Brief creative biography of Dostoevsky. Biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky briefly the most important thing

Galina Rebel . The story of Anatoly Pristavkin. “The golden cloud spent the night”

http://philolog.pspu.ru/module/magazine/do/mpub_2_41

Sample questions for independent
preliminary analysis of the story by A. Pristavkin
“The golden cloud spent the night”:

1. Where and when does the story take place? How do space-time coordinates change throughout the story and what remains the same?
2. On whose behalf is the story being told? How does the way the narrative is organized shape the coordinates of the artistic world of the work?
3. How the main characters of the work are presented at the beginning of the story:

Who are they?
What do they know about themselves, about their past?
What and how do they live?
What does their inextricable fraternal unity give the Kuzmenysh?
What made them go to the Caucasus?

4. From the very beginning of the story, what word becomes the key word both in the fate of its main characters and in the plot of the work?
5. What emotional and psychological states and feelings of the characters are consistently captured on the pages of the story? How would you describe, and perhaps depict, the “emotional curve” of the work?
6. What explains the crowdedness of the story? What do the fates of most heroes have in common? Describe the social environment of the Kuzmenysh on different stages their lives: what kind of people surround them? What kind of relationship do they have with these people?
7. What is the Caucasus in the context of the story and in the context of personal and national destinies presented in the work? (Note the numerous literary reminiscences that form this image.)
8. Who, why and for what is crucifying Sasha? How does Kolka feel about this? What does his brother's death mean to him?
9. Why does Pristavkin “substitute” the Chechen Alkhuzur in the place of the deceased Sashka? What episode of the story precedes and predicts such a plot decision?
10. How are the sources of evil and the causes of the tragedy indicated in the story?
11. What role do numerous quotes, allusions, and reminiscences play in the story? What texts does the author refer the reader to? How does this book generally comprehend the mission of the word, its meaning in people’s lives?
12. Explain the title of the work.

A lesson (more precisely, lessons - at least two, preferably four) can begin with an introduction to the author, with a short story about his life, work and social activities. (Colleagues will find the corresponding certificate in the appendix to this publication.)

Then (or, conversely, before introducing the author), it seems to me that one should exchange general impressions about what they read - in that “uncombed”, natural form in which they formed in the minds of the children, so that subsequent delving into the text would be adequate to the text itself strong emotional start.

The main content of the conversation is the analysis of the story, which is focused on revealing the questions posed in advance, on understanding the moral, historical and political problems associated with them, on introducing to the mysteries of art, which can put into an irresistibly impressive word even something as complex and terrible as in this case , vital material.

BROTHERS

The key words of the story appear already in the dedication, where this book itself is designated as “a homeless child of literature,” which for a long time did not find a magazine home.

Having stepped beyond its original context, the formula “street child” determines the social status, lifestyle and fate of the main characters of the story - the Kuzmenyshes. True, at the center of the story is not one child, but the inseparable organic unity of two - the brothers Kolka and Sashka Kuzmin (is it because Kuzmenysh that it evokes a rhyme association - cubs?).

The fundamental significance of brotherhood as a form and way of human existence is confirmed by the plot: when one of the twin brothers dies, the second survives only due to the fact that a new, equally inseparable and devoted brother appears next to him.

And yet, why not just a child, but brothers? Why did Pristavkin prefer the inextricable unity indicated by the word “brothers”, which permeates the story from beginning to end, to the hopeless tragic loneliness captured in the formula “street child”?

To answer this question, you should take a close look at the heroes and follow them along the route of their destiny.

The Kuzmin brothers are at first a kind of single indivisible whole, exhausted by the same painful feeling - hunger, obsessed with the desire to see “how he, bread, in a pile, a mountain, rises like Kazbek on a table torn with knives,” driven by an irresistible temptation to at least feel, how this coveted bread smells (7).

They bravely hold the line against the cold and hostile world around them, taking full advantage of their advantage: “It’s easier to drag with four hands than with two; run away faster on four feet. And four eyes see much more sharply when you need to grab where something is lying badly” (8). This saving side of the tandem is later instantly captured by Sashka Alkhuzur, who replaced the deceased: “One brother is a good man, and a brother is four times!” (228).

The Kuzmenyshis confirm their unity by practical inseparability: “they walk together, eat together, go to bed together” (12). And even when they took turns going to class so as not to interrupt the “excavation work” - digging under the bread slicer, “it turned out that both were at least half there” (12). Each of them recognizes themselves as just a “half,” and for those around them they are an indissoluble whole. “They cannot be separated, they are indivisible, there is such a concept in arithmetic... This is exactly about them!” - so, in the third person, thereby emphasizing the objectivity of the fact, Kolka talks about himself and his brother at that dramatic moment when Sashka suddenly declares his readiness “of his own free will” to part with him because of Regina Petrovna. From Kolka’s point of view, there is only one way to explain this: “Sashka has gone crazy” (191). For in general, the brothers lived and survived by what they themselves formulated in response to the teacher’s question: “How are you individually?” “We do not exist separately” (137), where “we do not exist” is equivalent to “we do not exist.”

Sashka’s death becomes a catastrophe for Kolka, since it is not just the death of a close, dear, only vital being in the world - it is his own, living death.

Here he is carrying the dead Sasha through the night: “He didn’t even understand whether it was hard for him to carry or not. And what measure of gravity could there be if he was carrying his brother, with whom they never lived separately, but only together, one as part of the other, which means that it turned out that Kolka was transporting himself” (204).

Not thinking of himself outside of fraternal unity, saving himself only as a part of the whole, as a half, to the next question: “Who will you be? Are you Kolka or Sashka? - Kolka, who has just said goodbye to his brother forever, answers: “I am wallpaper!” (208).

When loneliness closed around him like an iron ring, when he realized not only with his mind, but with all his exhausted nature that there was neither Sashka nor Regina Petrovna with the “peasants,” life lost its meaning for him: for himself, only for himself, strength he didn't have it. And, curled up on the dirty floor of an abandoned, devastated colony, he lay down to die.

Life will return to him only when, through the deadening oblivion, he suddenly feels his brother next to him again. He will feel, physically feel brotherly participation, brotherly warmth. The newly found Sashka pushed an iron mug in his face and, for some reason, “breaking his tongue,” persuaded: “Hee... Hee... Pete, otherwise he’ll die sop,” then “he covered his brother with something warm and disappeared to reappear with with your mug." True, this Sashka had some kind of “strange, dark, wide-cheeked” face and, having emerged from oblivion, Kolka suddenly realizes that “this is not Sashka, but someone else’s boy,” with “someone else’s voice” and someone else’s words.

“- Sask no. Eats Alkhuzur. That's my name..."

But Kolka needs Sashka: “Call me Sashka.” Tell me I feel bad without him. Why is he playing the fool, not going..." (216)

I wanted to tell him so much and thought I had said it, but all that came out was a moo. And again - oblivion. And through the dream, “he saw that the dark-haired, alien Alkhuzur was feeding him one grape berry at a time” and putting chewed pieces of nut into his mouth. And this again gave rise to the feeling of the presence of a brother. In the same way, he and Sashka saved each other more than once. On his terrible way to the station with the body of his dead brother, Kolka remembers how Sashka, having accidentally found a single berry under the cart, brought it to him, the sick one, secretly crawled under the bed in the isolation ward and whispered: “Kolka, I brought you a currant berry, you get better, okay?” (205) He also remembers how he, in turn, slept under the ambulance car, where Sashka, who had eaten dirty green vegetables from hunger, died of dysentery. By knocking from time to time, they seemed to signal to each other: I am. You are. We are.

That's how we survived. This is how Kolka survived even now. He survived because the stranger, dark-haired, and who speaks little Russian, Alkhuzur, not so much understood as felt, guessed that salvation was not only in warmth, food and drink, but also in satisfying the most important - spiritual - need: “- I, I’m Sask... Call me though... I’ll be Sask.”

And only after this “things began to improve” (216).

With their brotherhood, Kolka and Alkhuzur protect themselves from Russian soldiers (“So this is Sashka lying! My brother...” /219/ - Kolka blurted out the first thing that came to mind to a young blue-eyed soldier inspecting the colony in search of Chechens); and from the Chechen avengers (“Don’t kill! He’s a byetz spysat... He’s called our brother..." /230/ - Alkhuzur desperately prays to his formidable relative); and even from the merciless state system in the person of the bald (“cunning”!) military man: “He is my brother,” Kolka stubbornly repeats during interrogation. And in response to an irrefutable, from the investigator’s point of view, argument: “He’s black! And you are bright! What kind of brothers are you?” - with dignity and without pretense he answers: “Real” (239).

And such is the strength of their conviction that in the face of this higher-than-blood, clan brotherhood, not only individual evil will, but also the deadly state mechanism retreats, leaving the diverse Kuzmenysh to each other.

It is noteworthy that the Kuzmin brothers themselves, being outwardly indistinguishable twins and inseparable comrades in fate, did not in any way connect their indissoluble unity with the concept of family. An attempt to classify their joint performance at a concert as a “family duet” causes internal resistance and obvious dissatisfaction: “they called them family for no reason!” (137) They not only now, in their homeless present unfolded on the pages of the story, do not have “in the whole wide world not a single blood close” (24), but it is as if they never had and could not have existed. Neither in conversations, nor in dreams, nor in memories - not once, either directly or indirectly, do images of a father, mother, or family home arise. They don’t even try on these concepts, don’t combine them, don’t connect them with themselves.

Only once in the story does a conversation about mom arise. It is started by her “men” who miss Regina Petrovna, who has gone to the hospital. “It’s bad without mom,” Marat complains. “Of course, it’s bad,” Kolka confirms, either only for the kids, or for himself, recognizing this truth. But in response to the confidence expressed by the “peasants” that not only their own, but also “all mothers will come,” the Kuzmenyshis, clearly not wanting to develop this topic, “hurried” back to the colony (128). Another example: to Aunt Zina’s question: “Where are your parents?” “Sashka shrugged and turned away. He didn’t answer such questions” (111). And even when Regina Petrovna, beloved by the Kuzmenyshami, invites them to live as one family, “the brothers did not understand about the family. They couldn't understand this. And the very word family was something alien, hostile to their life” (157). Even on the verge of death, in horror and despair, even dying, plunging into oblivion, Kolka will call not his mother, but Sashka.

But the most piercing, terrible evidence of the lack of family and homelessness of the brothers is that they not only do not know the day of their birth, but do not even understand what it means. “Why day? What if we were born at night? Or in the morning? (169) - the Kuzmenys are innocently amazed at the teacher’s question.

Alkhuzur also carries the same homelessness, familylessness, and restlessness. True, he, unlike Sashka and Kolka, who do not know their origins, has roots, motherland, there is a clan, each of whose men is “dada” for him - “father”. But for him, Kolka becomes his only real, vital relative—his brother, without whom he cannot survive and has no reason to live.

And one can say about the “second” Kuzmenyshs in exactly the same way as about the “first”: “They have each other - this will be true. This means that wherever they are taken, their house, their relatives and their roof are themselves” (24).

The union of Kolka and Alkhuzur highlights, exposes what was essential and main in the union of Kolka and Sashka: the kinship of souls in the unity of fate with a complete difference in characters, with absolute personal uniqueness. This is only for indifferent people around “The Kuzmins are like one person in two persons,” so they were even given one character reference for two, since for prying eyes “not only appearance, but also habits and inclinations,” and that’s all they are the same. But this is for those for whom “all children look the same” (66). And for the reader, to whom the heroes are shown not from the outside (it is noteworthy that portrait characteristics no at all), but from the inside, brothers, inextricably linked by a common destiny, mutual devotion and a doubled instinct for survival, are essentially completely different. They do not repeat, but complement each other.

Contemplative, calm Sashka is a generator of ideas. Resourceful and quick-witted, Kolka is a practitioner who brings these ideas to life. It is thanks to this harmonious complementarity that they undertake daring operations under the general motto “take the food”: they start digging under a bread slicer, carry out a victorious action of “expropriation” in the Voronezh market, provide themselves with a sweet stash at a cannery. Each of these events described with humor and compassion is an example of the fruitfulness of the interaction between a precise plan (idea) and brilliant organization (implementation) and at the same time evidence of the vitality and strength of the fraternal union of the Kuzmenysh.

