Heroic character in literature. Poetics of fairy tales

1. Portrait- image of the hero’s appearance. As noted, this is one of the techniques for character individualization. Through a portrait, the writer often reveals the inner world of the hero, the features of his character. In literature, there are two types of portraits - unfolded and torn. The first is a detailed description of the hero’s appearance (Gogol, Turgenev, Goncharov, etc.), the second is that as the character develops, characteristic details of the portrait are highlighted (L. Tolstoy, etc.). L. Tolstoy categorically objected to a detailed description, considering it static and unmemorable. Meanwhile, creative practice confirms the effectiveness of this form of portraiture. Sometimes an idea of ​​the hero’s external appearance is created without portrait sketches, but with the help of a deep disclosure of the hero’s inner world, when the reader, as it were, completes the picture himself. “So, in Pushkin’s romance “Eugene Onegin” nothing is said about the color of the eyes or stripes of Onegin and Tatiana, but the reader imagines them as alive.

2. Actions. As in life, the character of a hero is revealed primarily in what he does, in his actions. The plot of the work is a chain of events in which the characters' characters are revealed. A person is judged not by what he says about himself, but by his behavior.

3. Individualization of speech. This is also one of the most important means of revealing the character of the hero, since in speech a person fully reveals himself. In ancient times there was an aphorism: “Speak so that I can see you.” The speech gives an idea of ​​the hero’s social status, his character, education, profession, temperament and much more. The talent of a prose writer is determined by the ability to reveal the hero through his speech. All Russian classic writers are distinguished by the art of individualizing the speech of characters.

4. Biography of the hero. In a work of fiction, the hero’s life is depicted, as a rule, over a certain period. The writer often brings up the day to reveal the origins of certain character traits) biographical information related to his past. Thus, in I. Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” there is a chapter “Oblomov’s Dream,” which tells about the hero’s childhood, and it becomes clear to the reader why Ilya Ilyich grew up lazy and completely unadapted to life. Biographical information important for understanding Chichikov’s character is given by N. Gogol in the novel “Dead Souls”.

5. Author's description . The author of the work acts as an omniscient commentator. He comments not only on events, but also on what is happening in the spiritual world of the heroes. The author of a dramatic work cannot use this means, since his direct presence does not correspond to the peculiarities of dramaturgy (his stage directions are partially fulfilled).

6. Characteristics of the hero by other characters. This tool is widely used by writers.

7. Hero's worldview. Each person has his own view of the world, his own attitude towards life and people, so the writer, to complete the characterization of the hero, illuminates his worldview. Typical example-Bazarov in I. Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”, expressing his nihilistic views.

8. Habits, manners. Each person has his own habits and manners that shed light on his personal qualities. The habit of teacher Belikov from A. Chekhov’s story “The Man in a Case” to carry an umbrella and galoshes in any weather, guided by the principle “no matter what happens,” characterizes him as a hardened conservative.

9. The hero's attitude towards nature. By how a person relates to nature, to “our smaller brothers” animals, one can judge his character, his humanistic essence. For Bazarov, nature is “not a temple, but a workshop, and a person is a worker.” The peasant Kalinich has a different attitude towards nature (“Khor and Kalinich” by I. Turgenev).

10. Property characteristics. The caves surrounding a person give an idea of ​​his material wealth, profession, aesthetic taste and much more. Therefore, writers widely use this tool, attaching great importance to the so-called artistic details. So, in the living room of landowner Manilov (“Dead Souls” by N. Gogol), the furniture has been standing unpacked for several years, and on the table there is a book, open for the same number of years on page 14.

11.Psychological analysis tools: dreams, letters, diaries, revealing the hero’s inner world. Tatyana's dream, letters from Tatyana and Onegin in A.S. Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin" help the reader understand internal state heroes.

12. Meaningful (creative) surname. Often, to characterize characters, writers use surnames or given names that correspond to the essence of their characters. Great masters of creating such surnames in Russian literature were N. Gogol, M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, A. Chekhov. Many of these surnames became household names: Derzhimorda, Prishibeev, Derunov, etc.

In modern literary criticism there are clear differences: 1) biographical author- creative person, existing in extra-artistic, primary-empirical reality, and 2) the author in his intratextual, artistic embodiment.

An author in the first meaning is a writer who has his own biography (the literary genre of scientific biography of a writer is known, for example, the four-volume work of S.A. Makashin, dedicated to the biography of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, etc.), creating, composing another reality - verbal and artistic statements of any kind and genre, claiming ownership of the text he created.

In the moral and legal field of art, the following concepts are widely used: Copyright(a part of civil law that defines legal responsibilities associated with the creation and use of works of literature, science and art); copyright agreement(agreement on the use of works of literature, science and art, concluded by the copyright holder); author's manuscript(in textual criticism, a concept characterizing the belonging of a given written material to a specific author); authorized text(text for which the author’s consent has been given for publication, translation and distribution); author's proofreading(editing proofs or layout, which is carried out by the author himself in agreement with the editors or publishing house); author's translation(translation of a work into another language by the original author), etc.

With varying degrees of involvement, the author participates in literary life of his time, entering into direct relationships with other authors, with literary critics, with the editors of magazines and newspapers, with book publishers and booksellers, in epistolary contacts with readers, etc. Similar aesthetic views lead to the creation of writing groups, circles, literary societies, other copyright associations.

The concept of the author as an empirical-biographical person and entirely responsible for the work he has written takes root along with the recognition of the intrinsic value in the history of culture creative imagination, artistic fiction (in ancient literatures, descriptions were often taken as the undoubted truth, for what actually happened or happened 1). In the poem quoted above, Pushkin captured the psychologically complex transition from the perception of poetry as a free and majestic “service of the muses” to the awareness of the art of words as a certain kind of creative work. It was a clear symptom professionalization literary work, characteristic of Russian literature early XIX V.

In oral collective folk art (folklore), the category of author is deprived of the status of personal responsibility for a poetic statement. The place of the author of the text takes place there executor text - singer, narrator, narrator, etc. For many centuries of literary and especially pre-literary creativity, the idea of ​​the author, with varying degrees of openness and clarity, was included in the universal, esoterically comprehended concept of Divine authority, prophetic instructiveness, mediativity, sanctified by the wisdom of centuries and traditions 1 . Literary historians note a gradual increase personal beginnings in literature, a barely noticeable but persistent strengthening of the role of the author’s individuality in literary development nations 2. This process, starting from ancient culture and more clearly revealing itself in the Renaissance (the works of Boccaccio, Dante, Petrarch), is mainly associated with gradually emerging trends in overcoming artistic and normative canons, consecrated by the pathos of sacred cult teaching. The manifestation of direct authorial intonations in poetic literature is determined primarily by the growth of the authority of sincere-lyrical, intimate-personal motives and plots.

Author's self-awareness reaches its apogee in the heyday romantic art, focused on keen attention to the unique and individual value in a person, in his creative and moral quests, on the depiction of secret movements, on the embodiment of fleeting states, inexpressible experiences of the human soul.

In a broad sense, the author acts as an organizer, embodiment and exponent of emotional and semantic integrity, the unity of a given artistic text as an author-creator. IN sacred sense It is customary to talk about the living presence of the author in the creation itself (cf. in Pushkin’s poem “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands...”: “...The soul in the treasured lyre/My ashes will survive and flee decay...”).

The relationship between the author outside the text and the author captured in the text, are reflected in ideas about the subjective and omniscient that are difficult to exhaustively describe author's role, the author's plan, the author's concept (idea, will), found in every “cell” of the narrative, in every plot-compositional unit of the work, in every component of the text and in the artistic whole of the work.

At the same time, there are known confessions of many authors related to the fact that literary heroes, in the process of their creation, begin to live as if independently, according to the unwritten laws of their own organics, acquire a certain internal sovereignty and act contrary to the original author’s expectations and assumptions. L.N. Tolstoy recalled (this example has long become a textbook example) that Pushkin once confessed to one of his friends: “Imagine what kind of thing Tatyana ran away with me! She got married. I never expected this from her.” And he continued: “I can say the same about Anna Karenina. In general, my heroes and heroines sometimes do things that I would not want: they do what they should do in real life and as happens in real life, and not what I want...”

Subjective author's will, expressed in the entire artistic integrity of the work, commands a heterogeneous interpretation of the author behind text, recognizing in it the inseparability and non-fusion of the empirical, everyday and artistic and creative principles. A general poetic revelation was A.A. Akhmatova’s quatrain from the cycle “Secrets of the Craft” (the poem “I have no use for odic armies...”):

If only you knew from what rubbish / Poetry grows, knowing no shame, / How yellow dandelion by the fence, / Like burdocks and quinoa.

Often, a “treasury of curiosities” - legends, myths, stories, anecdotes about the author’s life - diligently replenished by contemporaries, and then by descendants, becomes a kind of kaleidoscopic-centripetal text. Increased interest may be attracted to unclear love, family-conflict and other aspects of the biography, as well as to unusual, non-trivial manifestations of the poet’s personality. A.S. Pushkin, in a letter to P.A. Vyazemsky (second half of November 1825), in response to his addressee’s complaints about the “loss of Byron’s notes,” noted: “We know Byron quite well. They saw him on the throne of glory, they saw him in torment great soul, seen in a coffin in the middle of resurrecting Greece. - You want to see him on the ship. The crowd greedily reads confessions, notes, etc., because in their meanness they rejoice at the humiliation of the high, the weaknesses of the mighty. At the discovery of any abomination, she is delighted. He is small, like us, he is vile, like us! You’re lying, scoundrels: he’s both small and vile - not like you - otherwise.”

More specific “personified” authorial intratextual manifestations provide compelling reasons for literary scholars to carefully examine author's image in fiction, to detect various forms of the author’s presence in the text. These forms depend on tribal affiliation works from him genre, but there are also general trends. As a rule, the author's subjectivity is clearly manifested in frame components of the text: title, epigraph, beginning And ending main text. Some works also contain dedications, author's notes(as in “Eugene Onegin”), preface, afterword, together forming a unique meta text, integral with the main text. This same range of issues includes the use pseudonyms with expressive lexical meaning: Sasha Cherny, Andrey Bely, Demyan Bedny, Maxim Gorky. This is also a way of building the image of the author and purposefully influencing the reader.

The author expresses himself most poignantly in lyrics, where the statement belongs to one lyrical subject, where his experiences are depicted, his attitude towards the “inexpressible” (V.A. Zhukovsky), towards the outside world and the world of his soul in the infinity of their transitions into each other.

IN drama author in to a greater extent finds himself in the shadow of his heroes. But even here his presence is seen in title, epigraph(if he is), list characters, in various kinds stage directions, advance notices(for example, in “The Inspector General” by N.V. Gogol - “Characters and Costumes. Notes for Gentlemen Actors”, etc.), in the system of remarks and any other stage directions, in remarks aside. The author's mouthpiece can be the characters themselves: heroes -reasoners(cf. Starodum’s monologues in D.I. Fonvizin’s comedy “The Minor”), choir(from the ancient Greek theater to the theater of Bertolt Brecht), etc. The author's intentionality reveals itself in the general concept and plot of the drama, in the arrangement of characters, in the nature of the conflict tension, etc. In dramatizations classical works Characters “from the author” often appear (in films based on literary works a voice-over “author’s” voice is introduced).

