The story of Savva Grudtsyna idea. History of Russian literature X - XVII centuries

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The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn

2. Plot and compositional plan of the work

3. Features of the image of a person and the surrounding reality, a system of images

4. The originality of poetics (features of language and style, vocabulary, tropes and other techniques for creating images of the world and people)

Bibliography

1. Characteristics of the genre of the work

story by Savva Grudtsyn

This work is written in the genre of a domestic story. In the second half of the 17th century. this genre was one of the main ones in the system of literary genres. The Old Russian tradition used this word to designate any “narration,” something that is, in principle, told. The story is like new literary genre filled with qualitatively different content. Its subject is the fate of man, his choice of his life path, awareness of your personal place in life. “The everyday story clearly reflected the changes that took place in the consciousness, morality and life of people, that struggle between “oldness” and “newness” of the transitional era, which permeated all spheres of personal and public life" “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” is the next stage in the development of the main story in everyday life of the second half of the 17th century. themes of the younger generation's search for their destiny. The style of this story combines traditional book techniques and individual motifs of oral folk poetry. The features of antiquity are still felt in the story: the heroes have no characters, their speech (with the exception of the speech of the demon) is devoid of individuality, the language of the story is replete with traditional book turns, such as: “Savva, when he heard such verbs from Bazhen, rejoiced with indescribable joy and soon flowed away.” to the house of Bazhen the Second" or: "having seen Savva, a certain aged beggar of her husband stood, dressed in vile rags, looking diligently at Savva and weeping velmily. Savva left the demon for a little while and came to the old man, although he recognized the guilt of his crying,” etc.

The unusual nature of the story lies in its attempt to portray an ordinary human character in an everyday setting, to reveal the complexity and inconsistency of character, and to show the meaning of love in a person’s life. And for this reason, a number of researchers consider “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” as the initial stage in the formation of the novel genre.

2. The plot and compositional plan of the work.

"The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn" gives Russian characters real names and locates events in a specific geographical, everyday, ethnographic environment. The action takes place in a merchant setting, which was close to readers of that era. Savva Grudtsyn appears before us surrounded by numerous details and details.

The story consists of separate episodes. These episodes, despite their completeness, are closely related to each other. Each of them reveals either certain character traits of the hero of the story, or the peculiarities of his behavior outside the home, outside of parental supervision.

First, the hero's immediate environment is depicted - his family. The features of patriarchal merchant life characterize the entire lifestyle of this family: all power is in the hands of the head of the family - the father, trade is the work of his whole life. And when, during the years of the “Troubles,” external circumstances interfere with her, the hero’s father, Foma Grudtsyn, leaves his hometown Veliky Ustyug and “moves to the glorious royal city of Kazan, before the evil Lithuania existed in the lower cities.” From here he goes on trade trips down the Volga, either to Soli-Kama, then to Astrakhan, then “beyond the Khvalynsk Sea to the Shakhov region.” He gradually accustoms his son to this, “so that after death his heir will be his estate.” While reading, it seems that the rules in this family are very strict, but at the same time you can find a description of the manifestation of love for each other: partings and meetings here are marked by the fact that Thomas Grudtsyn is obligatory, “and the usual kissing of his wife and son.” It would seem that in this environment with well-established forms of life, Savva should follow the old, proven paths.

But now the author shows his hero outside his parents’ home, on a trading trip to the distant Soli-Kama city of Orel. At first, here too, Savva falls into the sphere of familiar patriarchal relations. He is shown hospitality by the hotel in the city of Orel, “remembering the love and mercy of his father.” The hero is invited to his house by the Oryol merchant Bazhen II, old friend Father Savva, with whom he “had a lot of love and friendship.” But then something happens that knocks Savva out of the usual rut of life. He becomes close to Bazhen’s young wife and “lives a faulty and dishonest life and, since he had his father’s treasures with him, he was all exhausted in fornication and drunkenness.” In the huge stock of traditional literary images and situations, the author of the story finds material to describe and explain such unusual behavior young men. The reason for his unseemly actions is not Savva’s evil will. It is Bazhen’s young wife who seduces the inexperienced young man. But when Savva, after expelling him from Bazhen’s house, again enters into the latter’s trust, settles in his family for the second time and “again stumbles into the network of fornication with his cursed wife,” the author explains the behavior of his hero as the intervention of the devil. The traditionalism of “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” is also reflected in the medieval view of a woman as a “vessel of the devil” almost in literally, because Sinful attraction to a woman leads Savva to an even greater sin - selling his immortal soul to the devil.

Slowly, within the framework of juicy everyday descriptions, the love affair of the story unfolds. The entire way of life of Bazhen’s family and the atmosphere of a small trading town with its noisy “horse square” and at the same time with the quiet world of his beliefs and superstitions - all this is a carefully drawn background for the love story of Savva and Bazhen’s young wife.

The denouement of the love affair is purely realistic. Rumors about Savva’s “faulty life” reach Savva’s parents in Kazan. His mother writes to him three times, begging him to return to Kazan. Savva “read it, laughing and imputing it to nothing... but only exercising himself in the passion of fornication.” Then Savva’s father “touches the path to the Kama Salt, along the Kama. “Having found it myself, I said, I will bring my son to my house.” And Savva is forced to flee from Orel. So the author interrupts love story in the story. This ends the hero’s youth and his life in his native merchant environment, the foundations of which - unquestioning obedience to parents and the sanctity of family ties - he so carelessly violates. The scope of the narrative then expands significantly. The hero finds himself in the cycle of great historical events of his time - the Russian-Polish war of 1632-1634. In Shuya, Savva enlists as a soldier and soon “in military teaching he acquires such wisdom,” “as if he surpasses old soldiers and commanders in teaching.” Having moved with the regiment to Moscow, he is promoted even further: the colonel “hands him three companies of newly recruited soldiers, and instead of him, Savva arranges and trains him”; the tsar's brother-in-law, boyar Streshnev, invites him to his service and, finally, “you have already become noble to the tsar himself.” Everyone is surprised at Savva’s “wit” (mind). Luck invariably accompanies him: he makes a bold reconnaissance, penetrating into Smolensk itself, and finds out “how the Poles have fortified the city and placed all sorts of harmats at approaching places,” and finally, during the siege of Smolensk, he defeats three Polish “giants” in single combat, which “You have created a lot of gaps for the Smolensk people, but you will still surprise the Russian army.” This is the culminating moment of the hero's military success and glory, and the author depicts his exploits in the heroic-epic style of Russian epics and military tales. And only the image of Savva’s “sworn brother” - the demon who relentlessly follows him and helps him - bears the imprint of the traditional hagiographic manner of writing.

The ending of the story is quite traditional: after a series of detailed adventures and travels, Savva finds himself near Smolensk, participates in the liberation of the city from the Poles, suddenly falls ill and is terribly tormented by a demon. At the most dangerous moment, the Mother of God appears to him and predicts a miracle. And indeed, on the day of the patronal feast of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, Savina’s “letter of abdication” falls from under the dome of the church, from which all the writing has been erased. As a result, Savva gives away all his property and becomes a monk.

“The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” is especially remarkable in compositional terms. Its action follows several storylines, each of which individually could be sufficient for an independent narrative work: the collapse of a solid way of life in the merchant family of the Grudtsyn-Usovs; young wife and old husband Bazhenov; the modest life of the family of the Streltsy centurion Shilov; the adventures of two “sworn brothers” - Savva and the demon; the war near Smolensk, etc. In connection with this, the story contains multiple changes in the scene of action: here is Ustyug-Veliky, and Kazan, and Orel Solikamsk, and Shuya, and Moscow, and a military camp near Smolensk. An unusually large amount of space passes before the reader’s eyes for ancient Russians. literary works the number of heroes, each of whom is endowed with individual traits and represents a complete artistic image. The life of the main one, Savva Grudtsyn, is depicted from his birth to death in all the most important manifestations of a living human personality of the 17th century. -- attitude towards family, religion, love, struggle for a place in life. In addition, the author fills traditional plot schemes with features of living life in the 1st floor. XVII century with a description of real trade routes, training a young merchant’s son, recruitment into soldier regiments, etc. The story reflected both real-life demonological ideas of the 17th century and real historical events(Troubles, siege of Smolensk 1632-- 1634, etc.). From historical figures In addition to Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, the author mentions the boyars Shein and Streshnev, steward Vorontsov-Velyaminov, and Streltsy centurion Shilov.