The brothers themselves are well aware of their differences, although they hide them from prying eyes. “Sashka eats faster, he has little patience. I have more. But he is smarter, he uses his brain. And I’m businesslike” (66), - as a sign of special trust, Kolka reveals the secret of the tandem to Regina Petrovna.

The difference is already manifested in small things: “If someone could know the habits of the brothers [a remarkable disclaimer - no one knew! – G.R.], he would have distinguished them even by whistling. Kolka whistled with only two fingers, but his sound was iridescent and intricate. Sashka whistled with two hands, with four fingers, loudly, stronger than Kolka, his ears were already ringing, but as if on the same note” (200).

In different ways, and each individually, especially, they fall in love with Regina Petrovna. “This was the only thing that turned out to be not just common to them, like everything else, but also separate, belonging to each of them.

And the Kuzmenysh liked different things in a woman. Sashka liked her hair, liked her voice, especially when she laughed. Kolka liked the woman’s lips more, her whole witchy appearance, like some Scheherazade he saw in a book oriental tales"(39).

In almost any situation, the contemplative Sashka maintains a philosophical distance, vision of the essence and understanding of perspective, while the active, active, but short-sighted Kolka plunges headlong into the event. So, in the excitement of the hunt to stock up on jam, Kolka completely forgets about the ever-present danger of going too far and running into trouble. Therefore, when Sashka “for free” gives up the Magic Galosh to the jackals - “golden, dear, glorious Glasha” (131), with the help of which jars of jam were safely floated from the territory of the factory to the wasteland, and from there to the hiding place, Kolka was upset to the point of tears, then “ became furious,” believing that his brother had only “gone crazy,” voluntarily giving up his reliable nurse. Sashka, who invented this ingenious method of self-sufficiency, not only does not lose his sense of danger, but, amazingly, does not lose his sense of proportion and the idea of ​​​​a moral limit that cannot be crossed: “In theft, conscience is also needed. Take it for yourself, leave it for others. Know how to stop in time...” (133).

The difference between the brothers is even more clearly revealed in how they feel and explain one of their most powerful and constant experiences - fear. Kolka is focused on an external and, in principle, eliminated source - bandits hiding in the mountains. Sashka’s feelings are more complex and tragic - this is the existential fear of abandonment, abandonment, and loneliness of a person in a world hostile to him:

“I wasn’t afraid of them...”, he tries to explain to Kolka, who nods at “them,” whom everyone is afraid to even name.
“I was afraid of everything. And explosions, and fire, and corn... Even you.
- Me?
- Yeah.
- Me?! – Kolka asked again, surprised.
- No, not you, but everyone... And you. I was actually afraid. It seemed to me that I was left on my own. Understand?
Kolka did not understand and remained silent” (152 – 153).

This conversation, like the misunderstanding that suddenly arose between the “halves,” is one of the breakthroughs into the existential realm, ontological, metaphysical problems that are characteristic of Pristavkin’s book, but not immediately noticeable due to the tension of the plot and the social acuity of the narrative. human existence.

The brothers also see their personal way out of the Caucasian impasse differently. They even argued about whether to run away immediately or wait for Regina Petrovna. And Kolka, for whom “Sashka is smarter, that’s clear,” “reluctantly agreed” to wait (158). But they also have disagreements regarding the further route: “Kolka pulled back to the Moscow region, Sashka called forward, to where the mountains are” (156).

Ruthless fate will direct them in different directions.

Sashka dies a terrible death, brutally torn to pieces for the silver strap that Kolka gave him before the disaster, not even suspecting that he was passing the baton to death. “Gorky” Sashka - that’s what they called him on the train that was taking him and Kolka to the Caucasus... On the train he will go, already completely and irrevocably alone, into the mortal distance.

And “sweet” Kolka, having survived the death of his “half”, and thereby his own death, returns to life through the efforts of his new brother and, together with him, again on the train, leaves for the unknown, secret (?!), but maybe be, after all, giving the other side a chance to survive.

And this chance of survival remains, according to the logic of the story, despite the merciless powerful pressure from the outside and thanks to the indestructibility, salutary, healing nature of human brotherhood. Brotherhood in Pristavkin’s book is essentially synonymous with humanity.

HABITAT

The social and everyday circumstances of the lives of the heroes of the story can be defined in one word: terrible.

Children from orphanages, colonists, street children - this is their social, official status. Translated into everyday language, including their own language - “urks”, “jackals”, “punks”, “thieves”, “wild horde”...

The inscription on the former “Silkozteknyukom”, where they were taken from the “sharapovka near Moscow”, reads: “For immigrants from Mos. region 500 hours. Homeless." Thrown by someone else’s ill will into someone else’s hostile direction “for some incredible experiment,” they themselves cannot understand who they are now and what the letter “ch” means in this ominous “500 hours. Homeless”: “Chechmekov , Chumakov, weirdos? Or maybe strangers? (61).

Nobody even calls boys orphans, and, perhaps, they themselves do not feel like such, because orphanhood is a certain position in relation to parents, it is the presence, albeit with a minus sign, of parents in the child’s fate. Here there is an absolute emptiness at the very source of human existence: not just homelessness, familylessness - rootlessness.

Filled with inescapable bitterness and pain author's digression on this topic: “Or maybe it’s all fairy tales that rootless people - colonists and orphanages - are born? Maybe they start on their own, like fleas, say, like lice or bedbugs in a bad house? There are none, no, and then, lo and behold, they appeared in some crevice! They're swarming, like little bugs, and you can see from their unwashed faces, from their special grasping movements: bah! Yes, this is our homeless brother White light crawled out! From him, they say, all the infection comes from him, from him moths, pestilence, all kinds of scabies... And so there is not enough food in the country, and crime is growing and growing. It’s time to kill him, dear one, with Persian powder, overtrum, and kerosene, like cockroaches! And those who are more gluttonous, go to the Caucasus, and even sprinkle dust or insecticide on the rails behind the train, so that there is no memory left. Lo and behold, it’s gone. And everyone is calm. So it’s smooth on the conscience. They came from nothing, they went into nothing. What a birth! God!" (170).

The entire system of relationships and circumstances in which the Kuzmenysh are immersed is aimed at eradicating from them the consciousness of the meaningfulness and value of their existence, reducing it to the level of physical vegetation, and ultimately turning it into non-existence - so that there is no memory of them remains: “they came from nothing, they went into nothing” (170).

The human environment of the Kuzmenysh is multi-faced, multi-voiced, crowded - this is all of Russia, raised on its hind legs, agitated, launched around the world, but not only by the war with an external enemy, which “turned everyone upside down and threw them out of the usual” (93), but - and this is even more terrible ! - not knowing satiety, merciless, destructive war of power with own people. The main method of this war was the total uprooting of everyone and everywhere, so that there was no home, no social niche, no professional, no national soil underfoot - no soil, so that not people, but “clouds”, “grains of sand”, “ tumbleweeds,” obedient to the will that tossed them from side to side, meekly dragged along the “desert” of the vast fatherland. This is terribly and irrefutably evidenced by the fates of the Kuzmenysh themselves, the teacher Regina Petrovna, the wife of the deceased pilot, who, after the death of her husband, found herself and her children of no use; guide Ilya Zverk, who in the thirties lost his dispossessed parents, and at the beginning of the war repeated their journey on a freight train to distant Siberia (83) and has been wandering continuously since then; Zina’s aunts and her fellow countrymen from the Kursk region, who were “also brought” (113) to the Caucasian “paradise” because they did not die during the occupation, but lived and survived; the one-legged carter Demyan, who was evicted at “age sixteen” “for a horse” (190), and now, after the war, “without hope” settled in a foreign, rich, but hostile land to aliens. “Where is home? Where? No..." (93). And it shouldn't be. Therefore, “these... blacks”, whom the great war spared, were driven to such a force of fighters, “as if /.../ they were encircling them at Stalingrad,” and all of them en masse, living and dead, small and large, were “taken out” away... (190 ) “They brought”, “they took out”... An indefinitely personal, depersonalizing, destroying, murderous force - what can a lonely (and even clinging to another equally lonely, warm, vulnerable) human personality oppose to it?..

People do not live in this merciless meat grinder - they survive, often at the cost of loss, oblivion, and betrayal of their own humanity. Indifference to each other, moral deafness and blindness are presented in the story not simply as a manifestation of personal corrosion of individual human individuals, but as a result of the influence of purposeful public policy eradication of moral sanity. The same omnipresent Kolka becomes an unexpected and involuntary bewildered witness to the tragedy of the exiled Chechen children - those who were “taken out” in one of the first batches, even before the Kuzmenyshs arrived in the Caucasus. Locked in barred carriages, they screamed, shouted, cried, stretched their hands through the bars, begged for something, but no one except Kolka, “as it turned out, heard these screams and cries. And the gray-haired driver of their locomotive walked peacefully, tapping the wheels with a hammer, and jackals scurried around the train, and people at the station moved calmly on business, and the radio carried a bravura march brass band: “My native country is wide...” (46). Confused, wanting but powerless to help, not understanding what they are asking for, Kolka, of course, does not realize that this is a fatal meeting, that the black-eyed foreign-language captives are his brothers in fate, that one of those like them will save his life, will become a real brother and a desperate childish plea that was not understood then - “Hee! Hee!” - echoes in the calls addressed to him by the newly minted dark-haired “Sashka”: “Hee... Hee... Pete, otherwise he will die sop... We must drink water... Hee... Pynymash, hee...” (215). Maybe that’s why this life-saving mug of water will be extended to him, because then, when they met on the way, he was the only one who sympathized and wanted to help. I couldn't, but I wanted...

Collective moral deafness, dictated by fear, the bestial instinct of self-preservation, in turn, becomes the basis for reckless cruelty and hatred towards those whom the guiding hand points to as enemies: “Basmachi, you bastard! To the wall! Just as there were thieves for a hundred years, they remain thugs! They don’t understand another language, motherfucker…. Everyone, everyone to the wall! No wonder Comrade Stalin swept them to hell! The entire Caucasus must be cleansed! Traitors to the Motherland! Goodbye to Hitler!” (147). This cry of rage of a soldier, wounded in a shootout with Chechens resisting resettlement, is echoed in the story from another, our, time by a veteran of punitive actions - from among those “who did his will in His name”: “All of them, all of them must be thrown to the wall! We didn’t finish them off then, so now we’re slurping away” (225).

When the story was written and published, the Caucasian cauldron was firmly closed with a lid still of that Stalinist origin, and the revanchist sentiments captured by Pristavkin (“They believe that not everything is behind them...” /226/) seemed nothing more than a powerless senile, on the verge of insanity , malice. And when the pressure on the lid from above weakened and the pressure from inside tore it off, the events of half a century ago became the bloody and terrible reality of today...

But let's return to Kuzmenyshi. Most of the people with whom life confronts the brothers are indifferent to them, and even potentially or openly dangerous to them.

The first scene is already symbolic in this regard, where one of the Kuzmenysh - Kolka - coexists next to a mustachioed lieutenant colonel with a pack of Kazbek in his hands, absolutely not noticing the ragged guy lustfully staring at the box of cigarettes. The brothers are also not noticed by many other people who are obliged by duty to take an interest in them and even take care of them. “No one asked why they suddenly decided to go, what need was driving our brothers to a distant land” (17). No one guessed about the true reason for their departure to the Caucasus, no one saw them off to the station, no one worried that they would not die of hunger along the way: “They gave them a ration of bread. But they didn’t give it in advance. You’ll be fat, they say, you’re going to get bread, and give you bread!” (19).

The embodiment of murderous (literally) indifference is the director of the Tomilino orphanage, Vladimir Nikolaevich Bashmakov, who, as the author writes, in solidarity with the heroes, “both controlled our destinies and starved us to death” (27). This “Napoleon” with short arms and an imperious character, unfortunately, was no exception. He belonged to the criminal multitude of those “fat rear rats with whom our house-ship with children picked up in the ocean of war was infested...” (27).

The “kids” themselves were also different, and the relationship between them was not at all blissful. The painful and constant struggle for survival turned into a forced struggle of everyone against everyone who could deprive them of vital rations. The law of orphanage life was cruel: “The strong devoured everything, leaving crumbs for the weak, dreams of crumbs, taking small things into reliable networks of slavery...” (8).

