The problem of debt to the homeland Fedor Sologub. Truth of the heart
From the window, Lisa saw their owner passing by the garden along the narrow boundary behind the rye. He is humble and good-natured. Loves beer, but never gets rowdy. Is he afraid of war or not?
Lisa quickly came out to him. Asked:
Andrei Ivanovich, are you going to war?
The owner took off his hat and bowed. Said:
No, I am a warrior, my turn has not yet come. There are a lot of people without me.
Andrei Ivanovich, what if the Germans come? - asked Lisa.
The fat, tall Estonian laughed and said:
We won't let them in here. I will take a gun and kill one hundred Germans.
Lisa shouted to her mother out the window:
Mom, mom, listen to what he says!
Anna Sergeevna just waved her hand.
When Lisa returned, Anna Sergeevna walked around the room and repeated:
Horror, horror! All the same, you can’t live here. Ours or strangers, it doesn’t matter, soldiers will come, settle in our dacha, and they will tell us to leave.
Let's go for a walk before the evening - Lisa and her mother, young people. We went into an Estonian shop under the pretext of buying Georges-Borman chocolate. In fact, Anna Sergeevna wanted to prove to Liza that it was impossible to stay here, because they would take all the horses, and the shopkeeper’s too, and there would be nothing to carry goods on, and there was no way to get to the station: if you’re late to leave now, sit and die of hunger.
The cunning Estonian shopkeeper, as always, chuckled. He insisted that they were giving less for the horses than they cost him. Lisa didn't believe it.
But,” she said, “you don’t need to feed them in the winter, but buy new ones in the spring.”
The Estonian said, laughing slyly:
Whoever has bad horses benefits, but I lost.
Do you have any goods? - asked Anna Sergeevna.
Now it is. “It won’t be soon,” answered the Estonian.
Anna Sergeevna looked at her daughter with triumph. Bubenchikov suggested buying more chocolate:
Let's make chocolate soup.
No, don’t,” said Kozovalov, “we have a lot of crows, I’ll shoot.”
Anna Sergeevna was offended.
Eat it yourself, I’m not used to eating crow.
Coming out of the shop, we read the mobilization notices posted right there and commented on them. Anna Sergeevna said:
There's not even any ammunition. They ask the soldiers to bring boots with them. Unhappy people! It will be like the Japanese war again.
Lisa got angry and argued. She spoke with annoyance:
Mom, you are a military wife, but you reason like you don’t understand anything.
You understand a lot! - Anna Sergeevna answered with the usual old man’s rebuke to the children. - You should look at the reserves - their eyes are completely crazy.
Well, I haven’t seen this from anyone,” answered Lisa.
In the evening we met again at the Starkins'. They only talked about the war. Someone started a rumor that the call for recruits this year would be earlier than usual, by the eighteenth of August; and that deferments for students will be cancelled. Therefore, Bubenchikov and Kozovalov were oppressed - if this is true, then they will have to serve military service not in two years, but now.
The young people did not want to fight - Bubenchikov loved his young and, it seemed to him, valuable and wonderful life too much, and Kozovalov did not like anything around him to become too serious.
Kozovalov spoke sadly:
I'll go to Africa. There will be no war there.
“And I’ll go to France,” Bubenchikov said, “and I’ll become a French citizen.”
Lisa flushed with annoyance. She screamed:
And don't be ashamed! You are supposed to protect us, but you are thinking about where to hide. And you think that in France you won’t be forced to fight?
Yes, it's true! - Bubenchikov said sadly.
Kozovalov’s mother, a plump, cheerful lady, said good-naturedly:
They say this on purpose. And if they are called, they will show themselves as heroes. They will fight no worse than others.
Grimacing and breaking down, as usual, Bubenchikov asked Lisa:
So you don't advise me to go to France?
Lisa answered angrily:
Yes, I don't recommend it. You may be captured and shot along the way.
For what? - Bubenchikov asked foolishly.
Anna Sergeevna said angrily:
They still need to learn and support their mothers. They have nothing to do in war.
Bubenchikov, delighted at the support, frowned and said importantly:
I don’t want to talk about the war anymore. I want to do my own thing and that's enough for me.
“We’re not asking to be heroes,” Kozovalov said.
And why aren’t women taken to war? - Liza exclaimed. - After all, there were Amazons in ancient times!
What is the duty to the Motherland? Is it this question that F. Sologub thinks about in his work?
Commenting on this problem, it is worth paying attention to how Bubenchikov and Kozovalov reacted to the rumor that conscription for military service would be earlier than usual, and there would be no deferment for students. The young people did not want to fight. “Bubenchikov loved his young and... valuable life, and Kozovalov did not like anything around him to become too serious." Therefore, the young men were thinking about leaving Russia for other countries in order to avoid war. Their actions and thoughts tell us that nothing connects them with their Motherland, and they are not ready to defend the Fatherland.
The complete opposite of the young people is Paul Sepp. This young man’s homeland was Estonia, but the young man joined the ranks of the soldiers marching to defend Russia. Paul changed both externally and internally, “his gait was decisive and firm, and his eyes boldly looked forward.” The young man understood that he was obliged to defend the country that connected him with the most dear person, namely Lisa. Paul’s words and actions make us understand that he is ready to give his life, but to protect the country that gave him a person who is ready to go for him even for mortal combat.
I completely agree with the opinion of F Sologub. It is worth turning to the events of the history of our country. When on June 22, 1941, without warning, German troops crossed the border of the Soviet Union, thousands of people voluntarily went to the military registration and enlistment office. Both students and old people went there. Everyone understood that their Motherland in danger that if they do not stand up for her, then no one will stand up. I accompanied soldiers going to the front to every house, who promised to defend their Motherland and their family, drive the German fascists back to Germany and be sure to return.
Thus, each of us must love our Motherland, protect it, so that no one dares to desecrate its open spaces.
Updated: 2019-02-26
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The summer of 1914 in Orgo, a small Estonian village on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, passed pleasantly and calmly. At the beginning of summer, no one here even thought about the imminence of a major European war. The weather was beautiful all the time, clear, warm, with rare rains. Summer residents - Germans from Yuryev and Revel, and Russian intellectuals from the capitals - had fun as best they could. Those who lived here for several years praised this place very much, the wide view of the sea, the magnificent park, the sunsets - everything that can be praised. Those who came here for the first time - because acquaintances often praised Orgo in winter - complained of boredom.
In fact, Orgo is a remote outback, there is neither a kurhaus nor music. The Orgo Countryside Improvement Society had just been founded and only managed to put up two signs prohibiting cyclists from riding on the pedestrian path in the village, and even set up a poor tennis ground. Even the railway station is seven miles away - you can’t walk along the platform, meeting and seeing off trains. The only consolation was swimming in the sea - the beach was very good, almost the same as in the Ust-Narovsk bathing area - and lawn tennis, arranged in a clearing above the sea.
Because of lawn tennis, the youth quarreled with the pharmacist: they did not want to pay money for the right to play tennis, and the pharmacist, treasurer of the Orgo dacha improvement society, threatened to remove the net. He tried to be very careful both to justify his German surname and so that he would not be mistaken for an Estonian.
The young people said:
We are not required to pay you to play tennis. You have an old mesh hanging too.
The pharmacist stubbornly insisted:
No, we have to. Society does not have the funds to buy netting.
From our dacha,” said the cheerful student Bubenchikov, “you have already collected three rubles.”
And with ours,” said the gloomy Kozovalov, “even five.”
The pharmacist explained:
Well, this is for the delivery of correspondence - you yourself know that there is no post office in our area. And we are working hard, and next year we will have a post and telegraph office. What do you want?
“It doesn’t matter to us,” the young people said, “you can’t pay endlessly.”
They argued for a long time. Finally, the pharmacist removed the net and hung a note on a pole near the tennis ground with the inscription: “Playing without the permission of the board of the improvement society is prohibited.”
In retaliation for this, the frivolous young people the very next night nailed a note on the pharmacy door: “Going to the pharmacy without a doctor’s prescription is strictly prohibited.”
Many summer residents, stocking up on old signatures, deliberately went to the pharmacy to inquire why entry without a prescription was prohibited. Summer residents went to the pharmacy, as usual, not so much for medicine, but for postcards with views of the area, for lanterns for illumination, for soap and cologne, and for other various things.
The pharmacist was indignant, assured that you can go without a prescription, and, dispensing his goods, complained to everyone about the young people.
Two or three times a summer, amateur performances and balls were held in the premises of the local fire society - that's all the fun. The rest of the time I had to be content with home entertainment, and during the day walking and admiring the views - an activity not particularly characteristic of youth.
Lisa Starkin, the young daughter of a naval officer sailing somewhere in a distant sea, was undecided on which of the two young men she should focus her attention on. Bubenchikov and Kozovalov, two students, a lawyer and a mathematician, were both charming, each in their own way. Liza's mother, Anna Sergeevna, preferred the amiable and cheerful Bubenchikov. Lisa also appreciated his excellent qualities, but the gloomy Kozovalov also had his own charms. He was not without wit and resourcefulness, and although he sometimes spoke insolently to her, he was always ready to serve, while the amiable and cheerful Bubenchikov was an egoist and often shied away from providing services.
However, at times both young men seemed rather boring to Lisa. And it seemed even to her that they weren’t really living, but, by the way, until the end of the course, and their real life would begin later, when they passed their state exams and settled in more or less well.
But Lisa already wanted to love someone. That's how old it is. And so on the beach almost every day, she threw off her skirt and sandals and danced Duncan dances for one, then for the other, then for both together. Lisa, as usual, studied at some drama courses. She was charming in her sweet dances, slender, thin, cheerfully tanned, light above the surface of the fine, grayish-golden sand.
There was also a third, inclined to look after Liza more diligently and selflessly than the first two. It was a local, Paul Sepp, but for Lisa he was still only a comic element.
Paul Sepp was twenty-eight years old. He was handsome, tall, strong, broad-shouldered, a very reserved man, good-natured and a little baggy. He had clear blue eyes and blond hair. He didn't drink vodka or smoke. I didn’t know any depravity. Graduated from some agricultural school. I read a lot, in Russian and German. I love literature and philosophy very much. Played the piano. He sang in a baritone voice. His two sisters, young girls, had recently finished studying at the gymnasium.
Since spring he had been in love with Lisa Starkina - from the very first time he saw her on a cliff above the sea, in a tunic, cheerful, white, not yet tanned. But he was a simple peasant, an Estonian, and he himself worked in his field, together with his two sisters. He had thirty acres of land, and in the summer several men and women lived there.
He was still single and pure, like a boy. In winter he dreamed of distant beauties. Every summer he fell in love with a Russian young lady - now he fell in love with Lisa. For some reason he never fell in love with German women.
And so there were three people in love with one Lisa. Liza had never felt so proud and happy in her life. Lisa and Paul Sepp did not completely reject the fear of the other two. Teasing them, she said:
I want to and will marry an Estonian.
And she made fun of all three of them, fun and sweet, like everything she did.
Anna Sergeevna was very angry when Lisa talked to her about the Estonian. She exclaimed:
Lisa! Your father is a captain of the first rank, and you are talking about a simple Estonian.
Lisa laughed. She said:
Paul and I will mow the grass, sow grain, tend our flocks, and talk about Schiller and Kant.
Horror, horror! - Anna Sergeevna exclaimed.
Lisa continued to tease her mother:
I will milk the cows and bring fresh milk for you every morning. You will see how tasty, thick and clean it will be.
Anna Sergeevna covered her ears with her fingers and left.
Liza and her mother, Bubenchikov and Kozovalov were walking in the park. The park belonged to a Baltic baron, and at the entrance you had to buy tickets. To get tickets you had to go to the manager, a clean German from Riga.
We admired the magnificent, white, elevated above the Sillurian cliff, the baron's house. Only Kozovalov stubbornly said that he did not like the house, that it was only suitable for setting up a museum of bad taste. They argued with him. But he was, of course, right. He had good taste, and this poorly constructed building, which was not at all in harmony with the area, could not satisfy him.
When the blue sea was already visible, Kozovalov said, pointing to a separate huge tree:
This is the same tree.
Which? - asked Lisa.
Kozovalov smiled gloomily and remained silent. At that moment he looked mysterious and significant. Lisa suddenly sparked with curiosity. Bubenchikov said:
The baron's groom hanged himself on this tree in the spring. He whipped one horse's eye. The manager told him that he would charge him three hundred rubles and put him in prison. Well, he went here at night and hanged himself. Found it in the morning. The young man was very, very modest, and he had a fiancée, a local Estonian named Elsa - she lives as a maid at Levenshtein's.
Anna Sergeevna gasped:
Oh, what horror! Why did you take us here! I will dream about this Estonian at night. And why did you tell this!
Lisa said annoyedly:
Mom, how can you not tell him when they ask him about it!
Lisa was always tired of her mother's pretended expansiveness and flirtatiousness.
Bubenchikov spoke animatedly, as if something joyful:
Many people are now afraid to go to the park in the evening.
And it’s creepy during the day,” said Anna Sergeevna. - If I had known, I wouldn’t have taken the ticket.
Well, I would take it myself,” answered Lisa.
Kozovalov said gloatingly:
And the young baroness did not come this summer.
Why? - asked Lisa.
He is afraid that the Estonians will get angry and take revenge,” Kozovalov explained. “That’s why you have to take tickets, they’re afraid to let everyone in.”
“That’s not at all because,” Lisa argued, “they let everyone in first, so they approached the castle itself and picked off all the flowers.
Well, you are a controversialist! - said Anna Sergeevna, “you always know everything better than anyone else.”
In the evening, having met with Paul Sepp, Lisa asked him:
Why did this groom hang himself? Was it really because of some baron's horse?
Yes, because of the horse,” answered Paul Sepp.
But is this really true? - asked Lisa. - What could they have done with him? After all, we don’t live in the times of serfdom!
Paul Sepp calmly answered:
The manager is German.
So what? - Lisa asked in surprise.
The Germans are a careful people, they will not forgive,” said Paul Sepp.
And his clear eyes lit up with instant anger.
Somehow, quite unexpectedly, they began to say that there would soon be a war. The newspapers were read voraciously. Austria's vicious attack on Serbia and Germany's apparent connivance with it irritated many. Resentment against Germany grew. They recalled that Germany had for many years kept all of Europe in a state of uncertainty about the future and forced everyone to make excessive efforts for armaments. The hostility towards the arrogant and arrogant Prussians, which had been growing for many years, was revealed. Already the local notables, the pharmacist and the baker (who is also the owner of the boarding house) announced that they were not Germans, but Estonians; Until now they have carefully hidden it.
Decrees on mobilization appeared, first partial, and then general. Summer residents read the posted advertisements and interpreted them as best they could.
So war has been declared. The newspapers that arrived in the evening printed about the German impudent ultimatum to Russia. And by nightfall Bubenchikov, having ridden his bicycle to the station, brought important news. He hurriedly entered the closed glass terrace of the Starkins' dacha, where Liza, Anna Sergeevna and Kozovalov with their mother were sitting at the tea table. Greetings, he announced fearfully and joyfully:
Germany declared war on us. Franz Joseph died.
Anna Sergeevna clasped her hands and exclaimed:
Well, we waited, we sat through it! Horror, horror!
The Germans, perhaps, will land here,” said Bubenchikov, “there is no fortress here, and we don’t have a fleet, they will go here, and from here to St. Petersburg.”
He said this as if it were something joyful.
Horror, horror! - Anna Sergeevna repeated. - What will happen to us?
Kozovalov said:
No, the Germans will come from the south and destroy the railway. And what will happen to us is shrouded in the darkness of the unknown. However, whoever survives enemy shells, one must assume that the Germans will not do anything particularly bad: they are a cultured people.
Lisa did not believe in either the landing or the destruction of the railway. She had the calm and brave heart of a purely Russian girl. She loved Russia and therefore believed that Russia would win. She said:
The Germans will not be allowed to land here. And they can’t reach our railway.
The mother argued:
How can they not reach us, Lizochka, if three armies are moving towards us from East Prussia! After all, it’s written in all the newspapers!
Lisa calmly objected:
Why, we have our armies too!
Well, where are ours! - said the mother, - the Germans are stronger, all their men went to war.
Bubenchikov said:
The Germans will quickly take it. Before our people have time to come to their senses, the Germans will approach St. Petersburg. It’s not for nothing that they dig trenches around St. Petersburg and cut down all the trees.
Is that all? - Lisa asked mockingly. - Why is this?
Well, this is for military reasons,” Bubenchikov said. - Well, I'll go. We must say to our Likhutins too.
Bubenchikov quickly said goodbye to everyone and ran along the path of the dark garden.
Newspaper! - Lisa said annoyedly.
Bubenchikov visited all his friends.
The summer residents were worried. Until the morning they walked around the village and told each other rumors that had come from God knows where, each more incredible than the other.
The next day, in the morning, Anna Sergeevna talked about the need to leave for St. Petersburg as soon as possible. Lisa didn't want to. She said:
Such good weather! What will we do in St. Petersburg?
