Creative work based on T. Tolstoy's novel "Kys". Tatyana Tolstaya “Kys” What feelings does the story “Kys” evoke?

Tatiana Tolstoy, who was awarded the Triumph Prize for it in 2001, aroused a surge of interest among modern readers. Among the many critical responses devoted to the book is a detailed article by E.F. Shafranskaya about the role of myth in Tolstoy’s novel and P. Ladokhin’s note about the language “Kysi” (Russian Literature, 2002, No. 1). But the stylistic originality of the writer’s prose, according to B. Paramonov, is also “in its emphasized museum-like quality,” “cultural stagnation”: “Today this is called not epigonism, but postmodernism.

Here, quotation, repetition, reminiscence and associativity are not inability, but a technique." One cannot but agree with what has been said, but the features of postmodernism in "Kysi" are present only in poetics, and not in the picture of the world and the concept of individuality.

"Kys", like the works of postmodernists, is intertextual. The motivation for introducing a huge number of literary quotations into the novel is the profession of the main character Benedict, born after the Explosion, first a copyist of old books, then a terrible orderly who confiscates seditious publications from fellow citizens. At all stages of his evolution, Benya remains a book lover, for whom “Kolobok” is as exciting as the poetry of A. Blok, O. Mandelstam, and full of wisdom, like the work of A. Schopenhauer. Behind such aesthetic illegibility lies a postmodernist focus on “poetic thinking” and “communicative difficulty”, the idea of the intellectual and aesthetic equivalence of all texts. But Tolstoy herself, unlike postmodernists, does not have aesthetic and moral relativism.

She does not accept the postmodernist concept of the death of the author, as was clearly stated in her interview with Itogi magazine. A remark from a certain generalized Western Slavist: “In general, the author does not exist, so Derrida writes...” - Tolstaya wittily retorts: “But since the author does not exist, then maybe Derrida does not exist?” - "but no, Derrida exists, but no one else..." 3. It is no coincidence that the leitmotifs of "Kysi" are the restoration of the authorship of those texts that Fyodor Kuzmich Kablukov attributes to himself, and an attempt to preserve the culture of the past, relevant for modern Russia. Tolstoy is impressed by the activities of the former museum worker Nikita Ivanovich, now the Chief Stoker, who throughout the town of Fedor-Kuzmichsk, in the distant past of Moscow, puts up pillars with the names of Moscow streets and landmarks, “so that there is a memory of the glorious past! With hope for the future! All, "We'll restore everything, and let's start small! This is a whole layer of our history!"

In matters of morality, Tolstaya also agrees not with the opportunist Benedict, convinced that “besides defilement, there is a lot more in life. Depending on how you look at it,” but with Nikita Ivanovich and Lev Lvovich “of the dissidents.” These heroes lived even before the Explosion and retained their humanity and desire for freedom in the new society.

Nikita Ivanovich longs for “brotherhood, love, beauty. Justice. Respect for each other. Sublime aspirations.<...>so that the place of massacre and robbery will be replaced by reasonable, honest work, hand in hand. So that the fire of love for one’s neighbor ignites in the soul" (p. 167). Lev Lvovich laments the lack of civil liberties in Fedor-Kuzmichsk. Tolstoy’s beliefs are close to the position of this hero: “I am for freedom of speech,” the writer declares 5. After the state coup, Chief Orderly Kudeyarov decides to grant the people a number of freedoms: “So... Freedoms... I have it written down here... a memo... I can’t make it out...”

The novel consists of chapters named with the letters of the Old Church Slavonic and modern Russian alphabet, which indicates the internal plot - the vain study of the moral alphabet by the main character Benedict, a kind of Mitrofanushka, but in no way a superfluous person or a hero of the Hamlet type, which he states in his review of the novel P. Ladokhin 6. The syncretic genre of "Kysi" has features of an education novel.

At the same time, in this futurological work, a fantastic disaster novel, there is a genre “memory” of the novels “We” by E. Zamyatin, “Brave New World” by O. Huxley, “1984” by J. Orwell. As in these dystopias, the action of "Kysi" takes place almost two hundred years after a hypothetical catastrophe that turned history back to the Stone Age.

Fedor-Kuzmichsk is inaccessible to the outside world. This echoes the existence of Soviet society behind the Iron Curtain. At the same time, “Kysi” also contains the realities of modern internal political life in Russia:

In the middle of the town there is a watchtower with four windows, and guards are looking through all four windows. They are looking out for the Chechens" (p. 8-9). The Chechens are portrayed by the writer as peace-loving refugees. Nevertheless, in her recent interview with the Parisian weekly Marian, T. Tolstaya stated, "that the war in Chechnya is directed against terrorism and therefore it is legitimate. The West is making a mistake by interfering in this conflict and presenting Russia, a European country, as some kind of monster that threatens the world." 7

The exposition of the novel paints a holistic picture of the life of a fantasy society, which is typical for utopias, dystopias and works of other genres based on morality.

In the world invented by Tolstoy, people and nature are incredible. Among the people there are degenerates who lived even before the Explosion, who “have a face that looks like a human, their body is covered with hair, and they run on all fours. And on each foot there is a felt boot” (p. 6-7). People born after the Explosion are endowed with various deformities, or consequences - gills, a cock's comb, a tail. And those who lived before the Explosion do not grow old even after it. The forests are home to the fairytale fireweed fruits and, according to legend, the predatory katy lives, a symbol of the cruelty of the society depicted in the novel.

This society is at a primitive scientific level. In Fedor-Kuzmichsk there are ancient mythological ideas about the world (belief in the goblin, the mermaid, the enchanted bast, the Snout that grabs people by the legs, the poetic myth about the Princely Bird Paulin), there is oral folk art, and the legend about a girl with a gold and silver braid , which the so-called Chechens tell, is similar to the Russian one: “Here she unravels her braid, unravels everything, and when she unravels it, the world will end” (p. 10). Thus, the novel emphasizes the common destinies of the Russian, Chechen and other peoples in the event of a nuclear explosion.

The entire narrative is focused on the point of view of the main character Benedict, it is in his naive mind that the words denoting the realities of the past are distorted - “mogozin”, “entillegencia” and so on. Benedict, relying on the memories of his mother and other Formers, compares the life of Russia before and after the Explosion.

The society depicted by Tolstoy has its own social hierarchy.

At one extreme are people like Benedict at the beginning of the novel and other poor “darlings”. Their meager diet and poor clothing testify to the shortage of light industrial goods characteristic of a socialist society in the era of stagnation: “Well, what do they give in the Warehouse? Government-issued mouse sausage, mouse lard, bread flour, a feather, then felt boots, of course, grips, canvas , stone pots: it comes out differently.<...>"(p. 17). Even the measly salary the darlings receive with difficulty, feeling their social deprivation. Tolstaya raises in the novel the acute problem of the state deceiving the population: "You tore out the plaques from the state, now get up in another turn and pay the tax.<...>Count out six and a half plaques to Murza and give them to him. But you can’t tear a plaque in half, right? Who needs her, torn, right? So, give me seven. By the end of the day, Murza has this extra money - great thousands. So he’ll take them for himself, buy some food, or add a tier to the mansion, or a balcony, or else he’ll lose a fur coat, or else a new sleigh.

This same conflict takes on a completely new twist in the novel. "Kys" started back in 1986, but completed and published 14 years later - in 2000. Many who wrote about “Kysia” remembered the formula “encyclopedia of Russian life” and not only because the chapters of the novel are indicated by the letters of the Old Russian alphabet, but also because, as B. Paramonov formulated, “Tatyana Tolstaya wrote - created - a real model Russian history and culture. Working model. Microcosm".

However, not everyone’s book aroused similar enthusiasm for Tolstoy’s book. A. Nemzer most clearly expressed the point of view of opponents of “Kysi” in his review, seeing in the novel only a cocktail of “masterful imitation of Remizov and Zamyatin,” rehashes of the Strugatskys, “Sorokin’s savoring of abominations” and newspaper “banter.” And K. Stepanyan, contrasting “Kys” with Tolstoy’s stories, argues that in the novel “the author’s point of view shifted: she began to observe her heroes from the outside, they became an object for her, an object of irony. Hence the “head” construction of her dystopia (both in concept and in structure), and the cold mockery of recognizable or typified personalities, situations, images of Russian history, and the colorless language, only sometimes sparkling with sparkles - reminders of its former splendor.”

The main stylistic feature of the novel “Kys” is its intertextuality. B. Paramonov, A. Nemzer and other critics write about the intertextuality of the novel. As in the stories, in the novel “Kys” T. Tolstaya uses all available forms of intertextuality, and this fact is illuminated by researchers in three aspects: 1) definition of the genre of the novel; 2) his appeal to various forms of folklore; 3) reflection of intertextual borrowing in linguistic terms.

