1. Saltykov-Shchedrin's satire.
2. Genre features of fairy tales.
3. Heroes.
4. Fantastic motives.
The tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin are a very special layer of the writer's work. Almost all Saltykov-Shchedrin created in the last years of his life. These short works amaze with a variety of artistic techniques, as well as with their social significance. The writer addresses his "fairy tales" to "children of a fair age." Thus, Saltykov-Shchedrin seems to want to debunk the naive illusions of some adults who are accustomed to looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. The writer treats his readers harshly, does not spare them. The satire of Saltykov-Shchedrin in fairy tales is especially sharp and ruthless. The writer uses fantastic motifs to emphasize social contradictions. He is venomous and merciless. But otherwise his works would not be so accurate and truthful. I. S. Turgenev wrote about the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin: “I saw how the audience writhed with laughter when reading some of Saltykov's essays. There was something terrible about that laugh. The audience, laughing, at the same time felt how the scourge whipped itself. The writer used satire to make readers think about social and social contradictions, to arouse in their minds indignation about what is happening around.
Saltykov-Shchedrin did not accidentally choose the fairy tale genre. Thanks to allegory, he was able to openly express his opinion on a variety of issues. Saltykov-Shchedrin managed to harmoniously connect the genres of fairy tales and fables. From fairy tales, the writer borrowed such genre devices as unexpected transformations, the scene of action (the writer often says: "in a certain kingdom ..."). The genre of fables is manifested in the choice of heroes. A wolf, a hare, a bear, an eagle, a crow and other animals, birds and fish are perceived by the reader as masks behind which quite recognizable faces from the human world are hidden. Under the masks of representatives of the animal world, Saltykov-Shchedrin shows the characteristic features of different social types. The topical content of fairy tales is only emphasized by the intensity of passions that are characteristic of every fairy tale. Saltykov-Shchedrin set out to use a grotesquely ugly form to show the vices of public life, as well as the weaknesses of people. Behind the heroes of fairy tales it is easy to recognize human characters, their writer shows them so recognizable. If Saltykov-Shchedrin makes people the heroes of fairy tales, then he depicts a fantastic situation. People, being in the center of this situation, look very unattractive. Fantasy in fairy tales is an extraordinary situation. And everything else - human types, characters - it's all quite real. All stories are very interesting. For example, the fairy tale "The Wild Landowner" shows us a very stupid and short-sighted gentleman. He always enjoyed the fruits of the labors of his peasants, but did not appreciate it at all. Moreover, the master turned out to be so stupid that he decided to get rid of the peasants. His wish came true. What happened after that? The landowner degraded, ran wild. Fantastic in a fairy tale is the situation when the desire of a stupid master came true, and the peasants disappeared from his estate. The fantastic nature of the tale shows that the well-being of the landowner rested solely on the peasants. And as soon as the peasants were gone, the landowner turned into a wild beast. The harsh truth of this tale is that the ruling class uses the work of ordinary people and at the same time does not appreciate them at all.
Saltykov-Shchedrin repeatedly emphasizes the wretchedness, stupidity, short-sightedness of the representatives of the ruling class. For example, the fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals” makes you think about how helpless the generals are and how strong and savvy a simple person is. The generals cannot do without his help, and he himself lives perfectly alone. Saltykov-Shchedrin endows animals with human traits and reproduces some kind of social situation. In the fairy tale "Selfless Hare" the hare is cowardly, weak, indecisive. He is a typical victim, humiliated and helpless. The wolf is invested with power, personifies the master. The hare puts up with his position as a slave, does not try to do anything for the sake of changes in his life. The despot wolf revels in power, humiliating the unfortunate victim. People are guessed under the mask of animals. Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin are realistic works. The writer calls a spade a spade using allegory. In the fairy tale “The Selfless Hare”, the wolf says: “For not stopping from my first word, here is my decision for you: I sentence you to be deprived of your stomach by tearing it to pieces. And since now I am full, and my wolf is full, and we have enough stock for another five days, then you sit under this bush and wait in line. Or maybe ... ha ha ... I will have mercy on you. He is clearly mocking the victim. But the trouble is that the victim deserves such an attitude. After all, a slavishly submissive hare is deprived of pride, self-respect. He personifies the common people, patient, humble and helpless. From the point of view of Saltykov-Shchedrin, all these qualities deserve censure. The writer considered satire to be an effective and effective weapon capable of opening one's eyes to various social and personal vices.
The writer's tales occupy a very important place in the treasury of Russian literature. Their relevance is obvious even now, when a lot of time has passed since the moment of writing. All the same, there are phenomena in society that deserve sharp censure.
I option
In the 80s of the XIX century, the persecution of literature by government censorship became especially cruel, and as a result, the closure of the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski, edited by Shchedrin. Shchedrin, a master of the "Aesopian language", a bright satirist, subtly noticing human vices and ridiculing the nature of their occurrence, was forced to look for a new form of communication with the reader in order to circumvent censorship. His fairy tales, reflecting, first of all, the class struggle in Russia in the second half of the 19th century, were an ideal way out of this situation.
M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin was born into the family of a serf landowner and, in his own words, was brought up by “serf mothers”, “learned to read and write by a serf literate”. From childhood, an observant and sensitive teenager awakens a protest against cruelty and inhumanity towards the common people, and later he will say: "I saw all the horrors of centuries of bondage ... I saw in their nakedness." Saltykov-Shchedrin reflects all observations and beliefs in his works. Shchedrin, one might say, creates a new genre of fairy tale - political, where fantasy and topical political reality echo.
It can be said that Shchedrin's fairy tales show the confrontation between two social forces: the people and their exploiters. The people in fairy tales are depicted under the masks of kind and defenseless animals and birds, and the exploiters - in the images of predators.
The fairy tale "The Wild Landowner" reveals the burning problem of that time: the relationship between the post-reform peasants and the landowners. The landowner, fearing that the muzhik would “eat up all his goods,” tries to get rid of him: “... And not just somehow, but everything according to the rule. Whether a peasant chicken wanders into the master's oats - now, as a rule, it is in soup; if a peasant gathers to chop wood in secret in the master’s forest ... this very firewood for the master’s yard, and, according to the rule, a fine from the chopper. In the end, "the merciful God heard a tearful prayer," and "there was no peasant in the entire space of the possessions of the stupid landowner."