No, no, pack up and leave! - Anna Sergeevna said with an expression of confusion and horror on her face. - For now they are still letting you into St. Petersburg, and then they will neither let you in nor let you out. And if we go now, we will still have time, God willing, to leave St. Petersburg.
Lisa asked annoyedly:
Where else to go, mom?
Anna Sergeevna answered:
Lisa laughed. Asked:
So, do you think they will come to Moscow?
Ah, Lizanka, it's only a matter of time.
Lisa peered in surprise at her mother’s frightened face. She said reproachfully:
Well, mom, you’re a coward!
Anna Sergeevna began to cry and said:
Lisa, I don’t want a Prussian soldier to hit me with a rifle butt.
Lisa shrugged and went to the window.
A clear sky, simple-minded flowers in the flower beds, an imperturbable world of tall green trees - a clear, sweet life, and the wise proximity of a soothing, deep death poured into it - and next to it, here, this unnecessary, pathetic cowardice! How strange!
From the window, Lisa saw their owner passing by the garden along the narrow boundary behind the rye. He is humble and good-natured. Loves beer, but never gets rowdy. Is he afraid of war or not?
Lisa quickly came out to him. Asked:
Andrei Ivanovich, are you going to war?
The owner took off his hat and bowed. Said:
No, I am a warrior, my turn has not yet come. There are a lot of people without me.
Andrei Ivanovich, what if the Germans come? - asked Lisa.
The fat, tall Estonian laughed and said:
We won't let them in here. I will take a gun and kill one hundred Germans.
Lisa shouted to her mother out the window:
Mom, mom, listen to what he says!
Anna Sergeevna just waved her hand.
When Lisa returned, Anna Sergeevna walked around the room and repeated:
Horror, horror! All the same, you can’t live here. Ours or strangers, it doesn’t matter, soldiers will come, settle in our dacha, and they will tell us to leave.
Let's go for a walk before the evening - Lisa and her mother, young people. We went into an Estonian shop under the pretext of buying Georges-Borman chocolate. In fact, Anna Sergeevna wanted to prove to Liza that it was impossible to stay here, because they would take all the horses, and the shopkeeper’s too, and there would be nothing to carry goods on, and there was no way to get to the station: if you’re late to leave now, sit and die of hunger.
The cunning Estonian shopkeeper, as always, chuckled. He insisted that they were giving less for the horses than they cost him. Lisa didn't believe it.
But,” she said, “you don’t need to feed them in the winter, but buy new ones in the spring.”
The Estonian said, laughing slyly:
Whoever has bad horses benefits, but I lost.
Do you have any goods? - asked Anna Sergeevna.
Now it is. “It won’t be soon,” answered the Estonian.
Anna Sergeevna looked at her daughter with triumph. Bubenchikov suggested buying more chocolate:
Let's make chocolate soup.
No, don’t,” said Kozovalov, “we have a lot of crows, I’ll shoot.”
Anna Sergeevna was offended.
Eat it yourself, I’m not used to eating crow.
Coming out of the shop, we read the mobilization notices posted right there and commented on them. Anna Sergeevna said:
There's not even any ammunition. They ask the soldiers to bring boots with them. Unhappy people! It will be like the Japanese war again.
Lisa got angry and argued. She spoke with annoyance:
Mom, you are a military wife, but you reason like you don’t understand anything.
You understand a lot! - Anna Sergeevna answered with the usual old man’s rebuke to the children. - You should look at the reserves - their eyes are completely crazy.
Well, I haven’t seen this from anyone,” answered Lisa.
In the evening we met again at the Starkins'. They only talked about the war. Someone started a rumor that the call for recruits this year would be earlier than usual, by the eighteenth of August; and that deferments for students will be cancelled. Therefore, Bubenchikov and Kozovalov were oppressed - if this is true, then they will have to serve military service not in two years, but now.
The young people did not want to fight - Bubenchikov loved his young and, it seemed to him, valuable and wonderful life too much, and Kozovalov did not like anything around him to become too serious.
Kozovalov spoke sadly:
I'll go to Africa. There will be no war there.
“And I’ll go to France,” Bubenchikov said, “and I’ll become a French citizen.”
Lisa flushed with annoyance. She screamed:
And don't be ashamed! You are supposed to protect us, but you are thinking about where to hide. And you think that in France you won’t be forced to fight?
Yes, it's true! - Bubenchikov said sadly.
Kozovalov’s mother, a plump, cheerful lady, said good-naturedly:
They say this on purpose. And if they are called, they will show themselves as heroes. They will fight no worse than others.
Grimacing and breaking down, as usual, Bubenchikov asked Lisa:
So you don't advise me to go to France?
Lisa answered angrily:
Yes, I don't recommend it. You may be captured and shot along the way.
For what? - Bubenchikov asked foolishly.
Anna Sergeevna said angrily:
They still need to learn and support their mothers. They have nothing to do in war.
Bubenchikov, delighted at the support, frowned and said importantly:
I don’t want to talk about the war anymore. I want to do my own thing and that's enough for me.
“We’re not asking to be heroes,” Kozovalov said.
And why aren’t women taken to war? - Liza exclaimed. - After all, there were Amazons in ancient times!
We also had a cavalry girl named Durova,” said Kozovalova.
Anna Sergeevna looked at Lisa with a sour smile and said:
She turned out to be a patriot for me!
Her words were like reproach. Kozovalova laughed and said:
This morning, in the warm baths, I say to the bathhouse attendant: “Look, Martha, when the Germans come, don’t be very nice to them.” She gets angry, leaves the gang, and says: “What are you talking about, lady! I’ll scald them with boiling water!”
Horror, horror! - Anna Sergeevna repeated.
Sixteen reserves were called from Orgo. The Estonian caring for Lisa, Paul Sepp, was also called up. When Lisa found out about this, she suddenly felt somehow awkward, almost ashamed that she was laughing at him. She remembered his clear, child-like eyes. She suddenly clearly imagined a distant battlefield - and he, big, strong, would fall, struck by an enemy bullet. A caring, compassionate tenderness for this departing one rose in her soul. With fearful surprise she thought: “He loves me. And I - what am I? She jumped like a monkey and laughed. He will go to fight. Maybe he will die. And when it gets hard for him, who will he remember, to whom will he whisper: “Goodbye, honey”? He will remember the Russian young lady, someone else’s, distant.”
And Lisa became so sad - she wanted to cry.
On the day when the reserves had to go, in the morning Paul Sepp came to Lisa to say goodbye. Lisa looked at him with pitiful curiosity. But his eyes were clear and bold. She asked:
Paul, are you scared to go to war?
Paul smiled and said:
Everything great is scary. But dying is not scary. It would be scary if I knew that I would be afraid at the decisive moment. But this won't happen, I know.
How can you know this? - asked Lisa.
“I know myself,” said Paul. Lisa asked:
But you Estonians don’t want war, do you?
Paul Sepp calmly answered:
Who wants it? But if we are called, we will fight. And we will win. Russia cannot help but win.
Lisa wanted to say:
After all, you are not Russian.
But I didn’t dare or didn’t have time. Paul, as if guessing her thought, said:
We Estonians really don't like Germans. This is hereditary. They did a lot of cruelty here.
Lisa said:
But these were local Germans and not German ones. And what did the Germans do to you? And you love Beethoven and Goethe, don’t you?
“They are all the same - cruel, cunning, treacherous,” said Paul. - Ever since they defeated the French and took away Alsace and Lorraine, they seemed to have gotten drunk on some kind of poison. And it’s as if this is not the same people from which Beethoven and Goethe came. Take for example the fact that nowhere in the whole world, except Germany, is there a law on dual citizenship.
Lisa did not know what dual citizenship was. Paul Sepp explained. Lisa listened in surprise.
But this is a vile deception! - she exclaimed.
Paul Sepp shrugged.
This is German law,” he said. - Of course, they consider themselves right, but it is difficult for us to take their point of view. We do not understand their truth, and it seems to us a lie. Let us hope that among them there will be people - writers, workers - who will raise their voices against German madness.
Those called were escorted off solemnly. The whole village gathered. Speeches were made. A local amateur orchestra was playing. And almost all the summer residents came. The summer residents dressed up.
Paul walked ahead and sang. His eyes sparkled, his face seemed sunny, he held his hat in his hand, and a light breeze blew his blond curls. His usual baggy appearance was gone and he seemed very handsome. This is how the Vikings and Ushkuiniki once went on campaigns. He sang. Estonians enthusiastically repeated the words of the national anthem.
Anna Sergeevna walked right there and repeated quietly:
Horror, horror! Look, they all have crazy eyes. They know that they will all be killed.
What are you doing, mom! - Lisa objected. - Where do you see this? They all walk with enthusiasm. Such an uplifting spirit - don't you see?
We reached a forest outside the village. Summer residents began to return. The conscripts were seated on carriages. Clouds were rolling in. The sky began to frown. Gray whirlwinds curled and ran along the road, beckoning and teasing someone. Anna Sergeevna said:
Let's go home, Lisa. It's already raining.
Lisa answered quietly:
Wait, mom.
Well, what are you waiting for! - Anna Sergeevna said annoyedly. - They saw us off, consoled us as much as we could, and that was enough. Let them be alone and cry, maybe it will be easier after all.
Lisa laughed and said cheerfully:
No, mom, they won't cry. They don't think about death. And if they think, then death is a blessing in the world.
Lisa stopped Sepp:
Listen, Paul, come to me for a minute.
Paul walked away to a side path. He walked next to Lisa. His gait was decisive and firm, and his eyes boldly looked forward. It seemed as if the solemn sounds of warlike music were beating rhythmically in his soul. Lisa looked at him with loving eyes. He said:
Don't be afraid of anything, Lisa. As long as we are alive, we will not let the Germans go far. And whoever enters Russia will not be happy to see us. The more of them who enter, the fewer of them will return to Germany.
Suddenly Lisa blushed very red and said:
Paul, these days I have fallen in love with you. I'll follow you. They will take me as a sister of mercy. We will get married as soon as possible.
Paul flushed. He leaned over, kissed Liza’s hand and repeated:
Darling, darling!
And when he looked into her face again, his clear eyes were wet.
Anna Sergeevna walked a few steps behind and grumbled:
What tenderness with the Estonian! God knows what he imagines about himself. You can imagine - he kisses the hand, like a knight to his lady!
Bubenchikov imitated the gait of Paul Sepp. Anna Sergeevna found it very similar and very funny, and laughed. Kozovalov smiled sardonically.
Lisa turned to her mother and shouted:
Mom, come here!
She and Paul Sepp stopped at the edge of the road. Both had happy, beaming faces.
Kozovalov and Bubenchikov came up with Anna Sergeevna. Kozovalov said in Anna Sergeevna’s ear:
And for our Estonians, militant enthusiasm suits us very well. Look how handsome he is, like the knight Parsifal.
Anna Sergeevna grumbled with annoyance:
Well, he's so handsome! Well, Lizonka? - she asked her daughter.
Lisa said, smiling joyfully:
Here is my fiance, mommy.
Anna Sergeevna crossed herself in horror. She exclaimed:
Lisa, fear God! What are you saying!
Lisa spoke with pride:
He is the defender of the fatherland.
Anna Sergeevna looked confusedly, first at Paul, then at Lisa. I didn't know what to say. I finally came up with:
Is this the time now? Is this what he needs to think about?
Bubenchikov and Kozovalov smiled mockingly. Paul straightened up proudly and said:
Anna Sergeevna, I don’t want to take advantage of your daughter’s momentary impulse. She is free, but I will never forget this moment in my life.
No, no,” cried Lisa, “dear Paul, I love you, I want to be yours!”
She threw herself on his neck, hugged him tightly and began to sob. Anna Sergeevna exclaimed:
Horror, horror! But this is pure psychopathy!
Published according to edition: Sologub Fedor. Ardent year. Stories. M.: Moscow publishing house, 1916.
Real text from 2017 Fyodor Sologub about war, patriotism, heroism
Truth of the heart
In the evening we met again at the Starkins'. They only talked about the war. Someone started a rumor that the call for recruits this year would be earlier than usual, by the eighteenth of August; and that deferments for students will be cancelled. Therefore, Bubenchikov and Kozovalov were oppressed - if this is true, then they will have to serve military service not in two years, but now.
The young people did not want to fight - Bubenchikov loved his young and, it seemed to him, valuable and wonderful life too much, and Kozovalov did not like anything around him to become too serious.
Kozovalov spoke sadly:
I'll go to Africa. There will be no war there.
“And I’ll go to France,” Bubenchikov said, “and I’ll become a French citizen.”
Lisa flushed with annoyance. She screamed: “And you are not ashamed!” You are supposed to protect us, but you are thinking about where to hide. And you think that in France you won’t be forced to fight?
Sixteen reserves were called from Orgo. The Estonian caring for Lisa, Paul Sepp, was also called up. When Lisa found out about this, she suddenly felt somehow awkward, almost ashamed that she was laughing at him. She remembered his clear, child-like eyes. She suddenly clearly imagined a distant battlefield - and he, big, strong, would fall, struck by an enemy bullet. A caring, compassionate tenderness for this departing one rose in her soul. With fearful surprise she thought: “He loves me. And I - what am I? She jumped like a monkey and laughed. He will go to fight. Maybe he will die. And when it gets hard for him, who will he remember, to whom will he whisper: “Goodbye, honey”? He will remember the Russian young lady, someone else’s, distant.”
Those called were escorted off solemnly. The whole village gathered. Speeches were made. A local amateur orchestra was playing. And almost all the summer residents came. The summer residents dressed up.
Paul walked ahead and sang. His eyes sparkled, his face seemed sunny, he held his hat in his hand, and a light breeze blew his blond curls. His usual baggy appearance was gone and he seemed very handsome. This is how the Vikings and Ushkuiniki once went on campaigns. He sang. Estonians enthusiastically repeated the words of the national anthem.
Lisa stopped Sepp:
Listen, Paul, come to me for a minute.
Paul walked away to a side path. He walked next to Lisa. His gait was decisive and firm, and his eyes boldly looked forward. It seemed as if the solemn sounds of warlike music were beating rhythmically in his soul. Lisa looked at him with loving eyes. He said:
Don't be afraid of anything, Lisa. As long as we are alive, we will not let the Germans go far. And whoever enters Russia will not be happy to see us. The more of them who enter, the fewer of them will return to Germany.
Suddenly Lisa blushed very red and said:
Paul, these days I have fallen in love with you. I'll follow you. They will take me as a sister of mercy. We will get married as soon as possible.
Paul flushed. He leaned over, kissed Liza’s hand and repeated:
Darling, darling!
And when he looked into her face again, his clear eyes were wet.
Anna Sergeevna walked a few steps behind and grumbled:
What tenderness with the Estonian! God knows what he imagines about himself. You can imagine - he kisses the hand, like a knight to his lady!
Bubenchikov imitated the gait of Paul Sepp. Anna Sergeevna found it very similar and very funny, and laughed. Kozovalov smiled sardonically.
Lisa turned to her mother and shouted:
Mom, come here!
She and Paul Sepp stopped at the edge of the road. Both had happy, beaming faces.
Kozovalov and Bubenchikov came up with Anna Sergeevna. Kozovalov said in Anna Sergeevna’s ear:
And for our Estonians, militant enthusiasm suits us very well. Look how handsome he is, like the knight Parsifal.
Anna Sergeevna grumbled with annoyance:
Well, he's so handsome! Well, Lizonka? - she asked her daughter.
Lisa said, smiling joyfully: “Here is my fiancé, mommy.”
1) Amlinsky V. These are the people who come to me
2) Astafiev V. A capercaillie was homesick in a cage at the zoo.
3) G. Baklanov During the year of service in the battery, Dolgovushin changed many positions
4) Baklanov G. The German mortar battery hits again
5) Bykov V. The old man did not immediately tear him away from the opposite bank
6) Vasiliev B. I still have memories and one photograph from our class.
7) Veresaev V. Tired, with dull irritation boiling in his soul
8) Voronsky A. Natalya from a neighboring village
9)Garshin V. I live in the Fifteenth Line on Sredny Avenue
10) Glushko M. It was cold on the platform, grains were falling again
11) Kazakevich E. Only Katya remained in the secluded dugout.
12)Kachalkov S. How time changes people!
13) Round V. Still, time is an amazing category.
14) Kuvaev O. ...The tent dried out from the stones that retained the heat
15) Kuvaev O. The traditional evening of field workers served as a milestone
16) Likhachev D. They say that the content determines the form.
17) Mamin-Sibiryak D. Dreams make the strongest impression on me
18) Nagibin Yu. In the first years after the revolution
19)Nikitayskaya N. Seventy years have passed, but I can’t stop scolding myself.
20) Nosov E. What is a small homeland?
21) Orlov D. Tolstoy entered my life without introducing himself.
22) Paustovsky K. We lived for several days at the cordon
23) Sanin V. Gavrilov - that’s who didn’t give Sinitsyn peace.
24) Simonov K. All three Germans were from the Belgrade garrison...
25) Simonov K. It was in the morning.
26) Sobolev A. In our time, reading fiction
27) Soloveichik S. I was once on a train
28) Sologub F. In the evening we met again at the Starkins.
