Articles about the language of camp prose. The camp theme in Russian literature of the second half of the twentieth century

UDC 821.161.1

“CAMP PROSE” IN THE CONTEXT OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF THE XX CENTURY: CONCEPT, BOUNDARIES, SPECIFICITY

L. S. Starikova

THE "CAMP PROSE" IN THE CONTEXT OF THE RUSSIAN LITERATURE OF THE 20TH CENTURY:

CONCEPT, FRAMEWORK, SPECIFICITY

The article examines the history of the formation of the idea of ​​camp prose in literary criticism. A definition of this concept and its characteristics are given, based on the study of the works of three works by various writers: “The Resurrection of the Larch” by V. T. Shalamov, “The Zone” by S. D. Dovlatov, “Nomadism to Death” by V. E. Maksimov. Camp prose is a thematic trend in the Russian literary process of the late 50s - 90s. XX century, creating an artistic image of the camp in the creative reflection of writers (eyewitnesses, observers from the outside, those who did not see at all or studied from archives, memories), which has the following features: general themes and problems associated with the existential environment of the camp; autobiographical nature; documentary; historicism; artistic embodiment of the image of the camp; special space (isolation, island, hell); special human psychology, philosophical understanding of a person in a situation of unfreedom; special author's reflection on the text.

The paper describes the history of the formation of the ideas about the camp prose in the scientific literature. The definition of this concept and its characteristics are presentes, based on the study of three creative works of various writers: “The resurrection of the larch” by V. T. Shalamov, “Zone” by S. D. Dovlatov, “The nomadism to death” by V. E. Maksimov . The camp prose is a thematic direction in the Russian literature during the late 1950s - 1990s XX creating an artistic image of the camp in a creative reflection of writers (witnesses, observers, those who never saw camps but studied the archives, memoirs), with the following features: common themes and issues related to existential camp environment; autobiographical character; documentary; historicism; artistic expression of the image of the camp; special space (isolation, island, hell); special human psychology, philosophical understanding of the human situation in captivity; special author's reflection on the text.

Key words: camp prose, “new prose”, reflection, metatext, V. Shalamov, S. Dovlatov, V. Maksimov.

Keywords: camp prose, “new prose”, reflection, metatext, Varlam Shalamov, Sergey Dovlatov, Vladimir Maimov.

The study of works belonging to the thematic direction of camp prose has been carried out since the late 1980s. the following domestic literary scholars: O. V. Vasilyeva, E. Volkova, V. Esipov, L. V. Zharavina, Yu. V. Malova, A. V. Safronov, I. Sukhikh and others, however, a single concept of “camp prose" has not been identified, since the object of research is mainly individual authors or works, without access to the direction as a whole. Therefore, the purpose of our article is to summarize various positions to indicate the boundaries and content of this definition, as well as to identify specific features of the direction.

In Russia, the camp experience of several generations is not sufficiently comprehended and not truly experienced; it is not given as much attention as some researchers would like. According to E. Mikhailik (Australia), “It seems that the main audience of camp literature does not want not only to polemicize, but also to generally face any indirectly expressed statement that the society of which it is a part has fallen out of history and has lost the remnants of social connections, and it itself needs ethical and social evolution.” In Western culture, historians, philosophers, and philologists turn to this topic much more often. “So, in the 90s. XX century In France, an independent movement arose: “aesthetics has disappeared”

"news" (and in relation to the texts of surviving camp prisoners - "the aesthetics of Lazarus"), designed not just to analyze the array of artistic statements about the death camps and the crimes of fascism, but seeking to comprehend the break in sensuality that occurred in the middle of the 20th century in Europe, which experienced a catastrophe." In Poland they study (including in school) works of Polish camp prose, for example, the book “We Were in Auschwitz” by Tadeusz Borowski, Krystyn Olszewski and Janusz Nel Siedlecki, published in Munich in 1946. Although the tendency towards oblivion can be seen in Poland as well , since in 2015 “Russia did not receive an official invitation to the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz from the Polish side: the event was made non-state.” D. A. Ardamatskaya noted the importance of overcoming transcendental experience and the inner essence of writing camp prose: “evidence itself is the most important component of the reflection of catastrophic experience, resisting historical amnesia.” Reflection and memory of experiences become the basis for writing works that embody the transcendental experience of a person in an absurd reality.

Let us dwell on two review articles devoted to camp prose. In 1989, the first review article by I. Sukhikh appeared. He considers the following works: “Kolyma Tales” by V. T. Sha-

Lamov, “Uninvented” by L. Razgon, “Black Stones” by A. Zhigulin, “Life and Fate” by V. Grossman. The researcher considers all the authors belonging to this direction to be followers of the “new prose” method of V. T. Shalamov, characterizes them as Virgil, and the camp itself as hell, a “house of the dead,” denoting thematic community and philosophical orientation: “Unfolding as an artless autobiographical The “new prose” narrative constantly raises key questions about the nature of man and the human.” Following V. Shalamov, I. Sukhikh uses the term “new prose”. Researcher Yu. V. Malova asserts the beginning of the term camp prose itself in the essay “On Prose” by V. Shalamov. In it, the writer uses the phrase “camp theme,” then the direction began to be called camp prose, perhaps in relation to the concept of convict prose.

In an article from 1996, O. V. Vasilyeva makes an attempt to trace the evolution of the camp theme. She takes A. Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” as the point of opening the topic. Next in line she places V. Shalamov, who “consciously builds on” his predecessor. The researcher considers the narratives of both authors to be extremely similar, only emphasizing the differences in the angle of view on the camp experience: V. Shalamov takes extreme, extreme situations, and Solzhenitsyn takes the “statistically average” political prisoner camp.” The next stage in the development of the theme is “Faithful Ruslan” by G. Vladimov, where the camp is described through the eyes of a guard dog. This author removed the confrontation between the individual and the system, since “the personal beginning of the individual turned out to be so repressed and suppressed by the state that the confrontation “person - state” lost its meaning.” Then O. V. Vasilyeva examines S. Dovlatov’s story “The Zone,” which in modern literature practically completed the camp theme, combining and mixing everything that was connected with the camp in the real and artistic world, including the positions of its predecessors. In general, it is possible to identify what the researcher notes in all writers: the hell and absurdity of camp reality. But she also notes that, in fact, this direction only confirmed the type of the average person, the same as in military and village prose.

In a 2006 work, O. V. Vasilyeva and A. V. Savelyeva separately address the theme of camp in the works of M. Kuraev (the story “Night Watch,” 1988); they consider him, following S. Dovlatov, a writer who introduced ironic a comic perspective on the idea of ​​a person of the Soviet era, revealing in a lighter way the tragedy of the camp issues. M. Kuraev, in their opinion, also refuses to define a person through the concepts of “bad” and “good”, shows his versatility: he “created a model of a multipolar cosmosocium, when the perception, assessment, awareness of any phenomenon depends on many reasons: points vision, visual acuity, beliefs of the perceiver, his desires, his skills, and even the time of day.”

N.V. Ganushchak, studying the work of V.T. Shalamov, designates the poetics of camp prose as a global, all-human theme: “The writer considers the camp as a kind of model of human life, when its age-old collisions and contradictions are brought and aggravated to the extreme limit.”

Yu. V. Malova considers camp prose as a continuation of the tradition of “convict prose” of the 19th century, especially relying on the motifs of F. M. Dostoevsky’s “The House of the Dead”: “Works about the camps of the 20th century. echo the 19th in the depiction of hard labor (camps, exile, prison) as a “House of the Dead,” an earthly hell. The thought of the world-like nature of the camp (hard labor, exile), a copy of the “free” life of Russia, echoes.” Highlights the historicism of this direction.