And then it turns out that there is no life for a landowner without a peasant, because he is only accustomed to taking care of his “soft”, “white”, “crumbly” body, and without a peasant there is no one to wipe the dust , there is no one to cook food, even a mouse and he knows that "the landowner without Senka cannot do him any harm." The author thus makes it clear that the people who are mocked as if they are testing for survival are the only thing that does not allow the landowner to turn into an animal, as happened in a fairy tale (“He is all overgrown from head to toe hair ... and his nails became like iron ... he walked more on all fours and even wondered how he had not noticed before that this way of walking was the most decent and ... convenient”).
In the fairy tale "The Eagle-Maecenas" in allegorical language, the author mercilessly ridicules the tsar and his regime. The distribution of posts gives an idea of the "remarkable" mind of the eagle ruler: magpie, "fortunately she was a thief, they handed over the keys to the treasury."
The bird kingdom went through all the stages of the formation of the state: first, joy and carelessness from a bright future, then - "the tension of relations, which the intrigue hastened to take advantage of", then the vices of royal power come to the surface: careerism, selfishness, hypocrisy, fear, censorship. Feeling the punishing finger of the latter in real life, the author expresses his position here. Education is a sufficient argument to "put a woodpecker in shackles and imprison it in a hollow forever." But silence can also be punishable: “Even a deaf black grouse was suspected of a “way of thinking”, on the grounds that he is silent during the day and sleeps at night.”
Unfortunately, the heroes of Saltykov-Shchedrin have not gone into oblivion, because today we are faced with hypocrisy, irresponsibility, and stupidity. A passionate and indignant satirist writer helps us to overcome these vices.
Option 2
In the satirical works of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin there is a combination of the real and the fantastic. Fiction is a means of revealing the patterns of reality.
Fairy tales are a fantasy genre. But the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin are permeated with the real spirit of the time and reflect it. Under the influence of the spirit of the time, traditional fairy-tale characters are being transformed. The hare turns out to be "sane" or "selfless", the wolf - "poor", the eagle - a patron of the arts. And next to them, unconventional images appear, brought to life by the author's fantasy: an idealistic crucian, a wise gudgeon, and so on. And all of them - animals, birds, fish - are humanized, they behave like people, and at the same time remain animals. Bears, eagles, pikes administer justice and reprisals, conduct scientific disputes, and preach.
A bizarre fantasy world emerges. But creating this world, the satirist simultaneously explores the types of human behavior, various kinds of adaptive reactions. The satirist mercilessly ridicules all unrealizable hopes and hopes, convinces the reader of the futility of any compromise with the authorities. Neither the dedication of a hare sitting under a bush according to a "wolf's resolution", nor the wisdom of a minnow hiding in a hole, nor the determination of an idealistic crucian who entered into a discussion with a pike about the possibility of establishing social harmony by peaceful means, do not save from death.
Saltykov-Shchedrin ridiculed the liberals especially mercilessly. Refusing to fight and protest, they inevitably come to meanness. In the fairy tale "Liberal", the satirist called the phenomenon he hated by his own name and branded him for all time.
Intelligibly and convincingly, Saltykov-Shchedrin shows the reader that autocracy, like a hero born of Baba Yaga, is not viable, because it is “rotten from the inside” (“God the Tyr”). Moreover, the activities of the tsarist administrators inevitably come down to "atrocities." Atrocities can be different: "shameful", "brilliant", "natural". But they are due not to the personal qualities of the Toptygins, but to the very nature of power, hostile to the people (“The Bear in the Voivodeship”).
The generalized image of the people with the greatest emotional strength is embodied in the fairy tale "Konyaga". Saltykov-Shchedrin renounces any idealization of people's life, peasant labor, and even rural nature. And life, and work, and nature are revealed to him through the eternal suffering of a man and a horse. The tale expresses not just sympathy and compassion, but an understanding of the tragic hopelessness of their endless labor under the scorching rays of the sun: “How many centuries he bears this yoke - he does not know; how many centuries it is necessary to carry it ahead - does not count. The suffering of the people grows to a universal scale, beyond the control of time.
There is nothing fantastic in this tale, except for the symbolic image of eternal work and eternal suffering. A sober thinker, Saltykov-Shchedrin does not want and cannot invent a special fairy-tale power that would alleviate the suffering of the people. Obviously, this power is in the people themselves? But will she wake up? And what will its manifestations turn out to be? All this in the fog of the distant future.
According to N. V. Gogol, “a fairy tale can be a lofty creation when it serves as an allegorical garment that wraps high spiritual truth, when it reveals tangibly and visible even a common man’s deed, accessible only to a sage.” M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin valued the accessibility of the fairy tale genre. He carried both the commoner and the sage the truth about Russian life.
3 option
The publishers called the collection of fairy tales by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "Tales for children of a fair age", that is, for adults, or rather, for those who not only reflect on life, but also "learn to be a citizen." Why did the writer choose this particular genre? Firstly, an allergic form was necessary for caustic accusatory satire. Secondly, any fairy tale contains folk wisdom. Thirdly, the language of fairy tales is accurate, vivid, and figurative, which makes it possible to clearly and concisely convey to the reader the idea of the work.
In the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the contemporary life of the writer is intertwined with fairy-tale events. Heroes-animals behave, at first glance, as animals should. But suddenly something appears in their characteristics that is inherent in a person, and even belonging to a certain class and living in a very specific historical time. The generals on a desert island are reading the Moscow News, the "wild landowner" invites the actor Sadovsky to visit, and the "wise scribbler". enlightened, moderately liberal, "does not play cards, does not drink wine, does not smoke tobacco, does not chase red girls."
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PLAN
Introduction………………………………………………………………..3
1. The originality of the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin…………………….4
2. Elements of fantasy in the "History of one city"…………..9
Conclusion……………………………………………………………19
References…………………………………………………...20
Introduction
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin in his work chose the satirical principle of depicting reality with the help of elements of fantasy as a sure weapon. He became the successor of the traditions of D.I. Fonvizin, A.S. Griboyedov, N.V. Gogol in that he made satire his political weapon, fighting with it with the sharp questions of his time.