29) Soloukhin V. From childhood, from school
30) Chukovsky K. The other day a young student came to me
Amlinsky Vladimir Ilyich is a Russian writer.
Here are the people who come to me, write me greeting cards, pretend that I’m just like everyone else and that everything will be okay, or don’t pretend, but just reach out to me, maybe they believe in a miracle, in my recovery. Here they are. They have this very compassion. Someone else's illness also wears them down a little - some more, others less. But there are many who despise someone else’s illness; they do not dare to say it out loud, but think: why is he still alive, why is he crawling? This is how many medical institutions treat chronic patients, the so-called chronic patients.
Poor healthy people, they do not understand that all their peace and health are conditional, that one moment, one misfortune - and everything has turned upside down, and they themselves are forced to wait for help and ask for compassion. I don't wish this for them.
These are the people I lived with side by side for several years. Now I remember it like a bad dream. These were my flatmates. Mother, father, daughters. It seems like people are like people. They worked properly, they had a friendly family, they wouldn’t let anyone offend them. And in general, everything is as it should be: no drunkenness, no cheating, a healthy lifestyle, healthy relationships and a love of song. When they get home, the radio is on full blast, they listen to music, the latest news, and discuss international events. Surprisingly neat people. They do not like and do not tolerate disorder. Where you got it from, put it there! Things of the place know. The floors are polished, everything is shiny, the lights in public places are turned off. A penny saves the ruble. And here I am. And I have crutches. And I don’t fly, but walk quietly. I hobble across the parquet. And the parquet from crutches deteriorates... This is where our spiritual discord with them began, the abyss and misunderstanding. Now all this is a joke, but there was a real war, a cold one, with outbreaks and attacks. It was necessary to have nerves of iron to hobble into the bathroom under their hostile glances and bend your spine there to wipe the floor, because a wet floor is a violation of the norms of social behavior, it is an attack on the very foundations of communal life.
And it began: if you are sick, then live separately! What can I say? I would be happy to do it separately, I ask for it, but they don’t give it. Sick people have no place in our healthy lives. This is what these people decided and began a siege, embargo and blockade against me. And the worst thing for them was that I did not respond, did not get involved in battles, not giving them joy in a verbal brawl. I have learned the art of silence. I swear, sometimes I wanted to take a nice, brand new machine gun... But this is so, in nightmare visions. I wouldn’t take a machine gun, even if we were on a desert island, in the absence of people’s district courts. By that time I had already learned to understand the value of life, even their bad life. So I kept quiet. I tried to be taller and from constant attempts I became that way. And then sometimes I felt so bad that all this no longer bothered me. I didn’t care about their categories, I thought differently, and only when I rolled back from the abyss did I remember my communal enemies.
I caused them more and more trouble, I banged my crutches more and more loudly, it became more and more difficult for me to wipe the floors and not spill water, and the situation in this strange monastery, which united the most different people who were completely unnecessary to each other, became more and more intolerable.
And at one fine moment I understood quite clearly that perhaps the most important courage of a person is to overcome such a small quagmire, to get out of everyday abominations, not to succumb to the temptation of petty retribution, dwarf war, cheap despair.
Because little things of this kind corrode with great force many people who have not developed immunity to it. And these people seriously get into squabbles, stupid struggles, become devastated, lose their nerve, and can no longer stop. When they get old, they will understand the insignificance of this fuss, but it will be too late, too much energy has already been given to the mouse fuss, so much evil has accumulated inside, so many passions have been spent that could have fed something important, which should have moved a person forward .
Astafiev Viktor Petrovich - Soviet and Russian writer.
A capercaillie was grieving in a cage at the zoo. During the day. In public. The cage, the size of two or three desks, was both a prison and a “taiga” at the same time. In the corner of it there was something like a barn hole set up. A pine branch with dry, lifeless needles was sticking out over the blind, grass was scattered or stuck on the cage, several hummocks were depicted and between them there was also a “forest” - the top of a pine, a sprig of heather, withered bushes taken here at the zoo after spring pruning.
The capercaillie in captivity withered to the height and weight of a rooster, its feathers were not renewed in captivity, they just fell out, and there were not enough feathers in the fan-like outstretched tail, there was a glowing hole, the neck and scruff of the bird were exactly covered in matted fur. And only the eyebrows filled with red rage, burned militantly, covering the eyes with a dawn arc, now and then being covered by an impenetrable, blind film of the taiga dark, oblivion of a yearning male.
Having mixed up the time and place, not paying attention to the crowd of curious people, the captive wood grouse performed what nature had assigned to him - a song of love. Captivity did not extinguish his spring passion and did not exterminate the desire to prolong his family.
He leisurely, with the dignity of a fighter, stomped lazily on the rag-like, limp grass between the hummocks, raised his head and, aiming his beak at a celestial star, called out to the world and the heavens, demanding that he be heard and listened to. And having begun the song with rare, distinct clicks, increasingly gaining strength and frequency, he entered into such a passionate rapture, into such forgetfulness that his eyes again and again were covered with a film, he froze in place, and only his hot belly, his throat, suffocated from a loving call, it still continued to roll, crumble pebbles into scattering fragments.
At such moments, the bird giant becomes deaf and blind, and the cunning man, knowing this, sneaks up on him and kills him. He kills at the moment of spring intoxicating celebration, not allowing him to finish his love song.
This captive did not see, or rather, did not want to see or notice anyone, he lived, continued to live in captivity, the life assigned to him by nature, and when his eyes “went blind”, his ears “deaf”, he was carried away with his memory to the distant northern swamp, to sparse pine forests and, raising his head, aimed his beak, stained with pine resin, at that star that had shone for thousands of years for his feathered brothers.
Looking at the captive capercaillie, I thought that once giant birds lived and sang in the light, but people drove them into the wilderness and darkness, made them hermits, and now they put them in a cage. Man is pushing back and pushing back all living things in the taiga with gas and oil pipelines, hellish torches, electric highways, impudent helicopters, merciless, soulless technology further, deeper. But our country is great, there is no way to completely finish off nature, although man tries with all his might, but he cannot throw down all living things and reduce to the root not the best part of it, therefore, himself. He acquired “nature” at home, brought it to the city - for fun and for his whim. Why does he need to go to the taiga, to the cold...
During the year of service in the battery, Dolgovushin changed many positions, without showing any ability.
He ended up in the regiment by accident, on the march. It was at night. The artillery was moving towards the front, while the infantry was stomping along the side of the road in the dust, kicking up dust with many feet. And, as always, several infantrymen asked to go to the guns and drive up a little. Among them was Dolgovushin. The rest then jumped off, and Dolgovushin fell asleep. When I woke up, there was no more infantry on the road. Where his company was going, what its number was - he didn’t know any of this, because he had only joined it two days ago. So Dolgovushin took root in the artillery regiment.
At first, he was assigned to Bogachev in the platoon for managing a reel-to-reel telephone operator. Beyond the Dniester, near Iasi, Bogachev only once took him with him to a forward observation post, where everything was shot through with machine guns and where, not only during the day, but even at night, you couldn’t raise your head. Here Dolgovushin foolishly washed everything off himself and was left in only his overcoat, and under it - what his mother gave birth in. So he sat by the phone, wrapped up, and his partner ran and crawled along the line with a coil until he was wounded. The next day, Bogachev kicked Dolgovushin out: to join his platoon, he selected people whom he could rely on in battle, like himself. And Dolgovushin ended up with the firemen.
Uncomplaining, silently diligent, everything would be fine, but he turned out to be painfully clueless. When a dangerous task came up, they said about it: “This one won’t cope.” If it can’t handle it, why send it? And they sent another. So Dolgovushin migrated to the carts. He didn't ask, he was transferred. Perhaps now, by the end of the war, due to his inability, he would have fought somewhere in the PFS warehouse, but in the carts he was destined to fall under the command of Sergeant Major Ponomarev. This one did not believe in stupidity and immediately explained his attitudes:
In the army it’s like this: if you don’t know, they’ll teach you; if you don’t want to, they’ll force you. - And he also said: - From here you have only one path: to the infantry. Remember that.
What about the infantry? And people live in the infantry,” Dolgovushin answered sadly, more than anything else he was afraid of ending up in the infantry again.
With that, the foreman began to educate him. Dolgovushin did not live. And now he was dragging himself to the NP, under the very fire, all for the sake of the same upbringing. Two kilometers is not a long way, but to the front, and even under fire...
Glancing cautiously at the distant explosions, he tried to keep up with the sergeant major. Now Dolgovushin walked in front, hunched over, with the foreman behind. The narrow strip of corn ended, and they walked sideways, resting as they went: it was safe here. And the higher they climbed, the more they could see the battlefield left behind; it seemed to descend and become flat as they climbed up.
Ponomarev looked around again. The German tanks spread apart from each other and continued to fire. Flat gaps appeared all over the field, and infantrymen crawled between them; every time they got up to run across, they began firing machine guns more furiously. The further to the rear, the more restless and confident Dolgovushin became. They just had to pass the open space, and further on the ridge the corn began again. Through its sparse wall, a red trench covered with snow could be seen, some people were running across it, occasionally a head appeared above the parapet and a shot was heard. The wind was headwind, and the veil of tears that clouded my eyes prevented me from getting a good look at what was happening there. But they had already moved so far away from the front line, both were now so confident in their safety that they continued to walk without worrying. “Here, then, they are building a second line of defense,” Ponomarev decided with satisfaction. And Dolgovushin raised his clenched fists and, shaking them, shouted to those who were shooting from the trench.
There were about fifty meters left to the corn when a man in a helmet jumped onto the crest of the trench. With his short legs spread, clearly visible against the sky, he raised his rifle above his head, shook it and shouted something.
Germans! - measured Dolgovushin.
I'll give those "Germans"! - the sergeant-major shouted and shook his finger.
All the way he watched not so much the enemy as Dolgovushin, whom he firmly decided to re-educate. And when he shouted “Germans,” the foreman, who was suspicious of him, not only saw in this cowardice, but also a lack of faith in the order and rationality that exists in the army. However, Dolgovushin, usually timid of his superiors, this time, not paying attention, rushed to run back and to the left.
I'll run! - Ponomarev shouted after him and tried to unfasten the holster of his revolver.
Dolgovushin fell, quickly raking with his hands, flashing the soles of his boots, and crawled with a thermos on his back. The bullets were already kicking up the snow around him. Not understanding anything, the foreman looked at these boiling snow fountains. Suddenly, behind Dolgovushin, in a depression that opened under the slope, he saw a sleigh train. On a snow field as flat as a frozen river, horses stood near the sleigh. Other horses were lying around. Footprints and deep furrows left by crawling people fanned out from the sleigh. They ended suddenly, and at the end of each of them, where the bullet caught up with him, lay the rider. Only one, having already gone far, continued to crawl with a whip in his hand, and a machine gun was continuously hitting him from above.
“The Germans are in the rear!” - Ponomarev understood. Now, if they press from the front and the infantry begins to retreat, from here, from the rear, from cover, the Germans will meet them with machine-gun fire. Out of the blue, this is destruction.
Right, crawl right! - he shouted to Dolgovushin.
But then the foreman was pushed on the shoulder, he fell and no longer saw what happened to the wagon. Only Dolgovushin’s heels flashed ahead, moving away. Ponomarev crawled heavily behind him and, raising his head from the snow, shouted:
Take it right, take it right! There's a ramp!
The heels veered to the left. “I heard you!” - Ponomarev thought joyfully. He finally managed to pull out his revolver. He turned around and, taking aim, allowing Dolgovushin to leave, fired all seven rounds at the Germans. But there was no support in the wounded hand. Then he crawled again. He had six meters left to the corn, no more, and he already thought to himself: “Now he’s alive.” Then someone hit him on the head, on the bone, with a stick. Ponomarev trembled, stuck his face in the snow, and the light faded.
Meanwhile, Dolgovushin safely descended under the slope. Here the bullets went over the top. Dolgovushin caught his breath, took out a “bull” from behind the lapel of his earflaps and, bending over, smoked it. He swallowed smoke, choking and burning, and looked around. There was no more shooting upstairs. It was all over there.
“Crawl to the right,” Dolgovushin remembered and grinned with the superiority of the living over the dead. - Those turned out to be right... He freed his shoulders from the straps, and the thermos fell into the snow. Dolgovushin pushed him away with his foot. Where, crawling, bending and dashing, he got out from under the fire, and anyone who believed that Dolgovushin was “bruised by God” would be amazed now at how intelligently he acts, applying himself to the terrain.
In the evening, Dolgovushin came to the firing positions. He told how they fired back, how the foreman was killed before his eyes and he tried to drag him dead. He showed the empty disk of the machine. Sitting on the ground next to the kitchen, he ate greedily, and the cook used a spoon to catch meat from a ladle and put it in his pot. And everyone looked at Dolgovushin sympathetically.
“This is how you can’t form an opinion about people at first glance,” thought Nazarov, who didn’t like Dolgovushin. “I considered him a man of my own mind, but this is what he is, it turns out.” I just don’t know how to understand people yet...” And since the privateer was wounded that day, Nazarov, feeling guilty before Dolgovushin, called the battery commander, and Dolgovushin took the quiet, bread-and-butter position of privateer.
Baklanov Grigory Yakovlevich - Russian Soviet writer and screenwriter.
The German mortar battery is hitting again, the same one, but now the explosions are to the left. She had been beating this since the evening. I rummage and rummage with the stereo tube - no flash, no dust above the firing positions - everything is hidden by the ridge of heights. It seems that I would give my hand just to destroy it. I can roughly feel the place where she stands, and have already tried to destroy her several times, but she changes positions. If only the heights were ours! But we are sitting in a ditch of the road, with a stereo telescope raised above us, and our entire view is to the ridge.
We dug this trench when the ground was still soft. Now the road, torn up by caterpillars, with traces of feet and wheels in fresh mud, has turned to stone and cracked. Not only a mine - a light projectile almost does not leave a crater on it: the sun baked it so much.
When we landed on this bridgehead, we did not have enough strength to take the heights. Under fire, the infantry lay down at the foot and hastily began to dig in. There was a defense. It arose like this: an infantryman fell, pinned down by a machine-gun stream, and first of all he dug up the ground under his heart, poured a mound in front of his head, protecting it from a bullet. By morning, at this place he was already walking at full height in his trench, buried in the ground - it would not be so easy to pull him out of here.
From these trenches we launched an attack several times, but the Germans again put us down with machine gun fire and heavy mortar and artillery fire. We can't even suppress their mortars because we can't see them. And the Germans from the heights view the entire bridgehead, the crossing, and the other shore. We are holding on, clinging to the foot, we have already taken root, and yet it is strange that they have not yet thrown us into the Dniester. It seems to me that if we were at those heights, and they were here, we would have already redeemed them.
Even when I look up from the stereo tube and close my eyes, even in my sleep I see these heights, an uneven ridge with all the landmarks, crooked trees, craters, white stones emerging from the ground, as if the skeleton of a height washed out by the rain is exposed.
When the war ends and people remember it, they will probably remember the great battles in which the outcome of the war was decided, the fate of humanity was decided. Wars are always remembered as great battles. And among them there will be no place for our bridgehead. His fate is like the fate of one person when the fate of millions is being decided. But, by the way, often the destinies and tragedies of millions begin with the fate of one person. They just forget about this for some reason. Since we began to advance, we have captured hundreds of such bridgeheads on all rivers. And the Germans immediately tried to throw us off, but we held on, clinging to the shore with our teeth and hands. Sometimes the Germans succeeded. Then, sparing no effort, we captured a new bridgehead. And then they advanced from it.
I don't know whether we will advance from this bridgehead. And none of us can know this. The offensive begins where it is easier to break through the defenses, where there is operational space for tanks. But the mere fact that we are sitting here, the Germans feel day and night. No wonder they tried to throw us into the Dniester twice. And they will try again. Now everyone, even the Germans, knows that the war will end soon. And they also know how it will end. This is probably why our desire to survive is so strong. In the most difficult months of 1941, surrounded, everyone would have given their life without a second thought to stop the Germans in front of Moscow. But now the whole war is behind us, most of us will see victory, and it’s such a shame to die in recent months.
Bykov Vasil Vladimirovich - Soviet and Belarusian writer, public figure, participant in the Great Patriotic War.
Left alone on the cliff, the old man silently fell silent, and his face, overgrown with gray stubble, acquired the expression of his old familiar thoughtfulness. He was silent for a long time, mechanically moving his hands over the greasy sides of his jacket with a red edging along the edge, and through the thickening twilight his watery eyes looked unblinkingly into the district. The Kolomiets below, waving the end of the fishing rod in his hand, deftly threw it into the oily surface of the darkening water. With a flash of nylon fishing line, the sinker quickly sank under the water with a quiet splash, taking the bait with it.
On the cliff, Petrovich shuddered slightly, as if from cold, his fingers froze on his chest, and his whole thin, bony figure under his jacket shrank and shrank. But his gaze was still directed to the bank beyond the river; on this, it seemed, he did not notice anything and did not even seem to hear the unkind words of Kolomiyets. Meanwhile, the Kolomiets, with his usual dexterity, threw two or three more donks into the water and secured short fishing rods with tiny bells in the stones.