And yet, in this raging sea of ​​hatred there are islands of goodness and warmth. First of all, these are the Kuzmenysh themselves, whom their fraternal union helps in inhuman, cruel circumstances to remain human, not to turn into “jackals”, into a “lesson”, into “punks”. It is precisely because they have each other that love does not fade in the soul of each of them, trust, pity, compassion warms, despite the surrounding cold, not only for each other, but also for others, strangers and even hostile people. Having barely eaten themselves, they think with regret about the Tomilin jackals, with whom “they were sold into slavery for a tiny bit of saccharin” (129); they sincerely feel sorry for Ilya, who deceived them, when they see his burnt house and think that he too died; and even Kolka, the Chechen who crucified Sashka, cannot kill, but only wants to ask: for what?.. And with what high nobility their love for Regina Petrovna is filled, for whom they become true knights, intercessors, defenders! And finally, the fraternal unity of Kolka and Alkhuzur is a symbol of genuine, indestructible humanity.

And on the way of the Kuzmenysh, kind, good, decent people appear one after another.

The first one who, having encountered them, looked not through them, not over their heads, but at them, and although he glanced at the brothers, he immediately “muttered something about the clothes,” that is, he noticed how bad, unsuitable for the distance, they were equipped for a difficult road, there was Pyotr Anisimovich Meshkov - “The Briefcase,” as his charges called him. An extremely honest, deeply decent man, who spent his entire life in economic work and left it, “because they were dragging everything around,” and he did not want to do this and did not know how, “The Briefcase,” with his inherent sense of responsibility, took under his guardianship of “five hundred cutthroats of the worst of the worst” (103). And he did everything in his power and beyond these powers to help them survive. And while he himself was alive, he never parted with his nondescript briefcase, which contained his children’s documents, so that in this country of alienation, where, as it is said in another famous book, “there is no document, there is no person,” no one could doubt the the fact of the existence of these unfortunate “500 hours.”

Human warmth, preserved in spite of the conditions of existence, was bestowed upon the Kuzmenysh by Aunt Zina (by the way, the only one of all people - even the cow Masha could not be misled - who accurately distinguished between twins), the driver Vera, and the teacher Olga Khristoforovna. These people, if possible, help the brothers survive and be morally preserved, although the circumstances of their own lives, it would seem, should have deprived them of their strength and ability to compassion.

The hatred of everyone for everyone, actively instilled from above, especially for “strangers” (“Chechmeks”!) is opposed by the natural, organic, normal conviction of normal people that being different does not mean bad, that responsibility for evil lies with its specific bearers, and not with peoples This is said very simply, naturally, by the way - so the lesson is clear even to a child, although it raises in him additional questions that are inevitable in this situation:

“They are good Jews,” Kolka confirmed. [This is about the loaders at the cannery, who, it turns out, are also Jews, like those about whom Regina Petrovna says that they wrote the Bible. – G.R.]
– Why should Jews be bad? – Regina Petrovna asked with interest. And I thought about something. Suddenly she said: - Bad peoples does not happen, there are only bad people.
– What about the Chechens? - Sashka blurted out. “They killed Vera” (165).

This time Regina Petrovna did not answer the question about the “Chechens,” but she could not forget about the Chechen boy who turned aside the barrel of a gun aimed at her, about the night robbers who spared her. She understood and tried to explain to the Kuzmenysh: “You shouldn’t have touched your hat. /…/ It was like I was cutting something alive” (155). In other words: you cannot invade someone else’s, special, unique world by force and reshape it in your own way.

The social model of normal, humane coexistence of people of different nationalities and different worlds is presented in the story in the form of an orphanage, where Kolka and Alkhuzur, caught in the mountains and almost feral, end up. Here live the cheerful and awkward Tatar Musa, the fair Nogai Balbek, the neat and helpful German Lida Gross, as well as Armenians, Kazakhs, Jews, Moldovans and two Bulgarians. The snub-nosed little Russian and his black-eyed, barely speaking Russian brother, Kuzmenyshi, also find themselves here.

For a representative of the official government - a man in civilian clothes, but with a military bearing and tough manners - the composition of the shelter company causes irritation and suspicion: “They recruited here,” he contemptuously throws at the assembled workers, “You need to know who you are accepting.” At these words, “for some reason the adults shuddered,” but the courageous teacher Olga Khristoforovna, despite her own vulnerability (she is German), answers with dignity: “We accept children. Only children” (242). Some of these children are also blind. Blind physically, but sighted in essence: kind, smart and sensitive. Those who have the gift of seeing good in a world blinded by hatred. That good that is revealed not to the eye, but to the heart, which comes down to very simple truths, but clouded by the intricacies of evil and the pressure of aggression.

The rabid, insane and suicidal call “All of them, all of them should be against the wall!” (225) in Pristavkin’s story, a childish, simple-minded and only saving desire is contrasted: “Isn’t it possible to make sure that no one bothers anyone, and all the people are alive, like we, gathered in a colony, live side by side?” (206). This “like in a colony” cannot but cause a bitter smile, but what else could a “public” child oppose to a war of universal destruction?..

"Emotional curve" of the story

Pristavkin’s story is amazing not only for its “texture,” although the events and destinies themselves are amazing. The power of the emotional impact is also due to the penetrating authenticity and psychological contagiousness of the extreme mental and physiological states reproduced in it.

The emotional richness, density, and “temperature” of the narrative are extremely high from the beginning to the very end of the book, despite the fact that the nature and content of experiences change, the psychological picture becomes more complex, enriched with new colors. The reader's intense attention and empathy intensifies with each new episode - the effect of an emotional and psychological “funnel” arises, due, on the one hand, to the “visual power of talent” (M. Bulgakov), and on the other – substantial, all-human, intelligible not only on the conscious , aesthetic, but also at the subcortical, physiological level by the nature of the described experiences.

If you try to draw a certain conventional emotional curve of the story, it will look something like this. First, in increasing order: hunger - fear - panic. Then there is a change, switching to a different, major plane: love, jealousy, sadness, happiness. And again a contrasting, this time catastrophic breakdown: horror, despair, death. And finally, the final experiences that mark the resurrection, the return to life: pain and hope.

Already acquaintance with the Kuzmenyshs becomes for the reader almost a physiological introduction to their fate. The unbearable pangs of hunger experienced by the heroes, from which the whole nature languishes, writhes, emanates with longing and thirst, it is simply impossible not to feel it physically or at least try it on: “Saliva boiled in the mouth. It hurt my stomach. My head was getting fuzzy. I wanted to howl, scream and beat, beat on that iron door so that they would unlock it, open it, so that they would finally understand: we want it too! Let him then go to a punishment cell, anywhere... They will punish, beat, kill... But first let them show, even from the door, how he, bread, in a heap, a mountain, Kazbek towers on a table torn with knives... How he smells! (7). For children immersed in the darkness of a hungry existence, the possibility of satiation and satisfying hunger is the core question of existence: “If there is a mountain of bread, it means the world exists...” (7). The painful desire to “take food” seems to be the only driver of their thoughts and actions. And the reader, to whom the author simply leaves no chance to remain an indifferent observer, initially wants only one thing: for the coveted piece of bread to finally fall into hungry mouths. The culminating episode of the “hungry” chapters is the exciting operation of “expropriating” a loaf of bread at the station in Voronezh - an amazing tragicomic scene that demonstrates what kind of artistry and ingenuity was required from the Kuzmenysh to satisfy an elementary, fundamental need of life - the need for food.

By the way, this is one of those “risky” episodes of the story that do not lend themselves to a primitive moralistic assessment, because life here is shown in its indecomposable complexity and inconsistency. Meanwhile, there was a certain “strict” reader (unfortunately, from among our teaching staff) who saw in this brilliantly artistic, at the same time very funny and very bitter scene nothing less than a poeticization of theft. “The story had not yet been published in full,” says critic A. Latynina, “and I was already holding in my hand a letter from a teacher who condemned the author for, they say, taking stealing boys as heroes.” In response to this absurd accusation, A. Latynina asks rhetorical questions: “...Will the tongue dare to call the meager trade in the markets of two hungry, ragged boys, whose all dreams are around frozen potatoes and potato peelings, theft?.. And is it possible to follow without sympathy that truly heroic struggle for survival waged by two twins selflessly supporting each other?” We will turn to the analysis of this episode later, and returning to the topic of this chapter, we will say that, having reached its maximum plot tension here, the “hungry” emotion fades and is replaced by other, even stronger and more difficult experiences.

Slightly overfed on the road, treated kindly by Regina Petrovna, having recovered from Sashka’s serious illness, Kuzmenyshi, like the rest of the passengers of the “homeless” train, immediately upon arriving in the Caucasus find themselves in the grip of a new painful feeling. At first, they are overcome by a vague, unclear anxiety caused by the hostile desertion of the surrounding areas and mysterious explosions in the mountains. Then anxiety develops into fear, greatly amplified by the incomprehensibility and mystery of what is happening. “How can you be afraid without knowing what?” – the pragmatist Kolka is perplexed. "Can. And then... if everyone around you is afraid... it’s even worse,” explains Sashka, who is more existentially more sensitive than his brother (80). And, really, everyone is afraid. The inhabitants of the village of Berezovskaya “somehow live secretly, insecurely, because in the evenings they don’t go out into the street, and they don’t sit on the rubble. There are no lights in the huts at night. They don’t wander around the streets, they don’t drive cattle, they don’t sing songs” (68). On behalf of these strange villagers, guide Ilya confesses: “...We, pathetic migrant bitches, don’t burn fire, we’re afraid.... We're afraid! Is this really life? (72). And he advises his perplexed brothers: “You should get out of here! I'm telling the truth! Run! Run as fast as you can!” (91). Demyan speaks about fear: “This is a rich region, you could live... Fear ruins everything” (94). Fear freezes in the eyes of Regina Petrovna after a night explosion in the colony and becomes the cause of her illness. Fear controls the kindest aunt Zina: “We are so afraid... We are so afraid...” (114) - she confesses to the twins and, out of the kindness of her soul and ingenuousness, she is the first to lift the curtain of secrecy in front of the guys about the forced relocation of the Chechens and about the avengers remaining in the mountains.

Fear reaches its culmination and develops into panic after an explosion during a concert in a club, from which the cheerful chauffeur Vera dies: “There was a cold in the stomach and chest, there was an insane desire to go somewhere, to disappear, to leave, but only with everyone, not alone ! And of course we were on the verge of screaming! We were silent, but if one of us suddenly screamed, howled like a wolf cordoned off with flags howls, then everyone would howl and scream, and then we could certainly go crazy…” (145). And when the horror receded a little, the mind, rushing about in search of a way out, whispered to the Kuzmenysh that “in Tomilino, in this dirty garbage dump, although they were uncomfortable, they lived a simpler, calmer life than here, among these beautiful mountains” (105).

And yet, it was here that they had the opportunity to experience not only the most terrible, but also the brightest, happiest, humanly fulfilling moments of life - a real celebration of life, which the fabulously beautiful and kind Regina Petrovna generously gifted them with. Thanks to her, they experience a whole range of complex, contradictory, high and bright feelings: blinding by beauty, jealousy, embarrassment, love, joy, and bright sadness. “They had never known or felt anything like this” (185). The birthday party presented by Regina Petrovna opened up new value dimensions for the boys. All their lives, preoccupied with having enough time to get enough before they took away their “rations,” they, at the sight of the “magical, improbable table” that Regina Petrovna had set for them, “suddenly became timid” and “did not know how to approach” (178). For the first time in their lives, having received real gifts, they were confused, not knowing what to do with it, and having difficulty putting on unusual clothes, they did not dare to leave the shelter where they changed clothes: “Can a normal person have so much goodness on himself!” (181). But the main thing that Regina Petrovna gave them on this amazing day was a hitherto unknown, peaceful and bright state of mind: “It was languid, sad, quiet, warm, soulful. It was happy, in a word” (185).

What happened after was even more terrible and unbearable.

Everything happened irreparably quickly and inevitably scary: awakening, “lifeless silence,” an empty colony, a chase, Kolka’s oblivion, a serene morning, the crucified Sashka. Following relaxation and tranquility - the utmost intensity of feelings: again fear, intensified by the incomprehensibility of what is happening and instantly developing into panic, a selfless instinctive desire to hide, bury itself in the ground, and escape; complete loss of consciousness; then awakening, hopes and - horror, indescribable, inexpressible, unbearable horror, emanating from the depths of the shocked nature in an inhuman scream.