The genre of the novel is defined by critics Yu. Latynina and others as “dystopia.” One of the reasons is the fact that T. Tolstaya describes life after a catastrophe, and “writing about life after a catastrophe or near a catastrophe is common in the 20th century, and these works are traditionally classified under the department of science fiction or its almost independent feat, called dystopia.” According to other critics, the novel “Kys” is not a “pure” dystopia. For example, N. Ivanova declares that T. Tolstaya “is not writing another dystopia, but a parody of it,” that she combined “intellectual” dystopia with Russian folklore, with a fairy tale, “science fiction” with a “burning” newspaper feuilleton: that is massolite with elite, refined prose.” N. Leiderman and M. Lipovetsky directly state that Tolstaya does not predict the future, therefore “Kys” is not a dystopia. Tolstoy, in their opinion, brilliantly conveys the current crisis of language, the post-communist collapse of hierarchical relations in culture, when the cultural orders of Soviet civilization collapsed, burying at the same time alternative, hidden anti-Soviet cultural hierarchies.

The critic L. Benyash also defined the genre of the novel as a dystopia, a warning novel.

Some critics believe that the genre of the novel itself is dual and ambivalent. It can be either a utopia or a dystopia, depending on what problems are addressed in the novel.

We believe that the novel “Kys” is still an anti-upopia. Translated from Greek, “utopia” means “a place that does not exist.” In the explanatory dictionary of S.I. Ozhegova defines this word as “something fantastic; a pipe dream, an impossible dream.” Can what is described in the novel be called a dream? We think that the world of mutants and “degenerates” can hardly be considered a dream. The task of anti-upopia is to warn the world about danger, to warn against the wrong path. T. Tolstoy's novel contains several such warnings. The first of them is an environmental warning. An explosion occurred in Russia. (The book was written starting in 1986, so an association with the Chernobyl disaster naturally arises.) Two to three hundred years after this, the reader finds himself in a small settlement surrounded by a fortress with watchtowers. Mutant people live in the settlement - it seems that they are former Muscovites and their descendants. Somewhere outside the settlement live exactly the same mutant people.” And those who were born after the Explosion have different consequences,-all sorts of things. Some have their hands covered in green flour... some have gills; another has a cock's comb or something else". . The reason for such “miracles” is the frivolous behavior of people, “ as if people were playing and finished playing with ARUZHYE" This contains a direct reference to the pressing problem of our time - the arms race, the accumulation of atomic weapons, the problem of instability of the world.

The second, no less significant problem raised in the novel “Kys” is primarily interesting in terms of content. The main problem of the novel “Kys” is the search for lost spirituality, inner harmony, and lost continuity of generations. It is difficult to disagree with this opinion, since the fate of the main character in the novel is connected with the search for the “ABC” - that real meaning of life, which he never manages to find. Closely related to this is the problem of historical memory. Nikita Ivanovich, who places pillars with signs “Arbat”, “Garden Ring”, “Kuznetsky Bridge”, is thus trying to preserve a piece of the past, memory, and history for posterity.

The critic B. Tuch believes that in the novel “Kys” three “pillars” can be distinguished: the problem of ideology, culture and the intelligentsia.

N. Leiderman and M. Lipovetsky believe that a kind of oblivion occurs in the novel: there is no history in Benedict’s mind, and therefore everything is the latest novelty. The fact that the “darlings” eat mice, saying “the mouse is our wealth”, “the mouse is our support”, speaks of a conscious emphasis on this oblivion, since in ancient mythology the mouse was a symbol of oblivion, and everything that the mouse touched was destroyed. disappeared from memory.

Due to the fact that tradition and history are interrupted, that they are written anew every time, that only the names of things remain, and the essence is lost, a person constantly feels, as D. Olshansky rightly noted, a certain “appearance,” the inconsistency of reality.” And the feeling of “appearance”, “failure” of reality, constantly pushes a person towards destruction rather than creation. Benedict’s appeal to Emperor Fyodor Kuzmich is indicative: “ Get down, throw yourself off, you damned bloodsucking tyrant,-The father-in-law shouted beautifully.-They've come to put you away! He ruined the whole state to hell. I stole poetry from Pushkin!”.

In the novel “Kys” T. Tolstaya also raises the problem of the intelligentsia, a problem that is significant for any people.

In our opinion, in the novel “Kys” three categories of representatives of the intelligentsia can be distinguished. The first category is represented by Nikita Ivanovich. They restore cultural monuments and preach past spiritual values. Their status and influence in society are noticeable, but, nevertheless, their fate is predetermined: they are burned at the end of the novel. Before us is a kind of allegory that denotes the attitude towards the intelligentsia in any era. The second category includes “darlings” - intellectuals of the new generation who keep “old printed” books and express doubts about the correctness of official literature, for example, Varvara Lukinishna. Their fate is also tragic: Varvara Lukinisha is killed by Benedict in order to take the book from her. The third category includes Benedict (if you can call him an intellectual) and people like him. These are those who supposedly love art, but in fact, are deprived of a living feeling, a feeling of “brotherhood, love, beauty and justice.” They are always used by the authorities as a tool to achieve their own goals.

Another warning is the danger that totalitarian systems pose. Prehistoric savagery and completely modern totalitarian tyranny reign in the settlement. Fyodor Kuzmich becomes almost a god, who is prayerfully glorified. He is the wisest, the most talented, the strongest and the like, although in fact he is simply a pathetic dwarf. In the state, everyone lives according to orders, norms, any deviation from right to left is strictly punished. Here we can draw a parallel with E. Zamyatin’s dystopia “We”.

In the novel "Kys" there is a shift in temporal and spatial structures, which is also characteristic of dystopia. The hypothetical time of action is the uncertain future, the place is the town of Fedor-Kuzmichsk, former Moscow. Fiction, symbols, allegories, hyperboles, persistent mythologies, and archetypes are also widely used here.

Reads in 9 minutes, original - 8 hours

Illustration by O. Pashchenko

Very briefly

A satirical tale about a peculiar Russian hut “paradise” that appeared after the Explosion in the twentieth century. The explosion destroyed the bonds of civilization and caused the mutation of the Russian language and the people themselves.

All chapters are named with letters of the Old Russian alphabet.

The action takes place in Moscow after the Explosion in the twentieth century. More than two hundred years have passed since then. The capital is called by the name of the main boss - the Greatest Murza, now Fedor-Kuzmichsk. The simple darlings have everything, thanks to Fyodor Kuzmich, glory to him: he invented letters, a wheel, to catch mice, a rocker. Behind him are the little murzas, above the little darlings.

Many who were born after the Explosion have Consequences: for example, one and a half faces, or ears all over the body, or cockscombs, or something else. The Former ones remained after the Explosion - those who were still there before it. They have already lived for three centuries and have not aged. Look, like Mother Benedicta: she lived for two hundred and thirty years, and was still young until she was poisoned. The main stoker, who brings fire to every house, Nikita Ivanovich, is also from the Former Ones. Before the Explosion, he was already quite an old man, he kept coughing. And now it breathes fire, and it will be warm in the houses: the whole of Fedor-Kuzmichsk depends on it. Benedict also wanted to become a Stoker, but his mother insisted that her son become a scribe: she had the ONEVERSETE ABRASION, even if Benya knew how to read and write. The father almost pulls the mother by the hair, “and the neighbors don’t say a word: that’s right, the husband teaches his wife.”

Benedict sometimes asked his mother: why and why there was an explosion? Yes, she didn’t really know. It’s as if people were playing and finishing the game with ARGUY.

On the way to work, Benedict meets the degenerates: “They are scary, and you can’t understand whether they are people or not: their face looks like a person’s, their body is covered with fur, and they run on all fours. And on each foot there is a felt boot. They say they lived even before the Explosion, they were reincarnated.”

But the worst thing is Kys: “A man will go into the forest like this, and she will fall on the back of his neck: hop! and the backbone with your teeth: crunch! - and with his claw he will find the main vein and tear it, and all the mind will come out of the person. This one will come back, but he is not the same, and his eyes are not the same, and he walks without understanding the road, as happens, for example, when people walk in their sleep under the moon, with their arms outstretched, and move their fingers: they themselves are sleeping, but they themselves are walking.” True, Nikita Ivanovich says that there is no Kysi, they say it was invented out of ignorance.

They hit the mallet - the working day begins in the Izba. Benedict rewrites on birch bark the works of the Greatest Murza, Fyodor Kuzmich, glory to him. About Kolobok or Ryaba. Or some poetry. The drawings are drawn by Olenka, a beloved beauty, “dressed in a hare’s fur coat, she goes to work in a sleigh - it’s obvious that she’s a noble family.”

There are also old books that were printed in ancient times. In the dark they glow, as if from radiation. The disease, God forbid, God forbid, may come from them: when they find out that the darling is holding some old printed book, the Orderlies are following him on the Red Sleigh. Everyone is terribly afraid of the orderlies: after their treatment, no one returned home. Benya's mother had an old printed book, but her father burned it.

