Matrenin Dvor in the magazine New World. Topics and issues

One of the founders of Russian literary criticism was V.G. Belinsky. And although serious steps were taken in developing the concept back in antiquity literary kind(Aristotle), it was Belinsky who owned the scientifically based theory of three literary families, which you can get acquainted with in detail by reading Belinsky’s article “The Division of Poetry into Genus and Species.”

There are three types fiction: epic(from Greek Epos, narrative), lyrical(it was called a lyre musical instrument, accompanied by chanting poems) and dramatic(from Greek Drama, action).

When presenting this or that subject to the reader (meaning the subject of conversation), the author chooses different approaches to it:

First approach: in detail tell about the object, about the events associated with it, about the circumstances of the existence of this object, etc.; in this case, the author’s position will be more or less detached, the author will act as a kind of chronicler, narrator, or choose one of the characters as the narrator; the main thing in such a work will be the story, the narration about the subject, the leading type of speech will be precisely narration; this kind of literature is called epic;

The second approach: you can tell not so much about the events, but about the impressed, which they produced on the author, about those feelings which they called; image inner world, experiences, impressions and will relate to lyrical kind literature; exactly experience becomes the main event of the lyrics;

Third approach: you can portray item in action, show him on stage; introduce to the reader and viewer of it surrounded by other phenomena; this kind of literature is dramatic; In a drama, the author's voice will be heard least often - in stage directions, that is, the author's explanations of the actions and remarks of the characters.

Look at the table and try to remember its contents:

Types of fiction

Each type of literature in turn includes a number of genres.

GENRE is a historically established group of works united common features content and form. Such groups include novels, stories, poems, elegies, short stories, feuilletons, comedies, etc. In literary criticism, the concept of literary type is often introduced, this is more broad concept than genre. In this case, the novel will be considered a type of fiction, and genres will be various types of novels, for example, adventure, detective, psychological, parable novel, dystopian novel, etc.

Examples genus-species relations in literature:

• Genus: dramatic; view: comedy; genre: sitcom.
• Genus: epic; view: story; genre: fantastic story etc.

Genres being categories historical, appear, develop and eventually “leave” from the “active stock” of artists depending on historical era: ancient lyricists did not know the sonnet; in our time, an archaic genre has become one that was born in ancient times and popular in XVII-XVIII centuries Oh yeah; romanticism XIX century brought to life detective literature, etc.

Consider the following table, which presents the types and genres related to the various types of word art:

Genera, types and genres of artistic literature

Modern literary criticism also highlights fourth, a related genre of literature that combines the features of the epic and lyrical genres: lyric-epic, which refers to poem. And indeed, by telling the reader a story, the poem manifests itself as an epic; revealing to the reader the depth of feelings, inner world person telling this story, the poem manifests itself as lyric poetry.

In the table you came across the expression “small genres”. Epic and lyrical works divided into large and small genres in to a greater extent by volume. Large ones include an epic, a novel, a poem, and small ones include a story, story, fable, song, sonnet, etc.

Read V. Belinsky’s statement about the genre of the story:

If a story, according to Belinsky, is “a leaf from the book of life,” then, using his metaphor, one can figuratively define a novel from a genre point of view as “a chapter from the book of life,” and a story as “a line from the book of life.”

Small epic genres to which the story relates is "intense" in terms of content prose: the writer, due to the small volume, does not have the opportunity to “spread his thoughts along the tree”, to get carried away detailed descriptions, transfers, reproduce a large number of events in detail, but the reader often needs to tell a lot.

The story is characterized by the following features:

• small volume;
• The plot is most often based on one event, the rest are only plotted by the author;
• a small number of characters: usually one or two central characters;
• the author is interested in a specific topic;
• one is decided main question, the remaining questions are “derived” from the main one.

So,
STORY is a small prose work with one or two main characters, dedicated to depicting a single event. Somewhat more voluminous story, but the difference between a story and a story is not always clear: some people call A. Chekhov’s work “The Duel” a short story, and some call it a big story. The following is important: as the critic E. Anichkov wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century, " it is the person’s personality that is at the center of the stories, but not whole group of people".

The rise of Russian short prose begins in the 20s of the 19th century, which gave excellent examples of short epic prose, including the undisputed masterpieces of Pushkin (“Belkin’s Tales”, “ Queen of Spades") and Gogol ("Evenings on a farm near Dikanka", St. Petersburg stories), romantic short stories by A. Pogorelsky, A. Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, V. Odoevsky and others. In the second half of the 19th century, small epic works F. Dostoevsky ("Dream funny man", "Notes from the Underground", N. Leskova ("Lefty", "The Stupid Artist", "Lady Macbeth Mtsensk district"), I. Turgenev ("Hamlet of Shchigrovsky District", "King of the Steppes Lear", "Ghosts", "Notes of a Hunter"), L. Tolstoy (" Prisoner of the Caucasus", "Hadji Murat", "Cossacks", Sevastopol stories), A. Chekhov as the greatest master short story, works by V. Garshin, D. Grigorovich, G. Uspensky and many others.

