The place occupied by the hero in the work is a red flower. “Philosophical motives in the story by V.M. Garshin “Red Flower”

Much has been written about the symbolic meaning of the red flower in Garshin’s story of the same name. The red flower in the story is the embodiment of evil, but we must not forget that the flower embodies evil only in the imagination of an unfortunate madman. The hero calls the flower Ahriman, (Ahriman is the personification of the forces of evil, the deity of darkness and the underworld, often identified in Christianity with Satan) who has taken on a “modest and innocent appearance.” A feat is a heroic, selfless act. The madman accomplished a feat. He overcame evil at the cost of his life, and gave his all to others. Garshin expressed his admiration for the beauty of “self-sacrifice and heroism” and the romance of heroism. “Red Flower” is Garsha’s hymn to the “madness of the brave.” This contains its deep philosophical meaning. In Garshin, the drama of action is replaced by the drama of thought, revolving in the vicious circle of “damned questions”, the drama of experiences, which are the main material for Garshin. It is necessary to note the deep realism of Garshin’s manner. His work is characterized by precision of observation and definite expression of thought. He has few metaphors and comparisons; instead, he uses simple designations of objects and facts. A short, polished phrase, without subordinate clauses in descriptions. Garshin was unable to cover a wide range of social phenomena. He could not depict the big outside world, but the narrow “his own.” And this determined all the features of his artistic style. All his work is permeated with deep pessimism. The significance of Garshin is that he knew how to acutely feel and artistically embody social evil.

51. Hardy's work. "Tess of the D'Urbervilles"

Hardy is the last of the Victorian era. Hardy published his first two novels, Desperate Remedies and Under the Green Tree, or the Mellstock Choir, anonymously. In 1874, the novel Far from the Madding Crowd was published, which made Hardy famous writer. In total, Hardy published twenty-five titles - novels, collections of stories and poems. He dedicated most of his novels and stories to peasants. Describing the tragic fate of his heroes, Hardy exposes the social basis of psychological conflicts and opposes deadening moral standards victorian era. But turning to the contradictions of reality, Hardy sees no way to resolve them. Reality suppresses the writer, which determines the general tragic tone of his works. The strongest side of Hardy's work is the analysis of tragic conflicts and descriptions of English life. In the field of language, he continues the traditions of the English classics and belongs entirely to the 19th century. In Tess of the D'Urbervilles, an honest woman, having committed a crime for her happiness, dies on the scaffold. Hardy's heroine is endowed with a rare charm; her image especially touches the reader. In the joys and sufferings of the female soul, fiery and selfless, but easily vulnerable, defenseless against brute force. Both his enthusiasm, clouded by sadness, and the bitterness and indignation that overwhelmed him were expressed. Many English novelists, Hardy's predecessors, wrote about the fall of woman, making bitter observations that awakened the conscience and stirred thought. However, none of them connected so many glaring questions with this topic, did not touch a sore spot so sharply, did not express such a harsh reproach to society. He deliberately called Tess a “pure woman” and declared that he was telling only the truth. Tess is a tragic character. However, neither passion nor strong-willed aspiration, breaking down obstacles and confronting conflicting interests, controls her. Mental purity is a captivating and harmless quality - this is her pathos. She is ready to suffer, endures all the hardships of fate without complaint, does the hardest work, and endures ridicule. Tess of the Urbervilles is a classic novel of tragedy and loss. Love and crime are intricately intertwined in the fate of young Tess, a poor heiress of an ancient family, doomed to the role of a kept woman - and ready to change this fate at the cost of her own life.

3 Problem lesson based on the story “Red Flower” by V.M. Garshin

Lesson topic: “Hero or Madman” (problem lesson based on the story “Red Flower” by V.M. Garshin)

in 10th grade

The purpose of the lesson:introduce students to the biography of the writer V.M. Garshin, identify the main idea of ​​the story “Red Flower”.

Lesson objectives:

Educational:

Increase your level of perception literary text, the ability to “see” author's position

Introduce the concept of “image-symbol”

Educational:

Develop the ability to analyze, compare, generalize, prove, draw conclusions

Develop skills in analyzing a work of art

Educational:

Contribute to the formation of a personal position, education moral qualities: compassion, humanity.

Cultivate interest in literature as the art of words.

Epigraph of the lesson

The man in "The Red Flower" is greater than the world's evil, which he challenges. V.I.Prudominsky . (“The Sad Soldier, or the Life of Vsevolod Garshin” - that’s what V.I. called his book about him. Prudominsky).

Main activities of students: reporting on the writer’s biography, oral answers to questions, working with text, working with literary concepts, dramatizing a passage, working with portraits of the writer, compiling an associative dictionary.

During the classes :

Organization of the class, setting for active work

Teacher's opening speech.

Today in the lesson we will get acquainted with the biography of the writer V.M. Garshin, analyze his best work - the story “Red Flower”, introduce the new concept of “symbol”, and answer the problematic question, which is the topic of our lesson “Hero or madman?” .

Let's write down the date and topic of the lesson in our notebooks and read the epigraph. The guys were given a proactive task: to prepare a message and presentation on the writer’s biography.

Studying a new topic.

Student speech, presentation.

The teacher's word. So, you have read the best work of the writer V.M. Garshin "Red Flower". If you express it in one or two words, what feelings, emotions, sensations did you have after reading the story?(The hero evokes sympathy ). Why?

Let's try to figure it out and move on to analyzing the story.

Conversation on issues. Analysis of the story. Work with text.

When do we meet the hero of the story?

What significant first phrase does the hero say? What does the word revision mean? examination, verification, control, examination, revision, inspection; revolution, turning point, turning over, change, update. Can we say that this phrase of the hero is symbolic? What does she mean?(The world needs updating).

What is the hero going to audit?

Does he realize where he is?

Why does the hero, knowing where he is, not resist, but go to the department himself?

(The hero is an intelligent, freedom-loving, proud person)

Why doesn't the hero have a name?

What colors predominate when describing the hospital?

How does the hospital affect the patient?

So, in the first chapter, two opposing forces are identified. Which?

(A hero endowed with spiritual aspirations and yet common sense, and the hospital suppressing them. The hospital, as a special closed world, has its own ideologist.)

Who is it?

What is the doctor's name?

Can we say that the image of the doctor is symbolic?

What does the doctor symbolize? A symbol of power. Hospital? Lack of freedom.

4. Dramatizing the conversation between the main character and the doctor.

- What key word does the hero say in this scene?

(It is in a conversation with the doctor that the hero utters the word evil.)

Are they able to understand each other?

Which one evokes sympathy?

(The patient does not think about his own well-being, but about the salvation of the unfortunate patients, he is not complacent, like the doctor, he suffers. The conditions in which the patient is placed do not give him any chance to fight. And yet he fights.)

What is the subsequent narration in the story? (With the hero fighting with three red flowers)

Why did the hero, despite his “extraordinary appetite,” catastrophically lose weight?

(He was overcome by the thought of a flower)

What kind of flowers were these?

How do they appear to the hero?

Describe the hero's face when he looks at the flower. (You can read an excerpt)

What does the flower symbolize for the hero? (symbol of world evil)

5. Slide. “Symbol” Give examples of symbols from life.

Why does the hero see flowers differently than everyone else?

What feelings does the hero evoke?

How the hero's face changed at the end of the story. Find the last paragraph in the text and read it. (Work with text)

Why did it become calm and peaceful? (He saved humanity from evil, taking it with him, although at the cost of his own life).

Why was he clutching flowers on his chest?

6. Group work: (1-2 minutes for discussion)

1 group. Exercise. Fill out the table “Characteristics of the image of the main character”

2nd group. Exercise. Fill out the table “Image Characteristics” the doctors"

3rd group. Exercise. Why did V. Garshin dedicated his story to I.S. Turgenev? Your guesses.

After the response of group 3, the student’s message about the correspondence between Garshin and Turgenev.

7. Student message

4th group. Exercise. Determine the author's attitude towards the hero. Prove your point.

Answers from group speakers.

Answer 4 groups.Student answers (1 minute for each group)

Work comparing two portraits of V.M. Garshina.

What mood does the first portrait make you feel?

Which of the images did you like best and why?

What states of Garshin did the artist convey in these portraits?

Teacher after students' answers : In the first portrait, the writer is depicted in his best moments, when he experienced a sublime spiritual life and was in a state of inner harmony. In the second portrait he appears in moments of internal pain and terrible tension. Garshin's acquaintance with Repin dates back to 1882-1884. At this time, the artist was working on the paintings “They Didn’t Expect” and “Ivan the Terrible,” and the writer was working on “The Red Flower.” Repin immediately became eager to make a portrait of Garshin. “The main feature of Garshin’s character was “not of this world” - something angelic... When Garshin came to see me, I always felt it even before his call. And he entered silently and always brought with him a quiet delight, like an ethereal angel. Garshin’s eyes, of particular beauty, full of serious modesty, were often clouded with a mysterious tear,” Repin recalled. He chose the writer as a model for the image of Tsarevich Ivan: “I was struck by the doom in Garshin’s face: he had the face of one doomed to perish. This was what I needed for my prince.” A year later, Repin creates a large portrait of the writer.

Summary:

Is it possible to connect the idea of ​​the story “Red Flower” with Garshin’s personality, his fate? Remember the facts of the writer’s biography that you learned about at the beginning of the lesson. (Students' answers)

Working on the epigraph. Slide

Let's turn to the epigraph of our lesson. How do you understand the meaning of this phrase?

So, let's answer the question: hero or madman?

Summing up the lesson.

Teacher: Garshin was burdened by the injustice of modern life. With his creativity, he protested against a social structure based on callousness and violence. But life in its essence did not lose its charm for him.

Mine literary path Garshin ended with a funny fairy tale for children.

Reflection.

What did you learn new in the lesson?

What is the relevance of the story in our time?

What kind of work is this - social, ridiculing the strange impulses of people, or philosophical, forcing us once again to think about the meaning of life?

Homework: write an essay on the topic “Death – victory or defeat of the main character?”

Lesson grades.

Additional information:

In October 1881, V. Garshin, on the advice of his mother, wrote a letter to Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev. "... I wrote him a short letter. Ivan Sergeevich considered it necessary to answer the following: “Dear Garshin, how pleased I was to receive a letter from you (albeit a long time ago) and how ashamed I am that I did not answer you for so long. I am now sending you a few lines through your brother Eugene.”

In his reply letter, Ivan Sergeevich reassures Garshin, saying that his illness will pass, and he will leave a “noticeable mark” in Russian literature. Turgenev informs Garshin: “ Even last year I was counting on the fact that maybe you would stay with me; and now you probably won’t refuse me. Of all our young writers, you are the one who raises great hopes. You have all the signs of a real, major talent...”

“Encouragement” by I.S. Turgenev speaks of young writers about the generosity of his soul and heart, his talent not only literary, but also human.

1 group.

Exercise. Fill out the table “Characteristics of the image of the main character”

2nd group.

Exercise. Fill out the table “Characteristics of the image of a doctor”

________________________________________________

3rd group.

Exercise. Why did V. Garshin dedicated his story to I.S. Turgenev? Your guesses.

______________________________________________________

4th group.

APPENDIX No. 1.

Characteristic literary hero(image of the main character of the story “Red Flower”

Education ___________________.

APPENDIX No. 1.

Characteristics of a literary hero (the image of a doctor in the story “Red Flower”)

The place occupied by the hero in the work ________________________________________________________________________________

Education, occupation ___________________.

Public and Family status hero; the environment in which he lives _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________,

Demeanor, appearance, costume features ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________,

Actions, characteristics of behavior, activities, influence on others________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

The hero’s understanding of the goals of life, his main interests ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Feelings of a literary hero, his attitude towards other characters__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The attitude of other characters to this hero ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The attitude of the author to the hero and the importance of the hero in revealing the idea of ​​the work__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

"Where I am? What happened with me?" - it occurred to him.

Chapter 2

Oh, come on, Tobi!.. - the guard who entered shouted.

What a help Toby encore! Gritsko! Ivan!

Go shvidche, now you're untied.

Chapter 6

“He was found dead in the morning. His face was calm and bright; emaciated features with thin lips and deeply sunken eyes closed expressed some kind of proud happiness. When they laid him on the stretcher,We tried to open our hand and take out the red flower. But his hand became numb, and he took his trophy to the grave.” This is how the hero of the most famous story by Vsevolod Garshin (1855-1888) died.

Plot elements. The story has 6 chapters. In chapter 1 (starting pointFirst, a new mentally ill patient is taken to the hospital, he resists with terrible force. He perceives all medical manipulations as torture, and sees himself as a Christian martyr for the faith, for example, St. George. In Chapter 2 (development of the action), at night the patient woke up briefly as a healthy man and fell asleep again. No wonder this chapter is the shortest. Chapter 3 (the second plot) contains a conversation between the patient and the doctor about freedom, then the madman sees poppy flowers in the hospital garden. Chapter 4 (action development) is filled with events: the hero’s fantasies, the first daytime attempt to pick poppies, the second eveningearly attempt turned out to beb successful, crazy appetite, destruction of the flower. In chapter 5 (the first culmination) we learn why it is necessary to destroy the poppy: “All the evil of the world gathered into this bright red flower... It was a mysterious, terrible creature, the opposite of God, Ahriman, who took on a modest and innocent appearance. It was necessary to rip him off and kill him.” Three days later, the patient picked a second scarlet flower. She is losing weight, sedatives (morphine) are not working. In chapter 6 (the second climax and denouement), a patient in a straitjacket is tied to a bed, breaks, screams about terrible danger, a watchman is assigned to him, at night the madman is freed, picks a third flower, and in the morning he is found dead.