They are all fools, leading you by the nose, assenting to you. And you believe. They will come! Who will come when the war is already over! Think with your head.
It was getting noticeably dark on the river; the dim silhouette of Kolomiets was moving vaguely near the water itself. He didn’t say anything else to the old man and kept fiddling with the bait and fishing rods, and Petrovich, after sitting in silence for a while, spoke thoughtfully and quietly:
So this is the youngest, Tolik... My eyes got sick. When it gets dark, he sees nothing. The eldest saw well. What if what happened to the elder?..
“What happens to the elder, the same goes to the younger,” Kolomiets interrupted him rudely. - War, it didn’t take anyone into account. Especially during the blockade.
Well! - the old man simply agreed. - There was just a blockade. Tolik with the eyes has only been at home for a week, and Ales comes running and says: they are surrounded on all sides, but there is not enough strength. Well, let's go. The youngest was sixteen years old. He asked to stay - no way. As soon as the Germans left, they said to light a fire...
Off the top of your head! - Kolomiets was surprised and even stood up from his donks. - They said to spread it out!.. When was this?!
Yes to Petrovka. Right on Petrovka, yes...
To Petrovka! How many years have passed, do you realize?
The old man seemed extremely surprised and, it seems, for the first time that evening he tore his pained gaze away from the forest line of the shore, barely visible in the dark.
Yes, years? After all, twenty-five years have passed, my head is spruce!
A grimace of deep inner pain distorted Petrovich’s senile face. His lips trembled in an offended, childish way, his eyes blinked very quickly, and his gaze immediately went out. Apparently, only now the full terrible meaning of his many years of delusion began to slowly dawn on his darkened consciousness.
So this is... So how is this?..
Inwardly tensed with some kind of effort, he probably wanted and could not express some thought that justified himself, and from this unbearable tension his gaze became motionless, became meaningless and left the other shore. The old man sank before our eyes, became even more gloomy, and withdrew entirely into himself. He probably had something inside him that kept him immobile and mute for a long time.
“I’m telling you, stop this fun,” Kolomiets irritably urged below, fiddling with the gear. - You can't wait for the guys. Amba to both. Already somewhere the bones have rotted. Like this!
The old man was silent. Busy with his work, Kolomiets also fell silent. The twilight of the approaching night quickly swallowed up the shore and bushes; gray tufts of fog crawled out of the riverine ravines; light, smoky streams of it stretched along the quiet stretch. Quickly dimming, the river lost its daytime shine, the dark opposite bank tipped wide into its depths, filling the river surface with smooth, impenetrable blackness. The dredger stopped rumbling, it became completely dull and quiet, and in this silence, thinly and gently, as if from an unknown distance, the little donkey bell ticked. Having floundered on the rocks with the soles of his rubber boots, Kolomiets rushed to the fishing rod at the end of the bank and, deftly moving his hands, began to unwind the fishing line from the water. He did not see how Petrovich struggled to his feet on the cliff, staggered and, hunched over, silently wandered somewhere away from this shore.
Probably, in the darkness, somewhere the old man parted ways with Yura, who soon appeared on the cliff and, grunting, threw a crackling armful of dead wood at his feet - a large armful next to Petrovich’s small bundle.
Where is grandfather?
Look what he took! - Hearing his friend, Kolomiets spoke cheerfully under the cliff. - Kelbik is what we need! It will take half a kilo...
Where is Petrovich? - Sensing something unkind, Yura repeated the question.
Petrovich? And who is it... He's gone, I guess. I told him...
How? - Yura was dumbfounded on the cliff. - What you said?
Said everything. Otherwise they lead a crazy person by the nose. They assent...
What have you done? You killed him!
That's how he killed it! He will be alive!
Oh, and Kalun! Oh, and a blow! I told you! Everyone here took care of him! Spared! And you?..
What is there to spare? Let him know the truth.
This kind of truth will finish him off. After all, they both died during the blockade. And before that, he himself took them there on a boat.
Vasiliev Boris Lvovich - Russian writer.
I still have memories and one photograph from our class. Group portrait with the class teacher in the center, girls around and boys on the edges. The photograph had faded, and since the photographer carefully pointed at the teacher, the edges, blurred during the shooting, were now completely blurred; sometimes it seems to me that they blurred because the boys in our class long ago faded into oblivion, never having had time to grow up, and their features were dissolved by time.
For some reason, even now I don’t want to remember how we ran away from classes, smoked in the boiler room and created a crush in the locker room, so that at least for a moment we could touch the one we loved so secretly that we did not admit it to ourselves. I spend hours looking at a faded photograph, at the already blurred faces of those who are not on this earth: I want to understand. After all, no one wanted to die, right?
And we didn’t even know that death was on duty outside the threshold of our class. We were young, and the ignorance of youth is made up for by faith in our own immortality. But of all the boys who look at me from the photograph, four remain alive.
And since childhood, we have played what we ourselves lived with. The classes competed not for grades or percentages, but for the honor of writing a letter to Papanin’s people or being called “Chkalovsky”, for the right to attend the opening of a new factory workshop or to allocate a delegation to meet Spanish children.
And I also remember how I grieved that I would not be able to help the Chelyuskinites, because my plane made an emergency landing somewhere in Yakutia, never reaching the ice camp. The real deal: I got a bad grade for not having learned the poem. Then I learned it: “Yes, there were people in our time...” And the thing was that there was a huge homemade map hanging on the wall of the classroom and each student had his own plane. The excellent rating was five hundred kilometers, but I received a “bad” rating and my plane was grounded from the flight. And it wasn’t just “bad” in the school magazine: I felt bad myself and a little - a little! - to the Chelyuskinites, whom I so let down.
Smile at me, comrade. I forgot how you smiled, sorry. I am now much older than you, I have a lot to do, I have a lot of troubles. like a ship with shells. At night, more and more often I hear the sobs of my own heart: it is exhausted. Tired of being sick.
I have become grey, and sometimes they give up my seat on public transport. Young men and women who are very similar to you guys are giving way. And then I think that God forbid they repeat your fate. And if this does happen, then God forbid they become the same.
Between you, yesterday, and them, today, lies more than just a generation. We knew for sure that there would be a war, but they were convinced that there would not be one. And this is wonderful: they are freer than us. It’s just a pity that this freedom sometimes turns into serenity...
In ninth grade, Valentina Andronovna suggested to us the topic of a free essay, “Who do I want to become?” And all the guys wrote that they want to become commanders of the Red Army. Even Vovik Khramov wanted to be a tank driver, which caused a storm of delight. Yes, we sincerely wanted our fate to be harsh. We ourselves elected it, dreaming of an army, air force and navy: we considered ourselves men, and more masculine professions did not exist then.
In this sense, I was lucky. I caught up with my father in height already in the eighth grade, and since he was a career commander of the Red Army, his old uniform passed on to me. Tunic and riding breeches, boots and commander's belt, overcoat and budenovka made of dark gray cloth. I put on these beautiful things one wonderful day and did not take them off for fifteen years. Not demobilized yet. The form was already different then, but its content did not change: it still remained the clothing of my generation. The most beautiful and the most fashionable.
All the guys were fiercely jealous of me. And even Iskra Polyakova.
Of course, it’s a little big for me,” Iskra said, trying on my tunic. - But how cozy it is. Especially if you tighten your belt.
I often remember these words because they convey a sense of time. We all tried to tighten our grip, as if a formation awaited us every moment, as if the readiness of this general formation for battles and victories depended on our appearance alone. We were young, but we did not thirst for personal happiness, but for personal achievement. We did not know that a feat must first be sown and grown. That it is ripening slowly, invisibly filling with strength, so that one day it will explode with a dazzling flame, the flashes of which will shine for a long time to come for generations to come.
Veresaev Vikenty Vikentievich - Russian writer, translator.
Tired, with dull irritation boiling in my soul, I sat down on the bench. Suddenly, somewhere not far behind me, the sounds of a violin being tuned were heard. I looked around in surprise: behind the acacia bushes the back of a small outbuilding was white, and sounds rushed from its wide open, unlit windows. This means that young Yartsev is at home... The musician began to play. I got up to leave; These artificial human sounds seemed to me like a gross insult to those around me.
I slowly moved forward, carefully stepping on the grass so as not to crunch a twig, and Yartsev played...
It was strange music, and improvisation was immediately felt. But what kind of improvisation was this! Five minutes passed, ten, and I stood motionless and listened eagerly.
The sounds flowed timidly, uncertainly. They seemed to be looking for something, as if they were trying to express something that they were unable to express. It was not the melody itself that attracted attention to itself - in the strict sense, it didn’t even exist - but precisely this search, yearning for something else that involuntarily lay ahead. “Now it will be real,” I thought. And the sounds poured out just as uncertainly and restrainedly. Occasionally something will flash in them - not a melody, just a fragment, a hint of a melody - but so wonderful that the heart skips a beat. It seemed that the theme would be grasped, and the timid searching sounds would burst into a divinely calm, solemn, unearthly song. But a minute passed, and the strings began to ring with suppressed sobs: the hint remained incomprehensible, the great thought that flashed for a moment disappeared irrevocably.
What is this? Was there really someone who was now experiencing the same thing as me? There could be no doubt: before him this night stood as a painful and insoluble riddle as before me.
Suddenly a sharp, impatient chord was heard, followed by another, a third, and frantic sounds, interrupting each other, poured violently from under the bow. It was as if someone shackled was violently rushing, trying to break the chains. It was something completely new and unexpected. However, it was felt that something similar was needed, that it was impossible to remain with the old one, because it was too tormented by its futility and hopelessness... Now there were no quiet tears to be heard, no despair was heard; Every note sounded with strength and daring challenge. And something continued to struggle desperately, and the impossible began to seem possible; It seemed that one more effort - and the strong chains would shatter into pieces and some great, unequal struggle would begin. There was such a breath of youth, such self-confidence and courage that there was no fear about the outcome of the struggle. “Even if there is no hope, we will win back hope itself!” - these mighty sounds seemed to say.
I held my breath and listened in delight. The night was silent and also listened - sensitively, in surprise, listening to this whirlwind of alien, passionate, indignant sounds. The pale stars blinked less frequently and more uncertainly; the thick fog over the pond stood motionless; The birches froze, their weeping branches drooping, and everything around became still and quiet. The sounds of a small, weak instrument rushing from the outbuilding reigned over everything, and these sounds seemed to thunder over the earth like peals of thunder.
With a new and strange feeling I looked around. The same night stood before me in its former mysterious beauty. But I looked at her with different eyes: everything around me was now just a beautiful silent accompaniment to those struggling, suffering sounds.
Now everything was meaningful, everything was full of deep, breathtaking, but dear, understandable beauty. And this human beauty eclipsed, obscured, without destroying that beauty, still distant, still incomprehensible and inaccessible.
For the first time, I returned home happy and satisfied on such a night.
Voronsky Alexander Konstantinovich - Russian writer, literary critic, art theorist.
...Natalya is from a neighboring village, about ten years ago she immediately lost her husband and three children: during her absence they died from smoke inhalation. Since then, she sold the house, abandoned the farm and wandered.
Natalya speaks quietly, melodiously, innocently. Her words are pure, as if washed, as close and pleasant as the sky, field, bread, village huts. And all of Natalya is simple, warm, calm and majestic. Natalya is not surprised by anything: she has seen everything, experienced everything, she talks about modern affairs and incidents, even dark and terrible ones, as if they were separated from our lives by millennia. Natalya doesn’t flatter anyone; What’s really good about her is that she doesn’t go to monasteries and holy places, and doesn’t look for miraculous icons. She is worldly and talks about everyday things. There is nothing superfluous in it, no fussiness.
Natalya bears the burden of a wanderer easily, and buries her grief from people. She has an amazing memory. She remembers when and why such and such a family was ill. She talks about everything willingly, but in one thing she is stingy with words: when they ask her why she became a wanderer.
...I had already studied at the bursa, had a reputation for being “inveterate” and “desperate,” and took revenge on the guards and teachers from around the corner, revealing remarkable ingenuity in these matters. During one of the breaks, the students informed me that “some woman” was waiting for me in the locker room. The woman turned out to be Natalya. Natalya walked from afar, from Kholmogory, she remembered me, and although she had to give the detour about eighty miles, how could she not visit the orphan, not look at his city life; her son had probably grown up, wiser for the joy and consolation of his mother. I listened inattentively to Natalya: I was ashamed of her bast shoes, her boots, her knapsack, her rustic appearance, I was afraid of losing myself in the eyes of the students and kept looking sideways at my peers snooping past. Finally he couldn’t stand it and said rudely to Natalya:
Let's get out of here.
Without waiting for consent, I took her to the backyard so that no one would see us there. Natalya untied her knapsack and handed me some village flatbread.
I don’t have anything else in store for you, my friend. Don’t worry, I baked them myself, using butter or cow’s milk.
At first I sullenly refused, but Natalya insisted on donuts. Soon Natalya noticed that I was shy of her and was not at all happy with her. She also noticed the torn, ink-stained Casinet jacket I was wearing, my dirty and pale neck, my red boots, and my haunted, sullen look. Natalya's eyes filled with tears.
Why can’t you say a kind word, son? So, it was in vain that I came to see you.
I dully poked at the sore on my arm and muttered something listlessly. Natalya leaned over me, shook her head and, looking into my eyes, whispered:
Yes, my dear, you seem out of your mind! You weren't like that at home. Oh, they did something bad to you! Dashingly, apparently, they let you down! This is the teaching that comes out.
“Nothing,” I muttered emotionlessly, moving away from Natalya.
Garshin Vsevolod Mikhailovich - Russian writer, poet, art critic.
I live on the Fifteenth Line on Sredny Avenue and four times a day I walk along the embankment where foreign ships land. I love this place for its diversity, its liveliness, its hustle and bustle, and because it has given me a lot of material. Here, looking at day laborers carrying coolies, turning gates and winches, carrying carts with all sorts of luggage, I learned to draw a working man.
I was walking home with Dedov, a landscape painter... A kind and innocent man, like the landscape itself, and passionately in love with his art. For him there are no doubts; writes what he sees: he sees a river - and writes a river; he sees a swamp with sedges - and writes a swamp with sedges. Why does he need this river and this swamp? - he never thinks about it. He seems to be an educated man; at least I graduated as an engineer. He left the service, fortunately some kind of inheritance appeared, giving him the opportunity to exist without difficulty. Now he writes and writes: in the summer he sits from morning to evening in the field or in the forest behind sketches, in the winter he tirelessly composes sunsets, sunrises, middays, the beginnings and ends of rain, winter, spring, and so on. He forgot his engineering and doesn’t regret it. Only when we pass by the pier does he often explain to me the meaning of the huge masses of cast iron and steel: machine parts, boilers and various miscellaneous items unloaded from the ship to the shore.
Look at the cauldron they brought in,” he told me yesterday, hitting the ringing cauldron with his cane.
Don't we really know how to make them? - I asked.
They do it here too, but not enough, not enough. See what a bunch they brought. And bad work; I'll have to fix it here: see how the seam is coming apart? Here, too, the rivets have become loose. Do you know how this thing is made? This, I tell you, is a hell of a job. A man sits in a cauldron and holds the rivet from the inside with pliers, pressing his chest against them as hard as he can, and from the outside the master hits the rivet with a hammer and makes a hat like this.
He pointed to a long row of raised metal circles running along the seam of the cauldron.
Grandfathers, it’s the same as beating you on the chest!
Doesn't matter. I tried to climb into the boiler once, but after four rivets I barely got out. My chest was completely broken. And these somehow manage to get used to it. True, they die like flies: they can survive for a year or two, and then even if they are alive, they are rarely good for anything. If you please, endure the blows of a hefty hammer all day long, and even in a cauldron, in the stuffiness, bent over. In winter, the iron freezes, it’s cold, and he sits or lies on the iron. In that cauldron over there - you see, red, narrow - you can’t sit like that: lie on your side and expose your chest. Hard work for these wood grouse.
Wood grouse?
Well, yes, that’s what the workers called them. This ringing often makes them deaf. And do you think they get much for such hard work? Pennies! Because here neither skill nor art is required, but only meat... How many difficult impressions at all these factories, Ryabinin, if you only knew! I'm so glad I'm done with them forever. It was just hard to live at first, looking at this suffering... Either it was something to do with nature. She doesn’t offend, and she doesn’t need to be offended in order to exploit her, like we artists... Look, look, what a grayish tone! - he suddenly interrupted himself, pointing to a corner of the sky: - lower, over there, under the cloud... lovely! With a greenish tint. After all, if you write it like that, well, exactly like that, they won’t believe it! But it’s not bad, eh?
I expressed my approval, although, to tell the truth, I did not see any beauty in the dirty green patch of St. Petersburg sky, and interrupted Dedov, who began to admire some other “thin” thing near another cloud.
Tell me, where can I see such a capercaillie?
Let's go to the factory together; I'll show you all sorts of things. Even tomorrow if you want! Did you really think of painting this capercaillie? Come on, it's not worth it. Isn't there anything more fun? And to the factory, if you want, even tomorrow.
