Cross sisters of the remizes. Cross Sisters

ALEXEY REMIZOV
Cross Sisters
Tale
Dedicated to S. P. Remizova-Dovgello
Chapter first
Marakulin was friends with Glotov not at all because their official business was closely connected with one another, one could not do without the other: Pyotr Alekseevich issued coupons, Alexander Ivanovich was the cashier.
The order is well known: Marakulin will only write in ink, and Glotov will count out exactly the same thing only in gold.
And both of them are so different and dissimilar: one is narrow-chested and has a stringy mustache, the other is wide and has a cat’s mustache, one looks from the inside, the other blurs.
But still, friends: there is only one bread and salt.
They both had a mark - a quality, and such a fundamental one, you can’t hide it in any way, in a sleepy person it will gleam under the eyelids, and besides, it doesn’t matter at all whether it’s stuffed in the pupil somewhere or runs out from the pupil over the apple: the proboscis looks like some kind of antennae they both had one, and this proboscis did not just cling to life, but somehow sucked into itself everything living, everything that lives around life, down to a blade of grass that breathes, to a small pebble that grows, and sucked in with some kind of greed and fun, and somehow infectious fun. That's it.
Those who needed it saw, those who didn’t see, they felt, and those who didn’t feel, they guessed.
Well, youth - both are about thirty or thirty-something, and luck - both of them somehow managed everything, and strength - both of them have never been sick and have never complained about any teeth, and no there is no connection, neither legal nor lawless, as in the steppe alone, but the steppe has unfolded in all its breadth and power, free, free, free - yours.
About three years ago, it seems, Glotov threw his lawful wife from the third floor onto the pavement, and the poor thing’s skull was cut in half, and not three years, no, perhaps it will be all four, however, it doesn’t matter, it’s not about Glotov at all, and in Marakulin, we are talking about Pyotr Alekseevich Marakulin. Infecting his colleagues with fun and carefreeness, Marakulin once admitted that although he was thirty years old, for some reason, and without knowing it, he considered himself exactly, well, twelve years old, and gave examples: when, say, If he happens to meet someone or enter into a conversation, it’s as if the older ones are all old, and he’s the youngest – small, about twelve years old. And Marakulin also admitted that he did not at all resemble a person, at least not like those real people whom you constantly see in the theater, at meetings, in clubs, when they enter or leave, speak or are silent, angry or happy, well, doesn’t look a bit like him, and everything must be out of place for him, from his nose to his little finger, so it seems to him. And Marakulin also admitted that he never thinks about anything, he just doesn’t feel like he’s thinking, and if he walks along the streets, then he walks like that, well, he just walks with his feet, and when you meet him, he makes no difference does not notice any peculiarities either in the face or in the movements of his new acquaintance and only vaguely feels that one attracts, the other repels, one is closer, the other is farther, and the third is all the same, but more often the feeling of closeness and confidence in goodwill prevails. And Marakulin also admitted that since he began to read books and encountered people, the most opposite opinions did not frighten him at all and he was ready to agree with everyone, considering everyone right in his own way, and did not argue, and if he broke through and he even bullied himself, then for completely indisputable reasons, which, by the way, he was perfectly aware of every time, but he just didn’t show it to his face - you never know how many such indisputable, everyday reasons there are! And Marakulin also admitted that he had never cried, and only once, when the old nanny left, on her last day: then, crawling into the closet, he choked on his first and last tears. And he had one remarkable extravagant quality, which they usually laughed at: some trifles would pop into his head, and he would grab hold of them and with such tenacity, as if the whole essence was in them and his own life, - after all, the whole thing is made of he will invent nonsense for himself! For the holiday, a report is submitted to the director, the report is usually written on a machine - the most ordinary report, but for some reason he will certainly want to rewrite it himself and with his own hand, and although it is more likely to be made easier and simpler by machine and there are such forms, this He’s not embarrassed at all, as much as possible! - both nights and days he stubbornly writes out letter after letter, scribbles evenly, as if he were tracing with beads, and rewrites it more than once until he achieves such a report, even if he takes it to an exhibition, that’s even what it is! - Marakulin was famous for his handwriting. Tomorrow this report will be put into paper somewhere, special attention no one will pay attention, no one needs him like that, and a lot of time and labor have been spent and to no avail. An extravagant person and stubborn in his extravagance. Yes, and even more wonderfully, Marakulin told about some inexplicable extraordinary joy of his, and he experienced it completely unexpectedly: another time he ran to work in the morning and suddenly, for no reason, as if his heart would flutter in his chest, fill his chest and become unusually joyful. And such is his joy, it will so embrace everything and so much of it, he would take it, it seems, from his chest, from his very heart, and distribute it to everyone - and there would be enough for everyone, he would take it, like a bird, in both handfuls and, blowing with his mouth So that this bird of paradise does not freeze, does not flutter out, I would carry it along Nevsky: let them see it, and breathe in its warmth, and feel its light, the quiet light and warmth that the heart breathes and shines with joy.
Of course, you can’t judge yourself, you can’t get away with confessions: it happened, it didn’t happen, who can figure it out? - but love for life and flair for life, gaiety of spirit, this was true in him.
Listening to Marakulin and seeing how he approached people, from his smile and gaze, the thought sometimes came that someone like him was always ready to enter a cage of a rabid beast and not blink, and without hesitation would stretch out his hand to Stroke the wild fur of an animal, and the animal will not bite.
And how upset Marakulin was when it was unexpectedly and unexpectedly revealed that he, like everyone else, could be hated, that he also had his own ill-will, that he was a log in the world for someone, and God knows why. looks great!
But you could do anything with Marakulin!
And if he managed to live to be thirty years old and successfully, then there is one miracle - an incredible thing.
Yes, rather, they loved Pyotr Alekseevich, and not just like that, deeply and very much, but there was nothing not to love him for - fun and laughter and not just a simple one, but some kind of drunk, Marakulinsky, why hate him!
And yet it didn’t end very lovingly; Pyotr Alekseevich ended badly.
So it was: Marakulin was expecting a promotion and reward for Easter - in rich trading offices there are a fair amount of rewards for the holiday, but instead of a promotion and reward, he was kicked out of the service.
It happened: Pyotr Alekseevich served for five years, was in charge of the coupon books for five years, and everything was in perfect working order and accurate - Marakulin was jokingly nicknamed the German for his accuracy and accuracy - but the directors started checking the books before the holidays, and how they began to check and count - and there was a hitch: something just didn’t add up, something was missing, and maybe mere trifles were missing, but the matter is big, these trifles and confusion can confuse the whole thing.
They took away his books and his hat.
At first, Marakulin didn’t believe it, he simply refused to believe it, he thinks to himself: it’s like they’re making fun of him, like they’re blowing a trumpet for the sake of fun, for greater merriment, and so - before the holiday!
He laughs and goes to explain himself, and also not without a joke.
- Allow, they say, such and such a thief, and a robber and a traveler to explain his theft...
- What, sir?
And in one explanatory letter addressed to a very important and influential director, the signature was signed by not just Pyotr Marakulin, but the thief Pyotr Marakulin and expropriator.
"The thief Pyotr Marakulin and the expropriator."
- What, sir?
- Ha ha... - he is the first to laugh.
Yes, the joke apparently didn’t work, nothing funny came out, or it did, but no one noticed, and no one laughs, on the contrary.
And the funniest thing seemed to be the answer of one young accountant - this accountant is a small, quiet man, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, and he doesn’t even have a title.
Averyanov said:
- Until your misunderstanding is clarified, I would like to wait with a final answer.
At this point Pyotr Alekseevich became serious:
- What kind of confusion, they say, and there can be no mistake!
- What, sir?
- It’s a mistake, I say... I have no mistake, I’m German... where is the mistake?
And I believed it.
Believe it!
