The work of the Russian Soviet prose writer A. I. Solzhenitsyn is one of the most striking and significant pages our literature. Main merit his to readers lies in the fact that the author made people think about their past, about the dark pages of history, told cruel truth about many inhumane orders of the Soviet regime and revealed the origins of the lack of spirituality of subsequent - post-perestroika - generations. The story "Matryonin Dvor" in this regard is the most indicative.
History of creation and autobiographical motives
So, the history of creation and analysis. " Matrenin yard"Relates to stories, although in size it significantly exceeds the traditional framework of the mentioned one. It was written in 1959, and published thanks to the efforts and efforts of Tvardovsky, the editor of the most progressive literary magazine at that time" New world”- in 1963. Four years of waiting is a very short time for a writer who spent time in camps with the stigma of “enemy of the people” and disgraced after the publication of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”.
Let's continue the analysis. Progressive critics consider “Matryona Dvor” to be even a stronger and more significant work than “One Day ...”. If in the story about the fate of prisoner Shukhov the reader was captivated by the novelty of the material, the courage to choose a topic and its presentation, and the accusatory power, then the story about Matryona is amazing amazing language, mastery of the living Russian word and that highest moral charge, pure spirituality, with which the pages of the work are filled. Solzhenitsyn planned to call the story like this: “A village is not worth without a righteous man,” so that main topic and the idea were stated initially. But censorship would hardly have missed such a shocking title for the Soviet atheistic ideology, so the writer inserted these words at the end of his work, titled it by the name of the heroine. However, the story only benefited from the rearrangement.
What else is important to note, continuing the analysis? "Matrenin Dvor" refers to the so-called village literature, rightly noting its fundamental importance for this trend in Russian verbal art. The author's principled and artistic veracity, a firm moral position and heightened conscientiousness, the impossibility of making compromises, as required by the censors and the situation, became the reason for further suppression of the story, on the one hand, and a vivid, living example for writers - Solzhenitsyn's contemporaries, on the other. fits perfectly with the theme of the work. And it was impossible otherwise, telling about the righteous Matryona, an elderly peasant woman from the village of Talnovo, who lives in the most "interior", primordially Russian outback.
Solzhenitsyn was personally acquainted with the prototype of the heroine. In fact, he talks about himself - a former military man who spent a decade in camps and in a settlement, immensely tired of the hardships and injustices of life and eager to rest his soul in a calm and uncomplicated provincial silence. And Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva is Matryona Zakharova from the village of Miltsevo, in whose hut Alexander Isaevich rented a corner. And the life of Matryona from the story is a somewhat artistically generalized fate of a real simple Russian woman.
Theme and idea of the work
Those who have read the story will not be hindered by the analysis. “Matryona Dvor” is a kind of parable about a disinterested woman, a woman of amazing kindness and gentleness. Her whole life is serving people. She worked on the collective farm for “workday sticks”, lost her health, and did not receive a pension. It is difficult for her to go to the city, it is difficult for her, and she does not like to complain, cry, and even more so to demand something. But when the chairman of the collective farm demands to go to work on harvesting or weeding, no matter how bad Matryona felt, she still walked, helped common cause. And if the neighbors asked to help dig potatoes, she also behaved. She never took payment for her work, she rejoiced heartily at someone else's rich harvest and did not envy when her own potatoes were small, like fodder.
Analysis of the work "Matryona Dvor" helps to reveal an interesting pattern. During their lifetime, people like Matryona Vasilievna cause bewilderment, irritation, and condemnation in those around them and relatives. The same sisters of the heroine, “mourning” her, lament that nothing was left after her from things or other wealth, they have nothing to profit from. But with her death, it was as if some kind of light went out in the village, as if it became darker, more boring, sadder. After all, Matryona was that righteous woman on whom the world rests, and without which neither the village, nor the city, nor the Earth itself stands.
Yes, Matryona is a weak old woman. But what will happen to us when such last guardians of humanity, spirituality, cordiality and kindness disappear? This is what the writer invites us to think about ...
The story “Matryonin Dvor” was written by Solzhenitsyn in 1959. The first title of the story is “There is no village without a righteous man” (Russian proverb). final version the name was invented by Tvardovsky, who at that time was the editor of the Novy Mir magazine, where the story was published in No. 1 for 1963. At the insistence of the editors, the beginning of the story was changed and the events were attributed not to 1956, but to 1953, that is to the pre-Khrushchev era. This is a nod to Khrushchev, thanks to whose permission Solzhenitsyn's first story, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962), was published.
The image of the narrator in the work "Matryonin Dvor" is autobiographical. After Stalin's death, Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated, indeed he lived in the village of Miltsevo (Talnovo in the story) and rented a corner from Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova (Grigorieva in the story). Solzhenitsyn very accurately conveyed not only the details of the life of Marena's prototype, but also the features of life and even the local dialect of the village.
Literary direction and genre
Solzhenitsyn developed the Tolstoyan tradition of Russian prose in realistic direction. The story combines the features of an artistic essay, the story itself and elements of life. The life of the Russian village is reflected so objectively and diversely that the work approaches the genre of "novel type story". In this genre, the character of the hero is shown not only in crucial moment its development, but also illuminated the history of character, the stages of its formation. The fate of the hero reflects the fate of the entire era and the country (as Solzhenitsyn says, the land).