The author appears to be more involved in the event of the work in epic. Only the genres of autobiographical story or autobiographical novel, as well as adjacent works with fictional characters, warmed by the light of autobiographical lyricism, present the author to a certain extent directly (in “Confession” by J.-J. Rousseau, “Poetry and Truth” by I.V. Goethe, “Before and Thoughts” by A.I. Herzen, “Poshekhon Antiquity” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, in “The History of My Contemporary” by V.G. Korolenko, etc.).

Most often the author acts as narrator, leading story from third party in an extra-subjective, impersonal form. The figure has been known since the time of Homer omniscient author, knowing everything and everyone about his heroes, freely moving from one time plane to another, from one space to another. In modern literature, this method of narration, the most conventional (the narrator’s omniscience is not motivated), is usually combined with subjective forms, with the introduction storytellers, with transmission in speech formally belonging to the narrator, points of view this or that hero (for example, in “War and Peace” the reader sees the Battle of Borodino “through the eyes” of Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov). In general, in an epic, the system of narrative instances can be very complex, multi-stage, and the forms of input of “alien speech” are very diverse. The author can entrust his stories to someone he has written, to a dummy Narrator (participant in events, chronicler, eyewitness, etc.) or to narrators, who can thus be characters in their own narrative. The narrator leads first person narration; depending on its closeness/alienity to the author’s outlook, the use of this or that vocabulary, some researchers distinguish personal narrator(“Notes of a Hunter” by I.S. Turgenev) and the narrator himself, with his characteristic, patterned tale (“Warrior” by N.S. Leskov).

In any case, the unifying principle of the epic text is the author’s consciousness, which sheds light on the whole and on all components of the literary text. “...The cement that binds every work of art into one whole and therefore produces the illusion of a reflection of life,” wrote L.N. Tolstoy, “is not the unity of persons and positions, but the unity of the original moral attitude of the author to the subject” 2. In epic works, the author's beginning appears in different ways: as the author's point of view on the recreated poetic reality, as the author's commentary on the course of the plot, as a direct, indirect or improperly direct characterization of the heroes, as the author's description of the natural and material world, etc.

Author's image as a semantic-style category epic And lyric-epic the works are purposefully comprehended by V.V. Vinogradov as part of the theory of functional styles he developed 2. The image of the author was understood by V.V. Vinogradov as the main and multi-valued stylistic characteristic of a single work and of all fiction as a distinctive whole. Moreover, the image of the author was conceived primarily in his stylistic individualization, in his artistic and speech expression, in the selection and implementation of the corresponding lexical and syntactic units in the text, in the general compositional embodiment; The image of the author, according to Vinogradov, is the center of the artistic and speech world, revealing the author’s aesthetic relationship to the content of his own text.

One of them recognizes complete or almost complete omnipotence in a dialogue with a literary text reader, his unconditional and natural right to freedom of perception of a poetic work, to freedom from the author, from obediently following the author’s concept embodied in the text, to independence from the author’s will and position. Going back to the works of V. Humboldt and A.A. Potebnya, this point of view was embodied in the works of representatives of the psychological school of literary criticism of the 20th century. A.G. Gornfeld wrote about a work of art: “Complete, detached from the creator, it is free from his influence, it has become a playground of historical fate, because it has become an instrument of someone else’s creativity: the creativity of those who perceive. We need the artist’s work precisely because it is the answer to our questions: our, for the artist did not set them for himself and could not foresee them<...>every new reader of Hamlet is, as it were, his new author...". Yu.I. Aikhenvald offered his own maxim on this matter: “The reader will never read exactly what the writer wrote.”

The extreme expression of this position is that the author’s text becomes only a pretext for subsequent active reader receptions, literary adaptations, willful translations into the languages ​​of other arts, etc. Consciously or unintentionally, the reader’s arrogant categorism and categorical judgments are justified. In the practice of school, and sometimes special philological education, confidence in the limitless power of the reader over the literary text is born, the formula “My Pushkin”, hard-won by M.I. Tsvetaeva, is replicated, and involuntarily another one is born, going back to Gogol’s Khlestakov: “With Pushkin on a friendly leg."

In the second half of the 20th century. The “reader-centric” point of view has been taken to its extreme limit. Roland Barthes, focusing on the so-called poststructuralism in literary literature and philological science and announcing the text is a zone of exclusively linguistic interests, capable of bringing the reader mainly playful pleasure and satisfaction, argued that in verbal and artistic creativity “traces of our subjectivity are lost”, “all self-identity and, first of all, the bodily identity of the writer disappears”, “the voice is torn away from its source , death comes for the author." A literary text, according to R. Barthes, is an extra-subjective structure, and the owner-manager, co-natural with the text itself, is the reader: “... the birth of the reader must be paid for by the death of the Author.” Despite its proud shockingness and extravagance, the concept death of the author, developed by R. Barth, helped to focus philological research attention on the deep semantic-associative roots that precede the observed text and constitute its genealogy, which is not fixed by the author’s consciousness (“texts in the text”, dense layers of involuntary literary reminiscences and connections, archetypal images and etc.). It is difficult to overestimate the role of the reading public in the literary process: after all, the fate of the book depends on its approval (the silent path), indignation or complete indifference. Readers' debates about the character of the hero, the convincingness of the denouement, the symbolism of the landscape, etc. - this is the best evidence of the “life” of an artistic work. “As for my last work: “Fathers and Sons,” I can only say that I stand amazed at its action,” writes I.S. Turgenev to P.V. Annenkov.

But the reader makes his presence known not only when the work is completed and offered to him. It is present in the consciousness (or subconscious) of the writer in the very act of creativity, influencing the result. Sometimes the thought of the reader is framed as an artistic image. To denote the reader’s participation in the processes of creativity and perception, various terms are used: in the first case - addressee (imaginary, implicit, internal reader); in the second - real reader (public, recipient). In addition, they highlight reader's image in work 2. Here we will talk about the reader-addressee of creativity, some related problems (mainly based on the material of Russian literature of the 19th-20th centuries).

The focus of any fairy tale is the hero. It is around him that different events happen, other characters help or hinder him, he loses and finds, and in the end achieves happiness. Every nation has its own favorite heroes. They often embody not so much the best qualities of the people as the ideals that exist in them. The true heroes of European fairy tales are associated with such concepts as strength, courage, victory in battles, and physical beauty.

The favorite hero of Russian folk tales is Ivan the Fool. The names, however, may be different. Outwardly inconspicuous, committing at first glance stupid and unnecessary actions, not striving for either wealth or fame, at the end of the fairy tale he receives a beautiful princess as a reward, and sometimes half a kingdom in addition. European fairy tales They also love the image of a fool, but in them it allows him to ridicule the shortcomings of the people; he remains to the end a fool who commits foolish acts. There are such fairy tales and jokes in Russia too. But Ivan the Fool is a completely different matter. He is precisely the hero of a folk tale and the conqueror of his enemies.

In the famous fairy tale about Sivko-burko, the father had three sons. The younger one, Ivan the Fool, “did nothing, just sat on the stove in the corner and blew his nose.” Before his death, the old man asked his sons each to spend three nights at his grave. The two elders sent a fool in their place. He received a generous gift from his late father - a beautiful horse named Sivko-Burko. With his help, Ivan was able to reach the princess’s high window and kiss her (according to another version, he receives a ring or scarf from her). The tale ends with a feast at which the princess tries to find her betrothed. Ivan the Fool also comes. This is how the fairy tale describes its hero: “... the dress he’s wearing is thin, covered in soot, his hair stands on end.” Seeing him, “the princess was delighted, took him by the hand, led him to his father and said: “Father! Here is my betrothed." The brothers here felt like a knife to the heart, they thought: “Why is this princess! Have you lost your mind? Leads a fool to betrothed." The conversations here are short: a merry feast and a wedding. Our Ivan here became not Ivan the Fool, but Ivan the Tsar’s son-in-law; he recovered, he cleaned himself up, he became a fine fellow, people didn’t recognize him!”

Why is Ivan the Fool rewarded in this fairy tale? First of all, of course, for remaining true to the word given to his father. His brothers were too lazy to go to the grave at night - it was dark and scary. From a common sense point of view, they are right. You can’t help your father anyway, so why bother? But for Ivan, his father’s behests are more important than common sense, and therefore he is a “fool.”

The strength of Ivan the Fool - and this also expresses a kind of folk ideal - is in simplicity, sincerity, lack of commercialism and pragmatism. At the same time, his older brothers - smart people and pragmatists - turn out to be fools. The absence of practicality is at the same time the absence of greed and acquisitiveness.

Someone is stealing turnips from the garden. Vanka remains to guard the thief. He sees a boy barely dragging a huge bag at night, straining himself. The boy asked to help him carry the bag home, and Vanka helped. Well, aren't you a fool? Then he refused the offered gold and silver, and took the samogud harp. And, of course, it all ended with the princess and “living happily ever after.”

An important feature of Ivan the Fool is compassion; he helps everyone who asks for help, even if at first glance it is to his own detriment. He gives the hungry hare the last loaf of bread - a senseless act from the point of view of common sense, and at a difficult moment it is she who brings him the egg in which Kashcheev’s death. Or he covers the chicks from the rain with his dress and freezes himself, and in return the giant bird helps him return home. This is how mercy is rewarded. Smart brothers use their intelligence for personal gain - and are punished.

The fool’s compassion and gentleness benefit the brothers themselves. At the end of the tale, the hero often forgives them all their machinations, brothers after all! He has no sense of vindictiveness. It’s good for him, so let it be good for others, even evil brothers.

Pity is one of the favorite properties of Russian nature. It manifests itself in a variety of areas. For example, the first Russian saints - Boris and Gleb, were not fighters for the faith, but innocently murdered victims, sufferers (and also not for the faith). Among their virtues, chroniclers include youth, gentleness, sensitivity, kindness, and cordiality. Both of them refuse to fight the evil inexorably approaching them, to respond to violence with violence. And both die without resistance at the hands of assassins sent to them. For the time and their position as junior heirs to the throne, their murder by their older brother in a power struggle is not unusual. Their holiness lies only in the fact that they became innocent victims and did not resist evil.

And Tsarevich Dimitri, the son of Ivan the Terrible, who carelessly ran into a knife at a young age? He didn’t have time to prove himself at all (according to some sources, he was also of a nasty, cruel character and it was no coincidence that he loved little knives, but this may be slander). But he, too, was canonized and revered by the Russian people as a saint: for the innocence of the victim, for his ruined youth, and even for such a meaningless, from the people’s point of view, thing as power.

Another important quality of a Russian hero is modesty. He is not an upstart, not a talker, not a braggart. And is he such a fool, if you look at it? He doesn’t tell his brothers anything about Sivka-burka, about the princess’s kiss, they wouldn’t be able to resist bragging. And if they had found out about his adventures, they could have interfered. Nobody takes Ivan the Fool seriously, and this is also his strength.