The rabid beast, apparently, is not so simple, does not give in so easily, you can’t stroke it very deftly on its raised fur, and keep your hands off: the beast will bite your finger!
So, what?
Or the beast has nothing to do with it, and the whole curse is not at all that man is a beast to man, and even a rabid one, but that man is a log to man. And no matter how much you pray to him, he won’t hear, no matter how much you cry, he won’t respond, you tap your forehead, knocking your forehead in front of him, he won’t move: just as they put it, he’ll stand there until he falls or you fall.
So, what?
So, something like this flashed through Marakulin’s mind then, and for the first time he clearly thought and said clearly:
man is a log to man.
I knocked here, knocked here, everything was closed, everything was locked: they didn’t accept me. And even if they accept it, they don’t want to talk, they don’t let me say a word.
Then they started slamming doors in our faces: and - there was no time! and leave me alone please! and - not up to you at all! and other things to do! and - what did I look at before! and blame yourself! and again - there is no time! and - leave me alone, please!
And the servants don’t talk through the chain: it’s not ordered and everyone is very tired.
There was no refuge for Marakulin, he was left as if alone in the steppe, and the steppe lay scorched, black, vast - alien. Look around in all four directions, well!
He was in everything, became nothing.
But all because of trifles - one blind accident.
There were rumors that Alexander Ivanovich had rigged the whole thing, his hands: Glotov recruited his friend, but he himself got away with it.
And on the other hand, everyone knew that Marakulin was not averse to it, either because of the kindness of his soul or some other quality, or because of his excessive gullibility and imagination, because he loved to get along with people! - yes, he himself was not averse to temporarily, of course, issuing a coupon to a person who was not at all involved in any receipt, well, in view of some special requests and the constraint of a friend, even to the same Alexander Ivanovich!
After all, anything could be done with Marakulin! But he himself, unsettled by blind chance, idle, alone, nights and days thinking, thinking to himself, now it’s not that time - that time has passed - now he, like real people, began to think, himself - then at first he firmly decided and passed judgment on himself.
He did not plead guilty and did not accuse himself of theft. And proving his right to exist, in his fever, in his thoughts, he grabbed, as in the scheme and in his fun, in Marakulin’s way: he grabbed this log, which he realized that man is man’s log, and went to unscrew it.
He certainly wanted, at all costs, to know who needed all this and why, for the pleasure of which log the logs were placed, and he wanted to know in order to definitely tell himself whether he should still stand as a log, how Did someone get it into his head to put it down, or, without waiting for the minute when someone else gets it in his head to knock it down again, of his own free will and without asking anyone, screw up?
Judge for yourself, you can’t answer this right away, and who to answer, not the palmist from Kuznechny, who stole the trousers, but based on the features of the hand he proved to another, to the neighbor in the corners, also from Kuznechny! Yes, apparently, without this it is absolutely impossible not to wear out the heart - not to rip the heart off, it is always evident this way when someone begins to prove his right to exist.
But the point is not at all that man is a rabid beast to man, and not that man is a log to man, that’s a thing of the past.
Trouble will come, be patient, because be patient, it doesn’t matter whether you kick back or start biting - it’s all in vain, she won’t let you go until her time is up. So, what?
be patient!
He spent the summer doing nothing. Everything that he had collected during his five St. Petersburg coupon years went to pawnshops either in Stolichny or in Gorodskaya on Vladimirsky. And soon there was nothing left, and I took the pawnshop receipts to the watchmaker on Gorokhovaya, and what was left was all worn out, torn, and the Tatar would not take it. He was tattered and tattered, his single linoleum collar was washed to the skin, only the cross was intact on his neck and the Bogolyubsky belt, which, however, he had not worn for a long time, was kept on the wall as a memory. And I felt some kind of shame, I had never felt anything like that before. He doesn't dare ask. It’s good that there is no one to ask: as if from cholera, the friends ran away and all hid.
And he somehow became afraid of everyone, both familiar and unfamiliar.
It’s embarrassing and scary to walk the streets: everyone seems to know something about him, and something that he doesn’t even seem to have the courage to admit to himself, let alone say in public. Passersby push. The dog also grumbles and grabs his leg.
He is a dead man.
Well, dead, powerless - and be patient, be patient and forget...
If trouble comes, forget that there are people in the world, people won’t help, and even if they want to help, it doesn’t matter, the trouble will upset them, every business will bring them to nothing, drive them away and intimidate them, and therefore forget about people.
So, what?
So, something along these lines flashed through Marakulin’s mind then and said clearly:
forget!
But people were soon found, they showed up, but not some Averyanov and not his assistant Chekurov - the scourge of vulgarity, as this most honest Chekurov called himself, no, all those that Marakulin never remembered: petty suspicious employees, re-expelled - from all kinds of institutions and wandering to all sorts of places - candidates for pasture, dead and dying, defamed and endured, who were not allowed into decent houses and to shake hands with was considered indecent and impossible, who, finally, had a certain nickname - their own name and nickname thieves, scoundrels, scoundrels - swindlers.
And so all these thieves, scoundrels and scoundrels - swindlers known, semi-familiar and completely unknown - came to Marakulin to express their sympathy, and then at first they got him work, well, not particularly important, but just some, just to at least to live somehow.
Marakulin had his own apartment on the Fontanka near Obukhov Bridge, small, but still his own, he had to give up the apartment, move into rooms, a room was found on the same stairs three floors above.
In fact, Marakulin’s life was successful, but it was confused and awkward, he lived and God knows how, but all this was before he settled down, at the beginning of his life, when nothing like that is noticed.
And now it seemed difficult to him, it was difficult to be embarrassed, all the more difficult and difficult since there was no hope of recovery, and the money he made from fraudulent earnings was not important, it was barely enough to just somehow get by.
Why live?
And why endure, why forget - forget and endure?
He certainly wanted, at all costs, to know who needed all this and why, for the pleasure of which thief, scoundrel and scoundrel, and he wanted to know in order to definitely tell himself whether it was still worth going through all the hassle and patience, just to get by somehow?
Judge for yourself, you can’t answer this right away, and who to answer, not the palmist from Kuznechny, who stole the trousers, but based on the features of the hand he proved to another, to the neighbor in the corners, also from Kuznechny!
Yes, apparently, without this it is absolutely impossible not to wear out the heart - not to rip the heart off, apparently, it’s always like this when someone starts to prove their right to exist.
But the point is not at all to endure, and not to forget, the point is simpler:
do not think!
So, what?
So, something along these lines flashed through Marakulin’s mind then and said clearly:
do not think!
Shouldn't he think... now?
Yes, it was now, unsettled by blind chance, alone, without anything to do, that he began to think for the first time - that time has passed, when you didn’t think, you can’t get that time back.
And a circle closed in him: he knew that it was in vain to think, there was no need to think, you could not prove anything, and he could not help but think - he could not help but prove - he thought painfully, his thoughts went on non-stop, as if in delirium.
Marakulin dealt with the apartment successfully, they didn’t drag him anywhere to the police station and didn’t describe him - nothing happened, but you can’t take his soul out.
Only Mikhail Pavlovich did not shake his hand, - senior Mikhail Pavlovich, if he respected the tenant mediocre, always gave him a hand.
The last day on the old ashes turned out to be memorable for Marakulin.
In the morning, a misfortune happened in the yard: a cat died - a white, sleek cat with a gray mustache. Maybe she didn’t kill herself, and didn’t think of falling from any roof of the fifth floor, but swallowed something by accident: a nail or glass, or even on purpose, for fun, some amateur fed her a splinter or a nail, there are those. She was suffering, and it was difficult for her: she would either fall on her back and roll on the stones, or turn over on her belly, stretch out her front legs, lift up her muzzle, as if looking into the windows, and meow.