Issues
At the center of the story moral issues. Are many worth human lives a seized area or a decision dictated by human greed not to make a second trip by a tractor? Material values people are valued more than the person himself. Thaddeus lost his son and the once beloved woman, his son-in-law is threatened with prison, and his daughter is inconsolable. But the hero thinks about how to save the logs that the workers at the crossing did not have time to burn.
Mystical motifs are at the center of the problematic of the story. This is the motif of an unrecognized righteous man and the problem of cursing things that are touched by people with unclean hands pursuing selfish goals. So Thaddeus undertook to bring down Matryonin's room, thereby making her cursed.
Plot and composition
The story "Matryonin Dvor" has a time frame. In one paragraph, the author talks about how trains slow down at one of the crossings and 25 years after a certain event. That is, the frame refers to the beginning of the 80s, the rest of the story is an explanation of what happened at the crossing in 1956, the year of the Khrushchev thaw, when “something started to move”.
The hero-narrator finds the place of his teaching almost in a mystical way, having heard a special Russian dialect at the bazaar and settled in the "kondovoy Russia", in the village of Talnovo.
In the center of the plot is the life of Matryona. The narrator learns about her fate from herself (she tells how Thaddeus, who disappeared in the first war, wooed her, and how she married his brother, who disappeared in the second). But the hero finds out more about the silent Matryona from his own observations and from others.
The story describes in detail Matryona's hut, which stands in a picturesque place near the lake. The hut plays in the life and death of Matryona important role. To understand the meaning of the story, you need to imagine a traditional Russian hut. Matrona's hut was divided into two halves: the actual residential hut with a Russian stove and the upper room (it was built for the eldest son to separate him when he marries). It is this chamber that Thaddeus disassembles in order to build a hut for Matryona's niece and his own daughter Kira. The hut in the story is animated. The wallpaper left behind the wall is called its inner skin.
Ficuses in tubs are also endowed with living features, reminding the narrator of a silent, but lively crowd.
The development of the action in the story is a static state of harmonious coexistence of the narrator and Matryona, who "do not find the meaning of everyday existence in food." The culmination of the story is the moment of the destruction of the chamber, and the work ends with the main idea and a bitter omen.
Heroes of the story
The hero-narrator, whom Matryona calls Ignatich, from the first lines makes it clear that he came from places of detention. He is looking for a job as a teacher in the wilderness, in the Russian outback. Only the third village satisfies him. Both the first and the second turn out to be corrupted by civilization. Solzhenitsyn makes it clear to the reader that he condemns the attitude of Soviet bureaucrats towards man. The narrator despises the authorities, who do not assign a pension to Matryona, forcing her to work on the collective farm for sticks, not only not giving peat for the furnace, but also forbidding anyone to ask about it. He instantly decides not to extradite Matryona, who brewed moonshine, hides her crime, for which she faces prison.
Having experienced and seen a lot, the narrator, embodying the author's point of view, acquires the right to judge everything that he observes in the village of Talnovo - a miniature embodiment of Russia.
Matryona is the main character of the story. The author says about her: “Those people have good faces who are at odds with their conscience.” At the moment of acquaintance, Matryona's face is yellow, and her eyes are clouded with illness.
To survive, Matryona grows small potatoes, secretly brings forbidden peat from the forest (up to 6 sacks a day) and secretly cuts hay for her goat.
There was no woman's curiosity in Matryona, she was delicate, did not annoy with questions. Today's Matryona is a lost old woman. The author knows about her that she got married before the revolution, that she had 6 children, but they all died quickly, "so two did not live at once." Matryona's husband did not return from the war, but went missing. The hero suspected that he had new family somewhere abroad.
Matryona had a quality that distinguished her from the rest of the villagers: she selflessly helped everyone, even the collective farm, from which she was expelled due to illness. There is a lot of mysticism in her image. In her youth, she could lift sacks of any weight, stopped a galloping horse, foresaw her death, being afraid of locomotives. Another omen of her death is a pot of holy water that went missing on Epiphany.
Matryona's death seems to be an accident. But why on the night of her death, the mice rush about like crazy? The narrator suggests that it was 30 years later that the threat of Matryona's brother-in-law Thaddeus, who threatened to chop down Matryona and his own brother, who married her, struck.
After death, the holiness of Matryona is revealed. The mourners notice that she, completely crushed by the tractor, has only the right hand left to pray to God. And the narrator draws attention to her face, more alive than dead.
Fellow villagers speak of Matryona with disdain, not understanding her disinterestedness. The sister-in-law considers her unscrupulous, not careful, not inclined to accumulate good, Matryona did not seek her own benefit and helped others for free. Despised by fellow villagers was even Matryonina's cordiality and simplicity.
Only after her death did the narrator realize that Matryona, "not chasing after the factory", indifferent to food and clothing, is the foundation, the core of all of Russia. On such a righteous person stands a village, a city and a country ("all our land"). For the sake of one righteous man, as in the Bible, God can spare the earth, protect it from fire.
Artistic originality
Matryona appears before the hero as fabulous creature, similar to Baba Yaga, who reluctantly gets off the stove to feed the prince who is passing by. She, like a fairy grandmother, has helper animals. Shortly before the death of Matryona, the rickety cat leaves the house, the mice, anticipating the death of the old woman, rustle especially. But cockroaches are indifferent to the fate of the hostess. Following Matryona, her favorite ficuses, like a crowd, die: they do not represent practical value and taken out into the cold after the death of Matryona.
Topic: "The beauty of the human soul"Problem moral beauty person.
What true beauty human? Which moral qualities make a person beautiful?
