20 Leagues Under the Sea read. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)

Very briefly After the prom former classmates decide to have fun in an unusual way, which leads them to a quarrel. Meanwhile, their teachers are arguing about how to properly teach schoolchildren.

Graduation party at school. After the holiday, six classmates gather by the river to say goodbye to each other. A boy from a wealthy family, athlete Gena Golikov, excellent student Yulia Studentseva, beautiful Natka Bystrova, “their boyfriend” Vera Zherikh, guitarist and funny man Socrates Onuchin and artist Igor Proukhov have known each other for a long time. An idea arises: everyone will express their opinion about others, without even hiding bad thoughts. Gena Golikov is the first to find out the truth about himself. He is sure that his school friends will not say anything bad about him.

But suddenly Gena receives reproaches from Vera, Yulia and Igor for callousness, selfless selfishness and meanness. Natka says that Gena is a coward and is unable to express his feelings.

You are a firefly, Gena, you burn beautifully, but you don’t provide any warmth.

Only Socrates refrains from speaking about Gene.

What he hears offends Gena. He begins to respond to his classmates with barbs. He calls faith empty, inexpressive and envious person who hides her insignificance behind kindness. Yulia, according to him, is selfish and ready to trample anyone into the dirt. Igor suffers from a sense of inflated self-importance and will die from his own anger. He even humiliates Socrates, comparing him to a “harmless lamb.” He deals the heaviest blow to Natka, in whom school years was in love. Once he was walking by the river, and Natka, who was swimming there, came out of the water and deliberately appeared to him without clothes. Having talked about this, he calls her “a female who is waiting to be attacked.” Natka starts beating him, and Gena runs away.

Suddenly Socrates reports that Gena’s enemy, the bully Yashka Topor, decided to watch Gena while she was walking and kill her. He learned this from one of Yashka’s friends. At first, classmates try to convince themselves that Gena is no longer their friend, and his fate does not concern them, but Yulia claims that it would be wrong not to warn him about such a danger, no matter what kind of person he is. Gradually, friends begin to regret that everything turned out this way and admit that Gena is not so bad guy. Natka goes to look for Gena.

At the same time, in the staff room, six teachers are arguing about how to “make students the best people" The teachers were offended by the fact that Yulia Studentseva said during her graduation that the school forced her to learn everything except what she liked. The old teacher Zoya Vladimirovna considers such words ingratitude and regrets that Student will no longer be punished. Head teacher Olga Olegovna says that Zoya Vladimirovna herself teaches the subject (literature) so uninterestingly that she turns students away from it.

All literature is a set of dry formulas that can neither be loved nor hated. Not exciting literature!

Zoya Vladimirovna is offended and leaves.

Physics teacher Reshnikov says that Olga Olegovna also sometimes does the wrong thing. He teaches physics in his own way: he singles out students who are more capable of physics, equips them interesting information, hoping to spark their interest in the subject. Olga Olegovna prevents him from doing this, because she believes that a teacher should not have favorites. Reshnikov asks her “not to interfere with him cultivating his garden.” Mathematician Innokenty Sergeevich offers his own option for improving pedagogy: film lectures the best teachers and teach children with the help of these films, which will free up some of the teachers’ time and allow them to be creative in preparing students.

Knowledge has long been obtained with the help of machines, but for some reason it is still transmitted, so to speak, manually.

Director Ivan Ignatievich says that this idea is still far from being realized, but we still need to think about improving the quality of education. The teachers suddenly see that the youngest of them, Nina Semyonovna, is crying, thinking that she is not so good teacher(Studentseva studied in her class). Olga Olegovna says that the main thing is to teach the younger generation not to offend people. To this Nina Semyonovna replies that the students of her class (Igor, Gena, Yulia and the rest) are kind and sympathetic.

If they begin to offend each other, then... there is only one thing left - to hang themselves on the first nail out of despair.

Reshnikov and Innokenty go home and decide to have a drink - 31 years ago, in 1941, the war began. Innocent says about his students: “Let’s drink so that they don’t freeze in the trenches.”

And the classmates (except for Gena and Natka) go to school again. Igor says: “We will still learn to live.”

Immediately after its publication in 1974, Tendryakov’s new work began to be discussed among readers. The topic touched upon in it has always worried society: the education of the feelings of the younger generation and the role assigned to the school in this education.