Chronotope (time and place of the text).The action takes place in a hospital and a hospital garden, that is, in a closed horizontal space. The vertical space is open, since the madman connects himself with the sky: “I am coming to you,” he whispered, looking at the sky.” It is no coincidence that the same root words “moon, lunar” are repeated: “Behind the bushes, directly opposite the window, a high fence was dark, the high tops of the trees of a large garden, drenched and imbued with moonlight, looked out from behind it. To the right rose the white hospital building with iron-barred windows illuminated from within; to the left is a white, moon-bright, blank wall of the dead. Moonlight fell through the grating of the window into the room, onto the floor, and illuminated part of the bed and the exhausted, pale face of the patient with his eyes closed; now there was nothing crazy about him.”

Day and night are in opposition. During the day the hero is mad (chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, 6), at night in the first half of the story he feels healthy (chapters 2, 4). The images of poppy (daytime vigor) and morphine (night sleep) are also opposite. As you know, morphine is obtained from the juice of poppy heads - what a cruel irony! A mentally ill man seeks to destroy the poppy (the source of universal evil in his eyes), and the doctor injects him with a dose of morphine as a remedy.

The main theme of the story is death.Precisely on the thought of death suggest strong positions of the text (beginning and ending, repetitions, keywords). The name is “Red (symbol of blood) flower.” Dedicated to the memory of the recently deceased Turgenev. Beginning of Chapter 1: “In the name of His Imperial Majesty, Sovereign Emperor Peter the Great, I announce an audit of this madhouse!” End: “He was carried to his bed in unconsciousness, which turned into a deep, dead and long sleep.” Beginning of chapter 2 (the shortest): “He woke up at night.” End: “For a few moments he woke up in full memory, as if healthy, then in the morning he got out of bed the same madman.” Beginning of Chapter 3: “How are you feeling? - the doctor asked him the next day.” End: “The patient hardly slept and spent whole days in continuous movement.” Chapter 4 (the longest). Start: “He realized that he was in a madhouse; he even realized that he was sick.” End: “He trembled as if in a fever and convulsively squeezed his chest, all saturated, as it seemed to him, with an unheard-of deadly poison.” Chapter 5 Start: "He didn't sleep all night." End: “However, I doubt that he survived.” Chapter 6 Beginning: “And the sick man was tied up.” End: “But his hand became numb, and he took his trophy to the grave.”

Keywords of the motive of deathscattered throughout the text: “The place of secret execution, hell, why kill me, in mortal horror, they cut off my head, a dead dream, a blank wall of the dead, growing thin every day, dead, killed, dead, poisonous, deadly breath, I will perish, turned pale like death, strangle, deadly poison, perish, die, better than death, barely alive, perish, kill, died, death, stiffened, grave. If this goes on, he won't survive. If this continues, he will die in two days. However, I doubt that he survived. “I’m coming to you,” he whispered, looking at the sky.”

Garshin's hero is a proud man,and pride, as you know, is a mortal sin and spiritual illness. “He saw himself in some kind of magical, enchanted circle, which had collected all the power of the earth, and in a proud frenzy he considered himself the center of this circle.” “He hoped that by morning the flower would lose all its strength. His evil will pass into his chest, his soul, and there he will be defeated or victorious - then he himself will perish, die, but he will die as an honest fighter and as the first fighter of humanity, because until now no one has dared to fight all the evil of the world at once.” . “How Toby bis help!” “His face was calm and bright; emaciated features with thin lips and deeply sunken, closed eyes expressed a kind of proud happiness.” I also remember the thematic repetition associated with Russian Emperor: “Peter the Great, Peter the Great, Battle of Poltava.” The madman perceives himself as the Christian savior of the world, almost a martyr, Saint George. He attaches a mystical meaning to the red cross on the hospital cap.

Symbols. Number 3. Three red flowers. “One of the most positive emblem numbers in symbolism, religious thought, mythology and folklore. Can be seen as the interaction (sum) of duality and unity. Participates together with the four (a symbol of the corporeal) in the formation of the sacred seven (addition) and twelve (multiplication), in both cases representing the heavenly or the Spirit (soul).”

Poppy. “The ancient Greeks considered the poppy to be an attribute of not only the god of sleep (Hypnos), but also the god of death (Thanatos). It is known that the ancient Egyptians already had a sleeping potion made from poppy seeds, who used it as a medicine and for this purpose cultivated even near the city of Thebes the same type of poppy (Paver somniferum) that we also cultivate. Nowadays, the healing properties of poppy have receded, unable to withstand competition with synthetic analgesics. And the deadly juice of this flower, opium, a source of heroin, morphine and other dangerous drugs, came to the fore. But the flower is not to blame for anything. The culprits are people who have lost their sense of proportion, who do not feel the line between life and death, and sometimes they are simply necrophiles, fans of Thanatos.”

Red color. “Among the experiences that the color red reflects, one can highlight, on the one hand, love, passion, eroticism, inspiration, and, on the other hand, aggression, hatred and danger. It is believed that the choice of red is also associated with a tendency towards self-realization. Most often, the color red evokes such associations as fiery, fire, fiery, inferno, heat, blood, irritation. The color red has a variety of mental effects on a person. It often causes anxiety, anxiety, and increases nervous tension. By increasing the level of anxiety, it forces you to pay more attention to the world around you. Being surrounded by red, a person intuitively tries to get out of it as quickly as possible.”

Cross. "Cross - main symbol Christianity, representing the instrument of execution of the God-man Jesus Christ, on which he was crucified to atone for the sins of the world. The cross is a symbol of the sacrificial love of the all-good God for fallen people, the all-conquering spiritual weapon of Christians, the foundation and focus of church life.”

Dictionary. "Ahriman (spirit of disasters)) - the god of evil in the religion of ancient Iran, founded by Zoroaster. A. is the source of evil, injustice, all the rare forces of nature; in every good beginning he can sow the seed of evil. All other evil spirits are subordinate to him.”

"Morphine - colorless crystalline powder obtained from opium, bitter and poisonous; in small doses it is an analgesic and hypnotic. A narcotic, painkiller extracted from the milky juice of poppy heads. [From Morpheios - god of sleep in Greek. mythology.]"

"George the Victorious"- Christian saint, great martyr, the most revered saint of this name. He suffered during the reign of Emperor Diocletian, and after eight days of severe torture in 303 (304) he was beheaded.”

"Palladium, palladium(ancient Greek παλλάδιον) - a sacred amulet statue depicting Pallas Athena. It was a shrine and talisman of the city in which it was kept. IN figuratively- a talisman, a sacred object that brings good luck to the owner (usually the country).”

“Dahlia. Dahlia is the Russian name for this flower. Its botanical name is Dahlia, it belongs to the Aster family. Dahlias are a perennial tuberous plant with stems that die off in winter and powerful perennial tubers that have a reserve of nutrients. Dalia's homeland is North America. These plants were well known to the Aztecs and Mayans."

Gleb Uspensky about “Red Flower”: “But Garshin, in his “Red Flower,” managed to remember and hold in his attention the transitional moments of not only a painful state.

Reading such a thing as “The Red Flower,” we, in addition to subtle observations of the symptoms of mental illness, see that the source of the suffering of a sick person lies in the conditions of his life and that from there, from life, suffering entered his soul. We see that life has offended his sense of justice, upset him, that the thought of life’s untruth is main root mental suffering and that nervous disorder, physical pain, physical suffering only complicate the intense work of a completely definite thought, inspired by the impressions of living life. A thought distressed by life beats as it beats migrant with the wind, with the fog - it struggles with the symptoms of physical illness, but it, this thought, like a bird that knows the purpose of its flight, is not distorted by these obstacles encountered on the path of its flight, but tries to break through them, rushing towards a known goal , V in this case to the theft of the flower, to its destruction as the source of all evil. The mere fact that a mentally ill person focuses his attention not just on a flower, but on red, and that it is this color that reveals unbreakable connection simply physical suffering with moral suffering, excited by life, impressions of what has been experienced, painted in this particular red, bloody color - this alone proves that living impressions of real life, of a certain tone, properties, meaning and quality - have in a mental disorder for a person like Garshin, the importance takes precedence over physical disorder.”

Extra-plot elements (portrait, landscape, interior, digressions)
Portrait of a hero. “He was scary. On top of the gray dress torn to shreds during a seizure, a jacket made of rough canvas with wide neckline hugged his waist; the long sleeves pressed his arms crosswise to his chest and were tied at the back. His inflamed, wide-open eyes (he had not slept for ten days) glowed with a motionless, hot shine; a nervous spasm twitched the edge of the lower lip; tangled, curly hair fell like a mane on his forehead.”

Interior. “It was a large stone building of an old government construction. Two large halls, one a dining room, the other a common room for quiet patients, a wide corridor with a glass door opening onto a garden with a flower garden, and a dozen separate rooms where the sick lived, occupied the lower floor; Two dark rooms were built right there, one upholstered with mattresses, the other with boards in which the violent were put, and a huge gloomy room with vaults - the bathroom. The top floor was occupied by women. A discordant noise, interrupted by howls and screams, rushed from there. The hospital was built for eighty people, but since it alone served several surrounding provinces, it could accommodate up to three hundred. The small closets had four and five beds; in winter, when the sick were not allowed into the garden and all the windows behind the iron bars were tightly locked, the hospital became unbearably stuffy.

The new patient was taken to a room where baths were located. And it could make a difficult impression on a healthy person, but on a frustrated, excited imagination it had an even more difficult effect. It was a large vaulted room with a sticky stone floor, lit by one window in the corner; the walls and vaults were painted with dark red oil paint; in the floor, blackened by dirt, at a level with it, two stone baths were built, like two oval pits filled with water. A huge copper stove with a cylindrical boiler for heating water and a whole system of copper pipes and taps occupied the corner opposite the window; everything had an unusually gloomy and fantastic character for an upset head, and the watchman in charge of the bathrooms, a fat, always silent little Russian, increased the impression with his gloomy physiognomy.”

Scenery. “The corner of the garden is overgrown with thick cherry trees; alleys of elms stretched along it; in the middle, on a small artificial hill, the most beautiful flower garden in the entire garden was planted; bright flowers grew along the edges of the upper platform, and in the center of it stood a large, large and sparse, yellow dalia with red specks. It formed the center of the entire garden, towering above it, and one could notice that many patients attached some mysterious significance to it. To the new patient, it also seemed like something not quite ordinary, some kind of palladium of a garden and a building. All the paths were also lined with the hands of the sick. There were all kinds of flowers found in Little Russian gardens: tall roses, bright petunias, tall tobacco bushes with small pink flowers, mint, marigolds, nasturtiums and poppy. Right there, not far from the porch, grew three poppy bushes of some special breed; it was much smaller than usual and differed from it in the extraordinary brightness of its scarlet color. This flower struck the patient when, on the first day after being admitted to the hospital, he looked into the garden through the glass door.”

“The Society of Sleepless Gentlemen,” as Garshin ironically called the interlocutors he depicted, was easily associated in the reader’s mind with the most diverse and sometimes even very humane trends in various intellectual circles, whose participants proposed the final and, from their point of view, the only correct ways to reorganize life. In some cases, the activities of these circles were easily stopped by the authorities, and then their members could say that they suffered for their beliefs.

In more complex cases, it turned out that the proposed theories simplified the real complexity of life, as was the case with the populists, who created a clearly idealized image of the people. The real man did not fit into any framework invented for him, destroying such harmonious and logical theories. For those who completely transferred the content of this allegory to modern reality, it became another basis for reproaching Garshin for pessimism.

One of Garshin’s best stories, “The Red Flower,” can be considered as the writer’s response to this reproach. The hero of the story believes that “the iron bars will soon fall apart, all these imprisoned people will come out of here and rush to all the ends of the earth, and the whole world will tremble, throw off its old shell and appear in a new, wonderful beauty.” This is what distinguishes him from the heroes of the allegory “That Which Wasn’t”, who were unable to say anything worthwhile about the “future life”.

The inhabitants of the greenhouse and the insects and animals philosophizing in the meadow live in a limited, closed world, while the hero of “The Red Flower” feels his connection with the world and space. Even the stars sympathize with him and send their “endless rays” that “penetrated to his very heart.” The heroes of previously written allegories perceived the world too narrowly, only within the framework of their experience.

The hero of “The Red Flower” sees “the balance of the whole world”, in which opposite principles are neutralized. At the same time, he is not alien to both a kind of practicality and a sober realistic view of the world.

Unlike the palm tree, he is not alone and considers the patients around him to be his comrades: “All of them, his comrades in the hospital, gathered here to carry out a task that vaguely seemed to him like a gigantic enterprise aimed at eliminating evil on earth.”

Emphasizing this, Garshin introduces a significant detail: the patients wear caps with a red cross, which were purchased after they had already been to war. The patient attached “a special, mysterious meaning” to this red cross.

The color red generally constantly surrounds the hero. The walls and vaults of the bathroom where he was initially taken were painted with “dark red oil paint.” They dressed him in a robe made of “paper material with wide red stripes.”

When a patient is given a spot - an operation that he takes as torture and mockery - he rips it off the back of the head along with the skin, leaving a bare red abrasion. The color red becomes for him a symbol of evil and innocently shed blood. On the contrary, the red cross embodies heroic self-sacrifice.

And yet, despite all the heroism, lofty ideals and self-sacrifice, the hero of the story is crazy. One of the main questions of the story is what is the main point of his madness?