M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote more than 30 fairy tales. Appeal to this genre was natural for Saltykov-Shchedrin. Elements of fantasy permeate all the writer's work. In the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin, political problems are developed, topical issues are resolved. Defending the advanced ideals of his time, the author acted in his works as a defender of the people's interests. Having enriched folklore plots with new content, Saltykov-Shchedrin directed the genre of fairy tales to educate civic feelings and special respect for the people.
The purpose of the abstract is to study the role of fantasy elements in the works of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
1. The originality of the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin
Saltykov-Shchedrin repeatedly refers to the fairy tale genre in his work: first in 1869, and then after 1881, when historical conditions (the assassination of the tsar) led to tightening of censorship.
Like many writers, Saltykov-Shchedrin uses the fairy tale genre to reveal the vices of man and society. Written for "children of a fair age," the fairy tales are a sharp criticism of the existing system and, in essence, serve as a weapon incriminating the Russian autocracy.
The themes of fairy tales are very diverse: the author not only opposes the vices of autocracy (“The Bear in the Voivodeship”, “Bogatyr”), but also denounces noble despotism (“The Wild Landowner”). The views of the liberals (“Karas-idealist”), as well as the indifference of officials (“Idle conversation”) and narrow-minded cowardice (“Wise gudgeon”) cause particular condemnation in the satirist.
However, there is a theme that, one might say, is present in many fairy tales - this is the theme of the oppressed people. In the fairy tales “How one man fed two generals”, “Konyaga” it sounds especially bright.
Themes and problems determine the variety of characters acting in these witty satirical works. These are stupid rulers, who strike with their ignorance and tyrant landowners, officials and townsfolk, merchants and peasants. Sometimes the characters are quite reliable, and we find in them the features of specific historical figures, and sometimes the images are allegorical and allegorical.
Using the folklore and fairy-tale form, the satirist covers the most pressing issues of Russian life, acts as a defender of popular interests and advanced ideas.
The tale “The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals” stands out from all of them with its special dynamism, variability of the plot. The writer uses a fantastic trick - the generals, as if “at the behest of a pike”, are transferred to a desert island, and here the writer, with his characteristic irony, demonstrates to us the complete helplessness of officials and their inability to act.
“The generals served all their lives in some kind of registry; there they were born, brought up and grew old, therefore, they did not understand anything. They didn't even know the words." Due to their stupidity and narrow-mindedness, they almost starved to death. But a man comes to their aid, who is a master of all trades: he can hunt and cook food. The image of a “hefty man” in this tale personifies both the strength and weakness of the Russian people. Skill, his extraordinary abilities are combined in this image with humility, class passivity (the man himself weaves a rope to be tied to a tree at night). Having gathered ripe apples for the generals, he takes sour, unripe ones for himself, and he was also glad that the generals "praised him, a parasite, and did not disdain him for peasant labor."
The tale of two generals suggests that the people, according to Saltykov-Shchedrin, are the backbone of the state, they are the creator of material and spiritual values.
The theme of the people is developed in another fairy tale by Saltykov-Shchedrin - “Konyaga”, which was created in 1885. In style, it differs from others in the absence of action.
This tale is called the strongest work in the series dedicated to the plight of the Russian peasantry. The image of a horse-worker is collective. He personifies the entire forced laboring people, it reflects the tragedy of millions of peasants, this enormous force, enslaved and disenfranchised.
In this tale, the theme of the obedience of the people, their wordlessness and lack of desire to fight also sounds. Konyaga, “tortured, beaten, narrow-chested, with protruding ribs and burned shoulders, with broken legs” - such a portrait is created by the author, who mourns for the unenviable fate of a disenfranchised people. Reflections on the future, the fate of the people are painful, but filled with selfless love.
In the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, with the help of Aesopian language, elements of fantasy, folklore traditions and satirical devices, various themes sound.
What brings the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin closer to folk tales? Typical fairy tale beginnings ("Once upon a time there were two generals ...", "In a certain kingdom, in a certain state there lived a landowner ..."; sayings ("at the command of a pike", "neither in a fairy tale to say, nor to describe with a pen" ); turnarounds characteristic of folk speech (“thought and thought”, “said - done”); syntax, vocabulary, orthoepy close to the folk language. Exaggerations, grotesque, hyperbole: one of the generals eats another; “wild landowner”, as a cat climbs a tree in an instant, a man cooks a handful of soup.As in folk tales, a miraculous incident sets up a plot: by the grace of God, "there was no peasant in the entire space of the possessions of a stupid landowner." The folk tradition of Saltykov-Shchedrin follows in fairy tales about animals, when in allegorical form he ridicules the shortcomings of society.
Difference: the interweaving of the fantastic with the real and even historically reliable. “The Bear in the Voivodship”: among the characters - animals, the image of Magnitsky, a famous reactionary in Russian history, suddenly appears: even before Toptygin appeared in the forest, all printing houses were destroyed by Magnitsky, students were given into soldiers, academicians were imprisoned. In the fairy tale "The Wild Landowner" the hero gradually degrades, turning into an animal. The incredible story of the hero is largely due to the fact that he read the Vesti newspaper and followed its advice. Saltykov-Shchedrin simultaneously respects the form of a folk tale and destroys it. The magic in the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin is explained by the real, the reader cannot escape reality, which is constantly felt behind the images of animals, fantastic events. Fairy-tale forms allowed Saltykov-Shchedrin to present ideas close to him in a new way, to show or ridicule social shortcomings.
“The wise minnow” is an image of a frightened inhabitant to death, who “protects everything only his hateful life.” Can the slogan "survive and the pike not get into hailo" be the meaning of life for a person?