In the fairy tale about the wise wife, the foolish son bought paternal inheritance a cat and a dog, settled in a hut and was happy. He ate what the dog brought, did not demand anything from life - to eat, where to sleep and what to eat, that’s all, thank God! I once received three barrels of gold for my cat. Up to this point, the plot is international, known in different countries. But then its Slavic variety begins. The fool gave two barrels to the poor (“What an abyss of gold! Where can I take it?”), and for the third he bought incense and lit it in the field. As a result, the angel promised to fulfill his every desire. The fool listened to the advice that the men working in the field gave him and wished for a wise wife. And I was not mistaken. In the end, with the help of his wife’s wisdom, he became a king. So much for the fool! He lived simply, did not demand anything, had no self-interest, listened to advice, i.e. did everything right.

Finally, special meaning has the appearance of a hero: it is usually emphatically simple, unprepossessing, the hero is physically unattractive. In the fairy tale, “...the little one, Vanyusha, is like a runt, like a pinched duckling, much meaner” than his older brothers. He sits on the stove, blowing his nose. He is smeared with soot. Because from the point of view of the people's ideal, this is not so important. The already mentioned popular saying says: “Love us dirty, but everyone will love us clean.” The older brothers take care of their appearance: “...the elders, you know, ride their horses, curl their curls, get fried, and invigorate their dear ones...” From the point of view of the people’s consciousness, it immediately becomes obvious that you can’t expect anything good from such people.

Thus, fairy tales reflect folk ideals, ideas about good and evil, about what is important for a person and what is secondary. As we see, the hero of a Russian fairy tale is, at first glance, inconspicuous, weak, stupid, even pitiful. But in the end he is the winner of all the strong and beautiful, he receives a princess and sometimes a chest of goods or half a kingdom. The image of Ivan the Fool reflects the qualities most valued by the people - compassion, willingness to help one's neighbor not for profit, but from the heart, kindness, loyalty to one's word, modesty. The main shortcomings are embodied in practical people who represent the opposite of the hero, such as, for example, his brothers. This is greed, indifference, talkativeness, a heartless attitude towards one’s neighbor, and indeed towards all living things.

In Russian culture we find many other confirmations that all these qualities were especially valued among the people. And that “intelligence” often became synonymous with pragmatism, boasting, talkativeness, and lack of spirituality. For example, special veneration of holy fools, who put the spiritual principle above the material and voluntarily renounced their “mind.” Or let us remember the irony of Griboyedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit”, in which the hero, much smarter than the people around him, talks a lot, especially about himself, and his “mind” in the end brings only grief to everyone.

The heroine of a Russian fairy tale is wise, hard-working, faithful, modest. She often saves the hero, helping him out in the most difficult situations, gives him advice, and does things for him. difficult work. As a rule, she is also endowed with magical properties and can work miracles.

Here again we are not talking about intelligence, but about wisdom. We find an interesting difference in these two concepts in V.I. Dahl’s dictionary. “Mind” for him is “the general name of the cognitive and final ability of a person, the ability to think; this is one half of his spirit, and the other is character, morality, desire, love, passions...” That is, the mind is not bad, but only when it, as in famous saying, with the heart or morals “in harmony.” “Wise”, according to the dictionary, is “based on goodness and truth; righteous, combining love and truth; V highest degree reasonable and well-intentioned." This is much deeper and more comprehensive than the mind, a quality that is undoubtedly positive, without any reservations. In Russian fairy tales we meet Vasilisa the Wise, Elena the Wise, the wise maiden and others who do not have this epithet, but act precisely in accordance with the above definition.

The hero can do something stupid (for example, burn a frog's skin, although he was asked not to do this, destroy the feathers) and thereby bring terrible troubles to the heroine's head. Or betray, like Finist, the clear falcon who flew away, forgot about his beloved and married someone else. But the heroine forgives him everything and remains faithful to the end. Moreover, often the acquaintance of heroes begins with some not very beautiful act of the hero, such as theft.

The “love” of the heroes in the fairy tale “The Sea King and Vasilisa the Wise” begins with the prince stealing the shirt that the girl took off while swimming. She begs him to return the stolen goods, promising that they will be useful. And he keeps his word firmly: he secretly carries out all the orders of the sea king - he builds a crystal bridge, plants a garden in one night. When the question of marriage arises, she herself tells the prince how to find her and marries him. Moreover, she helps the hero escape home, although she knows that he will forget her in his homeland.

Of course, in fairy tales, ideas take on exaggerated forms in order to convey the idea to the listener in its entirety. But it is obvious that the main thing in the heroine of such a fairy tale is loyalty, devotion, patience, humility.

Often the hero is portrayed as completely useless in order to emphasize the heroine’s merits. He is poor, and a fool, and unlucky, and often disobedient. She is beautiful, smart and rich. But here’s the paradox: she doesn’t need anyone except him. From this point of view, the cycle of fairy tales about Ivan the Unfortunate is interesting. The hero does not succeed, everything is bad luck, he cannot do or accomplish anything worthwhile. He comes to the king for advice on what to do. The king’s daughter saw him and said: “And I think so, father: if you marry him, then maybe the Lord will send him a different share.” And she got married (in other versions the heroine is a merchant’s daughter who refuses a rich groom for the sake of the worthless Ivan). There is not and cannot be even a hint in fairy tales of any selfish motives in love. And then, with magic and skill, the heroine begins to build family well-being. Yes, and Ivan changes, begins to show courage and ingenuity, defeats the snake, or, in another version, the cunning merchants. However, this does not always happen, because it is not so important. At the end of the tale, the hero, returning home, finds his wife in bed with two good fellows and raises his sword to kill them. But at the last moment, remembering good advice, he stops (he’s gotten wiser after all!) and finds out that these are his two sons, born in his absence. Such fairy tales do not give any explanation why the heroine loves the hero, but they show her insight and, again, wisdom: it all ends with the heroes living happily ever after until the end of their days.

Heroines even forgive the hero’s betrayal. It is the hero who can afford to be offended and leave, the heroine leaves only if she is forced to do so by evil magic. In the popular in Russia and very ancient in origin fairy tale about Finist - clear falcon The evil sisters, suspecting that Finist was flying to their younger sister, stuck sharp knives on the window. Finist flew in, cut himself, got offended and flew away forever. By the way, bad sisters, like the brothers of Ivan the Fool, are also bad because they love themselves, show off, think about outfits and grooms, which, it would seem, is natural for young girls, but is condemned, contrasted with the good younger one, who puzzled her father by searching for something strange Finist's feather is a clear falcon. Not only without being offended, but as if even feeling guilty for the loss of her loved one, the heroine sets off to search for him. Just what the poor girl did - she wore out three pairs of iron shoes, broke three iron staffs, went to the Baba Yagas, got a job. And all this in order to discover that her lover has already calmly married someone else. WITH with great difficulty, by cunning and magic, the heroine returned her Finist to herself, and then they, as expected, lived happily.

With all such wonderful merits, the heroine never pushes her merits, always remains in the shadow of the hero. She is only his assistant and is submissive to him, accepting him as he is. Even if the heroine sees that the hero is doing unreasonable things, but cannot stop him, she, resigned, follows him, and then helps him get out. But more often than not, the hero listens to his reasonable wife, even if he does not understand her actions, and her advice goes against common sense. He seems to admit that she is given more to foresee than he.

The destinies of the hero and heroine are closely intertwined with each other. Only together can they build happy life. From the meeting with the heroine, the elevation, enlightenment, admonition (if he is a “fool”) of the hero begins; as a rule, the trials that he must go through are associated with her. But the heroine is nothing without her hero - a frog is a frog or a beautiful bird. Her femininity, intelligence, even magical properties are often revealed only from the need to fight for the hero and happiness.

In the Russian fairy tale “Go there - I don’t know where, bring that - I don’t know what” Fedot the archer wounded the bird, but, heeding its request, did not kill it, but brought it home. She turned out to be a beautiful princess, whom he married. Fedot obeys his wife in everything - he says: borrow money, he takes it, says: buy silk, he buys it. At the same time, the wife is everything for her husband, for the family, she is not at all proud of her beauty and royal title, she feels sorry for him like a woman, because she works hard, gets tired, and lives in poverty. With the help of magic, she decided to save him from work (apparently so that he could lie on the stove instead of working at home), and wove a beautiful carpet. Because of this, the tsar fell in love with her, sent Fedot “there - I don’t know where”, and himself to woo the beauty. But she is faithful to her husband and does not agree. It’s interesting that no one puts Fedot himself in a penny. Baba Yaga says: “He himself is a simple person, it would not be difficult to kill him - it’s like sniffing a pinch of tobacco! Yes, his wife is painfully cunning.” Meanwhile, he lures Shmata-reason to his side with kindness, deceives the merchants, and obtains wealth for the family.

The heroines of Russian fairy tales are sometimes very beautiful and receive the nickname Beautiful. But most often nothing is mentioned about the heroine’s appearance, since this is a secondary matter. The main advantage of the heroine of Western European fairy tales is, as a rule, beauty. She may be stupid, harmful, cruel, but everything is forgiven to her because she is beautiful. By the way, smart women in such fairy tales they usually embody an evil spirit, harm the heroine and often strive to deprive her of her main dignity - beauty.

In Russian fairy tales, beauties are beautiful with an emphatically fabulous beauty - “neither can be said in a fairy tale, nor described with a pen,” they say about them. Well, who really, in ordinary everyday life, will rejoice at the star on the forehead or the month under the scythe? Their beauty is a kind of frog skin or bird feathers; it is needed only at the first moment of meeting in order to attract the attention of the hero and make an acquaintance. Beauty is important in the European chivalric culture of loving worship of a woman as a bride or mistress. In the Russian consciousness, in a fairy tale, a woman is first of all a wife and mother, even if she is a future and potential, mistress of the house, a worker, here completely different qualities are more important, and not external beauty.

The hero and heroine are associated with a central theme for Russian fairy tales - family life. At the beginning of a fairy tale, the hero, as a rule, leaves his family; at the end, after trials and wanderings, he returns with a young wife or, if there is nowhere to return, creates a new one. It is the creation of a family that is the highest reward for a hero; a good wife becomes the crown of his trials and exploits. Obviously, this reflects the special place that the family occupied in the Russian world as a whole. “Domostroy,” a book written in the 16th century, sounds almost like a fairy tale when it talks about the happiness of family life: “If God gives someone a good wife, it is worth more than a valuable stone. It would be a sin to lose such a wife even with great benefit: she will establish a prosperous life for her husband. Having collected wool and flax, he will do everything that is needed with his own hands, it will be like a trading ship: it absorbs all the wealth from everywhere. And he will rise in the middle of the night and give food to the house and work to the maidservants. He will increase wealth from the fruits of his hands. Having girded his loins tightly, he will fix his hands on the work. And she teaches her children, like her maidservants, and her lamp does not go out all night: she stretches out her hands to work, strengthens her fingers on the spindle. She turns her mercy to the poor, and gives the fruits of her labor to the poor - her husband does not worry about his home: he prepares a variety of elegant clothes for his husband, and for himself, and for his children, and for his household. And therefore, when her husband is in the assembly of nobles or sits with acquaintances who always honor him, he, speaking wisely, knows how to act well, for no one is crowned without difficulty. With a good wife, the husband is also blessed, and the number of days of his life will double - a good wife makes her husband happy and fills his years with peace: good wife- a good reward for those who fear God, for a wife makes her husband more virtuous: firstly, having fulfilled God’s commandment, she is blessed by God, and secondly, people praise her. A kind, hardworking, silent wife is a crown to her husband, if the husband has found such a good wife, she only brings good things out of his home. Blessed is the husband of such a wife, and they will live their years in a good world” (Domostroy, 1990: 137).