Matryona looks very simple, nothing stands out peasant woman, all his life doing hard rural work. Life was difficult for Matryona, as for all the inhabitants of the village: they have nothing to buy in the store, and their food is very meager and modest - only potatoes. And Matryona's house is so dilapidated, as if crumbling into splinters. Mice and cockroaches coexist with the heroine. And she's already used to them.
But how beautiful is the soul of the heroine! Kindness, diligence, responsiveness, the desire to help, to understand another - all this makes her beautiful.
She did not have to ask for help, it was enough to say that tomorrow she would come to help collect potatoes. And Matryona quit all her affairs and went to help, and even sincerely rejoiced for her neighbors if the potatoes were born large.
Having lived hard life, she did not get angry at people, did not even take offense at the fact that, having worked for a quarter of a century on a collective farm, she did not receive a pension, since only factory workers were entitled to a pension. She was sick - but was considered an invalid. As if the state simply forgot that such a woman lives, no one cares about her. Barely at the end of her life, Matryona was able to secure a pension for herself for her husband, but how much envy appeared immediately among fellow villagers and relatives: where did she get so much money.
And Matryona did not stop giving warmth to people. How cozy and good the narrator felt in her house. It was easy with Matryona, calmly at home.
"The village does not live without a righteous man"- that was the first title of the story. And indeed, it is people like Matryona, the righteous, that is, those who live in truth, who make life cleaner, kinder, showing with their lives what is valuable on this earth: not material things, but human relationships, mutual understanding and respect. in order to transport the dismantled house of Matryona during her lifetime, as the man Thaddeus once loved by her did. The death of the heroine under the wheels of a train while transporting logs across the rails is a terrible warning to people about what should be valued in life. With the death of the heroine, the village seemed to be empty, there was no such kind and sympathetic Matryona.
But the terrible thing is that people didn’t even notice that such a a beautiful woman. The commemoration was just an excuse to get drunk. And at the end they even sang songs. Here she is, moral degradation of people. Even relatives are indifferent to the death of Matryona.
And only the narrator sincerely regrets her. " We all lived next to her and did not understand that she is the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand. .Neither city. Not all our land."
A person is beautiful with his soul, his actions, his attitude towards people. It is this conclusion that can be drawn by reading the story of Solzhenitsyn A.I.
There are always a lot of emotions, intellectual tension and discussions around the name of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn. Our contemporary, a troublemaker in the stagnant hard times, an exile with unheard of world fame, one of the "bison" of the literature of the Russian abroad, Solzhenitsyn combines in his personal appearance and creativity many principles disturbing our consciousness. This is also characteristic of the story of the writer "Matryona Dvor". In the center of the story is the fate of a village woman.
By the will of circumstances, after being released from the Stalinist camps, the writer came into contact with the fate of an old lonely woman. Having worked all her life on the collective farm not for money, but for "sticks", she did not receive a pension. The meager decoration and the only decoration of her hut were pots and tubs with ficuses, a dim mirror and two bright cheap posters on the wall. In her declining years, seriously ill, Matryona has no rest and is forced to earn a piece of bread literally by the sweat of her brow. Without any special deliberateness, the author tells how endlessly and stubbornly, almost daily, this woman overcomes the long way to the village council, fussing about her pension. And it is not because Matryona's case is not advancing that she did not deserve it from the state. The reason for the fruitlessness of these efforts is, unfortunately, the most common. In the story we are faced with a completely everyday picture: “He goes to the village council, but the secretary is not there today, and just like that there is not, as it happens in the villages. Tomorrow, then go again. Now there is a secretary, but he does not have a seal. Third day go again. And go on the fourth day because blindly they signed on the wrong piece of paper.
The story clearly reveals the relationship between power and man. Matryona has only one goat, but for her to collect hay is "great work." “Near the canvas,” Matryona explains, “do not mow - there are your own owners, and there is no mowing in the forest - the forestry is the owner, and they don’t tell me on the collective farm - not a collective farmer, they say, now ... The chairman is new, recent, sent from the city, first of all cut gardens for all disabled people. Fifteen acres of sand to Matryona, and ten acres were empty behind the fence.
But even harder old woman to get hold of fuel: “We stood around the forest, and there was nowhere to get fireboxes. Excavators roared all around in the swamps, but peat was not sold to the residents, but only carried to the authorities, and who at the authorities, but by car - to teachers, doctors, factory workers. Fuel was not allowed, and it was not supposed to ask about it. The chairman of the collective farm walked around the village, looked into the eyes demandingly or dully, or ingenuously, talking about anything except fuel. Because he himself stocked up ... ". So the village women had to gather several people for courage and carry peat secretly in bags. Sometimes two pounds were carried for three kilometers. “My back never heals,” Matrena admits. - In winter, a sleigh on oneself, in the summer bundles on oneself, by God, really! Moreover, fear is a constant companion of her already bleak life: sometimes they went through the village with a search - they were looking for illegal peat. But the coming cold again at night drove Matryona to look for fuel. In measured, colorful sketches, the image of not only a lonely and destitute woman, but also a person with an immensely kind, generous and disinterested soul gradually appears before us. Having buried six children, having lost her husband at the front, and ill, Matryona has not lost the ability to respond to someone else's need. Not a single plowing in the village could do without it. Together with other women, she harnessed herself to the plow and dragged it on herself. Matryona could not refuse help to any relative, close or distant, often leaving her urgent matters. Not without some surprise, the narrator also notices how sincerely she rejoices at someone else's good harvest, although this never happens on the sand herself. In essence, having nothing, this woman knows how to give. She is embarrassed and worried, trying to please her guest: she cooks larger potatoes for him in a separate pot - this is the best thing she has.