The writer theoretically tests the characters in the story for their humanity. Tendryakov’s road to truth is thorny and dramatic. The characters go through a moral crisis, which they overcome on their own.

The plot is as follows: the graduation party took place, solemn speeches were made, in which the children expressed their attitude towards the school, teachers, and plans in their future life. Among the standard formulations, the confession of graduate Yulechka Studentseva, who admitted that she was afraid of the future, was unexpected. There are many roads, but none of them attracts her; she would continue to study at school and return home to mom and dad every evening.

The banquet ended, and six former schoolchildren decide to gather for fresh air, by the river. There they start a frank conversation. Teachers also gathered in the staff room to discuss Student’s speech. Teachers express polar opinions: no gratitude for our efforts; It’s a pity that we no longer have the right to stop it; all the work is in vain.

However, the head teacher Olga Olegovna says that something special happened today: one of the best students of the school showed how the teaching staff failed to cope with their tasks, the school provided the students with knowledge, but did not teach them love and good deeds. Some opponents do not agree with the head teacher’s idea.

A conflict arises between Olga Olegovna and the elderly teacher Zoya Vladimirovna. The first accuses the second of producing ignoramuses all these years, because she drills into their heads knowledge that is unlikely to be useful to them in life. In the end, teachers disagree, everyone remains with their own opinion. Only two former front-line soldiers wish the new generation happiness and that they do not freeze in the trenches like their fathers and grandfathers.

In the company of yesterday's schoolchildren, Genka Golikov stands out - an athlete and a handsome man. Next to him is his best friend– Igor Proukhov is an artist in pants, on which he wipes his brushes. The third guy is the funny guy and guitarist Socrates Onuchin. Of the girls, the most spectacular is Natka Bystrova, for whom Genka pines.

The second girl, Vera Zherich, is Natka’s friend, her direct opposite: ugly, overweight, unable to sing, dance, or debate. But she is a “party girl”, and not a single party is complete without her. The third girl, Yulia Studentseva, is an excellent student and activist.

The guys drink wine and shout toasts to freedom, drinking first to it, and then to power. It turns out that the artist Igor dreams of ruling over people. And Yulia invites Genka to choose one path between them, Genka develops the topic and talks about entering one of the capital’s universities together. This comes as a surprise to everyone. Genka jokes, Yulia seriously hints that she is not indifferent to Golikov. Then the girl asks everyone to express what they think about her and everyone present.

None of them wants to start talking first, until Vera decides to speak out about Genk, the son of the plant director, who never needed anything, and therefore grew up soulless and callous. Julia supports Vera, but clarifies that Genka is not soulless, but selfish, “a firefly... you burn beautifully, but you can’t provide warmth.”

His best friend does not spare Genka either, calling him a traitor: he recalled his speech at a meeting in the House of Creativity, where he criticized Igor’s work to smithereens. Natka finishes off Golikov, calling him “mama’s boy.”

Then Genka goes all in: he accuses Vera of envying everyone who is better than her, then moves on to Yulka, admitting that she was disliked in the class for her “correctness” and desire to be first, mocks Igor in his desire to become “Caesar” and be considered a genius. Natka got it for harassing him, Genki, although he considers him a weakling and a coward.

Natka calls the guy a scoundrel, and he leaves the company in anger. After he leaves, Socrates admits that Genke is threatening ex-convict Yashka Topor, hoping to take revenge for a long-standing conflict. A dispute arises between the young people whether it is now necessary to warn Golikov about the danger.

Suddenly all five remember how in different time Genka helped them in some way: he took the blame upon himself, stood up for them. And now he himself needs help...

The night after graduation has ended: in her room Zoya Vladimirovna is crying into her pillow out of resentment, Nina Semyonovna gets to her home on the outskirts of the city and thinks about what awaits the current graduates in the future, four of her former students swear near the school that they will definitely learn to live, and Natka he is looking for his Genka by the river.

Vladimir Tendryakov

The night after graduation. Stories

The text of the stories “The Night After Graduation”, “Sixty Candles”, “Reckoning” is published according to the publication: Tendryakov V. Reckoning: Stories. M.: Sov. writer, 1982.

Portrait of V. F. Tendryakov by O. Vereisky.

All rights reserved. No part electronic version This book may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet or corporate networks, for private or public use without the written permission of the copyright owner.