They hit the Mallet - lunch. Everyone goes to the Dining Hut to eat mouse soup. The employee is a scary little darling with cockscombs! - having lunch with Benedict at the table. She loves art and knows a lot of poetry. He asks about the “horse” that is mentioned in Fyodor Kuzmich’s poems - an unfamiliar word. It's probably a mouse, Benedict answers. She says that Fyodor Kuzmich, thank him, seems to have different voices in different poems.

Once Fyodor Kuzmich came to Rabochaya Izba, glory to him. The largest Murza Bene is knee-deep - small in stature. Jump on Olenka's knees! And everyone listens and is in awe. And in the Izba, as luck would have it, the fire went out - no longer there. They sent for the Chief Stoker. Fyodor Kuzmich, thank him, donated his painting to the Izba - it’s called “Demon”. Then Nikita Ivanovich appeared - he breathed fire to make it warm. He is not afraid of anyone, and the light is always with him. At least he can burn the whole damn thing on earth!

The Decree of the Greatest Murza is issued to celebrate the New Year on March 1. Benedict gets ready: he catches mice at home, then exchanges them at the market for various goodies. You can also exchange mice for birch bark books. You can buy it for plaques. They stand in queues all night long to get plaques - they get paid for their work. If someone falls asleep, they will take him under the mikitka and drag him to the end of the line. And when they wake up, they don’t know anything. Well, there are screams, fights, all sorts of injuries. Then pay tax to the state from the received plaques, in another window.

But it’s impossible to enjoy the goodies: already in the hut Benya imagines that Kys is approaching. And just then Nikita Ivanovich is knocking on the door - saving, darling, from Kysya. Benedict spends the week in a fever and misses the New Year. Nikita Ivanovich is with him all the time - preparing food, caring for him. Eh, Ben needs a family, woman. So as not to be distracted by “philosophy”. True, he goes to the women to spin and somersault. But that's not it.

Here a new decree comes out: on March 8, congratulate all women and do not beat them up. Benedict congratulates all the women at work on this day, including Olenka, and asks for her hand in marriage. “I’ll take it,” the sweetheart answers with agreement.

The woman with scallops invites you to visit. In her hut, she shows Benya an old printed book. What they are rewriting was not written by Fyodor Kuzmich, but by various former people - Nikita Ivanovich said. And there is no disease from old books. The frightened Benedict runs away.

Nikita Ivanovich pins his hopes on Benya - they say, his mother was educated, and her son also has the makings. He asks him to hew some kind of Pushkin out of wood. Pushkin is our everything, he says. Benedict does not understand much - these Formers swear with unfamiliar words, or they don’t like jokes. And what wonderful games there are! Jumping ropes, for example. One in the dark jumps on others from the stove. He will break something for someone, and if he doesn’t jump on anyone, he will hurt himself:

If someone hurts my member or causes damage to my body... it’s not funny... But that’s if it’s for me. And if it’s different, then it’s funny.

Little by little Benya begins to work on Pushkin. It turns out that Benya has a ponytail: is this a consequence? A normal person shouldn't have it. I have to agree to cut him off.

He meets Olenka's parents. It turns out that her father is the Chief Orderly. The whole family has claws, scratching under the table: The consequence is this.

After the wedding, he moves into a huge mansion with his wife’s parents. I stopped going to work: why? His father-in-law enlightens him: people burn printed books out of ignorance. Now Benedict uses a huge library of old books and reads everything avidly. “Iliad”, “Ass is a fool. Color it yourself,” “Electric Traction,” “Black Prince,” “Cipollino,” “Beekeeping,” “Red and Black,” “Blue and Green,” “Crimson Island” are at his disposal. After reading all the books, he is horrified: what to do now?! Finally he notices his wife: he plays tricks with Olenka for a week, and then starts to get bored again.

Benya and his father-in-law ride on a Sanitary Sleigh among people to confiscate books. Benedict accidentally kills one darling with a hook. Looking for everyone. Desperate, Benya comes to ask Nikita Ivanovich. But the Stoker doesn’t give the book: he says he hasn’t mastered the alphabet of life yet.

Father-in-law encourages Benedict to make a revolution. They kill Fyodor Kuzmich, glory to him, they overthrow the tyrant. The father-in-law becomes the boss - the General Orderly, writes the first decree: “I will live in the Red Tower with double security,” “Don’t come within a hundred arshins, whoever comes up will immediately take a detour without talking.” The city will henceforth be called by his name. Second decree on freedoms:

...freedom on the left...or again...I can’t tell.

We decided: there will be freedom of assembly - in groups of three, no more. Benedict at first wants to allow his darlings to read old printed books, but then changes his mind: probably, the pages will be torn out or the books will be thrown. Necha!

Olenka gives birth to triplets. One of the offspring is a lump, immediately falls and rolls into some kind of crevice. And so it disappears. Benedict and the father-in-law are quarreling, the son-in-law keeps moving away from the Chief Orderly: his breath smells bad. The father-in-law calls Benya Kysya in revenge. But it’s true: Benya even had a tail! And I found a vein in a man!

The General Orderly decides to execute Nikita Ivanovich; the Stoker is no longer needed. One reincarnation knows where gasoline can be obtained, the orderly will let a spark from the ray come out of his eyes - and there will be fire.

The stoker is tied to Pushkin and they want to set him on fire. But he releases a flame and burns the entire Fedor-Kuzmichsk. Benedict escapes from the fire in a pit and asks: “Why didn’t you get burned?” - “But I’m reluctant.” Nikita Ivanovich and a comrade from the Former Ones rise into the air.

O. A. Ponomareva

“ANOTHER WORD” IN T. TOLSTOY’S NOVEL “KYS”

The work is presented by the Department of Domestic and Foreign Literature of Pyatigorsk State Linguistic University.

Scientific supervisor - Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor A. F. Petrenko

The article presents an analysis of Tatyana Tolstaya's novel “Kys” from the point of view of intertextual poetics. Various types of intertextual connections are considered: “actually” intertextuality (attributed and unattributed quotes, allusions, centon) and arch-textuality (genre connection of texts).

The article represents the intertextual analysis of T. Tolstaya's novel “Kys.” The author examines various types of intertextual communication: “proper” intertextuality (attributive and nonattributive citations, allusions, cento) and architextuality (genre textual communication).

Contemporary art is generally considered quotable; the same characteristic is usually given to a postmodern literary text and the author’s way of thinking. Intertextuality, an integral part of postmodern poetics, is a technique for creating artistic structures and a tool for analysis. In the formation of the theory of intertextuality, M. Bakhtin’s ideas about the “alien word” are of particular importance. The literary critic noted that the “cognitive-ethical moment of content”, which is necessary for a work of art, is taken by the author-creators not only from the “world of knowledge and the ethical reality of the act”, but in interaction with previous and modern literature, creating a kind of “dialogue”1.

Speaking about intertextuality, we first of all mean the presence in the new text of elements of previous literary texts. This understanding of the term has existed since J. Kristeva gave “intertextuality” an appropriate interpretation. Scientists working on this problem have identified several types of intertextual connections. One of these types is “architextuality” (J. Genette), understood

as a genre connection between texts and which has become an integral property of postmodern literature.

When creating a work, modern writers are guided not only by their own worldview; such a concept as “memory of the genre” (term by M. M. Bakhtin) is also important. Focusing on traditional genre canons, the creator of the work chooses those forms that most fully reflect his ideas. Based on them, the writer constructs his own new genre. The most susceptible to changes “... are those genres that have a fairly long history and have a certain degree of universality”2. These processes are reflected in the genre form of “Kysi” by T. Tolstoy.

The novel form of “Kysi” has a complex structure, including numerous elements of various genre models. This is primarily a neo-mythological, fairy-tale-parable form, social-satirical and dystopian genre varieties. The listed features are one way or another present in the work, but dystopia predominates.

The classic dystopian narrative is characterized by a certain structure: the historical process is divided into two segments - before the realization of the ideal and after, between them - a cultural, social or natural cataclysm, after which a new society is built. A typical situation for a dystopia is the total alienation of a person from his own nature. Like the classical, the new dystopian picture of the world creates an image of the future through the grotesque, but in post-dystopia all proportions and connections between components are violated “through the deliberate repetition of supporting situations of classical plots, thereby creating a parodic image of dystopian literature itself”3.

B. A. Lanin and M. M. Borishanskaya identify motives specific to dystopia: the motive of the separation of soul and body, the motive of power, actually utopian motives, Dionysian and pre-Dionysian orgiastic cults, the motive of death, carnival motives, which, according to scientists, are genre-forming4 .