If in the first part of the work Matryona and her life are described through the perception of the narrator, then in the second part the heroine herself talks about herself, about her past, recalls her youth, love. IN early years fate treated Matrena harshly: she did not wait for her beloved, who was missing in the war. The death of Fadey's mother and the matchmaking of his younger brother, as it were, determined her fate. And she decided to enter the house where her soul seemed to have settled for a long time and forever. And yet, Matryona was not thinking about herself then: “Their mother died ... They didn’t have enough hands.” Did Fadey, who soon returned from Hungarian captivity, understand her sacrifice? His terrible, cruel threat: “... if it weren’t for my brother, I would have chopped both of you,” which Matryona recalls decades later, makes her guest shudder. For ten years, Matryona brought up the "blood of Fadey" - his youngest daughter Kira. She married herself. She gives her room to her pupil. It is not easy for her to decide to break down the house in which she has lived for forty years. And although for herself this means the end of her life, she does not feel sorry for “the upper room, which stood idle, as Matryona never spared her labor or goodness.”
However, everything ends tragically: Matryona dies, and with her one of Fadey's sons and a tractor driver. The writer depicts the shock of people from what happened on railway crossing. And only Fadey is completely absorbed in another desire - to save the abandoned logs of the upper room. It was this that "tormented the soul of the black-bearded Fadey all Friday and all Saturday." His daughter was going crazy, his son-in-law was threatened with court, in his own house lay dead son, on the same street - the woman he had killed, whom he once loved - Fadey only came to stand at the coffins for a short time. high forehead he was overshadowed by a heavy thought, but this thought was - how to "save the logs of the upper room from the fire and intrigues of the Matryona sisters."
Why are they so different - Fadey and Matryona? In the sympathetic and at the same time indignant tone of the story, this question seems to sound all the time. The answer lies in the very juxtaposition of the heroes: no matter how hard and inevitable fate is, it only more clearly shows the measure of the human in each of the people. The content of the story convinces that Solzhenitsyn's ideological and artistic search is in line with the Christian Orthodox worldview. In the story they are reflected different sides life of the Russian village in the 50s, but still the moral and spiritual content is dominant in it. The heroine of Solzhenitsyn is fiercely pious, although the narrator remarks that he has never even seen her pray. But all the actions and thoughts of Matryona are disinterested and, as it were, are surrounded by a halo of holiness, which is not always clear to others. That's why people have such different attitudes towards it. All reviews of the sister-in-law, for example, are disapproving: “... and she was unscrupulous; and did not chase the trim; and not careful; and she didn’t even keep a pig, .. and stupid, she helped strangers for free ... And even about Matryona’s cordiality and simplicity, which her sister-in-law recognized for her, she spoke with contemptuous regret. But such a wonderful Matryona, though few, but was dear. The son of Fadey confesses to the tenant that he loves his aunt very much. The pupil Kira is inconsolable in grief when Matryona dies. The peculiarity of "Matryona's Yard" is that the main character is revealed in it not only through the perception of the guest and not only through his personal relationship with her. The reader also recognizes Matryona through her participation in the ongoing events, in the description of which the author's voice is heard, but it sounds even more clearly in the description of what is happening in front of the narrator. And here the voices of the author and the narrator become almost indistinguishable. It is the author who allows us to see the characters in extreme conditions when active actor becomes the narrator.
It is impossible not to notice with what selflessness Matryona rolls heavy logs onto the sled. The author describes the troubles of this woman to the smallest detail. It is here for the first time that we see not that Matryona, who was unfairly deprived of fate, offended by people and power, but the one who, in spite of everything, retained the ability to love and do good. Describing it, the author notes: “Those people always have good faces, who are at odds with their conscience.” The righteous peasant woman lived surrounded by unfriendly and mercenary collective farmers. Their miserable and unhappy life was not much different from the existence of camp prisoners. They lived according to their traditional ways. Even after the death of Matryona, who did so much good for everyone, the neighbors were not particularly worried, although they cried, and they went to her hut with the children, as if to a performance. “Those who considered themselves closer to the deceased began to cry from the threshold, and when they reached the coffin, they leaned over the very face of the deceased.” Crying relatives was "a kind of politics": in it, each expressed their own thoughts and feelings. And all these lamentations boiled down to the fact that “we are not to blame for her death, but we’ll talk about the hut!”. It is a pity that the language calls our property good, national or our own. And to lose it is considered shameful and stupid before people.
The story "Matryona Dvor" is impossible to read without tears. This sad story the righteous peasant woman is not fiction the author, but taken from real life. The writer himself said the best about his heroine: “All of us next to her did not understand that she is the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand. Not the city, not all our land." These words express the main idea of the story.
The history of the creation of Solzhenitsyn's work "Matryonin Dvor"
In 1962, the Novy Mir magazine published the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", which made Solzhenitsyn's name known throughout the country and far beyond its borders. A year later, in the same journal, Solzhenitsyn published several stories, including “Matryona Dvor”. Postings have stopped at this point. None of the writer's works were allowed to be published in the USSR. And in 1970 Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Initially, the story "Matryona Dvor" was called "A village does not stand without the righteous." But, on the advice of A. Tvardovsky, in order to avoid censorship obstacles, the name was changed. For the same reasons, the year of action in the story from 1956 was replaced by the author with 1953. "Matrenin Dvor", as the author himself noted, "is completely autobiographical and reliable." In all the notes to the story, the prototype of the heroine is reported - Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova from the village of Miltsovo, Kurlovsky district, Vladimir region. The narrator, like the author himself, teaches in the Ryazan village, living with the heroine of the story, and the narrator's patronymic - Ignatich - is consonant with A. Solzhenitsyn's patronymic - Isaevich. The story, written in 1956, tells about the life of a Russian village in the fifties.