3. Features of the image of a person and the surrounding reality, a system of images.

“The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” gives the characters Russian, real names and places the events in a specific geographical, everyday, ethnographic environment. The action in it was completely subordinated to the merchant environment of a certain era close to the readers. Savva Grudtsyn appears before the reader surrounded by numerous details and details. In this story, “everyday life serves as a means of simplifying a person, destroying his medieval idealization,” we read from D.S. Likhachev. The image of Savva Grudtsyn captured the characteristic features young man transitional era. Showing Savva's participation in the struggle of Russian troops for Smolensk, the author of the story heroizes his image. Savva's victory over the enemy heroes is depicted in a heroic epic style. As M. O. Skripil notes, in these episodes Savva comes close to the images of Russian heroes, and his victory in fights with enemy “giants” rises to the significance of a national feat.
The image of Savva, like the image of the Molodets in “The Tale of Grief and Misfortune,” generalizes the features younger generation, striving to throw off the oppression of centuries-old traditions, to live to the fullest extent of his daring, brave powers.

I would like to separately highlight the image of the demon in this story. Here's what academician A.M. writes about it. Panchenko in one of the chapters of his book on the history of Russian literature: “The demon in the role of a servant is also a productive narrative motif (which is why it is so widely used in world literature). Russian prose usually developed a comic version of it - for example, in the Life of John of Novgorod. The Great Mirror, which the author of Savva Grudtsyn may have known, recalled the comic treatment of the motif. Chapter 244 of this collection, didactic in its general mood, tells about “how a certain hermit has a demon guarding his turnips.” Once a thief climbed into the hermit’s garden, the guard devil called out to him and threatened to complain to the owner. The thief continued his work, but could not leave with the loot: demonic power chained him to the spot. A hermit appeared, and the thief asked for forgiveness: “Forgive me, Holy One of God, teach me to do this.” Then the demon cried out: “About unrighteousness, didn’t I tell you three times - don’t pick turnips, I’ll tell the old man?” The soul-saving flavor of the 244th chapter is just a superficial layering. In fact, this is a typical short story that uses a play on words, built on the collision of a phraseological unit (“the devil has confused”) and the literal meaning of the word “demon,” denoting the character.

In “Savva Grudtsyn” this motive is transferred to another plane - to the plane of the tragic theme of duality. The demon is the hero's named brother, his “second self.” In Orthodox beliefs, each person is accompanied by a guardian angel - also a kind of double, but an ideal double. The author of “Savva Grudtsyn” gave an inverted, “shadow” solution to this topic.”
A different point of view can be found in D.S. Likhachev. He writes that the image of the demon in the story is the image of his fate. “in “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” the fate of Savva appears before him in the form of a demon, tempting him to various detrimental actions. The demon in “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” appears suddenly, as if growing out of the ground when Savva ceases to control himself, when he is completely, contrary to reason, possessed by passion. Savva carries in himself " great tribulation“, with it he “thinner his flesh”, he cannot overcome the passion that attracts him. The demon is a creation of his own desire, he appears just at the moment when Savva thought: “... if only I could copulate with her wife again, “I would serve the devil.” The demon takes from Savva the “handwriting” (“fortress”), symbolizing the hero’s enslavement to his fate.”

Also in A.M. Panchenko you can find a description of the episodes in which the supporting characters are involved: “The illusion of life-likeness is also served by episodes of the same theme and type. These are not repetitions, but variations of one motif. Situations are constantly updated, and the characters seem to split into two. In Usolye, Savva was cared for by the wife of a “hotelkeeper”; in Moscow, the centurion’s wife takes care of him. The Usolsky sorcerer appears again in the village of Pavlov Perevoz, at the market, in the guise of an old beggar. “Do you know, child,” he says, crying, “who do you go with now and call him your brother? But this is not a man... but a demon, walking with you, bringing you to the abyss of hell.” And just as the “gostinnik” does not believe the sorcerer, so Savva does not listen to the seer dressed in rags. The mother, having learned about her son’s indecencies, sends letters to Savva, calls him home, persuades and threatens, “begs with prayer, and conjures with oaths.” Soon the father also takes up the pen. Its purpose is the same, but the tone of the letter is different, almost tender (“Yes, I see, my dear, the beauty of your face”). This variation is psychologically very reliable.”

The wife of Bazhen II appears in traditional ancient Russian literature the image of a temptress and slanderer.

The originality of poetics (features of language and style, vocabulary, tropes and other techniques for creating images of the world and people).

To express the emotions of his characters, the author of the story about Savva Grudtsyn found new means, which later, in the 18th century, became favorites in narrative literature. The author condemns the connection between Savva and the young wife of Bazhen II, for him it is a “sin”, “bad” or “stingy thing”, and to define it he does not skimp on epithets taken from the reserves of ancient Russian phraseology: “Sava is always in the feces of fornication, as the pig wallowed and remained in such insatiable fornication for a long time, like cattle.” But he also finds gentle lyrical tones to convey Savva’s love grief during his quarrel with his wife Bazhen: “My heart grieves,” he says about Savva, “and grieves inconsolably for her wife, and the beauty of his face begins to fade from great pain and his flesh becomes thin." This is the first time in ancient Russian literature that the author of a story talks about the love failure of his hero. “Once upon a time that Savva,” we read further, “went out alone from the city onto the field, out of great despondency and sorrow, and walked alone across the field, and saw no one in front of him or behind him, and thought of nothing else, but only lamenting and grieving over his separation from his wife.”

Savva’s mother and father repeatedly send “epistolia” to their son - a technique for expressing the emotions of heroes and a compositional means, on the basis of which in the 18th century. Entire stories and novels are written. In the language of “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” there are many words of the transitional era: epistole, soldiers, article, company, team, etc. The author loves archaisms, they sound to him like elegant, refined speech: “And so that Savva... from the envy of the devil It became a comma, having fallen into the network of fornication...” (Great Menaion Menaions: “The devil hates goodness alone, and I will lie to him and into the pit of fornication”); “Sava accepted such writing and read it, imputing it to nothing” (V. Ch.-M.: “And imputing the elder’s prohibition to nothing”); “The imaginary brother, even if the demon said, will soon take the ink and charter from the hearth and give it to the young men” (V.Ch.-M.: “And I will take the gold from the hearth, which he carried for the market...”), etc. .

Limitation linguistic means the author creates the effect of muteness of the characters in the story. Despite the abundance of direct speech, this direct speech still remains “the author’s speech” for his characters. An attempt to individualize direct speech was made only for the demon, but this individualization does not concern speech itself, but only the manner in which the demon speaks to Savva: sometimes “smiling,” sometimes “laughing,” sometimes “smiling.” In terms of language, the speeches of Savva, the demon, Bazhen the Second, his wife, the main Satan and others do not differ from each other.

In his views, the author of the story is a conservative, he opposes the new trends that the “rebellious age” brought with him; everything that violates traditional norms of behavior is for him “of the devil.” But the author himself involuntarily submits to the spirit of the time and turns out to be an innovator - both in mixing genre schemes and in using surprise as artistic technique, both in the depiction of a developed love affair, and in vivid everyday sketches.

The question of the author's attitude to the events described is no longer as clear as before: the author's voice clearly gives way to the plot as such, and the reader is left to draw his own conclusion from this plot. And this was important for unknown author this story, because he sought to present to the reader the path of the younger generation as a whole, the life choice of not a specific, but a generalized hero.

Bibliography

1. Kuskov V.V. History of Old Russian Literature: Textbook. for philol. specialist. universities/V.V. Kuskov. -- 7th ed. - M.: Higher. school, 2003. -- 336 pp.