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About the prose of Vladimir Tendryakov

Vladimir Fedorovich Tendryakov was a personality of enormous public temperament. He worked in literature for thirty-five years, and each new work of his aroused the interest of readers and critics, met with recognition and disagreement, and aroused thought and conscience. Few can be named modern prose writers, who would with such constancy, with such stubborn passion defend the right to raise the most acute social and moral problems of our society, who would day after day directly ask the question about the meaning of human existence to himself and his reader. In the work of V. Tendryakov, a taut string of civic concern rang incessantly. In this sense, he was very integral and consistent. His books are brought to life by thirst artistic knowledge reality, the writer’s desire to make his judgment about it, to appeal to our consciousness, to educate or awaken social indifference in the reader.

Therefore, the conversation about Tendryakov’s stories and novels immediately enters the zone of reality itself; we begin to argue about the life around us, about the complex spiritual, economic, and moral processes touched upon by the prose writer. But at the same time, criticism, while supporting the writer for his pathos, fearlessness and directness in posing questions, sometimes notes with regret the discrepancy between “problems” and “prose” in some of Tendryakov’s works: “Of course, there is a logic for solving problems. But there is also a logic of construction literary prose. A problem introduced into prose must contain the artistic construction of the thing, and not fall on it all at once, otherwise it is bad for both the problem and the prose.” And those critics for whom the “predominance” of problematic issues does not seem to be a weakness of the prose writer, but only a clearly expressed property of his writer’s nature, certainly consider it their duty to remember the artistic “trails and losses”, which, however, pay off a hundredfold, however, “by the significance, seriousness and modernity of his words , social significance and severity social conflicts And moral problems his creativity."

Here, in essence, are two wings of critical awareness of Vladimir Tendryakov’s prose:

a civically responsive sociologist and moralist, but sometimes an “insufficient” artist, which diminishes the depth of his very problems;

“not enough” artist? May be. But everything is paid off handsomely by the severity and social significance of the conflicts and problems of his work.

Both judgments, although to different degrees, recognize the artistic incompleteness of Tendryakov’s world. I can't agree with this. It is worth re-reading today, one after another, all the writer’s books, which at one time aroused abundant criticism, including deliberately unfair criticism, which directly denies the legitimacy of the problematics and conflicts of some of the prose writer’s works, in order to be convinced of the integrity of the problematic-artistic world of this writer. One can argue and disagree with his actively preaching manner, with the desire to express painful things not so much in an objectively plastic figurative form, but in the direct pressure of the characters’ reasoning, where the author’s voice is always clearly heard. One can deny the effectiveness and universality of parable-like situations, which are very characteristic of Tendryakov’s stories. But at the same time, in my opinion, it is impossible not to see the sharply defined artistic originality of this pen. The logic of the decision is vital important issues for Tendryakov and artistic logic united, inseparable, feeding each other. For him, art begins with an idea and lives by ideology. The thought unfolds in images, tests itself in artistic arguments on the site of a story or novel and, as a rule, is resolved in the finale, posing new questions and new problems for us and the heroes.

We must also not forget that V. Tendryakov formed as a writer in active polemics against the so-called conflict-free theory, which was quite widespread in our post-war fiction. Acute conflict, extreme drama of situations, especially moral conflicts, are the most characteristic Tendryakov style. He feels the truth as a search for caring, active thought and openly, without beating around the bush, strives to tell this truth to people, without at all claiming all its objective completeness, or his own omniscience. Courage and frankness of truth are the moral foundation on which rests art world Tendryakov, and it stands firmly and will stand for a long time, until the life contradictions that feed it are exhausted by reality itself.

Vladimir Fedorovich Tendryakov was born in 1923 in the village of Makarovskaya, Vologda Region, in the family of a rural employee. After graduation high school went to the front and served as a radio operator in a rifle regiment. In the battles for Kharkov he was seriously wounded, demobilized, taught in rural school, was elected secretary of the district Komsomol committee. In the first peaceful autumn he entered the art department of VGIK, and then transferred to Literary Institute, from which he graduated in 1951. He worked as a correspondent for the magazine “Ogonyok”, wrote rural essays, and in 1948 published his first story in the anthology “Young Guard”.