Today we went to the plant and inspected everything. We also saw a capercaillie. He sat hunched over in a corner of the cauldron and exposed his chest to the blows of the hammer. I looked at him for half an hour; In these half an hour, Ryabinin came up with such stupidity that I don’t know what to think about him. The day before yesterday I took him to the metal plant; we spent the whole day there, examined everything, and I explained to him all sorts of production (to my surprise, I forgot very little of my profession); Finally I brought him to the boiler room. There at that time they were working on a huge boiler. Ryabinin climbed into the boiler and watched for half an hour as the worker held the rivets with pliers. He came out pale and upset; I was silent the whole way back. And today he announces to me that he has already begun to paint this wood grouse worker. What's an idea! What poetry in the mud! Here I can say, without being embarrassed by anyone or anything, something that, of course, I would not say in front of everyone: in my opinion, this whole peasant streak in art is pure ugliness. Who needs these notorious Repin "Barge Haulers"? They are beautifully written, there is no doubt; but that's all.
Where is the beauty, harmony, gracefulness here? Is it not to reproduce the graceful in nature that art exists? That's the case with me! A few more days of work, and my quiet “May morning” will be over. The water in the pond sways slightly, the willows bow their branches onto it; the east lights up; small cirrus clouds turned pink. A female figure comes from a steep bank with a bucket to fetch water, scaring away a flock of ducks. That's all; It seems simple, but at the same time I clearly feel that there is an abyss of poetry in the picture. This is art! It attunes a person to quiet, meek thoughtfulness and softens the soul. But Ryabinin’s “Capercaillie” will have no effect on anyone, simply because everyone will try to run away from it as quickly as possible, just so as not to be an eyesore with these ugly rags and this dirty mug. Strange affair! After all, in music, harsh, unpleasant harmonies are not allowed; Why is it that we, in painting, can reproduce positively ugly, repulsive images? You need to talk about this with L., he will write an article and, by the way, give Ryabinin a ride for his painting. And it's worth it.
Glushko Maria Vasilievna - Soviet writer, screenwriter.
It was cold on the platform, grains were falling again, she walked around, stamping her feet, and breathed on her hands.
She was running out of food, she wanted to buy at least something, but they didn’t sell anything at the station. She decided to get to the station. The station was packed with people, sitting on suitcases, bundles, and just on the floor, having laid out food, having breakfast.
She came out onto the station square, densely dotted with colorful spots of coats, fur coats, and bundles; here, too, whole families of people sat and lay, some were lucky enough to occupy benches, others settled right on the asphalt, spreading a blanket, raincoats, newspapers... In this thicket of people, in this hopelessness, she felt almost happy - after all, I’m going, I know where and to whom, and the war is driving all these people into the unknown, and how long they have to sit here, they themselves don’t know.
Suddenly an old woman screamed, she was robbed, two boys stood next to her and were also crying, the policeman said something angrily to her, held her hand, and she struggled and screamed. There is such a simple custom - with a hat in a circle, And here there are hundreds and hundreds of people nearby, if everyone gave at least a ruble... But everyone around looked sympathetically at the screaming woman and no one budged.
Nina called an older boy, rummaged in her purse, pulled out a hundred-dollar note, and stuck it in his hand:
Give it to grandma... - And she quickly went so as not to see his tear-stained face and bony fist clutching the money. She still had five hundred rubles left from the money her father had given her - nothing, that was enough.
She asked some local woman how far the bazaar was. It turned out that if you go by tram, there is only one stop, but Nina did not wait for the tram, she missed the movement, the walking, and went on foot.
The market was completely empty, and only three thickly dressed women stood under the canopy, stamping their feet in felt boots; in front of one stood an enamel bucket with pickled apples, another was selling potatoes laid out in piles, the third was selling seeds.
She bought two glasses of sunflower seeds and a dozen apples. Nina immediately, at the counter, greedily ate one, feeling her mouth blissfully filled with spicy-sweet juice.
Suddenly she heard the sound of wheels and was afraid that it was her train taking her away. She quickened her pace, but from a distance she saw that her train was in place.
That old woman with the children was no longer on the station square; she had probably been taken somewhere, to some institution where they would help - she wanted to think so, it was calmer this way: to believe in the unshakable justice of the world.
She wandered along the platform, cracking seeds, collecting the husks in her fist, walked around the shabby one-story station building, its walls were papered with pieces of paper, advertisements, written in different handwritings, different inks, more often with a chemical pencil, glued with bread crumbs, glue, resin and God knows what else. how. “I am looking for the Klimenkov family from Vitebsk, I ask those who know to inform me at the address...” “Who knows the whereabouts of my father Sergeev Nikolai Sergeevich, please inform...” Dozens of pieces of paper, and on top - straight along the wall in charcoal: “Valya, mothers in Penza no, I'm moving on. Lida."
All this was familiar and familiar, at every station Nina read such announcements, similar to cries of despair, but every time her heart sank with pain and pity, especially when she read about lost children.
Reading such advertisements, she imagined people traveling around the country, walking, rushing through cities, wandering along the roads, looking for loved ones - a dear drop in the human ocean - and thought that war is not only terrible with deaths, it is also terrible with separations!
Now Nina was remembering everyone from whom the war separated her: her father, Victor, Marusya, the boys from her course... Isn’t this just a dream - crowded train stations, crying women, empty markets, and I’m going somewhere... To an unfamiliar place , stranger. For what? For what?
Kazakevich Emmanuil Genrikhovich - writer and poet, translator, screenwriter.
Only Katya remained in the secluded dugout.
What did Travkin’s response to her final words on the radio mean? Did he say I understand you at all, as is customary to confirm what he heard on the radio, or did he put a certain secret meaning into his words? This thought worried her more than any other. It seemed to her that, surrounded by mortal dangers, he had become softer and more accessible to simple, human feelings, that his last words on the radio were the result of this change. She smiled at her thoughts. Having asked military paramedic Ulybysheva for a mirror, she looked into it, trying to give her face an expression of solemn seriousness, as befits - she even uttered this word out loud - for the hero’s bride.
And then, throwing away the mirror, she began repeating again into the roaring ether, tenderly, cheerfully and sadly, depending on her mood:
Star. Star. Star. Star.
Two days after that conversation, the Star suddenly responded again:
Earth. Earth. I am a star. Can you hear me? I am a star.
Star, Star! - Katya shouted loudly. “I am the Earth.” I listen to you, listen, listen to you.
The Star was silent the next day and later. Occasionally, Meshchersky, Bugorkov, Major Likhachev, or Captain Yarkevich, the new intelligence chief who replaced the removed Barashkin, came into the dugout. But the Star was silent.
Katya, half asleep, pressed the receiver of the walkie-talkie to her ear all day. She imagined some strange dreams, visions, Travkin with a very pale face in a green camouflage coat, Mamochkin, doubling, with a frozen smile on his face, her brother Lenya - also for some reason in a green camouflage coat. She came to her senses, trembling with horror that she might have missed Travkin’s calls, and began speaking into the phone again:
Star. Star. Star.
From a distance she could hear artillery salvoes and the roar of the beginning of the battle.
During these tense days, Major Likhachev was in great need of radio operators, but he did not dare remove Katya from duty at the radio. So she sat, almost forgotten, in a secluded dugout.
One late evening Bugorkov came into the dugout. He brought a letter to Travkin from his mother, which he had just received from the post office. His mother wrote that she had found a red common notebook on physics, his favorite subject. She will keep this notebook. When he goes to university, the notebook will be very useful to him. Indeed, this is an exemplary notebook. As a matter of fact, it could be published as a textbook - everything on the sections of electricity and heat is written down with such precision and sense of proportion. He has a clear inclination towards scientific work, which she is very pleased with. By the way, does he remember that ingenious water engine that he invented as a twelve-year-old boy? She found these drawings and laughed a lot with Aunt Klava over them.
After reading the letter, Bugorkov bent over the walkie-talkie, cried and said:
If only the war would end soon... No, I’m not tired. I'm not saying I'm tired. But it’s just time to stop killing people.
And with horror, Katya suddenly thought that perhaps her sitting here at the machine and her endless calls to the Star were useless. The star set and went out. But how can she leave here? What if he talks? What if he is hiding somewhere deep in the forests?
And, full of hope and iron perseverance, she waited. No one was waiting anymore, but she was waiting. And no one dared to remove the radio from reception until the offensive began.
Kachalkov Sergey Semyonovich is a modern prose writer.
(1) How time changes people! (2) Unrecognizable! (3) Sometimes these are not even changes, but real metamorphoses! (4) As a child, she was a princess; when she grew up, she turned into a piranha. (5) But it happens the other way around: at school there is a gray mouse, unnoticeable, invisible, and then on you is Elena the Beautiful. (6) Why does this happen? (7) It seems that Levitansky wrote that everyone chooses a woman, a religion, a path... (8) It’s just not clear: does a person really choose a path for himself or is some force pushing him along one path or another? (9) Is it really our life that was originally destined from above: those born to crawl cannot fly?.. (10) Or is it all about us: do we crawl because we did not want to strain our wings? (11) I don’t know! (12) Life is full of examples both in favor of one opinion and in defense of another.
(13) Choose what you want?..
(14) At school we called Maxim Lyubavin Einstein. (15) True, outwardly he did not at all resemble a great scientist, but he had all the habits of geniuses: he was absent-minded, thoughtful, a complex thought process was always seething in his head, some discoveries were made, and this often led to him , as classmates joked, he was not adequate. (16) They used to ask him in biology, and it turns out that at that time, in some sophisticated way, he was calculating the radiation of some nuclides. (17) He will go to the blackboard and start writing incomprehensible formulas.
(18) The biology teacher will shrug:
(19) - Max, what are you talking about?
(20) He will come to his senses, hit himself on the head, not paying attention to the laughter in the class, then he will begin to tell what is needed, for example, about the discrete laws of heredity.
(21) He didn’t show his nose at discos or cool evenings. (22) I wasn’t friends with anyone, but I was just friends. (23) Books, a computer - these are his faithful companions and brothers. (24) We joked among ourselves: remember well how Maxim Lyubavin dressed, where he sat. (25) And in ten years, when he is awarded the Nobel Prize, journalists will come here, at least they will have something to tell about their great classmate.
(26) After school, Max entered the university. (27) He graduated brilliantly... (28) And then our paths diverged. (29) I became a military man, left my hometown for a long time, started a family. (30) Life for a military man is hectic: as soon as you get ready to go on vacation, some kind of emergency happens... (31) But still, I managed to escape to my homeland with my wife and two daughters. (32) At the station we made an agreement with a private owner, and he took us in his car to our parents’ house.
(33) - Only, you didn’t recognize me or what? – the driver suddenly asked. (34) I looked at him in amazement. (35) Tall, bony man, thin mustache, glasses, scar on his cheek... (36) I don’t know that! (37) But the voice is really familiar. (38) Max Lyubavin?! (39) It can’t be! (40) Is the great physicist engaged in private transportation?
(41) - No! (42) Take it higher! – Max grinned. – (43) I work as a loader at the wholesale market...
(44) From my face he realized that I considered these words a joke.
(45) - No! (46) I just know how to count! (47) We sell sugar in bags! (48) In the evening I’ll pour out three or four hundred grams from each bag... (49) Do you know how much it turns out per month if you’re not greedy? (50) Forty thousand! (51) Just think, if I became a scientist, would I receive that kind of money? (52) On the weekends, you can get some money by driving a cab, give a ride to a couple of clients - another thousand. (53) Enough for a bun with butter...
(54) He laughed contentedly. (55) I shook my head.
(56) - Max, but with sugar, isn’t that stealing?
(57) - No! (58) Business! – Max answered.
(59) He took me home. (60) I gave him two hundred rubles, he returned ten in change and went to look for new clients.
(61) - Did you study together? - asked the wife.
(62) - This is our Einstein! – I told her. - (63) Remember, I told you about him!
(64) - Einstein?
(65) - Only the former! – I said with a sad sigh.
Vladimir Igorevich Krugly is an Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation.
Let’s say, in the sixties and seventies, at least according to my recollections, reading for me and for those around me was not just a daily need: when I picked up a book, I experienced a unique feeling of joy. I haven't experienced such a feeling for a long time. Unfortunately, so do my children, although they are smart, developed and read, which is a rarity these days.
And, of course, time is to blame for this. Changed living conditions, large volumes of information that need to be mastered, and the desire to make it easier to perceive through video format lead to the fact that we have stopped enjoying reading.
I understand that the enthusiasm of the seventies or eighties will probably never return, when we followed the appearance of books, hunted for them, sometimes specially went to Moscow to barter somewhere or buy a scarce edition. At that time, books represented true wealth - and not only in the material sense.
However, as soon as I strengthened my disappointment, life presented an unexpected surprise. True, this happened after a regrettable and painful event. After my father passed away, I inherited a large and comprehensive library. Having started to sort it out, it was among the books of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that I was able to find something that captivated me and brought back, if not that childhood joy, but the real pleasure of reading.
As I sorted through the books, I began to leaf through them, delving into one and then another, and soon realized that I was reading them avidly. I enthusiastically spend all weekends, as well as long hours on the road, on trains and planes, writing essays about famous Russian artists - Repin, Benois or Dobuzhinsky.
I must admit, I knew very little about the last artist. Erich Hollerbach's book "Drawings of Dobuzhinsky" discovered this wonderful man and excellent artist for me. The amazing edition of 1923 completely fascinated me, first of all, with its reproductions of Dobuzhinsky’s works, neatly covered with tissue paper.
In addition, Hollerbach's book is written in very good language, it is easy and exciting to read - like literary prose. Talking about how Dobuzhinsky's talent was formed from a very young age, the author reveals to the reader the secrets of the artist. The book by art historian and critic Erich Hollerbach was intended for a wide readership, and this is its strength. And how nice it is to hold it in your hands! Beautiful design, the subtle smell of paper, the feeling that you are touching an ancient tome - all this gives rise to real reader delight.
But why exactly did the books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries become a breath of fresh air for me? And I myself don’t know for sure; I only realize that the atmosphere of that time seemed to swallow me up, capture me.
Perhaps this was an attempt to escape from modern reality into the world of history. Or, on the contrary, the desire to find “points of intersection”: transition periods, years of searching for new forms and meanings, as we know, repeat each other, which means that by studying the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries from fiction, documents or journalism, you can gain experience or spy ready-made solutions for today.
Thanks to the bizarre play of time, books from the “Silver Age” of our culture turned out to be a source of reading inspiration for me; for someone else, such a source may be ancient tomes or manuscripts of aspiring writers. The main thing is not to let disappointment get stronger and continue searching: you will definitely find a book that will give you pleasure.
The stones kept the heat dry, and they spent the night in dry, cool warmth. In the morning, Salakhov woke up alone in a tent. The warmth still lingered, and Salakhov lay there dozing. Coming out of the tent, he saw a clear sky and the God of Fire by the water. He leisurely washed a sample taken right off the shore.
“I woke up healthy,” said the worker and happily shrugged his shoulders in confirmation. - I decided to look at the luck in the tray...
The God of Fire put down the tray, took off the wolverine's cap and pulled out a piece of fishing line from behind her lapel.
The dog is eating the red rag. Look! - He looked devotedly at Salakhov, threw the fishing line into the water and immediately threw a large dark-backed grayling onto the sand.
The God of Fire strengthened his feet in oversized boots, pulled up his padded jacket, pulled down his shaggy hat and began to drag the graylings one after another with a shuttle. Soon all the sand around him was littered with elastic fish shimmering with mother-of-pearl.
Enough! - said Salakhov. - Stop.
To this river... yes, with nets, and with barrels. And there’s no need to bend over backwards. On the mainland you climb, you climb with nonsense, you can barely get your head around. What if this river went there? And our Voronezh one here. There is no population here anyway; an empty river will do just fine here.
You could have emptied it there in a week,” Salakhov said.
During the week? No! - The God of Fire sighed.
Close the sanatorium, Salakhov ordered
Maybe we can hang it on it and take it with us? - the God of Fire suggested hesitantly.
“Words have no power against greed,” Salakhov chuckled. - We need machine guns against her. Have you recovered? Dot! Assemble the camp, cook the soup and stomp according to the assignment received. Any questions?
No questions,” the God of Fire sighed.
Take action! I go downstream with the tray. ...
Salakhov walked very quickly. He was suddenly struck by the idea that goodness makes people worse. They turn into pigs. And when people feel bad, they become better. While the God of Fire was ill, Salakhov felt very sorry for him. And today he was unpleasant to him, even hateful...
Salakhov, forgetting that he needed to take a sample, walked and walked along the dry bank of the Vatap River. The idea that being kind to people would lead to their condemnation was very unpleasant to him. Some kind of hopeless thought. From the experience of the army, from the experience of prison life, Salakhov knew that excessive severity also embitters people. “So you can’t take us with either goodness or fear,” he thought. - But there must be some approach. There must be an open door..."
And suddenly Salakhov stopped. The answer he found was simple and obvious. Among the many human groups, there is probably only one that is yours. Like the army has its own company. If you find it, hold on to it with your teeth. Let everyone see that you belong to them, you are with them to the end. And that you have everything in sight. One roof, one destiny, and let the state think about the rest...