The continuity of the traditions of camp prose from convict prose is also considered by researcher A. Yu. Mineralov using the example of the reflection of “Notes from the House of the Dead” by F. M. Dostoevsky and “Sakhalin Island”

A. P. Chekhov in the works of the 20th century.

I. V. Nekrasova, summarizing the experience of researchers in a 2003 monograph, in particular the opinion of D. Lekukh, describes two directions of camp prose of the 20th century. A. I. Solzhenitsyn is considered the founder of the “real-historical” direction; he laid the foundation for the second, “existential” direction

B. T. Shalamov. It is distinguished by “the author’s desire to explore “man in a limiting situation.” After Shalamov, according to the researcher, the direction was continued by S. Dovlatov. “The real-historical seeks guilt in the external: in Bolshevism, in the trampling of God, in the distortion of the essence of man - in anything, but not in itself. The existential direction finds the courage to admit: evil is a product of man, it is one of the components of his nature” [cit. from: 18, p. 36]. So D. Lekukh contrasts two directions through the definition of a person and his will to accept responsibility for what happens to him.

I. V. Nekrasova considers the work of V. Shalamov and his “new prose” to be the basis of the “existential” direction. By “new prose” the writer himself understood a specific new method of translating life experience into artistic form, in the words of N. E. Tarkan, this is “Documentary associated with psychologism is one of the remarkable characteristics of Shalamov’s stories, which he called “new” prose ".

M. Mikheev calls the concept of anti-catharsis he proposed as the key point of the “new prose”. “The device consists of the reader obviously transferring himself to the place of the murdered person, or rather, to the place of the unnamed “I” who observed this murder... The author consciously influences the reader’s feelings, forcing him to experience relief for the “I” - but at the same time time and remorse. That is, anti-catharsis is an even more aggravated experience instead of relief, or new anxiety, anxiety, doubt - accompanying local relief." We can find examples of anti-catharsis in the works we are considering. In the cycle “Resurrection of the Larch” by V. T. Shalamov, a striking example is the story “Silence”, where the narrator is glad of the silence,

which came after the suicide of an annoying sectarian who sang psalms and hymns. He does not experience the moment of death, it is already commonplace for the heroes of camp prose, he thinks about the urgent: now he needs to look for a new partner. In “Nomadism to Death” by V. Maksimov, one of the heroes kills a man in order to win back at cards. And for everyone this is a normal event; the camp murder even became a reason for hope to “glue together” the group case and receive an award from the opera Zhdan.

A. V. Safronov, in an article from 2013, examines from an interesting point of view a number of writers of camp prose (I. M. Guberman, D. Yu. Shevchenko, E. V. Limonov), starting from “The Gulag Archipelago” by A. Solzhenitsyn. The researcher reveals the features of the travel genre inherited by camp prose, starting its series from “convict” literature, in particular “Sakhalin Island” by A. P. Chekhov:

“1) “Road”, “path”, “route” in the role of a compositional dominant - the heroes of “camp prose” literally have to make a “journey”: some to Siberia, some to the Far East, some to the Solovetsky Islands...

2) Perception of a prison or camp as a special world, an independent state, an “unknown country.”

3) Narrative “about the natives” (prisoners): history, hierarchy of the “natives” society, gallery of prison and camp types, study of the causes of crimes; relations between “thieves” and “political”, aesthetics and philosophy of life; language, folklore".

A year earlier, the same researcher published a textbook, where a separate chapter is devoted to camp prose of the 2nd half of the 20th century. This manual contains a definition of the direction: “By “camp prose” we understand the thematic branch (current) of Russian artistic and documentary prose, which arose during the “Khrushchev Thaw”, which adopted the traditions of “convict prose” of the 19th century, ... based on the traditions “ ethnographic realism" and the travel genre. In relation to the works of these authors, it is also possible to use the term “essay - crime”. “Camp prose” is presented in the genres of memoirs, diaries, notes, memories, autobiographies.” The emphasis is placed specifically on the traditions of the travel and essay genre, which we cannot agree with, since, first of all, camp prose is a work of fiction. For example, V. Shalamov argued that his stories have nothing to do with the essay: “The prose of “KR” has nothing to do with the essay. Essay pieces are interspersed there for the greater glory of the document, but only here and there each time it is dated and calculated. - Living life is put on paper in completely different ways than in an essay. There are no descriptions in “KR”, no digital material, no conclusions, no journalism. In "KR" the point is in the depiction of new psychological patterns, in the artistic exploration of a terrible topic, and not in the form of "information", not in the collection of facts. Although, of course, any fact in “KR” is irrefutable.”

Let us summarize the key points identified by researchers that characterize the direction

camp prose and which are also reflected in the works we took for analysis.

1. The space of the camp as hell, the “house of the dead,” the absurdity of camp reality (O. V. Vasilyeva, Yu. V. Malova, A. Yu. Mineralov, E. Mikhailik, I. Sukhikh).

2. New information about man and his behavior (N.V. Ga-nushchak, E. Mikhailik, I.V. Nekrasova, I. Sukhikh, N.E. Tarkan).

3. Reflection of the principles of “new prose” derived by V. T. Shalamov (I. V. Nekrasova, I. Sukhikh, N. E. Tarkan).

4. Autobiography (E. Mikhailik, A. V. Safronov, I. Sukhikh).

5. Documentary, historicism (Yu. V. Malova, A. V. Safronov, N. E. Tarkan).

7. The camp as a special world, an island (A. V. Safronov).

Not all of these points are sufficiently detailed; for example, many researchers mention human behavior in the camp reality, but do not specify the characteristic features that manifest themselves in the camp. Only O.V. Vasilyeva specifically states that the works of camp prose show the type of the average person, which we cannot agree with, since in different works a person shows different facets of himself. And in “The Resurrection of the Larch” the main character, who escaped from hell and writes poetry, cannot be considered by us to be an average person. It is also of particular interest to us to explore the reflective nature of camp prose, which is reflected in the metatextual structure of the works we have taken. Turning to the following works of camp prose: “The Resurrection of the Larch” (1965 - 1967) by V. Shalamov, “The Zone” (1964 - 1989) by S. Dovlatov and “Nomadism to Death” (1994) by V. Maksimov, we highlight the artistic image of the zone , embodied by writers with different camp experiences. They were written at different times, belong to different literary movements, the camp experience is shown from different points of view and in different volumes, but they all belong to the thematic direction of camp prose with its characteristic features.

Based on these works, I would like to consider in more detail the general points: the special space of the camp, a person in a situation of unfreedom, the reflexive nature of the narrative.

The camp is another, separate world, an island. Despite the fact that Kolyma is geographically a peninsula and adjacent to the continent, in the artistic world of camp prose it becomes an island separated from the mainland. This is especially clearly manifested in the works of V. Shalamov, which is also noted by some researchers, for example, N. L. Leiderman: “A concentration camp that has replaced the entire country, a country turned into a huge archipelago”; M. Brewer: “It is also often called the “island,” and the rest of the space is the “mainland” or “mainland.” There, on the mainland, they live “at the top”, and by analogy, Kolyma is at the very bottom, “in hell”. In the story “For the Letter,” the main character goes to get

a letter sent to him for the first time in 15 years. He gets to the letter within a few days, travels 500 km, and sells almost all his valuables along the way. And the hero does not even make this difficult journey to freedom, then he will have to return back again. In the story “Boris Yuzhanin” the author explains that “. The central parts of Russia on Kolyma are called “mainland”, although Kolyma is not an island, but a region on the Chukotka Peninsula - but the Sakhalin vocabulary, shipping only by steamships, a multi-day sea route - all this creates the illusion of an island. Psychologically there is no illusion. Kolyma is an island. From there they return to the “mainland”, to the “Mainland”. Both the mainland and the mainland are a dictionary of everyday life: magazine, newspaper, book.”