The authors of the monograph “Russian dystopia of the 20th century” note that the analyzed genre is characterized by “quasi-nomination” - renaming as a manifestation of power. We find a striking example in “Kysi”: “And the name of our city, our native side, is Fedor-Kuzmichsk, and before that... it was called Ivan-Porfiryichsk, and even before that - Sergei-Sergeichsk...”5. We see a similar situation in J. Orwell’s novel “1984”: “Even the names of the countries and their outlines on the map were different. Runway 1, for example, was called differently then: it was called England or Britain ... "6. And in “Moscow 2042” by V. Voinovich, Moscow was previously called Moscow.

The space of dystopia is always limited. This is the hero’s home (room, apartment), in which the people around him constantly interfere. Thus, in “Kysi” the violators of Benedict’s personal space are family members: father-in-law, mother-in-law, wife. Here one can trace the archi-textual

connection between “Kysi” and the dystopia “Invitation to Execution” by V. Nabokov. The personal space of Cincinnatus Ts. (death row) is constantly violated by lawyer Roman Vissarionovich, director Rodrigue Ivanovich and M'sieur Pierre with an insistent desire for cheerful communication.

The structural core of dystopia is a pseudo-carnival, the basis of which is absolute fear. As follows from the nature of the carnival environment, fear coexists with reverence for manifestations of power. Thus, the darlings have a lofty attitude towards the Greater Murza: with fear, reverence, and gratitude for the existing discoveries that make life easier. The same thing happens in the United State (“We” by E. Zamyatin), the same distance between the Chief Executive and the residents of London in “A Brave New World” by O. Huxley. But, as a rule, in dystopian literature, fear disappears and heroes violate the laws of a totalitarian state.

A sign of a carnival is an “attraction”, which “turns out to be effective as a means of plotting precisely because, due to the extreme nature of the situation created, it forces the characters to reveal themselves to the limit of their spiritual capabilities, in the most hidden human depths, which the heroes themselves might not even suspect” 7. Execution and trial, built according to ritual norms, become an attraction. In "Kysi" the attractions are the scenes of the funeral of the Former Ones, which represent a spectacle for the main character and execution in the form of burning with the help of "pinzin".

The attraction is present in many dystopias: the conversion of water into vodka (a parody of the gospel motif) by Leni Tikhomirov in “Lyubimov”, “entry on a white horse”, which Sim Simych Karnavalov has been preparing for years in “Moscow 2042” by V. Voinovich, the whole life of the inhabitants on the underground surface countries in “Laz” by V. Makanin.

Dystopia includes various insert genres, and this compositional

the peculiarity is attributed to the menippea traditions, about which M. M. Bakhtin also wrote: “The menippea is characterized by the widespread use of inserted genres: short stories, letters, oratory, symposiums, etc., and is characterized by a mixture of prose and poetic speech”8. Thus, in structure, the novel “Kys” is a complex formation that combines elements of a parable, a fairy tale, an epic, an anecdote, a pamphlet, a feuilleton, a utopian legend, and a satirical work. And the layer of poetic text is represented by numerous direct quotes from poets of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Along with the listed genres, myth occupies a special place in T. Tolstoy’s novel “Kys”. V. Rudnev drew attention to the fact that “the literary text of the 20th century. he himself begins to resemble a myth in structure... the writer comes up with his own original mythology, which has the features of traditional mythology”9.

M. Lipovetsky believes that in postmodern intertextuality the properties of the mythological type of world modeling appear, since it is in mythology that the integrity of being is imprinted directly in the object of the image. The structure of the world is absolutely adequate to the structure of myth10. The clearest example of such a creation of an author's myth in modern Russian literature is the novel by T. Tolstoy that we are considering, the text of which presents various myths: cosmogonic, eschatological, totemic, and the myth of a cultural hero.

The novel fits into the very rigid mythological structure of the American scientist G. Slockhover, who identified four elements: “Eden” (Benedict’s childhood, with memories of his father and mother), “crime and fall” (the spiritual fall of the hero and the coup d’etat), “journey” (trip to the Red Tower), “return or death” (after returning to his father-in-law’s house, the hero’s “death” occurs, but not physical, but

again on a certain spiritual level: he is deprived of books - the most precious thing he had in life).

An interesting analysis of the text of the novel according to the classification model of A. Zh. Greimas. He identifies the level of “subject manifestation”, where “human or humanized beings act, performing certain tasks, being tested and striving for their goals”11. Greimas designates the “characters” of works as “actors” or “actants”, and their actions as “functions”. Greimas identifies a set of “actants” corresponding to “functions” and creates a structural model based on the modal relations connecting them.

Analysis of the text of the novel revealed six structural units: the subject - Benedict - strives to master the object - old printed books. This sets the action in motion. In our situation, the subject is at the same time the recipient, since he strives to acquire the object for himself. The giver of the object, Kudeyarov, allows Benedict to access his library. Helpers play a big role in achieving the goal (Olenka is an indirect helper, Nikita Ivanovich reveals the truth). On the way to mastering the object, the hero inevitably encounters an enemy (Nabolshiy Murza). Thus, the presence in the text of “Kysi” of all the necessary mythological components is confirmed.

In addition to the genre connection, in T. Tolstoy’s novel there is a direct presence of other texts of fiction, i.e. “actually” intertextuality.

The text of the novel “Kys” is full of quotes - mainly from the poetic works of A. S. Pushkin, M. Yu. Lermontov, O. Mandelstam, A. Blok, M. Tsvetaeva, V. V. Mayakovsky, B. Pasternak, S. Yesenin , I. Annensky, B. Okudzhava, B. Grebenshchikov and many others. In addition, much attention is paid to folklore text - quoting fairy tales, spells, songs.

T. Tolstaya often uses a quotation as “an exact reproduction of some other person’s fragment of text,” but in this case the meaning completely changes. As I. V. Fomenko notes, “the transformation and formation of the meanings of the author’s text is the main function of the quotation”12. As a result of the study, we came to the conclusion that in T. Tolstoy’s novel this function of the quotation is realized primarily through its comic rethinking.

T. Tolstoy often contains quotes constructed from several texts. Thus, Fyodor Kuzmich builds his monologue on the basis of quotes taken from V. V. Mayakovsky’s poem “Conversation with the Financial Inspector about Poetry” and the poem “Night” by B. L. Pasternak: “Do you think it’s easy for me to compose? You exhaust a single word for the sake of a thousand tons of verbal ore, ara. Forgot? I wrote about this. Don't sleep, don't sleep, artist. Don't give in to sleep. And besides art, there is a lot to do... "13. In this case, the character uses the quote as an element of the dictionary. An unattributed quotation is used as the primary means of communication.

Using quotation marks is another way of marking a quotation. In this way, the unattributed quotation is identified and its meaning expanded. In a conversation about art: “But art for art’s sake is not good, teaches Fyodor Kuzmich, glory to him. Art must be closely connected with life. "My life! Or did I dream about you?” - May be. I don’t know”14.

On each page of the novel there are quotes scattered throughout the characters’ remarks, participating in the characteristics of images, in the description of social phenomena, emotional states, in the assessment of a particular event. These are the titles of poems, the most famous lines

ki, biblical text, folk wisdom. Such quotes have no attribution, but are easily recognizable: “Here!” (V.V. Mayakovsky), “You are destined for good impulses, But nothing is given to accomplish” (N.A. Nekrasov. “A Knight for an Hour”), “I hear the speech not of a boy, but of a husband” (A.S. Pushkin. “Boris Godunov.” Words by Marina Mnishek addressed to the Pretender), “Mitrofanushka, ignoramus” (D. I. Fonvizin), “fear, noose and pit” (N. Gumilyov. “Star Horror”), “Be proud, so is you, a poet, and there is no law for you” (A.S. Pushkin. “Yezersky”: “Be proud: so are you, a poet, / And there are no conditions for you”), “in great knowledge there is much sorrow” and “be fruitful and multiply" (Bible).

In the text of the novel there are allusions, most often unattributed. According to their internal structure of building an intertextual relationship, they best perform the function of discovering something new in the old. This is Nikita Ivanovich’s remark: “But the word inscribed in them is harder than copper and more durable than the pyramids”15. This line contains more than one pretext: the first part contains elements of M. Tsvetaeva’s poem “In the Black Sky - Words Are Inscribed” from the cycle “Marches II”, the second refers to several authors. In the poem by M. V. Lomonosov we find: “I erected a sign of immortality for myself / Higher than the pyramids and stronger than copper”16. In G. Derzhavin’s “Monument” there are the following lines: “I erected a wonderful, eternal monument to myself, / It is harder than metals and higher than the pyramids”17. The list is completed by poets: V. V. Kapnist (“I erected a monument to myself that will last; It is higher than the pyramids and stronger than copper”), A. A. Fet (“I erected a monument that is more eternal than durable copper / And royal buildings higher than the pyramids”), Tuchkov ( “I erected a monument to myself / Above the royal pyramids / I thereby glorified my name. / Its magnificent appearance, / Which is seen as harder than copper”) and others.