The theme of the tale is connected with the defeat of the Narodnaya Volya, when many representatives of the intelligentsia, frightened, withdrew from public affairs. A type of coward is created, miserable, unhappy. These people did no harm to anyone, but lived their lives aimlessly, without impulses. This tale is about the civil position of a person and about the meaning of human life. In general, the author appears in a fairy tale in two faces at once: a folk narrator, a simpleton joker and at the same time a person wise by life experience, a writer-thinker, a citizen. In the description of the life of the animal kingdom, with its inherent details, details of the real life of people are interspersed. The language of the fairy tale combines fabulous words and phrases, the spoken language of the third estate and the journalistic language of that time.
2. Elements of fantasy in"HistoryAndone city"
"The History of a City" is the most significant fantastic and satirical work of Russian literature. This book is the only successful attempt in our country to give in one work a picture (parodic and grotesque, but surprisingly accurate) not only of the history of Russia, but also of its contemporary image for the writer. Moreover, while reading The History of a City, you constantly catch yourself thinking that this book is about our time, about “post-perestroika” Russia, its socio-political, psychological and artistic discoveries are so topical for us.
Saltykov-Shchedrin could write such a literary work universal for Russia only in the form of grotesque, fantasy and satire. Contemporary critics of Saltykov-Shchedrin, his fellow writers and ordinary readers held two different opinions about the "History of a City": some saw in it only an unfair caricature of Russian history and the Russian people (Leo Tolstoy was among the supporters of this point of view), others they saw in the satire of Saltykov-Shchedrin the dawn of a new, happy life (liberal democrats, social democrats). In the Soviet period, official science pretended that the work had nothing to do with Soviet reality. Only now it becomes clear that "The History of a City" is a book "for all times" and not only about Russia at the end of the 20th century, but also about other countries.
Despite the fact that Saltykov-Shchedrin's book is the first such significant grotesque-satirical work of Russian literature, the forms of grotesque, fantasy and satire in literature and art are by no means new. The very origin of the words speaks about this, and also, to a certain extent, about the essence of these methods: fantastich (fantasy) in Greek in the literal sense of the word - the art of imagining; satira (satura) in Latin - a mixture, all sorts of things; grottesco in Italian - "cave", "grotto" (to refer to bizarre ornaments found in the 15th-16th centuries during excavations of ancient Roman premises - "grottoes"). Thus, the "fantastic grotesque" and satirical works date back to the ancient, so-called "mythological archaic" ("low version" of the myth) and to the ancient satirical novel, to the folk fantastic grotesque of the Renaissance. Later, these terms became the subject of special studies in literary criticism and aesthetics. The first serious study of the grotesque as an artistic, aesthetic method was undertaken more than 200 years ago in 1788 in Germany by G. Schneegans, who first gave a generalized definition of the grotesque. Later, in 1827, the famous French writer Victor Hugo, in his Preface to Cromwell, for the first time gave the term "grotesque" a broad aesthetic interpretation and drew the attention of a wide section of the reading public to it.
In our time, “grotesque”, “fantastic”, “satire” is understood approximately as follows. Grotesque in literature is one of the types of typification, mostly satirical, in which real life relationships are deformed, credibility gives way to caricature, fantasy, and a sharp combination of contrasts. (Another, similar definition: Grotesque is a type of artistic imagery that generalizes and sharpens life relationships through a bizarre and contrasting combination of real and fantastic, credibility and caricature, tragic and comic, beautiful and ugly. Fantasy is a specific method of artistic reflection of life, using an artistic form - image (an object, a situation, a world in which the elements of reality are combined in an unusual way - incredibly, "wonderful", supernatural). Satire is a specific form of artistic reflection of reality, through which negative, internally perverse phenomena are exposed and ridiculed; mockery of the depicted, revealing its internal inconsistency, its inconsistency with its nature or purpose, "idea". It is noteworthy that these three definitions have something in common. Thus, in the definition of the grotesque, both fantastic and comic are mentioned as its elements ( the last type is satire). It is advisable not to separate these three concepts, but to speak of the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin as satirical, written in the form of a fantastic grotesque. Moreover, the unity of all three artistic methods is emphasized by many researchers of Saltykov-Shchedrin's work when they speak of his works as parts of an integral satirical, grotesque world. Analyzing this world (the most striking embodiment of which is the "History of a City"), literary critics note the following features of it. The grotesque seems to "destroy" the real country of Russia and its people in the "household", everyday plausibility and creates new patterns and connections. A special grotesque world arises, which is essential, however, for revealing the real contradictions of reality. Therefore, the grotesque in Saltykov-Shchedrin consists, as it were, of two planes, and its perception is dual. What at first glance seems random, arbitrary, in fact, turns out to be deeply natural. The nature of the comic in the "History of a City" does not at all consist in strengthening the farcical principle (in "comedy"), but is connected with its two-dimensionality. The comic is released along with the comprehension of the essence of the grotesque, with the movement of the reader's thought from a superficial plane to a deeper one. Moreover, in Shchedrin's "History of a City" the grotesque beginning is not just an essential part. On the contrary, the grotesque principle is laid at the very foundation of the work. The grotesque is often characterized by the desire for the ultimate generalization, mostly satirical, to comprehend the essence of the phenomenon and extract from it some meaning, a concentrate of history. That is why the grotesque turned out to be the only possible form for Saltykov-Shchedrin and the basis of his work. The range of the generalized phenomenon in the "History of a City" expands to amazingly wide limits - to the generalization of the trend of all Russian history and modernity. The generalization and concentration of historical content determine a particularly sharp combination of humor and sarcasm, comic and tragic elements in the grotesque. Reading the "History of a City", you are convinced of the validity of another important conclusion made by philologists: the grotesque is striving for a holistic and multifaceted expression of the basic, cardinal problems of human life.
In the work of the great satirist one can see, on the one hand, the element of folk art and folk comedy, on the other, an expression of the inconsistency and complexity of life. The images of the folk grotesque, built on the unity of polar, contrasting (and comical in their contrasting fusion) elements, capture the essence of a sharply contradictory life, its dialectics. Laughter reduction, rapprochement of contrasts, as it were, abolishes all unambiguity, exclusivity and inviolability. The grotesque world realizes a kind of folk laughter utopia. The entire content of the "History of a City" in a compressed form fits into the "Inventory to the Mayors", therefore the "Inventory to the Mayors" best illustrates the methods by which Saltykov-Shchedrin created his work.