2. The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn / Prepared by. text and comment. A.M. Panchenko // Monuments of literature of Ancient Rus': XVII century. Book 1. M., 1988. S. 39 - 54

3. Panchenko A.M. History of Russian literature: In 4 volumes. Volume 1: Old Russian literature. Literature XVIII century. L., 1980. Chapter 6.

4. Skripil M. O. The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn // History of Russian Literature: In 10 volumes / USSR Academy of Sciences. - M.; L.: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1941-1956. T. II. Part 2.

5. Literature of Ancient Rus': Reader / Comp. L.A. Dmitriev; Under. ed. D.S. Likhacheva. - M.: Higher. School, 1990 - 544 p.

6. http://ksana-k.narod.ru/Book/oldruss/p_grudzn.htm

7. http://www.portal-slovo.ru/philology/37361.php?PRINT=Y

8. http://feb-web.ru/feb/irl/il0/i22/i22-2222.htm

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Chapter 8. LITERATURE OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE 17TH CENTURY

2. “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn”

The genre system of Russian prose was experiencing in the 17th century. radical disruption and restructuring. The meaning of this restructuring was liberation from business functions, from connections with ritual, from medieval etiquette. There was a fictionalization of prose, its transformation into a free plot narrative. The hagiographies, which gradually lost their former meaning as “religious epics,” began to incorporate features of secular biography. The translated knightly novel and the translated short story have sharply increased the share of entertaining plots. Complex new compositions arose in prose, which used several traditional genre schemes. This is “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn,” written in the 60s. like an episode from the recent past. The story begins in 1606 and covers the siege of Smolensk by Russian troops in 1632-1634. But the nameless author of the story writes not about the history of Russia, but about privacy Russian man, merchant son of Savva Grudtsyn. The story develops on Russian material the Faustian theme, the theme of selling the soul to the devil for worldly goods and pleasures. Savva Grudtsyn, son of a rich woman merchant family , sent by his father on trade matters from Kazan to one of the cities in the region of Salt Kama, is seduced by a married woman. He found the strength to resist her advances on the day of the Ascension of Christ, but the lustful beloved took cruel revenge on him: first she “dried” Savva with a love potion, and then rejected him. The suffering Savva is ready to do anything to bring her back - he is even ready to destroy his soul. “I would serve the devil,” he thinks. Here, next to him, an “imaginary brother”, a demon, appears, then he accompanies him everywhere, to whom Savva had to give a “handwriting” - an agreement on the sale of his soul. The beloved returned to Savva again. Then he “walks” around Rus' with the demon, enlists as a recruit in the army, and leaves Moscow for Smolensk. Here (with the help of a demon, of course) he shows miracles of courage, defeats three giants one after another and then returns to the capital as a hero. But the time of reckoning is coming. Savva is mortally ill, he is seized with horror: after all, his soul is destined for eternal torment. He repents, vows to become a monk and begs the Mother of God for forgiveness: in the church where the sick Savva was brought, the fateful “God-marking scripture” falls from above. It is “smoothed”, it is blank paper. This means that the contract is not valid, and the devil loses power over Sava’s soul. The hero recovers and takes monastic vows at the Chudov Monastery. This is a brief retelling of the event outline of this work. In “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” the plot scheme of a “miracle”, a religious legend, is used. This genre was one of the most widespread in medieval writing. It is also widely represented in the prose of the 17th century. Every religious legend sets itself a didactic goal: to prove some Christian axiom, for example, the effectiveness of prayer and repentance, the inevitability of punishment for a sinner. Legends usually have three plot points. Legends begin with a hero's sin, misfortune or illness. Then follows repentance, prayer, turning to God, the Mother of God, and the saints for help. The third node is forgiveness of sin, healing, salvation. This composition was mandatory, but a certain amount of artistic freedom was allowed in its development and specific execution. The writer could, at his own discretion, choose the main character or heroine, the time and place of action, and introduce an arbitrary number of minor characters. The plot sources for “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” were religious legends about a young man who sinned by selling his soul to the devil, then repented and was forgiven. In one of these legends, “The Lay and Legend of a Certain Merchant,” the action took place in Novgorod, the hero was a merchant’s son, and the demon was portrayed as the hero’s servant. Apparently, it was “The Word and Legend of a Certain Merchant” that was the direct literary source of “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn.” It is extremely important that the characters in both “Words” and “Tales” belong to the merchant environment. The merchant class was the most mobile of the ancient Russian classes. Merchants were accustomed to long journeys across Rus' and beyond Russian borders. The merchants knew languages, constantly communicated with foreigners in their own and foreign markets, bought, read and brought home foreign books. The merchant class was less inert and closed than other classes of ancient Russian society, more tolerant of foreign culture, and open to various influences. How broad was the horizon? the best people this class, shows “Walking across Three Seas” by Afanasy Nikitin with his amazing tolerance and respect for other people’s beliefs and traditions. This class “mobility” is also reflected in literature - in works whose heroes were merchants. The reader found here descriptions of dangerous journeys with storms and shipwrecks, stories about testing a wife’s fidelity during her husband’s absence, and other adventure and romantic motifs. The “pressure of etiquette” in works about merchants is much weaker than in works about “official” heroes, church devotees, princes, kings and governors. Having chosen a merchant’s son as the hero of his story, the author of “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” could rely on this tradition. Another source of the story - fairy tale . The fairy tale is inspired by scenes in which the demon acts as a magical assistant, “giving” Savva “wisdom” in military affairs, supplying him with money, etc. The fairy tale is inspired by Savva’s fights with three enemy heroes near Smolensk (the trinity symbolism here is clearly of folklore origin) . Such a plot link of the story as the “royal theme” is also connected with the fairy tale. In the scenes leading the reader to the denouement, it is constantly emphasized that the king “pours out his mercy” on Savva, takes care of him, sympathizes with him. When the hero suffered from “demonic languor” and everyone was afraid that he would commit suicide, the king assigned guards to him and sent him “everyday food.” The king ordered the suffering man to be transferred to the church. The Tsar asked Savva about his life and adventures. From the point of view of plot logic, this royal patronage is natural: after all, the story takes place after Savva’s military service near Smolensk. Patronage is given to the brave, invincible warrior. Royal attention is not an accident or a whim, but a reward for exploits on the battlefield. But the author of the story speaks of Savva’s connection with the tsar much earlier, even before the Smolensk campaign, when the reader still does not know that the dissolute merchant’s son will become a war hero. “By some chance, it was clearly revealed (became known) to the Tsar himself,” the author writes about Savva, when he and his “imaginary brother” ended up in Moscow. Here the boyar Semyon Lukyanovich Streshnev, the sovereign's brother-in-law, drew favorable attention to Savva. For some reason, the patronage of the royal brother-in-law infuriates the demon. “The demon furiously spoke to him (Sava): “Why do you want to despise the royal mercy and serve his servant? Nowadays you yourself are organized in the same order, since you have already become noble (known) to the Tsar himself.” What does it mean? Why does the demon say that Savva “now himself is organized in the same order,” that is, he has become equal to the tsar’s relative and the boyar? The answer is given by a fairy tale. The author seems to be avoiding explanations, but this does not mean at all that the reader of the 17th century. I didn't understand what he was hinting at. For people of Ancient Rus', a fairy tale was a close, “eternal companion” from childhood. And just a fairy tale explains this episode. As a rule, it ends with the hero’s marriage to the king’s daughter and his subsequent accession to the throne. It is usually the son-in-law, in-law, and not the son or other blood relative of the sovereign who reigns. This is what the demon means: why bow to the Tsar’s brother-in-law if Savva becomes the Tsar’s son-in-law? And then, as it were, preparations for a fabulous triumph continue. This is why the author moves the action to Smolensk to give Savva a chance to distinguish himself. Now he is already a hero, he completed something like a fairytale test - he defeated three “combatants”. But here the author interrupts the fabulous flow of events, returning to the plot points of the “miracle”. Illness (the consequence of sin), then repentance and, finally, healing and forgiveness (atonement for sin) are described. From an artistic point of view, these switches from one plot prototype to another, from religious legend to fairy tale and then again to religious legend are extremely important. This is a kind of literary “deception”, because the author creates the effect of disappointed expectations. This technique is not typical for the Middle Ages, when etiquette reigned in literature, when a familiar plot situation attracted another, equally familiar. This technique is characteristic of the art of modern times, in which the unexpected, unusual, and new are valued. The author of “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” has already overcome medieval etiquette, because he keeps the reader in constant suspense, switching from one storyline to another. It would be wrong to see this literary game or artistic inconsistency. “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” is not a mosaic of poorly fitted fragments taken from different compositions. This is a thoughtful, ideologically and artistically integral work. Savva is not destined to achieve fabulous happiness because God judges, and Savva sold his soul to Satan. The demon, so similar to a fairy-tale magical assistant, is in fact the antagonist of the hero. The demon is not omnipotent, and those who rely on him will certainly fail. Evil begets evil. Evil makes a person unhappy. This is the moral conflict of the story, and in this conflict the demon plays a primary role. The demonic theme in “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” is a tragic theme of duality. The demon is the hero’s “brother,” his “second self.” In Orthodox beliefs, every person living on earth is accompanied by a guardian angel - also a kind of double, but an ideal, heavenly double. The author of “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” gave a negative, “shadow” solution to this topic. The demon is the shadow of the hero, the demon personifies Savva’s vices, the dark things that are in him - frivolity, weak will, vanity, lust. The forces of evil are powerless in the fight against the righteous, but the sinner becomes their easy prey because he chooses the path of evil. Savva, of course, is a victim, but he himself is to blame for his misfortunes. “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” is full of signs of the “rebellious age,” when the centuries-old foundations of ancient Russian life were broken. The author strives to convince the reader that his work is not fiction, that it is “true.” This illusion of life-likeness is served, in particular, by the reality of the character’s surname. In the merchant class of the 17th century. One of the prominent places was occupied by the wealthy Grudtsyn-Usov family. It is quite possible that the story reflected some real troubles experienced by this family. It is quite possible that some dissolute urchin from the Grudtsyn-Usov family seduced a married merchant’s wife (or that the merchant’s wife seduced the ignoramus). It is even possible that the undergrowth tried to “dry” the merchant’s wife with the help of Satan: according to sources of the 18th century, as established by N. N. Pokrovsky, dozens of attempts are known to conclude a “contract with the devil,” and the most common motive was love failures. Such a loser wrote on a piece of paper about his agreement to sell his soul (a signature in blood is not required), wrapped a stone in paper (the stone was taken for weight) and threw it into a mill whirlpool, where evil spirits were believed to live (cf. the saying “In a still pool there are devils") If they did this in the 18th century, then even more so they could have done this a century earlier. And yet the introduction to the text real family, real name, real address - this is first of all literary device. It was not the truth of the incident described, but the “truth” of his work, its authority, weight, and significance that the author tried to establish in this way. In the author’s artistic concept, the idea of diversity and diversity of life is very important. Her variability fascinates the young man. But a perfect Christian must resist this obsession, for for him earthly existence is decay, a dream, vanity of vanities. This thought occupied the author so much that he allowed inconsistency in plotting. Savva Grudtsyn entered into an agreement with the devil in order to quench his sinful passion for the wife of Bazhen the Second. The devil, for his part, fulfilled his obligation: “Sava returned to the Bazhenov house and continued in his previous stingy business.” But then a letter comes from Kazan, from which it is clear that Grudtsyn Sr. learned about his son’s dissipation and wants to come for him. And then Savva suddenly forgets about his demonic, all-consuming passion, leaving his mistress forever. The hero will never remember her again, and the reader will not know anything. Why, then, was it necessary to sell your soul? Did Savva really grow cold because he was afraid of his father? Couldn’t the all-powerful “imaginary brother” somehow settle the matter and detain his father? Let’s give the word to the demon: “Brother Savvo, how long will we live here in one small city? Let’s go to other cities and take a walk.” “Good, brother, you speak,” Savva approves of him. This means that Savva Grudtsyn sold his soul not only for love, but also for “walking” through Russian cities, seeing the world, enjoying life, experiencing its variability and diversity. Thus, the inconsistency of the plot is compensated by the integrity of the protagonist’s character. In his views, the author of the story is a conservative. Carnal passion terrifies him, as does any thought about enjoying life: it is sin and destruction. But the power of love-passion, the attractiveness of a colorful life had already captured his contemporaries and entered the flesh and blood of the new generation. The author opposes new trends and condemns them from the standpoint of church morality. But, like a true artist, he admits that these trends are firmly rooted in Russian society.