The basis of family happiness in fairy tales is fate, narrowness. It is not love and passion, but purpose that is decisive when choosing a mate. And most often there is no choice as such. The fairy tale deliberately, to the point of absurdity, avoids at least any explanation on the topic of why they fell in love. The archer steals the wings of Princess Marya the Wise. She discovers the loss and calls: “If a man is old, be my father, and an old woman, be my mother; if a young person - be a warm friend, and a red maiden - be a sister! This is the beginning of love, which then went through difficult trials.

The theme of destiny in family happiness is revealed even more acutely in the fairy tale “The Frog Princess.” It also shows that not only the heroine, but also the hero, is submissive to fate. Everyone knows the beginning of the fairy tale. The king had three sons. The time came for them to get married, their father gave them an arrow and ordered them to draw their bows. Whoever finds their arrow will marry her. That is, here the choice is determined by fate, regardless of their desires, for all three sons. The two eldest were lucky - they got the general's and the merchant's daughters. And the younger one shot his arrow into the swamp (in some versions it is also “dirty” to enhance the unpleasant feeling), and the frog found it. Stupidity, it would seem, a mistake, but the hero saw in this the finger of fate: “Ivan Tsarevich became thoughtful and cried: “How can I live with a frog? To live a century is not to cross a river or cross a field!” I cried and cried, but there was nothing to do - I took a frog as my wife.” The following is a detail so that no one doubts that the frog is the most ordinary: “They were all married according to their rite; the frog was kept on a platter.”

The tale keeps the listener in suspense for a long time - Ivan lives with a frog, and she turns around as a girl and works miracles only when he is sleeping. And only by chance he learns about its magical properties, burns the skin and brings misfortune on both of them. Now he has to return his betrothed, prove that he is worthy of her. The moral is simple: you fall in love with a frog, live with it, remain faithful to it, and then, you see, it will become a princess, at least for you.

The prince fell in love with the European Cinderella in the guise of a beautiful princess in a luxurious dress and, as an honest man, married her, although she turned out to be not who she said she was, just the pathetic daughter of a forester. In Russian fairy tales the situation is the opposite: the hero marries a frog, a wretched creature, and she then turns into a beautiful princess. First, pity for the unfortunate creature, then a little patience and a beautiful wife, and even with a dowry. At least in a fairy tale. Many believe and wait patiently. Patience is also one of the qualities loved and valued by the Russian people; it is not without reason that the proverb says: “If you endure, you will fall in love.”

By the way, there is a French fairy tale “The Toad Groom”. The plot is similar, but the emphasis is placed completely differently. To begin with, the idea itself - decisive choice after a girl, she decides to marry a toad - this somehow changes the situation. But the choice here is determined solely by filial love: the toad refuses to let her father go until the girl agrees to the marriage. The toad immediately discovers a rich castle, and at the very first wedding night she turns out to be a handsome prince.

Marriage and family transform the initially unprepossessing hero of Russian fairy tales. In one of the versions of the fairy tale “Sivko-Burko”, Ivan the Fool kisses Elena the Beautiful, turning into a beautiful young man. It is interesting that later, at the feast, he arranges a kind of test for her: “Then,” he says, “she fell in love with me when I was young, now she will love me in a simple caftan.” Elena, of course, recognized her betrothed in his simple appearance, and then a kind of “ordinary miracle” occurs. This is how touchingly, in its naive pride for the hero, the fairy tale tells about this: “... she soon got married to him; and he, my God, how smart and brave he has become, and what a handsome man!.. He used to sit on a flying horse, push his cap off, put his hands on his hips - a king, a real king! If you look closely, you won’t think that Vanyusha was once there.”

There are other wonderful characters in fairy tales. Good ones who help the heroes, and evil ones who interfere with their happiness. Among the helpers there are often animals and even inanimate objects saved by the heroes, as well as mysterious old men and women who help in gratitude for the crust of bread received, and even more often - for kindness. sweet Nothing. The villains are also quite complex - Koschey the Immortal, who turns out to be mortal, the Serpent Gorynych, whose heads must be cut off all at once, otherwise they will grow back, the king of the sea, who lures everyone under his water. Koschey definitely wants to marry the heroine, which is why he steals her, the Serpent - to destroy the entire Russian land, the sea king - to save his daughters and drown as many people as possible. But they cannot resist the forces of good.

One character stands out and is of particular interest. This is Baba Yaga, found exclusively in Slavic fairy tales. Depending on the situation, it can help or harm the heroes.

The English envoy J. Fletcher, who visited Russia in 1588, noted in his essay: “... as for the story about the golden or yaga-baba (about whom I happened to read in some descriptions of this country that she is an idol in the form of an old woman) ... then I was convinced that this was an empty fable” (Fletcher, 2002: 113). Two points are indicative here: firstly, indicating the popularity of her image, as evidenced by the word “idol” and the mention of her in books, apparently foreign, and secondly, the belief in her that persisted until that time (end of the 16th century) reality. Somehow the Englishman convinced himself that she was a fiction, but he believed it from the very beginning, which means that the Russians around him believed it.

There is much debate about the origin and meaning of her image. Some consider her the guardian of the other world, some - the mistress of all living things, some - the embodiment of mother-raw-earth herself. There is a lot of mystery in her nature, behavior, appearance, and attributes.

For example, there is no consensus on the mysterious phrase with which Baba Yaga greets the hero: “It smells like the Russian spirit.” What kind of spirit is this special that she pays attention to? V. Propp believes that this indicates that a living person came to her, and she was used to dealing with the dead, incorporeal and odorless (Propp, 2000a: 47) (though this does not explain why Russian). Yu. S. Stepanov believes that this phrase “exposes her as someone else’s, not Russian” (Stepanov, 2001: 840). He also writes about the existence of real “ethnic smells.”

This fact was pointed out in mid-19th V. Russian ethnographer S. V. Maksimov. He wrote: “Not only the external environment, but also the consumed famous people food has an effect on its animal, specific smell. All Asian peoples, addicted to eating garlic and wild garlic, amaze the sense of smell of a fresh person... and everyone has their own special smell: the Chinese and Persians, the Kyrgyz and Samoyeds - especially those who have adopted the wearing of woolen and fur dresses. The aromatic seasonings for dishes, the aroma of the dominant plants of the country, etc. are equally influential.” (Maksimov, 1987: 625). Those who traveled abroad before the start of perestroika remember that those returning “from there” smelled of some special, “foreign” smell. Now this feeling has somewhat dulled, but has not disappeared: arriving in any country is accompanied by a certain set of smells.

Baba Yaga lives in a hut on chicken legs, flies in a mortar, she has a bone leg and huge teeth. She is the keeper of fire (in the fairy tale “Vasilisa the Wise”), golden apples (in the fairy tale “Geese-Swans”), many magical objects (a ball showing the way, a heroic horse, etc.), and most importantly - knowledge magical life. She always knows where to find the stolen heroine, how to get to her and how to win her back from her enemies, who, by the way, are often her own relatives. She is a kind of intermediary between the world of ordinary people and the other, fabulous one.

The image of Baba Yaga well shows the depth, complexity and ambiguity of Russian fairy tales, their psychologism and understanding of life. Where the need to demonstrate clear ideals is concerned, they are static and conditional. Baba Yaga is not good or bad, as it would seem to be in fairy tales, but different, as in life. If you find the right words, a common language, it will be a help, but if not, you might just eat it or use some other means. It is characteristic that Baba Yaga, unlike Koshchei or the Serpent, is almost never destroyed.

What key do the heroes find to unlock it? Someone wins her trust with affection, someone with the helplessness of the situation, someone with diligent work, someone with cunning. But the most common way is to remind her of her responsibilities as a housewife. And here the peculiarities of Russian culture and attitude to life also appear. The hut is located in the forest, there is no housing around. The hero traveler comes to her house and encounters her hostility. The “Russian spirit” especially irritates Baba Yaga. But the hero is not lost, he answers her: “Well, old man, why are you shouting? First, give me something to drink and feed, take me to the bathhouse, and then show me around and ask questions.” The laws of hospitality turn out to be holy. Remembering her duties as a housewife, Baba Yaga takes him to the bathhouse (is it not to wash off the “Russian spirit”?), then feeds him, gives him something to drink, and puts him to bed. Sternly asks: “What, good fellow, are you trying to do things or are you getting away with it?” As if it matters to her whether he is a serious person or just how he spends his time. The hero tells Baba Yaga about his misfortune. After this, it is impossible to kill or eat the hero - bread was broken, he slept in her house, and he reminded her that she was the mistress. All that remains is to help. In the stove, Baba Yaga tries to fry only small and foolish children who do not know how to approach her, and even then they run away from her anyway.

In fairy tales, the hero often goes to distant lands to the thirtieth kingdom. Sometimes it is called “other,” “unprecedented,” or something else. The path to it is long and difficult. The hero (less often the heroine) goes there either in search of a lost lover (beloved), or completing a task, or simply “to catch happiness” and good luck. The descriptions of these kingdoms are very different; the hero gets to them in different ways - through an impenetrable forest, by sea or through high mountains. But there is always a miracle there. And he always returns home.

There is a widespread belief that the Russian people have always been in a kind of cultural isolation - due to geographical and sometimes political reasons. And that this became the reason for the lack of interest in distant countries, concentration on one’s narrow circle, often within several surrounding villages, when a trip to the nearest city became a large-scale event. On the one hand, the Russian peasant really lived inside a closed world, and long journeys were not only not accessible to him, but also unnecessary. The country itself is large, diverse, and also constantly expanding its borders and developing new lands. On the other hand, the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe isolation of the Russian person from the world around him, including the distant one, was clearly exaggerated. Politics, trade, pilgrimage have always connected Rus', Russia with other countries: even the grand ducal daughters married foreign monarchs, new markets were sought across the three seas, and holy places were visited not only by people of clergy. There is a lot of evidence of constant interaction between Russia and the world: it is found in books, in the notes of travelers, in borrowed rituals and details of everyday life, in language and food traditions.

Fairy tales also testify to this. They describe endless seas and high mountains, which do not exist either in central Russia, or in the south, or in many other regions (together they exist almost only in the Russian North). But this does not bother anyone; they are not perceived as exotic. But other countries really bear the imprint of magic. They are described as beautiful and different from everyday life. In the thirtieth kingdom there are magnificent palaces, crystal or glass mountains, “green meadows, silk grass, azure flowers” ​​(Afanasyev, 1984: 157), beautiful gardens, sometimes with golden fruits or rejuvenating apples. The palaces there are most often golden: “And that palace is golden and stands on one pillar on a silver one, and the canopy over the palace is of semi-precious stones, the mother-of-pearl stairs, like wings, diverge in both directions... As soon as they entered, the silver pillar groaned, the stairs diverged, everything sparkled roofs, the whole palace began to turn around and move from place to place” (ibid.: 560). Not only the palace is golden, but also the wells, towers, and fences. Sometimes it's all diamond. And often there live tsar-maidens of unprecedented beauty. And they are surrounded by deer with golden horns, firebirds, and ducks with golden feathers.