It is here, in the most concentrated form, that we meet “bizarre and contrasting combinations of the real and the fantastic, the plausibility and the caricature, the tragic and the comic” that are characteristic of the grotesque. Probably, never before in Russian literature has such a compact description of entire eras, layers of Russian history and life been encountered. In the "Inventory" the reader is bombarded with a stream of absurdity, which, oddly enough, is more understandable than the real contradictory and phantasmagoric Russian life. Let's take the first mayor, Amadeus Manuilovich Klementy. Only seven lines are devoted to him (approximately the same amount of text is given to each of the 22 mayors), but each word is more valuable than many pages and volumes written by modern Saltykov-Shchedrin official historians and social scientists. The comic effect is created already in the first words: the absurd combination of the foreign, beautiful and high-sounding for the Russian ear name Amadeus Klementy with the provincial Russian patronymic Manuilovich says a lot: about the fleeting "westernization" of Russia "from above", about how the country was flooded with foreign adventurers, about how alien the mores imposed from above were to ordinary people, and about many other things. From the same sentence, the reader learns that Amadeus Manuilovich ended up in the mayor’s office “for skillful cooking of pasta” - a grotesque, of course, and at first it seems funny, but after a moment the modern Russian reader understands with horror that in the one hundred and thirty years that have passed since writing the "History of a City", and in the 270 years that have passed since the time of Biron, little has changed: and before our eyes, numerous "advisers", "experts", "creators of monetary systems" and the "systems" themselves were discharged from the West crackling foreign chatter, for a beautiful, exotic surname for the Russian ear ... And after all, they believed, they believed, like the Foolovites, just as stupid and just as naive. Nothing has changed since then. Further, the descriptions of the "town governors" almost instantly follow one after another, piled up and mixed up in their absurdity, together making up, oddly enough, an almost scientific picture of Russian life. This description clearly shows how Saltykov-Shchedrin “constructs” his grotesque world. To do this, he really first “destroys” the plausibility: Dementy Vaolamovich Brudasty had “some special device” in his head, Anton Protasyevich de Sanglot flew through the air, Ivan Panteleevich Pimple turned out to be with a stuffed head. In the "Inventory" there is something not so fantastic, but still very unlikely: the mayor Lamvrokakis died, eaten in bed by bedbugs; foreman Ivan Matveyevich Baklan is broken in half during a storm; Nikodim Osipovich Ivanov died of exertion, "struggling to comprehend some Senate decree," and so on. So, the grotesque world of Saltykov-Shchedrin is constructed, and the reader laughed at him to his heart's content. However, our contemporary soon begins to understand that the absurd, fantastic world of Saltykov is not so absurd as it seems at first glance. More precisely, it is absurd, but the real world, the real country is no less absurd. In this "high reality" of Shchedrin's world, in the understanding by the modern reader of the absurdity of the structure of our life, lies the justification and purpose of Shchedrin's grotesque as an artistic method. Organchik Following the "Inventory", a detailed account of the "acts" of the mayors and a description of the behavior of the Foolovites more than once makes the modern reader involuntarily exclaim: "How could Saltykov-Shchedrin 130 years ago know what is happening to us at the end of the twentieth century?" The answer to this question, according to Kozintsev, must be sought in the dictionary for the word "genius". In places, the text of this chapter is so amazing and so testifies to the exceptional visionary gift of Saltykov-Shchedrin, supported by the methods of hyperbole, grotesque and satire he uses, that it is necessary to quote several quotations here. “The inhabitants rejoiced... They congratulated each other with joy, kissed, shed tears... In a fit of delight, Foolov's old liberties were also remembered. The best citizens..., having formed a nationwide veche, shook the air with exclamations: our father! Even dangerous dreamers appeared. Guided not so much by reason as by the movements of a noble heart, they argued that trade would flourish under the new city governor and that sciences and arts would arise under the supervision of district overseers. They didn't refrain from making comparisons. They remembered the old mayor who had just left the city, and it turned out that although he was also handsome and clever, but after all that, the new ruler should already be given the advantage by one volume that he was new. In a word, in this case, as in other similar cases, both the usual Foolovian enthusiasm and the usual Foolovian frivolity were fully expressed ... Soon, however, the townsfolk became convinced that their glee and hopes were, to a minimum, premature and exaggerated. .. The new mayor locked himself in his office ... From time to time he ran out into the hall ... he said “I won’t stand it!” - and again hid in the office. The Foolovites were horrified ... suddenly the thought dawned on everyone: well, how will he flog an entire nation in such a manner! ... they became agitated, made a noise and, inviting the superintendent of the public school, asked him the question: were there examples in history when people ordered, waged wars and concluded treatises with an empty vessel on their shoulders? Much has already been said about the "organ", the mayor Brudast, from this amazing chapter. No less interesting, however, is the description of the Foolovites in this chapter.
At the time of Saltykov-Shchedrin, and even now, the grotesque image of the Russian people he created seemed and still seems to many to be forced, and even slanderous. It was common for monarchists, liberals, and social democrats alike to idealize the people, to ascribe to it some sublime, abstract qualities. Both liberals and socialists thought it incredible that the broad masses of the population could endure for centuries a long succession of "organists" and "former scoundrels", sometimes bursting into outbursts of unreasonable enthusiasm or anger. This situation was considered a "historical error" or "a contradiction between the forces of production and production relations" and seemed to be correctable by introducing representative democracy or putting into practice the theories of Marxism. Only later did it gradually become clear that the seemingly paradoxical, absurd and grotesque features of the national Russian character are confirmed by serious scientific analysis. Thus, we see that Saltykov-Shchedrin's grotesque and satire were not only expressive means by which he solved artistic problems, but also a tool for analyzing Russian life - contradictory, paradoxical and seemingly fantastic, but internally integral and containing not only negative traits, but also elements of sustainability, and a guarantee of future development. In turn, the very foundations of the contradictory Russian life dictated to Saltykov-Shchedrin the need to use precisely the forms of the fantastic grotesque.