The children surrounded the cat, abandoned their wild games and wild work, squatted down around the cat, became quiet, did not tear themselves away from the cat, and she meowed.
The Persian masseur from the baths, black, also perched nearby, circling the squirrels, and she meowed.
Some smoky cat jumped out of the carriage house, walked briskly across the yard across the boards on the rubble directly at the cat, but three steps away it suddenly stopped, bristled and with its tail puffed out to the side.
One girl grabbed it, ran for milk, brought a turtle, put it under the cat’s nose, but she didn’t even look, she kept meowing.
- The cat is crazy! - said someone adult: it must also be like Marakulin, who was watching the cat from the window.
- This is our cat Murka! - corrected the girl who was running for milk, her face was burning, and there was resentment and impatience in her voice.
And everyone seemed to be waiting for one thing: when the end would come.
Marakulin did not leave the window, could not tear himself away, he also waited: when the end would come.
And he would have stood there without moving, even until the evening, if he had not felt that someone was standing behind him, shifting: he had not locked the doors for a long time, so someone came in!
Yes, that’s right: an old man was standing in front of him, shifting, a disheveled old man, long, from under his coat his pants were dangling on his legs, as if they weren’t legs, the old man had only knuckles, he was fiddling with his hat in his hands and something else... an envelope, yes, some kind of envelope.
He had never seen such an old man, of course! - but what does he need?
- What do you want?
- To your mercy, Pyotr Alekseevich, I am from Alexander Ivanovich.
- From Alexander Ivanovich!
- From themselves, they forgot the doors lock it, and I was right there, but I was afraid to call, excuse me.” The old man moved his lips, fiddling with his hat.
In the past, all sorts of people came from Glotov more than once - in the office for evening classes the people were needed, but how could Glotov decide to send a man to him now, because Glotov knows that he is without a place, and now he has one piece of money in his pocket!
- I can’t do anything for you, you need money...
The old man began to fuss and pulled out a crumpled quarter note from the envelope, covered with uneven and large writing.
“I wrote a petition to your honor, I’m ashamed to ask, so I wrote a petition!” - The old man poked with a quarter and kept smiling, and with such a smile, as if somewhere in his lips this cat, Murka, was meowing.
And having thrust his last piece of money into the old man, Marakulin sat down at the table and waited alone, for the old man to leave, for the end to come.
The old man did not leave, clutching a coin and a hat in his fist, and in the other an envelope and a crumpled quarter, with writing uneven and large.
My hands were shaking, and the hat couldn’t hold on and fell to the floor.
- Well, Alexander Ivanovich, how is Alexander Ivanovich, how is he doing? asked Mara-kulin, feeling how everything inside him was shaking and he could no longer stand it, he would scream and throw the old man out.
The old man stretched out his neck like a bird and opened his mouth with his beak.
“Today, just right,” the old man seemed delighted, shaking his head, they were dressed very well, like a senior janitor, a jacket and patent leather boots, like a senior janitor. “Go, Gvozdev, straight to Pyotr Alekseevich on the Fontanka!” That's what he said. Like a senior janitor! In Tsarskoye he was at their dacha, he jokes around, he’s in love, he says he fell in love with madame. Everyone jokes: “He says you can feed the hungry, you can enrich the poor, but as long as you’re in love and your object doesn’t interest you, there’s no help.” I don’t understand anything, sir, everyone is joking. They gave me a coat from their own shoulder, and this is Averyanov’s accountant - theirs, sir, a little wide. “Are you complying,” he says, Gvozdev? “Sorry, I say, Alexander Ivanovich, I’m a woman hunter.” Everyone is joking.
The old man spoke incessantly, confusedly, but did not sit down, and did not unclench his fist, and did not raise his hat.
A restless old man, he is so restless, he served with the Shakhovskys as grooms in St. Petersburg, a good position, but the horse went crazy, hit him in the chest, and he went to the monastery.
Since then, he has been moving around monasteries: from monastery to monastery he moves - such a restless warehouse - where he begins to get used to it, and immediately runs away from there.
He escaped from Cheremenetskoye about a month ago.
“A man I knew looked up to me and let me into his room. He rents a room on Zelenina, just a small room. The family man himself, Koryakin, his wife, a small child, a girl, looked after him: all four of them lived together. And on Holga’s day, their eldest daughter came to visit St. Petersburg, it was a little cramped and awkward: a girl. I moved to Obvodny, rented a corner - one and a half rubles with cucumbers, good angle in the aisle. I, Pyotr Alekseevich, would take up trading just to make a living somehow.
The old man spoke incessantly, confusedly, the words merged and hissed, a restless old man.
But Marakulin’s eyes were clouded, his eyelids grew heavy, he couldn’t see anything, only the old man’s wide Averyanov’s trousers dangled in front of his eyes, and not on his legs, but on his knuckles.
- I am a hunter of women... one and a half rubles with cucumbers, just to somehow survive.
Marakulin jumped up from his chair:
“Why, tell me, finally,” he shouted, “what to live for?”
But he was alone in the room and no one else.
He was alone in the room, he fell asleep while listening to the conversation, the old man guessed and with his last piglet, stealthily, he left unnoticed, just as he entered unnoticed.
And the hat was not lying on the floor.
The cat meowed, Murka meowed.
And suddenly Marakulin clearly thought, as he had never thought so clearly, that Murka always meowed, and not just yesterday, but for all five years here on the Fontanka, on the Burkov yard, and only he did not notice, and not only here on the Burkov yard - on the Fontanka , on Nevsky meowed and in Moscow, in Taganka - at the Resurrection in Taganka, where he was born and raised, wherever there is alive soul.
And how clearly he thought, how firmly it was said that from this meowing, from Murka, he could not hide anywhere.
And how firmly it was felt, how deeply it was felt that it was not in the yard where Murka was meowing, but here...
- Give me some air! - Murka meowed, as if she was reprimanding: give me some air! and rolled on the stones, looking up to the windows.
Closely, even more closely, the children squatted around her, forgot their wild games and wild works, became quiet, alert, and then the skull with milk stood untouched, and the Persian masseur from the baths, black, did not leave, circling the squirrels.
Only late in the evening did Marakulin move to his new room on the fifth floor, where there used to be a laundry room.
There was no one in the apartment except the cook Akumovna, the owner Adonia Ivoilovna had not yet returned - Adonia Ivoilovna went on pilgrimage in the summer, leaving the apartment to Akumovna, the other two rooms were empty.
On the first night of the housewarming, Marakulin had a dream that he was sitting at a table in some country garden opposite the stage - the Aquarium resembles a garden, and around all the people are strangers: their faces are angry and restless, and everyone is walking, purring, everyone is whispering about him they purr and have bad things on their minds, oh, bad things! His fear began to disassemble, and more and more of them approached, and the circle closed more closely, and they stopped whispering, but with their eyes they show each other, understand each other, point at him. And there is no doubt: he cannot stay here any longer - he will be killed. He stood up and unnoticed towards the exit, and they were right behind him: that’s right - they will kill. They will kill him, they will strangle him, where can he go, where can he hide? Lord, if only there was just one person, just one person! And they are on the heels, close, about to catch up. He fell into the grotto and fell face down on the stones. And suddenly, like a stone, a bird landed on his back, not an eagle, but a kite that carries chickens, grabbed it tightly with its claws, lifted it behind his back, pinching everything, like he was hurting chickens. "Thief, thief, thief!" - knocks with his beak. And it became heavy, heavy, his heart sank, his heart broke, his hands dropped, and there was no doubt at all: he would never get up, never stand on his feet—and it was hard, and bitterness, and mortal melancholy.
“It’s not a good dream,” said Akumovna, when the next morning Marakulin told Akumovna about the night people and the kite bird, “to see him before illness, you will definitely get sick.”
And the sickness-illness had already taken hold, he was broken all over, he was weakened, and his head was hanging, he was already sick: in the morning he barely finished a glass of tea and a piece did not go down his throat.
It was Peter the Great's heat, and he was shaking as if in Epiphany frost.
Akumovna is divine, so in the Burkov court they called Akumovna divine, kind soul, put Marakulin to bed, and gave him raspberries to drink, and put out mustard plasters, followed him in and out day and night.
The sickness-disease got rid of him and moved away from him.