Critics praised the story. The essence of Solzhenitsyn's work was noted by A. Tvardovsky: “Why is the fate of the old peasant woman, told on a few pages, for us such big interest? This woman is unread, illiterate, a simple worker. And yet her spiritual world is endowed with such qualities that we talk with her as with Anna Karenina. After reading these words in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Solzhenitsyn immediately wrote to Tvardovsky: “Needless to say, the paragraph of your speech referring to Matryona means a lot to me. You pointed to the very essence - to a woman who loves and suffers, while all the criticism scoured all the time from above, comparing the Talnovsky collective farm and neighboring ones.
The first title of the story "A village is not worth without the righteous" contained deep meaning: the Russian village rests on people whose way of life is based on the universal values of kindness, labor, sympathy, help. Since a righteous person is called, firstly, a person who lives in accordance with religious rules; secondly, a person who does not sin in anything against the rules of morality (rules that determine mores, behavior, spiritual and spiritual qualities necessary for a person in society). The second name - "Matryona Dvor" - somewhat changed the angle of view: moral principles began to have clear boundaries only within the Matrenin Dvor. On a larger scale of the village, they are blurred, the people around the heroine are often different from her. Having titled the story "Matryona Dvor", Solzhenitsyn focused readers' attention on wonderful world Russian woman.
gender, genre, creative method analyzed work
Solzhenitsyn once remarked that he rarely turned to the short story genre, for “artistic pleasure”: “You can put a lot in a small form, and it is a great pleasure for an artist to work on a small form. Because in a small form you can hone the edges with great pleasure for yourself. In the story "Matryona Dvor" all facets are honed with brilliance, and meeting with the story becomes, in turn, a great pleasure for the reader. The story is usually based on a case that reveals the character of the protagonist.
Regarding the story "Matryona Dvor" in literary criticism, there were two points of view. One of them presented Solzhenitsyn's story as a phenomenon of "village prose". V. Astafiev, calling "Matryona Dvor" "the pinnacle of Russian short stories", believed that our " village prose came out of this story. Somewhat later, this idea was developed in literary criticism.
At the same time, the story "Matryona Dvor" was associated with the original genre monumental story. An example of this genre is M. Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man".
In the 1960s genre features"monumental story" are recognizable in "Matryona yard" by A. Solzhenitsyn, "Mother of man" by V. Zakrutkin, "In the light of day" by E. Kazakevich. The main difference of this genre is the image common man, which is the custodian of universal values. Moreover, the image of a simple person is given in sublime colors, and the story itself is focused on high genre. So, in the story "The Fate of a Man" features of the epic are visible. And in the "Matryona Dvor" the emphasis is on the lives of the saints. Before us is the life of Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva, the righteous and great martyr of the era " complete collectivization"and the tragic experiment on whole country. Matryona was portrayed by the author as a saint ("Only she had fewer sins than a rickety cat").
The subject of the work
The theme of the story is a description of the life of the patriarchal Russian village, which reflects how flourishing egoism and rapacity disfigure Russia and "destroy communications and meaning." The writer raises short story serious problems Russian village in the early 1950s (her life, customs and mores, the relationship between power and a working person). The author repeatedly emphasizes that the state needs only working hands, and not the person himself: “She was lonely all around, but since she began to get sick, she was released from the collective farm.” A person, according to the author, should mind his own business. So Matryona finds the meaning of life in work, she is angry with the unscrupulous attitude of others to business.
An analysis of the work shows that the problems raised in it are subordinated to one goal: to reveal the beauty of the Christian Orthodox worldview of the heroine. On the example of the fate of a village woman, to show that life's losses and suffering only more clearly show the measure of the human in each of the people. But Matryona dies - and this world collapses: her house is pulled apart by a log, her modest belongings are greedily divided. And there is no one to protect Matryona's yard, no one even thinks that with the departure of Matryona, something very valuable and important, not amenable to division and primitive everyday assessment, passes away. “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she is the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand. No city. Not all our land." Last phrases expand the boundaries of the Matrona Court (as the personal world of the heroine) to the scale of humanity.
The main characters of the work
The main character of the story, as indicated in the title, is Matrena Vasilievna Grigorieva. Matrena is a lonely destitute peasant woman with a generous and disinterested soul. She lost her husband in the war, buried six of her own and raised other people's children. Matryona gave her pupil the most precious thing in her life - the house: "... she did not feel sorry for the upper room, which stood idle, as well as neither her labor nor her goodness ...".
The heroine has endured many hardships in life, but has not lost the ability to empathize with others, joy and sorrow. She is disinterested: she sincerely rejoices in someone else's good harvest, although she never has it on the sand herself. All the wealth of Matrena is a dirty white goat, a lame cat and large flowers in tubs.
Matrena - concentration best features national character: shy, understands the "education" of the narrator, respects him for it. The author appreciates in Matryona her delicacy, the absence of annoying curiosity about the life of another person, hard work. For a quarter of a century she worked on a collective farm, but because she was not at a factory, she was not entitled to a pension for herself, and she could only get it for her husband, that is, for the breadwinner. As a result, she never received a pension. Life was extremely difficult. She got grass for a goat, peat for warmth, collected old stumps turned out by a tractor, soaked lingonberries for the winter, grew potatoes, helping those who were nearby to survive.