Then a concentration of despair sets in, when it, driven inside, becomes the source of the strength that Kolka needs to pay his last debt to his brother, so that in a mental conversation with Sashka’s killer he can simply and accurately indicate what happened: “You killed Sashka and me...” (206) , to send his brother on his last journey to realize his new human status: “I am wallpaper” (208). And only then give vent to despair, let it out - burst into tears.

The catastrophe that caps the story of the ordeal of the Kuzmin brothers makes such a stunning impression that after it, it seems impossible to say anything, and there is no need to say anything. Most of the critics who wrote about the story believed that the final point should have been put here, so as not to transfer the story from the realistic to the literary-romantic plane. But a point at this point would be a death sentence not for the heroes of the story, but for all of us. Such an end to the text would mean the end of meaningful and justified human existence, the end of history, at the beginning of which was the Son of Man crucified on the cross, and in the finale, which brings the world into catastrophe, the crucified and desecrated corpse of a child.

But this book is not a sentence, but a lesson. And it is crowned not by death, but by resurrection through pain and, despite everything, hope. Timid, tongue-tied, in its symbolic tongue-tiedness, defenselessly vulnerable, and yet - hope: “Why cry! No need... We will go, go, and we will come, right? We'll be together, right? Everything’s a joke, right?” The sound of the wheels of the speeding train, which takes the crying Kolka and Alkhuzur comforting him away from us into the unknown, seems to confirm: “Yes-yes-yes-yes-yes-yes...” (246).

Spatiotemporal coordinates and subjective organization of narration

The action of the story takes place over the course of a year - from the winter of 1944 to January 1, 1945 - on a huge, uncomfortable expanse of devastated, destitute, lonely ownerless land, crossed along and across by endless roads along which people rush about in crowds and alone in a fruitless search for permanent shelter. The song-poetic, romantic formula of that era “Wide is my native country...” with the stanza finale “...where a person breathes so freely”, implied but not given in the story, hidden in a meaningful subtext, was included by Pristavkin in a refuting, bitterly ironic context and melted into prosaic, realistic statements and evidence of numerous wanderers in the bleak domestic spaces: “ Greater Russia, there's a lot in it beautiful places, and it’s a mess, to judge, it’s the same everywhere...” (84).

Real historical time - the last war year - and real geographical space (“dirty Moscow region” - the road to the south - the mysterious and terrible Caucasus) are presented in the story through two existing parallel, sometimes intersecting and merging subjective prisms: the perception of the hero and the position of the narrator.

Intra-situational, nakedly subjective, emotionally and intonationally brightly colored - this is a “heroic” prism, belonging either to both Kuzmenysh at once, or to one of them - Kolka. “Here and now” is the self-perception of the characters, which accordingly forms the chronotope of their existence.

From the outside, from a distance of forty years separating the events described, from the bowels of a “comfortable Moscow apartment” (145), the author-narrator peers into the heroes and events. He, unlike the heroes, sees causes and consequences, the historical perspective is clear to him, it is clear what the children plunged into the horror of existence and doomed to death could not know or were not able to formulate.

The voice and gaze of the author-narrator are directed simultaneously to the tragic past to which the narrative is dedicated and in which he lives by the fate and experiences of his heroes, and to the present, inaccessible to the heroes, unknown to them, in which he greedily searches for traces of his comrades in fate: “This story , probably my last cry into the void: respond! There were half a thousand of us in that composition! Well, at least someone else, at least one, might hear from the survivors, because many later, and this was partly before my eyes, began to disappear, to die on that new land where we were brought...” (25).

The author-narrator does not just lead the narrative - he opens up unhealed wounds, reliving his own past together with his heroes and powerfully involving the reader in empathy, complicity, and compassion. In the most terrible, intense, tragic moments, the third-person narrative turns into a first-person narrative, the detached “they” is imperceptibly and naturally replaced by an all-encompassing “we” and (or) a piercingly personal “I”.

This is how it happens, for example, in the episode that follows the colonists' journey through an ominous night after an explosion during a concert.

“The picture was like this. The director walked ahead, holding his briefcase in front of him like a shield.
His gait was not exactly hesitant, but somehow uneven, jerky, as if he had forgotten how to walk. He probably felt the children propping him up on his back. And it also seemed to them that like this, behind him, closer to him, they were better covered and protected.
Thank God that none of them could see his face at that time.”

But the next phrase, separated from the previous one by a space that graphically highlights the final part of chapter 19, is a purely personal, individual experience: “And even this deep darkness, especially hopeless after a bright fire!” This is how the emotional merging of the narrator with the characters is captured, and after it there is an imperceptible, not immediately recorded by the reader’s consciousness, substitution of the detached objective “they” with the all-encompassing “we” of the heroes and the narrator: “We walked, huddled in a silent dense mass. /…/ We tried to even step carefully so as not to rattle our shoes. We held our breath, tried not to cough or sneeze. /…/ What did we know, what could we understand about the danger that threatened us? We didn’t understand or know anything!” Here, not only the content of the story, but also the subjective organization of the text itself, the unmistakably accurate, jewelery switching of registers, the translation of the narrative from the objective to the subjective plane, captures, involves, includes the reader in empathy, appealing to the existential core of his personality, in which he sits, waiting for his hours, ready to burst out at any moment, the horror of loneliness, abandonment, fear of death: “We, like little animals, felt in our skin that we were driven into this night, into this corn, into these explosions and fires...”

After this climactic fragment within the episode, a sharp temporal shift occurs; for a moment, the author-narrator, who was in the shadows, breathing down the necks of the heroes, the “demiurge”, who was in the background, is moving to the foreground of the narrative, lamenting that all he has to reproduce what he has experienced is - these are just “words written forty years after those autumn events of the year forty-four.” But such recognition not only does not detract, but, on the contrary, strengthens it, fuels the “unfathomable horror” that has not faded in forty years with the acuteness of the experience, which that terrible night became “the stronger, the more of us there were,” and at the same time was fragmented into “ taking by the throat" "the fear of each of us", personal fear: "I just remembered, and this memory of the skin is the most real thing that can be - how my legs buckled from fear, but could not help but walk, not run, because in this running, it seemed like salvation to us...”, and again formed into a feeling common to everyone: “We wanted to live with our stomach, chest, legs, arms...” (145).

“We” and especially “I” that suddenly surfaced to the surface of the text, which in the next chapter again dissolve in the third person, create the effect of conjugation - the crossing of times, the crossing of destinies...

Here is another fragment of the story, built on the same principle. The happiest day in the life of the Kuzmenysh family is coming to an end - the first and only birthday celebration. Delicious treats have already been eaten, delicious gifts have been tried on, funny stories have been told, sad songs have been sung. “It was evening sunset, and it was languid, sad, quiet, warm, soulful. It was happy, in a word.” This is how it is realized and experienced from within the situation. Next is a look from the outside, from the author’s (and the reader’s supposed: “our brothers”) tragic omniscience: “Although our brothers have not yet guessed about happiness, they, perhaps, will understand it later. If they understand. If they still have time to understand!” Following this - again, the author’s bitter sigh on behalf of maturity, wise by the experience of disappointments and failures: “My God, how short life is, and how hard it is to think and think ahead, especially when we already know everything, everything...” And then - “ landing”, returning to the inside of the situation, but not through a detached “heroic”, but through a personal, first-person experience conveyed: “I remember, I remember this untold evening on our promised farm in the depths of some foothills of the Caucasus. Oddly enough, the day invented for us by the sorceress Regina Petrovna became my birthday for the rest of my life. I think maybe that’s when I was truly born?” (185).

There is a piercing personal feeling that colors the narrative from beginning to end, the author’s personal involvement in what is happening to the characters, moreover, the coincidence of the hero and the author-storyteller not only in the emotional and psychological, but also in life, personal terms, despite the fact that at the moment of the narration they are separated from each other by four decades, and perhaps even by the border between life and death, which determines the special, pulsating, sometimes expanding, sometimes narrowing nature of the artistic space-time field.

Expansion is ensured due to the “author’s excess” inaccessible to the heroes (M. Bakhtin).

The narrowing occurs when the artistic prism of the narrative becomes the view of the child hero, participant and evaluator of events. Pristavkin not only showed the fate of a child in a crazy, cruel world, he showed the world through the eyes of a child, and this specific – “childish” – prism predetermined the special nature of the narrative in general and its spatio-temporal parameters in particular. As mentioned above, for the Kuzmenyshes everything happens here and now. The Kuzmenysh’s sketchy, very approximate, partly mythological ideas about the world around them serve only as a kind of conventional background for their extremely specific life goals and objectives: “Sashka has a golden head, not a head, but the Palace of Soviets! The brothers saw this in the picture. All sorts of American skyscrapers a hundred floors below are at hand. We are the very first, the highest! And the Kuzmenyshis are the first in something else. They were the first to understand how to live through the winter of '44 without dying" (9). The exact dating of the events here is the author’s hint to the reader, an appeal to his, the reader’s, knowledge and understanding that 1944 is the penultimate year of the war, with all the numerous and complex consequences and circumstances that follow from this for the entire country and each individual person. But in the picture of the world that has developed in the minds of the Kuzmenyshs, war is given the place of some stable, unchanging background, some external reality that cannot be challenged or changed, because they do not remember, do not know, pre-war, non-war life (for them it is some kind of then mythical, “incredibly ancient times” /132/, designated by the fused new formation of “pre-war”), and they hardly think about post-war life - not before. Now, today, they would like to get out, to contrive, to evade, to “take the food”, “not to die”...

In practice, the Kuzmenysh have only one time - the present. And not only because they are children, and a child’s momentary situation and condition absorbs the emotional and intellectual resources of the individual, but also because they are lonely, abandoned children, forced to wage a continuous war for survival. Where does a sense of personal life perspective come from for those who do not even know the very fact of their own birth, much less its exact date; for whom “nineteen is almost old age” (151), the ultimate measure of the concept of “always” is 20 years of age, and 30 and 40 years seem to be old age (179), devoid of memory, i.e. having no past.

The absolute absorption of the young heroes by the present is greatly facilitated by the extreme tension of all forces that it requires of them, its eventful and emotional intensity, and tragic intensity.

Just a day separates his dead brother Kolka, who was carrying his dead brother on his last journey, from the moment when he and Sashka woke up in Demyan’s cart among the thickets of corn on the road from the farm to the colony. “But now it seemed to Kolka that this happened a long time ago” (203), because between these two time points - now and yesterday - there was not only fear, flight, pursuit, a ruined colony; between yesterday and today there was death. And not only the death of Sashka, who was brutally executed for someone else’s guilt, but also Kolkin’s meeting face to face with death. Exhausted by the flight from the horror that was overtaking him, left completely alone, surrounded by the blackness of the grave, Kolka, like an animal, buried himself in an earthen hole and “disappeared from this world. Fell into oblivion” (197).

And for Kolka, who has risen from oblivion and was shocked by the death of his brother, what preceded the tragedy is pushed into the utmost distance of time: “a long time ago”... (203).

In addition to the sense of personal time, Pristavkin’s young heroes also have a certain conventional schoolboy-bookish, mythological idea of ​​historical time, of “some distant, incomprehensible times when the black-bearded, eccentric highlander Hadji Murat fired at the enemies, when the leader of the murids, Imam Shamil, defended himself in a besieged fortress, and the Russian soldiers Zhilin and Kostylin languished in a deep hole” (5). It doesn’t even occur to the brothers that these literary associations that arose in their minds in connection with the word “Caucasus” will very soon acquire for them very specific, real and terrible life outlines.

They incredulously perceive and ironically parody the story told by Regina Petrovna about how in “incredibly distant times” “young ladies and gentlemen from the northern capitals” came to the Caucasian waters in rich carriages only to “drink the Caucasian waters and improve their health.” : “There were waters, they flowed here and up to Kuzmenyshi. But as for the gentlemen who trudged from Moscow without a train for the sake of the pits, the brothers openly doubted it. For the sake of churek, say, for the sake of potatoes or cherry plums, that’s another matter... If you want to eat, you’ll run up... And water, it is water. Eat - water, drink - water... you will never shit! (94). And not even suspecting how terribly this will come back to haunt their fate, they put on a parody performance based on the theme of Regina Petrovna’s story, trying on an iron, coffin-like dog walker: “An iron coffin with music! /…/ From the northern capitals…. In the carriage, on the water... The gentlemen have arrived, the Kuzmins!” (95). In such a dog owner, dead Sashka will leave Kolka forever.