“The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” gives the characters Russian, real names and places the events in a specific geographical, everyday, ethnographic environment. The action in it was completely subordinated to the merchant environment of a certain era close to the readers. Savva Grudtsyn appears before the reader surrounded by numerous details and details. In this story, “everyday life serves as a means of simplifying a person, destroying his medieval idealization,” we read from D.S. Likhachev. The image of Savva Grudtsyn captured the characteristic features of a young man of a transitional era. Showing Savva's participation in the struggle of Russian troops for Smolensk, the author of the story heroizes his image. Savva's victory over the enemy heroes is depicted in a heroic epic style. As M. O. Skripil notes, in these episodes Savva comes close to the images of Russian heroes, and his victory in fights with enemy “giants” rises to the significance of a national feat. The image of Savva, like the image of the Molodets in “The Tale of Woe and Misfortune,” summarizes the features of the younger generation, striving to throw off the oppression of centuries-old traditions and live to the fullest extent of their daring, brave powers.

In “Savva Grudtsyn” this motive is transferred to another plane - to the plane of the tragic theme of duality. The demon is the hero's named brother, his “second self.” In Orthodox beliefs, each person is accompanied by a guardian angel - also a kind of double, but an ideal double. The author of “Savva Grudtsyn” gave an inverted, “shadow” solution to this topic.” A different point of view can be found in D.S. Likhachev. He writes that the image of the demon in the story is the image of his fate. “in “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” the fate of Savva appears before him in the form of a demon, tempting him to various detrimental actions. The demon in “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” appears suddenly, as if growing out of the ground when Savva ceases to control himself, when he is completely, contrary to reason, possessed by passion. Savva carries within himself “great sorrow,” with it he “thinners his flesh,” he cannot overcome the passion that attracts him. The demon is a product of his own desire, he appears just at the moment when Savva thought: “... if only I could have intercourse with her wife, I would serve the devil.” The demon takes the “handwriting” (“fortress”) from Savva, symbolizing the hero’s enslavement to his fate.”

The wife of Bazhen the Second appears in the traditional image of a temptress and slanderer in ancient Russian literature.

The originality of poetics (features of language and style, vocabulary, tropes and other techniques for creating images of the world and people).

The limitations of the author's linguistic means create the effect of muteness of the characters in the story. Despite the abundance of direct speech, this direct speech still remains “the author’s speech” for his characters. An attempt to individualize direct speech was made only for the demon, but this individualization does not concern speech itself, but only the manner in which the demon speaks to Savva: sometimes “smiling,” sometimes “laughing,” sometimes “smiling.” In terms of language, the speeches of Savva, the demon, Bazhen the Second, his wife, the main Satan and others do not differ from each other.

In the second half of the 17th century. The genre of the story took a leading position in the system of literary genres. If Old Russian tradition This word meant any “narration”, something that is basically told; the story, as a new literary genre, is filled with a qualitatively different content. Its subject is the individual fate of a person, his choice of his life path, awareness of his personal place in life. The question of the author's attitude to the events described is no longer as clear as before: the author's voice clearly gives way to the plot as such, and the reader is left to draw his own conclusion from this plot.

