Why was the Snow Maiden met with ambiguity by some writers? Questions and assignments based on the play by A.N.

Creative history plays "The Snow Maiden" Why did A.N. Ostrovsky's play "The Snow Maiden" so surprise readers, critics, and spectators? Why did A. N. Ostrovsky’s play “The Snow Maiden” so surprise readers, critics, and spectators? How was the original concept of the play changed by A.N. Ostrovsky? How was the original concept of the play changed by A.N. Ostrovsky? What difficulties do you think the great playwright might have experienced when creating the play “The Snow Maiden”? What difficulties do you think the great playwright might have experienced when creating the play “The Snow Maiden”? Individual work with article (c): How was the play assessed by individual writers? What is the reason ambiguous assessment? How was the play assessed by individual writers? What is the reason for the mixed assessment?

Composition diagram Contents of the composition parts 1. Exposition 2. Commencement 3. Plot development 4. Climax 5. Denouement Presence of older and younger generations. Absence of elders. Main character or the heroine discovers a loss or shortage, or a prohibition is violated, disaster follows. Finding what is lost or missing, correcting a mistake The main character or heroine fights an opposing force and always defeats it Overcoming a loss or lack, accession (gaining a higher status)

Outline of the composition Contents of the parts of the composition 1. Exposition 2. Commencement 3. Development of the action 4. Climax 5. Denouement Meeting the parents of the Snow Maiden The wonderful child of Frost and Spring asks for people. The prohibition of Frost: “fear Lel, his speeches and songs” The test of the heroine who finds herself among people: the conflict with Bobyl and Bobylikha, the conflict with the girls of the Berendey kingdom, the conflict with Kupava, the conflict with Lel Acquisition of a forbidden quality - love The death of the heroine. The triumph of the Sun and harmony in the life of the Berendeys

Ostrovsky, unlike folk tale transforms the conflict of the work into an internal one psychological plan. If in a folk tale the test of the hero is to fight against dark forces, then in Ostrovsky’s “spring fairy tale” the struggle of “hot” and “cold” feelings in the soul of the Snow Maiden is shown. The playwright filled the borrowed central motif of the death of the Snow Maiden with new content; he was able to transfer from the fairy tale a life-affirming principle, which determined the spring tone of the play, associated with the revival of nature and love in the hearts of the Berendeys. Ostrovsky, unlike a folk tale, transfers the conflict of the work to an internal psychological plane. If in a folk tale the test of the hero is to fight against dark forces, then in Ostrovsky’s “spring fairy tale” the struggle of “hot” and “cold” feelings in the soul of the Snow Maiden is shown. The playwright filled the borrowed central motif of the death of the Snow Maiden with new content; he was able to transfer from the fairy tale a life-affirming principle, which determined the spring tone of the play, associated with the revival of nature and love in the hearts of the Berendeys.

Genius Test Once a young man came to Brecht and said: Once a young man came to Brecht and said: “I have a lot of creative ideas in my head, I can write a good novel.” The only thing stopping me from writing is not knowing how to start. - My head is full of creative ideas, I can write a good novel. The only thing stopping me from writing is not knowing how to start. Brecht smiled and advised: Brecht smiled and advised: - Very simple. Start with... - Very simple. Start with... Bertolt Brecht German poet, novelist, playwright, theater reformer, founder of the Berlin Ensemble theater. Laureate of the International Stalin Prize “For Strengthening Peace Between Nations” (1954).

The World of the Berendey Kingdom What events fill the life of the Berendeys? What events fill the life of the Berendeys? Give a description of the inhabitants of the Berendey kingdom: Bobyl and Bobylikha, Murash, Lelya, Kupava. Prove your conclusions with text. What do the names of the heroes mean? Are they some kind of characterization of the heroes? Give a description of the inhabitants of the Berendey kingdom: Bobyl and Bobylikha, Murash, Lelya, Kupava. Prove your conclusions with text. What do the names of the heroes mean? Are they some kind of characterization of the heroes?

ACT TWO

In what wise king did you see the reason why Yarilo is angry with his people?

Reference. Yarilo is a deity of Slavic mythology associated with fertility. Carnivals and mass celebrations were usually held in his honor.

The wise Tsar Berendey immediately realized that Yarilo was dissatisfied with the fact that the boys and girls were not having much fun, that treason had arisen among them. The fact that they sing little and play little, offended merry god fertility.

Why is Mizgir being tried? Why is exile in the kingdom of the Berendeys such a terrible punishment?

Mizgir is put on trial for betraying Kupava’s love. Kupava was faithful to him, loved her groom and did not offend him in any way. Captivated by the beauty of the Snow Maiden, Mizgir rejected the bride whom he already wanted to lead down the aisle - this was a grave sin for the Berendeys. And for this sin he will face a terrible punishment - expulsion. The exile was scary because no one knew what awaited him beyond the borders of Berendey’s kingdom in a strange and unknown world. All Berendeys were afraid of this unknown world.

Why, having learned that the Snow Maiden does not know love, does Tsar Berendey consider Yarilin’s anger justified?

Tsar Berendey considers all the inhabitants of his country to be people with a kind heart; he is convinced that they are capable of love and being loyal. When he learned that among his subjects there was a beautiful girl who did not have these qualities, he immediately understood what caused Yarila’s anger.

How do you understand the king’s words: “Let us redouble our efforts to correct an involuntary sin”?

Tsar Berendey calls on his subjects to become friendly and cheerful again, return to the spring holidays and forget about grief and betrayal forever.

Why the call to melt the Snow Maiden’s heart Beautiful Elena advises me to contact Lelya?

Beautiful Elena is convinced of the power of youth, beauty and art. Lel is not only handsome, he is also talented, so he is able to overcome the cold in the Snow Maiden’s heart.