Remizov Alexey

Cross Sisters

ALEXEY REMIZOV

Cross Sisters

Dedicated to S.P. Remizova-Dovgello

Chapter first

Marakulin was friends with Glotov not at all because their official business was closely connected with one another, one could not do without the other: Pyotr Alekseevich issued coupons, Alexander Ivanovich was the cashier.

The order is well known: Marakulin will only write in ink, and Glotov will count out exactly the same thing only in gold.

And both of them are so different and dissimilar: one is narrow-chested and has a stringy mustache, the other is wide and has a cat’s mustache, one looks from the inside, the other blurs.

But still, friends: there is only one bread and salt.

They both had a mark - a quality, and such a fundamental one, you can’t hide it in any way, in a sleepy person it will gleam under the eyelids, and besides, it doesn’t matter at all whether it’s stuffed in the pupil somewhere or runs out from the pupil over the apple: the proboscis looks like some kind of antennae they both had one, and this proboscis did not just cling to life, but somehow sucked into itself everything living, everything that lives around life, down to a blade of grass that breathes, to a small pebble that grows, and sucked in with some kind of greed and fun, and somehow infectious fun. That's it.

Those who needed it saw, those who didn’t see, they felt, and those who didn’t feel, they guessed.

Well, youth - both are about thirty or thirty-something, and luck - both of them somehow managed everything, and strength - both of them have never been sick and have never complained about any teeth, and no there is no connection, neither legal nor lawless, as in the steppe alone, but the steppe has unfolded in all its breadth and power, free, free, free - yours.

About three years ago, it seems, Glotov threw his lawful wife from the third floor onto the pavement, and the poor thing’s skull was cut in half, and not three years, no, perhaps it will be all four, however, it doesn’t matter, it’s not about Glotov at all, and in Marakulin, we are talking about Pyotr Alekseevich Marakulin. Infecting his colleagues with fun and carefreeness, Marakulin once admitted that although he was thirty years old, for some reason, and without knowing it, he considered himself exactly, well, twelve years old, and gave examples: when, say, If he happens to meet someone or enter into a conversation, it’s as if the older ones are all old, and he’s the youngest – small, about twelve years old. And Marakulin also admitted that he did not at all resemble a person, at least not like those real people whom you constantly see in the theater, at meetings, in clubs, when they enter or leave, speak or are silent, angry or happy, well, doesn’t look a bit like him, and everything must be out of place for him, from his nose to his little finger, so it seems to him. And Marakulin also admitted that he never thinks about anything, he just doesn’t feel like he’s thinking, and if he walks along the streets, then he walks like that, well, he just walks with his feet, and when you meet him, he makes no difference does not notice any peculiarities either in the face or in the movements of his new acquaintance and only vaguely feels that one attracts, the other repels, one is closer, the other is farther, and the third is all the same, but more often the feeling of closeness and confidence in goodwill prevails. And Marakulin also admitted that since he began to read books and encountered people, the most opposite opinions did not frighten him at all and he was ready to agree with everyone, considering everyone right in his own way, and did not argue, and if he broke through and he even bullied himself, then for completely indisputable reasons, which, by the way, he was perfectly aware of every time, but he just didn’t show it to his face - you never know how many such indisputable, everyday reasons there are! And Marakulin also admitted that he had never cried, and only once, when the old nanny left, on her last day: then, crawling into the closet, he choked on his first and last tears. And he had one remarkable extravagant quality, which they usually laughed at: some trifles would pop into his head, and he would grab hold of them and with such tenacity, as if the whole essence was in them and his own life, - after all, the whole thing is made of he will invent nonsense for himself! For the holiday, a report is submitted to the director, the report is usually written on a machine - the most ordinary report, but for some reason he will certainly want to rewrite it himself and with his own hand, and although it is more likely to be made easier and simpler by machine and there are such forms, this He’s not embarrassed at all, as much as possible! - both nights and days he stubbornly writes out letter after letter, scribbles evenly, as if he were tracing with beads, and rewrites it more than once until he achieves such a report, even if he takes it to an exhibition, that’s even what it is! - Marakulin was famous for his handwriting. Tomorrow this report will be put into papers somewhere, no one will pay much attention, no one needs it, and a lot of time and labor have been spent and to no avail. An extravagant person and stubborn in his extravagance. Yes, and even more wonderfully, Marakulin told about some inexplicable extraordinary joy of his, and he experienced it completely unexpectedly: another time he ran to work in the morning and suddenly, for no reason, as if his heart would flutter in his chest, fill his chest and become unusually joyful. And such is his joy, it will so embrace everything and so much of it, he would take it, it seems, from his chest, from his very heart, and distribute it to everyone - and there would be enough for everyone, he would take it, like a bird, in both handfuls and, blowing with his mouth So that this bird of paradise does not freeze, does not flutter out, I would carry it along Nevsky: let them see it, and breathe in its warmth, and feel its light, the quiet light and warmth that the heart breathes and shines with joy.

Of course, you can’t judge yourself, you can’t get away with confessions: it happened, it didn’t happen, who can figure it out? - but love for life and flair for life, gaiety of spirit, this was true in him.

Listening to Marakulin and seeing how he approached people, from his smile and gaze, the thought sometimes came that someone like him was always ready to enter a cage of a rabid beast and not blink, and without hesitation would stretch out his hand to Stroke the wild fur of an animal, and the animal will not bite.

And how upset Marakulin was when it was unexpectedly and unexpectedly revealed that he, like everyone else, could be hated, that he also had his own ill-will, that he was a log in the world for someone, and God knows why. looks great!

But you could do anything with Marakulin!

And if he managed to live to be thirty years old and successfully, then there is one miracle - an incredible thing.

Yes, rather, they loved Pyotr Alekseevich, and not just like that, deeply and very much, but there was nothing not to love him for - fun and laughter and not just a simple one, but some kind of drunk, Marakulinsky, why hate him!

And yet it didn’t end very lovingly; Pyotr Alekseevich ended badly.

So it was: Marakulin was expecting a promotion and reward for Easter - in rich trading offices there are a fair amount of rewards for the holiday, but instead of a promotion and reward, he was kicked out of the service.

It happened: Pyotr Alekseevich served for five years, was in charge of the coupon books for five years, and everything was in perfect working order and accurate - Marakulin was jokingly nicknamed the German for his accuracy and accuracy - but the directors started checking the books before the holidays, and how they began to check and count - and there was a hitch: something just didn’t add up, something was missing, and maybe mere trifles were missing, but the matter is big, these trifles and confusion can confuse the whole thing.

They took away his books and his hat.

At first, Marakulin didn’t believe it, he simply refused to believe it, he thinks to himself: it’s like they’re making fun of him, like they’re blowing a trumpet for the sake of fun, for greater merriment, and so - before the holiday!

He laughs and goes to explain himself, and also not without a joke.

Allow, they say, such and such a thief, and a robber, and a traveler to explain his theft...

And in one explanatory letter addressed to a very important and influential director, the signature was signed by not just Pyotr Marakulin, but the thief Pyotr Marakulin and expropriator.

"The thief Pyotr Marakulin and the expropriator."

Ha-ha... - he is the first to laugh.

Yes, the joke apparently didn’t work, nothing funny came out, or it did, but no one noticed, and no one laughs, on the contrary.

And the funniest thing seemed to be the answer of one young accountant - this accountant is a small, quiet man, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, and he doesn’t even have a title.

ALEXEY REMIZOV

Cross Sisters

Dedicated to S. P. Remizova-Dovgello

Chapter first

The order is well known: Marakulin will only write in ink, and Glotov will count out exactly the same thing only in gold.

And both of them are so different and dissimilar: one is narrow-chested and has a stringy mustache, the other is wide and has a cat’s mustache, one looks from the inside, the other blurs.

But still, friends: there is only one bread and salt.