The image of the camp in these works is described as hell on earth, which has already been confirmed by some researchers, where absurdity becomes the norm of existence, and death moves from an existential concept to the sphere of everyday life. S.D. Dovlatov himself, analyzing his predecessors and their perception of the camp, writes what has become a textbook phrase: “According to Solzhenitsyn, the camp is hell. I think that hell is ourselves.” . But in this case, despite the postmodern character of the “Zone”, Dovlatov’s laughter and acting, his concept is even more depressing: if hell is us, people, everything, then hell is not just a camp, hell is the whole world, besides hostile: “On both sides of the ban spread a single and soulless world.” “The world I found myself in was terrible,” the hero of “The Zone” emphasizes more than once. A camp is a system that operates not only within a specific zone, but also within the country and the whole world.

The experience of the hero of V. Maksimov’s novel “Nomadism to Death” also becomes characteristic in this regard, for whom all the orders of the world at all times are seen only as variants of the camp system, in which guards and prisoners alternate. The whole world is described as a trap for man, the power of nature and the universe dominates him, even the “illuminated camp” looks “like a toy model, hastily assembled by a random hand.” As a result, for the hero the world is a “huge mousetrap” that slams shut, and the only way out of it is death (for the hero - suicide).

In this space, one can trace the special psychology of a person who finds himself in the borderland, trying to understand himself. The key becomes the philosophical understanding of a person in a situation of unfreedom. V. Shalamov in his essay “On Prose” writes that his stories “show new psychological patterns, new behavior in a person reduced to the level of an animal - however, animals are made from the best material and not a single animal endures the torment that a person suffered . New in human behavior, new - despite the huge literature on prisons and imprisonment." In the story “The Thermometer of Grishka Logun,” V. Shalamov emphasizes that power is the main criterion for the corruption of the human soul: “Power is corruption. An unleashed beast hidden in the soul

a person seeks greedy satisfaction of his eternal human essence in beatings and murders.” Another example is the story “Squirrel”, where a crowd of people kills an animal just like that, according to the animal nature of a person thirsting for murder.

According to S. Dovlatov, “Evil is determined by the situation, demand, and the function of its bearer. In addition, there is a factor of chance. An unfortunate coincidence of circumstances. And even - poor aesthetic taste”; “A person changes beyond recognition under the influence of circumstances. And especially in the camp." The situation controls a person’s choice, and evil always exists in him, just like good. A typical example of duality in the “Zone” can be considered the situation with one of the characters - Vokhrovets Yegorov, whose wife could not sleep because of the barking of the camp guard dog. And he just shot the dog. In fact, he committed murder for a good purpose. And the main character himself goes through a difficult path during his service in a criminal camp: from an intellectual with a naive bookish mentality, imbued with romantic motives, to a previously unprecedented fall for him (his meeting with a prostitute). In the last novella, he himself finds himself under escort, becoming a prisoner.

I. Sukhikh, in a monograph dedicated to the work of S. Dovlatov, analyzing the idea of ​​a person in the “Zone”, also speaks about the previous tradition: “Solzhenitsyn is absolutely sure that a person who has preserved God in his soul will endure any torment, overcome, win... A person can be killed, but cannot be broken." According to V. Shalamov, if “a person still retained something in himself, it means that he was simply beaten a little. The educational “environment is stuck” is transformed in Shalamov into the absolute, slavish dependence of a person on a totalitarian whole. Therefore, Shalamov’s stories are “notes from the other world” of a man who never escaped, never returned from hell.” Thus, S. Dovlatov’s position finds itself in some way between two extremes, and “Man to man... how can I put it better - tabula rasa. In other words, anything."

Of the three writers we are considering, V. Maksimov pronounces the most severe sentence on a person, showing a person as essentially weak, helpless in a mousetrap world. He goes further, on the one hand, and turns out to be somewhat similar to S. Dovlatov in the moment of determining the essence of a person depending on circumstances, on the other hand, he agrees with V. Shalamov in the powerlessness of culture (civilization), the loss of which reveals everything base in man. One of the heroes (a doctor in the camp) is sure: “Hungry people are all the same, our culture, dear friend, is so, light makeup on an ordinary monkey does not withstand the first serious test like snow or rain.”

The three writers are also united by the motive of creativity, which reflects reflection on their lives and the history of the country. They interpret not only texts, but also reality, comprehending and experiencing it through artistic images, which allows us to consider these works on a metatextual level.

Firstly, all the main characters of the works we took are writers. The hero of V. Shalamov writes poetry and is a reflection of the author, Shalamov. He is a poet, poetry becomes his salvation, an escape from the hell of reality.

The structure of the “Zone” initially has a metatectonic character: the hero-writer collects his own old short stories into a single whole, and the text is created as if before our eyes. His hero reflects not only on the past, but also in the process of life, which is sometimes reflected in his view of himself from a third person: “When I was beaten near the Ropchinsk timber exchange, my consciousness acted almost calmly: “A man is beaten with boots. It covers the ribs and stomach. He is passive and tries not to arouse the ire of the masses... What, however, vile faces! This Tatar has visible lead fillings...” Terrible things were happening all around."

In “Nomadism to Death” by V. Maksimov, the hero not only reflects on his own life, but is also the author of a historical novel about his father and the history of Russia. The structure itself demonstrates the “text within text” technique. A. V. Baklykov defines the genre of “Nomadization to Death” as a “philological novel”: “The presence of numerous lyrical digressions in the novel “Nomadization to Death” and the use of the “novel within a novel” technique, which the main character allegedly writes, allows us to talk about the importance of the topic creativity, psychology of the creative process, which makes it possible to define the genre variety of a work as a “philological novel”.

Secondly, all three works are constructed as a description of the past through the present, which dictates the reflexivity of the author’s narrative. “Resurrection of the Larch” begins with the story “The Path”, where the events reflect the last years of V. Shalamov’s imprisonment in the camp, and from this point he considers the path from the very beginning of his arrival at the camp (the story “The Pier of Hell”). In S. Dovlatov, the very structure of the construction is presented in the form of letters to the publisher with the appendix of short stories about the experience of the guard in the camp. V. Maksimov’s novel is structured as a sequence of changing descriptions of events of the present and past, interspersed with inserts of a “novel within a novel” by the hero himself, who writes his novel in front of the reader’s eyes, and also comments on it.

Thirdly, creativity becomes the determining vector for the heroes of works of “camp prose,” as well as for the writers themselves, who are experiencing the camp period of their lives by putting it on paper. In “The Resurrection of the Larch,” only creative people who create something new are able to resist destruction. For Sergei Dovlatov, the camp experience became one of the impetus for the beginning of his writing career, and his hero, through creativity, reevaluates his life principles. For the hero of the novel “Nomadism to Death,” creativity is a profession; it helps him maintain himself for some time, but in the end the hero still chooses death.

Let us indicate, perhaps, an incomplete list of writers whose works are included in the circle of camp prose: G. Vladimov, O. Volkov, E. Ginzburg, V. Grossman, S. D. Dovlatov, A. Zhigulin, V. Kress, M. Kuraev, V. E. Maksimov, L. Razgon, A. Sinyavsky, A. I. Solzhenitsyn, V. T. Shalamov.

Based on the analysis of studies devoted to camp prose and the works we took as an example (“Resurrection of the Larch” by V. Shalamov, “The Zone” by S. Dovlatov and “Nomadism to Death” by V. Maksimov), as well as a comparison of the conclusions obtained, we will try give a definition of the concept of “camp prose”.

So, camp prose is a thematic trend that manifested itself in the development of the Russian literary process in the late 50s - 90s. XX century, creating an artistic image of the camp in the creative reflection of writers (eyewitnesses, observers from the outside, those who did not see at all or studied from archives, memories), with the characteristic features inherent in it.