The idea of ​​other countries as a beautiful and amazing place is characteristic of Russian culture as a whole. It is interesting that in the dictionary of constants of Russian culture a connection is established between the concepts of “alien”, “alien” and “miracle”, “wonderful” (ibid.: 140). A miracle is understood as “a phenomenon that cannot be explained by the natural order of things,” “strange, unusual.”

The description of real travels of Russian people to other countries is very similar to fairy tales. So strong, apparently, was the expectation of a “miracle” from these “foreign” lands. Here are excerpts from just some of the “walkings”:

“And many other pillars stand around the city made of marble, there are many inscriptions on them, decorated with carvings from top to bottom. There are many amazing things that are incomprehensible to the mind” (“The Wanderings of Stefan the Novgorodian,” 1348-1349) (Book of Walks, 1984).

“They stood in two rows, some dressed in crimson velvet, others in cherry velvet, one row had pearls on their chests, others had other decorations. Under the choir there was a palace with 12 steps, two fathoms wide, clothed with a red worm, with two golden pillars on it... Who can convey this beauty!” (“The Walk of Ignatius of Smolnyanin to Constantinople,” 1389) (ibid.).

“In front of the gates of this monastery lies a stone toad. Under King Leo the Wise, this toad walked the streets, devoured garbage, and swept brooms themselves. They will get up early in the morning, and the streets are clean” (“Zosima’s Walk to Constantinople, Athos and Palestine”, 1419-1422) (ibid.).

“And we saw a wonderful city, and plains, and small mountains, and beautiful gardens, and very wonderful chambers, with gilded tops, and wonderful and powerful monasteries in the city. And it’s full of all sorts of goods. And the water was brought into the city through pipes and flowed through all the streets. And now the waters flow from the fountains, cold and tasty... And they saw here a perplexed and unspeakable wisdom.<…>In the middle of this city there are fountains, their columns are made of copper, gilded, very wonderful, three fathoms and taller. And at each of the fountains there are statues of people, also made of copper. And from all these copper people, tasty and cold water flows out: one from the mouth, another from the ear, and another from the eye, and from another from the elbow, and from another from the nostrils, flowing very quickly, like from barrels. These statues simply look like living people.<…>These mountains are so high that the clouds move along the gorges along them and the clouds come from them. Snow has been on them since the creation of the mountains. In the summer they are hot and very hot, but the snow does not melt” (“Walking to the Florence Cathedral of the Unknown Suzdalian”, 1437) (ibid.).

“There are seven gates in the Sultan’s fortress, and at the gates sit a hundred guards and a hundred Hindu scribes: some write down who will enter, others write down who will leave; Foreigners are not allowed into the fortress. His palace is very wonderful, there is carving and gold everywhere, and every stone is carved and painted with gold, and in the palace there are different vessels.<…>But Ceylon is a considerable pier of the Indian Sea, and in it lies Father Adam on a high mountain. Yes, precious stones, rubies, crystals, white agates, resin, crystal, emery will be born around it. And elephants are born, but they are sold by the cubit, and ostriches are sold by weight. ... On Shabbat, silk, ray pearls, simple pearls, sandalwood will be born... Indigo and varnish will be born in Gujarat, and carnelian will be born in Kambai. A diamond will be born in Raichur” (“Walking across the Three Seas of Afanasy Nikitin”, 1466-1472) (ibid.).

It is difficult to distinguish between fairy tales and reality, they are so closely intertwined. And already the description from a fairy tale sometimes looks more ordinary than from a real trip.

But miracles eventually tire. And the heroes of fairy tales, having enjoyed an amazing life in distant countries, begin to yearn and long for home. And how much longing for the homeland is heard in the exclamation of Afanasy Nikitin, who spent six years wandering around the eastern countries: “May the Russian land be preserved by God! God save her! There is no country like it in this world, although the boyars of the Russian land are unjust. May the Russian land become prosperous and may there be justice in it. O God, God, God, God” (ibid.: 378). Sometimes, in order to love your native places, you have to part with them. AND fabulous trip turns out to be another test of the hero - his love for his homeland.

It is important to note one more feature of the fairy tale action. In Europe, most fairy tales begin with something like “once upon a time.” In Russia, as a rule, this is “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state...” Consequently, in Europe, the fairy-tale reference goes back in time - once upon a time, long ago, miracles happened and strange creatures lived. In Russia, this is a spatial reference. There, somewhere, in distant countries, this fabulous reality exists to this day. Who knows? Thus, in the Russian perception of fairy-tale reality, on the one hand, a miracle always exists somewhere far away, on the other hand, it is real in space and not in time. This means that he can live in the present day.

Fairy tales reveal many individual character traits of a Russian person and the peculiarities of his inner world and ideals.

The attitude towards wealth is clear. Greed is perceived as a great vice. Poverty is a virtue. This does not mean that there is no dream of prosperity: the difficulties of peasant life made one dream of a self-assembled tablecloth, of a stove in which “goose meat, pig meat, and pies - apparently and invisibly! One word to say - whatever the soul wants, everything is there! the bride received was also nice to dream about on long winter evenings. But wealth comes to the heroes easily, casually, when they don’t even think about it, as an additional prize for a good bride or a saved wife. Those who strive for it as an end in itself are always punished and remain “with nothing.”

The attitude of the Russian people to work reflected in fairy tales seems peculiar. Here is a seemingly incomprehensible fairy tale about Emelya the Fool from the point of view of ideals. He lay on the stove all his life, did nothing, and did not hide the reason, he answered “I’m lazy!” to all requests for help. Once I went out into the water and caught a magic pike. The continuation is well known to everyone: the pike persuaded him to let her go back into the hole, and for this she undertook to fulfill all of Emelya’s wishes. And so "by pike command“, at my request,” a sleigh without a horse carries a fool to the city, the ax chops the wood itself, and they are put into the oven, the buckets march into the house without outside help. Moreover, Emelya also got the royal daughter, also not without the intervention of magic. The ending, however, is still hopeful (in children's retellings for some reason it is often omitted): “The fool, seeing that all people are like people, and he alone was bad and stupid, wanted to become better and for this he said: “As a pike by command, and at my request, that I become such a fine fellow, that nothing like this should happen to me, and that I be extremely smart!” And as soon as he had time to speak, at that very moment he became so beautiful, and also smart, that everyone was surprised.”

This fairy tale is often interpreted as a reflection of the eternal tendency of Russian people to laziness and idleness. She speaks, rather, about the severity of peasant labor, which gave rise to the desire to relax, which made one dream of a magical helper. Yes, if you are lucky and catch a miracle pike, you can happily do nothing, lie on a warm stove and think about the Tsar’s daughter. All this, of course, is also unrealistic for the man who dreams of it, like a stove driving through the streets, and the usual difficult situation awaits him. daily work, but you can dream about pleasant things.

The fairy tale also reveals another difference in Russian culture - it does not have the sacredness of the concept of work, that special reverent attitude, on the verge of “work for the sake of work itself,” which is characteristic, for example, of Germany or modern America. It is known, for example, that one of the common problems among Americans is the inability to relax, distract themselves from business, and understand that nothing will happen if they go on vacation for a week. For a Russian person there is no such problem - he knows how to relax and have fun, and perceives work as inevitable.

The famous philosopher I. Ilyin considered such “laziness” of the Russian person to be part of his creative, contemplative nature. “First of all, our flat space taught us contemplation,” wrote the Russian thinker, “our nature, with its distances and clouds, with its rivers, forests, thunderstorms and blizzards. Hence our insatiable gaze, our dreaminess, our contemplating “laziness” (Pushkin), behind which lies strength creative imagination. Russian contemplation was given beauty that captivated the heart, and this beauty was introduced into everything - from fabric and lace to housing and fortifications” (Russian Idea, 1992: 437). There may be no zeal and exaltation of work, but there is a feeling of beauty, merging with nature. This also bears fruit - rich folk art, expressed, among other things, in the fairy-tale heritage.

Sometimes heroes are rewarded for their suffering. This theme is also especially loved by Russian fairy tales. Often, sympathies are on the side of heroes (even more often - heroines) not because of their special qualities or the actions they perform, but because of the life circumstances - misfortune, orphanhood, poverty - in which they find themselves. In this case, salvation comes from the outside, from nowhere, not as a result of the active actions of the hero, but as the restoration of justice. Such fairy tales are designed to instill compassion, empathy for one’s neighbor, and a feeling of love for all those who suffer. How can one not recall the thought of F. M. Dostoevsky that suffering is necessary for a person, because it strengthens and purifies the soul.

Russian fairy tales also testify to the special faith of the Russian person in the meaning of the spoken word. Thus, there is a separate cycle from the category of fairy tales-legends, in which the entire plot is tied to various kinds of accidentally escaped curses. It is characteristic that only Russian versions of such tales are known. In one of them, for example, a son, cursed by his mother while still in the womb, fell into the hands of evil spirits. In turn, everyone goes to help him out - his father, then his mother, then his wife. He saves, of course, his wife, who was not afraid to jump into the hole after him to hell with the words “My dear friend, the inseparable law! Now I won’t leave you alone!.. You go into the water, and I’ll follow you!” (Afanasyev, 1984: 229). Fairy tales also emphasize the importance of the spoken word, the need to keep it: you promised to marry the one who finds the arrow - you must fulfill it; If you kept your word and went to your father’s grave, you will be rewarded; made a promise to marry the one who stole the wings - fulfill it. Fairy tales are filled with these simple truths.

The word opens doors, turns the hut, breaks the spell. The sung song brings back the memory of the husband, who forgot and did not recognize his wife, the little goat with his quatrain (except for him, apparently, he does not know how to say anything, otherwise he would have explained what happened) saves his sister Alyonushka and himself. The word is believed, without any doubt. “I’ll be of use to you,” says some bunny, and the hero lets him go, confident (like the reader) that this will happen.

Even in Russian fairy tales, as well as among the Russian people, faith in miracles is strong. Of course, all fairy tales in the world are based on some extraordinary events. But nowhere does the miraculous dominate the plot as much as in Russians. It piles up, overwhelms the action, sometimes it is not even necessary for the development of events. And they always believe in him, unconditionally and without a shadow of a doubt. A parallel with today involuntarily arises. For how many years have the Russian people been fooled, but he still believes and buys it. Other nations would have already understood that you can’t go on super-cheap trips to Turkey and Egypt or believe in some mythical jobs where they will pay as much in a month as they would in another place in their entire life, but they still believe - and go, and are deceived, and return disappointed, and go again. Russia is truly fertile ground for scammers, so strong is the people’s belief in miracles and that the best is still possible.

Finally, Russian fairy tales often surprise us with their lack of logic and common sense. Storytellers do not even try to connect or explain the phenomena. They often seem to avoid it quite deliberately. Because all this is unnecessary, it only obscures the internal thought and logic of the story. This is why Russian fairy tales are so difficult for people with rational thinking to understand. Just as it is difficult to understand the actions of a Russian person (isn’t this the way out - the idea of ​​​​a mysterious Russian soul, which at least somehow explains what is happening).