The story about Ugryum-Burcheev is probably the most widely cited chapter of the History of a City in perestroika times. As you know, Arakcheev and Nicholas I were the direct prototypes of the image of Grim-Burcheev, and the military settlements of the Nikolaev era were the prototype of the barracks town of Nepreklonsk, and literary critics of the Soviet period paid attention to this. However, reading this chapter, you can clearly see the features of the amazing similarity between Nepreklonsk and barracks socialism of the Stalinist type. Moreover, Saltykov-Shchedrin managed to point out the main features of the society built by the "levelers", and even such details of this society, which, it seems, were absolutely impossible to predict 60 years before. The accuracy of Saltykov-Shchedrin's providence is amazing. In his book, he foresaw both the “barracks” appearance of that society, to which the “idea of universal happiness” would lead, elevated to “a rather complex and inextricable administrative theory of ideological tricks”, and the enormous victims of the Stalin era (“the solved issue of general extermination”, “ a fantastic failure in which “everything and everything disappeared without a trace”), and the miserable straightforwardness of the ideology and “theory” of barracks socialism (“Having drawn a straight line, he planned to squeeze the entire visible and invisible world into it” - how not to recall here the primitive theories gradual “erasing of boundaries” and “improvement” of everything and everyone), and annoying collectivism (“Everyone lives every minute together ...”), and much more. And the more particular features of Saltykov-Shchedrin's "society of the future" are like two drops of water similar to the reality of the Stalinist dictatorship. Here are the lowly origins of the “mayor”, and his incredible, inhuman cruelty towards members of his own family, and two official ideological holidays in Nepreklonsk in the spring and autumn, and spy mania, and the gloomy mumbling “plan for the transformation of nature”, and even the details of the disease and the death of Grim-Burcheev... When you reflect on how Saltykov-Shchedrin managed to foresee the future of Russia with such accuracy, you come to the conclusion that his literary method of studying the world and the country, based on the artistic logic of fantastic hyperbole, turned out to be much more accurate and more powerful than the scientific forecasting methods that guided social scientists and philosophers, the writer's contemporaries. Moreover, in the chapter on Ugryum-Burcheev, he gave a more accurate diagnosis of the society of barracks socialism than most Russian scientists of the 20th century! This aspect of the problem also attracts attention. When Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote his "dystopia", much of what he said about Nepreklonsk seemed and was for that time precisely fantasy, hyperbole and grotesque. But after 60 years, the most fantastic predictions of the writer turned out to be realized with amazing accuracy. Here we have an example of how (perhaps for the only time in the history of literature) a fantastic grotesque and artistic hyperbole of such magnitude absolutely definitely becomes real life. In this case, the fantastic grotesque allowed the writer to reveal hidden for the time being, but inexorable mechanisms of transformation of society. The reason that Saltykov-Shchedrin turned out to be more perspicacious than all the major philosophers of his time lay, obviously, in the very nature of his artistic creativity and method: the fantastic grotesque method allowed him to single out the essential elements and patterns of the historical process, while his great artistic talent allowed him to simultaneously (unlike the social sciences) to preserve the totality of details, accidents and features of living, real life. The artistic world, constructed in this way by Saltykov-Shchedrin, turned out to be a reflection of such a real force that over time it inexorably and menacingly made its way into life. Instead of a conclusion: “It” The final lines of the “History of a City” contain a gloomy and mysterious prediction, not deciphered by the author: “The North has darkened and covered with clouds; from these clouds something rushed to the city: either a downpour, or a tornado ... It was approaching, and as it approached, time stopped its run. At last the earth shook, the sun went dark... the Foolovites fell on their faces. Inscrutable horror appeared on all faces, seized all hearts. It has come...” Many researchers of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work write that by “it” the writer meant social revolution, “Russian revolt”, overthrow of the autocracy. The fantastic nature of the image of “it” emphasizes in Saltykov-Shchedrin the tragedy of the social cataclysms he expects. It is interesting to compare the prophecy of Saltykov-Shchedrin with the forecasts of other Russian writers. M.Yu. Lermontov in his poem, which is called “Prediction”, wrote: A year will come, a black year for Russia, When the crown of the kings will fall; The mob will forget their former love for them, And the food of many will be death and blood; ... It is significant that Pushkin described similar events with much greater optimism as regards changes in society itself, and welcomed the most "radical" measures against the tsar, his family and children: Autocratic villain! I hate you, your throne, Your death, the death of children With cruel joy I see. Finally, Blok in "Voice in the Clouds" also looks to the future with a fair amount of optimism: We fought with the wind and, eyebrows furrowed, In the darkness we could hardly distinguish the path ... And then, like an ambassador of a growing storm, A prophetic voice hit the crowd. - Sad people, tired people, Wake up, find out that joy is near! Where the seas sing about a miracle, Where the light of the lighthouse goes! As we can see, the opinions of the great Russian poets on the future of Russian ups and downs radically diverged.
It is known that the forecasts of events in Russia made by other great Russian writers - Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov - turned out to be much less accurate than the providences of Saltykov-Shchedrin.
Conclusion
Like his works, the figure of Saltykov-Shchedrin still remains one of the most paradoxical in the history of Russian literature. While many literary critics and the “general reader” often place him much lower than Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov, connoisseurs of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work consider him the successor to the traditions of the titans of Renaissance and Enlightenment literature: Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift.
Saltykov-Shchedrin, with the help of elements of fantasy, was able to see and reflect in his fairy tales not only the specific and passing troubles of his time, but also the eternal problems of relations between the people and power, the shortcomings of the people's character.
Perhaps centuries will pass, and the work of our great satirist writer will be as relevant as it was a hundred years ago, as it is now. In the meantime, we, together with him, “laughingly say goodbye to our past” and look with anxiety and hope into the future of our great and unfortunate Motherland.
Bibliography
1. Efimov A.I. The language of satire by Saltykov-Shchedrin. - M.: Moscow University Publishing House, 1953.
2. Makashin S.A. Saltykov, Mikhail Evgrafovich. // KLE. T.6. - M.: SE, 1971.
3. Saltykov-Shchedrin Mikhail Evgrafovich // Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: Who's Who / Ed. V. Gakov. - Minsk: IKO Galaxias, 1995.