Ostrovsky, “The Snow Maiden”, ACT TWO. What did the wise king see as the reason why Yarilo was angry with his people?

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ACT TWO

What did the wise king see as the reason why Yarilo was angry with his people?

Reference. Yarilo is a deity of Slavic mythology associated with fertility. Carnivals and mass celebrations were usually held in his honor.

The wise Tsar Berendey immediately realized that Yarilo was dissatisfied with the fact that the boys and girls were not having much fun, that treason had arisen among them. The fact that they sang little and played little offended the cheerful god of fertility.

Why is Mizgir being tried? Why is exile in the kingdom of the Berendeys such a terrible punishment?

Why, having learned that the Snow Maiden does not know love, did Tsar Berendey

Does Yarilin’s anger feel justified?

How do you understand the king’s words: “Let us redouble our efforts to correct an involuntary sin”?

Tsar Berendey calls on his subjects to become friendly and cheerful again, return to the spring holidays and forget about grief and betrayal forever.

Why does the Beautiful Elena advise turning the call to melt the heart of the Snow Maiden to Lelya?

Beautiful Elena is convinced of the power of youth, beauty and art. Lel is not only handsome, he is also talented, so he is able to overcome the cold in the Snow Maiden’s heart.

Glossary:

What does Berendey see as the cause of misfortune?
Why do you think the Snow Maiden was received ambiguously by some writers?
What does Berendey see as the reason why Yarilo is angry with his people?
Why do you think the Snow Maiden was received ambiguously
What kind of cold is Tsar Berendey talking about in his soul and how do you think it can be overcome?

Literature

Questions and assignments based on the play by A.N. Ostrovsky "Snow Maiden"

How do you imagine A.M. Ostrovsky? Tell us about it using materials from the textbook.
Read the play “The Snow Maiden” in its entirety. Determine which events of the play make up its composition: exposition, beginning, culture, denouement.
Which scenes from The Snow Maiden most affected you? strong impression? Why?
Compose thesis plan headings of the textbook “In the world artistic word plays "The Snow Maiden"
Name the key words necessary to characterize the central images of the play.

Formulate artistic idea fairy tale plays by A.N. Ostrovsky.
Define the genre of “The Snow Maiden”.
What is stage fate plays by A.N. Ostrovsky? Try to answer using additional materials.
Why, in your opinion, was “The Snow Maiden” met with ambiguity by some writers?
Topics for essays, messages, creative works
1. “The Snow Maiden” and oral folk art.
2. Hymn of love (based on the pages of A.N. Ostrovsky’s “spring fairy tale”).
3. Romantic traditions in The Snow Maiden.
4. Performers in the play and in the opera (story about the actors).
1. House-museum of A. N. Ostrovsky in Moscow: House in Zamoskvorechye. M., 1988.
2. Zhuravleva A.I., Makeev M.S. A.N. Ostrovsky. M., 1997.
3. Lobanov M. Ostrovsky. M., 1979 (ZhZL).
4. Sakharov V.I. A.N. Ostrovsky in life and work. M., 2012

A wonderful transformation

Even the stone is slowly turning into something. The child grows, the apple ripens, but this is imperceptible to the simple human eye. Snow is a completely different matter. It melts in the palm of your hand, it spills from your felt boots onto the plank floor and spreads into a wet puddle, and when the spring sun warms up, right before your eyes, the white snow turns into blue water, because the blue sky is reflected in it.

Thus, the appearance of the Snow Maiden was inevitable. It is difficult to imagine a people who live half their lives under the snow and do not think about its magical fate.

Somewhere in the bottomless distance of folklore, the myth of the cloud maiden is hidden, echoes of pagan legends hint at a spring sacrifice, but the fairy tale, homemade folk handicraft, brought a natural mystery to its hut and shared its human warmth. The fairy tale did not see anything frightening or menacing in the annual spring change - only a pattern. Nothing heroic or heroic was heard there - only a light sad sigh. So a girl was born. Not a queen, not a mistress, not some wise prophetess, but just a child, so fragile.

It is completely pointless to dwell on this topic, because a century and a half ago, in 1867, Alexander Nikolaevich Afanasyev already said everything in the best and most exactly. On the pages of his seminal work, “Poetic Views of the Slavs on Nature,” he wrote: “... the Snow Maiden stretched upward with a light steam, curled into a thin cloud and flew away into the sky. In such a graceful poetic image, folk fantasy represents one of the ordinary phenomena of nature...”

No one knows what can depend on one word. And there is no documentary evidence. But dark winter evening it seems: if the scientist Afanasyev had not named the image of the Snow Maiden graceful, her entire future literary life would have gone differently. Or maybe a long beautiful life would not have happened at all, although at this initial line it is too early to talk about this.

As for folk fantasy, it has left us a legacy of a whole scattering of fairy-tale variants about the Snow Maiden, the Snow Maiden, the Snow Maiden, and these variants sometimes differ from each other, like completely different fairy tales, “unfamiliar” with each other.
Most often the story is simple, downright everyday, but with a magical beginning and a sad magical ending:

“Everything happens in the world, everything is said about in a fairy tale.

Once upon a time there lived a grandfather and a woman. They had plenty of everything - a cow, a sheep, and a cat on the stove, but there were no children. They were very sad, they kept grieving.

One time in winter there was white knee-deep snow..."

Everything else is known.

A wonderful living daughter turned out from the snow, she was kind and cheerful all winter, but in the spring she got bored and began to hide from the sun. Grandfather and grandmother themselves persuaded her to go with her friends to the forest. And the girlfriends lit a fire, began to jump over it and shout:

“Jump, jump, Snow Maiden!

The Snow Maiden ran and jumped... There was a noise over the fire, a plaintive groan, and the Snow Maiden was gone. White steam stretched over the fire, curled into a cloud, and the cloud flew into the heights of heaven. The Snow Maiden has melted..."