The hero feels like a great thinker who has learned the secrets of the world, and most of his monologues begin with the word “I”: “I have actually achieved what has been developed by philosophy. I experience with myself the great ideas that space and time are fictions. I live in all ages. I live without space, everywhere or nowhere, as you wish...” He contrasts himself with the rest of the crowd: “I noticed that there are several more of the same here.

But for the rest of the crowd this situation is terrible.” He feels like the chosen one and is sure that only he and no one else can save the world: “I would send you, but only I can do this.” “He saw himself in some kind of magical, enchanted circle, which had collected all the power of the earth, and,” Garshin emphasizes, “in a proud frenzy, he considered himself the center of this circle.”

Such a great man must do only great things. He is “the first fighter of humanity”; after all, “until now no one has dared to fight all the evil of the world at once.” At the same time, the evil of the world for him was concentrated in one thing, concrete and material.

In fact, evil is complex and diverse, it is scattered in the world, its forms are numerous, and even the most heroic person is not able to immediately and forever destroy it. This is the main point of his insanity.

But for Garshin, a person should always have faith that evil can be defeated; fighting it, even if good results do not come instantly, is the only means that can bring happiness to a person. If Attalea princeps dies, having experienced great disappointment, and the philosophizing interlocutors from the allegory “That which was not” die without noticing their death, then the hero of “The Red Flower” dies happy, and this happiness is deserved by him.

The hero of the story “The Red Flower,” in order to bring happiness to people, had to destroy the red poppy and absorb its poison. In real life, struggle is always a struggle between man and man. What is permissible and what is unacceptable, humane and inhumane in this struggle, can the greatest and noblest goal be achieved by unsuitable means - such is the very general form the main theme of Garshin's latest works.

The story “Nadezhda Nikolaevna” (1885) - the writer’s largest work - continues the theme of the story “The Incident”. His heroine - a fallen but proud woman - meets a talented, noble, kind artist.

The theme of lying to oneself is also heard here, but does not occupy a central place. She is connected in the story with the image of Bessonov. This is a person who thinks rationally, who does not doubt anything, who has firmly and unequivocally resolved all issues once and for all. Having met Nadezhda Nikolaevna, he comes to the idea that such women never rise, and behaves in accordance with it.

Having soberly assessed his friend Lopatin, Bessonov tells him that he will never be able to draw Charlotte Corday, who killed Marat. “You have to have it in your blood,” he says. - You have to be a descendant of those people who survived Marat, and Charlotte Corday, and all this time. And you? The gentlest Russian intellectual, sluggish, weak! You have to be capable of such an act yourself. And you? Can you, when necessary, throw down your brush and, to put it in a high style, take up a dagger?

Bessonov firmly knows why he lives, and knows that happiness only lies in work. He is a man of strong will and believes that he can always control his feelings. Lopatin’s friend Gelfreich gives an exact description of Bessonov: “This man has all the boxes and compartments in his head; he will nominate one, take out a ticket, read what is written there, and act like that.” These qualities are emphasized by the portrait of Bessonov - he has a “quadrangular skull”.

But Bessonov’s sober and rationalistic thoughts are constantly refuted by life. Nadezhda Nikolaevna turns out to be capable of revival, but Bessonov himself cannot cope with his feelings. He abandons his work, in which he always saw the only meaning and happiness. “The gentlest Russian intellectual” turns out to be able to “raise the dagger” and kills Bessonov.

This is how the story argues with the “mathematics” of rationalistic thinking. This debate takes on additional depth thanks to the introduction into the story of subjects taken from folklore and history and serving as the basis for paintings by two artists - Lopatin and Gelfreich.

Lopatin wants to portray Charlotte Corday as a “fanatic of goodness” who commits a “feat-crime.” According to the artist’s plan, this image should combine “determination and melancholy, pride and fear, love and hatred,” that is, it presupposes that combination of the incompatible, which Bessonov would decisively reject. And the most main difficulty lies in the contradictory position of the heroine of the picture: for the sake of goodness and justice, she must kill a person.

The artist Gelfreich faces the same problem, only he takes subjects from more ancient history. He decides to portray Ilya Muromets, who all his life thought that he believed in Christ and fulfilled his commandments, but at the same time killed a great many “Pechenegs, and Tatars, and robbers.”

Gelfreich wants to portray Ilya Muromets reading the Gospel precisely in the place where it says that, having received a blow, one must put oneself under another. The composition of the story is structured in such a way that both plots coincide with the plot of the story: in the finale, Lopatin kills Bessonov, who shoots Nadezhda Nikolaevna. So, three different stories are united by one problem: is good, based on murder, acceptable, and is it necessary to respond to evil with evil?

The story gives three possible answers. The first answer is the one that, according to Gelfreich, is given by Ilya Muromets: “It’s good if they hit me, but what if they offend a woman, or touch a child, or a filthy person comes and begins to rob and kill your, Lord, servants? Do not touch? Leave it to rob and kill? No, Lord, I can’t listen to you! I will sit on a horse, take a spear in my hands and go to fight in your name, for I do not understand your wisdom, but you gave me a voice in my soul, and I listen to it, not you!..”

The second answer is given by the hero of the story. After he is completely acquitted by the court, taking into account all the circumstances of the murder, he says to himself that “there are no written laws for the human conscience, there is no doctrine of insanity, and I am punished for my crime.” Usually this answer is compared with the teachings of Tolstoy, who indeed had a strong influence on Garshin.

But such a formulation of the question, perhaps even in to a greater extent close to Dostoevsky, who, always opposing death penalty, even for murder, still considered it unacceptable for a person who killed another to be told in court that he was innocent. Acquitted, but guilty. This, according to Dostoevsky, is an answer that agrees with the demands of human conscience. The hero of Garshin’s story also comes to this answer.

If Ilya Muromets rejects the gospel truth, obeying the demands of conscience, then Lopatin rejects the “secular”, state solution to the issue. These are the two extreme poles of solving the problem.

Garshin himself is closest to Gelfreich’s opinion. He believes that this is one of the most important questions of humanity, to which there is no clear answer yet.

Gelfreich says to Lopatin: “Are you saying that the question has already been raised? Right! But this is not enough. You need to ask it every day, every hour, every moment. It is necessary that he does not give people peace.” This is the third answer.

The story “Nadezhda Nikolaevna” begins with the dying Lopatin trying to explain why he writes his notes, which form the content of this work. Lopatin asks the question: what interest might his notes be for readers? Their topic, he believes, cannot be of interest to people “accustomed to dealing with, if not world, then social issues,” especially since they were written by a young man who “did not make history and did not see how it is made.”

Indeed, the depiction of a traditional “love triangle” does not encourage the formulation of historical and social problems. But for Garshin there is no distinction between private, personal and public issues. In a love story you can see the history of humanity, and the fate of the world depends on how each person solves the problems of good and evil.

History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983.

V. M. Garshin. "Red flower"

Lesson #1. Life and fate of V. M. Garshin. “Red Flower” is a work about man’s irreconcilable struggle against evil.
Types of tasks: introducing students to the main stages of the life and work of V. M. Garshin, associative vocabulary, familiarity with the concept of image-symbol.
Homework: read the story and answer the questions:
-Which of the characters in the story perceives the world symbolically? What objects does the hero see differently from others? What do they mean to him?

Lesson #2. Analysis of the story “Red Flower”.
Types of tasks: analytical reading of the 1st chapter, role-based reading of the 3rd chapter, comparison of the story “Red Flower” and the poem “Anchar” by A. S. Pushkin, comparison of two portraits of V. M. Garshin.
Homework: create a prospectus plan (application) for the film adaptation of the story.

Studying the story by V. M. Garshin “Red Flower”