Those who needed it saw, those who didn’t see, they felt, and those who didn’t feel, they guessed.

But you could do anything with Marakulin!

And if he managed to live to be thirty years old and successfully, then there is one miracle - an incredible thing.

And yet it didn’t end very lovingly; Pyotr Alekseevich ended badly.

They took away his books and his hat.

He laughs and goes to explain himself, and also not without a joke.

Allow, they say, such and such a thief, and a robber, and a traveler to explain his theft...

Ha-ha... - he is the first to laugh.

And in one explanatory letter addressed to a very important and influential director, the signature was signed by not just Pyotr Marakulin, but the thief Pyotr Marakulin and expropriator.

Alexey Mikhailovich Remizov (1877 - 1957).

When the novel was published, KS gained wide popularity. The text of R was studied from different angles, called neorealistic, a novel about a little man, an official. The tragedy of a little man. Neorealism is realism that reduces the distance between everyday life and metaphysics and mysticism. This text fits into the laws of symbolist prose. R connects the myth of Russian history with Merezhkovsky's trilogy. national history. R creates a myth about Russian national history and the fate of the Russian people. The artistic logic of the novel is based on several ideas: 1) a person lives through several stages in his life - childhood consciousness; underground consciousness (according to Dostoevsky, suffering, unable to explain what is happening to him and others, the transition occurs “suddenly”); the death of a person due to the general state of the world, as a world of total evil, chaos, indifference (man is a log to man = the madness of Sologub, the paganism of Merezhkovsky); 2) projecting the fate of the Russian people onto the fate of Russia: Peter’s Russia is the false path of the nation, imposed by Peter’s Europeanization, Peter is the Bronze Horseman. For R, the myth of Peter - the myth of the Tsar raped the Russian soul; Russia is a victim of violence, suffering (name, female characters); the salvation of Russia lies in the utmost suffering and death of those who suffer in the name of a future resurrection. Russia, through its suffering, must announce to the world its missionary role. Plot, character system, mythopoetics.

Gg - Pyotr Alekseevich Marakulin, the lack of clarity of his consciousness. Stage 1 – consists of infantile childhood. It ends by chance when M is fired from service. The hero from infantile joy goes into the state of a hunted animal, which everyone avoids; according to the logic of R, this state of resentment and loneliness, the irrationalism of the surrounding is healing, because a person is able to go beyond own destiny, to find sisters of the cross, to see that everyone around is suffering. M lives in the profitable Burkov house. Everyone suffers, especially women women's destiny, as a projection of Russian sacrifice. Three heroines are named Vera. The bearers of this name have lost faith in divine justice. A woman’s destiny is to become a victim of violence, including physical violence. Mother M had the most sacrificial fate; she was subjected to violence. The mythological logic of P leads to a paradoxical turn - female victims blame themselves, bear one cross, and take all the evil upon themselves. Salvation lies in bringing us to the extreme of suffering. M, seeing the suffering of people, comes to the Bronze Horseman, he is a victim of Peter’s story, a fragmented consciousness. Contamination from replicas different characters who tried to escape in their own way. M absorbs misfortunes and gives them to the Bronze Horseman, but can only complain to him, express the creation of an insane consciousness. Final stage– death due to the indirect fault of P1. He dies on the night from Saturday to Sunday on Trinity. The inexplicable death of the victim, who absorbed all the violence of Peter’s history and whose death should herald the beginning of a new stage.

Impressionism in the context of older symbolism.

Impressionism as an aesthetic and poetic feature. The art of the turn of the era was called Art Nouveau (Jugenstil). He opposed positivism, rationalism, imperialism, and relied on the idea of natural growth, on the line of plant geometry (Vrubel, Roerich). IN verbal art Art Nouveau style took shape in the direction of impressionism. Russian impressionism did not produce manifestos or a coherent system. In accordance with classical meaning words impressionism, poetics is based on the primary, sensual, recreation of the impression of reality.

Konstantin Balmont (1866 - 1942)

He was a unique translator who knew great amount languages. He was a traveler who reached the most remote regions. He felt organic to world culture. The first collection “Under the Northern Sky”, 1894, “In the Boundless” 1895, “Silence” 1897, “Burning Buildings” 1900, “We Will Be Like the Sun”, “Only Love”, “Liturgy of Beauty” 1905.

The transformation from decadence indicates evolution, the intermediate collections in Vastness and Silence, then close to classical Young Symbolism.

B discovers the cult of the moment, the impression of it, the ability to see eternity in any moment. Abundance of flora: lilies of the valley, grass, feather grass. The flexibility of the world and vegetation, the perception of an instant change of the world is classical impressionist poetics, characterized by a certain set of specific tropes. Lyrical subject B cultivates not only the world as a change of impressions, but also sees himself as a spontaneous genius, in which a romantic type of consciousness is discerned, a type of consciousness that categorically does not accept everyday life, a type of supramundane consciousness. Horizontally - vastness, vertically - I caught the departing shadows with a dream...

“I caught the departing shadows with a dream...” - epigraph to the collection “In the Boundless.”

The position of supra-mundaneity is conquered by the lyrical subject, romantic cliches. The position of supermundaneity is important in order to establish oneself in one’s superhumanity, to establish contact with the entire universe, I = world. LH is capable of wandering; a wandering spirit, exploring the world extensively, turns out to be an eternal traveler, a companion of any culture. A lot of geographical names in verse. Travel not only in space, but also in time. The boundaries between territories and cultures are blurred; the entire culture is a single text-myth.

Romantic type consciousness at the limit of comprehension of all cultures leads to another world, which is shaped like the lunar world, mysterious dreams, singing, sighs.

Concept of creativity: spontaneous genius - emphasis on unpredictability, concept of art involves relying on momentary impressions.

In the 1900s, another turn to the intensity of experiences (“Four Accord of the Elements”) appeared, a focus on intensity, the ability to experience intensely. The intensity of experience does not lead away from the poetic dominant; impressions are no longer absorbed sequentially, but are absorbed and embodied synchronously. This impression is not only from space world, but also from love. Symbolism B in to a lesser extent demonic.

Innokenty Annensky (1855 - 1909)

He taught ancient languages and translated ancient classics. As a teacher, I did not imagine my entry into modern poetry. Annensky left only 2 poetry collection"Quiet Songs" and "Cypress Casket". The names betrayed innate modesty, there was no automythologizing, the signature was Nick-t. O – cultural genealogy (Odysseus), and reluctance to advertise.

The “Cypress Casket” was divided into 2 subcycles:

1. Trefoils – microcycles of three verses, united by a title and theme.

2. Folds - mini-cycles of 2 poems

3. Scattered sheets are not related topic poetry. Illustrates the fragmented consciousness of man, fragmentary poetic images.

LH A is identified with modern man(I am a weak son of a sick generation), a resident of St. Petersburg
, an intellectual suffering under conditions modern world, this world is recognizable and prosaic, a material world. Vocabulary A is prosaic (old barrel organ, alarm clock\clock, vocabulary of melting dirty snow, station station, etc.). domestic prosaic world- aesthetic poetic discovery, everyday life of the world. This material world is demonized, fraught with hidden horror, evil, hopelessness. Demonization does not give rise to specific individual myths, the sense of the world is demonized, impressions of the world and of one’s own are demonic inner world, discord, illness (Tavern of Life) - the inner world of a person living in a terrible world, but there is no infernality, an everyday terrible world. In such a world a man dwells (Man - sonnet) – confusing human consciousness, life is like a wound-up mechanism, man is not free, man is revealed as a half-beast, half-child - a man in the tavern of life.

The complex of impressions from the tavern of life comes down to three states: boredom, torment, melancholy. They are often written with a capital letter. There is a dynamic through boredom to anguish and melancholy. Boredom unites people, torment separates lies from the context of ordinary people, because - suffering from one’s own unfulfillment, from the thirst for creativity; melancholy is thought of as high spiritual state, the memory of past unity with the absolute and ideals, is characteristic of a creative person, presupposes the search for an ideal (Bow and strings).