There is also an episode in the story when the historical parallels passed through the consciousness of the Kuzmenyshs give the story a tragicomic sound. This is the same “outrageous” scene of the expropriation of food surpluses from a fat-assed Voronezh trader. The critical moment, when “everything has been taken away and you need to get away beautifully” (33), is given in two historical projections that are global in their significance - in comparison with the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kulikovo Field:

“As they would say in the Information Bureau report: the encirclement of the enemy group at Stalingrad is completed. It's time to strike the final blow.
This is why Sashka stands in ambush. Like Dmitry Bobrok’s detachment on the Kulikovo field against Mamai. We took place at school. Mamai, of course, is a fat-assed wheat girl,” and Sashka, seeing that “the Mongol-Tatars began to push back the Russians” (which means: the girl grabbed Kolka’s sleeve), jumps out from ambush to “deal a decisive tank blow,” and with the help A precisely calculated distracting maneuver helps Kolka break free and run away. At the final stage of the operation, the street children inhabiting the train are included in the action - “five hundred mocking faces, five hundred poisonous throats”: “Stubs, bottles, cans fell from the windows, and they slowed down the enemy advance of the fascist-Mamaev hordes. As always in history, the outcome of the battle was ultimately decided by the people" (33,34,35). The comic effect is created by the combination of phenomena that are incomparable in scale and content, but this combination also conceals tragic meaning, because ultimately, in both cases - both on the fields of grandiose battles and in the market chaos - the same question was being decided: to live or not to live.

Thus, in the story there is a crossing of times: the present and the historical and mythological time of the heroes; present (forty years distant from the events described) and past (coinciding with the present time of the characters) time of the narrator. These chronological switches, roll calls and connections create artistic volume, a sense of historical authenticity and universal significance of what is happening to the characters. Grains of sand carried by the wind cruel fate, they are unwitting participants, witnesses and victims of a historical tragedy.

The artistic space of storytelling is no less complex and multifaceted than time. It is indicated by very specific, historically and geographically reliable coordinates: Moscow region - the road to the south - the Caucasus, but at the same time it is very personally lived-in and meaningful, because this is the space of the heroes’ lives, the space of their destiny. Two poles that become life centers for the Kuzmenysh, their stages, milestones life path, are indicated already in the first lines of the narrative: the “dirty” Moscow region is the mysterious and inaccessible Caucasus.

However, the “dirty Moscow region” is the vision of the narrator, not the heroes, and the Caucasus for the Kuzmenyshs is at first only “a pointed word, sparkling with a shiny icy edge” (6). The real space of their life is a hungry and cold orphanage. The center of the universe, the concentration of all thoughts and desires, is the BREAD SLICER. “This is how we highlight it in font,” the narrator emphasizes, “for it stood before the children’s eyes higher and more inaccessible than some KAZBEK!” (6). Let us note, however, that there is an undoubted echo in the sound ([zka] - [kaz]) of these two words, seemingly so far apart from each other, and that in this roll call lies a secret, ominous meaning. But the Kuzmenysh have no time for linguistic research, for them “all roads lead to a bread slicer” (11) and Caucasian abundance is measured in the same way: “The mountains are the size of their orphanage, and between them bread slicers are stuck everywhere. And none of them are locked. And there is no need to dig, I went in, hung it myself, ate it myself. He came out and there was another bread slicer, and again without a lock” (17).

In absentia, the Caucasus appears in another, no less subjective, dimension: listening to talk about the possible sending of starving street children to the land of plenty, Kuzmenyshi skeptically foresees that “no Caucasus will suffer from such a meeting. They will strip you down to the skin, eat them to bits, and smash their Kazbeks into pieces... They will turn them into a desert! To the Sahara! (13).

Without the slightest regret, they part with the Tomilino orphanage, with the Moscow region, with Moscow itself: “Go to hell, for nothing, this uncomfortable, unwashed, damned, war-emasculated region!” (24). (Lermontov’s “Farewell, unwashed Russia!” shines through Pristavkovsky’s text, giving it an additional painful tint.) What lies ahead is unknown, but one doesn’t feel sorry for what one is parting with. “We’ve become dilapidated, overpaid, tattered, shabby in the Moscow region, now it’s as if we’re happily running away from ourselves. We fly into the unknown, like seeds in the desert. According to the military - in the desert - I must say” (25).

The “blessed mountain region” (60) will also turn out to be a desert for them - the alien, mysteriously and hostilely hidden “beautiful land” (61) greets them “deserted and deaf.”

The world around us can be inexpressive and dirty, like the Moscow region, or it can be poetically beautiful, like the Caucasus on that naturally serene morning when, waking up from oblivion, Kolka goes to look for his brother. “...It was blue and peaceful,” sunny and joyful, and “I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t imagine that on such a morning any evil could happen” (198). Against the backdrop of this beauty, Kolka saw his crucified brother...

Whether beautiful or ugly, the world remained a desert for him. “No one was around” (202) on this most terrible morning of Kolka’s life. There was no one there when he was carrying his dead brother through the night, and “if Kolka could have been more aware of reality and he would have been asked how it would be more convenient for him to travel with his brother, he would have asked exactly that way, so that no one would be in their way, no one would interfere get to the station" (204).

But the desolation of the world is not an original, natural, but a man-made, malicious state. The source of evil is indicated in the story indirectly, indirectly, and this is a very accurate move from a psychological and artistic point of view, since the children could not name it, and a direct denunciation on behalf of the narrator would have transferred the story from an artistic to a journalistic plane. But when these children, doomed to perish in the desert of their loneliness, along with thieves’ songs, as sincerely as a matter of course, sing a ballad about the “falcon” Stalin, who “made his whole native country happy” (140); when Kolka, freezing in the mountains together with Alkhuzur, screams with all his might a song “about Stalin, the wise, dear and beloved” (229); when the young residents of the orphanage, following their German teacher, suspicious of the powers that be, thank “Comrade Stalin for... happy childhood"(243) - this is quite enough for social picture the world has developed in all its depressing completeness.

The desert that surrounds the living space for Pristavkin’s heroes leaves only one possibility of survival. In the desert it is impossible, and there is nowhere, to stop, to stick around, to settle down; one must try to overcome the desert, cross it, escape it - by incessantly moving through it. You can only survive “together and on the train” - this is how the brothers formulate for themselves, not suspecting that they are deducing a philosophical formula of existence for wanderers and outcasts in their native country. The narrator confirms: “We were used to the train, the carriage, and even the road; it was our element. We felt relatively safe among the stations, markets, bag-sellers, refugees, noisy platforms and trains.

All of Russia was on the move, all of Russia was going somewhere and we were inside its flow, flesh of flesh – its children” (61).

And the story ends not with its homeless heroes finding shelter, but with their departure in an empty, uncleaned carriage into an unknown distance. “No one was going anywhere except them on this first day of the new year” (244). Their doom to endless movement means deprivation, restlessness and homelessness. Who are they? Seeds in the desert, “tumbleweeds, wherever the wind turns, drives them there”; someone once said about Kolka: “Tumbleweed Kolya” (76). And also - clouds... But not only from that Lermontov poem, the line of which became the title of the story, but no less from another, even more tragic one - those clouds that are “heavenly eternal wanderers” (53). Not playing in the azure, not cheerful and carefree, but eternally persecuted, homeless: “You have no homeland, you have no exile...”.

Word

The events depicted in Pristavkin's story, in addition to the emotional, psychological and socio-historical parameters described above, have one more, extremely important dimension - universal, timeless. “The Golden Cloud Spent the Night” is a story-parable that goes back to the Book and corresponds with it in its innermost, deep, final meaning.

In general, there are a lot of literary allusions, reminiscences, and direct quotes in the story, starting with the title. Taken together, they create the cultural context into which Pristavkin fits his vision of the Caucasian tragedy. But the most powerful and most important spiritual and moral radiation, permeating the narrative from beginning to end, tragically illuminating the fate of the Pristavka “cubs,” comes from the Bible.

Already in the first phrase - “This word arose on its own, just as the wind is born in a field” - in addition to the direct meaning lying on the surface (this is how the beginning of events was imprinted in the minds of its participants), it clearly contains a hint of the primary source, the ancestral text that explains the beginning of all began: “In the beginning was the Word...” (John 1:1). And although the author of “Tuchka,” as mentioned earlier, expresses doubts about the ability of the word to be a full-fledged embodiment of living life, it still remains the only building material of the artistic world of the book, its origin, flesh, form of existence. And in the real world, his power is undoubted and Pristavkin’s story is convincingly confirmed.

To exterminate a people, it is not enough to physically destroy or scatter its representatives around the world, it is not enough to clear a place - this place must be renamed, so that with a new word, like a spell, to displace, get rid of, get rid of the old realities. Alkhuzur intuitively penetrates into the ominous, disastrous meaning of the renaming action. When Kolka draws him a diagram of the location of the stash and marks the village of Berezovskaya on it, “dark-haired Sashka” vehemently protests: “No Peresovshkh... Dey Churt - that’s what they call it!” (217). Renaming the Grave of the Fathers (as Day Churt is translated) inevitably entails the literal uprooting of the graves, the stone slabs from which line the path into the abyss - an obvious blasphemous demonstration of the power and indestructibility of the force that rules over the living and the dead, over the past and the future. This is how the sensitive Alkhuzur understands this: “Kamen net, mohil-chur-net... Net and Chechen... Net and Alkhuzur... Why, why me?” (222).

But in another case, the same Alkhuzur voluntarily agrees to renaming, when, again intuitively, he realizes that this is the only way to save a boy who is still alien to him from death. Neither chewed nuts, nor berries, nor water - nothing revives Kolka, who is dying of longing for his brother. And only when, in response to his next call, a tongue-tied voice is heard: “I, I am Sask... Want, and daek call... I will be Sask...” (216) - he begins to return to life. This is the very case when the word is equal to life, when it reveals its biblical power.

However, the biblical word itself, biblical themes and the images that permeate the story often find themselves in a bitterly ironic, almost antagonistic context to the original source. In the minds of hungry, homeless children there is its own picture of the universe, although it appeals to the biblical one, built on verbal and semantic blocks borrowed from it, but essentially refutes it. The center, the “holy of holies” of this imaginary universe is the BREAD SLICER, where the “most chosen”, “the happiest on earth”, “as God would appoint, say, to heaven” (6). Paradise itself is mentioned in the story many times, in different contexts (Aunt Zina, for example, interprets the guard’s promise to escort them to heaven in full accordance with all the experiences of her life: “to heaven is to be shot” /114/); and the more often, in contrast to the growing tragedy, this word is heard, the more obvious it is: “paradise” acts as an atonymic substitute for what is implied, but not spoken out for the time being, ripening, swelling with its terrible bloody meaning of the word-sentence to what is happening: “hell.”

The philosophical formula of existence that has developed in the minds of the heroes is extremely simple and irrefutably convincing: “Since there is a mountain of bread, it means the world exists” (7). The moral code is recognizable exactly the opposite: “In theft, conscience is also needed. Take it for yourself, leave it for others. Know how to stop in time...” (133). This is a clarification of the biblical commandment dictated by circumstances. And at the same time - a sincere, passionate hope that those above will understand and even help. Before stealing the coveted white loaf with a golden crust, stupefying with an unimaginable edible smell, a real white loaf with a golden crust, “the brothers prayed to themselves. So they asked: “Lord! Don’t give it to anyone, save it until our time comes! Take aside, Lord, those who have a big purse, who could have grabbed this white miracle-yudo before us... You see, Lord, that we need to go further, and if we let it go now... Yes, and we’ll eat, Lord! You fed thousands with bread (the old women said), so add a little for two! ”(30). How many pious prayers are this - sincere, heartfelt and worthy of being heard...

But everything that happens to the children, the entire tragic intensity of the story, human and superhuman deafness to children’s prayers, it would seem, mercilessly testify that “there is no Creator in creation and there is no meaning in prayer”...

“The Bible is such a big, big fairy tale” (165), Regina Petrovna explains either jokingly or seriously to her ignorant charges. In the context of the events taking place in the story, there is a temptation to agree: a fairy tale. For life is in itself, the Bible is in itself. But this “fairy tale” cruelly takes revenge for the lack of trust in the lessons it taught and terribly comes true in the fate of Pristavka’s heroes.