In T. Tolstoy there is a borrowing in which particles of the precedent text are dispersed across the entire page.

This is a quote from L.N. Tolstoy’s novel “Aina Karenina”. Benedict learns about ancient printed books kept by people. Varvara Lukinishna’s “discovery” throws him into confusion and fills his mind with disordered thoughts: “They look at each other: maybe they, too, have an old book hidden under the couch... We’ll close the doors and get it out... Let’s read it.<...>And a candle, with... full of anxiety and deception!.. What fear! The highlighted fragments send us to the pretext: “And the candle, by which she read a book full of anxiety, deception, grief and evil”19. In this situation, the text is easily recognized, since there is a sign of attribution (a description of the appearance of the author of these lines).

To create an allusion, constructive intertextuality is used, which organizes borrowed elements in such a way that they turn out to be cohesion nodes of the semantic-compositional structure of the new text.

The next type of “actually intertextuality” is centonic texts, which

which represent a whole complex of allusions and quotations. For the most part they are unattributed. The text, composed of interrogative sentences, conveys the emotional state of the main character; “What, what’s in my name for you? Why does the wind swirl in the ravine? what, what do you want, old man? Why are you greedily looking at the road? Why are you bothering me? Boring, Nina! Get some ink and cry! Open the prison for me! Or will a slow disabled person slam a barrier into my forehead? I'm here! I'm not guilty! I'm with you! I'm with you!"20. This centon text is a collection of recognizable lines from various poems by five famous authors (Pushkin, Nekrasov, Blok, Lermontov, Pasternak).

Thus, the novel “Kys” can be spoken of as a multi-quote artistic space. Citation is the most important way of structuring a text and constructing the meaning of a work; it reflects the specifics of the worldview and the nature of the author’s artistic thinking.

7. The meaning of the ending of “Kysi”

The theme of life and death, like many things in the novel, also takes on a fantastic character. The finale - the death and burning of half the town - occurs against the backdrop of the soaring of the “former” ones who survived the Explosion. This is not death, no, they received their immortality in history, this is going beyond its framework, beyond the boundaries separating man from humanity, this is the feeling of a life not lived in vain.

In the image of “The Biggest Murza” Fyodor Kuzmich, who credits himself with the invention of all technical and everyday innovations, scientific discoveries and the creation of masterpieces of art, the myth of Prometheus, a cultural hero who produced fire and taught people crafts, is parodied. The antithesis of Fyodor Kuzmich as “Prometheus” is the true Prometheus Nikita Ivanovich (it is no coincidence that by occupation he is a stoker, a man who creates fire). The image of fire is also a mythologem. Fire can destroy, but it also supports life. Ognevtsy give people food, but they, the false ones, can take life (it was the false Ognevtsi who killed Benedict’s mother). At the end of the novel, fire, destructive and cleansing at the same time, burns Kudeyar-Kudeyarychsk so that a different story, a different culture can begin in a new place (Life is over - long live life!). At the origins of this culture are Nikita Ivanovich, who brings fire to people, and therefore, like Prometheus, is immortal, and Benedict, who went through “his” fire - destructive, destructive - the fire of thirst for immersion in another reality, which he saw in books. Perhaps books that had already lost their readers had to burn so that new generations would create new books, their own culture, spiritually transforming, changing along with it. The ending of "Kysi" is symbolic, fantastic and conceptually significant. It is important that Nikita Ivanovich and Lev Lvovich did not burn out. “Life is over, Nikita Ivanovich,” Benedict said in a voice that was not his own. “It’s over - let’s start another,” the old man responded grumpily.”

Ekimtseva Olga

This work is the result of work at the Khabarovsk Research and Production Complex

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Non-state educational institution

"Secondary school "Rosna"

Essay

Genre originality and stylistic features of the novel “Kys” by T. Tolstoy

Completed by: Ekimtseva Olga

9th grade student

Scientific supervisor: Travina N. O.

teacher of Russian language and literature

NOU secondary school "Rosna"

Khabarovsk

2010

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….3

Tatiana Tolstaya. The evolution of creativity: from essay to novel……………….8

Genre originality and stylistic features of the novel “Kys”...19

The ideological content of the novel……………………………………………...19

Poetics of the novel……………………………………………………………..22

Symbolistic images of the novel………………………………………..26

Stylistic features……………………………………………………………31

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….36

References………………………………………………………...38

Introduction

The choice of the topic of our essay, related to the definition of genre and consideration of the stylistic originality of one of the most original works of modern literature, is not accidental. The novel “Kys” has been little studied. A relatively small number of works are devoted to it, in which researchers in various aspects approach both the definition of the genre and the analysis of the style of the novel.

An object - genre diversity and stylistic features of the novel “Kys”.

Item - studying the genre diversity and stylistic features of Tatyana Tolstoy’s novel “Kys”.

Target - analyze a little-studied work of modern Russian literature.

The relevance of the study is due to the fact that one of the main problems of the 20th century is the rethinking of human life in the coordinates of a non-classical worldview. The latter in literature corresponds to certain genre forms, radically new or evoked at the call of history from the depths of cultural memory. Such an iconic genre is undoubtedly dystopia, which enjoyed increased popularity in the past century, especially in the initial and final stages of the Soviet era.

“Kys” is an unusual book; it touches on real problems. And the way in which these problems are presented is unique. There is a lot of fiction and fantasy here. But all this is cleverly disguised under the cover of humor and some indifference to everything that is happening. There is no authorial intervention in the plot here. There is a kind of childish, fairy-tale spontaneity going on throughout the entire book, and the absurdities of the plot make us smile. The story is similar to a fairy tale, but as they say: “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it...”. The book is specific, it concentrates three times: from the past through the present to the future. The light of past days is extinguished, nothing is visible in the darkness of the present, and obscurity preserves the road to the future.

Tatyana Tolstoy's novel looks like a dystopia, but in reality it is a formal encyclopedia of Russian life. The plot, a story about ancient Rus' re-emerging from the nuclear wreckage of Moscow some year, is clearly inspired by Chernobyl - “Kys” began in 1986. However, this traditionally fantastic move for Tolstoy is just a method of so-called detachment, an opportunity to look at the whole truth of Russian life as if from the outside. The result was great.

First of all, Tolstaya highlights such an important component of Russian reality as constant mutation, imaginary, fragility of the supposedly solid order of things. In Russia, as in the novel “Kys”, there are certainly some “former”, “former” ones - because the ground keeps slipping away from under one’s feet, going crookedly and downwards. Tolstoy's heroes cannot in any way coincide with the changeable nature, not only of the environment but also of their own. They are left with only the names of things, but not the things themselves.

One of the main stylistic features of the novel is its intertextuality.

The intertextuality of the novel “Kys” is also manifested in its appeal to the genres of folk verbal creativity (legends, folk tales). Tolstoy creates a special fairy-tale world.

The main feature of this world is that the fantastic here smoothly turns into the natural, while, however, losing the symbol of “miracle”. The miracle here is the natural.

The fantastic beginnings intertwined with reality in “Kysi” are reminiscent of Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita,” where the real world is not separated from the fantastic world; they are one whole.

Also, according to rumors from the residents of Fedora-Kuzmichsk, far in the east lives a white princess, Bird Paulin, with half-face-length eyes and a “human red mouth,” who loves herself so much that she turns her head and kisses herself all over. The images of these two creatures remain outside the main plot narrative, but are mentioned so often that the inquisitive reader begins to guess: isn’t Kys an unmaterialized embodiment of unconscious human fears, and the princely Bird Paulin a reflection of their hopes and subconscious thirst for the beauty of life?

Intertextuality is also embodied in the linguistic plane of the text, in which almost all language levels are present: high, neutral, colloquial and vernacular. According to N. Ivanova, in the novel the author’s speech is deliberately supplanted by the words of the characters. There are often monster words, such as PHILOSOPHY, ONEVERSTETSKE ABRAZAVANIE RINISSANCE and the like, words are fragments of the “old language”. In our opinion, here we can see a warning, concern for the state of the modern Russian language, which can turn into the same monster without norms and rules.

This essay is dedicated to such a multifaceted work. “Kys” is also interesting as Tatyana Tolstoy’s first romantic experience.

Thus, based on the above, in our work we will use methods and techniques of linguistic (philological) text analysis, the purpose of which is to find out how a work of art is created with the help of figurative means of language, to identify the aesthetic, philosophical, informational significance of the text. 1

A method of putting forward a hypothesis that is confirmed or refuted by expressed imagery and stylistic devices;
Analysis of the means of creating imagery and artistic decisions of the author, which allow us to derive a certain hypothesis of understanding

1 The use of knowledge from different areas of life in the analysis is currently used quite widely; it is no coincidence that linguistic analysis of a literary text is gradually being renamed philological analysis, which is emphasized by the commonality of sciences in the search for truth.