This very successful, coherent literary adaptation of a folk tale, made many years ago by Irina Valeryanovna Karnaukhova, is probably closest to its folklore roots. Of course, it does not say here that the fire is Kupala, and jumping over it is pagan Slavic rite initiation, recognition of a girl as a girl. In addition, some researchers believe that in time immemorial, the story of the Snow Maiden did not end with a fire, and the water cycle in nature was reflected in all its harmony, right up to the new white snow. Who knows…

In any case, in the poetic retelling of Natalya Zabila, a famous Ukrainian Soviet writer, the white cloud over the fire not only rose into the heavenly distance, but turned into real good:

The traditional version with a fire and a cloud has been reprinted many times and is, of course, the most familiar. But there are, in addition, Snow Maidens who are absolutely amazing. Here Vladimir Ivanovich Dal retold the story about how the old man did not listen to his old woman, brought a small lump of snow to the hut, put it in a pot and put it on the window. “The sun has risen and warmed the pot...”, and - just think! - already in the pot “there’s a girl lying there, white as a snowball and round as a lump”. "I, - speaks, - the girl Snow Maiden, rolled up from spring snow, warmed and rouged by the spring sun".

On this, in fact, all the “snowiness” ends, and a fairy tale about something else begins: how the girl Snow Maiden got lost in the forest, and the old dog Zhuchka, who was driven out of the yard, saved Snow Maiden, for which the good animal again “They accepted me as a favor and put me in my old place”.

There is a Snow Maiden (or rather, a Snow Maiden), who is - what a horror! - the girlfriends were killed because she collected the most berries and buried under a pine tree. And reeds grew on the grave. And they made a pipe out of reeds. And the pipe began to sing human voice. Then the grandfather and woman broke the pipe, and a living Snowflake jumped out, more beautiful than before. Well, and girlfriends... Apparently, even in fairy-tale times there were all sorts of girlfriends. For example, in the retelling of Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy, they did not kill the Snow Maiden, however “they lured into the forest, having lured them, they left”. If it weren’t for the kind fox Olisawa, the old man and the old woman would never have seen their granddaughter.

The recount of the Snow Maidens can be continued, but the point is not at all in the nuances. There is one in all these various fabulous versions common law, main and decisive: the snow girl is always good. She did no harm to anyone, she appeared to the joy of everyone, and if she left, she did not reproach anyone. That's why it evokes a rare human feeling - tenderness.

Note in the margin: neighbors

I would like to say a few words in defense of national pride.

It should be recognized that from time immemorial white snow has fallen and melted not only on Slavic territory. But, if you believe the fairy tales, Western people first of all felt cold from this and expected trouble. Ice Maidens And Snow Queens There is no way our dear Snow Maiden can even be second cousins.

Of course, in world folklore and literary practice there are children made of snow who can melt (they say that Latvians even have a Snow Maiden boy), but they did not manage to get into the first ranks of fairy-tale characters, and the ability to “melt” sometimes was not at all natural, but completely human.

For example, in Germany an old, old legend was discovered about a merchant who, after long wanderings, returned home and found not only his wife, but also a child who had come from God knows where. The bad woman reported that the child had snowy origin and appeared at a moment of deep longing for her husband. The merchant did not argue, but took the “snow” child with him on his next trip. He returned alone. And to the question “where?!” answered without blinking an eye: melted...

The lovely Snow White, whose plot is almost equal in plot to the tale of the Sleeping Princess, can bring some confusion into the snow-fairy-tale relationship, but the name seems to remind one of the Snow Maiden. In fact, everything is different: when the Brothers Grimm wrote down and revised the fairy tale, whose title is sometimes directly (and erroneously) translated into Russian as “Snow Maiden,” they only meant the girl that the queen gave birth to in the winter.

This is why the German Schneewittchen came about - that is, something snow white or, even more beautiful, snow-white. That’s all, the young princess’s pedigree does not suggest any other winter, spring, or natural motifs.
So why did our Snow Maiden so obviously “go her own way” and turn straight into national heroine and became every kid’s bosom friend? Is it really only the mysterious Slavic soul and our special sensitivity to the secrets of Mother Nature that are to blame?

Miracle

At the beginning of 1873, the famous Maly Theater was closed for repairs. As a result, all the troupes of the Imperial Moscow theaters - drama, opera and ballet - were forced to perform next door, on stage Bolshoi Theater. Someone had a tempting idea: to stage a play in which all three troupes would be involved at the same time. The directorate immediately turned to Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky with a proposal to write a corresponding play, and the universally recognized “singer of Zamoskvorechye” did not refuse the offer. By this time, he had long been the main playwright of the Maly Theater and collaborated with it for twenty years.

It is difficult to imagine a more successful and happy combination of circumstances. For many years now, having left his colorful, strictly natural merchants and merchants' women for the time being, the Russian writer Ostrovsky has been striving to delve into history, began writing historical plays and really wanted to look into the beginning. Winds of unexpected folklore ideas swept over Russia and Europe, which one serious researcher called dizzying. In the depths of centuries, where all civilization seems to end, historians, ethnographers and philologists have discovered entire worlds. The patterns of homespun village clothes and the word patterns of ancient songs suddenly took on a global meaning. The noisy foliage of “modern culture” suddenly sensed its primordial roots somewhere out there, far and deep.

Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky was a serious and fairly balanced person. He did not succumb to the fussy euphoria about finding roots that reigned in society at that time. But the topic itself interested him extremely; he studied both folklore directly and studies written on this subject. Perhaps the classic did not notice the word “gracefully” when he leafed through the pages dedicated to the people's Snow Maiden, but it is known for certain that his personal library carefully collected scientific works not only by A.N. Afanasyev, but also by F.I. Buslaev and E.I. Zabelin, the largest specialists in the field of studying folk art and folk life.