Analysis of the work says that the image of Matryona and individual details in the story are symbolic. Solzhenitsyn's Matryona is the embodiment of the ideal of a Russian woman. As noted in critical literature, the appearance of the heroine is like an icon, and life is like the lives of saints. Her house, as it were, symbolizes the ark of the biblical Noah, in which he is saved from global flood. The death of Matryona symbolizes the cruelty and meaninglessness of the world in which she lived.
The heroine lives according to the laws of Christianity, although her actions are not always clear to others. Therefore, the attitude towards it is different. Matryona is surrounded by sisters, sister-in-law, stepdaughter Kira, the only friend in the village, Thaddeus. However, no one appreciated it. She lived in poverty, wretchedly, lonely - a "lost old woman", exhausted by work and illness. Relatives almost did not appear in her house, everyone condemned Matryona in chorus that she was funny and stupid, she worked for others for free all her life. Everyone mercilessly took advantage of Matryona's kindness and innocence - and unanimously judged her for it. Among the people around her, the author treats her heroine with great sympathy; both her son Thaddeus and her pupil Kira love her.
The image of Matryona is contrasted in the story with the image of the cruel and greedy Thaddeus, who seeks to get Matryona's house during her lifetime.
Matrena's yard is one of key images story. The description of the courtyard, the house is detailed, with a lot of details, devoid of bright colors Matryona lives "in the wilderness." It is important for the author to emphasize the inseparability of the house and the person: if the house is destroyed, its mistress will also die. This unity is already stated in the very title of the story. The hut for Matryona is filled with a special spirit and light, the life of a woman is connected with the "life" of the house. Therefore, for a long time she did not agree to break the hut.
Plot and composition
The story consists of three parts. In the first part, we are talking about how fate threw the hero-narrator to the station with a strange name for Russian places - Peat product. Former prisoner, now school teacher, longing to find peace in some remote and quiet corner of Russia, finds shelter and warmth in the house of the elderly and knowing life Matrena. “Maybe, to someone from the village, who is richer, Matryona’s hut didn’t seem well-lived, but we were quite good with her that autumn and winter: it didn’t leak from the rains and the cold winds blew the furnace heat out of it not immediately, only in the morning , especially when the wind was blowing from the leaky side. In addition to Matryona and me, they also lived in the hut - a cat, mice and cockroaches. They immediately find mutual language. Next to Matryona, the hero calms down with his soul.
In the second part of the story, Matrena recalls her youth, the terrible ordeal that befell her. Her fiancé Thaddeus went missing in World War I. Wooed her younger brother missing husband, Yefim, left alone after death with younger children in his arms. She took pity on Matryona Efim, married an unloved one. And here, after three years of absence, Thaddeus himself unexpectedly returned, whom Matryona continued to love. The hard life did not harden Matrena's heart. In worries about daily bread, she went her way to the end. And even death overtook a woman in labor worries. Matryona dies helping Thaddeus and his sons to drag across railway on a sleigh, part of his own hut, bequeathed to Kira. Thaddeus did not want to wait for the death of Matryona and decided to take the inheritance for the young during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death.
In the third part, the tenant learns about the death of the mistress of the house. Description of the funeral and commemoration showed true attitude to Matryona of people close to her. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry more out of duty than from the heart, and think only about the final division of Matryona's property. And Thaddeus doesn't even come to the wake.
Artistic features of the analyzed story
The artistic world in the story is built linearly - in accordance with the life story of the heroine. In the first part of the work, the whole story about Matryona is given through the perception of the author, a man who has endured a lot in his lifetime, who dreamed of "getting lost and getting lost in the very interior of Russia." The narrator evaluates her life from the outside, compares it with the environment, becomes an authoritative witness of righteousness. In the second part, the heroine talks about herself. The combination of lyrical and epic pages, the chaining of episodes according to the principle of emotional contrast allows the author to change the rhythm of the narration, its tone. In this way the author is coming to recreate layered painting life. Already the first pages of the story serve as a convincing example. It is opened by the beginning, which tells about the tragedy at the railway siding. We learn the details of this tragedy at the end of the story.
Solzhenitsyn in his work does not give a detailed, specific description of the heroine. Only one portrait detail constantly emphasized by the author - "radiant", "kind", "apologetic" smile of Matryona. Nevertheless, by the end of the story, the reader imagines the appearance of the heroine. Already in the very tonality of the phrase, the selection of "colors" is felt author's attitude to Matryona: “From the red frosty sun, the frozen window of the canopy, now shortened, filled with a little pink, and Matryona’s face warmed this reflection.” And further - already straight author's characteristic: "Those people always have good faces, who are at odds with their conscience." Even after terrible death the heroine of her "face remained intact, calm, more alive than dead."