The method is semantic-stylistic, which takes into account deviations from language rules, combinations of subject and connotative 2 elements of the text, the possibility of contextual polysemy of words, building up the semantic elements of words using special stylistic devices;
Causal 3 a method that is based on the principle of causal explanation of phenomena and includes all the diversity of relationships of a single work with socio-historical reality and the biographical situation of the time of creation.

Since methods are rarely used in their “pure” form, we will combine them as necessary. And since linguistic analysis can also include other components based on facts from history, literary criticism, and psychology, we will introduce into the structure of our abstract:

- Dating. History of the text.

- Biographical situation.

– Perception and responses of contemporaries.

So, let us formulate the main objectives of this work:

To study the characteristic features of Tatyana Tolstoy’s work using the example of her first novel;
Consider the novel as a dystopia during the Soviet era;
Determine whether a work belongs to postmodernism;
Consider the stylistic originality of the novel;

_____________________________

2 Connotation is a peripheral part of the lexical meaning, optional, containing information about the personality of the speaker, including his emotional state, communication situation, character, attitude of the speaker to the interlocutor and the subject of speech. In the sphere of connotation, various components are distinguished - connotants, differing in functional orientation (to the inner world of a person, to language and to reality external to language), and therefore they are divided into main types: emotional, evaluative, figurative, expressive.

3 Causal - from lat. Causa - reason.

Explore the features of the author’s narrative language.

You may like “Kys” or not (many prefer simple plots without allegories and stylizations), but it will definitely surprise and delight - this book is very skillfully and cleverly written.

Tatiana Tolstaya. The evolution of creativity: from essay to novel

Tatyana Nikitichna Tolstaya was born on May 3, 1951 in Leningrad. Granddaughter on one side - the writer A.N. Tolstoy and poetess N.V. Krandievskaya, according to another - translator M.L. Lozinsky, daughter of academician-philologist N.I. Tolstoy.

Graduated from the Department of Classical Philology at Leningrad University.

Having married a Muscovite, she moved to Moscow and worked as a proofreader. T. Tolstoy's first story "They were sitting on the golden porch..." was published in the magazine "Aurora" in 1983. Since then, 19 stories have been published, including the short story "Plot". Thirteen of them compiled a collection of stories “They sat on the golden porch...” (Fakir, “Circle”, “Potere”, “Dear Shura”, “Okkervil River”, etc.) In 1988 - “Somnambulist in the Fog”.

Tolstoy is referred to as a “new wave” in literature, called one of the bright names of “artistic prose”, which has its roots in the “game prose” of Bulgakov and Olesha, which brought with it parody, buffoonery, celebration, and the eccentricity of the author’s “I.”

He says about himself: “I am interested in people “from the margins,” that is, to whom we are usually deaf, whom we perceive as ridiculous, unable to hear their speeches, unable to discern their pain. They pass away from life. ", having understood little, often not receiving something important, and leaving, they are perplexed like children: the holiday is over, but where are the gifts? And life was a gift, and they themselves were a gift, but no one explained this to them."

In recent years, Tatyana Tolstaya has been living and working in Princeton (USA), teaching Russian literature at universities.

Any texts by Tolstoy are complete, detailed works. Whatever she writes about, everything is seen through the prism of the writer’s subjective view. She is equally interested in everyday life, history, any human face, and any banal object. In one interview, Tatyana Tolstaya says: “...for me the only way to cope with the despondency of any reality is to poeticize it.”

Dense, densely populated women's prose juxtaposes with masterly subjunctive historical stories and caustic essays about life. In one case this“...young people of unknown occupations, and an old man with a guitar, and ninth-grader poets, and actors who turned out to be drivers, and drivers who turned out to be actors, and one demobilized ballerina... and ladies in diamonds, and unrecognized jewelers, and nobody’s girls with requests in their eyes , and half-educated philosophers, and a deacon from Novorossiysk ... ". In a different - “...the bird of God...poops on the hand of the villain. Klyak!and Pushkin is alive. Yes, he’s not just alive, but with an old, trembling hand he hits a nasty red-haired, burry boy on the head. Clack! History took a different path. Little Volodenka grew into a loyal citizen. In his old age he loved to visit noble maidens. He especially patronized the big-eyed ones and for some reason called them all Nadka. Well, essays are, well, essays. Portraits of contemporaries and reflections on various things.

The author of the preface to the collection “If you love - you don’t,” Vladimir Novikov wrote: “The design of all the stories is universal, delicately honed, but the same. This, of course, is also a skill and a considerable one, but such skill is confusing, raising suspicions of insincerity, of writing the same story with different characters taking turns appearing on the same stage. At the second minute of each story by Tatyana Tolstoy, a slight half-smile appears on the reader’s face, at the fourth minute he, unable to restrain himself, laughs out loud, at the sixth he becomes sad, and at the eighth he takes a deep and long breath, holding back a tear.

Of course, it’s powerfully written and a pleasure to read, but – I’ll go back to where I started – truly Russian literature has always been suffering from the intuitive, eager to reveal the meaning of being, and sensual literature for the pleasure of reading is not quite a Russian tradition.” .

In the book "Two. Miscellaneous." (2001)turned out to be those essays of hers that for some reason were not included in The Day. Namely: "Gribbby from here!" - about how Tatyana Nikitichna bought salted milk mushrooms; “The country needs currency” - about how Tatyana Nikitichna was arrested; “About Grisha and Masha” - this is how Tatyana Nikitichna tried to bake a cake. Have you noticed that she makes up jokes about herself? You noticed, of course. But there were also in “The Day” jokes. But what was not there were lyrical investigations, which are the texts about the Titanic and Princess Anastasia. These are not reviews, stories or essays, but a “story” for an ideal glossy magazine (which we didn’t have, that’s why the writer composed them for the Russian Telegraph). What does she care about these passengers of the Titanic or the dead princess? But no, since she writes, she loves them not at the “dollar-line” rate, but for real. This is perhaps the most amazing thing property of Tatiana Tolstoy.

When these essays by Tolstoy appeared in periodicals, they evoked mixed feelings among readers. I didn’t want to agree with everything she said. There was a general feeling that this was not her genre. There is nothing surprising in this, of course: who would evaluate, say, Blok’s poems on the same scale as his newspaper articles. Now this idea has changed significantly, and for the better: collected in one book, Tolstoy’s essays are winning. How, by the way, Blok’s articles won in the collected works: it is clear that they were not accidental. And one more circumstance played a role: calling the collection of her essays “Day,” Tolstaya gave it a subtitle: “Personal,” which introduced an appropriate note, so to speak, of the necessary secondary nature of what was collected. Like, in prose, in my art, I am a poet, but here I am a citizen, and in this capacity I also have an indisputable right to vote.

The voice of Russian citizen Tatyana Tolstoy, of course, sounds in its own way and cannot be confused with anyone else. One of the themes of Tolstoy's journalism is the denunciation of post-Soviet life in its cultural, or rather anti-cultural, manifestations. The notorious new Russians are the heroes of these articles by Tolstoy (the article is called “What open space: a look through the fly”):

“The world of a man, offered by publishers, is sad and simple: a desert, and in the middle there is a pillar that always falls, even if you prop it up with a stick. This “man” was never a boy, did not put anything together from cubes, did not leaf through picture books, did not write poetry, and did not tell ghost stories to his friends in the pioneer camp. He never cried over the frailty of the world - “small, his throat is sore” - and dad accordingly did not read to him “the prophetic Oleg.” And he didn’t have a dad, and now he doesn’t have to take oranges to the hospital across the city. He has neither sisters nor brothers..."

When reading this text, it is worth remembering, however, that the magazine for men is published in Russian in Moscow, but its publishers are Americans who are simply exporting their product through the line of so-called cultural imperialism. In Tolstoy’s book, it’s not so much the philippics that are interesting addressed to the new Russians, how many of her statements are about America. There is a certain philosophy here .

The fact is that Tolstoy’s essays and her very pathos may seem extremely anti-American. Yes, judging solely by the text, it is so. One can, of course, say that Tatyana Tolstaya does not condemn and ridicule America, but American popular culture. But the fact is that (judging at least from this book) in it, in America, Tolstaya finds nothing but mass culture, that there is nothing else there. And much more poison was poured on America, and much more concentrated, than on the insignificant, for all their money, new Russians.

Articles such as “Nikolaevskaya America” - about the war against smoking in the States, “There will be no cinema” - about Monica Gate, “I will sue, torture, like Pol Pot Kampuchea” - about the passion of Americans for lawsuits - are quite caustic, but they could have been written by Americans - not the way Tolstaya writes (for only she writes that way), but still written, and from the same satirical angle. But the article “Ice and Fire” is no longer something anti-, but, so to speak, super-American. She, in a way, encroaches on sacred things. And this shrine is the mouse Mickey Mouse, the emblematic hero of Disney cartoons.