But in our reader’s consciousness, Tendryakov announced himself immediately, large and noticeably, in the early 1950s, as if having passed the time of literary apprenticeship. Time and the social situation contributed to the emergence of a whole galaxy of writers, through whose mouths the hitherto almost silent post-war village spoke truthfully. Following the essays and stories of Valentin Ovechkin, Gavriil Troepolsky in early works V. Tendryakov publicly exposed serious contradictions in the collective farm life of those years, which later became the subject of close public attention.

All his life, Tendryakov was worried about the problems of choice and duty, faith and skepticism. And until his last days, he anxiously pondered the question: “Where is he going? human history? Evidence of this is the novel “Attempt on Mirages” (1978–1980) - the most profound and strong work Tendryakov, his spiritual testament to us and the future.

But no matter what Tendryakov wrote about, no matter what life situation neither chose, consideration, artistic analysis Realities always occur for him in the light of the moral demands of conscience.

Conscience in the ethical code of Vladimir Tendryakov is a fundamental concept; only it is capable of illuminating a person with the deep truth about himself and the world around him.

Nurturing a high soul is an area of tireless artistic concern for the writer. He often turns to school, writes about the lives of teenagers, and here, unlike the characters of adults, he is very interested in psychological details, nuances, overflows of the unsettled spiritual world. Such, for example, is Dyushka Tyagunov from Tendryakov’s brightest, most poetic story “Spring Changelings” (1973).

Huge, complex world opens to a thirteen-year-old boy. A world where there is love, a holy sense of camaraderie, and right next to it there is anger and cruelty, humiliation of man and grief.

The soul of a teenager grows, for the first time comprehending the contradictions of life, comprehending time itself. Tendryakov writes this state perfectly - generously, subtly, in love with his little hero:

« Time! It's sneaking.

Dyushka saw him! Maybe not the thing itself, maybe its traces.

Yesterday there was no haze on the birch tree, yesterday the buds had not yet blossomed - today there is! This is a trace of time passing!

There were rooks - there are none! Time again - its trace, its movement! It carried the roaring car into the distance, it will soon fill the street with people...

Time flows silently down the street, changing everything around...

Time passes, trees are born and die, people are born and die. From ancient times, from faceless distances to this very minute - it flows, picks up Dyushka, carries him further, somewhere into aching infinity.

Nurturing a high soul is an area of tireless artistic concern for the writer. He often turns to school, writes about the lives of teenagers, and here, unlike the characters of adults, he is very interested in psychological details, nuances, and overflows of the unstable spiritual world. Such, for example, is Dyushka Tyagunov from Tendryakov’s brightest, most poetic story “Spring Changelings” (1973).

A huge, complex world opens up to a thirteen-year-old boy. A world where there is love, a holy sense of camaraderie, and right next to it there is anger and cruelty, humiliation of man and grief.

« Time! It's sneaking.

Dyushka saw him! Maybe not the thing itself, maybe its traces.

Yesterday there was no haze on the birch tree, yesterday the buds had not yet blossomed - today there is! This is a trace of time passing!

There were rooks - there are none! Time again - its trace, its movement! It carried the roaring car into the distance, it will soon fill the street with people...

Time flows silently down the street, changing everything around...

It’s both creepy and joyful... It’s joyful that I discovered it, it’s creepy that I discovered not just something, but something great, it’s breathtaking!”

Dyushka Tyagunov withstands the first life trials. He was not afraid of his enemy, Sanka Erokha, and in the fight against him he defended his personal independence. He acquired a wonderful friend - Minka, at first, it would seem, a timid, weak boy, but in reality - a brave and faithful comrade. Dyushka learns to defend goodness, for Tendryakov this is the main thing in a person.

The writer is convinced that school is called upon not only to give children knowledge, but also to instill good feelings in young citizens, to foster activity in the fight against evil, indifference, and selfishness. But does the school always fulfill this mission? Already Tendryakov’s first novel “Behind the Running Day” (1959), dedicated to life village teacher, was openly polemical, touched a nerve, touched hot buttons social problems. The writer spoke out against serious shortcomings school teaching. And although the novel is not a problematic article, not an essay, it caused a whole discussion in pedagogical circles of the country.

Equally, if not more, controversial was V. Tendryakov’s story “The Night After Graduation” (1974). If in the novel “Behind the Running Day” the writer sought to convince society of the need to restructure the entire school education system in order to more closely connect it with production, with labor activity, and also try to take into account the individuality of each student, then the story “The Night After Graduation” directly addresses the most pressing problems of morality. It is about the education of feelings and the role that school plays in this complex process.