Reading Garshin's works is a difficult test for a student reader. The story “Red Flower” is particularly difficult for children to understand. In it, the author relies on a whole series of images-symbols, without “deciphering” or “decoding” which it is impossible for the reader to understand the meaning of the work. Garshin in “The Red Flower” comprehends the eternal problem of confrontation between good and evil and offers the only possible way out in which good can defeat evil - this is the path of a person’s selfless, uncompromising struggle with evil, when a person “closes” evil on himself, does not allow it to spread farthest into the world. This is a tragic path.
It is not easy to empathize with the hero of the story, because his actions and thoughts are colored by madness, and here it is important to help students hear the intonation of the author, who treats the hero with careful understanding, completely sympathizing with him. It is the author’s intonation, the author’s attitude towards events and the hero that enlightens what is difficult to perceive (especially modern teenager) the plot of the work. When working on this story, you need to use techniques creative activation, aimed at arousing the emotions, feelings, and imagination of students, which also helps to overcome barriers to the full perception of the story.
The purpose of the orientation towards the perception of the story “Red Flower” is to revive and clarify students’ ideas about the symbolic meaning of objects, colors, phenomena, to “wake up” the eye, and to activate the work of imagination. First, the teacher can show students one by one different colored sheets of paper - white, blue, red, black, etc. (or name the colors) and ask them to write down the association words that students associate with this color. Let's ask the schoolchildren: “What associations did this color evoke in you?”, “Why did some of you have the same associations?”
The meaning of color is associated not only with a person’s individual perception of the world, but also with national culture, with mankind’s long, centuries-long observation of colors and associating them with certain phenomena of life. In this regard, it is interesting to turn to symbolic colors national flags. The colors of national flags are not officially approved - they are born by the people, live in their minds and are immortal for them. Every nation has a range of favorite, so-called “national” colors. You can show the “violent” red-yellow flag of Spain and the “calm” white-blue flag of Finland, connecting these colors with the peculiarities of the perception of the world by the people of these nations. Many flags of European countries are tricolor (tricolore) - Italy, France, Bulgaria, etc. The general interpretation of the combination of three colors was the motto: “Faith, Hope, Love”, and the French flag (red-white-blue) - “Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood". The white-blue-red Russian flag was approved as the state flag under Peter I. The symbolism of the colors still causes different interpretations among experts, but everyone agrees that these colors are characteristic of the Russian people and since ancient times have meant the following: white - nobility, frankness; blue - fidelity, honesty, impeccability, chastity; red - courage, boldness, generosity, love. From 1858 to 1883, by decree of Alexander II, the state flag in Russia was black, yellow and white, with black and yellow colors"passed" from national emblem(a black double-headed eagle on a yellow field), and the white one was associated with the cockade of Peter I and the white horseman of St. George. But this flag did not last long, because black in the national perception means mourning, sorrow, sadness, etc., and yellow means gold, while the “main” metal in Russia was not gold, but silver.
So, the colors on the flags are symbolic meaning. It would be appropriate to ask schoolchildren: “What other colors, signs, objects can be called symbolic? What do they mean?
After discussing the children's answers, the teacher can talk about the origin of the word "symbol". (Option: students independently read the textbook article “The Concept of an Image-Symbol” and answer the following questions: “What image-symbols are discussed in the article? From what language did the word “symbol” come to us and what did it originally mean? How do images arise -symbols?)
Word symbol of Greek origin. In Ancient Greece there was a custom: if friends separated for a long time, then as a sign of friendship they broke a stick in two, which was called symbolon and everyone kept half for themselves. A few years later, any of them could, returning after long wanderings, come to a friend’s house. Even if he had changed a lot, he still had a chance to be recognized - by his part of the wand. Thus, this stick contained special information, a thought, that is, it had a symbolic meaning. There are national symbols (as we saw in the example of flags), universal symbols (for example, a dove is a symbol of peace, a cross is a symbol of suffering, a ring is a symbol of fidelity, etc.), there are also individual symbols that contain special meaning only for one or several people, for a group of people. An image can also become a symbol literary work. So, for example, the ocean in poetry is a symbol of freedom, a rose is a symbol of love, the sun in Pushkin’s “Bacchanalian Song” is a symbol of happiness and reason. And in Garshin’s story we will meet such a symbolic image.
After creating a reading mindset, the teacher asks students to read the story and think about it. the following questions:
-Which of the characters in the story perceives the world symbolically? What objects does the hero see differently from other people? What do they mean to him?
Not only the red flower is a symbol in this story - the red cross (a symbol of the fight against evil), and the hospital (a symbol of unfreedom), etc. have a symbolic meaning.
The story is based on an image-symbol, and therefore, before starting to analyze the work, you need to clarify with schoolchildren whether they saw this symbol and what is the symbolism of the main character’s perception of the world? How does the “image of the world” in the hero’s mind differ from the “picture of the world” of others? What is the reason for this hero’s perception of the world? Is it flawed or is it high and noble?
The red flower in Garshin's story is a symbol of world evil.
The teacher can teach students that the color red has different meanings in different cultures. So, for example, in China, red was the color of the Shu dynasty and the south, it was considered the happiest of all colors and was associated with life, prosperity, energy and summer; among the Celts, on the contrary, this color was associated with death: it was depicted as a red horseman. In the Russian tradition, the color red is associated with beauty (“red sun”), with holiday (“red day of the calendar”), and with shed blood (“red flag” as a symbol of the Soviet state).
The teacher asks students to find descriptions of a red flower in the text. There are two of them in the story: one belongs to the author, the other to the hero. When comparing these descriptions, it is important to understand their differences.
1. “There were all kinds of flowers found in Little Russian gardens: tall roses, bright petunias, tall tobacco bushes with small pink flowers, mint, marigolds, nasturtiums, poppy. Right there, not far from the porch, grew three poppy bushes of some special breed; it was much smaller than usual and differed from it in the extraordinary brightness of its scarlet color.”
The author, who gives an objective picture of what he saw, singles out poppies only because they differ from the usual ones in their size and “extraordinary brightness of scarlet color.” Poppies are unusual; the author, describing them from the point of view of a normal, healthy person, conveys a non-symbolic view of the world.
The hero sees everything differently:
2. “He didn’t sleep all night. He picked this flower because he saw in such an act a feat that he was obliged to do. At the first glance through the glass door, the scarlet petals attracted his attention, and it seemed to him that from that moment he understood what exactly he should do on earth. All the evil in the world has gathered into this bright red flower. He knew that opium was made from poppies; Perhaps this thought, growing and taking on monstrous forms, forced him to create a terrible fantastic ghost. The flower in his eyes embodied all evil; he absorbed all the innocently shed blood (that’s why he was so red), all the tears, all the bile of humanity. It was a mysterious, terrible creature, the opposite of God, Ahriman, who took on a modest and innocent appearance. It was necessary to rip him off and kill him.”
The hero’s sick mind creates a monstrous fantasy in which the poppy flower “carried out all evil; he absorbed all the innocently shed blood... all the tears, all the bile of humanity.”
- Why did the red poppy become a symbol of world evil for the hero? Why does the hero see poppies differently than everyone else?
These questions lead students to understand the image of the hero of the story.
- What feelings does the hero of the story evoke in you? How does the author feel about him? What actions indicate that the hero is a sick person, and what indicates that he is reasonably consistent in his actions?
Analytical reading of the first chapter will help students reveal the inner world of the hero. Particular attention should be paid to the lines spoken by the hero, as well as the comparison of the external circumstances into which the hero finds himself and his reactions. The first remark (“In the name of His Imperial Majesty, Sovereign Emperor Peter the Great, I announce an audit of this madhouse!”) is symbolic; in the context of the story it is read as follows: the most famous monument to Peter the Great “ Bronze Horseman“contains an allegory of the struggle between good and evil (Peter’s horse crushed the snake with its hooves: the good that Peter personifies on the horse triumphs over malice, hatred, envy, and deceit). This phrase emphasizes the connection between the hero’s future actions and the previous tradition of humanity’s struggle against evil and reveals the messianic meaning of the hero’s arrival in the hospital. Students may be asked to consider the following questions:
- What is the hero going to audit?
- Why does the hero, realizing where he is, not resist, but go to the department himself? What qualities of the hero are behind his remark: “Call. I can't. Have you tied my hands?
The hero is a freedom-loving, proud man. To identify the conflict between the freedom of a person’s spirit and the lack of freedom of external circumstances, it is necessary to analyze the description of the hospital.
- What colors predominate in the description of hospital premises?
- What words convey the unbearable atmosphere of lack of freedom?
- What feelings does the hospital evoke in the author? How does it affect the patient?
The most terrible moments come for the patient in the bathroom: it seems to him that they want to kill him.
-Who does the hero look to for help? Who is he addressing?
It is no coincidence that he turned to the Great Martyr George, a saint who suffered terrible torment in the fight against evil spirits. The image of St. George, traditional in Russian art, echoes the monument to Peter “The Bronze Horseman” (and, as we indicated, with the first phrase of the story). You can show students the traditional iconographic image of St. George - on a horse with a spear killing a serpent, and convince them that the motif of a person’s struggle against evil, which appears at the beginning of the story, is repeated here, but in a slightly different sense. Students can be shown the famous icon “The Miracle of George on the Dragon” from the collection of the Russian Museum. The icon depicts a scene of confrontation between George and the dragon - a high symbol of the triumph of good over evil and death. Special meaning have the colors on the icon: on a red background there is a rider on a snow-white horse, under whose hooves a monster bends. The red color here is the color of the blood of a martyr, spiritual fire and victory over death. Green is the color of regenerating life. Black is a symbol of evil, death, evil spirits. (The teacher can find useful and interesting material in the book by G. and T. Vilinbakhov “St. George the Victorious” (St. Petersburg, 1995).) By the way, with the image of St. George is associated with one of the versions of the origin of the tricolor Russian flag: white is the color of the horse and armor, blue is the color of the cloak, red is the background color. Since the time of Yaroslav Wise George The Victorious is the patron saint of the Russian state, his image is on the coat of arms of Moscow, one of the most honorable orders of Russia is the military order of the Holy Great Martyr and Victorious George.
However, the hero’s remark is strange: why does he ask the saint to save only his body? Why doesn’t he want to betray his spirit to the saint? Is this a manifestation of the hero's strength or weakness?
The story mentions caps with red crosses that “were seen in the war and were bought at auction.” Thus, the motive of the fight against evil is connected in the story with the image of St. George and the caps that were in the war. Struggle, war, battle, feat, death - all these words form the semantic field of the story.
So, in the first chapter, two opposing forces are identified - a hero endowed with spiritual aspirations, and a hospital that suppresses them. The hospital, as a special world, has, of course, its own ideologist. He is a doctor. It is no coincidence that he, like the hero, has no name. The image of the doctor is symbolic: he is the bearer of certain beliefs that allow him to dominate others.
The next stage of work in the lesson is reading by face the conversation between the hero and the doctor from the 3rd chapter. Before reading the conversation, it is advisable to analyze the portraits of the interlocutors, highlighting the most characteristic details.
- Why is the doctor’s face called “sleek” and his eyes “calm” and “blue”? How is a patient different from a doctor? In the description of both the patient and the doctor, the word “immobile” appears. What is the difference between the combinations of this word and others in the description of the characters: the sick man’s eyes glowed with a “motionless hot shine,” and the doctor’s face was “motionless and impenetrable”? How does the doctor make the author feel?
It is in a conversation with the doctor that the hero utters the word “evil”: “Why are you doing evil? Why did you gather this crowd of unfortunates and keep them here? I don’t care: I understand and am calm; but they? Why this torment?..” The hero is calm for himself: he learned the illusory nature of space and time and became free, but other patients, in his opinion, did not know inner freedom. The hospital is a real prison for both their body and their soul. Their situation is terrible, and the hero asks the doctor to free the unfortunates at least from external shackles, releasing them to freedom. The doctor, as the main defender of this system, is forced to intellectually fight with the patient and prove to him the inconsistency of his main idea. He believes that it is enough to find a flaw in one of the patient’s statements to cast doubt on all his conclusions about freedom. And he finds this “weak” place in the reasoning of the “enemy”: “However, one cannot but agree that we are in this room and that now,” the doctor took out his watch, “it is half past ten, May 6, 18**. What do you think about it?" The patient is convinced that it is necessary to take into account not the external state of the world, but a person’s internal attitude towards it. "If to me it doesn't matter if this means that I everywhere and always? - he objects to his opponent. The doctor only “grinned” at this: the evil in the world rests on everyday, quite obvious things. Analysis of this conversation leads students to the conclusion that neither the doctor (due to the limitations of his common sense) neither the patient (due to the morbid state of mind) are able to understand each other. Everyone has their own logic, their own vision of the world. But why exactly do the patient’s thoughts evoke our sympathy? The patient does not think about his own well-being, but about the salvation of the unfortunate patients; he is not complacent, like the doctor, but suffers. The conditions in which the hero finds himself do not leave him any chance to fight evil. And yet he fights.
The further narration of the story is connected with the hero’s struggle with three red flowers. Work on the analysis of these episodes can be organized by the following questions and tasks:
1. Why did the hero, despite his “extraordinary appetite,” catastrophically lose weight?
2. How do you imagine the flowers with which the hero “fights”? What do they look like to him?
3. Describe the hero’s face when he looks at the red flower.
4. Imagine who this person was “free”, what he was like in a “normal” state.
5. Why doesn’t the hero of the story have a name?
6. Why did the stars and the night sky give the hero strength?
7. Prepare detailed retelling finale (“The hero pulls out the last red flower”). Does the hero’s action seem necessary or in vain to you?
8. How did the hero’s face change in the finale? Why was it “calm and bright”?
9. At what moments in the story is the author particularly worried about his hero? How does he feel about parting with him?
To clarify for students the idea of ​​the story (victory over evil is possible only with a selfless struggle against it, with sacrificial service to good, with “locking” evil on oneself), it is advisable to compare it with A. S. Pushkin’s poem “Anchar”. In both of these works there is a symbolic image of evil: “anchar” in Pushkin and “red flower” in Garshin. In Pushkin’s poem, a person (slave) becomes a “carrier” of evil, contributing to the fact that locally existing evil spreads throughout the world. In Garshin, a person, on the contrary, collects all the evil of the world in one object and destroys it at the cost of his own death, being poisoned by evil, but not letting it into the world anymore. It is no coincidence that the hero of the story takes the red flower with him to the grave. A comparison of a poem and a story can be based on the following questions:
1. Which work can be called a continuation of another?
2. Why does evil win in “Anchar”?
3. What means of fighting evil does the hero of “The Red Flower” choose?
4. Why does the slave die in Pushkin’s poem and what is the reason for the death of the hero of Garshin’s story?
At the end of the lesson, the teacher can invite students to compare two portraits of Garshin, made in 1883 and 1884 by I. Repin. The purpose of this work is to connect the idea of ​​the story “Red Flower” with the personality of Garshin, with his fate, to create a mindset for further communication of students with artistic world this wonderful writer.
Garshin's acquaintance with Repin dates back to 1882-1884. At this time, the artist was working on the paintings “They Didn’t Expect” and “Ivan the Terrible,” and the writer was working on “The Red Flower.” Repin immediately became eager to make a portrait of Garshin. “The main feature of Garshin’s character was “not of this world” - something angelic... When Garshin came to see me, I always felt it even before his call. And he entered silently and always brought with him a quiet delight, like an ethereal angel.
Garshin’s eyes, of particular beauty, full of serious modesty, were often clouded with a mysterious tear,” Repin recalled. He chose the writer as a model for the image of Tsarevich Ivan: “I was struck by the doom in Garshin’s face: he had the face of one doomed to perish. This was what I needed for my prince.” A year later, Repin creates a large portrait of the writer.
These portraits, a sketch for the painting “Ivan the Terrible” (1883) and a portrait of Garshin (1884), are completely different from each other. If in the first of them the writer is depicted in his best moments, when he experienced a sublime spiritual life and was in a state of inner harmony, then in the second portrait he appears in moments of inner pain and terrible tension.
Students may be asked to consider the following questions:
- What mood does the first portrait evoke in you, the second? Which of the images did you like best and why? What states of Garshin did the artist convey in these portraits? Imagine what you need to do separate edition"Red Flower" Which of Garshin's portraits would you choose for him and why?
As homework the teacher can offer students creative work aimed at creating their own interpretation, at intellectually and emotionally “assembling” the story. Students are encouraged to film the story. The following questions may help:
- Fiction cinematography or animation and why would you choose for your work?
- From whose point of view - the hero, the hospital staff, the author, or perhaps the author and the hero alternately - would you show the events?
- Describe what the peculiarity of each option will be (using the example of the episode when the hero sneaks behind the first poppy).
- What colors and why will you choose as the main colors for your film?

"A Man of a Shocked Conscience"
(study of the work of V. M. Garshin)

“The Red Flower” by V. M. Garshin was first introduced for study in the school course of Russian literature by a program edited by V. G. Marantsman; other alternative literature programs do not provide for the study of V. M. Garshin’s work. The need to turn to Garshin’s story, according to the authors and compilers of the program, is determined by the following - “the dominant problems of the 8th grade literature course are the problems of “Hero and Time,” therefore it is necessary to show students the change of times using specific literary material, to formulate in students through the study of the era, mosaic composed of a variety of literary phenomena, a systematic view of the world and art."
The program involves considering the uniqueness of the author's position through the study of the writer's biography, the era in which he worked, and the uniqueness of the genre of the work. Two hours and a lesson are recommended for studying this work. extracurricular reading. An approximate distribution of material according to the thematic plan could be as follows:

The first lesson on the topic “A Man of a Shocked Conscience” involves organizing the study of the material in such a way that students see Garshin the writer as a conscientious, emotional and sensitive person to injustice, who saw the task of art in enabling a person to recognize evil and injustice and not only recognize, but also to lose sleep, peace, well-being, to experience moral shock, catharsis.
During the lesson it is necessary to refer to the materials of the biography of V. M. Garshin. The presentation of the material can be presented in the form of a lecture by the teacher or independent reports by students in groups. The main goal of the lesson is to identify the uniqueness of the author’s personality through familiarizing schoolchildren with articles and memoirs about Garshin, analyzing illustrations by I. E. Repin, V. V. Vereshchagin. As material on the theory of literature, it is necessary to introduce the concept of literary association and allegory. It is important that before starting the study, the story is read by the students; as a preliminary task, questions will be given to identify the reader’s perception:
What impression did the story make on you and why?
In connection with what is the story dedicated to I. S. Turgenev?
Why nowhere in the story does the author call the hero by name or surname, but only “he”, “him”, “sick”?
Can we guess what the profession of the hero of the story was before his illness?
Why is the story called this way? What do you associate with the title of the story?
What associations does the red poppy evoke in the patient?
Let's think about how we can title parts of the story. Why didn't the author do this?
If the teacher chooses lecture material as the basis for the first lesson, we offer the following information as basic information:
The future writer's childhood was difficult not only because of the living conditions associated with constant moving, since his father was a military man. When Garshin was five years old, there was a break between his parents. After leaving her husband, E. S. Garshina took her eldest sons with her, the youngest, Vsevolod, remained with his father. This family drama made a depressing impression on the future writer. But the discord in Garshin’s family also had a political background: Garshin’s mother, having become the wife of Zavadsky (the children’s teacher), maintained acquaintance with revolutionary figures of the 60s. In his autobiography, Garshin noted that at the age of eight he read “What is to be done?” Chernyshevsky, and he learned to read from the books of the Sovremennik magazine.
At the same time, Garshin’s interest in natural science grew. He retained this interest throughout his life, and in his fairy tales and stories we see a careful description of flowers, plants, flower beds, flora and fauna.
Later, among his close friends were naturalist teacher A.L. Gerd and zoologist V.A. Fausek. Having entered the Mining Institute in St. Petersburg, V. M. Garshin became close to the circle of Peredvizhniki artists. His acquaintance with the artists V.V. Vereshchagin and I.E. Repin was also reflected in his work (the story “Artists”). However, he did not manage to finish the institute - in 1870 the war began in the Balkans. Garshin wrote to his mother about his decision to go to war: “I cannot hide behind the walls of an institution when my peers expose their foreheads and chests to bullets. Bless me." And he received a short telegram in response: “With God, dear.”
Garshin was enlisted as a private in one of the infantry regiments in Chisinau. Together with ordinary soldiers, he made a difficult trek along the Danube. We had to walk in the heat, sometimes 40-45 miles a day. But Garshin bravely endured adversity. At the front he was wounded, sent to the hospital, was promoted to officer, and finished the story “Four Days.” After returning from the army, he devoted himself entirely to artistic creativity.
If the teacher prefers the basis of the first lesson to be student presentations with reports, then in the first report, made on the analysis of the writer’s biography, it is necessary to note Garshin’s awareness of himself as part of an old noble family, the representatives of which he evaluates from a highly moral position, as a result of which the readers are faced with the image a person who does not accept violence from anyone, including loved ones. At the same time, Garshin’s vision of the tragedy of his existence is pointed out, which is a consequence of the psychological trauma he suffered in childhood.
The second report should present the writer's attitude to the war using the example of his voluntary participation in the military campaign of 1877. The prepared speech should contain a moral assessment of the war by V. M. Garshin as a horror in which there are neither vanquished nor victors. Students are recommended to use paintings by Garshin’s friend V.V. Vereshchagin (“After the attack,” “Dressing station near Plevna,” “Presenting trophies” (1872), “Apotheosis of War” (1871-1872), “Mortally wounded” ( 1873) and others - at the teacher’s choice). Students can base their speech on V. M. Garshin’s story “Four Days,” which is clearly autobiographical in nature.
In preparing the third report, it is necessary to rely on the memories of I. E. Repin and other Itinerant artists about Garshin. He posed for Repin while painting “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan,” when the image of the murdered prince was created. The artist called Garshin an “ethereal angel,” drawing attention to his eyes of special beauty, full of serious modesty, which were often clouded with a mysterious tear. Garshin’s shock at the sight of the pool of blood depicted on Repin’s canvas is mentioned, and the meaningful phrase he uttered: “Blood, blood everywhere.” Both the portrait of Garshin and the reproduction are necessary to identify psychological state writer.
The next speech will be related to the writer’s appeal in 1880 to the Minister of Internal Affairs M. T. Loris-Melikov, on whose decision depended the life of I. Mlodetsky, sentenced to death for the assassination attempt. On the day of the verdict, Garshin wrote a letter to Loris-Melikov, in which he begged him to forgive Mlodetsky. “Your Excellency, forgive the criminal” - this is how this letter began. In the request for pardon, V. M. Garshin appears as a person who worries with all his soul, feels pain, is horrified by the mere consciousness of the possible commission of violence. Apparently, Garshin doubted whether this letter would help the convict, so at night he came to the minister and ensured that he accepted it personally. On his knees, his voice hoarse from tears, sobbing, he begged for mercy for Mlodetsky. But his petition was unsuccessful. Mlodetsky was executed. Shocked by everything that happened, Garshin suffered a severe attack of mental illness. In the story about this period of Garshin’s life, it is necessary to note the following fact: Garshin never belonged to any social revolutionary party.
So, after listening to the teacher’s speeches or lectures, students come to the conclusion about the uniqueness of the moral world of the writer, who in many ways represents the ethical ideal of man.
As homework, there may be a task to create associative series that students must match to the title of the story “Red Flower”, identifying allegories in the text.
Lesson two: “Madman or Savior?” will be devoted to textual analysis and identifying the genre uniqueness of the story, and the work will begin with identifying the reader’s perception of previously asked questions and analyzing those associations that arose among students, for example:

red flower - beautiful solitary (as one flower); flames - nature, naturalness, revolution, a flower is always beautiful

In this work you can immediately notice two levels - fantastic and real.
And the symbolism of the color red is two-dimensional: red is the color of blood, flame, fire, the color of anxiety. But red is also the color of the sun, the color of health, beauty and goodness. Based on the polysemy of understanding images, students come to the concept of symbol. Turning to literary dictionaries, they compare their understanding with the term and write down the definition in a notebook. “A symbol is an object or word that conventionally expresses the essence of a phenomenon. An object, an animal, a sign become symbols when they are endowed with additional, extremely important meaning. The meaning of a symbol is implied, so its perception depends on the readers (the symbol has multiple meanings). Compared to allegory, the symbol is polysemantic and broad, giving greater freedom of interpretation" (Dictionary of Literary Terms).
The conversation to identify the reading perception of schoolchildren showed enough high level understanding the story. Here are some student opinions: “The story “Red Flower” is the embodiment of universal evil. Garshin's heroes are most often like-minded people of the author, shocked by the terrible depravity of life. The story is mostly monologue; it is a reflection on the most pressing, exciting issues of public life. The story contains a poignant theme of loneliness and misunderstanding. It’s amazing how Garshin describes the flowers; they are drawn very clearly and colorfully, as if we see them through the eyes of a person with a very heightened sense of perception. The hero is very sick, but he is sick with the desire to free the whole world from evil. The writer does not give his hero a name, because he does not want to specify it.” All of Garshin’s stories are very sincere, truthful and relevant to this day. In addition, the psychologism of stories reveals the depths of the consciousness and subconscious of its hero, and sometimes the author himself.
V. A. Fausek noted in his memoirs that Garshin lived among some special tension of spirit, could not write calmly and without worry. Even his little stories required the exertion of all his mental strength, and the creations of his imagination greatly excited him. This made Garshin’s works deeply lyrical and imprinted on them some of his special anxiety. The tone of most of his stories is kept almost on the border separating emotion from painful affect. In this sense, “Red Flower” is the most characteristic Garshin story. It is a symbol of the writer’s entire life and work. The peculiarity of the work is that the individuality of creativity and the individuality of fate have merged so much that it is difficult to distinguish them. This story contains an amazing symbol that embodies the tragedy of the human spirit.
Let's analyze what is significant about the hero's first words, what is the symbolism of the image of the house and the world in which the hero wants to conduct an audit. The world needs updating - this is the idea of ​​​​the crazy hero of the story. And he expresses it in a loud, sharp, ringing voice. He behaves like a man in the hands of enemies (he walks “with a fast, heavy and decisive gait, raising his crazy head high”). For the sake of the great idea of ​​​​the liberation of humanity and the destruction of prison bars, he is ready to endure torment and torture, even execution. “A person who has reached the point where there is a great thought, a general thought, in his soul, he does not care where to live, what to feel. Even to live and not to live..."
The hero of the work is in the grip of great anticipation and renewal of life. “Soon, soon the iron bars will fall apart, all these imprisoned ones will come out of here and rush to all the ends of the earth, and the whole world will tremble, throw off its old shell and appear in a new, wonderful beauty.”
Who is main character- a madman or a savior who seeks to destroy evil on earth? - the answer in the story is obvious at first glance. The hero is sick, therefore he is insane and placed in a madhouse. But the hero is obsessed with the idea of ​​salvation from evil, and only he sees the path to salvation; we come to the conclusion that the hero of the story is a kind of political romantic who sought to find and at once destroy the source of evil. If we draw historical parallels, we will remember that during Garshin’s time such people died in the hundreds. But, sympathizing with these people, Garshin saw the hopeless tragedy of revolutionary romantics, dreamers, loners fighting evil. And Garshin’s hero understands his doom, but believes that “he will die as an honest fighter and as the first fighter of humanity.” Yes, he dies in vain, but the description of his face (“...his face was calm and bright, his emaciated features with thin lips and deeply sunken closed eyes expressed some kind of proud happiness...”) speaks of the moral greatness of his feat.
Thus, the fight against evil is the lot of madmen or an expression of selfless sacrifice in the fight against social evil? Advanced criticism of that time saw in “The Red Flower” primarily sacrifice, and saw the source of the disease in the conditions of Russian life.
Let's consider the author's position in the story. It is quite difficult to detect it, since it is necessary to identify the author's voice in the narrative. The author-narrator objectively evaluates his hero, he is mad, his victory is illusory, but the author does not condemn him, but sympathizes and empathizes with him.
Why does the story end with the death of the hero? Is a different ending to the story possible? In case of difficulty, students can be asked the following additional questions:
Why does the work begin this way?
As a result, the madman exclaims: “Holy Great Martyr George! I commend my body into your hands. But the spirit - no, oh no!”?
How can we explain that the hero calls other people a “crowd”?
To what biblical image can a madman be compared? What are the similarities and differences?
What and how would change in the story if it had a different ending?
The next stage of work on the text is aimed at identifying the genre originality of the work; this is necessary to understand the writer’s holistic picture of the world. Let us outline a problem for schoolchildren: in critical literature, the genre of this work is presented ambiguously.
On the one hand, it is defined as a story, on the other - as a literary fairy tale, and the writer himself understood a parable by a fairy tale; third option (according to researcher G. A. Byaly): “Red Flower” is a crossing of two genres: a psychological short story and an allegorical fairy tale. The dual nature of the genre emphasizes the combination of both narrative lines in Garshin’s work in order to show social evil in all its nakedness, without any mitigating circumstances. Garshin entered Russian literature primarily as a master of short psychological stories, tragic monologues, which reflected the pain, suffering and hopes of the best people of his time.
Let's turn to dictionaries and prove our understanding of “The Red Flower”. In the literary dictionary, the concept of “parable” is defined as “a short story containing teachings in an allegorical, allegorical form, akin to a fable. The meaning of the parable is more significant: it illustrates an important idea, touching on the problem of morality and universal human laws. A parable is one of the means of expressing the author’s moral and philosophical judgments and is often used to directly instruct the reader on issues of human and social behavior.”
And if we consider the main problem of the story from a moral and philosophical position, then, of course, this work is a parable.
The very name of the writer in the eyes of his contemporaries was associated with this work. This story is a symbol of the writer’s entire life and work.
At the end of the lesson, we invite students to summarize the uniqueness of the writer’s concept of the world, which is reflected in the parable “The Red Flower.”
For homework, we suggest writing an essay on one of the topics:
“Is death a victory or defeat for the main character?”
"Garshin's stories in the modern context of life."
An extracurricular reading lesson on “The Tale of the Toad and the Rose” is the logical conclusion of the study of Garshin’s work. And according to V. Byaly, the main mood of “The Red Flower” is continued in the small “Tale of the Toad and the Rose.” The heroes of the fairy tale can be divided into two groups: one symbolizes goodness and beauty, physical and moral, the other - evil and ugliness; two poles - a toad and a rose. Rose is the beauty and joy of life; “even if she could... cry, it would not be from grief, but from happiness to live.” A little sick boy, sensitive and loving nature, and his sister, the embodiment of selfless sisterly love, are one world of beauty and love, a world of roses.
The beauty of nature and the beauty of the human soul form a single whole. At the same time, Garshin combines the theme of beauty with the theme of freedom; these categories are inseparable for him. They sound in the description of a neglected flower garden. Plants live in freedom, unconstrained by anything or anyone. Flowers and herbs grow freely, the wooden lattice is destroyed. “And the flower garden has become no worse from this destruction,” the author notes meaningfully, admiring the lush beauty of the plants blooming in the wild.
Let us draw the attention of schoolchildren to how the author describes the flower garden. He describes a neglected flower garden as a botanist who knows exactly the characteristics and properties of each plant. “The remains of the lattice were woven with hops, dodder with large white flowers and mouse peas, hanging in whole pale green piles with lavender tassels of flowers scattered here and there. The thorny thistles on the oily and wet soil of the flower garden (there was a large shady garden around it) reached such large sizes that they almost seemed like trees. The yellow mulleins raised their flower-lined arrows even higher than them. Nettles occupied an entire corner of the flower garden; it, of course, burned, but one could admire its dark greenery from afar, especially when this greenery served as a background for a delicate and luxurious pale rose flower.”
In describing plants and animals, Garshin creates, as it were, “portraits” of the inhabitants of the flower garden. There are no inaccurate or approximately accurate details in his landscape sketches.
He briefly but accurately talks about how the “ant people” run towards grass aphids, how an ant “delicately touches” the tubes sticking out on the aphids’ back, how a dung beetle “busily and diligently” drags its ball, like “a lizard, opening a blunt muzzle, sitting in the sun, the green scutes of its back shining.” A flower garden that lives its own life, where ants work, a hedgehog runs in, a nightingale flies to a rose bush, is described by Garshin at the same time from the perspective of a boy who subtly senses the beauty of nature and treats it delicately (even the hedgehog was not afraid of his presence, but drank milk from a saucer ).
These precise descriptions are warmed by a sense of admiration for the beauty and freedom that reigns in the natural world.
But, according to Garshin, not everyone only admires beauty; for others, it makes them want to “devour” it. The toad looks at the rose with evil, carnivorous eyes and wheezes: “Wait, I’ll eat you!” She repeats this phrase three times in different ways, each time with greater hatred and lust, moving closer and closer to her goal. Let us draw students' attention to the following questions:
Why did the smell of roses cause vague anxiety to the toad?
Why do you think that when the toad first saw the rose, “something strange stirred in her toad heart”? What exactly?
Why is the toad so persistent in its desire to “eat the rose”, despite the fact that it is bleeding, but tirelessly climbs up to the flower?
The result of the conversation will be the idea that Garshin creates and strengthens the impression of insecurity of beauty in the world.
A friend of V. M. Garshin, zoologist V. A. Fausek, according to the writer, provides information “about the origin of his fairy tale about the toad and the rose.” “It was at an evening with Ya. P. Polonsky; A. G. Rubinstein was playing, and directly opposite Rubinstein sat down and looked at him intently at a very unsympathetic Garshin (now deceased), an unpleasant-looking old official, Garshin looked at both of them, and, as an antithesis to Rubinstein and to his disgusting listener, The thought of a toad and a rose arose in him; to the sounds of Rubinstein’s music, the simple plot and touching words of his little fairy tale took shape in his head.”
Great artist and his art is the embodiment of beauty, the official old man is the embodiment of everything hostile to beauty.
Rose dies in Garshin's fairy tale, although not from the paws of a toad. “Lord,” she prayed, “if only I could die a different death.” This is already the motive of “Red Flower”, the motive of sacrificial death. Rose sacrifices her life only to brighten up the last moments of a dying child. It is not a freedom-loving feat, but the moral beauty of self-denial that resounds in Garshin’s fairy tale.
Here Garshin comes into contact with Andersen, but in a different way. He comes closer to Andersen’s characteristic morality of meek sacrifice and good-natured love. The Tale of the Toad and the Rose can be compared to Andersen's Daisy. The story of how a humble daisy died, paying with her life in order to relieve last minutes of a dying lark, closely resembles the Garshin fairy tale.
The image of a rose is also often found in Andersen. For him, this is the personification of beauty and selfless altruism. The rose rests on the chest of a beautiful girl, she is kissed by the lips of a child, even her dying enemy and envious person finds shelter and final consolation in a rose bush; roses decorate the graves of great creators of beauty; dried roses are kept in the prayer books of meek women and in the books of the poet. The rose as a symbol of love has the subtlest shades in Andersen. He knows the rose of earthly love that blooms on the grave of Romeo and Julia, and the rose that blooms on the blood of a hero who died for the fatherland, and the magical rose of science, and the sacred white rose sorrow. But for him, the most beautiful rose in the world embodies Christian self-sacrifice.
Garshin in “The Tale of the Toad and the Rose” expresses disgust for evil toads that ruin life, and the idea of ​​self-sacrifice takes on a different tone.
Garshin showed evil and ugliness as a monstrous contrast with beauty and joy. Mine short journey in literature he completed another amazing fairy tale"Frog traveler". Garshin's fairy tales are filled with the philosophy of beauty, kindness, intelligence and humor and the confidence that the beauty and joy of life will never disappear.
Thus, Garshin should be given a rather honorable place in literature, not only due to the artistry of his stories, many of which can rightly be called true poetry in prose, but also due to his enormous connection with humanity in general, since Garshin’s pain is universal human pain, which forever secures his connection with his offspring.