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FANTASTIC AS A MEANS OF SATIRE. “I love Russia to the point of heartache,” said the great satirist M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. And all his work is imbued with anger, resentment and pain for the fate of Russia, for the bitter life of its people. Everything that he subjected to satirical denunciation aroused just indignation in him. And although he understood that it was impossible to rid society of cruelty, violence, and injustice overnight, he nevertheless saw satire as an effective “powerful weapon” that could make people think about ways to change life for the better. In The History of a City, he draws a caricature of a standard provincial Russian town. The action takes place in the city of Glupov, stunning in its fantastic character, personifying the absurdity and parody of the existing way of Russian life. This is facilitated by the extraordinary variety of art forms that uses
Showing Foolov's mayors, the author skillfully uses the techniques of grotesque, fantastic distortion of reality. So, characterizing the mayor Brodasty, nicknamed Organchik, the writer says that a certain primitive mechanism is installed in his head, which reproduces only two words: “I will not tolerate it!” and "I'll ruin it!" And Baklan Ivan Matveyevich "boasts about what happens in a straight line from Ivan the Great" (the bell tower known in Moscow). The Marquis de Sanglot flies "through the air and the city garden", Major Pimple wears a "stuffed head" on his shoulders.
Each of the twenty-two mayors of the city of Glupov has his own nickname, is endowed with an absurd memorable appearance and is marked by the same ridiculous "acts": the mayor Benevolensky composes laws, like the "Charter on Respectable Cookie Pies", which forbids making pies from mud, clay and other construction materials. materials; basilisk Wartkin introduces (against bedbugs) mustard, Provence oil and chamomile, wages wars with the help of tin soldiers and dreams of conquering Byzantium, and Ugryum-Grumcheev arranges life in Foolov like a military camp, having previously destroyed the old city and built in its place new. The rulers of Foolov are sent into oblivion for reasons that are absurd, curious or shameful: Dunka the thick-fifted was eaten to death by bedbugs at the bug factory, the marshal of the nobility ate his stuffed annual at Pimple; one died of gluttony, the other - from the effort with which the Senate uїsaz tried to overcome, the third - from lust ... And the most "terrible" of all the mayors - Gloomy-Grumbling - melted into the air when the mysterious "it" approached from nowhere.
Satirically depicted mayors, mayors and Foolovites, the author contrasts in the novel with the symbolic image of the river, embodying the elements of life itself, which no one can either abolish or subdue. She not only does not submit to the wild gaze of the basilisk Grim-Grumbling, but also demolishes the dam from garbage and manure.
The life of the city of Foolov for many centuries was a life “under the yoke of madness”, so the author portrayed it in an ugly comic form: everything here is fantastic, incredible, exaggerated, everything is funny and at the same time scary. “From Glupovo to Umnev, the road lies through Buyanov, and not through semolina,” Shchedrin wrote, hinting that he sees the only way out of the current situation in the revolution. And so he sends a formidable “it” to the city - something resembling a tornado, rushing in anger over Foolov, a raging element that sweeps away all the absurdity of social life and the slavish obedience of the Foolovites. Fantasy occupies a huge place in the satirical fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, which became the logical conclusion of his work. They most closely intertwined reality and fantasy, comic and tragic.
The relocation of the generals to a desert island at first glance may seem like something fantastic, and the writer really generously uses the device of a fantastic assumption, but it turns out to be deeply justified in this tale. Retired officials who have risen to the rank of generals in the St. Petersburg office, suddenly finding themselves without servants, “without cooks,” demonstrate their absolute inability to do useful work.
All their lives they existed at the expense of the labor of simple "muzhiks", and now they cannot feed themselves, despite the surrounding abundance. They turned into hungry savages, ready to tear each other apart: “an ominous fire appeared in their eyes, their teeth chattered, a dull growl flew out of their chests. They began to slowly crawl towards each other and in the blink of an eye went berserk. One of them even swallowed the order of the other, and it is not known how their fight would have ended if a man had not magically appeared on the island. He saved the generals from starvation, from final savagery. And he caught fire, and caught hazel grouse, and prepared swan fluff so that the generals could sleep in warmth and comfort, and learned to cook soup in a handful. But, unfortunately, this dexterous, skillful person, possessing unlimited possibilities, is accustomed to meekly obey the masters, serve them, fulfill all their whims, being content with "a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver." He cannot imagine another life. Shchedrin laughs bitterly at such slavish resignation, humility and humility.
The hero of the fairy tale "The Wild Landowner", who cherished and cherished his "soft, white, crumbly" body, was worried that the peasant would not "take" all the "good" from him, and decided to expel the common people, in a special way, "according to the rules" oppressing him. The peasants prayed, seeing the tyranny of the lord: it would be easier for them to perish, “than to suffer like this all their lives,” and the Lord heard their prayer. And the landowner, left alone, turned out to be, like the generals, helpless: he went wild, turned into a four-legged predator, rushing at animals and people. It would have disappeared completely, but the authorities intervened, since you can’t buy a piece of meat or a pound of bread at the market, and most importantly, taxes stopped coming to the treasury. The amazing ability of Saltykov-Shchedrin to use fantastic techniques and images was also manifested in other works. But the fantasy of Saltykov-Shchedrin does not lead us away from real life, does not distort it, but, on the contrary, serves as a means of deeper knowledge of it and a satirical exposure of the negative phenomena of this life.
Saltykov-Shchedrin valued realistic concreteness and therefore denounced flaws and inaccuracies, based on real facts, convincing life examples. But at the same time, he always animated his satirical analysis with a bright thought and faith in the triumph of goodness, truth and justice on earth.
With his work, Saltykov-Shchedrin significantly enriched not only Russian, but also world literature. I.S. Turgenev, defining the world significance of The History of a City, compared Shchedrin's style with the works of the Roman poet Juvenal and Swift's cruel humor, introducing the Russian writer's work into a general European context. And the Danish critic Georg Brandes described the advantages of the great Shchedrin over all the satirists of his time: "... the sting of Russian satire is unusually sharp, the end of its spear is hard and red-hot, like a point stuck by Odysseus in the eye of a giant ..."