<…>It can be interesting and instructive to follow the artistic thought of Tendryakov, who breaks the flow of everyday life with a thoughtful compositional and plot explosion, as if he were setting up a moral experiment and testing his characters for their human authenticity. For Tendryakov, the path to truth and goodness flows, as always, dramatically, through a moral crisis, which a person must go through himself, to the end, without looking back.

“The Night After Graduation” is just such a moral test for six boys and girls who have just graduated from ten years of age. They gather at night on a river cliff and decide for the first time in their lives to openly tell each other to their faces what each of them thinks about those present.

At first it all seems almost like fun game, a joke, but soon acquires serious content. Good guys inadvertently reveal cruelty, mental deficiency, and the ability to hurt each other painfully. Tendryakov is little concerned about creating the illusion of the plausibility of the situation. It is initially important for him to place the heroes in exceptional conditions that could reveal their moral potential and expose the subconscious, which rarely manifests itself in ordinary circumstances. And it turned out that each of young heroes, in essence, “thinks only about himself... and doesn’t give a damn about the dignity of another... This is disgusting... so we’ve finished the game...”.

This conclusion, which belongs to Yulechka Studentseva, the best student at the school, is, of course, not entirely fair, born of extreme moral maximalism. But the writer himself, if not completely in agreement with his heroine, is still close to her assessment of what is happening. Tendryakov decided on a harsh experiment in order to loudly speak about the danger of selfishness and rationalization of feelings in modern teenagers.

But not only for this. In the story “The Night After Graduation,” another, deeper, social cross-section is also visible. The writer reveals to us a certain model of collective psychology, when a person is not always able to control himself and unwittingly follows the “rules” dictated by instant community life. The game started by teenagers forces them to neglect moral standards, which for each of them individually would be immutable in other, ordinary circumstances. Thus, in the structure of a small team, Tendryakov discovers his laws, his secret contradictions, which have not a particular, but a general meaning.

The composition of the story combines two parallel plans: an argument in the teachers' room, a kind of debate between teachers about the shortcomings of school education, and a conversation between the children by the river. The night after graduation became a serious exam for both students and teachers, and many failed.

The school gave the children knowledge, but did not cultivate feelings, did not teach them love and kindness. On graduation party Yulia Studentseva, unexpectedly for everyone, throws excited and sincere words: “The school made me know everything except one thing - what I like, what I love. I liked some things and didn’t like some things. And if you don’t like it, it’s more difficult, so give it to the person you don’t like. more strength, otherwise you won't get an A. The school demanded straight A's, I obeyed and... and didn't dare to love much... Now I looked back, and it turned out that I didn't love anything. Nothing but mom, dad and... school. And thousands of roads - and all are the same, all are indifferent... Don’t think that I’m happy. I'm scared. Very!"

The night after graduation ended. Teachers and students go home. Some will soon enter classrooms again. Others will go to a new one, independent life. Hardly experiencing a moral shock, each of the guys, perhaps for the first time, thought deeply about the essence human soul, about himself and about the team, which, it turns out, he didn’t know. “We will learn to live,” says Igor, and with these words of hope the writer ends his story.

In the 1970s, V.F. Tendryakov worked especially hard and productively. His new works were released one after another: “Eclipse” (1977), “Reckoning” (1979), “Sixty Candles” (1980). Posthumously published brilliant satirical story " Clear waters Kitezh” (1980) revealed to the reader another facet of Tendryakov’s talent, confirming how he rapidly developed throughout his life, without congealing in the word he found and mastered.

All books by Vladimir Fedorovich Tendryakov are brought to life by real conflicts and passions. He belonged to the type of writers who carried out social and moral exploration and preaching in literature. Tendryakov was often followed by other prose writers, sometimes artistically deepening what he had first discovered. For me, for example, there is no doubt that the work of Vasily Belov and Fyodor Abramov, Vasily Shukshin and Boris Mozhaev developed taking into account the writing experience of Vladimir Tendryakov, who was one of the first to embark on the path of artistic knowledge of the contradictions of our post-war life in order to overcome them.

He did not live to see the days when time in our country turned towards political and economic transformations, the fight against the gap between word and deed. But with each of his lines he brought the present days closer, had a presentiment, hastened them, and therefore will remain a living contemporary of his readers for a long time.