Along their entire path, captured on the pages of the book, there are biblical milestones - signs of a higher destiny and special purpose. The “ark” train, which has collected “a pair of each creature” from orphanages near Moscow - not for salvation, but for the death of the chosen ones, takes the children to the “Promised Land”. “...The blessed proud land was supposed to greet them with peace. The golden sun at the end of summer, abundant fruits on the trees, the quiet singing of birds at dawn" (60), but, by villainous self-will, transformed from blessed to sown by death and fruitful by death, this region becomes hell for them, and the "biblical mountains" appear impassive and the indifferent background of pathetic attempts to feed and survive. Hot baptism in sulfur baths turns out to be an act of familiarization with the terrible fate of other outcast migrants. The imminent catastrophe is anticipated by unexpectedly awakened children's souls - those very souls “about which they say that they, that is, souls, do not exist” (62). On the eve of the tragedy, Kuzmenyshi experiences a real spiritual revival - a new, previously unknown feeling of the fullness of life and the inextricably linked awareness of the inevitability of death. But the more poignant and richer the humanity acquired by the brothers, the more inevitable Golgotha.

Sashka was crucified for other people's sins, other people's guilt, other people's crimes.

In order to prevent this crazy world from collapsing completely, losing its right to exist and maintaining a chance for salvation, Kolka is resurrected.

The sacrificial image of the Son of Man undoubtedly illuminates the Kuzmenysh with its light - human cubs, in whose fate, as in the fates of many people who passed through the earth, His earthly fate was reflected.

But another biblical analogy is no less important for understanding the deep meaning of the work. In order to grasp it, which is not lying on the surface, not written down directly, but undoubtedly exists, perhaps even arising against the will of the author, we should return to the question we asked at the beginning: why Pristavkin placed not a lonely “homeless child” at the center of the story ”, stated in the dedication, but two inseparable twin brothers?

This artistic decision has no biographical basis (the future writer was alone in his wanderings) and, at first glance, softens and alleviates the situation: the fate of a lonely wanderer, especially a lonely child, is more tragic. One of the explanations for this author’s choice lies, apparently, in the “gospel version” of the fate of the Kuzmenysh set out above. An ordinary human child cannot fully bear such an analogy. The twin brothers, who thought of themselves as a single whole, but at the same time maintaining personal autonomy, were able to do this: the death of one of them means the death of both, the resurrection of Kolka is the continuation of Sashka’s life.

However, the very idea of ​​fraternity, judging by the way it was presented by Pristavkin, interpreted, in what context it is inscribed, was also borrowed from there, from the Bible, from the history of the human race set out in it. At the origins of this story, at its foundation, is a failed brotherhood, fratricide, echoed throughout the centuries by the question-reproach to man: “Where is your brother?” (Gen.4:9). The curse sent down from above on the fratricide Cain - “you will be an exile and a wanderer on the earth” (Gen. 4:12) - fell heavily on the fate of millions of his descendants.

“Exiles and wanderers” is the social status and existential sense of self of the Pristavka Kuzmenysh. Clouds... Eternal Wanderers... The immeasurable severity of the punishment - “more than one can bear” (Gen. 4:13) - is multiplied by what his children bear. According to the logic of Dostoevsky’s hero, it would be just right to “return the ticket,” to deny the world of God your personal acceptance. But the fate of Pristavkin’s heroes is built according to a different logic. With their whole being, with their lives, they atone for their ancestral guilt - they restore the originally desecrated shrine of brotherhood. This is why the idea of ​​brotherhood permeates the story from beginning to end, which is why Alkhuzur appears next to Kolka in the place of the deceased Sashka. No, not a comfortingly sentimental one, as some critics imagined, but a biblically large-scale, parable ending to this book.

The fraternal tandem of Kolka and Alkhuzur emphasizes, strengthens, makes irrefutably visible what was affirmed from the very beginning by the inseparability of the “first” Kuzmenyshes: brotherhood in Pristavkin’s story is an extra-family, non-tribal, supranational value, this is brotherhood in humanity, and not in a cramped, enclosed space family or clan. Completely different in everything, originally belonging to different worlds, destined by all the circumstances of their lives to be enemies, Kolka and Alkhuzur are not just friends - they are brothers, restoring with their union the harmony of coexistence that did not take place at the beginning of earthly existence. Together with the murdered Sashka, through his lips, contrary to the evidence and as a lesson to it, they testify: “all people are brothers” (231).

Exiles and wanderers living on a land saturated since the time of Cain with the blood of millions of brothers, Pristavkin’s heroes, without knowing it, represent a justification for humanity mired in the sin of fratricide and hope for its salvation, the key to which can only be the awareness of the truth that is obvious to them, the truth they have suffered through. . To the desperate question of Alkhuzur, shocked by the destruction of the family cemetery, “Why, why me?” Kolka answers simply and exhaustively: “If I exist, then you exist too. We both are” (222). He formulates the alternative in a mental conversation with his brother’s killer: “You killed Sashka and me, and the soldiers came, they will kill you... And you will start killing the soldiers, and that’s it: both they and you will die” (206). Through the mouth of a baby...

In Pristavkin's story there is no authoritarian, edifying, unmistakable word in its imperativeness, as in the classical parable. The truth here sounds from children’s lips, quietly, without pathos, sometimes, when it is the mouth of Alkhuzur, tongue-tied, as if being born again, in pain. But this does not stop it from being true. He who has ears, let him hear.

And so that there are more people who hear, so that people finally learn to connect the past and the present, so that evil does not multiply, but is stopped, so that hope does not fade away, the school teacher must do everything in his power so that his students read this bitter, wise, piercingly humane and so a book that is terribly relevant today - only then will it not remain, as the author feared, “a cry into the void.”

And Pristavkin. The golden cloud spent the night. Stories. M.: Pravda Publishing House, 1990. P. 5. (Further references to this publication are given by indicating the page in the text of the article.)

In the text of the story there are hints that this boy who saved Regina Petrovna was Alkhuzur: from his conversation with Kolka it turns out that he knows about the explosion and fire in the colony, and everything seems to Regina Petrovna, to whom he will be presented as Sashka that she had seen him somewhere.

“I’m not accepting God, Alyosha, I’m just respectfully returning the ticket to him,” says Ivan Karamazov to his brother (!), explaining his refusal of the right to enter the kingdom of “higher harmony” by the fact that “it’s not worth even one tear.” only /…/ a tortured child.” (F.M. Dostoevsky. The Karamazov Brothers // PSS in 30 vols. T. 14. L.: “Nauka”, 1976. P. 223.)

On October 30 (November 11, new style), 1821, the most famous Russian writer, F. M. Dostoevsky, was born. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky spent his childhood in a large family that belonged to the noble class. He was the second of seven children. The father of the family, Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky, worked in a hospital for the poor. Mother - Maria Fedorovna Dostoevskaya (maiden name - Nechaeva) came from a merchant family. When Fedor was 16 years old, his mother suddenly dies. The father is forced to send his older sons to K.F. Kostomarov's boarding school. From this moment on, the brothers Mikhail and Fyodor Dostoevsky settled in St. Petersburg.

Life and work of the writer by dates

1837

This date in Dostoevsky’s biography was very difficult. The mother dies, Pushkin, whose work plays a very important role in the fate of both brothers at that time, dies in a duel. In the same year, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky moved to St. Petersburg and entered the military engineering school. Two years later, the writer's father is killed by serfs. In 1843, the author took on the translation and publication of Balzac’s work, “Eugenie Grande.”

During his studies, Dostoevsky often read works such as foreign poets- Homer, Corneille, Balzac, Hugo, Goethe, Hoffmann, Schiller, Shakespeare, Byron, and Russians - Derzhavin, Lermontov, Gogol and, of course, Pushkin.

1844

This year can be considered the beginning of numerous stages in Dostoevsky’s work. It was in this year that Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote his first work, “Poor People” (1844-1845), which, upon release, immediately brought fame to the author. Dostoevsky's novel "Poor People" was highly appreciated by V. Belinsky and Nikolai Nekrasov. However, if the content of the novel “Poor People” was well received by the public, then the very next work encounters misunderstanding. The story “The Double” (1845-1846) does not evoke absolutely any emotions, and is even criticized.

In January-February 1846, Dostoevsky met Ivan Goncharov in the literary salon of the critic N. A. Maikov.

1849

December 22, 1849 – a turning point in life Dostoevsky, because he is sentenced to execution this year. The author is brought to trial in the “Petrashevsky case”, and on December 22 the court pronounces the death penalty. Much appears in a new light for the writer, but at the last moment, before the execution itself, the sentence is changed to a more lenient one - hard labor. Dostoevsky tries to put almost all his feelings into the monologue of Prince Myshkin from the novel “The Idiot”.

By the way, Grigoriev, also sentenced to execution, cannot withstand the psychological stress and goes crazy.

1850 – 1854

During this period, Dostoevsky's work subsided due to the fact that the writer was serving his sentence in exile in Omsk. Immediately after serving his term, in 1854, Dostoevsky was sent to the seventh linear Siberian battalion as an ordinary soldier. Here he meets Chokan Valikhanov (a famous Kazakh traveler and ethnographer) and Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva (the wife of a former government official special assignments), with whom his romance begins.

1857

After the death of Maria Dmitrievna's husband, Dostoevsky marries her. During his stay in hard labor and during military service, the writer greatly changes his worldview. Early creativity Dostoevsky was not subject to any dogmas or rigid ideals; after the events that occurred, the author becomes extremely pious and acquires his life ideal - Christ. In 1859, Dostoevsky, along with his wife and adopted son Pavel, left his place of service - the city of Semipalatinsk, and moved to St. Petersburg. He remains under unofficial surveillance.

1860 – 1866

Together with his brother Mikhail, he works in the magazine “Time”, then in the magazine “Epoch”. During the same period, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky wrote “Notes from the Dead House”, “Notes from the Underground”, “Humiliated and Insulted”, “Winter Notes on summer impressions" In 1864, Dostoevsky's brother Mikhail and Dostoevsky's wife died. He often loses at roulette and gets into debt. The money runs out very quickly and the writer is going through a difficult period. At this time, Dostoevsky was composing the novel “Crime and Punishment,” which he wrote one chapter at a time and immediately sent to the magazine set. In order not to lose rights to own works(in favor of the publisher F. T. Stellovsky), Fyodor Mikhailovich is forced to write the novel “The Gambler”. However, he does not have enough strength for this, and he is forced to hire stenographer Anna Grigorievna Snitkina. By the way, the novel “The Gambler” was written in exactly 21 days in 1866. In 1867, Snitkina-Dostoevskaya accompanies the writer abroad, where he goes so as not to lose all the money received for the novel Crime and Punishment. His wife keeps a diary about their journey together and helps arrange his financial well-being, taking all economic issues onto her shoulders.

Last years of life. Death and legacy

This last period in Dostoevsky's life there is a lot of fruitful for his work. Starting this year, Dostoevsky and his wife settled in the city Staraya Russa, located in the Novgorod province. In the same year, Dostoevsky wrote the novel “Demons.” A year later, “A Writer’s Diary” appeared, in 1875 – the novel “Teenager”, 1876 – the story “The Meek One”. In 1878, a significant event took place in Dostoevsky’s life; Emperor Alexander II invited him to his place and introduced him to his family. In two last year During his life (1879-1880), the writer created one of his best and most important works - the novel The Brothers Karamazov.
On January 28 (new style - February 9), 1881, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky dies due to a sharp exacerbation of emphysema. This happened after a scandal with the writer’s sister, Vera Mikhailovna, who asked her brother to give up his inheritance - an estate inherited from his aunt A.F. Kumanina.
The eventful biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky shows that the author received recognition during his lifetime. However, his works achieved their greatest success after his death. Even the great Friedrich Nietzsche admitted that Dostoevsky was the only psychological author who became partly his teacher. The Dostoevsky Museum was opened in St. Petersburg in the building in which the writer’s apartment was located. Analysis of Dostoevsky's works has been carried out by many critical writers. As a result, Fyodor Mikhailovich was recognized as one of the greatest Russian philosophical writers who touched on the most pressing issues of life.