1. General themes and issues: prison, zone/camp, the Gulag system as a whole, lack of freedom, existential motives, perception of death and life, material and spiritual.

2. The autobiographical nature of the narrative, which is due to the personal experience of the writers.

3. Documentary and connection with history (the camps existed and developed in a certain historical period), but documentary is more poetic, an artistically embodied document about a person and his feelings.

4. Specificity of descriptions, everyday perception of reality (as a consequence of documentation).

5. An artistic image of the camp, recreated in individual author’s pictures of the world.

6. Special space: the camp is like an island, separated from the mainland, Moscow and free life; the image of the zone as hell, a “dead house”; the image of the camp as an unnecessary existence with inverted value concepts.

7. The special psychology of a person who finds himself in the borderland, trying to understand the “new” world order and preserve individual traits, his own borders; philosophical understanding of man in a situation of unfreedom.

I would like to note that we do not pretend to be unique in the characteristics we have given, since our material does not fill the entire direction of camp prose, but many features are reflected in the works of other authors who have not been considered by us.

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25. Shalamov V. T. Resurrection of larch // Shalamov V. T. Collected works: in 6 volumes + volume 7, add. T. 2: Essays on the criminal world; Resurrection of larch; Glove, or KR-2; Anna Ivanovna: Play / comp. ready-made text, approx. I. Sirotinskaya. M.: Book Club Knigovek, 2013. P. 105 - 280.

26. Shalamov V. T. About prose // Shalamov V. T. Collected works: in 6 volumes + volume 7, add. T. 5: Essays and notes; Notebooks 1954 - 1979 / comp. prepared text, approx. I. Sirotinskaya. M.: Book Club Knigovek, 2013. pp. 144 - 157.

Starikova Lyudmila Semenovna - applicant for the Department of Journalism and Russian Literature of the 20th Century at Kemerovo State University, [email protected].

Lyudmila S. Starikova - post-graduate student at the Department of Journalism and Russian Literature of the 20th century, Kemerovo State University.

(Scientific supervisor: Ashcheulova Irina Vladimirovna - Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Journalism and Russian Literature of the 20th Century at KemSU.

Research advisor: Irina V. Ashcheulova - Candidate of Philology, Assistant Professor at the Department of Journalism and Russian Literature of the 20th century, Kemerovo State University).

Depiction of man and camp life in V. Shalamov’s collection “Kolyma Stories”

The existence of a common man in the unbearably harsh conditions of camp life is the main theme of the collection “Kolyma Stories” by Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov. It conveys in a surprisingly calm tone all the sorrows and torments of human suffering. A very special writer in Russian literature, Shalamov was able to convey to our generation all the bitterness of human deprivation and moral loss. Shalamov's prose is autobiographical. He had to endure three terms in the camps for anti-Soviet agitation, 17 years in prison in total. He courageously withstood all the tests fate had prepared for him, was able to survive during this difficult time in these hellish conditions, but fate prepared for him a sad end - being of sound mind and full sanity, Shalamov ended up in an insane asylum, while he continued to write poetry, although I saw and heard poorly.

During Shalamov’s lifetime, only one of his stories, “Stlannik,” was published in Russia. It describes the characteristics of this northern evergreen tree. However, his works were actively published in the West. What's amazing is the height at which they are written. After all, these are real chronicles of hell, conveyed to us in the calm voice of the author. There is no prayer, no scream, no anguish. His stories contain simple, concise phrases, a short summary of the action, and only a few details. They have no background to the lives of the heroes, their past, no chronology, no description of the inner world, no author’s assessment. Shalamov’s stories are devoid of pathos; everything in them is very simple and sparing. The stories contain only the most important things. They are extremely condensed, usually taking only 2-3 pages, with a short title. The writer takes one event, or one scene, or one gesture. In the center of the work there is always a portrait, the executioner or the victim, in some stories both. The last phrase in the story is often compressed, laconic, like a sudden spotlight, it illuminates what happened, blinding us with horror. It is noteworthy that the arrangement of the stories in the cycle is of fundamental importance for Shalamov; they must follow exactly the way he placed them, that is, one after the other.

Shalamov's stories are unique not only in their structure, they have artistic novelty. His detached, rather cold tone gives the prose such an unusual effect. There is no horror in his stories, no overt naturalism, no so-called blood. The horror in them is created by the truth. Moreover, with a truth completely unthinkable given the time in which he lived. “Kolyma Tales” is a terrible evidence of the pain that people caused to other people just like them.

The writer Shalamov is unique in our literature. In his stories, he, as the author, suddenly becomes involved in the narrative. For example, in the story “Sherry Brandy” there is a narration from a dying poet, and suddenly the author himself includes his deep thoughts in it. The story is based on a semi-legend about the death of Osip Mandelstam, which was popular among prisoners in the Far East in the 30s. Sherry-Brandy is both Mandelstam and himself. Shalamov said directly that this is a story about himself, that there is less violation of historical truth here than in Pushkin’s Boris Godunov. He was also dying of hunger, he was on that Vladivostok transit, and in this story he includes his literary manifesto, and talks about Mayakovsky, Tyutchev, Blok, he turns to human erudition, even the name itself refers to this. “Sherry-Brandy” is a phrase from O. Mandelstam’s poem “I’ll tell you from the last one...”. In context it sounds like this:
"...I'll tell you from the last
Directness:
It's all just nonsense, sherry brandy,
My angel…"

The word “bredney” here is an anagram for the word “brandy”, and in general Sherry Brandy is a cherry liqueur. In the story itself, the author conveys to us the feelings of the dying poet, his last thoughts. First, he describes the pitiful appearance of the hero, his helplessness, hopelessness. The poet here dies for so long that he even ceases to understand it. His strength leaves him, and now his thoughts about bread are weakening. Consciousness, like a pendulum, leaves him at times. He then ascends somewhere, then returns again to the harsh present. Thinking about his life, he notes that he was always in a hurry to get somewhere, but now he is glad that there is no need to rush, he can think more slowly. For Shalamov’s hero, the special importance of the actual feeling of life, its value, and the impossibility of replacing this value with any other world becomes obvious. His thoughts rush upward, and now he is talking “... about the great monotony of achievements before death, about what doctors understood and described earlier than artists and poets.” While dying physically, he remains alive spiritually, and gradually the material world disappears around him, leaving room only for the world of inner consciousness. The poet thinks about immortality, considering old age only an incurable disease, only an unsolved tragic misunderstanding that a person could live forever until he gets tired, but he himself is not tired. And lying in the transit barracks, where everyone feels the spirit of freedom, because there is a camp in front, a prison behind, he remembers the words of Tyutchev, who, in his opinion, deserved creative immortality.
"Blessed is he who has visited this world
His moments are fatal.”

The “fatal moments” of the world are correlated here with the death of the poet, where the inner spiritual universe is the basis of reality in “Sherry Brandy.” His death is also the death of the world. At the same time, the story says that “these reflections lacked passion,” that the poet had long been overcome by indifference. He suddenly realized that all his life he had lived not for poetry, but for poetry. His life is an inspiration, and he was glad to realize this now, before his death. That is, the poet, feeling that he is in such a borderline state between life and death, is a witness to these very “fateful minutes.” And here, in his expanded consciousness, the “last truth” was revealed to him, that life is inspiration. The poet suddenly saw that he was two people, one composing phrases, the other discarding the unnecessary. There are also echoes of Shalamov’s own concept here, in which life and poetry are one and the same thing, that you need to discard the world creeping onto paper, leaving what can fit on this paper. Let's return to the text of the story, realizing this, the poet realized that even now he is composing real poems, even if they are not written down, not published - this is just vanity of vanities. “The best thing is that which is not written down, that which was composed and disappeared, melted away without a trace, and only the creative joy that he feels and which cannot be confused with anything, proves that the poem was created, that the beautiful was created.” The poet notes that the best poems are those born unselfishly. Here the hero asks himself whether his creative joy is unmistakable, whether he has made any mistakes. Thinking about this, he remembers Blok’s last poems, their poetic helplessness.