On one occasion, now not worth mentioning, Tatyana Tolstoy, when she was a teacher at an American university, had the occasion to speak mockingly about this beloved American emblem, “the national rodent,” as she writes. An unexpected reaction followed:

"Don't touch the mouse!" - the student shouted in a ringing voice, clenching her fists. - “Do you love this stuffed animal?” - I was inadvertently surprised. - “Yes!” - all 15 people shouted. - “National pride, we won’t allow anyone!” ... “Disney is our childhood!” Thinking it was funny, I told my friend, an American liberal professor, about it. He didn't laugh, but became stern. “Don’t offend Mickey Mouse,” he said reproachfully. - “But you, as a liberal...” - “Don’t! Mickey Mouse is the foundation of our democracy, the cementing mortar of the nation.” I tried to incite him into treason: “Well, what if it’s between us... To be honest?... Do you love him?” The professor thought about it. Sixty-five years of his life had clearly passed before his inner gaze. Something flashed in his face... He opened his mouth... “Yes!” I love him! I love!" .

It is clear that this text is hyperbole and grotesque. It is clear that the object of satire is not the national mouse (called, among other things, a monster and a reptile), but the conformity of consciousness, stamped by mass culture, which is completely commercialized. It is also known that mass consciousness, governed by collective myths, can become a social danger of catastrophic proportions, and it is not without reason that at the end of this Tolstoy’s article an image of Soviet people appears, unanimously condemning the Trotskyist-Bukharin gang of imperialist mercenaries. All this is true, but the word “myth” can also be used in another sense - not alien to Tatyana Tolstoy herself.

Here we need to return from Tolstoy the essayist and publicist to Tolstoy the writer. Here is what academic researchers Leiderman and Lipovetsky write about her prose:

“The demonstrative fabulousness of her poetics is noteworthy. In Tolstoy's prose there is a metamorphosis of cultural myths into cultural fairy tales. ...the demythologization of the myth of Culture and the remythologization of its fragments are being consistently carried out. The new myth, born as a result of this operation, knows about its conditionality and optionality, about its creation - and hence its fragility. This is no longer a myth, but a fairy tale: the harmony of the mythological world order here looks extremely conditional and is replaced by a purely aesthetic attitude towards what, in the context of the myth, was seen as a negation of order, chaos.” .

This is where the main question arises in connection with Tolstoy’s American - or anti-American - articles: how, having so masterfully used the poetics of fairy tales, playing with myth in her own work, does she not want to see myth and fairy tales in the culture of another country, even denies this culture right to mythological roots? Yes, in fact, it is impossible to talk at all about any other countries and other myths, because the mythological space is one and indivisible. The American Mickey Mouse is the same Ivanushka the Fool, that is, the strong defeating the weak, this is Charlie Chaplin, this is, finally, David against Goliath!

We can say that Tolstaya is demythologizing American culture, but she doesn’t come up with anything from the wreckage of it. And it’s clear why: American life cannot serve as the basis for her artistic work - Tolstaya is a Russian writer, not an American one. She is unable to creatively sublimate her irritation with America. Russia causes her no less irritation (to say the least), but this is her own, familiar from childhood - just like from childhood. A person who has not had an American childhood - be he a poet or just a herald - will remain indifferent to Mickey Mouse.

Yes, but Tatyana Tolstaya is by no means indifferent to this very national mouse: she is indignant, not to say angry. There are, in my opinion, two reasons for this. That's what we'll talk about.

The first reason for a Russian writer’s repulsion from the West (in this case, Tatyana Tolstoy from America): a certain national complex. Dostoevsky noticed this in one of his best works, “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions.” There he wrote in particular:

“The Frenchman has no reason, and even to have it would be considered the greatest misfortune for himself.” This phrase was written by Fonvizin back in the last century. All similar phrases that endear foreigners, even if they still occur today, contain something irresistibly pleasant for us Russians. Here you can hear some kind of revenge for something past and bad. What is the reason for this not so strange phenomenon, Dostoevsky does not directly say, but he partly blurts it out. It seems that this secret dislike comes from the disappointment of the Russian person in Europe, in the West in general. But this disappointment presupposes, by definition, a previous fascination. This process stems from absentee, behind-the-eye admiration - and from the inevitable, at every opportunity, attempts to imitate and reproduce. As Dostoevsky immediately writes: “Squealing and lying with delight is our very first thing; look, after two years we go our separate ways, hanging our noses.”

Do we need to remind you that the closest experience of such delight was the post-Soviet period, with its illusions and collapses? Time for the reproduction, in the new Russian way, of Western democracy and market economy. But the result, frankly speaking, is more than mediocre, leaving an intelligent person with nothing but writing poisonous feuilletons about the new Russians, their morals, customs and tastes.

And the main thing is that an intelligent Russian person found out, having directly become acquainted with the West itself, having learned its, so to speak, humble prose, that democracy and a market economy there, of course, exist, but the presence of such did not at all lead to the flourishing of a high-brow, “high-browed” culture. Disneyland and its main inhabitant, Mickey Mouse, are considered the highest cultural achievement. The real West is not the same as it was imagined in Westernizing Russian dreams. And when a Russian person meets the real, real West, he comes to the conclusion that the West, strictly speaking - his, the Westernized West - did not exist and does not exist.

Herzen wrote about this in “The Past and Thoughts.” In our time, the most impressive example of such annihilation West a priori and the West a posteriori gave S.S. Averintsev, who saw with horror that the Ring of the Nibelungs was being staged incorrectly in Vienna.

Therefore, in Tatyana Tolstoy’s novel “Kys” the following dialogues occur:

Need a photocopier. - This is Lev Lvovich, gloomy.

Right, but the irony is...

The irony is that there is no West.

What do you mean no! - Lev Lvovich got angry. - The West is always there.

But we cannot know about this.

Well, what do you think, - Nikita Ivanovich asks, - well, if you had a fax and a photocopier... What would you do with them? How are you going to fight for freedom by fax? Well?

Have mercy. Yes, very simple. I take Durer's album. This is for example. I take a photocopier and make a copy. I reproduce. I take a fax and send a copy to the West. There they look: what is it! Their national treasure. They faxed me: return the national treasure this minute! And I tell them: come and take it. Volodya. So much for international contacts, diplomatic negotiations, and whatever you want! Coffee, paved roads.... Shirts with cufflinks. Conferences...

Confrontations...

Humanitarian rice polished...

Porn video...

Jeans...

Terrorists...

Necessarily. Complaints to the UN. Political hunger strikes. International Court of Justice in The Hague.

There is no Hague.

Lev Lvovich shook his head violently, even the candle flame began to flicker:

Don't upset me, Nikita Ivanovich. Don't say such terrible things. This is Domostroy.

No Hague, my dear. And it wasn't.

What’s also remarkable about this dialogue is that it parodies the conversations of intellectuals from “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”: Caesar explains to the captain the artistic delights of “Battleship Potemkin,” and the captain in response expresses his complete readiness to devour the worm-eaten meat that started the famous sailor rebellion.

Let us immediately note that “Kys” at the lexical level reproduces the verbal fabric of Solzhenitsyn’s story, and plot-wise it reproduces Nabokov’s novel “Invitation to Execution”.

There is, it seems to me, another reason for Tolstoy’s repulsion from the Western mouse diet. This is precisely her intense and almost organic Westernism. She is worried and, perhaps, seduced by Nabokov's fate. Her stories masterfully reproduce Nabokov's intonations, and, perhaps, plots as well. The ghosts of some enticing possibilities are revealed to Tolstoy by this bilingual snake.

What convinces most of this, oddly enough, is Tolstoy’s article - no, not about Nabokov, but about the phenomenon of Andrei Makin - that same Russian who, having learned a foreign language from a French grandmother stuck in Soviet Russia, managed to become French in France writer. In any case, a successful French writer.

Tatyana Tolstaya pays special attention to this bastard (or, in Western terms, bastard) - a large, forty-page article entitled “Russian man at a rendezvous.” By God, Makin himself is of no artistic interest. Much more interesting is Tolstoy’s interest in him. She writes:

“Makin is not Nabokov. Different scale, different requests, different background. It is strange and interesting - there are no words - to see for us, writing Russians... how the fate of one of us is shaping up at the next turn in the fate of Russian literature. It’s strange to see how, leaving the sphere of attraction of Russian literature, a Russian person, putting on a costume of a foreign language that is alien to him, not by washing, but by rolling, not by shouting, but by whispering, forces the attention of completely strangers and essentially indifferent people, so that, by desperately gesticulating , explain where, how, with what and why he came to us. He came with the same baggage of a traveling circus performer: a moth-eaten hare from a top hat, a woman cut in half, trained dogs: “Siberia”, “Russian sex”, “steppe”, cardboard Stalin, cardboard Beria (how would we live without him), cardboard camps, “He came, and he got attention, and he collected all the fair prizes.”