For a long time Ostrovsky dreamed of folk theater. For a long time he wanted to open an unprecedented performance on stage that would combine words and music, comedy and tragedy, the antics of buffoons and dramatic experiences. He knew that somewhere there was a point where history and fairy tale met. He generally knew a lot and was, according to Lydia Mikhailovna Lotman, "owner of the material". Several years before The Snow Maiden, Alexander Nikolaevich had already begun to compose an extravaganza about Ivan Tsarevich, but things did not go beyond individual fragments. So, maybe one of the Berendeys deliberately conjured up the repairs at the Maly Theater?

Berendeys, by the way, once existed in reality. True, not as harmless as Ostrovsky’s. Moreover, the village of Berendeevo, the swamp of the same name, and even the Berendeevo railway station, which appeared in 1868 and which Ostrovsky passed several times, still exist.

And he wrote his “Snow Maiden” in the spring and summer of that same 1873, immediately after receiving the order. He lived in a village, his beloved old parental estate near Kostroma. The weather changed, the clouds flew wherever they wanted, the sun rose and went beyond the horizon, everything went on as usual, and the fifty-year-old wise man was able to piece together words "spring tale", which did not melt.

At first everything seemed to be very simple, almost childish. The goblin hides in a hollow, Santa Claus comes out to the edge of the reserved forest, a whole choir of cheerful birds sings and dances around the beautiful Spring, who, of course, is called Spring-Red... And they all speak in verses, somehow unusual. Unhurried, smooth dialogues sound, of course, in Russian, but at the same time they are a little not Russian, intertwined with words that you either know or guess. And this melody...

This is how, according to rumors, the ancient Greeks and all other ancient peoples in general were able to speak, when the narrative does not flow, but flows, and the words are intertwined in two ways at once: according to the laws of meaning and according to the laws of music.

But then people appear on the scene, and everything changes. Bobyl and Bobylikha, who were the first to see the Snow Maiden, they, of course, are Berendeys, but they are worthless, useless.

“...Hawthorn! Is she alive? Alive.
In a sheepskin coat, boots, mittens..."

Yes, if you could have such a daughter, and if you could give her in marriage to a rich man... Well, yes, the author of the most spring Russian fairy tale is still the same Ostrovsky, and it is not typical for him to get off the ground completely. Handsome Lel, the sunny shepherd, because of whose songs the Snow Maiden, in fact, came out to people from the forest, is not an ephemeral creature at all. He, like any village shepherd, is supposed to be assigned to the residents of the settlement one by one, and this is an expensive matter. And the nearby boyar Bermyata, when asked by the king how the people are doing there, answers with an immortal aphorism: "They steal a little..." And Bermyata’s wife, Elena the Beautiful, shamelessly cheats on him. And in general, if you roughly retell the plot in straight words, nothing will come out except the eternal love triangle.

But it is impossible to “retell” “The Snow Maiden”. The country of the Berendeys, which Ostrovsky plunged into prehistoric times, is surrounded by some strange flickering light through which “straight” words do not penetrate. Suddenly it begins to seem that rhythmic poetic speech - the only way human communication. The Snow Maiden, who speaks very simply and very little, for some reason with every word becomes more and more different from all the others, and her simple speeches sound like the cry of a frightened swallow that has already sensed a thunderstorm. And when, finally, the main voice of everything that is happening appears, Tsar Berendey, who peacefully and blissfully paints the walls with his own hand royal palace azure flowers, then the secret fairy tale gains the force of law. Well, where else is there a country in which the main crime is not to love? And where is the king who knows this?..

Hundreds of pages written around Ostrovsky’s play interpret this complex tale in this way and that. The Snow Maiden's rival, the passionate Kupava, is denounced and extolled; the trade guest, maddened by the love of the handsome Mizgir, is either pitied or reproached for male egoism; and sometimes they even try to turn Ostrovsky himself into the author of the social utopia that he supposedly dreamed of. Serious researchers draw intricate parallels and meridians, trying to establish the point of existence famous work in the space of Russian and European literature.

But “The Snow Maiden” slips away, and something most important remains unsaid.

Needed special person to name the essence of Ostrovsky's fairy tale in exact words. What was needed was not a literary historian, not a fellow writer, or literary critic. Philosopher Alexey Fedorovich Losev said this: “The Snow Maiden knows no boundaries between cosmic and real feelings» . And this is finally true.

How does sad and beautiful, fabulously beautiful and humanly end exact history about the disastrous victory of love? And what kind of victory really is this?

“...Snow Maiden's sad death
And the terrible death of Mizgir
They can’t disturb us..." - says Tsar Berendey, and handsome Lel sings a song of praise to Yaril the Sun. Is all this really just for the sake of “patterns”, for the sake of a spectacular depiction of magnificent pagan rituals? Or did the great Russian writer Ostrovsky, in his most intimate work, simply put everything in its place? Maybe he wanted to say that only the Sun, that is, life, always wins, and a person has little choice: fall off a cliff, like Mizgir, or dissolve in bliss, like the Snow Maiden?

The choice is small. But what a difference.

Contemporaries did not accept the poetic gift: neither the readers of the play nor the spectators of the first production expressed any delight. Even the music of the young talent, the novice Tchaikovsky, which was specially written for the theater, did not help. dramatic performance. Critics considered the essay "strange",

They began to explain to Ostrovsky that this whole “spring fairy tale” was just "the whims of his imagination". The especially zealous ones agreed to the point that the action with buffoons and folk scenes generally resembles a booth. But the poet Nekrasov, who at that time was the publisher of the magazine “ Domestic notes" When Alexander Nikolaevich, who regularly published in Notes, suggested to Nikolai Alekseevich gave his own text for the first publication, Nekrasov assigned this "exorbitantly low", a humiliating fee, that the wounded Ostrovsky responded with an offended, bitter letter and published the play in Vestnik Evropy.