The poet was dying. Periodically, life entered and left him. For a long time he could not see the image in front of him until he realized that it was his own fingers. He suddenly remembered his childhood, a random Chinese passer-by who declared him the owner of a true sign, a lucky man. But now he doesn’t care, the main thing is that he hasn’t died yet. Talking about death, the dying poet remembers Yesenin and Mayakovsky. His strength was leaving him, even the feeling of hunger could not make his body move. He gave the soup to a neighbor, and for the last day his food was only a mug of boiling water, and yesterday’s bread was stolen. He lay there mindlessly until the morning. In the morning, having received his daily bread ration, he dug into it with all his might, feeling neither the scurvy pain nor the bleeding gums. One of his neighbors warned him to save some of the bread for later. "- When later? - he said distinctly and clearly.” Here, with particular depth, with obvious naturalism, the writer describes to us the poet with bread. The image of bread and red wine (Sherry Brandy resembles red wine in appearance) is not accidental in the story. They refer us to biblical stories. When Jesus broke the blessed bread (his body), shared it with others, took the cup of wine (his blood shed for many), and everyone drank from it. All this resonates very symbolically in this story by Shalamov. It is no coincidence that Jesus uttered his words just after he learned about the betrayal; they conceal a certain predestination of imminent death. The boundaries between worlds are erased, and bloody bread here is like a bloody word. It is also noteworthy that the death of a real hero is always public, it always gathers people around, and here a sudden question to the poet from neighbors in misfortune also implies that the poet is a real hero. He is like Christ, dying to gain immortality. Already in the evening, the soul left the pale body of the poet, but the resourceful neighbors kept him for two more days in order to receive bread for him. At the end of the story it is said that the poet thus died earlier than his official date of death, warning that this is an important detail for future biographers. In fact, the author himself is the biographer of his hero. The story “Sherry-Brandy” vividly embodies Shalamov’s theory, which boils down to the fact that a real artist emerges from hell to the surface of life. This is the theme of creative immortality, and the artistic vision here comes down to a double existence: beyond life and within it.

The camp theme in Shalamov's works is very different from the camp theme of Dostoevsky. For Dostoevsky, hard labor was a positive experience. Hard labor restored him, but his hard labor compared to Shalamov’s is a sanatorium. Even when Dostoevsky published the first chapters of Notes from the House of the Dead, censorship forbade him to do so, since a person feels very free there, too easily. And Shalamov writes that the camp is a completely negative experience for a person; not a single person became better after the camp. Shalamov has an absolutely unconventional humanism. Shalamov talks about things that no one has said before him. For example, the concept of friendship. In the story “Dry Rations,” he says that friendship is impossible in the camp: “Friendship is not born either in need or in trouble. Those “difficult” conditions of life that, as fairy tales of fiction tell us, are a prerequisite for the emergence of friendship, are simply not difficult enough. If misfortune and need brought people together and gave birth to friendship, it means that this need is not extreme and the misfortune is not great. Grief is not acute and deep enough if you can share it with friends. In real need, only one’s own mental and physical strength is learned, the limits of one’s capabilities, physical endurance and moral strength are determined.” And he returns to this topic again in another story, “Single Measurement”: “Dugaev was surprised - he and Baranov were not friends. However, with hunger, cold and insomnia, no friendship can be formed, and Dugaev, despite his youth, understood the falsity of the saying about friendship being tested by misfortune and misfortune.” In fact, all those concepts of morality that are possible in everyday life are distorted in the conditions of camp life.

In the story “The Snake Charmer,” the intellectual film scriptwriter Platonov “squeezes novels” to the thieves Fedenka, while reassuring himself that this is better, more noble, than enduring a bucket. Still, here he will awaken interest in the artistic word. He realizes that he still has a good place (at the stew, he can smoke, etc.). At the same time, at dawn, when Platonov, already completely weakened, finished telling the first part of the novel, the criminal Fedenka told him: “Lie here with us. You won't have to sleep much - it's dawn. You'll sleep at work. Gain strength for the evening...” This story shows all the ugliness of relations between prisoners. The thieves here ruled over the rest, they could force anyone to scratch their heels, “squeeze novels”, give up a place on the bunk or take away any thing, otherwise - a noose on the neck. The story “To the Presentation” describes how such thieves stabbed to death one prisoner in order to take away his knitted sweater - the last transfer from his wife before being sent on a long journey, which he did not want to give away. This is the real limit of the fall. At the beginning of the same story, the author conveys “big greetings” to Pushkin - the story begins in Shalamov’s “they were playing cards with the horseman Naumov,” and in Pushkin’s story “The Queen of Spades” the beginning was like this: “Once they were playing cards with the horse guard Narumov.” Shalamov has his own secret game. He keeps in mind the entire experience of Russian literature: Pushkin, Gogol, and Saltykov-Shchedrin. However, he uses it in very measured doses. Here is an unobtrusive and accurate hit right on target. Despite the fact that Shalamov was called the chronicler of those terrible tragedies, he still believed that he was not a chronicler and, moreover, was against teaching life in works. The story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev” shows the motive of freedom and gaining freedom at the expense of one’s life. This is a tradition characteristic of the Russian radical intelligentsia. The connection of times is broken, but Shalamov ties the ends of this thread. But speaking of Chernyshevsky, Nekrasov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, he blamed such literature for inciting social illusions.

Initially, it may seem to a new reader that Shalamov’s “Kolyma Tales” are similar to Solzhenitsyn’s prose, but this is far from the case. Initially, Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn are incompatible - neither aesthetically, nor ideologically, nor psychologically, nor literary and artistically. These are two completely different, incomparable people. Solzhenitsyn wrote: “True, Shalamov’s stories did not satisfy me artistically: in all of them I lacked characters, faces, the past of these persons and some kind of separate outlook on life for each.” And one of the leading researchers of Shalamov’s work, V. Esipov: “Solzhenitsyn clearly sought to humiliate and trample Shalamov.” On the other hand, Shalamov, having highly praised One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, wrote in one of his letters that he strongly disagreed with Ivan Denisovich in terms of the interpretation of the camp, that Solzhenitsyn did not know and did not understand the camp. He is surprised that Solzhenitsyn has a cat near the kitchen. What kind of camp is this? In real camp life, this cat would have been eaten long ago. Or he was also interested in why Shukhov needed a spoon, since the food was so liquid that it could be drunk simply over the side. Somewhere he also said, well, another varnisher appeared, he was sitting on a sharashka. They have the same topic, but different approaches. Writer Oleg Volkov wrote: “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Solzhenitsyn not only did not exhaust the theme of “Russia behind barbed wire”, but represents, albeit talented and original, but still a very one-sided and incomplete attempt to illuminate and comprehend one of the most terrible periods in the history of our country " And one more thing: “The illiterate Ivan Shukhov is in a sense a person belonging to the past - now you don’t often meet an adult Soviet person who would perceive reality so primitively, uncritically, whose worldview would be so limited as that of Solzhenitsyn’s hero.” O. Volkov opposes the idealization of labor in the camp, and Shalamov says that camp labor is a curse and corruption of man. Volkov highly appreciated the artistic side of the stories and wrote: “Shalamov’s characters are trying, unlike Solzhenitsynsky, to comprehend the misfortune that has befallen them, and in this analysis and comprehension lies the enormous significance of the stories under review: without such a process it will never be possible to uproot the consequences of the evil that we have inherited from Stalin's rule." Shalamov refused to become a co-author of “The Gulag Archipelago” when Solzhenitsyn offered him co-authorship. At the same time, the very concept of “The Gulag Archipelago” included the publication of this work not in Russia, but outside its borders. Therefore, in the dialogue that took place between Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov asked, I want to know for whom I am writing. In their work, Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov, when creating artistic and documentary prose, rely on different life experiences and different creative attitudes. This is one of their most important differences.