Chronological table

Other biography options

• Vladimir Ilyich Lenin called Dostoevsky “very nasty” because of his attitude towards the “lawless” revolutionaries. It was them who Fyodor Mikhailovich depicted in his famous novel “Demons,” calling them demons and swindlers.
• During a short stay in Tobolsk, on the way to hard labor in Omsk, Dostoevsky was given the Gospel. All the time in exile he read this book and did not part with it until the end of his life.
• The writer's life was overshadowed by a constant lack of money, illness, caring for a large family and growing debts. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote almost all his life on credit, that is, on an advance taken from the publisher. In such conditions, the writer did not always have enough time to develop and hone his works.
• Dostoevsky was very fond of St. Petersburg, which he showed in many of his works. Sometimes there are even accurate descriptions of places in this city. For example, in his novel Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov hid the murder weapon in one of the courtyards, which actually exists in St. Petersburg.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich - famous writer. Born on October 30, 1821 in Moscow in the building of the Mariinsky Hospital, where his father served as a staff physician.

Father, Mikhail Andreevich (1789-1839), was a doctor (head doctor) at the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, and in 1828 received the title of hereditary nobleman. In 1831 he acquired the village of Darovoye, Kashira district, Tula province, in 1833 neighboring village Chermoshnya. In raising his children, the father was an independent, educated, caring family man, but had a quick-tempered and suspicious character. After the death of his wife in 1837, he retired and settled in Darovo. According to documents, he died of apoplexy; according to the memories of relatives and oral traditions, was killed by his peasants.

In contrast to him was his mother, Maria Feodorovna, who dearly loved all her seven children. Big influence The nanny, Alena Frolovna, influenced the formation of Dostoevsky’s personality. It was she who told the children fairy tales about Russian heroes and the Firebird.

There were six more children in the Dostoevsky family, Fyodor was the second child. He grew up in a harsh environment, over which the gloomy spirit of his father hovered. Children were brought up in fear and obedience, which influenced the biography of Dostoevsky. Rarely leaving the walls of the hospital building, they communicated with the outside world only through the sick, with whom they sometimes spoke secretly from their father. Dostoevsky’s brightest childhood memories are associated with the village - the small estate of his parents in the Tula province. Since 1832, the family spent the summer months there every year, usually without a father, and the children had almost complete freedom there, which positively influenced the biography of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

In 1832, Dostoevsky and his older brother Mikhail began studying with teachers who came to the house, from 1833 they studied at the boarding house of N. I. Drashusov (Sushara), then at the boarding house of L. I. Chermak. Atmosphere educational institutions and isolation from the family caused a painful reaction in Dostoevsky (cf. the autobiographical features of the hero of the novel “The Teenager,” who experiences deep moral upheavals in the “Tushar boarding house”). At the same time, the years of study were marked by an awakened passion for reading.

1837 - important date for Dostoevsky. This is the year of his mother’s death, the year of Pushkin’s death, which he and his brother have read since childhood, the year of moving to St. Petersburg and entering the military engineering school, which Dostoevsky will graduate in 1843. In 1839, he receives news of the massacre of his father. A year before leaving his military career, Dostoevsky first translated and published Balzac’s “Eugenie Grande” (1843).

He began his creative career with the story “Poor People” (1846), which was commendably received by N. Nekrasov and V. Belinsky, they liked the tragedy depicted in it little man. The story brought popularity to the author; he was compared to Gogol. There was an acquaintance with I. Turgenev. But his following works: the psychological story “The Double” (1846), fantastic story“The Mistress” (1847), the lyrical “White Nights” (1848), the dramatic “Netochka Nezvanova” (1849), were coolly received by critics who did not accept his innovation and desire to penetrate the secrets of human character. Dostoevsky experienced negative reviews very painfully and began to move away from I. Turgenev and N. Nekrasov.

Shortly after the publication of White Nights, the writer was arrested (1849) in connection with the “Petrashevsky case.” Although Dostoevsky denied the charges against him, the court recognized him as “one of the most important criminals.” The trial and harsh sentence to death (December 22, 1849) on the Semenovsky parade ground was framed as a mock execution. At the last moment, the convicts were given a pardon and sentenced to hard labor. One of those sentenced to execution, Grigoriev, went crazy. Dostoevsky conveyed the feelings that he might experience before his execution in the words of Prince Myshkin in one of the monologues in the novel “The Idiot.”

Dostoevsky spent the next 4 years in hard labor in Omsk. In 1854, for good behavior, he was released from hard labor and sent as a private to the seventh linear Siberian battalion. He served in the fortress in Semipalatinsk and rose to the rank of lieutenant. Here he began an affair with Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, the wife of a former official on special assignments, who at the time of their acquaintance was an unemployed drunkard. In 1857, shortly after her husband's death, he married a 33-year-old widow. It was the period of imprisonment and military service that was a turning point in Dostoevsky’s life: from a still undecided “seeker of truth in man” in life, he turned into a deeply religious person, whose only ideal for the rest of his life was Christ.

In 1859 he received permission to live in Tver, then in St. Petersburg. At this time, he published the stories “Uncle’s Dream”, “The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants” (1859), and the novel “The Humiliated and Insulted” (1861). Nearly ten years of physical and moral suffering sharpened Dostoevsky's sensitivity to human suffering, intensifying his intense quest for social justice. These years became for him years of spiritual turning point, the collapse of socialist illusions, and growing contradictions in his worldview.

In 1861, Dostoevsky, together with his brother Mikhail, began publishing the magazine "Time". In 1863, the magazine was banned, and in 1864 they created a new publication, “Epoch,” which existed until 1865. This period of Dostoevsky's biography is relatively calm, except for persecution by censorship. He managed to travel - in 1862 he visited France, Great Britain, and Switzerland.

Back in 1862, Dostoevsky fell in love with Appolinaria Suslova, who reciprocated the feelings of the former political exile. She was an ardent and active nature, who managed to awaken in Dostoevsky feelings that he considered long dead. Dostoevsky proposes to Suslova, but she runs abroad with someone else. Dostoevsky rushes after her, catches up with his beloved in Paris and travels with Appolinaria throughout Europe for two months. But Dostoevsky’s irrepressible passion for roulette destroyed this connection - once the writer managed to lose even Suslova’s jewelry.

1864 brought heavy losses to Dostoevsky. On April 15, his wife died of consumption. The personality of Maria Dmitrievna, as well as the circumstances of their “unhappy” love, were reflected in many of Dostoevsky’s works (in the images of Katerina Ivanovna - “Crime and Punishment” and Nastasya Filippovna - “Idiot”) On June 10, M.M. died. Dostoevsky.

In 1864, “Notes from the Underground” was written, an important work for understanding the writer’s changed worldview. In 1865, while abroad, in the resort of Wiesbaden, to improve his health, the writer began work on the novel Crime and Punishment (1866), which reflected the entire complex path of his inner quest.

In January 1866, the novel “Crime and Punishment” began to be published in the Russian Messenger. This was the long-awaited world fame and recognition. During this period, the writer invited a stenographer to work - a young girl, Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, who in 1867 became his wife, becoming his close and devoted friend. But due to large debts and pressure from creditors, Dostoevsky was forced to leave Russia and go to Europe, where he stayed from 1867 to 1871. During this period the novel “The Idiot” was written.

Dostoevsky spent the last years of his life in the city of Staraya Russa, Novgorod province. These eight years became the most fruitful in the writer's life: 1872 - "Demons", 1873 - the beginning of the "Diary of a Writer" (a series of feuilletons, essays, polemical notes and passionate journalistic notes on the topic of the day), 1875 "Teenager", 1876 - "Meek ", 1879-1880 - "The Brothers Karamazov". At the same time, two events became significant for Dostoevsky. In 1878, Emperor Alexander II invited the writer to introduce him to his family, and in 1880, just a year before his death, Dostoevsky gave a famous speech at the unveiling of a monument to Pushkin in Moscow.

Beginning of 1881 - the writer talks about his plans for the future: he is going to resume “The Diary”, and in a few years write the second part of “The Karamazovs”. But these plans were not destined to come true. The writer’s health deteriorated, and on January 28 (February 9, n.s.) 1881, Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg. He was buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky born October 30 (November 11), 1821. The writer's father came from ancient family Rtishchev, descendants of the defender of the Orthodox faith of South-Western Rus' Daniil Ivanovich Rtishchev. For his special successes, he was given the village of Dostoevo (Podolsk province), where the Dostoevsky surname originates.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the Dostoevsky family became impoverished. The writer's grandfather, Andrei Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, served as an archpriest in the town of Bratslav, Podolsk province. The writer's father, Mikhail Andreevich, graduated from the Medical-Surgical Academy. In 1812, during Patriotic War, he fought against the French, and in 1819 he married the daughter of a Moscow merchant, Maria Fedorovna Nechaeva. After retiring, Mikhail Andreevich decided to take the position of doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, which was nicknamed Bozhedomka in Moscow.

The Dostoevsky family's apartment was located in a wing of the hospital. In the right wing of Bozhedomka, allocated to the doctor as a government apartment, Fyodor Mikhailovich was born. The writer's mother came from a merchant family. Pictures of instability, illness, poverty, premature deaths are the child’s first impressions, under the influence of which the future writer’s unusual view of the world was formed.

The Dostoevsky family, which eventually grew to nine people, huddled in two rooms in the front room. The writer's father, Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky, was a hot-tempered and suspicious person. Mother, Maria Fedorovna, was of a completely different type: kind, cheerful, economical. The relationship between the parents was built on complete submission to the will and whims of father Mikhail Fedorovich. The writer's mother and nanny sacredly revered religious traditions, raising children with deep respect for the Orthodox faith. Fyodor Mikhailovich's mother died early, at the age of 36. She was buried at the Lazarevskoye cemetery.

The Dostoevsky family attached great importance to science and education. Fyodor Mikhailovich at an early age found joy in learning and reading books. At first it was folk tales Arina Arkhipovna's nannies, then Zhukovsky and Pushkin - his mother's favorite writers. At an early age, Fyodor Mikhailovich met the classics of world literature: Homer, Cervantes and Hugo. Father arranged in the evenings family reading“History of the Russian State” N.M. Karamzin.

In 1827, the writer’s father, Mikhail Andreevich, for excellent and diligent service, was awarded the Order of St. Anna, 3rd degree, and a year later he was awarded the rank of collegiate assessor, which gave the right to hereditary nobility. He knew well the value of higher education, so he strove to seriously prepare his children for entering higher educational institutions.

In his childhood, the future writer experienced a tragedy that left an indelible mark on his soul for the rest of his life. With sincere childish feelings, he fell in love with a nine-year-old girl, the daughter of a cook. In one of summer days a cry was heard in the garden. Fedya ran out into the street and saw that this girl was lying on the ground in a torn white dress, and some women were bending over her. From their conversation, he realized that the tragedy was caused by a drunken tramp. They sent for her father, but his help was not needed: the girl died.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky received his primary education in a private Moscow boarding school. In 1838 he entered the Main Engineering School in St. Petersburg, which he graduated in 1843 with the title of military engineer.

The Engineering School in those years was considered one of the best educational institutions in Russia. It is no coincidence that many wonderful people came from there. Among Dostoevsky's classmates there were many talented people who later became outstanding personalities: the famous writer Dmitry Grigorovich, the artist Konstantin Trutovsky, the physiologist Ilya Sechenov, the organizer of the Sevastopol defense Eduard Totleben, the hero of Shipka Fyodor Radetsky. The school taught both special and humanitarian disciplines: Russian literature, domestic and world history, civil architecture and drawing.

Dostoevsky preferred solitude to the noisy student society. His favorite pastime was reading. Dostoevsky's erudition amazed his comrades. He read the works of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Hoffmann, and Balzac. However, the desire for solitude and loneliness was not an innate trait of his character. As an ardent, enthusiastic nature, he was in a constant search for new impressions. But at the school, he experienced first-hand the tragedy of the “little man’s” soul. Most The students in this educational institution were children of the highest military and bureaucratic bureaucracy. Wealthy parents spared no expense for their children and generously gifted teachers. In this environment, Dostoevsky looked like a “black sheep” and was often subjected to ridicule and insults. For several years, a feeling of wounded pride flared up in his soul, which was later reflected in his work.

However, despite ridicule and humiliation, Dostoevsky managed to gain the respect of both teachers and schoolmates. Over time, they all became convinced that he was a man of outstanding abilities and extraordinary intelligence.