A. A. Blok. Cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”

The cycle of poems by Alexander Blok “On the Kulikovo Field” (1908) for the first time introduces students to the work of this poet, so during the lessons we will try to combine the reading and discussion of poems with the facts of the “external” biography of the author, to help schoolchildren comprehend the poetic text in conjunction with texts of other types of art, in particular works of painting from the early 20th century.
The first acquaintance with Blok’s works is also important because it largely determines further attitude students to the lyrics of this poet, in a certain way prepares for the subsequent study of the monographic topic “Alexander Blok”.
We consider it advisable not to block the two hours allocated by the program for studying the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”. It is more important to help students in one lesson get a general idea of ​​the cycle, of Blok’s approach to a specific historical fact, then they should be given time to comprehend the content of this lesson and independent work with a cycle of poems in order to discuss questions about compositional originality cycle, about the peculiarities of connecting the past and the present, about the meaning of a number of cross-cutting symbols and, finally, to correlate the poetic text with the visual one.
The content of the first lesson is aimed at identifying eighth-graders’ reader’s perception of the poems in the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”; to comprehend poems in a biographical and historical-cultural context; to develop skills in thinking about problematic issues related to aesthetic concept artist, as well as skills in presenting biographical material.
Significant role on this lesson plays teacher's word anticipating the analytical analysis of complex poems, creating a certain mood for comprehending a lyrical work in the unity of its form and content. At the same time, the choice of certain methodological solutions is determined by the peculiarities of schoolchildren’s perception of the cycle’s poems, so it seems to us extremely important to determine the reader’s primary perception and response to independently read texts.
The nature of homework for the first lesson is determined, firstly, by the need to identify the peculiarities of eighth-graders’ perception of the poems of the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”, to determine the range of feelings and range of questions that arose in students after their first acquaintance with Blok’s poems; secondly, to activate the cognitive independence of schoolchildren at the interdisciplinary level “literature - history”.
Homework for the lesson:
1) Get to know the poems of the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” on your own. Read them out loud. Choose one poem for expressive reading, prepare to recite the poem in class and defend your presentation.
One of the options for this task could be the compilation and graphic recording of a reading “score”, in which the pace of reading, pauses, slowdowns, accelerations, etc. are noted. We practice such tasks in grades from 5 to 11, complicating them with taking into account the stage of literary development of schoolchildren, the characteristics of the class, and poetic texts. Compiling a “score” and defending it helps students delve deeper into the text; the search for reading options helps to enhance their aesthetic experience. Attention to expressive reading and reading by heart are especially important today, when reading culture in its various components is sharply declining.
2) Using any educational or popular science source, write a brief summary of the Battle of Kulikovo.
First lesson plan:
Teacher's opening speech. Reading a fragment of A. Blok’s play “Song of Fate” and students’ answers to questions about the fragment they listened to.
A conversation to reveal students’ perception of the poems in the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field.”
Brief information about the cycle with recording of the main provisions in a notebook.
Finding answers to a problematic question.
A conversation about the cycle as a whole, organized by questions from the teacher.
Summing up the conversation and determining the main directions of work on the poems of the cycle.
The lesson can begin with the teacher reading a fragment from A. Blok’s play “Song of Fate” - from Herman’s monologue (5th scene). Before reading, the teacher will ask students:
listen carefully to the lines;
try to determine the remark with which Blok characterizes the hero’s intonation (at the same time recording his options in a notebook);
correlate the content and mood of the monologue with the poems of the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”, which the schoolchildren became acquainted with at home.
Below is a fragment of the monologue. (If the teacher decides that it is difficult for students to comprehend the text by ear, then you can distribute sheets of paper with this fragment to their desks.)
“...Everything that was, everything that will be, surrounded me: as if these days I am living the life of all times, living the torments of my homeland. I remember the terrible day of the Battle of Kulikovo. - The prince stood with his retinue on a hill, the earth trembled from the creaking of the Tatar carts, the screech of an eagle threatened misfortune. Then an ominous night crept in, and Nepryadva disappeared into the fog, like a bride with a veil. The prince and the governor stood under the hill and listened to the ground: swans and geese splashed rebelliously, a widow sobbed, a mother beat against her son’s stirrup. Only there was silence over the Russian camp, and a distant lightning blazed. But the wind drove away the fog, the same autumn morning came, and I remember the same smell of burning. And the shining princely banner moved down the hill. When the first black and Tatar fell dead, the armies collided, and fought, cut, squabbled all day long... And the fresh army had to sit in ambush all day, just watch, and cry, and rush into battle... And the governor repeated, warning: it’s still early, our time has not come. - God! I know, like every warrior in that ambush army, how the heart asks for work, and how early it is, early!.. But here it is - morning! Again - the solemn music of the sun, like military trumpets, like a distant battle... and here I am, like a warrior in ambush, I don’t dare fight, I don’t know what to do, I shouldn’t, my time has not come! “That’s why I don’t sleep at night: I’m waiting with all my heart for the one who will come and say: “Your hour has struck!” It's time!
When answering the teacher’s questions, schoolchildren will easily determine that the read fragment and poems of the cycle being analyzed bring them closer to the Battle of Kulikovo. But this is only the most general, most superficial answer. It is not difficult to notice the roll-call of the images of the fragment of the “Song of Fate” and the poems “On the Kulikovo Field,” especially the 2nd and 3rd: “Behind Nepryadva, the swans shouted ...”, “And in the distance, in the distance, she beat against the stirrup, / The mother cried out ”, “And over Russia the quiet lightnings guarded the prince”, etc. However, identifying similar images is also not enough to understand the author’s intention. Here it is much more important that schoolchildren “hear” the intonation of both the monologue and the poems, and feel their nerve. That’s why we suggested thinking about what remark Blok characterizes the intonation of the hero pronouncing the monologue. When thinking about the question, students will offer options such as “anxious”, “tense”, “with excitement”, etc., and will probably come closer to the author’s version - “with increasing passion”. We will ask whether these definitions are close to those that they chose when reading the poems of the cycle at home, we will ask one or more students to read the poem expressively, trying to convey the author's feeling or to present and defend the “score” of expressive reading.
This conversation, which precedes the actual analysis of the cycle, will help the teacher determine how the eighth-graders perceived the poem, whether they felt Blok’s intonations and mood. In addition, the conversation will help to “lead” to a short biographical commentary, which will help further analysis of the poems in the cycle.
In addition to expressive reading (protecting the “score”) as a way to identify the reader’s perception of poems, it is advisable to use a number of questions that help determine the nature of the perception of the poem. Here are some possible questions:
Are you interested in reading poetry? Would you like to get acquainted with other poems by Blok? What poems have you read on your own? What attracted you to them?
Briefly define your feelings after reading the poems in the series “On the Kulikovo Field”: surprised, amazed, attracted, shocked, left indifferent, etc. What, in your opinion, is the reason for such a reader’s reaction?
How do you imagine the author of these poems? What excites him, worries him, what are his main thoughts?
What surprised you in the poems, remained unclear, made you think, made it difficult to read?
Which of the poems in the cycle did you highlight for yourself and why?
What works of writers (painters, composers) did you remember when reading the poems of the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”?
The next stage of the lesson allows you to see the cycle in a biographical context.
Let us tell students that the closeness of the fragment of “Song of Fate” and the poems of the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” is not accidental. “On December 1, 1912, Blok, remembering 1908, wrote in his diary about “Song of Fate”: “Stanislavsky praised it terribly, ordered two paintings to be remade, and I remade them into one that same summer.” In parentheses in the same entry, Blok notes: “The Kulikovo Field was born here. Continuing the story, it is advisable to focus students’ attention on those facts of the poet’s biography that will help them comprehend the poems being analyzed. It seems to us that L. I. Eremina’s idea that “... the creative heritage of A. Blok in a certain way correlates with the facts of his biography, cross-cutting motifs and images unite his poetry with his prose (entries in his diary, letters, articles, reviews, notebooks etc." . Reading small fragments of Blok’s diaries, accompanied by questions about the content of the materials, will help us feel the mood of the poet, who deeply experienced the revolution of 1905-1906, who in a special way comprehended the historical path of Russia. The teacher can use such fragments in his speech diary entries:
“When you go to the site of a felled grove at dusk (early, autumn), the distances are erased by fog and at night. There is a poor, naked Russia. Open spaces, sky, clouds on the Day of the Intercession"(Oct 1, 1908) .
“And now the quiet curtain of our doubts, contradictions, falls, madness rises: do you hear the choking rush of the troika? Do you see her diving through the snowdrifts of a dead and deserted pothole? This is Russia flying to God knows where - into the blue-blue abyss of times - on its dismantled and decorated troika. Do you see her starry eyes - With a prayer addressed to us: “Love me, love my beauty!” But we are separated from it by this endless distance of time, this blue frosty haze, this snowy star network.”(Oct. 26 (?) 1908).
Reflecting on the lines read by the teacher, students will note that the poet is reflecting on the Motherland, its fate, its originality. It is important to focus on the artistry of Blok’s diary entries, on the presence in them of images that will be embodied in poetic works: open spaces, desert plain, abyss of time, endless distance of time. It is advisable to invite students to record these images in a notebook as they read, and then, based on what is written down, draw a brief conclusion about the topic that occupied and worried the poet. Brief conclusions of eighth-graders can be supported by the teacher’s story that the revolution of 1905 was defined by the poet as the historical event that had the strongest influence on him, that Blok, like many other Russian artists, turned during this period to understanding the fate of Russia, its unique historical path. “Petersburg is more delightful than all the cities in the world, I think, in these October days,” the poet wrote in 1905 in a letter to his friend, E. P. Ivanov. Let us emphasize that it was during these years that the theme of Russia, outlined by the poet in his early poems, began to take shape. Interest in the topic will further deepen and become key in Blok’s work, which he himself wrote about in a textbook-famous letter to K. S. Stanislavsky on December 9, 1908: “My theme, I now know this firmly, without any doubt, is living, real subject; she's not only more than me she is greater than all of us; and it is our universal theme. All of us, alive, one way or another we will come to her. We won’t go, she will come at us herself, already gone...
This is how my topic stands before me, topic about Russia... To this topic I consciously and irrevocably I dedicate my life. I realize more and more clearly that this is the primary question, the most vital, the most real".
If the above material seems cumbersome and difficult for eighth-graders to understand due to the level of preparedness of the class, you can replace it with a short biographical note, completed by reading the above letter from Blok to Stanislavsky.
We offer students the task: “Reflecting on Blok’s words, try to determine what it means for an artist to “devote his life” to any topic, what, in your opinion, is the poet’s civic duty to the Fatherland.” This reasoning can be oral (represent small monologues of students or free conversation), or written - formatted as short statement, followed by reading a few statements in class, or as a series of synonymous phrases for the phrase “devote your life.”
This work is a transition to the analysis of poems from the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”.
The cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” was created by the poet in June - December 1908 and was first published in the almanac “Rosehip” in 1909.
A conversation about the cycle can be organized by the following questions:
What historical event did the poet address?
What role did this event play in the history of the country?
What, in your opinion, is the meaning and peculiarity of the poet’s appeal to this historical fact?
Guided by teacher questions, based on brief historical information, prepared at home (it is important that students clearly name the source of information: a history textbook, reference book, manual, etc.), and a poetic text, eighth-graders will note that the poet refers to the events of Russian history in 1380. On September 8 of this year, the Russians, led by Dmitry Donskoy, defeated the army of the Golden Horde, led by Khan Mamai. This battle, which took place on the Kulikovo Field, is the most important, turning point in the liberation of Rus' from the Mongol-Tatar yoke. Thus, the Kulikovo field is a glorious page in Russian history, the revival of the nation begins with it, it acts as a sign of the great independence of the Russian people.
Here it is important to draw students’ attention to the fact that any artist’s appeal to a historical fact is not so much historiography (or even historiography in the last place), but a creative understanding of this fact. The above fully applies to the cycle of poems by A. Blok, as many researchers point out: “Blok’s appeal to the past least of all pursues the traditional goal of the romantics in such cases - educating “fellow citizens through the exploits of their ancestors” (Ryleev). Blok has something else - the desire to understand the present through the past... What attracts Blok’s attention is not military valor, but historical destinies people and homeland. In the past he looked for lessons, for correspondences. In this respect, he was closer to Kuchelbecker, who believed that “the present, past and future are not links of a single time chain, but parallel straight lines drawn through time, replete with similar moments”; “Speaking about the past, about the Battle of Kulikovo, Blok internally, mainly morally, connects it with modernity, gives this battle a symbolic meaning.” The researchers’ statements are presented here not so that the teacher will overload the lesson with them, but only to demonstrate the similarity of assessments that students can come to on their own: turning to the country’s past, the glorious pages of its history, is one of the ways to think about the present of Russia. It is important to help schoolchildren see what is in the poems of the cycle not shown the battle itself, and its anticipation, the feelings of the hero, his impressions of the world around him on the eve of the great battle are conveyed.
If eighth-graders find it difficult to draw such conclusions, then the teacher should make them by asking the students to illustrate these conclusions with poetic lines.
In a conversation about the cycle as a whole, let us pay attention to such points as:
Moral and patriotic sound (intonation) of the cycle.
The hero’s deeply personal experiences, a sense of involvement in the fate of the homeland (here it is important to emphasize the connection of “we” and “I” in the poems of the cycle):