Shalamov's prose is structured in such a way as to allow a person to experience what he cannot experience for himself. It tells in simple and understandable language about the camp life of ordinary people during that particularly oppressive period of our history. This is what makes Shalamov’s book not a list of horrors, but genuine literature. In essence, this is philosophical prose about a person, about his behavior in unthinkable, inhuman conditions. Shalamov’s “Kolyma Stories” is at the same time a story, a physiological essay, and a study, but first of all it is a memory, which is valuable for this reason, and which must certainly be conveyed to the future generation.

Bibliography:

1. A. I. Solzhenitsyn and Russian culture. Vol. 3. – Saratov, Publishing Center “Science”, 2009.
2. Varlam Shalamov 1907 – 1982: [electronic resource]. URL: http://shalamov.ru.
3. Volkov, O. Varlam Shalamov “Kolyma Tales” // Banner. - 2015. - No. 2.
4. Esipov, V. Provincial disputes at the end of the twentieth century / V. Esipov. – Vologda: Griffin, 1999. - P. 208.
5. Kolyma stories. – M.: Det. Lit., 2009.
6. Minnullin O.R. Intertextual analysis of Varlam Shalamov's story "Sherry Brandy": Shalamov - Mandelstam - Tyutchev - Verlaine // Philological studios. - Krivoy Rog National University. – 2012. – Issue 8. - pp. 223 - 242.
7. Solzhenitsyn, A. With Varlam Shalamov // New World. - 1999. - No. 4. - P. 164.
8. Shalamov, V. Kolyma stories / V. Shalamov. – Moscow: Det. Lit., 2009.
9. Shalamov collection. Vol. 1. Comp. V.V. Esipov. - Vologda, 1994.
10. Shalamov collection: Vol. 3. Comp. V.V. Esipov. - Vologda: Griffin, 2002.
11. Shklovsky E. The truth of Varlam Shalamov // Shalamov V. Kolyma stories. – M.: Det. Lit., 2009.

“CAMP PROSE” - literary works created by former prisoners of places of detention. It is generated by an intense spiritual desire to comprehend the results of the catastrophic events that took place in the country during the twentieth century. Hence the moral and philosophical potential contained in the books of former Gulag prisoners I. Solonevich, B. Shiryaev, O. Volkov, A. Solzhenitsyn, V. Shalamov, A. Zhigulin, L. Borodin and others, whose personal creative experience allowed them not only to capture the horror of the Gulag dungeons, but also to touch upon the “eternal” problems of human existence.
Naturally, in their creative quests, representatives of “camp prose” could not ignore the artistic and philosophical experience of Dostoevsky, the author of “Notes from the House of the Dead.” It is no coincidence that in the books of A. Solzhenitsyn, in the stories of V. Shalamov, in the stories of L. Borodin and others, we constantly encounter reminiscences from Dostoevsky, references to his “Notes from the House of the Dead,” which turn out to be the starting point in artistic calculus. In their reflections on the human soul, on the struggle between good and evil in it, these prose writers come to the same conclusions as their great predecessor came to, who argued that evil lurks deeper in humanity than socialists assume.

Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov 1907-1982 Kolyma stories (1954-1973)

The plot of V. Shalamov's stories is a painful description of the prison and camp life of prisoners of the Soviet Gulag, their similar tragic destinies, in which chance, merciless or merciful, an assistant or a murderer, the tyranny of bosses and thieves rule. Hunger and its convulsive saturation, exhaustion, painful dying, slow and almost equally painful recovery, moral humiliation and moral degradation - this is what is constantly in the focus of the writer’s attention.

FUTURE WORD

The author remembers his camp comrades by name. Evoking the mournful martyrology, he tells who died and how, who suffered and how, who hoped for what, who and how behaved in this Auschwitz without ovens, as Shalamov called the Kolyma camps. Few managed to survive, few managed to survive and remain morally unbroken.

LIFE OF ENGINEER KIPREV

Having not betrayed or sold out to anyone, the author says that he has developed for himself a formula for actively defending his existence: a person can only consider himself human and survive if at any moment he is ready to commit suicide, ready to die. However, later he realizes that he only built himself a comfortable shelter, because it is unknown what you will be like at the decisive moment, whether you simply have enough physical strength, and not just mental strength. Engineer-physicist Kipreev, arrested in 1938, not only withstood a beating during interrogation, but even rushed at the investigator, after which he was put in a punishment cell. However, they still force him to sign false testimony, threatening him with the arrest of his wife. Nevertheless, Kipreev continued to prove to himself and others that he was a man and not a slave, like all prisoners. Thanks to his talent (he invented a way to restore burnt-out light bulbs and repaired an X-ray machine), he manages to avoid the most difficult work, but not always. He miraculously survives, but the moral shock remains in him forever.

TO THE REPRESENTATION

Camp molestation, Shalamov testifies, affected everyone to a greater or lesser extent and occurred in a variety of forms. Two thieves are playing cards. One of them is lost to the nines and asks you to play for “representation”, that is, in debt. At some point, excited by the game, he unexpectedly orders an ordinary intellectual prisoner, who happened to be among the spectators of their game, to give him a woolen sweater. He refuses, and then one of the thieves “finishes” him, but the sweater still goes to the thug.

• Specialty of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Russian Federation10.01.01
• Number of pages 236

Convict prose" of Russian writers of the 19th century, the prototype of "camp prose". P. 19

§ 1 Genre originality of “convict prose” of the 19th century.S. 24

§ 2 The image of the Dead House in the image

F. M. Dostoevsky, P. F. Yakubovich, A. P. Chekhov.S. 41

§ 3 The problem of nature and human freedom in the “convict prose” of the 19th century.S. 61

§ 4 Motives of loneliness and paradoxes of the human psyche

§ 5 The theme of the executioner and execution in the “convict prose” of the 19th century.S. 98

The image of the camp as an image of absolute evil in the “camp prose” of the 20th century.S. 111

§1 Genre originality and features of the manifestation of the author’s position in the “camp prose” of the 20th century.S. 114

§2 Theme of the House of the Dead in “camp prose”

XX century.S. 128

§3 The problem of human moral fortitude in the camp world.S. 166

§4The problem of confrontation between “socially close” and the intelligentsia.S. 185

§5 The theme of execution in the “camp prose” of the 20th century. .WITH. 199

Introduction of the dissertation (part of the abstract) on the topic “The formation and development of “camp prose” in Russian literature of the 19th-20th centuries.”

Similar dissertations in the specialty "Russian Literature", 01/10/01 code VAK

• Lexico-semantic field “Inhabitants of the Gulag Country” in “Kolyma Stories” by V. T. Shalamov: Features of structural-semantic organization 2000, Candidate of Philological Sciences Khalitova, Nadezhda Renatovna

• Artistic understanding of the philosophical and moral-psychological concept of freedom and lack of freedom of the human person in Russian and North Caucasian literature of the second half of the 19th-20th centuries 2009, Doctor of Philological Sciences Chotchaeva, Marina Yurievna

• Mythological images of fate in the prose of Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov 2011, candidate of philological sciences Zinchenko, Ekaterina Egorovna

• The artistic concept of man in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky and A. P. Chekhov: Based on the works “Notes from the House of the Dead” and “Sakhalin Island” 2001, Candidate of Philological Sciences Chotchaeva, Marina Yurievna

• "Dostoevsky" themes and form in the journalism of A.I. Solzhenitsyn 2007, candidate of philological sciences Sashina, Anna Sergeevna

Conclusion of the dissertation on the topic “Russian Literature”, Malova, Yulia Valerievna

List of references for dissertation research Candidate of Philological Sciences Malova, Yulia Valerievna, 2003

Please note that the scientific texts presented above are posted for informational purposes only and were obtained through original dissertation text recognition (OCR). Therefore, they may contain errors associated with imperfect recognition algorithms. There are no such errors in the PDF files of dissertations and abstracts that we deliver.