During his studies, Dostoevsky was influenced by Ivan Nikolaevich Shidlovsky, a graduate of Kharkov University who served in the Ministry of Finance. Shidlovsky wrote poetry and dreamed of literary fame. He believed in the enormous, world-transforming power of the poetic word and argued that all great poets were “builders” and “world creators.” In 1839, Shidlovsky unexpectedly left St. Petersburg and left for an unknown direction. Later, Dostoevsky found out that he had gone to the Valuysky monastery, but then, on the advice of one of the wise elders, he decided to perform a “Christian feat” in the world, among his peasants. He began to preach the Gospel and achieved great success in this field. Shidlovsky, a religious romantic thinker, became the prototype of Prince Myshkin and Alyosha Karamazov, heroes who have occupied a special place in world literature.

On July 8, 1839, the writer’s father died suddenly from an apoplexy. There were rumors that he did not die a natural death, but was killed by men for his tough temper. This news greatly shocked Dostoevsky, and he suffered his first seizure - a harbinger of epilepsy - a serious illness from which the writer suffered for the rest of his life.

On August 12, 1843, Dostoevsky completed a full course of science in the upper officer class and was enlisted in the engineering corps of the St. Petersburg engineering team, but he did not serve there for long. On October 19, 1844, he decided to resign and devote himself to literary creativity. Dostoevsky had a passion for literature for a long time. After graduating, he began translating the works of foreign classics, in particular Balzac. Page after page, he became deeply involved in the train of thought, in the movement of images of the great French writer. He liked to imagine himself as some famous romantic hero, most often Schiller's... But in January 1845, Dostoevsky experienced an important event, which he later called “the vision on the Neva.” Returning to one of winter evenings home from Vyborgskaya, he “cast a piercing glance along the river” into the “frosty, muddy distance.” And then it seemed to him that “this whole world, with all its inhabitants, strong and weak, with all their dwellings, beggars’ shelters or gilded chambers, in this twilight hour resembles a fantastic dream, a dream, which, in turn, immediately will disappear, disappear into steam towards the dark blue sky.” And at that very moment, a “completely new world” opened up before him, some strange “completely prosaic” figures. “Not Don Carlos and Poses at all,” but “quite titular advisers.” And “another story loomed, in some dark corners, some titular heart, honest and pure... and with it some girl, offended and sad.” And his “heart was deeply torn by their whole story.”

A sudden revolution took place in Dostoevsky’s soul. The heroes, so dearly loved by him just recently, who lived in the world of romantic dreams, were forgotten. The writer looked at the world with a different look, through the eyes of “little people” - a poor official, Makar Alekseevich Devushkin and his beloved girl, Varenka Dobroselova. This is how the idea of ​​the novel arose in the letters of “Poor People,” Dostoevsky’s first work of fiction. Then followed the novellas and short stories “The Double”, “Mr. Prokharchin”, “The Mistress”, “White Nights”, “Netochka Nezvanova”.

In 1847, Dostoevsky became close to Mikhail Vasilyevich Butashevich-Petrashevsky, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, passionate fan and propagandist Fourier, and began to attend his famous “Fridays”. Here he met the poets Alexei Pleshcheev, Apollon Maikov, Sergei Durov, Alexander Palm, prose writer Mikhail Saltykov, young scientists Nikolai Mordvinov and Vladimir Milyutin. At meetings of the Petrashevites circle, the latest socialist teachings and programs for revolutionary coups were discussed. Dostoevsky was among the supporters of the immediate abolition of serfdom in Russia. But the government became aware of the existence of the circle, and on April 23, 1849, thirty-seven of its members, including Dostoevsky, were arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. They were tried by military law and sentenced to death, but by order of the emperor the sentence was commuted, and Dostoevsky was exiled to Siberia for hard labor.

On December 25, 1849, the writer was shackled, seated in an open sleigh and sent to long journey... It took sixteen days to get to Tobolsk in forty-degree frosts. Remembering his journey to Siberia, Dostoevsky wrote: “I was frozen to my heart.”

In Tobolsk, the Petrashevites were visited by the wives of the Decembrists Natalia Dmitrievna Fonvizina and Praskovya Egorovna Annenkova - Russian women whose spiritual feat was admired by all of Russia. They presented each condemned person with a Gospel, in the binding of which money was hidden. The prisoners were forbidden to have their own money, and the insight of their friends to some extent at first made it easier for them to endure the harsh situation in the Siberian prison. This eternal book, the only one allowed in the prison, was kept by Dostoevsky all his life, like a shrine.

At hard labor, Dostoevsky realized how far the speculative, rationalistic ideas of the “new Christianity” were from that “heartfelt” feeling of Christ, the true bearer of which is the people. From here Dostoevsky brought out a new “symbol of faith”, which was based on the people’s feeling for Christ, the people’s type of Christian worldview. “This symbol of faith is very simple,” he said, “to believe that there is nothing more beautiful, deeper, more sympathetic, more intelligent, more courageous and more perfect than Christ, and not only is there not, but with jealous love I tell myself that it cannot be... »

For the writer, four years of hard labor gave way to military service: from Omsk, Dostoevsky was escorted under escort to Semipalatinsk. Here he served as a private, then received an officer rank. He returned to St. Petersburg only at the end of 1859. A spiritual search began for new ways of social development in Russia, which ended in the 60s with the formation of Dostoevsky’s so-called soil-based beliefs. Since 1861, the writer, together with his brother Mikhail, began publishing the magazine “Time”, and after its ban, the magazine “Epoch”. Working on magazines and new books, Dostoevsky developed his own view of the tasks of a Russian writer and public figure - a unique, Russian version of Christian socialism.

In 1861, Dostoevsky’s first novel, written after hard labor, was published, “The Humiliated and Insulted,” which expressed the author’s sympathy for the “little people” who were subjected to incessant insults. powerful of the world this. Huge public importance acquired “Notes from the House of the Dead” (1861-1863), conceived and begun by Dostoevsky while still in hard labor. In 1863, the magazine “Time” published “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions,” in which the writer criticized the political belief systems of Western Europe. In 1864, “Notes from the Underground” was published - a kind of confession by Dostoevsky, in which he renounced his previous ideals, love for man, and faith in the truth of love.

In 1866, the novel “Crime and Punishment” was published - one of the most significant novels of the writer, and in 1868 - the novel “The Idiot”, in which Dostoevsky tried to create the image of a positive hero opposing the cruel world of predators. Dostoevsky's novels “The Demons” (1871) and “The Teenager” (1879) became widely known. The last piece that sums it up creative activity writer, became the novel “The Brothers Karamazov” (1879-1880). The main character of this work, Alyosha Karamazov, helping people in their troubles and alleviating their suffering, becomes convinced that the most important thing in life is a feeling of love and forgiveness. On January 28 (February 9), 1881, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg.

1821 1881 Russian writer.

Russian writer, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1877). In the stories “Poor People” (1846), “White Nights” (1848), “Netochka Nezvanova” (1846, unfinished) and others, he described the suffering of the “little man” as a social tragedy. In the story "The Double" (1846) he gave psychological analysis split consciousness. A member of M. V. Petrashevsky's circle, Dostoevsky was arrested in 1849 and sentenced to death, commuted to hard labor (1850 54) with subsequent service as a private. In 1859 he returned to St. Petersburg. “Notes from the House of the Dead” (1861 62) about the tragic destinies and dignity of a person in hard labor. Together with his brother M. M. Dostoevsky, he published the “soil” magazines “Time” (1861 63) and “Epoch” (1864 65). In the novels “Crime and Punishment” (1866), “The Idiot” (1868), “Demons” (1871 72), “Teenager” (1875), “The Brothers Karamazov” (1879 80) and others, there is a philosophical understanding of the social and the spiritual crisis of Russia, the dialogic clash of original personalities, the passionate search for social and human harmony, deep psychologism and tragedy. Journalistic "Diary of a Writer" (1873 81). Dostoevsky's work had a powerful influence on Russian and world literature.

Biography

Born on October 30 (November 11, new year) in Moscow in the family of the staff doctor of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. Father, Mikhail Andreevich, nobleman; mother, Maria Fedorovna, from an old Moscow merchant family.

He received an excellent education at the private boarding school of L. Chermak, one of the best in Moscow. The family loved to read and subscribed to the magazine “Library for Reading,” which made it possible to get acquainted with the latest foreign literature. Of the Russian authors, they loved Karamzin, Zhukovsky, and Pushkin. The mother, a religious nature, introduced the children to the Gospel from a young age and took them on pilgrimages to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

Having had a hard time with the death of his mother (1837), Dostoevsky, by the decision of his father, entered the St. Petersburg Military Engineering School, one of the best educational institutions of that time. New life was given to him with great effort, nerves, and ambition. But there was another life - internal, hidden, unknown to others.

In 1839, his father unexpectedly died. This news shocked Dostoevsky and provoked a severe nervous attack - a harbinger of future epilepsy, to which he had a hereditary predisposition.

He graduated from college in 1843 and was enlisted in the drafting department of the engineering department. A year later he retired, convinced that his calling was literature.

Dostoevsky's first novel, Poor People, was written in 1845 and published by Nekrasov in the Petersburg Collection (1846). Belinsky proclaimed "the emergence... of an extraordinary talent...".

Belinsky rated the stories “The Double” (1846) and “The Mistress” (1847) lower, noting the lengthiness of the narrative, but Dostoevsky continued to write in his own way, disagreeing with the critic’s assessment.

Later "White Nights" (1848) and "Netochka Nezvanova" (1849) were published, which revealed features of Dostoevsky's realism that distinguished him from among writers " natural school": in-depth psychologism, exclusivity of characters and situations.

Successfully started literary activity ends tragically. Dostoevsky was one of the members of the Petrashevsky circle, which united adherents of French utopian socialism (Fourier, Saint-Simon). In 1849, for participating in this circle, the writer was arrested and sentenced to death, which was later replaced by four years of hard labor and settlement in Siberia.

After the death of Nicholas I and the beginning of the liberal reign of Alexander II, the fate of Dostoevsky, like many political criminals, was softened. His noble rights were returned to him, and in 1859 he retired with the rank of second lieutenant (in 1849, standing at the scaffold, he heard a rescript: “... a retired lieutenant... in hard labor in fortresses for... 4 years, and then as a private").

In 1859 Dostoevsky received permission to live in Tver, then in St. Petersburg. At this time, he published the stories "Uncle's Dream", "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants" (1859), and the novel "The Humiliated and Insulted" (1861). Almost ten years of physical and moral torment sharpened Dostoevsky's sensitivity to human suffering, intensifying his intense search for social justice. These years became for him years of spiritual turning point, the collapse of socialist illusions, and growing contradictions in his worldview. He actively participated in the public life of Russia, opposed the revolutionary democratic program of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, rejecting the theory of “art for art’s sake,” asserting the social value of art.

After hard labor, "Notes from the House of the Dead" was written. The writer spent the summer months of 1862 and 1863 abroad, visiting Germany, England, France, Italy and other countries. He believed that the historical path that Europe took after the French Revolution of 1789 would be disastrous for Russia, as well as the introduction of new bourgeois relations, the negative features of which shocked him during his trips to Western Europe. Russia’s special, original path to “earthly paradise” is Dostoevsky’s socio-political program in the early 1860s.

In 1864, “Notes from the Underground” was written, an important work for understanding the writer’s changed worldview. In 1865, while abroad, in the resort of Wiesbaden, to improve his health, the writer began work on the novel Crime and Punishment (1866), which reflected the entire complex path of his inner quest.

In 1867, Dostoevsky married Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, his stenographer, who became a close and devoted friend to him.

Soon they went abroad: they lived in Germany, Switzerland, Italy (1867 71). During these years, the writer worked on the novels “The Idiot” (1868) and “Demons” (1870 71), which he finished in Russia. In May 1872, the Dostoevskys left St. Petersburg for the summer for Staraya Rusa, where they subsequently bought a modest dacha and lived here with their two children even in winter. The novels “The Teenager” (1874 75) and “The Brothers Karamazov” (1880) were written almost entirely in Staraya Russa.

Since 1873, the writer became the executive editor of the magazine "Citizen", on the pages of which he began to publish "The Diary of a Writer", which at that time was a life teacher for thousands of Russian people.

At the end of May 1880, Dostoevsky came to Moscow for the opening of the monument to A. Pushkin (June 6, on the birthday of the great poet), where all of Moscow gathered. Turgenev, Maikov, Grigorovich and other Russian writers were here. Dostoevsky's speech was called by Aksakov "a brilliant, historical event."

The writer's health deteriorated, and on January 28 (February 9, n.s.) 1881, Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg. He was buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.