Embodied in Matryona folk character, which is primarily manifested in her speech. Expressiveness, a bright individuality gives her language an abundance of colloquial, dialectal vocabulary (hurry up, kuzhotkamu, summer, lightning). The manner of her speech is also deeply folk, the way she pronounces her words: “They began with some kind of low warm murmur, like grandmothers in fairy tales.” “Matryonin Dvor” minimally includes the landscape, he pays more attention to the interior, which appears not by itself, but in a lively interweaving with the “inhabitants” and with sounds - from the rustling of mice and cockroaches to the state of ficuses and a rickety cat. Every detail here characterizes not only the peasant life, Matryonin's yard, but also the storyteller. The voice of the narrator reveals in him a psychologist, a moralist, even a poet - in the way he observes Matryona, her neighbors and relatives, how he evaluates them and her. The poetic feeling is manifested in the author's emotions: "Only she had fewer sins than a cat ..."; “But Matryona rewarded me ...”. The lyrical pathos is especially obvious at the very end of the story, where even the syntactic structure changes, including paragraphs, translating the speech into blank verse:
“The Veems lived next to her / and did not understand / that she is the same righteous man, / without whom, according to the proverb, / the village does not stand. /Nor the city./Nor all our land.
The writer was looking for a new word. An example of this is his convincing articles on language in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Dahl's fantastic commitment (the researchers note that about 40% of the vocabulary in the story Solzhenitsyn borrowed from Dahl's dictionary), ingenuity in vocabulary. In the story "Matryona's Dvor" Solzhenitsyn came to the language of preaching.
The meaning of the work
“There are such born angels,” Solzhenitsyn wrote in the article “Repentance and Self-Restriction”, as if characterizing Matryona, “they seem to be weightless, they seem to glide over this slurry, without drowning in it at all, even touching its surface with their feet? Each of us met such people, there are not ten or a hundred of them in Russia, they are the righteous, we saw them, we were surprised (“eccentrics”), we used their goodness, in good moments we answered them the same, they dispose, - and immediately sank again to our doomed depth.
What is the essence of Matrona's righteousness? In life, not by lies, we will now say in the words of the writer himself, uttered much later. Creating this character, Solzhenitsyn places him in the most ordinary circumstances of rural collective farm life in the 1950s. The righteousness of Matrena lies in her ability to preserve her humanness even in such inaccessible conditions for this. As N.S. Leskov wrote, righteousness is the ability to live “without lying, without deceit, without condemning one’s neighbor and without condemning a biased enemy.”
The story was called "brilliant", "a truly brilliant work." In reviews of him, it was noted that even among Solzhenitsyn's stories he stands out for his strict artistry, the integrity of the poetic embodiment, and the consistency of artistic taste.
The story of A.I. Solzhenitsyn "Matryona Dvor" - for all time. It is especially relevant today, when questions moral values And life priorities are acute in modern Russian society.
Point of view
Anna Akhmatova
When his big thing came out (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”), I said: all 200 million should read this. And when I read Matrenin Dvor, I cried, and I rarely cry.
V. Surganov
After all, it’s not so much the appearance of Solzhenitsyn’s Matryona that evokes an internal rebuff in us, but the author’s frank admiration for beggarly disinterestedness and no less frank desire to exalt and oppose it to the rapacity of the owner, nesting in those around her, close to her.
(From the book The Word Makes Its Way.
Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn.
1962-1974. - M.: Russian way, 1978.)
This is interesting
On August 20, 1956, Solzhenitsyn left for his place of work. There were many such names as "Peat product" in the Vladimir region. Peat product (the local youth called it "Tyr-pyr") - was a railway station 180 kilometers and a four-hour drive from Moscow along the Kazan road. The school was located in the nearby village of Mezinovsky, and Solzhenitsyn had a chance to live two kilometers from the school - in the Meshchera village of Miltsevo.
Only three years will pass, and Solzhenitsyn will write a story that will immortalize these places: a station with a clumsy name, a village with a tiny bazaar, the house of the landlady Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova, and Matryona herself, a righteous woman and a sufferer. A photograph of the corner of the hut, where the guest will put a cot and, having pushed aside the master's ficuses, will arrange a table with a lamp, will go around the whole world.
The teaching staff of Mezinovka consisted of about fifty members that year and significantly influenced the life of the village. There were four schools here: primary, seven-year, secondary and evening for working youth. Solzhenitsyn received a referral to high school She was in an old one-story building. The academic year began with the August teachers' conference, so, having arrived in Torfoprodukt, the teacher of mathematics and electrical engineering of grades 8-10 managed to go to the Kurlovsky district for a traditional meeting. "Isaich", as his colleagues dubbed him, could, if desired, refer to serious illness but no, he didn't talk about her to anyone. We only saw how he was looking for a birch chaga mushroom and some herbs in the forest, and briefly answered questions: “I make medicinal drinks.” He was considered shy: after all, a person suffered ... But that was not the point at all: “I came with my goal, with my past. What could they know, what could u tell them? I sat with Matryona and wrote a novel every free minute. Why am I talking to myself? I didn't have that style. I was a conspirator to the end." Then everyone will get used to the fact that this thin, pale, a tall man in a suit and tie, wearing, like all teachers, a hat, coat or raincoat, keeps his distance and does not get close to anyone. He will remain silent when a document on rehabilitation comes in six months - just the school head teacher B.S. Protserov will receive a notification from the village council and send a teacher for help. No talking when the wife starts arriving. “What is it to whom? I live with Matryona and I live. Many were alarmed (isn't it a spy?) that he goes everywhere with a Zorkiy camera and shoots something completely different from what amateurs usually shoot: instead of relatives and friends - houses, wrecked farms, boring landscapes.
Coming to school at the beginning school year, he proposed his own methodology - giving all classes a control, according to the results he divided the students into strong and mediocre, and then worked individually.