Impressionism A begins when lyrical subjects do not represent a romantic dual world, but an attempt to lie in finding connections with this world. A is an internal traitor in decadence. Attempts not to move away from the world, but to find connections with it; it is not only terrible, but also beautiful (= Acmeism) (A painful sonnet). “The melancholy of the station” is a cone-shaped plot, the counterweight is a locomotive, the point is a symbol, completion. Finding connections with the real world.

Alexander Blok (1880 - 1921)

Blok represents St. Petersburg symbolism.

Lyrical trilogy of “incarnation”.

For the first time, the term lie was used by Tynyanov in connection with Blok’s lyrics, meaning difficult relationships between the author and the hero of the work, the lie is not equal to the real author, but carries within itself the features of a generation and the universal qualities of a person’s inner world. Blok’s fate is dramatic, incorporating two historical and cultural branches: his father Blok left his mother before his birth; his mother, nee Beketova, the daughter of the rector of the university, the line of the Russian democratic intelligentsia, had a greater influence on him.

In 1909, B wrote an article “The Soul of a Writer,” where he brilliantly defined the spiritual and artistic logic, formulated the idea and theme of the Path. He wrote that the first sign that a writer is not a random variable is a sense of direction. For B, the Path is a category of spiritual development and growth, for the second - a poetic theme, the motive of the Path, movement, tragedy and unstoppability. The Path category determined the structure of the lyrical trilogy.

Block structured all texts three times

Periodization of creativity

1. 1898 – 1904 – PD period

2. 1904 – 1907-8

3. 1908 - 1916 - the first PSS is published, the chronological principle is basically preserved here, in 1916 the second SS, the texts are subject to radical editing.

4. 1917 - 1921 - third SS, B again reworks his three-volume work.

Editorial principle: violation of chronology, which followed the imperative of the category of path - evolution spiritual path author. “on the railway” was originally in the cycle “ Scary world”, then B transferred it to the “Motherland” cycle. The terrible world and homeland are not only not separated, but also communicate.

The reverse evolution is from the Young Symbolist mysticism of the first volume to the decadent picture of the world of the third volume.

Lyrical trilogy B is a change of stable pictures of the world in the center of which there is one dominant image-symbol. The image-symbol in the first volume is PD, the picture of the world of the second volume: the image-symbol is elemental life; third volume: complication of the picture of the world, two dominant images-symbols - a terrible world and homeland.

Volume 1 – house (house as a cultural space).

Volume 2 – feast (release of inner passions and instincts).

Volume 3 - peace (a state of mind when the hero suddenly finds himself faced with a choice, understands that the need has come to become human, a social person, fearlessly facing the world).

The informal nature of the structure of the lyrical trilogy.

"Ante lucem" tribute to university education, dialogue with great culture, student cycle, dialogue with romanticism. B as predecessors of the Jena romantics, Zhuekowski, etc. Poetics, playing with romantic cliches, playing with cultural languages.

"Poems about PD"

1. the only cycle in which the texts maintain a chronological sequence can be read like a lyrical diary.

"Crossroads"

Lg, after the crisis of the ideal, remains at a spiritual crossroads

The lyrical cycle is a method of integration, a unification in which each poem adds meaning in the overall context.

In B, every poem plays a role epigraph.

Solovyov's myth about eternal femininity in the cycle “Poems about PD”.

The tragic image of a man in a terrible world in the third volume of the trilogy.

The image of Rus'-Russia in the cycle “Motherland”.

Image modern Russia, Nekrasov's images. Social suffering is aggravated by the situation of a love affair between the country and the Motherland. Symbolist-romantic. Flows in verse love story Russia and lies. The female appearance of Russia is not so much non-Kerasian-maternal, as Russia is endowed with youth, a young country, a bride, a wife, a young girl. Russia remembers beauty. The features of PD in the national scenery create an inseparable image of Russia as a woman. One of the cross-cutting plots is love union, marriage between LG and Russia. The path is tragic, linear, unnatural. Willingness to share a terrible and tragic path with beloved Russia. Russia is a young country (“New America”). Russia, which perished under the iron wheels of fate ( Railway was endowed with strong semiotics and mythologization). Iron fate, iron age, history, civilization, melancholy (road, iron). The motive of unclaimed youth, love and beauty, the unrealization of Russia.

The motive of variability or inconsistency and inconstancy national peace(“To sin shamelessly, uncontrollably...”). Changes in holiness and sinfulness, Russia is not only not idealized, but its sinful substance is emphasized.

Historical aspect: the lyrical hero is ready for co-crucifixion. Lg includes the community we are the voice of the generation. Origin lyrical image Christ. Balancing your sorrowful fate with the high sacrificial fate of Christ.

Blok's poems (“The Nightingale Garden”, “Retribution”, “The Twelve”)

The third volume is not only an interweaving of pictures of a terrible world and homeland. Cycle "Iambics". The poem “Retribution” is iambic tetrameter. In iambics the reverse process occurs, life and non-life fall into place. “Harps and Violins” - the musical sound of the world. The cycle “Italian Poems”, Italy’s loss of memory of its past brilliant culture. The cycle “Carmen” (L. A. Delmas), the seed from which the poem “The Nightingale Garden” grew. The Spanish-gypsy theme is a kind of anachronism in the 3rd volume of the terrible world. This cycle was born in the process of writing the poem “The Nightingale Garden”. I transferred reflection on the work of the SS poem to cycle B. One of the key lyrical situations is the situation of choice. This situation of choice is complemented by the choice between passion and duty. Passion is not only love, but also the passion of creativity. The first poem for the cycle “A Terrible World” is “To the Muse”: the nature of creativity is a demonic passion that removes a person from history, life, ethics. Blok reconsiders his understanding of lyrics as a sphere of realization of aesthetic consciousness (“From now on I am not a lyricist, since lyrics do not teach life”). One-sidedness and inferiority of the lyrical type of consciousness. The block is recognized as having a different need genre form- a poem that allows you to epically embrace reality, to go beyond the individual framework.

"Nightingale Garden".

The poem is cemented by the plot of the fate of a lieutenant, who allegedly chose his earthly path - hard, unaesthetic work. The semantics of donkey are multi-layered. Song in SS, the garden reproduces Eden. Compared to the cycle of poems about PD and its innocence, here the theme is the accessibility and openness of paradise, where you can hide from hard work. Return to the world of love, passion and wine - the second part, the temptation to return to the garden. The third is awareness, the hero wakes up at the dawn of an unknown day, time and night and eternity. Stage 4 – readiness to return to work, self-exile from paradise. The last 7th chapter is the irreversible changes that occurred during his absence from heaven. Inextricably ambiguous ending () my path, someone else's donkey - a tragic collision. Self-exile from paradise does not provide the opportunity to return to oneself, eternity has forgotten about it, and self-consciousness has led to the irreversibility of betrayal. SS is a betrayal of one’s path, it is impossible to make the same choice, life drives out lies, creates retribution on it. The tragedy of no return and irreversibility of betrayal.

B’s only experience in the genre of epic poem is fragments of the poem “Retribution”: prose preface, prologue, first chapter, introduction to the second chapter, third chapter, lyrical conclusion. This poem is autobiographical, about the fate of 4 generations of a noble family: grandfathers, fathers, the Lg generation, the hypothetical generation of the Lg son, who would be born from the Lg and a simple Polish girl. The semantics of “Retribution” is retribution committed by the new generation towards their fathers. Each generation is doomed to retribution: the grandfathers did not see the terrible national cataclysms, they turned out to be blind, their helplessness; demonism of fathers, self-destruction, decadent complex. Lg is incapable of making ethical choices. He is ready for his son's retribution. Prolog captures the situation of choice. Self-report. Pushkin's ideal.

Twelve.