Here is a typical dialogue (the fairy tale “The Flying Ship”): “The old man asks the fool: “Where are you going?” - “Yes, the king promised to give his daughter to the one who makes a flying ship.” - “Can you make such a ship?” - “No, I can’t!” - “So why are you going?” - “But God knows!” (ibid.: 144). For this wonderful answer (because he is honest?) the old man helps the hero get the princess. This eternal wandering “I don’t know where”, in search of “I don’t know what” is inherent in Russian fairy tales and Russian life.

Why does the heroine love the worthless hero? How does the hero, who has never left his home before, know what words to say to the hut so that it turns “towards him”, and what words to Baba Yaga so that she does not eat him? Why isn’t the merchant surprised when his wife asks him to buy her “wonderful, wonderful, wonderful”? How does the hero get “there, I don’t know where” and find “that, I don’t know what.” Fairy tales do not answer these questions. Yes, neither the listener nor the reader needs them.

Fairy tales reveal all the most important aspects of Russian life. Almost all the main topics that will be discussed in subsequent chapters are touched upon to one degree or another in folklore. Fairy tales are an inexhaustible source of information about national character. Their strength lies in the fact that they not only reveal it, but also create it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Afanasyev, A. N. (1984) Russian folk tales. In 3 vols. Ser. "Literary Monuments". M.: Science.

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Taking into account the plot differences, fairy tale characters appear as a wide gallery of images. Among them, the image of the hero is especially important; it is he who largely determines the ideological and artistic content of fairy tales. He embodies folk ideas about justice, kindness, and true beauty. All the best qualities of a person are concentrated in him, thanks to which the image of the hero becomes artistic expression ideal. The high moral qualities of the heroes are revealed through their actions. However, in fairy tales one can find elements psychological nature, attempts to convey the inner world of the heroes, their spiritual life: they love, rejoice, are upset, are proud of victory, experience betrayal and infidelity, look for a way out of difficult situations, and sometimes make mistakes. That is, in the fairy tale we find outlines of the image of the individual. And yet we can talk about the individualization of images with a certain degree of convention, since many features inherent in the hero one plot will be repeated in the heroes of other fairy tales. Therefore, the opinion about the depiction of a single folk character in fairy tales is fair. This folk character embodied in different types heroes - male and female images.

The topic of determining the images and heroes of a fairy tale is very extensive, so I will only analyze the images of the main characters of a fairy tale.

First of all, it is necessary to establish the main characters of the fairy tale. V.Ya. Propp, who studied the fairy tale based on the functions of the characters, establishes seven main characters in the fairy tale:

False Hero;

Antagonist-pest (harms the hero, his family, fights him, pursues him);

Donor (gives the hero a magical remedy);

Assistant (moves the hero, helps him in the fight against the pest);

Sender (sends the hero);

Princess (requested character).

It is not necessary that all of them be present, and each role played by a separate character, but certain characters are clearly visible in every fairy tale (41, pp. 72-75).

Hero

The main character of a fairy tale is essentially one. Regardless of whether his name is Ivan the Tsarevich or Ivan the Peasant Son, Pokati the Pea or Andrei the Sagittarius, Emelya the Fool, his appearance, behavior, and fate are the same. This is a generalized collective image of a positive hero. A courageous, fearless, faithful, handsome hero overcomes all troubles and adversity and wins his happiness, be it the royal throne, the hand of a princess, or victory over the enemies of his homeland. This hero is one, regardless of how he is presented and in what social position he is. In most fairy tales, the hero, unlike other characters, is endowed with extraordinary power. His heroism is revealed already in childhood, he “grows by leaps and bounds,” “he will go out into the street, whoever he grabs by the hand, hand off, whoever he grabs by the leg, foot away.” He has only the strength of a wonderful horse, which awaits the rider in the dungeon, chained with twelve chains. Setting off on his journey, the prince orders himself a twelve-pound club. The same power is hidden in Ivan the Fool (“Sivka-Burka”): “...He grabbed the nag by the tail, tore off its skin and shouted: “Hey, come together, jackdaws, hags and magpies!” Father sent you some food.”

It should be noted that the fairy tale reveals for us the most high quality the hero, for example, how the hero spares animals: Ivan the Fool uses his last money to buy a dog and a cat, frees a crane caught in a snare, a hunter, suffering from poverty, feeds an eagle for three years. The same manifestation of ideal qualities is fulfilling one's duty, honoring one's elders, and following wise advice. Usually advice comes from old men and women who embody life experience, the ability to foresee events. These characters often act as wonderful helpers. In the tale of the three kingdoms, Ivan Tsarevich, going in search of his kidnapped mother, defeats the many-headed snake, following her order “not to hit with a weapon twice” or to rearrange the barrels with “strong and powerless water.” The plot of “go there, I don’t know where” is entirely based on the Sagittarius following the wise advice of his wife. Failure to fulfill an order, violation of this word are regarded as a fault and carry with them serious consequences: wonderful objects and a bride are stolen from Ivan Tsarevich.

Initial erroneous behavior gives particular credibility to correct actions. Ivan Tsarevich is thinking about where to get a heroic horse. When asked by a streetwise grandmother he meets what he was thinking about, he responds with rudeness, but then comes to his senses, asks the old woman for forgiveness and receives the necessary advice.

The hero's personality is manifested in his actions, in his reaction to the outside world. The plot action (situations in which the hero is placed) serves as a revelation and proof of the truly positive qualities of a person, the correctness of his actions, as corresponding to the norms of human behavior in society. For every good deed, the hero is rewarded with magical objects: an invisibility hat, a self-assembled tablecloth, wonderful animals - a heroic horse, animal helpers. The reward can be in the form of advice: where to find a horse, how to find the way to your betrothed, or defeat a snake.

A fairy tale knows two main types of heroes: Ivan the Tsarevich (active) - the hero of magical heroic plots ("Three Kingdoms", "Kashchei the Immortal", "Rejuvenating Apples", etc.) and Ivan the Fool (passive) - the hero of fairy tales " Sivka-Burka", " Magic ring", "Wonderful Gifts", "The Little Humpbacked Horse", etc. The hero's goal is different in different stories: to return to people the light that was swallowed by the snake, to save the mother from the monster and to find the brothers, to restore the sight and health of the old man, turns the queen into a white duck, and then tries to destroy her children too.

Revealing the images of its heroes, the fairy tale conveys folk ideas about people, their relationships, affirms kindness and loyalty. The image of the hero is revealed in complex system plot contrasts.

Ivan Tsarevich- one of the main characters of Russian folklore. He appears in fairy tales in two different guises:

Figure 7 – Gorokhova E. “Feather of the Firebird”

Positive character fighting evil, helping the offended or weak. Very often at the beginning of a fairy tale, Ivan Tsarevich is poor, lost by his parents, persecuted by enemies, and does not know about his royal origins. In such tales, as a reward for heroic behavior and good deeds, Ivan Tsarevich receives back his kingdom, throne, or finds his royal parents. But even if he is initially a prince, at the end of the fairy tale he usually receives a kind of prize in the form of someone else’s half-kingdom, a royal or royal daughter, a magic or expensive horse, precious or magical objects, or even additional intelligence or magical skills.

Negative character, which is contrasted with other princes, but more often with characters of simple origin, for example, Ivan the Fisherman's Son. In this case, Ivan Tsarevich is angry, treacherous and in various ways tries to destroy the good heroes and take away their well-deserved reward. In the end he is disgraced and punished, but almost never killed.

Usually Ivan Tsarevich (like Ivan the Fool) is the youngest of three sons king

Ivan the Fool. Ivan the Fool, or Ivanushka the Fool, is one of the main prototypical characters of Russian fairy tales. It embodies a special fairy-tale strategy, not based on the standard postulates of practical reason, based on the search for one’s own solutions, often contrary to common sense, but ultimately bringing success. As a rule, his social status is low - a peasant's son or the son of an old man and an old woman. In the family he was often the third, youngest son. Not married. With the help of magical means, Ivan the Fool successfully passes all tests and achieves highest values: he defeats the enemy, marries the king's daughter, receives both wealth and fame. It is important to note that Ivan the Fool also embodies the image of a poet and musician. Fairy tales emphasize his singing, his ability to play the wonderful pipe or samogud harp, making the herd dance. Ivan the Fool is connected in the plot with a certain critical situation, culminating in a holiday (victory over the enemy and marriage), in which he is the main participant.

For my research, it is necessary to note that the hero of fairy tales, Ivan the Fool, is not a fool at all, in the modern meaning of the word. Before the adoption of Christianity and for a long time Afterwards, there was a tradition of not calling children by “adult” names, so that they would not be kidnapped by “devils” (living beyond the line) while they were helpless. The child received an “adult”, “real” name at initiation at the age of 10-13, and before that he had a fake, childish name. Children's names derived from numerals were widespread - Pervak, Vtorak, Tretyak. And also Drugak, that is, “other,” next. Since it was the most popular, denoting, in most cases, the youngest child, it eventually became a common noun and was simplified to “Fool.” The name "Fool" is found in church documents until the 14th-15th centuries. Since the 17th century, it began to mean what it means now - a stupid person. Naturally, the youngest is the most inexperienced and stupid. Therefore, taking this version into account, the famous Ivan the Fool from Russian fairy tales may turn out to be not a fool at all, but simply the youngest of three sons. (Internet resource No. 4).

Fairy tales have their own special structure - stable plots and motifs are constantly used in its composition, fairy tale heroes are encountered with their unchanged functions and abilities. We all remember popular folk tales with their triple repetitions, with the repeating formulas “Once upon a time...”, “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state...”, “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it...”. The space in a fairy tale is conditional and distant from reality.

The heroes of fairy tales are distinguished by such bright human qualities as nobility, kindness, courage, resourcefulness, and good forces in fairy tales always prevail. Among the positive heroes of Russian folk tales there are brave princes, epic heroes, simple peasants, and whole line female images.

Bogatyrs were originally heroes of Russian epics, but over time they penetrated into folk tales. The most famous hero of fairy tales is Ilya Muromets. He embodies the ideal of a warrior hero, who is famous not only for his remarkable physical strength, but also for the special moral qualities inherent in a real hero: calmness, perseverance, good nature. In epics and fairy tales, this hero is the people's protector. Let us recall, for example, such a work as “Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber.” Also worthy of mention is the noble but little-known ancient hero of Russian fairy tales, Ruslan Lazarevich. The plots and adventures in which he appears are close to the famous plots with Ilya Muromets.

Dobrynya Nikitich, like the hero of fairy tales, acts as a reliable assistant to the prince, whom he faithfully serves for many years. He carries out personal assignments for the prince, for example, to save his daughter or niece. Dobrynya is particularly brave - he himself decides to carry out tasks that other heroes refuse. Often this is the hero of a fairy tale about snake fighting, as well as Alyosha Popovich. Their adventures and the plots of the fairy tales in which they appear are extremely similar to each other. Let us recall, for example, such stories as “Dobrynya Nikitich and the Serpent Gorynych” and “Alyosha Popovich and Tugarin the Serpent.”