The purpose of the lesson:

• introduce students to the life and work of V.T. Shalamov and A.I. Solzhenitsyn;
• by comparing and analyzing “Kolyma Tales” by Shalamov and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Solzhenitsyn, give an answer to the question: “What could a person oppose... to the hellish colossus grinding him with its teeth of evil?”

Equipment: exhibition of books: V. Shalamov “Kolyma Tales”, A. Solzhenitsyn “The Gulag Archipelago”, “One Day of Ivan Denisovich”, O. Volkov “Plunge into Darkness”, A. Zhigulin “Black Stones”.

Portraits: V.T.Shalamov, A.I.Solzhenitsyn.

Illustrations: R. Vedeneev “Angel of the stage” 2007

Preparatory work: dividing the class into groups, defining specific tasks for each group, identifying leaders.

Group of historians: Historical information about the political situation in the country in the 30s of the twentieth century.

Group of biographers: Life and work of V.T. Shalamov and A.I. Solzhenitsyn.

Group of researchers of V.T. Shalamov’s creativity: Read Shalamov’s stories “At Night” and “Berry”. Consider the writer’s attitude towards camp life.

A group of researchers of the work of A.I. Solzhenitsyn: Read Solzhenitsyn's story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Consider the writer’s attitude towards camp life.

Teacher’s word: The camp theme in Russian literature is presented in such works as O. Volkova’s “Plunge into Darkness”, A. Zhigulin’s “Black Stones”, N. Vladimova’s “Faithful Ruslan” and others. The founders of this theme are called V.T. Shalamov and A.I. Solzhenitsyn.

After reading “Kolyma Tales” by Shalamov and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Solzhenitsyn, I want to talk about the difficult, totalitarian times in our country. In many families, in the countryside and in the city, among the intelligentsia, workers and peasants, there were people who were sent to hard labor for many years for their political beliefs; many of them died from unbearable living conditions.

You constantly ask yourself questions: why did this happen in Russia? why was this necessary? who needed it?

Historical reference. (Textbook. History. 20th century. Course of lectures edited by Academician of the Academy of Humanities of Russia Lichman. Yekaterinburg. 1995, p. 179 p. 2. State and law).

V.T.Shalamov and A.I. Solzhenitsyn are writers who have drunk this cup to the fullest.

Let's look at their biographies.

(The main stages of the lives of Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn)

This terrible experience haunted the writers throughout their lives. There is nothing lower in the world than to forget these crimes. Totalitarianism is the greatest tragedy, which has never happened in Russia in terms of depth and size. People should know about this. The duty of a writer is to tell the truth about life.

But, despite the same fate and common theme, artists have different perceptions of the camp experience. Let's look at this in the works.

Shalamov’s main work is “Kolyma Stories”, written in 1954 - 1973, which comprised six cycles: “Kolyma Stories”, “Left Bank”, “Shovel Artist”, “Sketches of the Underworld”, “Resurrection of Larch”, “Glove, or KR-2”.

Shalamov's prose was published in Russia only after his death, from 1987.

- What are your first impressions after reading “Kolyma Tales”?

Story “At Night”. One of the students tells a summary of it.

Students note that the story is striking in the ordinariness of what happens in it: what the prisoners do is against generally accepted moral norms, this is extreme blasphemy, they almost completely lose consciousness, and only a purely animal instinct remains.

First of all, this is the manner of presentation: calm, slow. The everyday description creates a feeling of familiarity with death. The story is distinguished by brevity, accuracy, economy of language, restrained intonation, specificity and at the same time capacity of presentation. Naturalistic details add concreteness to the narrative:

“Bagretsov cursed quietly. He scratched his finger and was bleeding. He sprinkled sand on the wound, tore out a piece of cotton wool from his padded jacket, pressed it - the bleeding did not stop.

“Poor clotting,” Glebov said indifferently.

Are you a doctor or what? – Bagretsov asked, sucking the blood.” This is a very important detail. She and the author’s commentary that follows help us understand that the camp inmates were losing their past and knew nothing about each other. The man in the camp forgot who he was, what his age was, he no longer thought about whether he would be better or worse. He was doomed, and this state was defined by the word “never.”

- Find psychological definitions that reveal the inner world of the characters?(“sunken, shining eyes” of Bagretsov, “indifferent” answer of Glebov, final “smile” of Bagretsov; pay attention to the landscape as the emotional background on which the action unfolds: “blue light of the rising moon”, showing “every ledge, every tree in a special , not in daylight.”) This further enhances the depressing situation.

- How do you feel about the described actions of the heroes of the story?

Shalamov does not give a direct assessment of his heroes. He is reserved and unobtrusive. Only a careful reading of the story (it is no coincidence that the story begins with a hungry dinner of two prisoners) allows one to perceive not the author’s condemnation of the victims of the camp, who might initially seem like looters, but pity and sympathy for these exhausted people trying to somehow hold on in this way.

No one described the pangs of hunger better than Shalamov. From constant physical torment begins “corruption of the mind and heart,” “dehumanization of man.” “Every minute of camp life is a poisoned minute.”

The story “Berry”. Brief retelling.

An incident that occurred at the camp logging site shocks the students. Everyone dealt with the prisoners: the authorities, the “thieves”, the guards. The reason is not difficult to find: one of the prisoners, exhausted, falls into the snow on the mountainside along with a log that he dropped from his shoulder, thereby delaying the general movement of the brigade in a given direction. The guard Fadeev calls the fallen man a “malingerer,” “a fascist,” and then hits him in the back with his boot because he cannot get to his feet. The second guard, Seroshapka, who came up next, promises the lying man: “Tomorrow I will shoot you with my own hands.” “Tomorrow” comes. A crew is removing stumps from an old clearing. Seroshapka “hung up the signs... outlining the restricted zone.” During a smoke break, the hero-narrator and another prisoner (Rybakov) collect taiga berries (rose hips, lingonberries, blueberries). Rybakov collected berries in a jar (for this the cook would give him bread), and the narrator ate them right where they grew. Approaching the “enchanted berries,” Rybakov crossed the border of the restricted zone and... was killed on the spot. What is striking is that according to the regulations, two shots are required: the first is a warning, and the second is to kill. Greyshapka did the opposite. The tragedy is enhanced by the everyday sound of the phrase: “Rybakov’s jar rolled away far, I managed to pick it up and hide it in my pocket. Maybe they’ll give me some bread for these berries...”

Is the circular composition of the story justified?

Yes. Guard Fadeev “put the butt of his rifle near my head,” and at the end of the story, guard Seroshapka “touched my shoulder with the end of his rifle.” The touch of the rifle is an expressive detail, indicating that the prisoner in the camp is constantly under gunpoint. The final phrase, which Seroshapka says with obvious annoyance, addressing the narrator, is eloquent: “I wanted you... but I didn’t show up, you bastard!” (It should be understood that this is only a temporary respite - this time it worked out).

The camp, according to Shalamov, is a place where human life is devalued, where all concepts of good and evil change.