Can this whole story be called instructive? Characteristic? I’m almost sure that in Russia - if we talk about awards - Makin would not have received Logovaz’s ponderous “Triumph”.

The good thing, however, is that Tolstaya herself deserved this Triumph (so the new Russians were good for something). And that she does not need copiers or faxes - that she is self-sufficient and exists in addition to translation.

And we will gladly excuse her feminine weakness - the fear of mice.

Genre originality and stylistic features of the novel “Kys”

The ideological content of the novel

Let's start from the end - it's more convenient. Tatyana Tolstaya concludes her novel like this: “- Understand it as you know! Moscow is the name, the penultimate one is the fictional Fedor-Kuzmichsk, where the action of "Kysi" takes place.

Let us clarify right away that this city, shortly before the end of the story, was renamed as a result of the coup d'etat. And this revolution was carried out by the main character of the book - the simple-minded and narrow-minded intellectual of the first generation, Benedict, a passionate bookworm, completely obsessed with books. Since the novel Fedor-Kuzmichsk was once called Moscow, a simple conclusion can be made - the events described in the book refer not to the future, but to the past. Moscow was Moscow, then it became Fedor-Kuzmichsky, and now again it’s itself.

The book describes life after an atomic explosion. The people there are not people - they’re all kind of freaks. The effects of radiation affected everything around. Darlings with their Consequences (some have udders, some have horns, or even a tail), flying hares, mice as food and general illiteracy. Here it is, the standard of the present in the book. The past is indicated by special characters and things. Those who lived before the Explosion keep the history and memory of what happened. They cry over the lost blessings of civilization, mourn the loss of national values.

City residents are divided into three types:

1) The former are people of the past. Educated and not receiving any Consequences. They honor bygone times and grieve not so much about the loss of everyday life as about the degradation of all living things around and the disappearance of culture and art. These people are the intelligentsia of the past, who barely found a place in the present, but will never live to see the future.

2) The degenerates are also people from the past, but unlike the first ones, these adapted to living conditions and eventually sank even lower than ordinary townspeople, becoming slaves of the local authorities. It is difficult to consider them as people. They run on all fours and swear.

3) Those who were born after the explosion. These people are accustomed to what surrounds them; they were born in this environment and have never seen or imagined another life. This category reflects the modern, post-Soviet (and perhaps post-revolutionary) generation.

However, they are still the same: they still hope for help from the West, they are still afraid of the East.

For the authorities they are like plasticine. You can suggest anything you want. These are simple workers who are not interested in anything from their past life. They will eat mice and worms, fight, steal, laugh at other people's misfortunes, be driven by lust, languish in fear of the authorities, and especially of the Orderlies (Secret Police) and of the unknown beast - the Kys, who lives in the forest, rushes at the darlings, vomits the main vein, and the mind leaves the person.

The main character of the novel is named Benedict. His mother was the Former, and therefore the boy learned to read and write (although his father was against it) and went to work as a scribe in the Worker's Hut. He rewrote various books, poems and believed that Fyodor Kuzmich wrote all this. And he believed that he was living as he should, until an old friend of his mother came to him for a holiday (New Year, which was also invented by Fyodor Kuzmich) - also the former, Nikita Ivanovich - the Chief Stoker.

It was he who gradually began to talk with Benedict on philosophical topics, as if in passing, revealing to him the “world of art.”

And one day another old woman invited him to her place and showed him an old printed book. Benedict ran out into the yard in horror. Meeting reality was a cruel blow for him.

The danger of interpreting books is precisely one of the themes of “Kysi”, and a plot-forming one at that. Unhappy Benedict tried so passionately to understand what he read, so desperately sought to find the main book about the meaning of life, that he reached complete brutality and murder. Because he did not know the world in which these books were written and the beautiful stanzas were composed. This world existed, according to the text, before the Explosion, but what this Explosion was - a criminal mistake of the atomic scientists, a revolution or Adam's fall from grace - is not answered.

The fantastic world described in "Kysi" is creepy and unsightly. He is especially frightening in the first chapters of the novel: people live in huts among endless fields, not only do not know electricity, but also do not know wheels, they catch mice (for food and natural exchange), drink and smoke some kind of rust, dig up worms, do not read books - printed books are prohibited, listen to the Greatest Murza - Fyodor Kuzmich. People in “Kysi” speak in a strange vernacular, clever words are remembered only by the “former” who lived before the Explosion - intellectuals and dissidents. The former argue more and more among themselves and openly despise other people. They are not positive heroes, although in the end, it seems, they are forgiven by the author. Perhaps this has already happened in Russian literature: the only positive hero of the book is the author. But this, in general, is a stretch.

The desire to cover almost all aspects of our existence makes “Kys” a significant phenomenon in the literary process of the late 20th - early 21st centuries. Based on the above, “Kys” can be considered as a kind of “novel of the beginning”: not only as a possible beginning of a new stage in the author’s creative activity, but also as a reflection of the mental, spiritual beginning of Russian society. This maxim is also confirmed by the fact that T. Tolstaya introduces the “beginning of beginnings” - the alphabet - into the table of contents of the novel. The book consists of chapters named after the letters of the Church Slavonic alphabet: Az, Buki, Vedi, Verb, up to the final Izhitsa. The entire micro- and macrocosm of Russian history, culture, literature (first of all), that specific phenomenon, which is called the word “spirituality”, which is unpleasant in its semantic overtones, national psychological and mental types, strata, political formations, secret police, patriotic and liberal intelligentsia - all this makes up the “blood and flesh”, bones and muscle tissue of the novel “Kys”. A few words about the title of the novel: “Kys” is a sacred animal that, feeding on human blood, becomes a zombie.

The book is an “encyclopedia of Russian life”, a kind of “universe”, “thesaurus” . The words of the “furious Vissarion” about Pushkin’s novel in verse migrate from review to review of Tatyana Tolstoy’s novel.

Conclusion

In conclusion of our work, the purpose of which was to determine genre affiliation and consider stylistic originality, the following conclusions can be drawn:

The novel is, of course, a “dystopia.” In this genre, for example, such excellent books have been written as “The Master of Smoky Rings” by V. Khlumov, “Justification” by D. Bykov, “The Lost House, or Conversations with My Lord” by A. Zhitinsky. Russian literature has a dangerous tendency: not just to “reflect reality,” but to change and modify it, to adapt it to suit itself. Thus, the poet V.Ya. Bryusov at the beginning of the century wrote a number of “dystopian” works, in particular, the short story “The Last Martyrs” (he predicted the October Revolution with all its consequences) and the story “Good Ald” (he foresaw the emergence of Soviet and Nazi death camps) . I called, and everything came true letter for letter. No matter how a new “Explosion” occurs. However, we have already survived our “Explosion” - the collapse of the Soviet Union, now we are experiencing the “Consequences” first hand, having been divided into “Formers” and “Degenerates” (read the book!).
The novel is totally literary-centric, because everything in life is a variety of fiction, and life itself is a multi-volume novel, which the Lord God writes. While working on the book, the writer, if not in her mind, then in her subconscious, kept, among countless others, the works of her grandfather A.N. Tolstoy (early), Andrei Bely, A.M. Remizov, F. Sologub (Fyodor Sologub in the world was Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov (actually Tyutyunnikov). From Sologubov’s “Nedotykomka” from the novel “Little Demon” to the “kiss” creature is just a stone’s throw away.) and, of course, “The History of One City” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (Shchedrinskys “ Foolovites", the inhabitants of the "city of Foolov", are very reminiscent of the inhabitants of the book by T. Tolstoy, and the "Foolov chronicler", in particular, is the main character of the novel Benedict, whose adventures he himself describes are plot-forming). “Kys” can be interpreted as a verbal and conceptual treasure, consisting of many caskets, each with secret compartments.
Tatyana Tolstaya in the novel “Kys” depicted that cruel, cheerful, eternal, almost prehistoric, on the basis of which both the city of Foolov and the city of Gradov grow. Here it is - eternal, undying, stone, nightmare... Are you going to admire it because it is eternal? – Tatyana Tolstaya seems to be asking. But what is beautiful and admirable is not eternal, but fragile and weak, something that can be destroyed by an explosion.
The language of the novel amazes and shocks: a waterfall, a whirlpool, a storm, a tornado of neologisms, “folk etymology,” a subtle, no, the most subtle, play of the mind and taste. This is something unprecedented and difficult to express conceptually. "Kys" is a verbal treasure. Let us fall silent in embarrassment, bowing our heads before the linguistic mastery of Tatyana Tolstoy. Let's just say that the St. Petersburg-Moscow-American writer increased the glory of her proud family-surname, her City, her University. Everything in Russia will get better, everything will go “the way,” because the “old” and “new” Russian literature being created before our eyes is the universal Russian hope and guiding star. Let it be so!