All these three epic hero are in close interaction with each other, and in different fairy tales they show their strong and noble qualities in different ways. Everyone is familiar with these names of heroes of folk tales. Alyosha Popovich is a collective image of a hero in Russian folklore. In the character of this fairy tale hero we see a mixture of a variety of traits. First of all, Alyosha is distinguished by his courage, but he is also very perky and cunning. His image reflected the entire breadth of the soul of the Russian person, all its versatility.

Favorite hero of folk tales is Ivan Tsarevich. This is a positive character known to everyone, who fights evil, helps the weak and offended. Often this is the youngest of the king's three sons. In some stories, Ivan does not even know about his royal origin, but, nevertheless, personifies the nobility and good qualities of his soul. For example, he fights Koshchei, defeats him, saves his wife or a beautiful princess. And for his heroic behavior and good deeds, this hero of folk tales receives his due kingdom or half of other people’s kingdoms, and the king’s daughter, and other magical skills.

Ivanushka the Fool is also very important hero fairy tales, standing on the side of good and bright forces. Ivan the Fool is just a peasant son and he does not at all resemble a noble fairy-tale hero. His peculiarity is that outwardly he is not at all like other positive heroes of Russian fairy tales. He does not shine with intelligence, but it is thanks to his irrational behavior and non-standard thinking that he passes all the fabulous tests, defeats his opponent and gains wealth.

It is important to note that Ivan the Fool has a special creative skill - he plays musical instruments (harp or pipe), and fairy tales often attach great importance to his wonderful singing. This is its peculiarity, because the positive heroes of fairy tales are not always able to create something beautiful on their own, without resorting to the help of magical animals or objects.

Among female fairy-tale images, the type of the Wonderful Bride is especially outstanding. This extraordinary hero of fairy tales is distinguished by his intelligence and special feminine cunning. She often owns some magical objects or knows how to use miraculous powers. We all know heroines who correspond to this type: Vasilisa the Beautiful, Vasilisa the Wise and the Frog Princess. This is the female version strong hero folk tales.

This kind heroine is a reflection of the bright side, the personification of goodness and peace, but at the same time, in many stories, the wonderful bride is the daughter of the enemy of the main character of the fairy tale. The good hero of folk tales goes through severe trials and solves complex riddles, and a wonderful bride helps him with these tasks. Thus, sometimes in one fairy tale we meet not one, but two, or even three characters who help each other in the fight against evil.

As we can see, the positive heroes of folk tales are very diverse. They reveal different sides of the people’s character: here there is nobility, selflessness, ingenuity, cunning, special heroism, straightforwardness, and female wisdom. The heroes of fairy tales overcome all obstacles on their way thanks to these positive qualities. After all, in Russian folklore, fairy-tale heroes strive for light, and good forces always prevail.

State Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education "MPGU"

Formation of the character of Alyosha, the main character of the fairy tale “The Black Hen, or the Underground Inhabitants”

Work completed

Berdnikova Anna

I checked the work:

st.pr. Leontyeva I.S.

Moscow 2010

A. Pogorelsky's magical fairy tale “The Black Hen, or the Underground Inhabitants” in the list of works of Russian classical literature for extracurricular reading attracts the attention of teachers because it makes it possible to introduce students to a truly artistic work addressed to children.

In the history of Russian literature, the name of A. Pogorelsky is associated with the emergence of romantic prose in the 20s of the 19th century. His works affirm such moral values ​​as honesty, selflessness, height of feelings, faith in goodness, and are therefore close to the modern reader.

Antony Pogorelsky (pseudonym of Alexei Alekseevich Perovsky) is the maternal uncle and educator of Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy, a poet, writer, playwright, whose name is closely connected with the village of Krasny Rog and the city of Pochep in the Bryansk region.

He was one of the most educated people of his time. He graduated from Moscow University in 1807, was a participant in the Patriotic War of 1812, was a member of the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, where he communicated with Ryleev, N. Bestuzhev, Kuchelbecker, F. Glinka. Pushkin knew and appreciated the stories of A. Pogorelsky. A. Pogorelsky's works include: “The Double, or My Evenings in Little Russia”, “The Monastery”, “The Magnetizer” and others.

A. Pogorelsky published the fairy tale “The Black Hen, or Underground Inhabitants” in 1829. He wrote it for his pupil, nephew Alyosha, the future outstanding writer Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy.

The fairy tale has been living for the second century. L. Tolstoy loved to reread it to his children, and our children listen and read it with great pleasure.

Children are fascinated by the fantastic events that happen in the real life of the little pupil of a private boarding school, Alyosha. They vividly perceive his worries, joys, sorrows, while realizing the clear and so important idea for them about the need to cultivate hard work, honesty, dedication, nobility, to overcome selfishness, laziness, selfishness, and callousness.

The language of the story is peculiar; it contains many words, for an explanation of the lexical meaning of which students should consult a dictionary. However, this circumstance does not in the least interfere with understanding the fairy tale, its main idea.

Uniqueness art world“The Black Hen” is largely due to the nature of creative interaction with the literature of German romanticism.

It is customary to name “The Elves” by L. Tick and “The Nutcracker” by E.-T.-A as the sources of the fairy tale. Hoffman. Pogorelsky's familiarity with the work of German romantics is beyond doubt. The story of a 9-year-old boy who found himself in the magical world of underground inhabitants, and then betrayed their secret, dooming the little people to move to unknown lands, is very reminiscent plot situation“Elves” by Tika is a fairy tale in which a heroine named Marie, who visited the amazingly beautiful world of elves as a child, reveals their secret to her husband, forcing the elves to leave the land.

The lively fantastic flavor of the Underworld makes it similar to both the fairy-tale world of elves and the candy state in Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker”: colorful trees, a table with all kinds of dishes, dishes made of pure gold, garden paths strewn with precious stones. Finally, the author's constant irony evokes associations with the irony of the German romantics.

However, in Pogorelsky it does not become all-consuming, although it receives many addresses. For example, Pogorelsky openly mocks the “teacher,” on whose head the hairdresser has piled a whole greenhouse of flowers, with two diamond rings shining between them. “An old, worn-out cloak” in combination with such a hairstyle reveals the squalor of the boarding house, occasionally, on the days of the arrival of significant persons, demonstrating the full power of servility and servility.

A striking contrast to all this is the inner world of Alyosha, devoid of hypocrisy, “whose young imagination wandered through knightly castles, through terrible ruins or through dark dense forests.” This is a purely romantic motive.

However, Pogorelsky was not just an imitator: mastering the experience of German romanticism, he made significant discoveries. In the center of the fairy tale is the boy Alyosha, while in fairy tales - sources there are two heroes - a boy and a girl. Boys (Anders in “Elves”, Fritz in “The Nutcracker”) are distinguished by their prudence, they strive to share all the beliefs of adults, so the path to the fairy-tale world, where girls discover a lot of interesting things, is closed to them.

German romantics divided children into ordinary children, that is, those who are unable to escape the confines of everyday life, and the elite.

“Such intelligent children are short-lived, they are too perfect for this world...” the grandmother remarked about Elfrida, Marie’s daughter. The ending of Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker” does not give any hope for happiness for Marie in “earthly life”: Marie, who gets married, becomes a queen in a country of sparkling candied fruit groves and ghostly marzipan castles. If we remember that the bride was only eight years old, it becomes clear that the realization of the ideal is possible only in the imagination.

Romance values ​​the world of a child, whose soul is pure and naive, unclouded by calculation and oppressive worries, capable of creating amazing worlds in his rich imagination. In children we are given, as it were, the truth of life itself, in them its first word.

Pogorelsky, by placing the image of the boy Alyosha at the center of the fairy tale, demonstrated the ambiguity, versatility and unpredictability of the child’s inner world. If Hoffmann was saved by romantic irony, then L. Tieck’s tale, devoid of irony, amazes with hopelessness: with the departure of the elves, the prosperity of the region disappears, Elfrida dies, and after her her mother.

Pogorelsky’s tale is also tragic: it burns the heart and evokes the strongest compassion for Alyosha and the underground inhabitants. But at the same time, the fairy tale does not give rise to a feeling of hopelessness.

Despite the external similarity: brilliance, unearthly beauty, mystery - Pogorelsky’s Underground Kingdom is not like either the candy-puppet state in “The Nutcracker” or the land of eternal childhood in “Elves”.

Marie in Hoffmann's "The Nutcracker" dreams of Drosselmeier's gift - a beautiful garden, where "there is a large lake, miraculous swans with golden ribbons on their necks swim on it and sing beautiful songs." Once in the candy kingdom, she finds just such a lake there. The dream during which Marie travels to a magical world is a real reality for her. According to the laws of romantic dual worlds, this is the second, perfect world and is genuine, since it realizes all the powers of the human soul. Dual worlds take on a completely different character in Pogorelsky.

Among Pogorelsky's underground inhabitants there are military men, officials, pages and knights. In Hoffmann’s candy-doll state there is “every kind of people you can find in this world.”

The wonderful garden in the Underworld is designed in English style; The precious stones strewn along the garden paths glisten from the light of specially installed lamps. In The Nutcracker, Marie “found herself in ... a meadow that sparkled like glittering precious stones, but ended up looking like candy.

The walls of the richly decorated hall seem to Alyosha to be made of “labradorite, like he saw in the mineral cabinet available in the boarding house.

All these rationalistic features, unthinkable in romanticism, allowed Pogorelsky, following the German romantics, to embody in the fairy-tale kingdom the child’s understanding of all aspects of existence, Alyosha’s ideas about the world around him. The underworld is a model of reality, according to Alyosha, a bright, festive, reasonable and fair reality.

A completely different kingdom of elves in Tika's fairy tale. This is the country of eternal childhood, where they reign hidden forces nature - water, fire, treasures of the earth's bowels. This is the world to which the child’s soul is initially related. For example, nothing more than fire, the rivers of which “flow underground in all directions, and from this flowers, fruits and wine grow,” nothing more than the welcomingly smiling Marie, laughing and jumping creatures “as if from a ruddy crystal." The only imbalance in the carefree world of eternal childhood is the underground room where the prince of metals, “an old, wrinkled little man,” commands ugly gnomes carrying gold in bags, and grumbles at Cerina and Marie: “Forever the same pranks. When will this idleness end?

For Alyosha, idleness begins when he receives a magic seed. Having received freedom, now making no effort to study, Alyosha imagined that he was “much better and smarter than all the boys, and became a terrible naughty boy.” The loss of prudence and abandonment of it, Pogorelsky concludes, lead to sad consequences: the degeneration of the child himself and the suffering to which Alyosha doomed the underground inhabitants with his rebirth. “Elves” shows the fatal incompatibility of the beautiful world of childhood with reality, its inexorable laws; growing up turns into degeneration, the loss of everything bright, beautiful and valuable: “You people are growing up too quickly and are rapidly becoming adults and reasonable,” the elf argues Cerina. An attempt to combine ideal and reality leads to disaster.

In “The Black Hen,” Alyosha’s word not to reveal the secrets of the underground inhabitants means that he owns the happiness of an entire country of little people and the ability to destroy it. The theme of human responsibility arises not only for himself, but also for the well-being of the whole world, united and therefore fragile.

This is how one of the global themes of Russian literature opens.