“The Tale of Misfortune” is the first in a group of everyday stories of the 17th century, opening the theme of a young man who does not want to live according to the laws of antiquity and is looking for his own path in life. These traditional laws are personified by his parents and " good people", giving the hero reasonable advice: do not drink "two spells for one", do not look at "good red wives", fear not the wise man, but the fool, do not steal, do not lie, do not bear false witness, do not think badly of people. It is obvious that before us is a free transposition of the biblical ten commandments. However, the Good Man, who “was at that time small and stupid, not fully sane and imperfect in mind,” rejects this traditional Christian morality, contrasts his path with it: “he wanted to live as he liked.” ". This motive of living for one’s own pleasure is strengthened in the story when the “sworn brother” brings the Young Man a glass of wine and a mug of beer: to drink “for his joy and joy.” It is the desire for pleasure that leads the Young Man to collapse, which the anonymous author very ironically states, telling how Grief "teaches a young man to live richly - to kill and rob, so that the young man will be hanged for it, or thrown into the water with a stone." Life according to the new rules does not work out, forgetting parental advice leads to disaster, accordingly, the only possible way out is to return to traditional Christian values: “the fellow remembers the saved path - and from there the fellow went to the monastery to take monastic vows.” The appearance of the image of the monastery at the end of “The Tale of Misfortune” is important primarily as an indicator of the traditional solution to the problem of choosing one’s path: Well done, as well as Prodigal son Simeon of Polotsk, eventually returns to the parental way of life. The commandments at the beginning of the path and the monastery at the end are symbolic points of this way of life.

A fundamentally new feature of "The Tale of Misfortune" can be considered the image of the main character - the nameless Well done. Well done - a folk hero by origin, a generalized representative of the younger generation. The absence of a name is an essential characteristic, since it is this absence that is an indicator of the initial stage of the transition from a traditional ancient Russian hero to a hero of modern times.

Unforeseen events in the life of the Young Man develop under the influence of changes in his very personality. These changes are subject to one main idea of the story: " human heart senseless and invincible." A person enters the dangerous path of temptation not at all because there is evil in the world and the devil does not sleep, but because, regardless of the existence outside of man of the principles of good and evil, the human heart itself is capable of choosing one or another path, and “incomplete mind” and “imperfect mind” inevitably tends to evil, to disobedience, to temptations and seductions.

In general, the development of the Young One goes more towards evil than towards good, although in the end he comes to the monastery to take haircut. But his tonsure was forced - this is not a spiritual rebirth to goodness, but a simple attempt to escape from Grief. Grief remains to guard him at the gates of the monastery, and it remains to be seen whether it will take possession of him a second time.

However, questions of good and evil recede into the background in the story from their traditionally first place. The author of the story not so much evaluates the actions of the Young Man from a religious and ethical point of view, but rather humanly pities the Young Man, empathizes with his failures and misfortune. He does not condemn the Well done, he grieves for him, internally sympathizing with him. Therefore, the lyrical element of the story, which is so clearly manifested in it, is by no means accidental. Folk lyrics - song lyrics, lamentations, complaints about fate and fate - were a form of expression of feelings emancipated from church didactics in relation to the emancipated personality of a person.

Researchers noted that "The Tale of Misfortune" stands on the verge of autobiography; it is filled with the author's personal interest in the fate of his hero and is one step away from a complaint about his own destiny. And paradoxically, it is very close to Avvakum’s autobiography in its lyrical tone

The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn" is the next stage in the development of the main theme in everyday stories of the second half of the 17th century, the theme of the young generation's search for their destiny. This work is the complete opposite of the "Tale of Woe-Misfortune" in terms of everyday specifics. The story about the Good Man and the Mountain is told in principle in a generalized manner, without naming specific places and in the complete absence of individualization of the hero. And this was important for the unknown author of this story, because he sought to present to the reader the path of the younger generation as a whole, the life choice of not a specific, but a generalized hero. "The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn" gives the characters Russian, real names and places events in a specific geographical, everyday, ethnographic environment. The action in it was completely subordinated to the merchant environment of a certain era close to the readers. Savva Grudtsyn appears before the reader surrounded by numerous details and details. At the beginning of the story, trade routes of Savva's father from Kazan to Solikamsk, Astrakhan or even beyond the Caspian Sea. The story is told about Savva's arrival in Orel and about his acquaintance with his father's friend, the merchant Bazhen II and his wife. And here the theme of love comes to the fore. When describing the origin of the feeling, the author is traditional: “...the adversary the devil, seeing that husband’s virtuous life, abiye offends his wife to the young man on him for a nasty mixture of fornication and constantly entices the young man on him with flattering words to fall into prodigaldom.” The traditionalism of “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” is also reflected in the medieval view of a woman as a “vessel of the devil” almost in the literal sense, for a sinful attraction to a woman, the wife of his father’s comrade, leads Savva to an even greater sin - selling his immortal soul to the devil. And indeed, the devil himself soon appears in the form of a youth who becomes Savva’s sworn brother (remember the “sworn brother” of “The Tale of Misfortune). The ending of the story is quite traditional: after a number of detailed adventures and travels, Savva finds himself near Smolensk, participates in in the liberation of the city from the Poles, he suddenly falls ill and is terribly tormented by a demon. At the most dangerous moment, the Mother of God appears to him and predicts a miracle. And indeed, on the day of the patronal feast of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, Savina’s “letter of abdication” falls from under the dome of the temple, from which everything was erased As a result, Savva distributes all his property and becomes a monk.

The author of “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” does not allow Savva to realize for a long time that he is dealing with a demon. Even the “handwriting” given to the “sworn brother” does not make him assume something is wrong; even the appearance of the main Satan before the throne gives rise to only vague suspicions in him. It is important for the author that the “handwriting” given by Savva to the devil symbolizes first the passion that gripped him for the wife of Bazhen II, then his ambitious aspirations. For the first time in the history of Russian fiction, the author uses the technique of identifying hidden meaning events: what is clear to the author and reader is still unclear to the character; the reader knows more than the heroes know, so he waits with special interest for the denouement, which consists not only in the triumph of virtue, but also in clarifying what is happening for themselves characters.
Of significant importance in this fictionalization of demonology was the transfer of action to the merchant environment. Thus, the plot about the sale of the soul to the devil was combined with the setting of travel, movement around different cities and countries, with the theme of fidelity or infidelity of a wife - common for merchant stories. However, Savva’s continuous movements around Russian cities also have a purely artistic significance: these movements demonstrate Savva’s troubled conscience, the impossibility for him to get rid of the consequences of his sin. These movements are not motivated by merchant affairs at all, but only by the restlessness to which his servant-devil pushes him.

From a moralizing point of view, there is a lot of unnecessary stuff in “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn”. It would be enough that Savva, in retribution for his handwriting, regains the love of the wife of Bazhen II. However, Savva, together with his demon friend, travels, moves from city to city, commits military exploits near Smolensk. The sale of the soul to the devil thus becomes a plot-forming moment. Savva needs not just one favor from the devil, but many services, constant help is needed - that is why the demon takes the guise of a servant or a “sworn brother” helping him. The plot gets more complicated. The devil's help becomes fate, fate, fate, and Savva is doomed, he cannot get rid of his sworn brother.

Stylistically, “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” was written in the old manner. Cliche stylistic formulas often do not allow deepening psychological and everyday characteristics. The direct speech of the characters is devoid of everyday and psychological characteristics, is not individualized, and remains bookish. The style and language of the story did not allow reality to fully enter into it, did not allow us to fully achieve the effect of the reader’s co-presence as the action of the story unfolds.

The limitations of the author's linguistic means created the effect of muteness of the characters in the story. Despite the abundance of direct speech, this direct speech still remained “the author’s speech” for his characters. These latter have not yet found their own language, their own, unique words. The words of the author, who is a kind of “puppeteer,” are inserted into their mouths. The same applies to “The Tale of Misfortune,” where we already see the Well done, but we don’t hear him yet.

