin's death, and cancer was immediately discovered; according to the verdict of doctors, he had less than a month to live. In the proximity of death, in anticipation of his fate, he saw the possibility of posing the most important, final questions of human existence. First of all, about the meaning of life. The disease does not take into account social status, it is indifferent to ideological beliefs, it is terrible because of its suddenness and the fact that it makes everyone equal before death. But AI Solzhenitsyn did not die, despite the neglected malignant tumor, and believed that "the life returned to him since then has an embedded purpose." After being discharged from the Tashkent Oncological Dispensary in 1955, AI Solzhenitsyn decided to write a story about people on the verge of death, about their last thoughts and actions. The idea was realized only after almost ten years. Attempts to publish "Cancer Ward" in the journal "New World" were unsuccessful, and the story was published in 1968 abroad.
Everyone was gathered by this terrible corps - the thirteenth, cancerous. The persecuted and the persecutors, the silent and the vigorous, the hard workers and money-grubbers - he gathered and depersonalized everyone, all of them are now only seriously ill, torn from their usual environment, rejected and rejected everything familiar and dear.
One of the themes of the story "Cancer Ward" is that, whatever the person, good or bad, educated or, conversely, uneducated; no matter what position he holds, when an almost incurable disease befalls him, he ceases to be a high-ranking official, turns into an ordinary person who just wants to live.
L. Durnov, academician of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, professor, notes that the interest of writers in extreme states that a sick person falls into has clearly increased in recent years. Rush hour brings out the good and the bad in a person. Just as in the 19th and early 20th centuries the "literature of tuberculosis" dominated (one has only to remember "Belated Flowers") by A.P. Chekhov or "Life on Loan" by Remarque), "literature of cancer" prevails today. The atmosphere of hopelessness, fatality that reigns around cancer is largely created by writers.
The academician remarks: “Reading the Cancer Ward, one never ceases to admire how Solzhenitsyn subtly, tactfully describes the psychological state of the patient. The sick person begins to feel lonely: “...everything is left on the other side of the tumor. And on this - Pavel Nikolaevich Rusanov. One".
"For a moment, the wiring to the outer world dangled - and broke off. And again the whole world was closed by a tumor the size of a fist placed under the jaw."
"Pavel Nikolaevich's happiness consisted in sitting here with his wife more, and not going to the ward." The patient becomes increasingly dependent on others. The theme of illness among writers is associated with loneliness, which helps to comprehend everything that happened, evaluate and find rational ways out of the borderline situation.
In the Cancer Ward, two actors collide and part ways. The image of Rusanov as a typical Soviet official of the Stalin era is contrasted with the image of Oleg Kostoglotov - an exile, somewhat reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn himself.
In Cancer Ward, the Gulag reality is almost invisible, it only slightly opens up somewhere in the distance, reminding itself of Kostoglotov's "eternal exile". The writer paints the everyday life of the cancer corps with calm, restrained colors. Here life is depicted, shackled not by barbed wire, but by nature itself. The threat of human death looms not from the side of the state, but from within the human body, ripening like a tumor. AI Solzhenitsyn seems to welcome all living things, removing the cobweb from what fills human existence, warms it. The writer considers the theme of love of life from the other side. The self-satisfied love of life of Maxim Chaly is just as blind and cynical as Pavel Rusanov's attitude to life. These people do not recognize spiritual values. The idea of repentance is alien to them, one of the cherished ones for A.I. This is partly an answer to the question asked by Oleg Kostoglotov: "What is the upper price of life anyway? How much can you pay for it, and how much can not?" For Oleg, the hospital ward became a school. It is understandable that he wants to live a simple life.
The condition of the sick doctor Dontsova, who works in oncology, is described very interestingly. The doctor, without ceasing to be a doctor, at the same time adopts the psychology of the patient.
By her recognition of the disease, she excluded herself from the noble class of doctors and puts herself in the place of the patient. I recall the beautiful lines of B. Pasternak: "I feel for them, for everyone - as if I had been in their shoes, I melt myself, as snow melts, I myself, like morning, frown, frown."
But on the other hand, Solzhenitsyn very correctly noted that, nevertheless, Dontsova, who fell ill, remains a doctor in her illness - she compares her feelings with the experience of her medical life and, perhaps, it is harder for her from this knowledge.
And it seems that Alexander Isaevich lived in the "Cancer Ward" for each of his heroes, endured everything that they endured, and, like a doctor, gave each of them a piece of his soul.