Kuvaev Oleg Mikhailovich - Soviet geologist, geophysicist, writer.
The traditional field workers' evening served as a milestone separating one expedition season from the next.
Chinkov motioned to pour some into the glasses and stood up.
Dear Colleagues! he said in a high voice. First of all, let me thank you for the honor. For the first time I am present at the celebration of the famous geological department not as a guest, but as one of our own. As a newcomer, let me break tradition. Let's not talk about last season. Let's talk better about the future. What is a field discovery? It's a mixture of chance and logic. But any true deposit opens only when the need for it has matured.
There was a dull knock on the control wall, there was a sort of extended sigh, and immediately the glass at the end of the corridor began to rattle and whine.
God bless! - someone said. - First winter!
What is this? - Sergushova quietly asked Gurin.
Yuzhak. The first one this winter. We'll have to run away from here.
Every journalist, every visiting writer, and in general anyone who has visited the Village and picked up a pen, has always written and will write about the Yuzhak. It's like being in Texas and not writing the word cowboy or, being in the Sahara, not mentioning camel. Yuzhak was a purely village phenomenon, similar to the famous Novorossiysk forest. On warm days, air accumulated behind the slope of the ridge and then fell with hurricane force into the settlement basin. During the Yuzhak it was always warm and the sky was cloudless, but this warm, even gentle wind knocked a person off his feet, rolled him to the nearest nook and sprinkled snow dust, slag, sand, and small stones on top. Tricon boots and ski goggles were best suited for yuzhak. During the yuzhak, shops were closed, institutions were closed, roofs moved into the yuzhak, and cubic meters of snow filled into a tiny hole into which a needle could not fit, overnight.
The light bulbs dimmed, the glass was already rattling continuously, and beyond the wall one could hear the ever-increasing sighs of gigantic lungs, and from time to time the sound of metal beating against metal somewhere.
They sat huddled around the same table. The light blinked and went out, or the wiring was damaged, or the power plant changed its operating mode. There was a murmur on the stairs. It was Kopkov who saw Luda Hollywood off and returned. He brought candles with him.
Yuzhak was banging on the control doors and gaining strength. The candle flames wavered, shadows jumped on the walls. The bottles glowed in different colors. Kopkov pushed the glass of cognac away from Zhora Apryatin and walked along the tables, looking for his mug.
This is how things turn out, as always,” Kopkov suddenly muttered. He looked around everyone with the naughty gaze of a prophet and clairvoyant, clasped his mug with his palms, and hunched over. - We are lying in a tent now. There is no coal, diesel fuel is running out, the weather is blowing. And all that stuff. Over the summer, the cuckoos were stuck together from sweat, not wool, but shavings. The tent is shaking, and all sorts of things are known to everyone. I’m lying there, thinking: how will the authorities let us down with transport, where will I put the people entrusted to me? You can't go out on foot. Frost, passes, no shoes. I'm looking for a way out. But that's not what I'm talking about. The thoughts are: why and for what? Why are my workers moaning in their bags? This cannot be measured with money. What happens? We live, then we die. All! And me too. It's a shame, of course. But why, I think, has the world been structured in such a way since ancient times that we ourselves hasten the death of our neighbor and our own? Wars, epidemics, disorganization of systems. This means there is evil in the world. Objective evil is in the forces and elements of nature, and subjective evil is due to the imperfection of our brains. This means that the common task of people and yours, Kopkov, in particular, is to eliminate this evil. A common task for the ancestors, you and your descendants. During the war, clearly take an ax or a machine gun. What about in peacetime? I come to the conclusion that in peacetime work is the elimination of universal evil. There is a higher meaning in this, not measured by money and position. In the name of this higher meaning, my hard workers groan in their sleep, and I myself grind my teeth, because out of stupidity I froze my finger. This has a higher meaning, this is a general and specific purpose.
Kopkov raised his eyes again, as if he were looking at people unknown to him in amazement, and just as suddenly fell silent.
Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev is a Russian literary scholar, cultural historian, text critic, publicist, and public figure.
They say that content determines form. This is true, but the opposite is also true: the content depends on the form. The famous American psychologist of the beginning of this century, D. James, wrote: “We cry because we are sad, but we are also sad because we cry.”
Once upon a time it was considered indecent to show with all your appearance that a misfortune had happened to you, that you were in grief. A person should not have imposed his depressed state on others. It was necessary to maintain dignity even in grief, to be even with everyone, not to become self-absorbed and to remain as friendly and even cheerful as possible. The ability to maintain dignity, not to impose one’s sorrows on others, not to spoil others’ moods, to always be even in dealing with people, to always be friendly and cheerful is a great and real art that helps to live in society and society itself.
But how cheerful should you be? Noisy and intrusive fun is tiring for those around you. A young man who is always spitting out witticisms is no longer perceived as behaving with dignity. He becomes a buffoon. And this is the worst thing that can happen to a person in society, and it ultimately means a loss of humor.
Not being funny is not only an ability to behave, but also a sign of intelligence.
You can be funny in everything, even in the way you dress. If a man carefully matches his tie to his shirt, or his shirt to his suit, he is ridiculous. Excessive concern for one's appearance is immediately visible. We must take care to dress decently, but this concern for men should not go beyond certain limits. A man who cares excessively about his appearance is unpleasant. A woman is a different matter. Men's clothes should have only a hint of fashion. A perfectly clean shirt, clean shoes and a fresh, but not very bright tie are enough. The suit may be old, it should not just be unkempt.
Don't be tormented by your shortcomings if you have them. If you stutter, don't think it's too bad. Stutterers can be excellent speakers, meaning every word they say. The best lecturer at Moscow University, famous for its eloquent professors, historian V. O. Klyuchevsky stuttered.
Don't be ashamed of your shyness: Shyness is very cute and not at all funny. She only becomes funny if you try too hard to overcome her and are embarrassed by her. Be simple and forgiving of your shortcomings. Don't suffer from them. I have a girl friend who has a slightly hunchback. Honestly, I never tire of admiring her grace on those rare occasions when I meet her at museum openings. There is nothing worse when an “inferiority complex” develops in a person, and with it bitterness, hostility towards other people, and envy. A person loses what is best in him - kindness.
There is no better music than silence, silence in the mountains, silence in the forest. There is no better “music in a person” than modesty and the ability to remain silent, not to come to the forefront. There is nothing more unpleasant and stupid in a person’s appearance and behavior than being important or noisy; There is nothing funnier in a man than excessive care for his suit and hairstyle, calculated movements and a “fountain of witticisms” and anecdotes, especially if they are repeated.
Simplicity and “silence” in a person, truthfulness, lack of pretensions in clothing and behavior - this is the most attractive “form” in a person, which also becomes his most elegant “content”.
Mamin-Sibiryak Dmitry Narkisovich - Russian prose writer and playwright.
(1) The strongest impression on me is made by dreams in which distant childhood rises and no longer existing faces appear in the vague fog, all the more dear, like everything irretrievably lost. (2) For a long time I cannot wake up from such a dream and for a long time I see alive those who have long been in the grave. (3) And what lovely, dear faces they all are! (4) It seems that I wouldn’t give anything to look at them at least from afar, hear a familiar voice, shake their hands and once again return to the distant, distant past. (5) It begins to seem to me that these silent shadows are demanding something from me. (6) After all, I owe so much to these people who are infinitely dear to me...
(7) But in the rosy perspective of childhood memories, it is not only people who are alive, but also those inanimate objects that were in one way or another connected with the small life of a beginning little person. (8) And now I think about them, reliving the impressions and sensations of childhood. (9) In these silent participants in a child’s life, in the foreground, of course, there is always a children’s book with pictures... (10) And this was the living thread that led out of the children’s room and connected it with the rest of the world. (11) For me, to this day, every children’s book is something alive, since it awakens a child’s soul, directs children’s thoughts in a certain direction and makes a child’s heart beat along with millions of other children’s hearts. (12) A children's book is a spring ray of sunshine that awakens the dormant powers of a child's soul and causes the seeds thrown onto this grateful soil to grow. (13) Children, thanks to this book, merge into one huge spiritual family that knows no ethnographic and geographical boundaries.
(14)3Here I will have to make a small digression specifically about modern children, who often have to observe a complete disrespect for the book. (15) Disheveled bindings, traces of dirty fingers, bent corners of sheets, all kinds of scribbles in the margins - in a word, the result is a crippled book.
(16) It is difficult to understand the reasons for all this, and only one explanation can be accepted: too many books are being published today, they are much cheaper and seem to have lost their real value among other household items. (17) Our generation, which remembers the dear book, has retained a special respect for it as an object of the highest spiritual order, bearing the bright stamp of talent and holy work.
The problem of memory (What is the duty of memory to those who are no longer with us?) Close people who are no longer with us are always alive in our memory; we are grateful to them for everything they have done for us; the debt of memory to them is to strive to become better.
The problem of childhood memories (What feelings do memories of childhood evoke in a person?) Memories of childhood awaken the strongest and most vivid feelings in a person.
The problem of the role of a book in the development of a child’s personality (What role does a book play in the development of a child’s personality?) A children’s book awakens the soul of a child, connects him with the whole world, and fosters a caring attitude towards spiritual values.
The problem of caring for books (Why do books require careful treatment?) A book is an object of the highest spiritual order, and therefore it requires special respect.
Nagibin Yuri Markovich is a Russian prose writer, journalist and screenwriter.
In the first years after the revolution, academician of architecture Shchusev gave lectures on aesthetics to a wide, mainly youth working audience. Their goal was to introduce the broad masses, as they put it then, to the understanding of beauty and the enjoyment of art. At the very first lecture, given by Shchusev with great enthusiasm, the talent of a born popularizer and, of course, exhaustive knowledge of the subject, a guy stood up with a cigarette butt stuck to his lower lip and said cheekily:
“You, comrade professor, kept muttering: beauty, beauty, but I still didn’t understand what this beauty is?
Someone laughed. Shchusev looked at the guy carefully. Stooped, long-armed, dull-eyed. And why did this not at all impeccable connecting rod show up at the lecture - to warm up or to get rowdy? He was not at all interested in the essence of the issue; he wanted to puzzle the “intellectual” cringing at the pulpit and expose himself to those around him. He must be firmly reined in for the sake of the common cause. Shchusev squinted and asked:
– Is there a mirror at home?
- Eat. I will throw myself in front of him.
- No, big...
- Yeah. In the closet.
Shchusev handed the guy a photograph taken from Michelangelo’s David, which he automatically took. – You will immediately understand what beauty is and what ugliness is.
I did not bring up this case for fun. There is a rational grain in the architect's mocking prank. Shchusev proposed the surest way to comprehend beauty. Truth is generally known through comparison. Just by looking at the images of beauty created by art, be it the Venus de Milo or Nike of Samothrace, Raphael’s Madonna or Pinturicchio’s boy, Titian’s Flora or Van Dyck’s self-portrait, Vrubel’s Swan Princess or Vasnetsov’s three heroes, the peasant girl Argunova, Tropinin’s lacemaker, Nesterov’s daughter or the running athletes Deineka, you can accustom your eyes and soul to the joy that comes from meeting the beautiful. Museums, exhibitions, reproductions, and art books serve this purpose.
As the great teacher K. Ushinsky said well: “Any sincere enjoyment of the elegant is in itself a source of moral beauty.” Think about these words, reader!..
Nikitayskaya Natalia Nikolaevna - science fiction writer, prose writer, poet. A theater specialist by training.
I’ve lived seventy years, but I can’t stop scolding myself. Well, what did it cost me, while my parents were alive, to ask them about everything, to write everything down in detail, so that I could remember it myself and, if possible, tell others. But no, I didn’t write it down. And she listened inattentively, the way their children mostly listen to their parents. Neither mom nor dad liked to return to what they lived and experienced during the war. But at times... When guests came, when the mood to remember attacked and so - for no reason at all... Well, for example, my mother comes from a neighbor, Antonina Karpovna, and says: “Karpovna told me: “Pebble, you are our unfound hero.” I told her how I got out of the encirclement from near Luga.”
By the beginning of the war, my mother was eighteen years old, and she was a paramedic, a village doctor. Dad was twenty-four years old. And he was a civil aviation pilot. They met and fell in love with each other in Vologda. Mom was very pretty, lively and frivolous.
Before the war, the profession of a pilot was considered a romantic profession. Aviation was taking wing. People involved in this formation immediately fell into the category of the chosen ones. Of course: not everyone is given the opportunity to live in heaven. The liberties that pilots of those times allowed themselves will be recalled, for example, by Chkalov’s flight under the Trinity Bridge in Leningrad. True, historians believe that the filmmakers came up with this for the film. But legends are legends, and my dad absolutely flew “at low level” over the roof of my mother’s house. This is how I finally won over my mother.
On the very first day of the war, as conscripts, both dad and mom put on military uniforms. Both were sent to the Leningrad Front. Mom goes to the hospital, dad goes to the air regiment. Dad served in an aviation regiment. We started the war with the U-2. There was no serious equipment on the planes, not even radio communications. But they fought!
One day, when dad, at the head of a squadron of these two-seater ships of the sky, was returning from a mission, he saw below, on the highway leading to the city, a broken down ambulance bus. The driver was fiddling around with him, trying to fix the breakdown. And the nurse desperately waved her jacket at our planes. And from above, dad saw that a column of Germans was marching along the same highway and also towards the city. And now a bus with wounded people, a driver and a nurse will be on their way. The outcome of such a meeting was predetermined. “You know, I immediately thought about Gala. She could have been in this little sister’s place. And then I signaled the command with my wings: “Do as I do,” and went to board in front of the bus." When they landed and counted the people, it turned out that they couldn’t take everyone, that three were left overboard. “I estimated the power of the cars and distributed them to some not one person at a time, but two people at a time." And one of the pilots shouted then: “Commander, you want me to die! I won’t fly with two! I got one for myself..." “I knew that his car was more reliable, but I didn’t argue, there was no time to argue. I said: “I’ll fly in yours, and you take my car.”
In fact, this whole story seems specially invented for cinema, for the indispensable use of parallel editing in order to intensify passions even more. Here the wounded are barely climbing the fuselage into the cockpit, and a column of Fritz is marching within sight, but here our first plane with a wounded man takes off into the sky, and the German is preparing his “Schmeisser” to fire... Well, and so on... And in real life , when the last pilot took off, the Nazis actually opened fire... And then they wrote about this incident in the newspaper, but our careless family, of course, did not save it.
I am writing these notes now not only in order, albeit belatedly, to confess my love for my parents, who lived a very difficult, but such an honest life. There were millions of other similar Soviet people who defeated fascism and did not lose their human face. And I really don't want them to be forgotten.
Nosov Evgeniy Ivanovich - Russian and Soviet writer.
(1) What is a small homeland? (3)Where are its boundaries? (4)Where and to where does it extend?
(5) In my opinion, a small homeland is the eye of our childhood. (6) In other words, what a boy’s eye can embrace. (7) And what a pure, open soul longs to contain. (8) Where this soul was first surprised, rejoiced and rejoiced with surging delight. (9) And where it first became sad, angry or experienced its first shock.
(10) A quiet village street, a cramped shop smelling of gingerbread and leather shoes, a machine yard outside the outskirts, where it is tempting to sneak in, secretly sit in the cabin of a tractor that has not yet cooled down, touch the levers and buttons, blissfully sigh the smell of a running engine; the foggy mystery of a collective farm garden running downhill, in the twilight of which a wooden knocker taps warningly, and a red-haired dog rattles with a heavy chain. (11) Behind the garden are the serpentine zigzags of old, almost erased trenches, overgrown with thorns and hazel, which, however, to this day force one to remain silent and speak in a low voice...
(12) And suddenly, again returning to the previous one, noisily, racing off into the inviting expanse of the meadow with sparkling lakes and half-overgrown oxbow lakes, where, stripping naked and stirring up the water, using a T-shirt to scoop up grimy crucian carp in this black jelly, mixed with leeches and swimming swimmers. (13) And finally the river, winding, evasive, does not tolerate open places and strives to sneak away into the willows, into the gnarled and loopy confusion. (14) And if you do not spare your shirts and pants, then you can make your way to the old mill with a long-broken dam and a collapsed roof, where free fireweed shoots wildly through dilapidated walkways and into empty openings. (15) Here, too, it is not customary to speak loudly: there is a rumor that even now in the pool there is a mill water, dilapidated, covered with moss, and as if someone heard him groaning and puffing in the bushes, trying to push him into the pool now to no one unnecessary millstone. (16) How can one not get there and see, fearing and looking around, whether that stone lies there or is no longer there...
(17) Beyond the river is a neighboring village, and you are not supposed to wander beyond the river: this is a different, transcendental world. (18) There live their own swirling fringers, whose eyes it is better not to catch one by one...