An attempt to individualize direct speech was made only for the demon, but this individualization does not concern speech itself, but only the manner in which the demon speaks to Savva: sometimes “smiling,” sometimes “laughing,” sometimes “smiling.” In terms of language, the speeches of Savva, the demon, Bazhen the Second, his wife, the main Satan and others do not differ from each other.

"The Tale of Frol Skobeev", representing the third stage in the evolution of the everyday story in Russian literature XVII century, is usually characterized by researchers as an original Russian short story. Dedicated to the same topic of self-determination of the younger generation, it, unlike all previous stories, solves it in a fundamentally anti-traditional way. This is the Russian version of the European picaresque novel. In "The Tale of Frol Skobeev" there is no ancient Russian book and folklore tradition, so strong in earlier stories. Frol Skobeev is a representative of the new generation, who achieves success precisely thanks to the rejection of traditional morality: deception, trickery, cunning. The plot of the story is about his clever marriage to the daughter of the steward Nardin-Nashchokin, Annushka. And the disclosure of the love theme here is fundamentally different from “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn”: the author talks not about a dangerous devilish temptation, but about a cleverly conceived and carried out intrigue, as a result of which each of the heroes gets what they deserve. If in “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” the wife of Bazhen the Second appears in the image of a temptress and slanderer, traditional for ancient Russian literature (this line is rich in examples from the “Word” and “Prayer” of Daniil Zatochnik in the 13th century to the “Tale of the Seven Wise Men” in the 17th century .), then Annushka turns out to be a kind of female parallel to the image of Frol - a cunning rogue. Let us note what exactly comes to her mind: how can she leave without arousing suspicion? parents' house: “And Annushka asked her mother to do as much as possible, went to Frol Skobeev and told him to ask for a carriage as soon as possible, and come to her himself, and it was said that from the steward’s sister Nardin Nashchekin came for Annushka from the Maiden’s Monastery ". The only traditional feature of “The Tale of Frol Skobev” can be considered, perhaps, author's position. The reader might have serious suspicions that the author is not very sympathetic to the drama that took place in the steward’s family, and looks at the tricks of his hero not without admiration. But it was impossible to take the author at his word and accuse him of sympathizing with vice.

A new and very remarkable feature of the story is the rejection of traditional literary methods narration, a complete change in narrative style. Style author's narration close to the style of business prose, orderly office work. The author testifies in court more than he writes a work of fiction. Nowhere does he strive for literary sublimity. Before us is an unpretentious story about significant events.

Genre and artistic originality satirical stories. “The Tale of Karp Sutulov”, “The Tale of Shemyakin’s Court”, “The Tale of Ersha Ershovich, Shchetinnikov’s son”, “The Kalyazin Petition”, “The Tale of the Chicken and the Fox”.

The authors of satirical stories spoke for the first time in the language of broad masses, the voice of the common people was heard in literature, it became spiritual food and entertainment for the reader, the image of a narrator, an author fighting for his ideals appeared in it.

The democratic satirical story embodied the main contradictions, the ups and downs of its complex turning point, all its many colors, all its expressive diversity. Its nameless authors managed to penetrate deeply into the essence of Russian reality, to see and evaluate both positive and negative sides in it. They do not rise to the level of conscious anti-feudal protest, they do not give examples of anti-religious satire, however, even without this, their denunciation is sharp and amazes with accuracy and strength.

Their favorite objects are the feudal court, the church and the depraved clergy, the royal tavern, injustice and social inequality. They see and find new ways to ridicule them, the most funny and painful, completely abandoning the old methods of showing reality. New democratic authors have found new means artistic expression, enriched the literature with new techniques. Satirical stories helped break the dominance of old genres; it is not without reason that one of the most important types of satirical stories was parody.

Themes of the most significant satires of the 17th century. touch upon important aspects of the feudal-serf system. The bias of legal proceedings, which were in the hands of bribe-taking judges, and the litigation of feudal lords attracted the attention of journalists already in the 16th century.

Such is “The Tale of Karp Sutulov,” a witty satire that denounces rich merchants and all ranks of the clergy from priest to archbishop. The story is named after the merchant Karp Sutulov, but its heroine was his wife, the smart, beautiful and savvy Tatyana. She represents a new literary type, born of historical conditions and above all the business and practical trading environment. In earlier ancient literature we knew images of women of great spiritual nobility - Yaroslavna, Eupraxia, Fevronia, but the literature of the 17th century. brings other qualities to the fore - practicality, dexterity, resourcefulness.

In "The Tale of Karp Sutulov" Tatyana ends up in dozol difficult situation. In the absence of her husband, the merchant, the priest and the archbishop attack her honor. A woman faces a previously unimaginable dilemma: to maintain honor and acquire capital. And I must say

that the heroine brilliantly overcomes the situation and puts her opponents to shame.

The story exposes the voluptuous clergy, who in their everyday practice come into conflict with the religious teaching about sin and act according to folk proverb: “He looks at the sky, but rummages around the ground.” Such ideas were completely impossible earlier, under the conditions of ancient patriarchal life. But “The Tale of Karp Sutulov” is an example of the fact that “the old man has gone bad” and the psychology of sober practical calculation has triumphed.

Merchant Afanasy Berdov, “ true friend"Karp Sutulov, ready to seduce his wife, spiritual father Tatiana's priest, instead of moral education, offers her 200 rubles for a love date. But the archbishop surpassed everyone. Being the highest clergyman of the city and having the right of absolution, he invited Tatyana to leave the merchant and the priest and arrange a date with him for 300 rubles. Tatiana, embarrassed by the archbishop’s vile proposal, tries to remind him of the punishment for his sins: “O great one removed! How can I escape from the fire of the future? He said to her: “I will give you permission in everything.”

Tatiana is depicted as a virtuous woman, loving and faithful wife Karpa Sutulov. During her husband's departure, she behaved modestly and met only with friends. Having spent the money, she turned to her husband’s friend for financial help, and then her misadventures began. The resourcefulness and dexterity with which she avoided the vile claims of the merchant, the priest and the archbishop revealed in her an extraordinary mind and great practicality. In a clash with the clergy, she acted as a bearer of high moral principles and, deftly using religious and didactic formulas, put the “holy” fathers to shame. Main artistic medium to describe the images of the story there is a satirical dialogue: comic effect is achieved by the fact that the author put a solemn speech into the mouth of Tatiana, an ordinary woman, and she “instructs” the holy fathers, fulfilling the mission of a preacher in their place. When the priest, who came on a date with Tatyana, hears a knock on the door and in horror asks to hide him from his shame, she answers him: “Fear not this, father, but fear your death, the sin of death; die one (death), but commit sin and be tormented forever.”

The influence of Russian folk tales is also felt in the story. The author, for example, uses the technique of trinity: three admirers of Tatyana, three chests, three times Tatyana talks about her husband’s advice to take out a loan, three come to Tatyana on a date. But unlike fairy tales, the story does not social conflict, the action takes place among wealthy merchants and clergy. The author focused all his attention on moral problems: he convincingly showed what a deep crack the world of patriarchal traditions had created, how the piety of the clergy dried up and the cult of the golden calf reigned. At the same time, one feels that the author does not condemn his heroes, he admires Tatyana’s actions and considers her morality to be the norm of human behavior.

Written in the form of a humorous petition in the last quarter of the 17th century. “List from the petition of the Kalyagin Monastery,” denouncing the dissolute, drunken life of the monks of one of the monasteries of the Tver diocese. The lower monastic brethren of the Kalyaeinsky monastery bash Archbishop Simeon of Tver against their Archimandrite Gabriel because, forgetting the fear of God and monastic vows, he annoys the monks: he taught the rogue sextons to ring the bells at the wrong time and beat the boards, and those rogue sextons neither day nor night they give the monks peace.

The petition very angrily and sharply ridicules the order that has taken root in the Kalyazin monastery. It is written in a lively, figurative colloquial language, with a very large number of rhymed lines, with rhymed sayings and proverbs, such as “you need a body behind your shoulders, but it’s stuffy to lie under the rustles”, “turnips and horseradish, and a black cup Ephraim”, “he’s in good spirits” he lives alone, but out of grief he chews dry bread,” “he was kind to us, his entire back was so straight that the skin slipped off his shoulders,” etc.