Literature plays a significant role in understanding what is happening. Kostoglotov thinks about Russian literature. It is no coincidence that a volume of Leo Tolstoy appeared in the ward. The writer Solzhenitsyn recalls the humanism of the literature of the 19th century with its "main law" of Tolstoy - the love of man for man.
Cancer disease equalizes patients. If for Rusanov the disease is a retribution, which he himself did not realize, then for some, like for Ephraim and Shulubin, this is an approach to a painful insight.
Kostoglotov knows that after his recovery, an eternal exile awaits him in Ush-Terek, but he, as it were, learns anew to appreciate what is given to man.
Deprived of the opportunity to start a family (Kostoglotov was injected with hormonal drugs), he comes out bodily healed from the thirteenth cancer building; Rusanov, who is falsely hoping for a recovery, is taken away by his relatives in a car.
Solzhenitsyn is close to the concept of the late Tolstoy. Cancer Ward is more of a philosophical story. Here, as in Leo Tolstoy's story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", the author puts his heroes face to face with death and forces everyone to look back at the life they have lived and think about its meaning. Above the meaning of life - their own and the common.
In the story of L, N, Tolstoy "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", the hero of which also sees the "lie" in his life, and his true meaning is revealed to him, that "general idea" that explains everything in the world. It is curious that there are coincidences in the figurative structure of the philosophical and epistemological artistic generalizations of the two writers.
Officials by profession (Rusanov and Ilya Ilyich) belong to the environment of rich people, where the thing ("curtain") becomes almost synonymous with life, and references to the soul seem like a ridiculous prejudice, gradually devastated the souls of the heroes. Accustomed to privileges, fenced off from life, they love "the people", but are squeamish about people. Rusanov is guilty of serious sins: he denounced a comrade, identified the relatives of prisoners among the workers and forced them to renounce the innocently convicted. Ivan Ilyich was always invigorated by the "possibility of putting anyone in prison." And suddenly they notice that doctors treat them the same way they themselves treated people. During the period of illness, Rusanov feels like a second-class person, but does not change his attitude to life. this is an example of a static hero. Ilya Ilyich Tolstoy is a dynamic hero, whose death is full of great meaning than a life full of deeds. For Tolstoy's hero, illness is a revelation.
The problem of human crisis conditions is extremely relevant.
Every day, thousands of Ivanov Ilyichs die on the planet, but people also continue to marry and marry for convenience, hate each other and raise children. Everyone thinks that they are capable of a feat. And feats lie in the most ordinary life, if it is illuminated, permeated with love and care for others.
Fear as a result of not understanding the causes of a sudden illness opens up the world of works of art by Russian writers of both the 19th and 20th centuries. A person who finds himself at the death line protests, not understanding why it is he who should die, and not someone else, for whom death, perhaps, is a natural fate. It is on the verge of death, not wanting to accept the fate of "everyone", that a person turns, sometimes for the first time, to God in order to call him to answer the question - why? why me? And this moment of awareness of death becomes the starting point for a person to acquire himself as a particle of God or the world whole. In other words, death reveals the greatest mystery of revelation: what is a person and what is his destiny. Russian literature tried to fulfill such a humanistic task, reflecting on the fate of man and the world on the verge of illness or death.
Tolstoy's heroes, who, as a rule, think least of all about death during their lives, become "decent" people just on the eve of their death. The author allegedly destroys them on purpose in order to give them the opportunity to "resurrect" in a new transformed essence even before the physical end. After all, his heroes, by and large, are not people until they fall into borderline situation - disease. All of them before this important, frank event of life were anyone - decent employees, officials, parents, spouses - but not people in the true sense of the word. When do they get into a situation "to be or not to be", the human essence awakens in them. The disease, as a punishment, came, it turns out, because I lived "not the way it should be", "wrong", "indecent". The beginning of the disease is nostalgia for the divine in man and the question "why?" always has its addressee - God. The death of a person is a return to the true understanding of faith, which, together with reflections on the end of being, is the least of all worrisome during life.
Humility before the inevitability of illness and then death sets the person up to accept this thought with great patience.
Realists believed that in order to heal society, you must first heal the person. And in Solzhenitsyn, cancer is a symbol of that malignant disease that has penetrated the flesh and blood of society.
"Repentance (repentance) is the first span under the foot, from which alone one can move forward ... only with repentance can spiritual growth begin," Solzhenitsyn writes in 1973 in the article "Repentance and Self-Restriction." Sins, from which one should get rid of and which one must repent of, is a cross-cutting theme of his work. These are national sins - serfdom, the destruction of historical Russia by the communists; these are personal sins - lies, violence, irresponsibility, cruelty, etc.