The characteristic motive for Blok is expectation, recognition (here - historical changes):

The following general questions can be suggested:
Has your attitude towards the cycle changed after the first conversation about it? If it has changed, how?
What questions that arose after independent reading became clearer, what new questions emerged?
Which poem from the cycle did you discover for yourself in a new way?
What poem would you suggest being taught in class and why? What questions would you like to ask about this poem?
What might a short commentary on the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” look like, placed in a collection of the poet’s poems?
As a final thought for the lesson, the teacher will read Blok’s famous note to the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field,” with which the poet accompanied the publication of 1912: “The Battle of Kulikovo belongs, according to the author, to the symbolic events of Russian history. Such events are destined to return. The solution to them is yet to come.”
Homework for the lesson:
Re-read the poems of the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”, try to determine the compositional logic of the cycle.
Try to determine how the past and present fit together in the cycle.
Find cross-cutting images-symbols in the poems of the cycle and try to determine their meaning.
Second lesson plan:
Introductory speech by the teacher: the turn of the 19th-20th centuries as a time of reflection by Russian artists about Russia. Historical painting of the turn of the century. Blok and Russian artists.
A conversation about the compositional logic of the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field”.
Analysis of the poem “The River Spreads” from the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field.”
The teacher's summary word. Determining areas of independent work.
Let's start the second lesson with a short introductory word from the teacher that the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century is becoming for many Russian artists a period of active reflection on the fate of Russia, its historical past, its present and future. It is no coincidence that it was at this time that development began to develop. history painting, capturing the present (drawings by M. Dobuzhinsky, for example, “October Idyll,” 1905; paintings by V. Serov, “Soldiers, Brave Children,” 1905; B. Kustodiev, “Manifestation,” 1906, and many others. ) and the past of Russia. Let us draw the attention of eighth-graders to the fact that Blok’s contemporaries created the image of the Motherland in different ways. Some works do not have social accents (as an example, the paintings “Hills”, “Landscape with Boulders”, “Landscape with a Church” by Roerich, “Loneliness”, “Spring Noise” by Rylov, “Birches” by Nesterov, “Pond” by Borisov) can be demonstrated -Musatova, etc.), in others, such as “On the Plowed Field” by Nesterov or “Gray Day” by Serov, these accents are already noticeable. The conversation about the painting of Blok’s contemporaries, the discussion of the paintings chosen by the teacher, is subject to a general idea: at the turn of the century, artists were reflecting on the image of Russia. It is especially important that a short excursion through the “art gallery” of the turn of the century does not ignore the paintings of M. Nesterov, whose landscapes had a certain influence on Blok’s lyrics; “certain chords of the “Nesterov” theme are also heard in the Russia of the mature Blok.” Students can be shown “Loneliness” and “Russian Landscape” (a fragment of the painting “Vision to the Youth Bartholomew”).
Further, the teacher can emphasize that Russian artists also turn to the historical past of Russia, including the Battle of Kulikovo. As illustrations, the drawing by V. Serov “After the Battle of Kulikovo” (1894) and “The Polovtsian Camp” by N. Roerich (1909) can be used. Thus, the eighth-graders and I will once again turn to the question of the place of the Battle of Kulikovo in Russian history and Blok’s assessment of this event: “A symbolic event in Russian history.”
Let’s begin our analysis of the cycle with the question of its compositional logic, remembering along the way that “a cycle is several works of art united by a common genre, theme, main characters, a single concept, sometimes a narrator, a historical era (in prose and drama), a single poetic mood, place of action (in the lyrics)".
We will guide the discussion of the compositional logic of the cycle and the conjugation of times with the following questions:
Which of the five poems, in your opinion, has the most general meaning? What motives does it combine? How does it resonate with other poems?
How to connect in a loop different times? Can you identify and show with examples the logic behind this connection?
Here are the main, in our opinion, results of the discussion of the above issues:
The cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” opens with a poem that creates a solemn and majestic image of Russia, a dynamic, open image, looking into the distance. Sadness (the river is sad, the haystacks are sad), melancholy are replaced by movement, uncontrollable, almost furious: “the steppe mare flies, flies,” “miles and steeps flash by.” This unstoppable movement “cements” the poem, making it central to the entire cycle. Pathetic lines of the first poem:

create both an anxious and joyful feeling. When helping students identify the key poem of the cycle, you can rely on the assessment given by M. Pyanykh (it is not at all necessary to read it to the students: “It would seem that the poem “The River Stretched...” generalizes into a single whole the motifs heard in other poems cycle, should not be at the beginning, but at the end. However, the logic is metaphorical, artistic logic Blok differs from rationalistic logic. As the “son of harmony,” Blok first of all captures and captures the picture in its integrity. It is thanks to its integrity that the poem “The River Spreads...” gained greater popularity than the rest of the poems in the cycle. However, other poems in the cycle are not simply verified by the “algebra of harmony,” although to a certain extent they analytically dissect the whole that was captured in the main poem of the cycle.” Reasoning about which poem is central in the cycle can be accompanied by such forms of student work as filling out a table (where the symbolic image or poetic formula of the first poem is written on the left side, and the symbolic images and poetic formulas of four other poems are written on the right side) . However, with these forms there is a danger of the cycle being “pulled apart” into quotations. This danger can be avoided by further observation of the logic of the cycle, in particular the logic of changing times.
It is in the first, generalizing poem that the present and the past are combined. The second and third poems are directed to the past; they contain many signs of a specific time and place. So, for example, some images of the third poem were drawn by Blok from “The Tale of Mamaev's massacre": fog over Nepryadva, "screams of swans", "night birds". Considering the second and third poems, you can offer students various forms of working with words:
observations of the vocabulary that creates the described historical time, recording of the vocabulary;
comparison of fragments of “The Lay” and “The Tale of the Massacre of Mamayev” and poetic lines, identification of images that Blok borrowed (“splash and trumpets of swans”, “eagles screeching over the Tatar camp”, “the darkness rose and wasted”, etc.);
observation of end-to-end image-symbols and their interpretation (for example, the swan - a symbol of the Turkic tribes - acquires a different meaning in the poem: “I heard your voice with my prophetic heart / In the cries of swans”). During the lesson, you can organize work on several symbolic images or consider one of them, inviting students to work independently with others. By determining the meaning of such symbolic images as a river, steppe, blood, it is possible to activate students’ knowledge about traditional folklore images.
The fourth and fifth poems of the cycle are an appeal to the present, transferring action from the past to the present. The first lines of the fourth and fifth poems, beginning with the word “again,” most accurately demonstrate the idea of ​​combining in the poet’s artistic consciousness a historical fact from the past and its modern understanding. Considering these poems, you can invite students to identify ways to create the hero’s mood, a change in mood towards the last stanzas of the cycle.
As a question that completes eighth-graders’ acquaintance with Blok’s cycle of poems, we invite them to identify the motif that, in their opinion, gives the cycle “On the Kulikovo Field” unity and integrity, and, based on the text, illustrate the answer. If the students themselves find it difficult to name path motive, then the teacher can directly or in a poetic line suggest the answer.

Study of V. Nabokov's story “Pilgram”