In the lessons, everyone received a separate task, so there was neither the possibility nor the desire to write off. Not only the solution of the problem was valued, but also the method of solution. The introductory part of the lesson was shortened as much as possible: the teacher spared time for "trifles". He knew exactly who and when to call to the board, who to ask more often, who to trust independent work. The teacher never sat at the teacher's table. He did not enter the class, but burst into it. He ignited everyone with his energy, knew how to build a lesson in such a way that there was no time to be bored or doze off. He respected his students. Never shouted, never even raised his voice.
And only outside the class Solzhenitsyn was silent and withdrawn. He went home after school, ate the “cardboard” soup prepared by Matryona and sat down to work. The neighbors remembered for a long time how inconspicuously the guest lodged, did not arrange parties, did not participate in fun, but read and wrote everything. “She loved Matryona Isaich,” used to say Shura Romanova, the adopted daughter of Matryona (in the story she is Kira). - Sometimes, she will come to me in Cherusti, I persuade her to stay longer. "No," he says. “I have Isaich - he needs to cook, heat the stove.” And back home."
The lodger also became attached to the lost old woman, cherishing her disinterestedness, conscientiousness, cordial simplicity, a smile that he tried in vain to catch in the camera lens. “So Matryona got used to me, and I to her, and we lived easily. She did not interfere with my long evening classes, did not annoy me with any questions. There was absolutely no woman's curiosity in her, and the lodger did not stir her soul either, but it turned out that they opened up to each other.
She learned about the prison, and about the serious illness of the guest, and about his loneliness. And there was no worse loss for him in those days than the ridiculous death of Matryona on February 21, 1957 under the wheels of a freight train at the crossing of one hundred and eighty-four kilometers from Moscow along the branch that goes to Murom from Kazan, exactly six months after the day he settled in her hut.
(From the book of Lyudmila Saraskina "Alexander Solzhenitsyn")
Matrenin yard is poor, as before
Solzhenitsyn's acquaintance with "condo", "interior" Russia, in which he so wanted to be after the Ekibastuz exile, a few years later was embodied in the received world fame story "Matryona yard". This year marks 40 years since its inception. As it turned out, in Mezinovsky itself, this work by Solzhenitsyn became a second-hand rarity. This book is not even available at Matrenin Dvor itself, where Lyuba, the niece of the heroine of Solzhenitsyn's story, now lives. “I had pages from a magazine, the neighbors once asked when they began to study it at school, and they didn’t return it,” complains Lyuba, who today brings up her grandson on disability benefits in the “historical” walls. Matryona's hut was inherited from her mother - herself younger sister Matryona. The hut was transported to Mezinovsky from the neighboring village of Miltsevo (in Solzhenitsyn's story - Talnovo), where Matryona Zakharova (Solzhenitsyn - Matryona Grigorieva) and lodged future writer. In the village of Miltsevo, for the visit of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1994, a similar, but much more solid house was hastily erected. Shortly after the memorable arrival of Solzhenitsyn, the countrymen uprooted window frames and floorboards from this unguarded building of Matrenina, standing on the outskirts of the village.
The "new" Mezin school, built in 1957, now has 240 students. In the unpreserved building of the old one, in which Solzhenitsyn taught lessons, about a thousand studied. For half a century, not only has the Miltsevskaya river become shallow and peat reserves in the surrounding swamps have become scarce, but they have also become empty. neighboring villages. And at the same time, Solzhenitsyn's Thaddeus did not disappear, calling the good of the people "ours" and considering that losing it is "shameful and stupid."
The crumbling house of Matryona, rearranged to a new place without a foundation, has grown into the ground for two crowns, buckets are put under a thin roof in the rain. Like Matryona, cockroaches are in full swing here, but there are no mice: there are four cats in the house, two of our own and two that have nailed it. Lyuba, a former foundry worker at a local factory, like Matryona, who once straightened out her pension for months, goes to the authorities to extend her disability allowance. “No one but Solzhenitsyn helps,” she complains. “Somehow one came in a jeep, called himself Alexei, examined the house and gave money.” Behind the house, like Matryona, there is a garden of 15 acres, on which Lyuba plants potatoes. As before, mint potatoes, mushrooms and cabbage are the main products for her life. In addition to cats, she doesn’t even have a goat in her courtyard, which Matryona had.
So lived and live many Mezinovsky righteous. Local historians write books about the stay of the great writer in Mezinovsky, local poets compose poems, new pioneers write essays “On difficult fate Alexandra Solzhenitsyn, Nobel laureate", as they once wrote essays about Brezhnev's "Virgin Land" and "Small Land". They are thinking of resurrecting the museum hut of Matrena on the outskirts of the deserted village of Miltsevo. And the old Matrenin yard lives the same life as it did half a century ago.
Leonid Novikov, Vladimir region.
Gang Yu. Service Solzhenitsyn // New time. - 1995. No. 24.
Zapevalov V. A. Solzhenitsyn. To the 30th anniversary of the publication of the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" // Russian Literature. - 1993. No. 2.
Litvinova V.I. Don't live in lies. Guidelines for the study of creativity A.I. Solzhenitsyn. - Abakan: KhSU publishing house, 1997.
MurinD. One hour, one day, one life of a person in the stories of A.I. Solzhenitsyn // Literature at school. - 1995. No. 5.
Palamarchuk P. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Guide. - M.,
1991.
SaraskinaL. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. ZhZL series. - M .: Young
guard, 2009.
The word makes its way. Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn. 1962-1974. - M .: Russian way, 1978.
ChalmaevV. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Life and work. - M., 1994.
Urmanov A.V. Works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. - M., 2003.