In the context of Blok’s articles and the poem “Scythians”. These texts realize B’s reflection on the phenomenon of revolution, on the clash of civilization and culture with revolution. Revolution is a cosmic phenomenon, a tragic element - the object of destruction - Christianity and culture. The only event - the murder of Katka by Petrukha - is a travesty of Russian history, turned into a farce; Katka bears the image of the PD. Petrukha is trying to drown out the voice of sin. The struggle within sin and sinlessness. Christ remains in souls, despite the struggle with him, continues his sacrificial mission, Christ as a victim - co-crucifixion.

Mandelstam.

A sober, courageous outlook on life.

1 collection “Stone” - the realization of Acmeist aesthetics. The stone varies with the images of a shell, a fruit, which form the widest space, the stone is a way of arranging space, at the basis of a temple and a house. Words are also stone, the basis for constructing a text. Stone semantics expands eternity. The sink is the house. The fruit is a semakntika of growth. The dominant theme of architecture stands out - the favorite style is Gothic. The embodiment of the idea of structuring and domestication, everything architectural structures bear traces of human cultural efforts. M's early poetry does not express the individual self. Architecture is a trace of a culture left behind. Culture not only subjugates the world of chaotic nature. Eternity and infinity. They admit it, but are skeptical. Culture is victory over chaos, inhabiting emptiness. Creativity is the act of creating the world. The poet is an architect. The concept of social architecture, the organizing mission of the state. Human society is a chaos that needs harmonization.

"Petersburg stanzas"

Stanza 1 – Russia – a legal state, an empire, a window to Europe, the splendor of an empire, in porphyry clothing.

Pushkinsky Evgeniy- a small man, a representative of all people who have experienced the violence of history. For M, the pressure of history is a necessity that must be reconciled in the name of future humanization. The warmth of the cultural shell will save and warm a person. Crimea is like St. Petersburg - Cultural Center, Crimea preserves the memory of antiquity, of Ovid.

Art transforms nature into home, culture, and them into religion.

To the mournful elegies of Ovid. Poems were written during the revolution. This is a break in cultural continuity. Grief and separation - keyword. “Twilight of Freedom”, “In St. Petersburg we will meet again.”

"Twilight of Freedom"

The ambiguity of the word twilight is like dawn and like sunset. Stanza 1 suggests that twilight is dawn. This is the readiness lyrical hero, identifying himself with the son of the century, views post-revolutionary times as the triumph of freedom.

But in other stanzas we glorify the fateful time - evening twilight - a foreshadowing of the death of culture.

Parting.

I learned the science of breaking up

We will meet again in St. Petersburg.

Poems 21-25

A chill tickles the crown...

"Century", 1922

Key temporal concepts, images – century, time, year, etc. century is a beast with a broken ridge, the lie looks with pity and compassion, it looks at its own historical time. Growing chaos. The flute is the spine. Lg is ready with his flute, in a word, with art, ready to begin to connect the vertebrae of two centuries.

“January 1, 1924” - the image of the century is humanized. Anxiety, a premonition of impossibility, the impossibility for the poet to fulfill his mission, because the century is not capable of dialogue with the poet, anticipation of the death of one’s own and the century. Lips are poetry. The organics of life and culture are doomed. Lg is not capable of being contemporary with his age.

No, I have never been anyone’s contemporary...

The logic of self-refutation. An apartment is an evil place to live. Trying to fit yourself into space new history

For the explosive valor of the coming centuries..., 1937

Determination to have nothing to do with this age. Metaphor of the age-beast, age-wolfhound. last try turn to the century, point out that the lie is not alien to the century. The subsequent stanzas are a disagreement with the age; there was no humanization of history. The desire to remove oneself from a terrible world.

The nature of lies is changing rapidly

New poems - collection.

Many were written in Moscow. He was exiled to Cherdyn, Perm exile. At the end of his exile he lived in Voronezh.

Moscow poems.

“Leningrad”, “people howl like animals”, “eyelashes prick. A tear sank into my chest,” “the apartment is as quiet as paper,” “Alexander Gertsevich lived,” “We live beneath us without feeling the country.”

The logic of Moscow poems. Dialogue with the century is not possible; topics can be divided into “historical subjects, characters”, when we're talking about about the growth of social chaos and catastrophe, the impossibility of culturalizing history. The dominant feature of history is ugliness, distortion of the norms of life, reverse evolution, cavernousness, the matter of life becomes impossible for humans. A story that exposes a person to suffering.

House of the first thirds of the XIX century. The owner of the house and plot was tradesman F.I. Krivdin, for whom in 1905 the architect A.P. Shiltsov rebuilt the house. Krivdin sold it to Colonel Andrei Petrovich Shuvalov. Shuvalov himself lived in another place; no one had ever seen him in this house.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the writer and excellent stylist Alexey Remizov (1877-1957) lived in this house. In this house in 1910 he wrote “The Sisters of the Cross”. The story was intended for two types of readers. The first type is the ordinary average reader who is not familiar with the true background of this work. Such a reader will see that the main character of the story is house 9 in Cossack Lane, which in the story is called “Burkov House”. The residents of the house served as prototypes for some of the characters. Dostoevsky was Remizov's idol, and this is clearly felt in the story. At the same time, such a reader will also feel bitter irony, and sometimes caustic satire.

In fact, the story was intended for the second type of readers, knowledgeable about literary life of that time and able to decipher from hints in the text true meaning.
The fact is that in 1909 Remizov was groundlessly accused of literary plagiarism. In "Birzhevye Vedomosti" famous critic Alexander Izmailov published an article in which he called Remizov a thief, an expropriator. This article was replicated by other newspapers. Remizov tried to justify himself, but no one wanted to listen to him, many turned away from him and stopped publishing his notes in newspapers. The circle of acquaintances fell apart. This led to the deterioration of the already not brilliant financial situation. But a group of criminal press reporters appeared with an offer to work - drowned people, massacres, stabbings, scandals. This gave Remizov at least some income.
That’s when Alexey Mikhailovich decided to answer in the genre of a confessional pamphlet. Later he wrote: “I guess I won’t write anything like this again because of the tension, the grief against the world. ‹...› This is a very painful memory.”
So, characters– Marakulin, who lives in the “Burkov House”, is Remizov himself, who lived at that time in Kazachye 9. The bastard Alexander Glotov, Marakulin’s colleague because of whom all the troubles began, is the critic Alexander Izmailov. Akumovna –V.V. Rozanov (religious philosopher, literary critic and publicist), friend of Remizov. Gorbachev - D.S. Merezhkovsky and F. Sologub, three Faiths - V.F. Komissarzhevskaya, inspector Obraztsov - I.F. Annensky, literature teacher Leshchev - N. S. Gumilyov. The merchant Plotnikov is Velimir Khlebnikov, with whom Remizov was in a quarrel at that time. Plotnikov’s drunken nonsense about the “Russian fly” that will grind everyone into powder is an ironic allusion to Khlebnikov’s theory about “Russification” globe».
At the same time, you need to understand that all the characters are just hints at real prototypes, on the one hand it can be an exact reproduction appearance, and on the other hand - a significant departure from the real character, even to the point of being presented in reverse.

Description of the house and its inhabitants:
Burkov's house does not abut any wall.
Against: - Obukhov hospital. There are two courtyards between the house and the hospital: Burkov's courtyard and the Belgian Society. Plant of the Belgian Society for right hand- four brick chimneys with lightning rods smoke all day long, and that’s why there’s black soot between the frames.

Akumovna always complains about this soot when cleaning the rooms before the holiday, but for some reason she blames not the brick Belgian chimneys, but the huge milky electric lantern that illuminates the Belgian yard.
“Burkov’s house is the whole of St. Petersburg!” That's what they liked to say at Burkov's yard. The front end of the house leads to the alley leading to the barracks - rich apartments.
The owner Burkov himself, a former governor, lives there: you can see from his uniform, like electricity, and the hallway is full of shoulder straps and buttons.