"Cancer Ward" warns us against social apathy, life by inertia, participation in lies, leading both to spiritual illnesses of the whole society and to physical illnesses of a particular person, helps to develop a civic position.
A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s work is most fully revealed only in the context of classical Russian literature, since his philosophical reflections are a continuation of the philosophy of Russian humanists.
In my opinion, the study of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s work in literature classes in high school on the basis of a comparative analysis (“The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by L. N. Tolstoy) is the most productive.
It is terrible to touch the work of the great genius, Nobel Prize winner, a man about whom so much has been said, but I cannot but write about his story "Cancer Ward" - a work to which he gave, albeit a small, but part of his life, to which he tried to deprive for many years. But he clung to life and endured all the hardships of the concentration camps, all their horror; he brought up in himself his own views on what is happening around, not borrowed from anyone; he expressed these views in his story.
One of its themes is that no matter what a person is, good or bad, educated or, conversely, uneducated; no matter what position he holds, when an almost incurable disease befalls him, he ceases to be a high-ranking official, turns into an ordinary person who just wants to live. Solzhenitsyn described life in a cancer ward, in the most terrible of hospitals, where people are doomed to death. Along with describing the struggle of a person for life, for the desire to simply coexist without pain, without torment, Solzhenitsyn, always and under any circumstances, distinguished by his craving for life, raised many problems. Their range is quite wide: from the meaning of life, the relationship between a man and a woman to the purpose of literature.
Solzhenitsyn brings together in one of the chambers people of different nationalities, professions, committed to different ideas. One of these patients was Oleg Kostoglotov, an exile, a former convict, and the other was Rusanov, the exact opposite of Kostoglotov: a party leader, “a valuable worker, an honored person”, devoted to the party. Having shown the events of the story first through the eyes of Rusanov, and then through the perception of Kostoglotov, Solzhenitsyn made it clear that power would gradually change, that the Rusanovs with their “questionnaire economy”, with their methods of various warnings, would cease to exist and the Kostoglotovs would live, who did not accept such concepts as "remnants of bourgeois consciousness" and "social origin". Solzhenitsyn wrote the story, trying to show different views on life: both from the point of view of Bega, and from the point of view of Asya, Dema, Vadim and many others. In some ways, their views are similar, in some ways they differ. But basically Solzhenitsyn wants to show the wrongness of those who think like Rusanov's daughter, Rusanov himself. They are accustomed to looking for people somewhere necessarily below; think only of yourself, without thinking about others. Kostoglotov - the spokesman for Solzhenitsyn's ideas; through Oleg's disputes with the ward, through his conversations in the camps, he reveals the paradox of life, or rather, that there was no point in such a life, just as there is no point in the literature that Avieta extols. According to her, sincerity in literature is harmful. “Literature is to entertain us when we are in a bad mood,” says Avieta, not realizing that literature is really a teacher of life. And if you have to write about what should be, then it means that there will never be truth, since no one can say exactly what will happen. And not everyone can see and describe what is, and it is unlikely that Avieta will be able to imagine at least a hundredth of the horror when a woman ceases to be a woman, but becomes a workhorse, who subsequently cannot have children. Zoya reveals to Kostoglotov the whole horror of hormone therapy; and the fact that he is deprived of the right to continue himself horrifies him: “First they deprived me of my own life. Now they are also depriving them of the right to ... continue themselves. To whom and why will I now be? .. The worst of freaks! For mercy? .. For alms? .. ”And no matter how much Ephraim, Vadim, Rusanov argue about the meaning of life, no matter how much they talk about him, for everyone he will remain the same - leave someone behind him. Kostoglotov went through everything, and this left its mark on his system of values, on his concept of life.
The fact that Solzhenitsyn spent a long time in the camps also influenced his language and style of writing the story. But the work only benefits from this, since everything that he writes about becomes available to a person, he is, as it were, transferred to a hospital and takes part in everything that happens. But it is unlikely that any of us will be able to fully understand Kostoglotov, who sees a prison everywhere, tries to find and finds a camp approach in everything, even in a zoo. The camp has crippled his life, and he understands that he is unlikely to be able to start his former life, that the road back is closed to him. And millions more of the same lost people are thrown into the vastness of the country, people who, communicating with those who did not touch the camp, understand that there will always be a wall of misunderstanding between them, just as Lyudmila Afanasyevna Kostoglotova did not understand.
We grieve that these people, who were crippled by life, disfigured by the regime, who showed such an irrepressible thirst for life, experienced terrible suffering, are now forced to endure the exclusion of society. They have to give up the life that they have long sought, that they deserve.