(19) This, in fact, is the whole boyish universe. (20) But even that small dwelling is more than enough for one day, until the sun falls, to run around, discover and be impressed to the point when, already at dinner, the wild little head, scorched by the sun and torn by the wind, and the mother begin to bow limply picks up and carries the scratched, aloof, limp child, smelling of cattails and bedstraw, to the bed, as a nurse of mercy carries the fallen from the battlefield. (21) And he has a dream that he is climbing the tallest tree, with a sinking heart he gets to the top branches, dangerously and terribly swayed by the wind to see: what’s next, where he has never been before? (22) And suddenly something brittle crunches, and with his breathing stopped, he falls head over heels. (23) But, as only happens in dreams, at the very last moment he somehow successfully places his arms, like wings, the wind elastically picks him up, and now he flies, flies, smoothly and bewitchingly gaining height and freezing with indescribable delight.
(24) A small homeland is something that bestows wings of inspiration on us throughout our lives.
Orlov Dal Konstantinovich - poet, Russian film critic and playwright.
Tolstoy came into my life without introducing himself. He and I were already actively communicating, but I still had no idea who I was dealing with. I was eleven or twelve years old, that is, a year or two after the war, when my mother was appointed director of a pioneer camp for the summer. Since spring, young people of both sexes began to appear in our little room, which opens onto an endless communal corridor, to be hired as pioneer leaders and physical educators. In modern terms, my mother conducted the casting right at home. But it's not that.
The fact is that one day they brought us to our house in a truck and dumped them in a heap right on the floor - books that were thoroughly used, but very diverse in subject matter. Someone worried in advance, not without my mother’s participation, I think, that there would be a library in the future pioneer camp. “What is your favorite pastime?.. Rummaging through books” - this is about me too. Then too. Rummaged. Until, at one happy moment, I fished out a tattered brick from this mountain: thin rice paper, eras and yati, no covers, no first pages, no last ones. The author is incognito. My eye fell on the beginning, which was not the beginning, and then I could not tear myself away from the text. I entered it as if into a new house, where for some reason everything turned out to be familiar - I had never been, but I recognized everything.
Amazing! It seemed that the unknown author had been spying on me for a long time, found out everything about me and now told me - frankly and kindly, almost in a kindred way. It was written: “... By that instinctive feeling with which one person guesses the thoughts of another and which serves as the guiding thought of a conversation, Katenka realized that her indifference hurt me...” But how many times has it happened to me that it also happened to the unknown Katenka : in a conversation, instinctively guess the “thoughts of another”! How exactly... Or in another place: “...Our eyes met, and I realized that he understood me and that I understood that he understood me...” Again, you couldn’t say it better! “I understand that he understands...” And so on every page. “In youth, all the forces of the soul are directed towards the future... Only clear and shared dreams of future happiness constitute the true happiness of this age.” Mine again! So it is: every day of your childhood and adolescence, if they are normal, is as if fused with the sun and the light of expectation for your destiny to come true. But how can you express this premonition that consumes you out loud? Can you convey it in words? While you are tormented by an irresistible muteness, this incognito author managed to tell everything for you.
But who was he - the unknown author? Whose magical book was in my hands? Needless to say, she did not go to any pioneer library - with her beginning and end gnawed, she remained with me personally. Later I recognized it in the binding: L.N. Tolstoy. "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth".
This is how Tolstoy came into my life without introducing himself. The illusion of recognition is an indispensable feature of classical texts. They are classics because they write for everyone. It's right. But they are also eternal classics because they write for everyone. This is true no less. Young simpleton, I “bought” the latter. The experiment was carried out purely: the author was hidden. The magic of the name did not dominate the perception of the text. The text itself defended its greatness. Tolstoy's “dialectics of the soul,” first noted by the unkind Chernyshevsky to Nabokov, like ball lightning through a window, shining, flew into yet another unidentified reader’s heart.
Paustovsky Konstantin Georgievich - Russian Soviet writer, classic of Russian literature.
We lived for several days at the cordon, fished on Shuya, hunted on Lake Orsa, where there was only a few centimeters of clean water, and underneath it lay bottomless viscous silt. Killed ducks, if they fell into the water, could not be retrieved in any way. You had to walk along the banks of the Ors on wide forestry skis to avoid falling into the swamps.
But we spent most of our time on Pre. I have seen many picturesque and remote places in Russia, but it is unlikely that I will ever see a river more virgin and mysterious than Pra.
Dry pine forests on its banks mixed with centuries-old oak groves, with thickets of willow, alder and aspen. The ship's pines, blown down by the wind, lay like cast copper bridges over its brown, but completely transparent water. From these pines we fished for stubborn ides.
The sand spits, washed by river water and blown by the wind, are overgrown with coltsfoot and flowers. During all this time we did not see a single human trace on these white sands - only the traces of wolves, moose and birds.
Thickets of heather and lingonberries approached the water itself, intertwined with thickets of pondweed, pink chastukha and telores.
The river went in strange bends. Its remote backwaters were lost in the darkness of the warmed forests. Over the running water, sparkling rollers and dragonflies continuously flew from shore to shore, and huge hawks soared above.
Everything was blooming around. Millions of leaves, stems, branches and corollas blocked the road at every step, and we were lost before this onslaught of vegetation, stopped and breathed until our lungs hurt in the astringent air of a hundred-year-old pine. There were layers of dry pine cones under the trees. My foot sank in them up to the bone.
Sometimes the wind ran along the river from the lower reaches, from the wooded spaces, from where the calm and still hot sun burned in the autumn sky. My heart sank at the thought that where this river flows, for almost two hundred kilometers there is only forest, forest and no housing. Only here and there on the banks there are huts of tar smokers and a sweetish smoke of smoldering tar drifts through the forest.
But the most amazing thing about these places was the air. There was complete and utter purity about him. This purity gave a special sharpness, even shine, to everything that was surrounded by this air. Each dry pine branch was visible among the dark needles very far away. It was as if forged from rusty iron. Every thread of the cobweb, a green pine cone high up, and a stalk of grass could be seen far away.
The clarity of the air gave some extraordinary strength and pristineness to the surroundings, especially in the mornings, when everything was wet with dew and only a blue fog still lay in the lowlands.
And in the middle of the day, both the river and the forests played with many sun spots - gold, blue, green and rainbow. Streams of light dimmed, then flared up and turned the thickets into a living, moving world of foliage. The eye rested from contemplating the powerful and varied green color.
The flight of birds cut through this sparkling air: it rang from the flapping of bird wings.
Forest smells came in waves. Sometimes it was difficult to identify these smells. Everything was mixed in them: the breath of juniper, heather, water, lingonberries, rotten stumps, mushrooms, water lilies, and perhaps the sky itself... It was so deep and pure that one could not help but believe that these oceans of air also brought their own smell - ozone and the wind that came here from the shores of the warm seas.
It is sometimes very difficult to convey your feelings. But, perhaps, the most accurate way to describe the state that we all experienced was a feeling of admiration for the charm of our native land that defies any description.
Turgenev spoke about the magical Russian language. But he did not say that the magic of language was born from this magical nature and the amazing properties of man.
And the man was amazing in both small and large ways: simple, clear and benevolent. He is simple in his work, clear in his thoughts, and friendly in his attitude towards people. Yes, not only to people, but also to every good animal, to every tree.
Sanin Vladimir Markovich - famous Soviet writer, travel niknik, polar explorer.
Gavrilov was the one who did not give Sinitsyn peace.
Memory, not subject to the will of man, did to Sinitsyn what he feared most, it threw him back to 1942.
He stood guard at the headquarters when the battalion commander, a Siberian with a thunderous bass voice, gave orders to the company commanders. And Sinitsyn heard that the battalion was leaving, leaving one platoon at the height. This platoon must fight to the last bullet, but delay the Nazis for at least three hours. His, Sinitsyn’s, platoon, the second platoon of the first company! And then he, a beardless boy, suffered from sunstroke. The heat was terrible, such cases happened, and the victim was doused with water and taken away on a cart. Then the general’s order was announced throughout the division and a salute was given to the fallen heroes who had fought off the Nazi attacks for more than a day. And then the company commander saw Private Sinitsyn.
Sinitsyn confusedly explained that he had sunstroke and therefore...
I see, he held out the company commander and looked at Sinitsyn.
He will never forget this look! He fought his way to Berlin, honestly earned two orders, washed away his unproven and unknown guilt with blood, but this look haunted him at night for a long time.
And now also Gavrilov.
Just before Wiese left, Gavrilov approached him and, clearly overpowering himself, muttered with hostility: Is the fuel ready?
Sinitsyn, exhausted by insomnia, falling off his feet from fatigue, nodded affirmatively. And Gavrilov left without saying goodbye, as if regretting that he had asked an extra and unnecessary question. For it went without saying that not a single head of a transport detachment would leave Mirny without preparing winter fuel and equipment for his replacement. Well, there was no such case in the history of expeditions and there could not have been! Therefore, in the question asked by Gavrilov, anyone in Sinitsyn’s place would have heard well-calculated tactlessness, a desire to offend and even insult with distrust.
Sinitsyn clearly remembered that he nodded in the affirmative.
But he didn’t have time to prepare winter fuel properly! That is, he prepared, of course, but for his campaign, which was supposed to take place in the polar summer. But Gavrilov would not go in the summer, but in the March frosts, and therefore the fuel had to be specially prepared for his trip. And the work is nonsense: add the required dose of kerosene to the tanks with diesel fuel, more than usual, then no frost will take effect. How could he forget!
Sinitsyn cursed. We need to immediately run to the radio room to find out if Gavrilov has gone on a hike. If you don’t come out, tell the truth: I’m sorry, I made a mistake, I forgot about the fuel, add kerosene to the diesel fuel. If Gavrilov is on a hike, raise the alarm and return the train to Mirny, even at the cost of losing several days to dilute the diesel fuel.
Sinitsyn began to get dressed, composing the text of the radiogram in his mind, and stopped. Is it worth raising a panic, asking for a scandal or elaboration? How cold will it be on the highway? About sixty degrees, no more, for such temperatures his diesel fuel will do just fine.
Having calmed himself with this thought, Sinitsyn took the decanter of water from the bracket, reached out for the glass and felt the box on the table. In the semi-darkness I read: luminal. And Zhenya’s nerves are on edge. I put two tablets in my mouth, washed it down with water, lay down and fell into a heavy sleep.
Three hours later, Gavrilov’s sleigh-caterpillar train left Mirny for the East into the deadly cold. Simonov
Konstantin Mikhailovich - Soviet prose writer, poet, screenwriter.
All three Germans were from the Belgrade garrison and knew very well that this was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and that in case of artillery shelling the grave had thick and strong walls. This was, in their opinion, good, and everything else did not interest them at all. This was the case with the Germans.
The Russians also considered this hill with a house on top as an excellent observation post, but an enemy observation post and, therefore, subject to fire.
What kind of residential building is this? It’s something wonderful, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the battery commander, Captain Nikolaenko, carefully examining the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier through binoculars for the fifth time. “And the Germans are sitting there, that’s for sure.” Well, have the data for firing been prepared?
Yes sir! - the young Lieutenant Prudnikov, who was standing next to the captain, reported.
Start shooting.
We shot quickly, with three shells. Two dug up the cliff right under the parapet, raising a whole fountain of earth. The third hit the parapet. Through binoculars one could see fragments of stones flying.
Lo and behold, it splashed! - said Nikolaenko. - Go to defeat.
But Lieutenant Prudnikov, who had previously been peering through his binoculars for a long time and intensely, as if remembering something, suddenly reached into his field bag, pulled out a German captured map of Belgrade and, putting it on top of his two-layout paper, began hastily running his finger over it.
What's the matter? - Nikolaenko said sternly. “There is nothing to clarify, everything is already clear.”
Allow me, one minute, comrade captain,” Prudnikov muttered.
He quickly looked several times at the plan, at the hill, and again at the plan, and suddenly, resolutely burying his finger in some point he had finally found, he raised his eyes to the captain:
Do you know what this is, Comrade Captain?
And that’s all - both the hill and this residential building?
This is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I kept looking and doubting. I saw it somewhere in a photograph in a book. Exactly. Here it is on the plan - the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
For Prudnikov, who once studied at the history department of Moscow State University before the war, this discovery seemed extremely important. But captain Nikolaenko, unexpectedly for Prudnikov, did not show any responsiveness. He answered calmly and even somewhat suspiciously:
What other unknown soldier is there? Let's fire.
Comrade captain, allow me! - Prudnikov said pleadingly looking into Nikolaenko’s eyes.
What else?
You may not know... This is not just a grave. This is, as it were, a national monument. Well... - Prudnikov stopped, choosing his words. - Well, a symbol of all those who died for their homeland. One soldier, who was not identified, was buried instead of everyone else, in their honor, and now it is like a memory for the whole country.
“Wait, don’t jabber,” Nikolaenko said and, wrinkling his brow, thought for a whole minute.
He was a great-hearted man, despite his rudeness, a favorite of the entire battery and a good artilleryman. But, having started the war as a simple fighter-gunner and rising through blood and valor to the rank of captain, in his labors and battles he never had time to learn many things that perhaps an officer should have known. He had a weak understanding of history, if it did not involve his direct accounts with the Germans, and of geography, if the question did not concern the settlement that needed to be taken. As for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, this was the first time he had heard about it.
However, although now he did not understand everything in Prudnikov’s words, he felt with his soldier’s soul that Prudnikov must be worried for good reason and that we were talking about something really worthwhile.
“Wait,” he repeated once again, loosening his wrinkles. “Tell me exactly whose soldier he fought with, who he fought with—that’s what you tell me!”
The Serbian soldier, in general, is Yugoslav,” said Prudnikov. “He fought with the Germans in the last war of 1914.”
Now it's clear.
Nikolaenko felt with pleasure that now everything was really clear and the right decision could be made on this issue.
“Everything is clear,” he repeated. “It’s clear who and what.” Otherwise you are weaving God knows what - “unknown, unknown.” How unknown is he when he is Serbian and fought with the Germans in that war? Leave it alone!
Simonov Konstantin Mikhailovich - Soviet prose writer, poet, screenwriter.
It was in the morning. The battalion commander Koshelev called Semyon Shkolenko to him and explained, as always, without long words:
- We need to get the “tongue”.
“I’ll get it,” Shkolenko said.
He returned to his trench, checked the machine gun, hung three discs on his belt, prepared five grenades, two simple and three anti-tank, put them in his bag, then looked around and, after thinking, took the copper wire stored in the soldier’s bag and hid it in his pocket.
We had to walk along the coast. He walked slowly, carefully. Everything was quiet all around. Shkolenko quickened his pace and, in order to shorten the distance, began to cross the ravine straight through the small bushes. A machine gun burst rang out. The bullets passed somewhere close. Shkolenko lay down and lay motionless for a minute.
He was unhappy with himself. This machine gun burst - we could have done without it. All I had to do was walk through the dense bush. I wanted to save half a minute, but now I have to lose ten by going around. He stood up and, bending down, ran into the thicket. In half an hour he passed first one beam, then another. Immediately behind this beam stood three barns and a house. Shkolenko lay down and crawled on his bellies. A few minutes later he crawled to the first shed and looked inside. The barn was dark and smelled damp. Chickens and a pig walked on the earthen floor. Shkolenko noticed a shallow trench near the wall and a loophole cut into two logs. Near the trench lay a half-smoked pack of German cigarettes. The Germans were somewhere close. Now there was no doubt about it. The next barn was empty, at the third, near a haystack, two dead Red Army soldiers lay, rifles lying next to them. The blood was fresh.
Shkolenko tried to reconstruct in his mind the picture of what had happened: well, yes, they came out of here, they were probably walking upright, without hiding, and the German hit with a machine gun from somewhere on the other side. Shkolenko was annoyed at this careless death. “If they were with me, I wouldn’t let them go like that,” he thought, but there was no time to think further, he had to look for the German.
In a hollow overgrown with vineyards, he came across a path. After the rain that had passed in the morning, the ground had not yet dried out, and footprints leading into the forest were clearly visible on the path. A hundred meters later Shkolenko saw a pair of German boots and a rifle. He was surprised why they were abandoned here, and just in case, he put the rifle in the bush. A fresh trail led into the forest. Shkolenko had not yet crawled fifty meters when he heard a mortar shot. The mortar struck ten times in a row with short pauses.
There were thickets ahead. Shkolenko crawled through them to the left; there was a hole visible, with weeds growing around it. From the hole, in the gap between the weed bushes, a mortar standing very close and a light machine gun a few steps further away could be seen. One German stood at the mortar, and six sat, gathered in a circle, eating from pots.
Shkolenko raised his machine gun and wanted to fire at them, but judiciously changed his mind. He might not have killed everyone with one burst at once, and he would have faced an unequal fight.
Slowly, he began to prepare an anti-tank grenade for battle. He chose an anti-tank weapon because the distance was short and it could hit harder. He was in no hurry. There was no need to rush: the target was in sight. He firmly placed his left hand on the bottom of the hole, grabbed the ground so that his hand would not slip, and, rising, threw the grenade. She fell right in the middle of the Germans. When he saw that six were lying motionless, and one, the one who was standing by the mortar, continued to stand near him, looking in surprise at the barrel mutilated by a grenade fragment, Shkolenko jumped up and, coming close to the German, without taking his eyes off him, made a sign, so that he unfastens his parabellum and throws it to the ground. The German’s hands were shaking, he took a long time to unfasten the parabellum and threw it far away from him. Then Shkolenko, pushing the German in front of him, approached the machine gun with him. The machine gun was unloaded. Shkolenko motioned for the German to shoulder the machine gun. The German obediently bent down and raised the machine gun. Now he had both hands full.