“The Snow Maiden” really could have probably gotten lost among countless poetic and prose works “about love” if the composer Rimsky-Korsakov had not met it. On their first date, that is, on their first reading in 1874, she told him, like most of the public, “I didn’t like it much”. But five years later, something unexpected happened. "In the winter of 1879/80,- Nikolai Andreevich himself recalled, - I read “The Snow Maiden” again and definitely saw its amazing beauty...

Wasn't there for me best story, there were no better ones poetic images“than Snegurochka, Lel or Spring, there was no better kingdom of the Berendeys with their wonderful king, there was no better worldview and religion than the worship of Yaril the Sun”.

The opera appeared overnight, like in a fairy tale: Rimsky-Korsakov wrote it, as they say, in one breath, that is, literally in one summer. The success was instant, loud and unconditional. The audience also seemed to wake up and see clearly, remembering what a wonderful story lies hidden in the land of the Berendeys. And to be honest, it wasn't just the great music. The fairy tale changed a little and, finally, became a fairy tale in its purest form. The echo of reality has gone and died down Everyday life. No one else remembered that the Berendeys were stealing, and some Elena the Beautiful was cheating on her husband. All that remained were people as such, vast nature and - between them - that same innocent, young, graceful daughter of Frost and Spring, who alone could teach people to love.

The very first performance of the opera at the Mariinsky Theater turned into a triumph. And at this time...

And at this very time, in the same 1882, in the home performance of the industrialist and philanthropist Savva Mamontov, the artist Viktor Vasnetsov appeared on stage in the clothes of the stern Father Frost and exclaimed in a loud bass: “I love it, love it!” Oh, how he really enjoyed creating the visible world of never-before-seen Berendeys! With what pleasure he delved into the details of the smallest pattern on a girl’s sundress and, alone, without any technical assistants, he painted huge panels of scenery with pictures of a protected forest or a royal palace.

Many years later, admiring art critics will say that it was Vasnetsov, in the design of “The Snow Maiden”, who turned out to be the first Russian artist who theater stage became an equal co-author of the play, in fact, the first real theater artist. After the home performance, he worked his miracles on the big stage, and then, almost twenty years later, he painted her portrait. Whose portrait?

An unreal, fictional Snow Maiden?

Artists are very strange creatures. When they draw what is not visible, this invisible receives the same rights as a night forest, fir trees in the snow and a fur edge on a girl’s hat. Now this is no longer fiction, but a real portrait and even more. Alexander Benois said that it was in this picture that Vasnetsov managed to discover "the law of ancient Russian beauty". Another contemporary was even more categorical: “There is no other artist for the Snow Maiden except Vasnetsov”.

This is where he was wrong.

At the turn of two centuries, while the naive 19th century was still melting and a cloud of illusions hovered over enlightened minds, the production of “The Snow Maiden” - both an opera and a dramatic performance - became a favorite Russian joy. Magnificent serious artists, as if competing, were looking for the appearance of a gentle creature already loved by everyone.

Composer Rimsky-Korsakov wrote many operas in fairy tales, but he considered “The Snow Maiden” the most successful. And the best performer of this opera part recognized Nadezhda Ivanovna Zabela-Vrubel, who, as can be heard from the surname itself, was the wife of the artist Vrubel - a man who managed to capture even the Demon himself.

The couple were endlessly devoted to each other, and from the day of their wedding, Nadezhda Zabela never turned to another theater artist to create your own stage images. And Vrubel wrote it tirelessly, turning it into a modest model for realistic portrait, then to the Swan Princess. His sketches of costumes for Rimsky-Korsakov's opera are also portraits of his wife, and each change in shade is another attempt to capture the unsteady, disappearing reflection of beauty.

The charm of the opera and the fairy tale itself was so great that Vrubel did not stop at designing the performances. He created a whole series of sculptures using the majolica technique. There are Mizgir and Lel, and Tsar Berendey, according to many experts, is simply a stylized portrait of Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom Vrubel was friends and whom he respected immensely.

Nicholas Roerich fell in love with “The Snow Maiden” in his youth. He saw in her "part of true Russia" and, not embarrassed by the disappearance of the main character, he admired the very worldview of the ancient Slavs and the picturesque color of their life. For registration theatrical productions Nikolai Konstantinovich applied four times: in 1908, 1912, 1919 and 1921. The appearance of the Snow Maiden changed, but each time she was beautiful in a new way.

This is how the miracle happened. As in time immemorial, each of the masters brought his own contribution to the single plot, and in just half a century, Russian artistic consciousness acquired a new component, already integral. About our usual New Year's No one has yet thought of the Snow Maiden, but the image, in the words of the same Lydia Lotman, has already entered into "mental turn", settled in the culture and turned out to be unusually susceptible to the metamorphoses of time.

On the way to New Year

“...And you are in a pearl necklace, / My pale Snow Maiden...”, wrote Konstantin Fofanov.
“...I heard your mysterious voice, / You were silver in the distance...”, wrote Alexander Blok.

And Fyodor Sologub, having lost his beloved wife, literally restored final scene from Ostrovsky's play:

All these and many other poetic lines little known to the general reader are given in his wonderful book by Dr. philological sciences Elena Vladimirovna Dushechkina. The book is called “Russian Christmas Tree”, our site has already addressed this unique publication, and if someone adult really wants to know how the Christmas tree tradition grew and sprouted on Russian soil, he cannot do without a serious, scientific, masterful study of Elena Dushechkina.
And the tradition grew stronger day by day and acquired new colors, the most diverse.