The story “The Pilgram” is dedicated to Nabokov’s main interrelated themes - the theme of creativity and the theme of spiritual wanderings, likened to the biblical Exodus. In the article “About Sirin”, V. Khodasevich defined the theme of creativity and, as a consequence, the character traits of Nabokov’s heroes: “The life of an artist and the life of reception in the artist’s mind is the theme of Sirin, revealed to one degree or another in almost all of his writings ... However, the artist (and more specifically, the writer) is never shown directly by him, but always under a mask: a chess player, a businessman, etc. There are several reasons, I think. Of these, the main one is that here we are dealing with a technique... defamiliarization. It consists in showing an object in an unusual setting, giving it a new position, revealing new sides to it... Sirin deprives his heroes of professional and artistic attributes... But Cincinnatus, Pilgram and the nameless hero of “Terra incognita”... are genuine, high artists... Every true artist, writer, poet, in the broad sense of the word, of course, is a degenerate, a creature, separated by nature itself from the environment of normal people. The more striking his dissimilarity with those around him, the more painful it is, and it often happens that in everyday life the poet tries to hide his ugliness, his genius.”
The hero of the story “Pilgram” can hardly be called a genius, but he cannot be denied the deep artistic nature of his nature. Nabokov covers the poetic note, the gift of the artist, with the mask of a shopkeeper - a German burgher, and draws this mask with special attention to details and trifles, reviving the puppet and playing the reader who believed the external, “well-invented” life. The mask allows the author to distance himself, protects him from merging with the hero, deliberately endowed with autobiographical traits - passion, obsession with entomology, “... enormous knowledge in the field of Lepidoptera.”
This passion, the “entomological gift,” determines the life of Pilgram, a shopkeeper and spiritual path Pilgram - a scientist, a creator, for the hero is presented in two forms. The principle of romantic dual worlds is enshrined in the composition and in the very title of the story. Each name is already part of the artistic image, one of the means that creates this image. The name Pilgram has a hidden associative and semantic background and is a kind of code. Pilgrim - Pilgrim is a word born of association and has several meanings. Literally pellegrino (Italian) from peregrino (Latin) - foreigner. Second meaning: pilgrim - a pilgrim wandering to holy places for the purpose of worship and communion with the highest spiritual experience. Figurative meaning: pilgrim - wanderer, traveler.
Central idea The story is correlated with all the meanings of the words “pilgrim”, with the course of the external and internal life of the Pilgram. In the finale, the disharmony of two worlds is overcome, the dream of the scientist, the creator comes true. And the death of the hero is only a departure, a continuation of the pilgrim’s wanderings.
Thus, decoding the name - the title of the story - gives the key to unraveling the author's intention. But this key is not the only one.
The episode that opens the story depicts the movement of a tram along a Berlin street, leading the narrator and reader to Pilgram's store. This episode contains “signs and symbols” that make it possible to see the problem-thematic basis and outline perspective of the composition of the text in question. The nature and sequence of movement: the street first “...stretched in the dark without shop windows, without any joys” and then, “... having decided to live in a new way, changed its name after a round square” - we correlate it with the story of Pilgram’s life. “...A globe, some tools and a skull on a pedestal of thick books” in the window of his store symbolize the inevitability of death. However, this same detail refers the “initiated” reader to Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet” and, through intertextual associations, gives rise to new meanings, explaining the metaphysical openness of the ending.
Hamlet's question “To be or not to be?” Nabokov decides in the affirmative. But this decision is not imposed on the reader, who is faced with a choice each time anew. Therefore, understanding the problem: Why “... in a sense it doesn’t matter” that “... in the morning, entering the shop, Eleanor saw... her husband sitting on the floor... with a blue, crooked face, long dead”? And what is important? - is the main part of the analysis.
Questions to identify primary perception:
1. At what points in the story do you imagine Pilgram most vividly?
2. What feelings does the hero evoke and how do they change throughout the story?
3. Are we (readers) prepared for the ending of the story or is the ending of the work unexpected? Why?
4. Death of Pilgram - tragic accident or inevitability?
5. Does the overall associative color scheme change throughout the story and what does this depend on?
Let's consider compositional features story.
At first, the story tells about the life of a Berlin shopkeeper, the owner of a butterfly and stationery store. Is Pilgram sympathetic or not and why?
Let us turn to the episode with the conventional title “Almost every evening in the tavern,” where a portrait of the hero is revealed in social environment like him. “On Saturdays, a heavy, pink man with a grayish mustache, unevenly trimmed, sat next to another table, ordered rum, filled his pipe and looked at the players with indifferent, watery eyes, of which the right one was open a little wider than the left. When he entered, they greeted him, not taking their eyes off the maps. Sometimes someone would turn to the overweight man and ask how his shop was doing; he hesitated before answering, and often did not answer at all. If the owner's daughter passed nearby, a large girl in plaid dress, he tried to slap her on her evasive thigh, without changing his gloomy expression at all, but only becoming filled with blood. The witty owner called him “Mr. Professor”, would sit down at his table, say: “Well, how are Mr. Professor?” - and he, puffing on his pipe, would look at him for a long time before answering, and then. .. said something rude and unfunny, the owner smartly objected, and then the people nearby, looking at their cards, laughed shakingly.”
A decent pink-gray appearance, accent details only indicate ill health and old age. Behavior worthy of a shopkeeper. At first glance, Pilgram appears to be part of a group portrait. But detachment, “indifferent, watery eyes” betray Pilgram - a “stranger” (peregrinos - lat.), a stranger to shopkeepers and innkeepers, in whose environment - “country” he is forced to exist. With what intonation does the witty owner pronounce his eveningly remark, addressed more to the spectators - visitors to the tavern, rather than to Pilgram: “Well, how is Mr. Professor”? - The unkind, mocking and disdainful attitude of the burghers towards the hero only confirms his inner foreignness.
The life of a shopkeeper is ordinary: caring for his daily bread, regular business, simply thoughtless fulfillment by someone of the rules that were once established: Saturday “outings” to the tavern, Sunday “silent and slow” walks with his wife. However, this is an external, inauthentic life.
The story about Pilgram the shopkeeper is devoid of the category of psychological time. The movement here is formal: days pass in succession in a “small, dim” apartment with “...cheerful windows into the courtyard.” A number of homogeneous members of the sentence, expressing the action of the imperfect form in the past tense (entered, muttered, returned, locked, groaned, etc.), with their persistent, emphasized monotony, create a feeling of continuity, movement in a circle. The circle is vicious. Nothing happens.
Let's pay attention to the symbolic details:
1. Why did Nabokov choose the sound of a dripping faucet in the kitchen as the soundtrack to the life of Pilgram the shopkeeper? This sound is a symbol of life flowing away drop by drop, the inexorability of the movement of time, the deathly devastating ritual of inauthentic existence. Submitting to an endless ritual, Pilgram perceives all the responsibilities of external life (a family member - a husband, a member of society - a store owner) as an annoying burden. Even when he has to put on dull, tight social clothes, he is spiritually absent.
2. Why are there “...several faded photographs of the same ship” hanging above Pilgram’s bed in the “small, dim apartment”? What does this detail symbolize? Identifying the function of a given artistic detail not only leads to an understanding of the romantic nature of the image of the Pilgram, but also actualizes the theme of the spiritual wanderings of the pilgrim.
A stranger to Berlin shopkeepers and innkeepers, Pilgram lives in magical land. Here, in his own country, he is not an indifferent, tired spectator, but a bewitched, selfless pilgrim, a pilgrim for whom entomology, “this meaningless and useless passion,” has become a kind of newfound faith. Pilgram professes entomology. “He knew the world completely in his own way, in a special way, surprisingly distinct and inaccessible to others.” In this world, Pilgram is free. Extraordinary journeys are possible here. Here Pilgram is a gifted lyrical painter: “He visited Teneriffe, the outskirts of Orotava, where in the hot, flowering ravines that cut the lower slopes of the mountains overgrown with chestnut and laurel, a strange variety of cabbage flies... He also visited the north - the swamps of Lapland, where the moss , gonobobel, dwarf willow, polar region rich in shaggy butterflies - and high alpine pastures, with flat stones lying here and there among the slippery tangled grass, and it seems there is no greater pleasure than lifting such a stone, under which there are ants and a blue scarab, and a plump sleepy night bat, perhaps not yet named by anyone; There, in the mountains, he saw translucent, red-eyed Apollos floating with the wind through a mountain tract running along a steep cliff...”
Can Pilgram, bending over a copy of his collection and finding the whole world, be called an artist, a creator? - He creates this “dreamed-out” harmonious world and feels himself a part of it. That's why verb form is not given in the conditional mood. There is no doubt: “He visited... he saw...”
Pilgram's imaginary spiritual wanderings are correlated with the search for the promised land, therefore the “biblical syntax” in this part of the story is functionally determined. “Biblical syntax” refers to the orderly alternation, repetition and “revival each time” of a certain syntactic structure (in this case, a complex sentence with a certain type of subordinate clause is repeated: “He visited ... where ... He saw ..."). When repeating, the conjunction “and” is used. In this way, the rhythm of the spell, the prayer, is created, conveying the endless journey of the pilgrim, which he makes in his dreams.
The true life of a stranger, a pilgrim professing entomology, is possible for the shopkeeper Pilgram only in dreams, imaginary travels, childhood memories and dreams that “... he saw without the knowledge of his wife and neighbors.”
External existence - episodes: almost every evening in a tavern, in a small dim apartment, trading in a shop - is perceived by the hero as “Berlin vegetation”. Let's compare the associative color scheme of the compositional parts of the story, correlated with the external and internal life of the hero, with his different hypostases; a shopkeeper and “an excellent entomologist who discovered and described something.” In what color is the part of the story that describes the “Berlin vegetation” arranged by Fate? - External life is devoid of color, sun. Associative gray conveys monotony and routine. In what color are the spiritual journeys of a pilgrim revealed? - A celebration of color and a variety of shades, approaching the mystery of existence. By what principle are the associative color characteristics of the compared compositional parts interconnected? - Gray everyday life drowns out and absorbs the bright colors of pilgrimage. The color is fading, like "...faded photographs above the bed” by Pilgram.
The shopkeeper pilgrim is not likeable. Why and how does the reader's attitude towards the hero change? - Pilgram the scientist deserves respect, Pilgram the artist gives rise to sympathy and tenderness, Pilgram the lack of freedom evokes compassion. Like butterflies, “these tiny velvet creatures... crucified on black pins,” he is involuntary, tied by Fate to his shop. The butterfly shop is also a trap of Fate. However, this is also a gift from Fate:
“He held tightly to his shop, as to the only connection between his Berlin vegetation and the ghost of piercing happiness: happiness lay in the fact that he himself, with these hands, with this light muslin bag stretched over a hoop, himself, himself, caught the rarest distant butterflies countries."
Pilgram’s whole life is a pursuit of the “ghost of piercing happiness”, this is life against Fate. “He got married, counting heavily on the dowry, but his father-in-law died a week later, leaving an inheritance of nothing but debts... Then, on the eve of the war, after hard work, everything was ready for him to leave - he even purchased a tropical helmet; when this collapsed, he was still consoled for some time by the hope that now he would end up somewhere - as young lieutenants had previously ended up in the east or in the colonies... Weak, loose, sick, he was left in the rear and foreign lepidopterans I didn't see it. But the worst thing - something that only happens in nightmares - happened a few years after the war: the amount of money he was holding in his hands - this very real condensed possibility of happiness - suddenly turned into meaningless pieces of paper. He almost died and still hasn’t recovered.”
Nabokov accompanies the hero’s dream with epithets: “passionate, unchanging, exhausting and blissful,” the dream is a “disease.” Let’s select our own epithets to understand its essence. - Lifelong, childish, beautiful, cruel. All attempts to make dreams come true are unsuccessful. Why? Is Pilgram a strong or weak person? - In a losing game with Fate, in the face of death, when “on a gray and damp April day” he “felt that he would not go anywhere, thought that he was soon fifty, that he owed all his neighbors, that he had nothing to pay the tax with,” Pilgram , seeking the impossible, uses the last possibility. “An excellent, very representative collection of small glassy species imitating mosquitoes, wasps, and wasps,” sold to the famous Sommer. Let's pay attention to the “German-speaking” surname: Sommer - Sommer (German) - summer. Thanks to Sommer, the “gray and damp April day”, symbolizing the “Berlin vegetation”, takes on the sunny colors of summer - a paradise time for entomological pilgrimage.
So, the deal was done. Pilgram won. However, Nabokov talks about the dangerous flaw of these duels with Fate - here “others” are not taken into account. Happiness is achieved at the expense of “others.” In this case, at the expense of his wife Eleanor. Is Eleanor likable? What role does she play in the story? - The attitude towards Eleanor as a means of achieving his goals, and a means that did not justify itself, is open to the reader: “He got married, counting heavily on the dowry...”, “Pilgram never wanted children, children would only serve as an extra obstacle to her embodiment. .. blissful dreams...” This attitude is manifested in the portrait characteristics of the hero. By what associations, thoughts and feelings Eleanor’s appearance evokes in Pilgram, one can judge about himself. “Short, in a dull nightgown, with thick hairy calves, with a small face shiny from the warmth of the feather bed.” Here the hero’s vision is connected to the author’s vision, and it prevails.
Of course, the main provisions of existential (religious) philosophy determine the problems of the story: “... is this fallen world truly real, in which evil eternally triumphs and exorbitant suffering is sent to people?.. Or is reality not exhausted by this forced world, and there is another world , metaphysical reality, and we are surrounded by mystery?.. and what then is the calling of man?” . Adherents of religious existentialism, answering the questions raised, state: “Becoming a person is a person’s task. Personality is not born from parents... it is created by God and is self-created... Personality is forged in self-determination. It always presupposes a calling, the one and only calling of everyone. She follows the inner voice calling her to fulfill her life's task. A person is only a personality when he follows this inner voice, and not external influences."
To a certain extent, Nabokov is close to the theses of existentialism. This explains the reason for the author’s unconditional sympathy for Pilgram, who decided to leave. Each person has the right to his own life, since he is a single manifestation of this life. Self-realization is a must. Breaking out of the vicious circle at any cost is the goal.
Pilgram makes a choice. However, the author does not rid him of the almost lost habit of measuring his actions as good and evil. “He knew perfectly well that this was madness, he knew that he was leaving a beggar wife, debts, a store that could not be sold, he knew that the two or three thousand that he would get for the collection would allow him to wander for no more than a year - and yet he went for it like a man who feels that tomorrow is old age and that the happiness that sent for him will never repeat the invitation.” Pilgram disdained rational sanity, became ABOVE the problems of morality, and liberated his true nature.
It would seem that Nabokov accepts a system of existentialist values. However, Nabokov’s “yes” is always a “yes” in question. The story tests the idea of ​​self-realization as a “human calling”, in connection with which the problems of freedom and responsibility, goals and means are examined; there is a “litigation” with Dostoevsky. In a fit of despair and irritation, wanting to kill Eleanor, Pilgram mentally resorts to the murder weapon of Rodion Raskolnikov: “... it would be nice to take an ax and hit her on the crown of the head” - an example of ironic quotation on the verge of discrediting the idea.
And yet the vicious circle is broken. Pilgram manages to make a decision and finds his true self. And you don't need more. The pilgrim reached his holy places. “Yes, Pilgram has gone far. He probably visited Granada, Murcia, and Albarazin - he probably saw pale moths circling around the tall, dazzling white lanterns on the Seville boulevard; He probably ended up in both the Congo and Suriname, and saw all those butterflies that he dreamed of seeing - velvety black with purple spots between strong veins, deep blue and small mica with squashes like black feathers. And in a sense, it doesn’t matter that in the morning, entering the shop, Eleanor saw a suitcase, and then her husband sitting on the floor, among scattered coins, with his back to the counter, with a blue, crooked face, long dead.”
Is the ending of the story unexpected, or did you expect something like this? Death of Pilgram- tragic accident or inevitability?
Why is the final episode of the hero’s “departure” (“Yes, Pilgram has gone far ...”) preceded by two detailed episodes dedicated to Eleanor? How to explain this “unexpected” attention of Nabokov to Eleanor? As a featured sequence final scenes expresses the author's position?
Death atones for guilt before Eleanor. Death is the price paid for freedom and liberation - the ending is metaphysically open, just like in Nabokov’s early poem “Oh, how you are eager to set on your winged path...” (1923), where the motive of lack of freedom, the languor of the soul - Psyche, suffering earthly trials and all - is developed and gaining immortality:

Why does the general mood of the story, despite the death of the hero, remain tragically enlightened? Why is it “in some sense unimportant” that Pilgram died? And what is important?
Pilgram dies for his wife, for his customers, for the whole world at the moment when for Nabokov and for every reader who decides Hamlet’s question in favor of “to be,” he goes to Spain - a country that does not coincide with the real Spain, because it created by his dream.
Pilgram's death is not only liberation, but also the finding of the promised land, an entomological paradise, a return to his true homeland. “Every foreign country seemed to him exclusively as the homeland of this or that butterfly, and the longing that he experienced at the same time can be compared to longing for his homeland.” And therefore, the plot of the story can be likened to the process of the birth of a butterfly - metamorphosis, the last stage of which is the finale.

Garshin V. M. Favorites. - M.: Pravda, 1985. - P. 343.
Khodasevich V.F. About Sirin // Shaking tripod. - M., 1991. - P. 458.
Berdyaev N. A. Self-knowledge. - L.: Lenizdat, 1991. - P. 166.
Right there. - P. 355.