The inner world of a child is not idealized by Pogorelsky. Prank and idleness, poeticized by Tick, lead to tragedy, which is being prepared gradually. On the way to the Underworld, Alyosha commits many rash acts. Despite numerous warnings from the Black Hen, he asks for the cat's paw and cannot resist bowing to the porcelain dolls... The disobedience of an inquisitive boy in the fairy tale kingdom leads to a conflict with wonderful world, awakens the forces of evil in him.

The second world, just like the first, testifies to the troubles in the child’s inner life, signals the need to guide the actions of an inquisitive and inexperienced boy and the danger of trusting all his unconscious impulses.

“Children’s spontaneous simplicity” is therefore not an object of worship for Pogorelsky. Pogorelsky replaces his admiration for the innocent child with a purely human, wise Christian love for a kind but frivolous boy who suffers deeply, acutely feels his guilt and repents of what he has done.

The scene of farewell to Chernushka repeats some moments of Tserina’s farewell to Elfrida: a representative of the magical kingdom appears, a description of his appearance is given, a conversation where both Tserina and Chernushka emphasize the plight of the inhabitants of fairy-tale worlds. The whole scene as a whole has an original character. In it, Pogorelsky seriously disagrees with Tick. Cerina still loves only the innocent Elfrida, and not Marie, who doomed her to suffering, the elf is “very angry.”

Chernushka says through tears: “I forgive you, I cannot forget that you saved my life, and still I love you, although you made me unhappy, perhaps forever.”

Love and kindness, according to Pogorelsky, are the basis of a person’s true beauty.

“The Black Hen” does not leave a feeling of hopelessness, does not contain “the insipidness and falsehood of moralizing tales,” its emotionally generalizing thought amazes with the power born of the depth of philosophical subtext, which the fairy tale was so often denied.

Pogorelsky managed to avoid extremes, the opposition of rationalism and spontaneity, reason and feeling, will and emotions, freedom and necessity. Only their harmonious combination in a person can save him from unjustified mistakes and dangerous delusions.

Having accepted one of the most important tenets of German romanticism, that a fairy tale is not a delight for children before bedtime, but “nature itself,” that it is nature that is most suitable for the embodiment of universal ideas, Pogorelsky created an amazing story in which the image of a child is captured in all its complexity.

However, this does not exhaust the meaning of the tale. It not only accurately depicts the child, but also reflects his real position in the world. The phenomenon of the fairy tale lies in the fact that this was done using techniques that among the German romantics led to conclusions that were either depressing in their hopelessness or to irony, which proclaimed the impossibility of achieving the truth. This path led to a crisis in the romantic worldview as a whole. Pogorelsky, according to the researcher of his work E.P. Zvantseva, “was one of the writers who, led by Pushkin, laid the foundation for Russian classical prose.”

The transformation of romantic ideas that occurred in the fairy tale reveals the deep tendencies in the development of Russian moral and aesthetic thought, which created masterpieces of world-historical significance in the 19th century.

The writer proved his independence for the first time children's world, the child has his own value system, taste, creativity. The image of Alyosha is distinguished by its authenticity psychological drawing, they open a gallery of images in the autobiographical stories of S.T. Aksakova, L.N. Tolstoy, N.G. Gagarin - Mikhailovsky.

The key idea of ​​the work - the collapse of infantilism, the transition from naive fantasies to an awareness of responsibility for actions - has become one of the leading ideas of Russian children's prose. Thoughts about a person’s independent path in the world of moral concepts, about the ethical law that operates in art in the same way as in life, are certainly an important part of the content.

Traditional romantic dual world found justification in the objective dual world of children's consciousness. The image of Alyosha combines the features of little Alyosha Perovsky and Alyosha Tolstoy.

Pogorelsky found a golden mean in the manner of narrating his childhood between prudence and sympathy, with shades of gentle humor and sentimentality, quite appropriate for reminiscences. A sense of proportion is also manifested in the syllable that moves from the book-narrative syllable to the syllable of live communication between the mentor and the child. Thus, in “The Black Hen” one of the main features of children's literature was determined - the presence of two narrative plans - for children and for adults.

There are two plans in Pogorelsky’s story: the real one, depicting St. Petersburg late XVIII centuries (a men's boarding school, the life and customs of students and teachers, their relationships), and a magical one, in which underground knights, gnomes, etc. operate. The author draws the main character with great warmth and subtle knowledge of child psychology. The boy does not lose heart, finding himself in a St. Petersburg boarding school far from his parents’ home, he studies diligently, plays happily with his friends and reads so much that he even knows “by heart the deeds of the most glorious knights.” “His young imagination wandered through knightly castles, through terrible ruins or through dark, dense forests,” writes Pogorelsky. Filled with childhood dreams, Alyosha is not a passive, dreamy child. The magical world he created does not fence him off from the real world. Unbridled imagination, a lively, active character distinguish the young hero. He constantly transfers what he imagines to everyday reality; real life seems mysterious and enigmatic to him. The director of the schools was expected to arrive, and Alyosha immediately imagined him as “a famous knight in shiny armor and a helmet with large feathers.”

Alyosha is capable of good impulses and actions, of self-sacrifice in the name of saving the defenseless. To save the life of his beloved chicken Chernushka, he, without hesitation, gives “to the angry and scolding cook a gold coin, which he treasured better than his own eyes, because it was a gift from his kind grandmother.” The little reader will undoubtedly highly appreciate this act of Alyosha. You can feel the didactic orientation already in the first pages of the story. Pogorelsky paints his hero in the most attractive colors, emphasizing his cordial responsiveness, hard work, and politeness. Therefore, the turn that occurs in the boy’s consciousness and behavior may seem poorly motivated. For saving Chernushka, who turned out to be the minister of the magical kingdom, the king of the gnomes promises to fulfill his every wish. After hesitating a little, Alyosha asks the king of the gnomes for only one magical remedy: not to learn lessons, but to answer them without hesitation. Alyosha is a child, and, naturally, positive moral qualities are just being formed in him. Then, young hero still wants to always know the lessons, but he thinks about it like other students: it would be good to know everything without bothering yourself, without making any effort. Pogorelsky shows what this children's philosophy leads to. He convinces young readers how bad it is not to want to work to know everything. This, first of all, is the moral, pedagogical meaning and educational significance of Pogorelsky’s magical story.

So, Alyosha receives a magical talisman: a hemp seed. He can now rest on his laurels and answer any lesson without any preparation. We are looking forward to seeing what Alyosha will become. After all, according to Pogorelsky, he was a “kind, sweet and modest” boy. Indeed, it is difficult for a hero to turn into a parasite. The writer reveals what is happening in the soul little hero the struggle of positive and negative principles, good and evil.

This portrayal of the hero was innovative. Before Pogorelsky, Russian folk and literary tales did not reveal the image of a positive hero. They did not depict the spiritual contradictions of the characters. They sharply separated good from evil. Characters were divided into positive and negative. The hero of Pogorelsky's story has good and bad traits characters are adjacent. Alyosha is a living, full-blooded image. The fairy tale conflict also develops in a new way. In the work one can feel the author’s increased attention to the psychological essence, to emotional experiences hero. Here Alyosha first appears in class with a hemp seed in his pocket and, “not yet knowing what to say... unmistakably, without stopping, he said everything that was asked.” But the teacher’s praise does not give him as much pleasure now as before. " Inner voice he was told that he did not deserve this praise, because the lesson did not cost him any work,” writes Pogorelsky.

Subsequently, the struggle between positive and negative principles in Alyosha’s soul loses its severity. It is drowned out by the growing selfishness, conceit and arrogance in the boy. Idleness cripples Alyosha spiritually, alienates him from other children, and brings suffering. He is losing his former charm. The imaginary successes turned Alyosha’s head so much that he began to rarely even remember his magical friend Chernushka. How pitiful the hero seems when, having lost his magic talisman, he “could not utter a single word” in class and suffered a severe punishment for this! Pogorelsky convinces readers that the seemingly harmless desire of some children to know everything without working, imperceptibly turns into a difficult-to-correct vice in the story, capable of bringing innumerable troubles to both the hero himself and others. The story is distinguished by acute tragic artistic situations and collisions. The plot of the work develops in such a way that at the climax of events the fate of an entire nation depends on the boy’s behavior. During the flogging, Alyosha could not stand it and told the teacher about the existence of an underground magical kingdom. He gave away the secret. After this, Chernushka, and the knights, and the “little people” - the gnomes - had to leave their native place. “You made me unhappy,” Chernushka, chained in chains, says to Alyosha. And the young hero hears the noise of mournfully departing people, the crying of children and women.

Alyosha broke his word and brought suffering to the residents underground kingdom unintentionally, unconsciously. But the tragedy that unfolded was a consequence of his “unreasonable behavior”, caused by the desire to live thoughtlessly and inactively. And only the hero’s struggle with himself can to some extent atone for his guilt. Leaving Alyosha, Chernushka tells him: “Your tears cannot help. You can only console me in my misfortune: try to improve and be again the same kind boy as you were before.” All fairy-tale events are drawn by the writer in the form of pictures that the hero sees and which are inspired by his reading of knightly novels. But the writer deliberately confuses dream with reality. Already at the very beginning of the story, Chernushka appears as an envoy of the magical kingdom to Alyosha both in a dream and when he was “lying with with open eyes and listened for a long time as in the upper housing, above his head, they walked from room to room and put chairs and tables in order.” And the shock that the hero experienced after the unintentional disclosure of the secret of the gnomes is described by the author in such a way that the little reader will not doubt the authenticity of what is happening.

Pogorelsky uses dialogue very sparingly, which played such a large role in folk tales. The main part of the text of the work is a narration on behalf of the author. It is dominated by book vocabulary, extended phrases with numerous subordinate clauses. The language of the story conveys its ideological and aesthetic originality. For example, the intonations of the “children’s” speech are subtly captured in the work: “Chernushka walked ahead on tiptoe and Alyosha ordered to follow her quietly, quietly.” Often the narrative turns into a conversation, and Pogorelsky seems to lead the little reader to the places he talks about in his fairy tale. Hence the author’s constant reservations and his appeals to children: “Another time and on another occasion, perhaps I will talk to you at greater length about the changes that have taken place in St. Petersburg during my century,” “I forgot to tell you that this house belonged to quite spacious yard..."

The time when the fairy tale was written coincides with events that shocked the whole of Russia - hundreds of people associated with secret Decembrist societies were sent to hard labor against their will in shackles. Chained Chernushka in the human form of a minister could not help but evoke associations that at that time they preferred not to share publicly. The meaning of the moral lesson to the hero of the fairy tale is not only that one must work diligently, but that childish frivolity (so often inherent in adults) makes both themselves and those dear to them unhappy. It is better to endure suffering than to break fidelity out of cowardice this word.

Romantic story– the fairy tale “The Black Hen, or the Underground Inhabitants” is a masterpiece of Russian children's fiction, which has become a monument to the noble culture of childhood. Possessing powerful educational and aesthetic potential, it undoubtedly left its mark on the minds of 19th-century readers. His nephew A.K. grew up in the atmosphere of pedagogical ideas and literary creativity of A. Pogorelsky. Tolstoy, who became the last romantic in the history of Russian literature, is a bright and multifaceted personality. L.N. Tolstoy, compiling a list of books that influenced him spiritual formation, included “Black Chicken...”.