On the floor above there is an Amsterdam attorney at law, he occupies two apartments.
Even higher - Oshurkov's husband and wife - ten rooms, all ten are decorated with different small things and an aquarium with fish, the servants change every now and then.
The Oshurkovs' neighbor is a German, a doctor of medicine in Wittenstaube, who treats all diseases with X-rays.
Above the Oshurkovs and Wittenstaube was General Kholmogorov, or louse, as the general’s wife was called in the courtyard.
No one lives above the general’s wife, but under Burkov himself there is an office and a bakery on the corner.
Nobody saw Burkov himself, and there were only rumors about some kind of self-destruction of his, as if, while governing somewhere in Purkhovets and exterminating sedition, he turned around so much that he signed, among other papers, a report to the ministry about his complete unsuitability, and safely, but Quite unexpectedly for himself, he was recalled to St. Petersburg, where he received his resignation.

On the contrary, everyone saw Kholmogorov’s general’s wife and everyone knew very well that she would only have enough percent until her death, and she would live another fifty - strong and alive, she would outlive everyone, or, in the words of the palmist, the end of her life was not in sight, and they knew so about the general’s wife, that on Tuesdays she goes to the bathhouse to steam, and has become so hardened that she doesn’t age, but everyone is in the same position, and they also knew, and God knows from where, that in spirit she seemed to have nothing at all to repent of: not she killed and did not steal and will not kill and will not steal, because she only feeds - drinks and eats - digests and hardens, and, finally, they knew that she leaves the house only with a folding chair, and she takes it in case, if they attack, and so with a chair you can meet her every day walking along the Fontanka for exercise, and on Saturdays and Sundays, on holidays and on holidays on Zagorodny to and from church.

Every day at noon, Burkov's maid Susanna appears in the yard, looking more like some young lady - a department typist than a maid, leading the beautiful governor's dog - the red dog Inspector - around the yard, barely holding back the annoying steel chain.

On Wednesdays, carpets are taken out into the yard, and before holidays cushioned furniture, and the floor polishers are shaken out and knocked out so diligently and with such thunder that sometimes it seems like cannons are being fired on the Neva: either an assassination attempt or a flood. And all these carpets and furniture from the front end are from rich apartments: from Burkov, Amsterdam, Oshurkov, from Wittenstaube and Kholmogorov’s general’s wife.

The black end of the house - the apartments are small and the residents are average, and most are small.
There is a shoemaker, a tailor, a baker, bath attendants, hairdressers, a laundry, two seamstresses, three dressmakers, a nurse from Obukhovskaya, conductors, machinists, hat makers, umbrella makers, brush makers, clerks, plumbers, typesetters and various mechanics, technicians and electrical foremen with their families. , with rags, with bubbles, with jars and cockroaches, and all sorts of young ladies from Gorokhovaya and Zagorodny, seamstress girls, and girls from the teahouse, and smart young men from the baths, serving the St. Petersburg ladies on demand.
There are also corners.
The owner of the corners, the merchant Gorbachev, is silent, that’s his nickname from the yard, a stocky, beleaguered, gray-haired old man, pious, who fumigates all his thirty corners with incense on Saturdays; he has three stalls on the Champ de Mars.
On Gorbachev’s holiday, girls in black headscarves and nuns-pickers in boots crowd around, and on Easter all these daughters sing chants and cheerfully and fervently sing to him of Christ is Risen.
Everyone knows Gorbachev and doesn’t really like him, but Gorbachev can’t stand children.
General Kholmogorova, as they say, also can’t stand children, and she never had her own, but Gorbachev had a girl, and he kept her in an empty rat closet and broke her fingers until he sent her to the next world.

The kids tease Gorbachev, give him all sorts of nicknames, follow him in wild flocks, make fun of his incense and his nose, which is overgrown with horsehair, and that’s why you rarely hear something in the prison yard, but the prison is an academy.
- The times are ripe, the cup of sin is fulfilled, punishment is near, I will hang all of you scoundrels by a string! - grumbles the offended, silent old man, tormented by the children, and sniffs his Gorbachev-like nose in horsehair, fumigating all his thirty corners with incense on Saturdays and angrily and bitterly mixing the divine with the obscene.
Gorbachev's corners are famous.
Here is an old woman selling sunflowers, sunflower seeds, Tsaregrad pods, fringed lollipops with pink paper, and herring, and soaked barrels, and cooks without a place, and so on. different people, like the restless old man Gvozdev, and a painter, and a carpenter, and a beater, and there are peddlers.
The peddlers' cupboards - stalls - are above the Wood cellars from the garbage dump on one side, and from the garbage pit on the other.
Early in the morning, when the janitors are tidying up and sweeping the yard, the peddlers' trays are in full swing with work: apples, oranges, sear, prunes, dates and other sweets and delicacies, all of this is carefully and temptingly laid out and rearranged, refreshed and renewed and then delivered to the Fontanka, and it’s so tempting, so tasty, it seems you can’t resist buying at least a date or a bar of lean sugar that smells like toadstools for tea.
And just as Gorbachev’s corners are never empty, so the hawker stalls are always full of tempting sweets and delicacies.
Near the corners is a janitor's room. Seven wipers. Everyone looks so healthy and everyone is sick with something like that, well, at least one of them got caught laughing! And the work of a janitor is not an easy task, and the duty, and carry firewood, and carry it to the unit, do everything straight from the ax. One benefit is firewood. Only the front end of the house belongs to the masters, while the black ones are the small fry who buy their own firewood, and the Burkovsky janitors, all seven of them as one, earn firewood.

Above the janitor's room is the elder Mikhail Pavlovich, in his handsomeness he is more suitable for the Nevsky Lavra - if only he were not one of the last in the Lavra, he does not take less than a ruble on holidays.
Above Mikhail Pavlovich are the passport officer Erkin and the clerk Stanislav.
Yerkin is the first in the whole Burkov yard when it comes to drinking, everyone knows that. And on holidays, having climbed somewhere to the fifth floor, he will often call the apartment, babble that he has come for a holiday two-kopeck coin, but then drop on the threshold as if dead, otherwise he would also roll down the stairs either at Christmas or at Easter Yes, from step to step - likes and dislikes, until he was all torn on the stones and they refused to recognize him. After the New Year, on Epiphany, the janitor Antonina Ignatievna, the wife of Mikhail Pavlovich, a God-fearing woman, took him to his brother in Harbor to return him to the true path, and he returned to the true path: he gave his brother a vow - a receipt that he would stop drinking for a year until the new year . Erkin trades in hospital stamps, and the stamps for him are increasingly in rubles! - like firewood for a Burkovsky janitor.
Erkin's roommate - Stanislav the clerk, just like the fitter Kazimir, Stanislav's friend, has always been known for climbing all the stairs at night, and not a single cook or maid has ever been able to resist, and any Semyonovite 1 in front of them just rubbish.
Weddings, dead people, incidents, incidents, scandals, fights, fights, guards and police stations, and either a person screams, or a cat meows, or someone is strangled - so every day.

"Burkov's house is a real Vyazma 2!"

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1 – opposite Cossack Lane on the other side of Zagorodny there were barracks of the Semenovsky regiment
2 – the name of the Vyazemskaya Lavra quarter, which Krestovsky wrote about in the novel “Petersburg Slums”. Now this is the site of the Sennaya Market.

The panorama shows that in house No. 9 the first courtyard is quite narrow, but the back courtyard is wide. That's where they beat out the carpets. From the windows of the house facing the courtyard, you can see the Obukhovskaya hospital and the Belgian station.
1 - Vvedensky channel 1 - Obukhov hospital.
2- Vvedensky channel 2 - Complex of the central power station of the Belgian joint-stock company "Electric lighting of St. Petersburg". Because of the four pipes popular name“dead elephant” or “elephant is dead.” Dad said that during the blockade the pipes were cut down so as not to serve as a landmark.
9 – Cossack 9, “Burkov House”