The same Fyodor Sologub (long before the death of his wife) wrote a very instructive, a strong fairy tale“Snow Maiden”, suitable for both adults and children. This is a story about intelligent city children Shurochka and Nyurochka, who instead of a snow woman made a snow girl and this girl - alas! - melted not because of Yarila’s spring intrigues, but because of stubborn, excuse me, parents. “...My mother’s name was simply Anna Ivanovna, but she was dreamy and tender at heart, and by conviction she was a feminist”(1908!). As for the father, the gymnasium teacher, when he saw a living, but completely white, pale girl, he did not believe in any miracles, reined in his own sobbing offspring, sat the poor child, apparently with a cold, closer to the fire... With all the ensuing consequences .

E.V. Dushechkina raises this fairy tale to the Russian folk tradition, but this time I have to timidly object: it is very reminiscent of “The Snow Maiden” by Fyodor Sologub “The Snow Maiden” by the American Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), a famous fighter for freedom of imagination. His Mr. Lindsay, a merchant and father of adorable children nicknamed Violet and Peony, also places the snow girl closer to the hot fire - of course, with the best intentions. As a result, it remains “a whole puddle in front of the stove”, and both tales can easily end with the words of F. Sologub: “Big and small looked at the remains of melted snow and streams of water, and did not understand each other, and reproached each other.”.

But the tiny, one-page “Snow Maiden” by the famous literary entertainer Alexei Mikhailovich Remizov - the same age as F. Sologub’s fairy tale - could not have appeared anywhere except Russia. There are also "witch bear", And Gray wolf, and the White Moon in a white scarf. True, the Snow Maiden herself is not at all “Ostrovsky” and also looks a little like a feminist: she opened the doors "great", jumped to the ground "firmly"…

Awakened by high art folklore image inevitably descended from heaven to earth, into the world of simple everyday fiction: the Snow Maiden began to entertain children. Following the works of the masters, small literary crafts fell as if from a cornucopia (see E.V. Dushechkina). Pretty little girls dressed up as snowflakes and snow maidens, pretty toy figures began to be hung on the Christmas tree, and children's magazines were full of fairy tales and rhymes on related topics:

And so on, and so on, and so on.

Then Russian reality was twisted into such a tornado that the “little ones” hid for twenty seconds. extra years, but the return of the Snow Maiden turned out to be completely revolutionary. In 1937 (that same year!) the Snow Maiden confidently walked out with Father Frost to the main children's New Year's celebration country, which took place in the Moscow House of Unions. She was now the legitimate granddaughter of Grandfather Frost, the fact of the existence of any parents was no longer considered, no one melted or disappeared, and although Soviet people had not yet dreamed of the word “brand”, it was in this capacity that the new time needed a heroine who had gone through the myth , a fairy tale and an artistic national rise. A phenomenon was born: no other country has a female New Year's character. And we have it. This is what it means to take a situation firmly into your own hands.

Since then, the Snow Maiden, like any fairy-tale character from the first row, can be used as a barometer or thermometer to measure literary moods, as well as as a personal test for individual writers and poets.

As always, the businesslike and concrete Agnia Lvovna Barto remembered the granddaughter of Santa Claus more than once. The poem from 1956 was especially successful:

And the Snow Maiden, in full accordance with the goals of international education, became the dark-skinned girl Shomite from distant India, who also studied in a Soviet school.

Soft, lyrically inclined Elena Blaginina followed the old, well-trodden natural path: she wrote how the melted Snow Maiden would respond to people in the warm spring:

Somehow I couldn’t produce really good children’s poems. Except that Timofey Maksimovich Belozerov, a Siberian from the distant village of Kamyshi, an undeservedly forgotten bright children's poet, once composed several quiet, sweet lines:

It would probably be fair to say that such people now live under the same name in children's literature. different girls and girls that you can’t even call them sisters.

Let's leave aside the glib stories where New Year characters and New Year's paraphernalia are used exclusively “for reviving." Sometimes such trouble happens even to famous writers. For example, Andrei Usachev’s “School of Snowmen” could just as easily be called a school of cheerful monkeys, butterflies, or, most likely, poorly made-up third-graders.

All the author’s imagination was only enough to come up with names like Morkovkin, Krossovkin, Vederkin, Shapochkina, etc. for nineteen (!) boys-snowmen and girls-snowmen. Further, having mixed, as they say, “two in one” (a little adventure, a little teaching), the author begins to string together episodes school life(presumably humorous) and promises to get there until the New Year itself. The Snow Maiden, of course, is present as a teacher. However, all its magic lies in the fact that New Year's Eve, when Santa Claus flies away on his fairy-tale sleigh, this same Snow Maiden gets behind the wheel of a trailer with gifts...

But let's not talk about sad things.

Let’s better remember other books in which the New Year and the official position of “granddaughter” are not the most important thing. And most importantly…

In “The Snow Tale” by Viktor Vitkovich and Grigory Yagdfeld there is no word “Snow Maiden” at all. The girl’s name is Lelya, and it may even seem that this is no accident: what if the writers inadvertently remembered that same handsome Lel? Anyway.

“The Snow Tale” (another name is “A Tale in Broad Daylight”) was born many years ago, was filmed back in 1959, and recently, fortunately, it was republished and is read just like a young person - almost with a sinking heart.

It’s impossible to even imagine how many amazing events and miracles can happen due to the fact that in a snow woman on village street the boy accidentally rolled up a toy a watch that doesn’t even know how to walk, can’t even move its painted hands. The clock says five minutes to twelve, and the fairy tale turns in such a way that this time may remain forever. How you want it - quite childishly, excitedly! - retell everything in your own words...

And about how the evil, huge snow women came to life, which Old year sent to catch the snow girl Lelya. And about how the boy Mitya, the same one who lost his watch in the snow, heroically saved her. And about how this toy watch ticked quietly in Lelya’s chest, like a living heart. No one understood Mitya, no one believed him: not even his mother, not even the kids at school. And trouble has already caught Lelya. Now everything will come to an end. The old year is already writing its “Manifesto”: “What is - is, what is not - will not be. Nothing new will happen in the world, nothing will change. From now on, December 31st will last forever.".