So, there was nothing more terrible than the “Kolyma circles” of hell (death reigns in Shalamov’s stories), and therefore the perception of this artist is tragic and pessimistic. Varlam Tikhonovich stated: “The camp was a great test of human moral strength, ordinary human morality, and ninety-nine percent of the people did not survive this test.” And only a few, endowed with special spiritual strength, were able to show great patience, courage, and perseverance. A striking example is the author himself, who proved, first of all, to himself that he did not break, did not betray the high moral principles inherent in him from childhood, and managed to retain human qualities in himself, and therefore the ability to resist against everything inhuman and immoral.

A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is easier to read - the hero survives, no matter what...

- Let's get acquainted with the history of the creation of this work. Ind. ass

This is how the author himself wrote about it: “How was this born? It was just such a camp day, hard work, I was carrying a stretcher with my partner and I thought how can I describe the entire camp world - in one day. Of course, you can describe your ten years of the camp, and then the whole history of the camps, but it is enough to collect everything in one day, as if in fragments; it is enough to describe only one day of one average, unremarkable person from morning to evening. And everything will be.”

In 1961, A.I. Solzhenitsyn transferred a politically “softened” edition of this work to the “New World”, headed by A.T. Tvardovsky. Then the story was called “Shch - 854 (One day of one prisoner)” and was signed “A. Ryazansky”. The camp fate of the hero, a Russian peasant, as well as the level of the author’s literary talent made a stunning impression on Tvardovsky, and he, relying on the personal support of N.S. Khrushchev, achieved publication. At the same time, A.T. Tvardovsky changed the title to “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and, against the will of the author, defined the genre of this work as a story. In 1973, A.I. Solzhenitsyn restored the distorted edition of the text and the original genre definition (story), but considered the new name successful.

The prototypes of Ivan Shukhov were the real Ivan Shukhov, a former soldier of A. Solzhenitsyn’s artillery battery, and the writer himself, who experienced the fate of a camp prisoner, as well as hundreds and thousands of the same unfortunate victims of tyranny and lawlessness.

Let's turn to the content of the story.

- Determining the general tone of the story, find the epithet for the word “day”.

“Almost a happy day...” - Ivan Denisovich Shukhov thinks about this day at the end of his day.

- Re-read or retell these “happy” events in the hero’s life on this day.(“...they didn’t put them in a punishment cell, they didn’t send the brigade to Sotsgorodok, they made porridge at lunch, the foreman closed the interest well, he laid the wall cheerfully, he didn’t get caught with a hacksaw on a search, he worked in the evening at Caesar’s and bought tobacco. And he didn’t get sick, he overcame”) .

- Do you agree with the definition of “happy”?

“Almost a happy day” did not bring any special troubles, this is already happiness.

Happiness is the absence of unhappiness in conditions that you cannot change.

If such a day is happy, then what is an unlucky day? The indictive power of Solzhenitsyn’s work lies in the depiction of the ordinariness of what is happening, the habit of inhuman conditions.

“The camp through the eyes of a man...” Ind. ass

The camp is a special world with its own realities: a zone, towers, guards on the towers, barracks, clapboards, barbed wire, BUR, condo with an exit, a punishment cell, guards, a search, dogs, a column, rations, a bowl of gruel, black pea coats with numbers ...

The camp authorities secured a comfortable existence for themselves by turning the prisoners into their personal slaves. They have an animal appearance. This is the head of the regime, Lieutenant Volkova, who is capable of beating a person with a whip for the slightest offense: “Here God marks a rogue, he gave him a family name!” – Volkova doesn’t look any other way than a wolf. Dark and long, like a wolf, and frowning - and rushes quickly. He’ll freak out from behind the barracks... he’ll sneak up behind you and hit you on the neck with a whip: “Why didn’t you join the ranks, you bastard? How the crowd will be shaken away by a wave.” These are the guards who are ready to shoot a “spy” who is late for roll call - a Moldovan who fell asleep from fatigue at his workplace.

But, despite the terrible details of camp life, Solzhenitsyn's story is optimistic in spirit. He proves that even in the last degree of humiliation it is possible to preserve a person within oneself.

- Hero of the story. Who is he, how did he get to the camp?

The main character of the story, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, was sentenced to ten years on a fabricated case: he was accused of returning from captivity on a secret German mission, but no one could come up with what exactly it was. Shukhov suffered the same fate as millions of other people who fought for their Motherland, but at the end of the war, prisoners of German camps turned out to be prisoners of Stalin’s Gulag camps.

- What helps him survive?

Shukhov treats Gopchik, a 16-year-old boy convicted of carrying milk to Bendera residents in the forest, as his own son. Watching him, he compares him with a “squirrel”, then with a “bunny”, then with a “kid”.

Shukhov, like Tolstoy’s Platon Karataev, has no shame in “earning extra money”: “to sew someone a mitten cover out of an old lining, to give a rich foreman dry felt boots directly to his bed, where he can sweep up or bring something to someone, or go to the dining room to collect bowls of food.” tables and take them in piles into the dishwasher.”

Ivan Denisovich adapts to camp life with peasant ingenuity and skill. He firmly remembered the words of the first foreman, the old camp wolf: “In the camp, this is who is dying: who licks the bowls, who hopes for the medical unit, and who goes to knock on the godfather.” These words explain Shukhov’s theory of survival: do not humiliate yourself, do not inform, do not live at someone else’s expense, do not cause inconvenience to anyone, do not judge anyone: everyone survives as best they can.

Ivan Denisovich is a peasant, a simple Russian man, who is called a natural, natural person. He has always lived in deprivation and lack, so he values ​​immediate life above all. Existence as a process, the satisfaction of the first simple needs: food, sleep, drink, warmth. (“He began to eat. At first he drank the liquid directly. How hot it was, it spread throughout his body - his insides were all fluttering towards the gruel. Good, good! This is the short moment for which the prisoner lives.” “Now it seems that the shoes have gotten better.” ": in October, Shukhov received strong, hard-toed boots, with room for two warm foot wraps. For a week after the birthday boy, he kept tapping his new heels. And in December, the felt boots arrived - life, no need to die."

Human dignity, equality, freedom of spirit, according to Solzhenitsyn, are established in labor, in the process of work. Labor unites and humanizes prisoners. They joke, have fun, get excited. The point is that the team is working. In the camp, the brigade is a family, the foreman is the father. (“The thermal power plant stood for two months, like a gray skeleton. But the 104th brigade came - and life begins again.” “The foreman is healthy in the shoulders, and he has a broad image. Deceive whoever you want in the camp, just don’t deceive Andrei Prokofich. And you will alive").

- Let's compare the attitude of Shalamov and Solzhenitsyn to camp labor.

Compare the attitude of writers to camp labor

(Shalamov. Key words: “Terribly, tightly, forever; grabbed, pushed, swung, thrown, thrown off, tied, died; knocking down, driving, lowering, climbing, clinging; death, death.”)

(Solzhenitsyn. Key words: “I saw... my wall, I cut down zealously, I mastered this work dashingly, the work went, it will go smoothly, I look more closely.”)

- Why?

Maybe because the experience of camp life is different: Shalamov, out of 74 and a half years of his life, was a prisoner of the Gulag for 20 years (3 years in the Urals and 17 years in Kolyma), so the perception of this artist is more tragic, pessimistic.

Solzhenitsyn set himself the task of showing the Russian national character in difficult life circumstances.

So, unlike V.T. Shalamov, A.I. Solzhenitsyn, talking about the camp and camp inmates, writes not about how they suffered, killed, and abused, but about how they managed to survive, preserving themselves as people.

Let's summarize. Answer the question: “What could a person oppose to the infernal colossus grinding him with its teeth of evil?”

(Patience, kindness, conscience, faith in the triumph of justice, love of life).