"I love Russia to the pain of my heart," said the great satirist M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. And all his work is imbued with anger, resentment and pain for the fate of Russia, for the bitter life of its people. Everything that he subjected to satirical denunciation aroused just indignation in him. And although he understood that it was impossible to rid society of cruelty, violence, and injustice overnight, he nevertheless saw satire as an effective "powerful weapon" that could make people think about ways to change life for the better. In "The History of a City" he draws a caricature of a standard provincial Russian town. The action takes place in the city of Glupov, stunning in its fantastic character, personifying the absurdity and parody of the existing way of Russian life. This is facilitated by the extraordinary variety of art forms that uses
Showing Foolov's mayors, the author skillfully uses the techniques of grotesque, fantastic distortion of reality. So, characterizing the mayor Brodasty, nicknamed Organchik, the writer says that he has a certain primitive mechanism installed in his head that reproduces only two words: "I will not tolerate it!" and "I'll break it!". And Baklan Ivan Matveyevich "boasts about what happens in a straight line from Ivan the Great" (the bell tower known in Moscow). The Marquis de Sanglot flies "through the air and the city garden", Major Pimple wears a "stuffed head" on his shoulders.
Each of the twenty-two mayors of the city of Glupov has his own nickname, is endowed with an absurd memorable appearance and is marked by the same ridiculous "deeds": the mayor Benevolensky composes laws, like the "Charter on Respectable Cookie Pies", which forbids making pies from mud, clay and other construction materials. materials; Basilisk Wartkin introduces (against bedbugs) mustard, Provence oil and Persian chamomile, wages wars with the help of tin soldiers and dreams of conquering Byzantium, and Grim-Grumbling arranges life in Foolov like a military camp, having destroyed before that the old city and built a new one in its place. The rulers of Foolov are sent into oblivion for reasons that are absurd, curious or shameful: Dunka the fat-fifted was eaten to death by bugs at the bug factory, at Pimple his stuffed head was eaten off by the leader of the nobility; one died of gluttony, the other from the effort with which he tried to overcome the Senate decree, the third from lust ... And the most "terrible" of all the mayors - Gloomy-Grumbling - melted into the air when the mysterious "it" approached from nowhere.
Satirically depicted mayors, mayors and Foolovites, the author contrasts in the novel with the symbolic image of the river, embodying the elements of life itself, which no one can either abolish or subdue. She not only does not submit to the wild gaze of the basilisk Grim-Grumbling, but also demolishes the dam from garbage and manure.
The life of the town of Foolov for many centuries was a life "under the yoke of madness", so the author portrayed it in an ugly comic form: everything here is fantastic, incredible, exaggerated, everything is funny and at the same time scary. "From Glupovo to Umnov, the road lies through Buyanov, and not through semolina," Shchedrin wrote, hinting that he sees the only way out of the current situation in the revolution. And so he sends a formidable "it" to the city - something resembling a tornado, rushing over Foolov in anger - a raging element that sweeps away all the absurdity of the social order of life and the slavish humility of the Foolovites. Fantasy occupies a huge place in the satirical fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, which became the logical conclusion of his work. They most closely intertwined reality and fantasy, comic and tragic.
The relocation of the generals to a desert island at first glance may seem like something fantastic, and the writer really generously uses the device of a fantastic assumption, but it turns out to be deeply justified in this tale. Retired officials who have risen to the rank of general in the St. Petersburg office, suddenly finding themselves without servants, "without cooks", demonstrate their absolute inability to perform useful activities.
All their lives they existed at the expense of the labor of simple "muzhiks", and now they cannot feed themselves, despite the surrounding abundance. They turned into hungry savages, ready to tear each other apart: “an ominous fire appeared in their eyes, their teeth chattered, a muffled growl flew out of their chests. They began to slowly crawl towards each other and in an instant became furious.” One of them even swallowed the order of the other, and it is not known how their fight would have ended if a man had not magically appeared on the island. He saved the generals from starvation, from final savagery. And he caught fire, and caught hazel grouse, and prepared swan fluff so that the generals could sleep in warmth and comfort, and learned to cook soup in a handful. But, unfortunately, this dexterous, skillful person, possessing unlimited possibilities, is accustomed to meekly obey the masters, serve them, fulfill all their whims, being content with "a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver." He cannot imagine another life. Shchedrin laughs bitterly at such slavish resignation, humility and humility.
The hero of the fairy tale "The Wild Landowner", who cherished and cherished his "soft, white, crumbly" body, was worried that the peasant would not "take" all the "good" from him, and decided to expel the common people, in a special way, "according to the rules" oppressing him. The peasants prayed, seeing the arbitrariness of the lord: it is easier for them to perish, "than to suffer like this all their lives," and the Lord heard their prayer. And the landowner, left alone, turned out to be, like the generals, helpless: he went wild, turned into a four-legged predator, rushing at animals and people. It would have disappeared completely, but the authorities intervened, since you can’t buy a piece of meat or a pound of bread at the market, and most importantly, taxes stopped coming to the treasury. The amazing ability of Saltykov-Shchedrin to use fantastic techniques and images was also manifested in other works. But the fantasy of Saltykov-Shchedrin does not lead us away from real life, does not distort it, but, on the contrary, serves as a means of deeper knowledge of it and a satirical exposure of the negative phenomena of this life.
Saltykov-Shchedrin valued realistic concreteness and therefore denounced flaws and inaccuracies, based on real facts, convincing life examples. But at the same time, he always animated his satirical analysis with a bright thought and faith in the triumph of goodness, truth and justice on earth.
With his work, Saltykov-Shchedrin significantly enriched not only Russian, but also world literature. I.S. Turgenev, defining the world significance of The History of a City, compared Shchedrin's style with the works of the Roman poet Juvenal and Swift's cruel humor, introducing the Russian writer's work into a general European context. And the Danish critic Georg Brandes described the advantages of the great Shchedrin over all the satirists of his time: "... the sting of Russian satire is unusually sharp, the end of its spear is hard and red-hot, like a point stuck by Odysseus in the eye of a giant ..."