“Snow Tale” by V. Vitkovich and G. Jagdfeld is dedicated to the memory of Evgeniy Schwartz. The author of "Dragon" and "An Ordinary Miracle" would have accepted such a gift. He also knew that the most terrible weapon in this world is a lie. If you overcome it, the clock will not stop. And when the girl Lelya starts flying on a small silver plane home to the Crystal Palace right on New Year’s Day, there will definitely be a whole bunch of wonderful bells on the tail of the plane. You can even get one of them as a gift. Hold it in your fist and, while the guests at the New Year’s table are chewing the pie, quietly move your hand so that it rings...

Veniamin Kaverin’s girl’s name is Nastenka. It becomes clear almost immediately that this "a girl from the Snow Maiden breed". And who else could such a sweet, graceful creature be, who glides through the snow, almost without touching it, feels great in the bitter cold in a light summer dress, does not understand the word “coat” and does not know that the Moon is the Moon. The fairy tale is called “Easy Steps” and is frankly written about love. Nobody cares about the New Year's Eve; the struggle is to, in principle, defeat the Snow Maiden's tendency to melt. It would be hard to call the story humorous, but a sly adult smile shines through every second through the twists and turns of reality, within which the fairy tale unfolds. These are Soviet, bureaucratic times, and snowy Nastenka even receives an official certificate of standard content: “First name, patronymic, last name: Snezhkova Anastasia Pavlovna. Time and place of birth: Nemukhin village, 1970. Social status: employee. Relation to military service: not subject". The question of turning Nastenka into an ordinary girl are engaged in the Ministry of Blizzards and Blizzards, the Institute Eternal Ice and other serious institutions, but it is, as you might guess, the boy Petka who saves her. Or rather, not even the boy himself, but his ardent desire and fabulous hope to preserve and protect his beloved creature. And for some reason the miracle happened, somehow on its own, at an unexpected moment. And then Petka suddenly took it and drew a picture: as if Nastenka fell asleep right “in a meadow in the summer, placing her palm under her cheek, lowering the delicate ovals of her eyelashes, and the sun, which she was no longer afraid of, gilded her hair, separated by a strip of parting”.

Just don’t think that all fairy tales always end well.

Kir Bulychev, whom several generations have been accustomed to trust wholeheartedly, also has not a fairy tale, but a story called “The Snow Maiden.” This is a classic Science fiction 1970s, where there are completely reliable scientific facts and quite living human feelings intersect at the point of a fantastic plot: the crew of our spaceship accidentally witnesses how it is not our spaceship that crashes while landing on an unknown planet. One creature survives. It's a girl. But you can’t touch it, because there is an objective reason - the difference in temperatures, ours and not ours. There is a difference life basis. For us it is water, but for the gentle “other” beauty beautiful eyes- ammonia. Therefore, she is a “snow maiden,” that is, under earthly pressure, her main component will boil and she will die.

The story is written in the first person, and this “first person,” just like the “Snow Maiden” herself, understands everything from the very beginning. But it is one thing to understand, and another to feel. And while our ship is rushing, hoping to preserve the living find, hoping that the supply of ammonia for the special chamber in which the cosmic curiosity was placed will not run out, love is quietly growing on this ship. Romantic hero Kira Bulycheva comes every day so that at least through the glass she can see the face of the unexpected Snow Maiden and say the words that a special machine translates from human to inhuman. And when the “not our” beloved, saved by people, finally goes to her ammonia homeland, on the spaceport site for a second, for a split second, she still touches her cheek to the hand of the man who just looked into her eyes. He touches because the burn and pain are nothing compared to this second.

One could, perhaps, dwell on such a touching and sublime cosmic note, but that was not the case: in addition to science fiction, there is also phantasmagoria in this world.

New Age

In fact, the singer of perestroika turmoil Igor Irtenyev wrote these inspired lines without waiting for the Millennium (“Yolka in the Kremlin”, 1989). And he tried, of course, not for cute little ones. But there is no separate air for children. We lived through a period of time when “in the Oblonskys’ house” everything really got mixed up to the point of a New Year’s vinaigrette, from which everyone now chooses as best they can. Therefore, in children's literature, an attempt to tie up loose ends in a new way is certainly present in those books that truly belong to the new century.

“The True Story of Santa Claus” was published in 2009. Its two authors, Andrei Zhvalevsky and Evgenia Pasternak, set themselves a, frankly speaking, difficult task: they decided to retell the history of our country over the last hundred years through and with the help of the adventures of Father Frost and the Snow Maiden. Which, in turn, are by no means such in everyday life. Only on New Year's Eve, an ordinary travel engineer Sergei Ivanovich Morozov and his wife Masha turn into good wizards.

Moreover, there are no mummers - only a real fairy-tale transformation, after which the characters live for a hundred years, aging in fragments. But this is not enough. In order to embrace all spheres of existence, secret and obvious, and at the same time wipe the noses of all sorts of Santa Clauses, in whose presence, as you know, auxiliary elves are nimble, “The True Story of Santa Claus” is also equipped with small fairy-tale characters, fundamentally new. These are pricks and ahs, extremely businesslike creatures: they collect orders for gifts, they send the gifts themselves...

If someone thinks that in such a situation it is quite difficult to talk about real story Russian Empire, Soviet Union and today's Russian Federation, you just need to open the table of contents and read the titles individual chapters: “In the summer of 1914, a war began, which was called the First World War,” “The difficult year of 1920,” “The very terrible New Year of 1942.” You can also look at the illustrations, which are either comically depicted antics of birds and assholes, or documentary photographs of people and events from different times.