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Shkolenko grinned. It seemed funny to him that a German would take his machine gun to us with his own hands.
Sobolev Andrey Nikolaevich - Russian linguist, Slavist and Balkanist.
Nowadays, reading fiction is essentially a privilege. This line of work takes too much time. Lack of leisure. Yes, and reading is also work, and first of all, on yourself. It may be unnoticeable, not so burdensome, but a person who has spent the day solving problems that require intellectual and spiritual dedication sometimes simply does not have the strength to take an interest in the latest literature. This does not justify anyone, but the reasons are obvious, and not everyone has developed a strong habit of serious reading.
For the majority of adults and older people these days, television and cinema replace reading; even if they get acquainted with the new products of the book market, it is with rare exceptions in a primitive film presentation.
Young people are increasingly learning the world of words through headphones, players and Internet resources, on smartphones and tablets, which are always at hand.
Perhaps I am exaggerating and someone will be able to paint a more optimistic picture, but it seems to me necessary to take into account the realities of the time.
I consider myself to be in the category of people who are busy with business. But my example is not typical. I manage to read and even write. Wrote the 4th collection of poems. I don’t stop there, the folders of manuscripts and drafts are replenished, although flights, trips and night vigils are all the writing resources that remain for me. Reading is even more difficult; pauses are rare.
If you try to characterize something you recently read, the first thing that comes to mind is: it was written by PERSONALITIES! Self-made people. You believe them. The very history of their lives does not allow one to doubt the conclusions and formulations. But it is very important to believe the author, no matter what we read - scientific literature, novel or memoir. The famous “I don’t believe it!” Stanislavsky now penetrates into all genres and types of art. And if in a movie the dynamics of the frame and the daring of the plot can distract the viewer’s attention from inconsistencies and outright falsehood, then the printed word immediately pushes all lies to the surface, everything that is written for the sake of a catchphrase is sucked out of thin air. Truly, what is written with a pen cannot be cut down with an axe.
As I review my reading history over the past years, I come to the conclusion that I have always unconsciously gravitated towards authors who not only have a distinguished writing talent, but also have an outstanding personal story. A biography, as they said then. In Soviet times, the personal lives of popular authors were measured and sometimes inaccessible; no one even thought about PR then. But bits of their deeds and actions were on everyone’s lips, enlivened the image and increased our sympathy and degree of trust. So it was with Mayakovsky, so it was with Vysotsky, Vizbor, Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov. And many others, whose texts we analyzed for quotes, whose books became the most convincing arguments in disputes.
I don’t know what the criterion of real literature is; for me, the main criterion was and remains the result - to be believed.
Soloveichik Simon Lvovich - Soviet and Russian publicist and journalist, pedagogical theorist.
I was once on a train. A modestly dressed, reserved woman sitting next to me at the window opened a volume of Chekhov. The road was long, I didn’t bring any books, the people around were strangers, I began to think about work. And in the same tone in which they ask, for example: “Do you know if we will arrive soon?” - I unexpectedly for myself and especially for my neighbor asked her:
Excuse me, you don’t know what happiness is?
The woman with a volume of Chekhov in her hands turned out to be a wonderful conversationalist. She didn’t ask me why I asked such a strange question, she didn’t immediately answer: “Happiness is...”, she didn’t tell me that happiness is when you are understood, or “what happiness is is something everyone understands.” “to her,” she didn’t use quotes: no, she covered the book and was silent for a long time, looking out the window, thinking. Finally, when I completely decided that she had forgotten about the question, she turned to me and said...
Let's come back to her answer later.
Let us ask ourselves: what is happiness?
Each country has its own Chief Teacher - the people, and there is a Chief Textbook of Pedagogy - language, "practical consciousness", as the classics wrote long ago. For actions we turn to the people, for concepts - to the language of the people. I don’t have to explain what happiness is, I have to humbly ask our language about it - everything is in it, you will understand everything from it, listening to the word in our speech today. Folk thought is contained not only in proverbs and sayings, in folk wisdom (proverbs are precisely contradictory), but in common, ordinary phrases and figures of speech. Let's look for what other words the concept we are interested in is combined with, why it can be said this way and why it cannot be said that way. That's what they say, but they don't say that. It's never random.
We say: “lucky lot”, “happy chance”, “happy fate”, “luck has landed”, “pulled out a lucky ticket”, “lucky luck”.
The most active people, those who have achieved everything through their work, still say: “I have been blessed... I have been given happiness...”
Happiness is fortune, fate, about which we know nothing, and if it doesn’t exist, then they say: “That’s my destiny,” “Apparently, it’s written in my destiny.”
But we will come across the law of spiritual life more than once (this sentence was slightly different): everything that is in a person arises from two counter movements, from two forces: from movement directed from the world to man, and movement from man to to the world. These opposing forces, meeting at one point, are not destroyed, but added up. But if the meeting does not take place, then it is as if both forces did not exist. Suppose a person has no luck in anything, misfortunes haunt him, and perhaps he has had a hard lot from birth. Not everyone will be able to defeat fate. But a strong person knows how to use the most imperceptible chance, which, of course, exists in everyone’s life.
This is how a person conquers fate. Or rather, not fate, but the difficulties that fate sent him. And if you don’t have your own desire to win, the desire for happiness, then even if you make him rich, there will be no happiness. He has no faith in life, his will is broken.
They say: found your happiness, gained happiness, achieved happiness and even stole someone else's happiness. Language requires action: found, caught, mined, achieved, snatched his happiness from fate, every person is the smith of his own happiness.
Happiness is not a thing, and not a collection of things, and not a position, and not a financial fortune, but a state of mind that arises when achieving something strongly desired. (And something else like “happiness is a blessing, grace”).
However, what did the woman on the bus say about happiness? It later turned out that she is a researcher, a specialist in the field of protein chemistry. After thinking for a long time about the question proposed to her, she said:
I can't define happiness. What a scientist! A scientist is not one who knows everything, but one who knows exactly what he does not know. But maybe it’s like this: a person has spiritual aspirations: when they are satisfied, he feels happy. Does this seem true?
Sologub Fedor - Russian poet, writer, playwright, publicist.
In the evening we met again at the Starkins'. They only talked about the war. Someone started a rumor that the call for recruits this year would be earlier than usual, by the eighteenth of August; and that deferments for students will be cancelled. Therefore, Bubenchikov and Kozovalov were oppressed - if this is true, then they will have to serve military service not in two years, but now.
The young people did not want to fight - Bubenchikov loved his young and, it seemed to him, valuable and wonderful life too much, and Kozovalov did not like anything around him to become too serious.
Kozovalov spoke sadly:
I'll go to Africa. There will be no war there.
“And I’ll go to France,” Bubenchikov said, “and I’ll become a French citizen.”
Lisa flushed with annoyance. She screamed:
And don't be ashamed! You are supposed to protect us, but you are thinking about where to hide. And you think that in France you won’t be forced to fight?
Sixteen reserves were called from Orgo. The Estonian caring for Lisa, Paul Sepp, was also called up. When Lisa found out about this, she suddenly felt somehow awkward, almost ashamed that she was laughing at him. She remembered his clear, child-like eyes. She suddenly clearly imagined a distant battlefield - and he, big, strong, would fall, struck by an enemy bullet. A caring, compassionate tenderness for this departing one rose in her soul. With fearful surprise she thought: “He loves me. And I - what am I? She jumped like a monkey and laughed. He will go to fight. Maybe he will die. And when it gets hard for him, who will he remember, to whom will he whisper: “Goodbye, honey”? He will remember the Russian young lady, someone else’s, distant.”
Those called were escorted off solemnly. The whole village gathered. Speeches were made. A local amateur orchestra was playing. And almost all the summer residents came. The summer residents dressed up.
Paul walked ahead and sang. His eyes sparkled, his face seemed sunny, he held his hat in his hand, and a light breeze blew his blond curls. His usual baggy appearance was gone and he seemed very handsome. This is how the Vikings and Ushkuiniki once went on campaigns. He sang. Estonians enthusiastically repeated the words of the national anthem.
We reached a forest outside the village. Lisa stopped Sepp:
Listen, Paul, come to me for a minute.
Paul walked away to a side path. He walked next to Lisa. His gait was decisive and firm, and his eyes boldly looked forward. It seemed as if the solemn sounds of warlike music were beating rhythmically in his soul. Lisa looked at him with loving eyes. He said:
Don't be afraid of anything, Lisa. As long as we are alive, we will not let the Germans go far. And whoever enters Russia will not be happy to see us. The more of them who enter, the fewer of them will return to Germany.
Suddenly Lisa blushed very red and said:
Paul, these days I have fallen in love with you. I'll follow you. They will take me as a sister of mercy. We will get married as soon as possible.
Paul flushed. He leaned over, kissed Liza’s hand and repeated:
Darling, darling!
And when he looked into her face again, his clear eyes were wet.
Anna Sergeevna walked a few steps behind and grumbled:
What tenderness with the Estonian! God knows what he imagines about himself. You can imagine - he kisses the hand, like a knight to his lady!
Lisa turned to her mother and shouted:
Mom, come here!
She and Paul Sepp stopped at the edge of the road. Both had happy, beaming faces.
Kozovalov and Bubenchikov came up with Anna Sergeevna. Kozovalov said in Anna Sergeevna’s ear:
And for our Estonians, militant enthusiasm suits us very well. Look how handsome he is, like the knight Parsifal.
Anna Sergeevna grumbled with annoyance:
Well, he's so handsome! Well, Lizonka? - she asked her daughter.
Lisa said, smiling joyfully:
Here is my fiance, mommy.
Anna Sergeevna crossed herself in horror. She exclaimed:
Lisa, fear God! What are you saying!
Lisa spoke with pride:
He is the defender of the fatherland.
Soloukhin Vladimir Alekseevich - Russian Soviet writer and poet.
From childhood, from school, a person gets used to the combination of words: “love for the motherland.” He realizes this love much later, and to understand the complex feeling of love for his homeland - that is, what exactly and why he loves is given already in adulthood.
This feeling is really complicated. Here is the native culture, and the native history, the entire past and the entire future of the people, everything that the people managed to accomplish throughout their history and what they still have to accomplish.
Without going into deep reasoning, we can say that one of the first places in the complex feeling of love for one’s homeland is love for one’s native nature.
For a person born in the mountains, nothing could be sweeter than rocks and mountain streams, snow-white peaks and steep slopes. It would seem, what to love in the tundra? A monotonous swampy land with countless glassy lakes, overgrown with lichens, but the Nenets reindeer herder would not exchange his tundra for any southern beauty.
In a word, who loves the steppe, who loves the mountains, who loves the sea coast scented with fish, and who loves the native Central Russian nature, quiet beautiful rivers with yellow water lilies and white lilies, the kind, quiet sun of Ryazan... And so that the lark sings over the field rye, and a birdhouse on a birch tree in front of the porch.
It would be pointless to list all the signs of Russian nature. But out of thousands of signs and signs, that common thing is formed that we call our native nature and that we, perhaps loving both the sea and the mountains, still love more than anything else in the whole world.
All this is true. But it must be said that this feeling of love for our native nature is not spontaneous in us, it not only arose by itself, since we were born and raised among nature, but was brought up in us by literature, painting, music, by those great teachers of ours who lived before us , also loved their native land and passed on their love to us, our descendants.
Don’t we remember by heart from childhood the best lines about nature by Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Alexei Tolstoy, Tyutchev, Fet? Do they leave us indifferent, don’t they teach us anything about the descriptions of nature from Turgenev, Aksakov, Leo Tolstoy, Prishvin, Leonov, Paustovsky?.. And painting? Shishkin and Levitan, Polenov and Savrasov, Nesterov and Plastov - didn’t they teach and are not teaching us to love our native nature? Among these glorious teachers, the name of the remarkable Russian writer Ivan Sergeevich Sokolov-Mikitov occupies a worthy place.
Ivan Sergeevich Sokolov-Mikitov was born in 1892 on the land of Smolensk, and his childhood was spent among the most Russian nature. At that time, folk customs, rituals, holidays, way of life and the way of ancient life were still alive. Shortly before his death, Ivan Sergeevich wrote about that time and that world:
“My life began in indigenous peasant Russia. This Russia was my real homeland. I listened to peasant songs, watched how bread was baked in a Russian oven, remembered village, thatched huts, women and men... I remember cheerful Christmastide, Maslenitsa, village weddings, fairs, round dances, village friends, children, our fun games, skiing from the mountains... I remember the cheerful haymaking, the village field sown with rye, narrow fields, blue cornflowers along the borders... I remember how, having changed into festive sundresses, women and girls came out to reap the ripened rye, scattered in colorful bright spots across the open golden field, as they celebrated the reapings. The first sheaf was entrusted to be reaped by the most beautiful, hardworking woman - a good, intelligent housewife... This was the world in which I was born and lived, this there was a Russia that Pushkin knew and Tolstoy knew."
Chukovsky Korney Ivanovich - Russian Soviet poet, publicist, literary critic, translator and literary critic.
The other day a young student came to me, unfamiliar, lively, with some simple request. Having fulfilled her request, I, for my part, asked her to do me a favor and read aloud at least five or ten pages from some book so that I could rest for half an hour.
She agreed willingly. I gave her the first thing that came to my hand - Gogol’s story “Nevsky Prospekt”, closed my eyes and prepared to listen with pleasure.
This is my favorite vacation.
The first pages of this delightful story are simply impossible to read without delight: there is such a variety of lively intonations in it and such a wonderful mixture of deadly irony, sarcasm and lyricism. To all this the girl turned out to be blind and deaf. I read Gogol like a train schedule - indifferently, monotonously and dullly. Before her was a magnificent, patterned, multi-colored fabric, sparkling with bright rainbows, but to her this fabric was gray.
Of course, she made many mistakes while reading. Instead of blaga, she read blaga, instead of mercantile, mecrantile, and became confused, like a seven-year-old schoolgirl, when she came to the word phantasmagoria, which was clearly unknown to her.
But what is literal illiteracy compared to mental illiteracy! Don't feel the wonderful humor! Do not respond with your soul to beauty! The girl seemed like a monster to me, and I remembered that this is exactly how one patient of the Kharkov psychiatric clinic read the same Gogol - stupidly, without a single smile.
To check my impression, I took another book from the shelf and asked the girl to read at least a page of “Past and Thoughts.” Here she gave up completely, as if Herzen were a foreign writer speaking in a language unknown to her. All his verbal fireworks were in vain; she didn't even notice them.
The girl graduated from school and successfully studied at a pedagogical university. No one taught her to admire art - to rejoice in Gogol, Lermontov, to make Pushkin, Baratynsky, Tyutchev her eternal companions, and I felt sorry for her, as one feels sorry for a cripple.
After all, a person who has not experienced a passionate passion for literature, poetry, music, painting, who has not gone through this emotional training, will forever remain a mental freak, no matter how successful he is in science and technology. When I first meet such people, I always notice their terrible flaw - the wretchedness of their psyche, their “stupidity” (in Herzen’s words). It is impossible to become a truly cultured person without experiencing aesthetic admiration for art. The one who has not experienced these sublime feelings has a different face, and the very sound of his voice is different. I always recognize a truly cultured person by the elasticity and richness of his intonations. And a person with a miserable, poor mental life mumbles monotonously and tediously, like the girl who read Nevsky Prospekt to me.
But does the school always enrich the spiritual and emotional life of its young students with literature, poetry, and art? I know dozens of schoolchildren for whom literature is the most boring, hated subject. The main quality that children learn in literature lessons is secrecy, hypocrisy, and insincerity.
Schoolchildren are forced to love those writers to whom they are indifferent, they are taught to dissemble and falsify, to hide their real opinions about the authors imposed on them by the school curriculum, and to declare their ardent admiration for those of them who inspire them with yawning boredom.
I'm not even talking about the fact that the vulgar sociological method, long rejected by our science, is still rampant in schools, and this deprives teachers of the opportunity to instill in students an emotional, living attitude towards art. Therefore, today, when I meet young people who assure me that Turgenev lived in the 18th century, and Leo Tolstoy participated in the Battle of Borodino, and confuse the ancient poet Alexei Koltsov with the Soviet journalist Mikhail Koltsov, I believe that all this is natural, that otherwise it can not be. It's all about the lack of love, indifference, and the internal resistance of schoolchildren to those coercive methods by which they want to introduce them to the brilliant (and non-genius) work of our great (and small) writers.
Without enthusiasm, without ardent love, all such attempts are doomed to failure.
Nowadays they write a lot in the newspapers about the catastrophically poor spelling in the essays of current schoolchildren, who mercilessly distort the simplest words. But spelling cannot be improved in isolation from general culture. Spelling is usually lame in those who are spiritually illiterate, who have an underdeveloped and meager psyche.
Eliminate this illiteracy, and everything else will follow.