Names mentioned in the petition

However, the pictures of monastic life depicted in satire were characteristic not only of the Kalyazin monastery, but of many Russian monasteries throughout almost the entire 17th century. and later times. It is not for nothing that, when applied to monastic life, there was even a saying: “The right clergy sings, the left one drinks beer in the altar. The frank naturalism with which the petition depicts monastic life, on the one hand, very clearly depicts the decomposition of monastic traditions that was already evident at that time, on the other hand, like both previous stories, it testifies to an increased critical attitude towards representatives of the church in the townsman or peasant environment, where the petition apparently arose, moving into the 18th century. into popular literature.

"The Tale of the Hen and the Fox" exposes formal piety, behind which selfish goals may be hidden.

The oldest edition of “The Tale of the Chicken and the Fox” is prose; As for the poetic and mixed ones, they arose no earlier than the beginning of the 18th century. In the oldest edition, the story begins with the fact that a gentle fox approaches the tree on which a chicken sits, i.e. a rooster, “bright-voiced and loud-voiced,” glorifying Christ and awakening Christians from sleep, and, turning to the chicken with flattering words, offers he should go down to her, the “venerable wife,” in order to repent of his sins, which the fox would gladly forgive him “in this world and in the future.” The chicken, although aware of its grave sins, at first refuses to come down from the tree, because it knows that the fox’s tongue is flattering, and its lips are full of untruths. Using the words of the “holy books,” the fox, even shedding tears over the chicken’s sins, convinces him of the need to repent in order to avoid eternal torment and pitch darkness. Succumbing to the “soulful” words of the fox, the chicken himself shed tears and began to descend towards her “from tree to tree, from twig to twig, from bush to bush, from stump to stump.” Having descended, he sat on the fox’s head, but the fox immediately grabbed him with its claws, began to grind its teeth, look at him “with an unmerciful eye, like an unmerciful devil at Christians,” and reproach him, who screamed in the fox’s claws, for various sins. In the “holy books” and in the “rules of the holy fathers” it is written: one wife should be taken according to the law, another for the birth of children, and whoever takes a third commits adultery; Kur, “a dashing man, a villain and a sorcerer, a lawbreaker,” keeps many wives, twenty and thirty or more, and for this the fox will betray him to an evil death. But he tries to counter the reference to “scripture” with another reference to the same “scripture”, which says: “Be fruitful and grow and multiply the earth, have all care for orphans and widows and take great care, then you will be heirs of the kingdom of heaven.” Then the fox makes a new accusation against the chicken: he hates his brother, and where he gets along with him, he fights painfully with him because of their jealous wives and concubines, and for this he is guilty of death. And also, when she, a hungry fox, came to the peasant’s yard where the chickens were sitting, he screamed and woke up the people, and they chased after her to kill her, as if she wanted to strangle their father and drown their mother; They wanted to kill her for one chicken. And now no one will save him from the fox’s claws - neither the prince, nor the boyar, nor any other nobleman. Kur is justified by the fact that “with whom the master lives, he must serve and do his will,” and the Gospel says: “A slave cannot work as a master.” But no references to “scripture” and plaintive requests for mercy have any effect on the fox: “You hope so,” she says, “that you know how to read and write. And that’s no excuse for you. You are guilty of death." The fox already wants to kill the chicken, but the chicken, screaming in a loud voice, asks him to say one more word: the Krutitsky Metropolitan called him to be a clerk, praised his voice very much and invited him to sing on his pulpit with a thin treble. The chicken promises to give the fox an annual quitrent, whatever she wishes, and if she wants to enter into power, she will ask the Metropolitan to make her more bread, and she will have large incomes, and on top of that, from him - a quitrent of fifty rubles. But the fox does not believe the chicken's promises. “You don’t promise me a pie in the sky, just give me a bird in my hands. Don’t promise me a year, put it in my mouth,” she says and eats the chicken.

Usage " scripture"for satirical and parodic purposes in its ridiculous use, which we have in our story, once again testifies to the general decline of church prestige, especially in the environment from which the story came - among the service class or in the townspeople. The story is a skillful combination of church and book quotations in general with elements of vernacular and oral poetic proverb and saying material.

The Tale of Shemyakina's Court"

The location of the action in the satirical "Tale of Shemyakin's Court" is epically conventional, as in works of oral folk art: events unfold in "certain places." Easily recognizable as fairy tale types, and the heroes of the “Tale” are nameless brothers, poor and rich; and the very motive of deceiving a judge is well known in world folklore. The poor man breaks the law three times: mutilating someone else's horse, accidentally killing a baby, and then an old man. Three sentences await him in court, which serve as a mirror reflection of the crimes he committed, which is typical for the Russian judicial system. practices XVII c., where murder was punishable by death, arson by burning, etc. According to the judge's decision, the poor man must own the horse until it grows new tail, to live with the priest until she gives birth to a child, to try his luck by standing under a bridge, from where the son of the murdered man should jump on him. Having learned about this court decision, all three plaintiffs pay off the poor man, and he becomes rich. The unjust judge Shemyaka, whose name became a household name, acquitted the culprit because during the trial he showed him a bundle, but instead of gold there was a stone in the bundle. A denouement that is shocking in its unexpectedness is a sign novelistic plot, the dynamism of which is given by three novelistic storylines(three crimes of a poor man), linked into one plot node by the court scene.

The object of satire in “The Tale of Shemyakin’s Court” is not only the bribe-taking judge and Russian legal system, but also that one a world order where everything is the other way around: the criminal can be acquitted and rewarded. The image of a poor man is usually interpreted as a type of loser who is haunted by misfortunes, but what happened is also his fault: “The rich man... has been lending for many years in poverty and cannot fulfill his poverty.” Apparently, the poor man is lazy and is used to living at the expense of others. Having received a horse from his brother, he asks for a collar, which can be easily made from available materials, so the rich man gets angry and reproaches his brother: “And you don’t have that thing that’s your own collar.” A poor man ties a log to the horse's tail, but when entering the yard, he forgets to remove the gateway and hits the smart animal, which has stopped at an obstacle, with a whip, which leads to the first crime: the horse has lost its tail. The reason for the second crime is curiosity and lack of self-esteem. Having watched from the floor how the priest and the rich brother were having dinner, the poor man fell on a ripple and crushed the child. He thought of the third crime as suicide, but, jumping from a bridge, he ran over an old man whom a townsman was taking to the bathhouse. According to Christian doctrine, suicide, and even the involuntary murder of a baby and an old man, is a grave sin. At the end of the Tale, the judge, having not received the gold, is glad that he escaped death: “... if only I had not judged by him, but he would have kicked me.” An involuntary sin is ready to become a conscious act, due to which an essentially acquittal verdict is not so much a comic as a tragicomic outcome, which is a consequence of the moral ill health of society, the illogicality of the laws by which it lives.

In connection with the creation of the Russian centralized state in the 2nd half of the 16th century. A number of works appeared that reflected the official point of view on history, state political power, religion, and regulated human behavior in state and family life.

The main role in the literature of the 17th century was occupied by works of historical subjects. A feature of books on historical subjects of the era was their vivid journalisticism. The largest and most famous historical literary work of the 17th century is “The Legend of the Cellarer to the Trinity - Sergeyev Lavra by Abraham Palitsyn.” In this work, the author tells his understanding of the Time of Troubles, discusses the causes of the “Troubles” and its events.