It still didn’t work out very well to tell the story in order. The authors coped well with the wars, but regarding the period between 1916 and 1919 they warned in advance: about this "we don't tell". All the “perestroika” affairs also somehow did not quite work out. They fit into five lines, after which the authors again reported: “We won’t say anything more”- and suggested that children-readers should ask their parents better. That is, before us, in fact, is either another version of the famous pop sketch “we play here, we don’t play here,” or a rather clumsy, but touching, “gentle” attempt historical reconstruction"especially for children."

And now, ladies and gentlemen, attention. Drum roll, somersault, and generally a 180-degree turn: this book is extremely readable. The usual laws of literary and pedagogical communication with children writhe and scream, but... Santa Claus Morozov is so cute. And his wife, the Snow Maiden, is absolutely lovely. Birds and oohs flutter. Quotes from Soviet newspapers pop out for a second, like a jack-in-the-box, and then disappear... So, maybe modern children, for whom dad is a computer, and mom is a TV, are they only able to perceive such verbal fireworks?

Many, many times we have said on our website that a new style of writing has already been born and strengthened, the ability of a modern writer, without stopping, to involve the reader in a speech flow that is mesmerizing in itself. It seems that A. Zhvalevsky and E. Pasternak are the champions of this “genre”. Their " True story…” It’s very difficult to call a book a bad book or a good book: waving yet another complex description of the moment, it slips away with a sweet smile, like a cunning child who shouts from afar: you won’t catch it! you won’t catch it!.. (for a fundamentally new edition of this book, see:).

The desire of many modern writers mixing everything and everyone in a whirlwind of phantasmagoria has become almost the norm. And this is not the author’s quirk and not ours national trait. What should we do with people who have just stopped being afraid of the primordial chaos and then, just two or three centuries later, find themselves in man-made chaos, that is, anthropogenic? Where to look for a way out?

While talking about a very remarkable book, which was published (seemingly) for teenagers and several years ago even won the Cherished Dream award, talking about Ilya Borovikov’s novel “Citizens of the Sun” will have to start from afar.

The matter, of course, is not ours, not the children’s, but smart people They knew for a long time where everything was going. In 1908, twenty-three-year-old Velimir Khlebnikov wrote dramatic tale“Snowball”, honestly admitting that he was inspired by Ostrovsky’s work. We won’t go into details, we’ll leave the analysis of word creation and the problem of passion for Pan-Slavism to specialists, but the essence is simple: Snezhimochka (in simple terms - Snegurochka) goes from the forest to the city to return people’s sense of nature. And here one quatrain appears, which should be read literally syllable by word, because a hundred years later this is exactly what happened:

The prediction came true and exceeded the plan: it is unlikely that even Khlebnikov could have predicted how much a person would forget himself in the bustle of the twenty-first century.

There is no need to guess whether professional art critic Ilya Borovikov drew his inspiration from a rather specific work by a rather “special” poet Khlebnikov. In any case, the above lines could be an epigraph to his novel. The main population of this novel is the same soulless “people” modern city Moscow, with the roar of its never-ending subway, the ruins of a planetarium and the metamorphoses of a zoo, can easily pass for “stone lichen,” but main character, having managed to change several “levels of living” and several names along the way, only at the very end she somehow finds herself and helps others feel the ghost of hope.

Retelling a real phantasmagoria is a pointless undertaking. Suffice it to say that the girl Mishata (Mitsel, Masha Ivanova), raised by snowmen, leaves the forest and comes to the city, drawn by an incomprehensible but irresistible feeling. Once upon a time, Khlebnikov’s Snowflake needed only a few pages to complete this journey. Mishata walks for a long time, painfully, and only at the most extreme, disastrous moment do we learn that she is actually the Snow Maiden, a strong-willed, brave Snow Maiden, ready with all the power of a steam locomotive flying through the walls to break the damned secret Clock, which, as it is written in the publisher’s annotation, “subjected the townspeople to their crazy rhythm”. Right at this moment “the sun, a huge happy sun, flared up in her and burned her to the ground”.

But this is not the end. The next and last chapter of the novel is called, as befits a real phantasmagoria, the word “The Beginning,” and before returning to the “beginning of the end,” it is necessary to talk about How this book was written. It was written by a romantic. It was written by a writer who, as if deliberately restraining his skill, does not allow elegantly captured figurative details and phrases to break through the thickness of the plot heaps. But in the darkness of those very man-made nightmares and nightmares, sometimes a hand flashes quill pen. And then we find out that “Mishata walked along the fence, watching the park end its messy day.”. Or suddenly we understand that we shouldn’t rush to call the city the birthplace of evil. “There, each pipe seems to have its own well, and in general the city, it is deep in everything, as well as elevated, like a forest reflected in a lake.”.

Ilya Borovikov's text entirely belongs to the new century, or rather to its current moment. This book is indeed for children, but not because the competition jury addressed it that way. We all now look a little like children lost in an oversized toy store. And until new ideas are born, where can one find refuge if not in a fairy tale?

Novel modern man Ilya Borovikov’s story ends in a life-affirming way: unlike all the Snow Maidens, Snow Maidens and Snow Girls, today’s mysterious girl, who has again become just Mishata, survives for real, as a human being. And when, at the end of all the upheavals, they finally asked her where she came from, Mishata, embarrassed, said: “Now I don’t know myself... but now I exist! “And I’m not going anywhere,” she added. - I will always be".

Well, it’s not without reason that the cheerful granddaughters of Father Frost dance in circles under the tree, and from somewhere very far away you can hear Mizgir’s desperate cry:

- Snow Maiden, liar, live...

Happy New Year, dear readers of children's fairy tales!

Why was the Snow Maiden met with ambiguity by some writers? Questions and assignments based on the play by A.N.

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