If we briefly define the significance of the 17th century in the history of Russian literature and in the history of Russian culture in general, the main thing is that the 17th century was a century of gradual transition from ancient literature to new, from medieval culture- to the culture of new times. The events of the “Troubles” of the early 17th century mixed up the social status of people. Both well-born and unborn people began to play a significant role, if only they had the abilities of political figures. Therefore, the official position of the author no longer has the same significance as before. The authors of the stories about the Troubles are participants in the events, and not just their witnesses. Therefore, they write about themselves and their views, justify their behavior, and feel themselves not only as objective historians, but to some extent as memoirists. Heroes of literary works “descend to earth.” The new hero of literary works does not occupy a strong and independent social position: either he is a merchant’s son who has lost his way with his sedate parents, or he is a drunken monk, etc. Among the stories of the 17th century one can name “The New Tale of the Glorious Russian Kingdom”, “The Tale of the Presentation of Prince Mikhail Vasilyevich Skopin-Shuisky”, “The Tale of Juliania Lazarevskaya”, etc.

In the 17th century, the genre of the historical story also underwent changes. “The Tale of the Azov Siege of the Don Cossacks” is a poetic description of actual events: the four-month siege of Azov by the Turks in 1641. It arose among the Cossacks. Its author was Fedor Ivanovich Poroshin, a member of the Cossack embassy in Moscow. He truthfully and in detail described the feat of the Don Cossacks. The story was written at the end of December 1641 - beginning of January 1642. It was a kind of literary appeal to support the heroic struggle of the Cossacks. The Cossacks committed heroic feat not for the sake of personal glory, not out of self-interest, but in the name of his homeland - the Moscow State. A high sense of national identity, a sense of patriotism inspires them to heroism. A Turkish army of 300,000 soldiers opposes 5,000 Cossacks. The Cossacks repelled 24 enemy attacks. In the last battle with the enemy, the Cossacks win. In his work, Poroshin widely used images of the ancient Russian military story and Cossack folklore. In the language of the story there is no bookish rhetoric and elements of lively colloquial speech are widely represented.

A new stage in the development of Old Russian literature begins after Nikon's church reform in 1653 and the historical reunification of Ukraine with Russia in 1654. The consequence of the intensive rapprochement of Russia with the countries of Western Europe was the penetration of numerous elements of European culture into Old Russian culture. There is a sharp struggle between supporters of Byzantine-Greek and Latin-Polish education. The process of differentiation of fiction begins, its isolation from historical and religious-didactic writing. Chronicles gradually cease to exist, remaining only on the periphery ("Siberian Chronicles"), historical stories are modified beyond recognition, life becomes everyday story and autobiography. Everyday stories with fictional plots and characters appear, democratic satire develops; drama and theater arise, syllabic poetry receives widespread development; The nature of translated literature is changing.

The process of awakening the consciousness of the individual is reflected in what appeared in the second half of the 17th century. a new genre - everyday story. His appearance is associated with a new type of hero who has declared himself both in life and in literature. The everyday story vividly reflected the changes that took place in the consciousness, morality and way of life of people, the struggle between “oldness” and “newness” of the transitional era, which permeated all spheres of personal and public life.

"A Tale of Woe and Misfortune." One of the outstanding works of literature of the second half of the 17th century. is "A Tale of Woe and Misfortune." The central theme of the story is the theme of the tragic fate of the younger generation, which is trying to break with the old forms of family life and home-building morality.

The plot of the story is based on the tragic life story of Young Man, who rejected his parents’ instructions and wished to live according to his own will, “as he pleases.” The appearance of a generalized collective image of a representative of the younger generation of his time was a very remarkable and innovative phenomenon. In literature, a historical figure is replaced by a fictional hero, whose character typifies the traits of an entire generation of the transitional era.

The story emphasizes that the reason for Molodets’s ruin is the “Tsar’s Tavern,” where the hero leaves “his bellies” and exchanges “the living room dress” for “the Tsar’s tavern.” So the “guest son” turns into a homeless tramp, joining the large army of “walking people” wandering through the towns and villages of Rus'. Pictures of “immeasurable nakedness and barefootness” are vividly depicted, in which the motives of protest of the poor class against social injustice and against an evil lot are heard.

In the truthful depiction of the process of formation of declassed elements of society, there is great social significance of the story.

The story sharply contrasts two types of attitudes to life, two worldviews: on the one hand, parents and “good people” - the majority guarding the “Domostroevsky” social and family morality; on the other hand, - Well done, embodying the desire of the new generation for a free life.

The fate of the Young Man is presented in the form of his life, but the story no longer has anything in common with traditional hagiography. Before us is a typically secular, everyday biographical story.

The interweaving of epic and lyricism gives the story an epic scope and gives it lyrical sincerity. In general, the story, according to N. G. Chernyshevsky, follows the true flow of the folk poetic word.

"The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn." Thematically, the Tale of Savva Grudtsyn, created in the 70s of the 17th century, is close to “The Tale of Grief and Misfortune.” This story also reveals the theme of the relationship between two generations, contrasting two types of attitudes towards life. The basis of the plot is the life of the merchant son Savva Grudtsyn, full of anxiety and adventure. The narration of the hero's fate is given against a broad historical background. Savva’s youth takes place during the years of “persecution and great rebellion,” that is, during the period of the Russian people’s struggle against Polish intervention; in his mature years the hero takes part in the war for Smolensk in 1632-1634. The story mentions historical figures: Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, boyar Streshnev, governor Shein, centurion Shilov; and the hero himself belongs to the famous merchant family of the Grudtsyn-Usovs. However, the main place in the story is occupied by pictures of private life.

The image of Savva, like the image of the Young Man in “The Tale of Woe and Misfortune,” summarizes the features of the younger generation, striving to throw off the oppression of centuries-old traditions and live to the fullest extent of their daring, brave powers.

The style of the story combines traditional book techniques and individual motifs of oral folk poetry. The innovation of the story lies in its attempt to portray an ordinary human character in an ordinary everyday setting, to reveal the complexity and inconsistency of character, to show the meaning of love in a person’s life. Quite rightly, therefore, a number of researchers consider “The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn” as the initial stage in the formation of the novel genre.

"The Tale of Frol Skobeev." If the heroes of the stories about Grief and Misfortune and Savva Grudtsyn, in their desire to go beyond the traditional norms of morality and everyday relations, are defeated, then the poor nobleman Frol Skobeev, the hero of the story of the same name, is already shamelessly trampling on ethical standards, achieving personal success in life: material well-being and strong social position.

The story is a typical picaresque short story. It reflected the beginning of the process of merging the patrimonial boyars and the service nobility into a single noble class, the process of elevation new nobility from clerks and clerks, the arrival of “thin families” to replace the “old, honest families.”

In the story, boyar pride and arrogance are subjected to sharp satirical ridicule: the noble steward is powerless to do anything against the “seedy” nobleman and is forced to reconcile with him and recognize him as his heir. All this gives reason to believe that the story arose after 1682, when localism was eliminated.

In achieving his goal, Frol Skobeev does not rely on either God or the devil, but only on his energy, intelligence and everyday practicality. Religious motives occupy a rather modest place in the story. A person’s actions are determined not by the will of a deity or a demon, but by his personal qualities and are consistent with the circumstances in which this person acts.

The image of Annushka is also noteworthy in the story. She declares her rights to choose her betrothed, boldly breaks traditions, and actively participates in organizing an escape from her parents’ home; easily agrees to pretense and deception in order to regain the favor of the fooled father and mother.

Thus, the fate of the heroes of the story reflects characteristic social and everyday phenomena of the late 17th century: the emergence of a new nobility and the destruction of the traditional way of life.

The author has a good command of the skill of direct free storytelling. I. S. Turgenev highly appreciated the story, calling it “an extremely wonderful thing.” “All the faces are excellent, and the naivety of the style is touching,” he wrote.

Subsequently, the story attracted attention writers XVIII and XIX centuries: in the 80s of the XVIII century. Iv. Based on it, Novikov created “Novgorod girls’ Yuletide evening played as a wedding party in Moscow.” N. M. Karamzin used this plot in the story "Natalya - the Boyar's Daughter"; in the 60s of the XIX century. playwright D.V. Averkiev wrote “The Comedy about the Russian nobleman Frol Skobeev”, and in the mid-40s of the 20th century. Soviet composer T. N. Khrennikov created the comic opera "Frol Skobeev" or "The Motherless Son-in-Law".