The twentieth century also did not remain in debt - and stories by I. Bunin, A. Kuprin, M. Zoshchenko, Teffi, A. Averchenko, M. Bulgakov appear... Even such recognized lyricists as A. Blok, N. Gumilyov, M. Tsvetaeva “they stooped to despicable prose,” in the words of Pushkin. It can be argued that on turn of XIX-XX centuries, the small genre of epic has occupied leading position in Russian literature.

And for this reason alone, one should not think that the story raises some minor problems and touches on shallow topics. Form story concise, and the plot is sometimes uncomplicated and concerns, at first glance, simple, as L. Tolstoy said, “natural” relationships: there is simply nowhere for the complex chain of events in the story to unfold. But this is precisely the task of the writer, to enclose a serious and often inexhaustible subject of conversation in a small space of text.

If the plot of the miniature I. Bunin "Muravsky Way", consisting of only 64 words, captures only a few moments of the conversation between the traveler and the coachman in the middle of the endless steppe, then the plot of the story A. Chekhov "Ionych" enough for a whole novel: artistic time The story spans almost a decade and a half. But it doesn’t matter to the author what happened to the hero at each stage of this time: it is enough for him to “snatch” several “links”-episodes from the hero’s life chain, similar friends on each other like drops of water, and the whole life of Doctor Startsev becomes extremely clear to both the author and the reader. “As you live one day of your life, you will live your whole life,” Chekhov seems to be saying. At the same time, the writer, reproducing the situation in the house of the most “cultured” family provincial town S., can focus all his attention on the clatter of knives from the kitchen and the smell of fried onions ( artistic details! ), but to talk about several years of a person’s life as if they never happened at all, or as if it was a “passing”, uninteresting time: “Four years have passed”, “Several more years have passed”, as if it is not worth wasting time and paper for the image of such a trifle...

Image Everyday life a person devoid of external storms and shocks, but in a routine that forces a person to forever wait for happiness that never comes, became the cross-cutting theme of A. Chekhov’s stories, which determined further development Russian short prose.

Historical upheavals, of course, dictate other themes and subjects to the artist. M. Sholokhov in the cycle of Don stories he talks about terrible and beautiful human destinies in a time of revolutionary upheaval. But the point here is not so much in the revolution itself, but in eternal problem the struggle of a person with himself, in the eternal tragedy of the collapse of the old familiar world, which humanity has experienced many times. And therefore Sholokhov turns to plots that have long been rooted in world literature, depicting private human life as if in the context of the world legendary history. Yes, in the story "Mole" Sholokhov uses a plot as ancient as the world about a duel between father and son, not recognized by each other, which we encounter in Russian epics, in the epics of ancient Persia and medieval Germany... But if ancient epic explains the tragedy of a father who killed his son in battle by the laws of fate, which is not subject to man’s control, then Sholokhov talks about the problem of a person’s choice of his life path, a choice that determines all subsequent events and ultimately makes one a beast in human form, and the other - equal greatest heroes of the past.

• A. Pushkin. The stories "Dubrovsky", "Blizzard"
• N. Gogol. The stories "The Night Before Christmas", "Taras Bulba", "The Overcoat", "Nevsky Prospekt".
• I.S. Turgenev. Tale " Noble Nest"; "Notes of a Hunter" (2-3 stories of your choice); story "Asya"
• N.S. Leskov. Stories "Lefty", "Stupid Artist"
• L.N. Tolstoy. Stories "After the Ball", "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"
• M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Fairy tales " The wise minnow", "Bogatyr", "Bear in the Voivodeship"
• A.P. Chekhov. Stories “Jumping”, “Ionych”, “Gooseberry”, “About Love”, “Lady with a Dog”, “Ward Number Six”, “In the Ravine”; other stories of your choice
• I.A.Bunin. Stories and stories "Mr. from San Francisco", "Sukhodol", " Easy breathing", "Antonov apples", "Dark alleys"A.I. Kuprin. The story "Olesya", the story "Garnet Bracelet"
• M. Gorky. Stories “Old Woman Izergil”, “Makar Chudra”, “Chelkash”; collection "Untimely Thoughts"
• A.N. Tolstoy. The story "Viper"
• M. Sholokhov. Stories "Mole", "Alien Blood", "The Fate of Man";
• M. Zoshchenko. Stories "Aristocrat", "Monkey Language", "Love" and others of your choice
• A.I. Solzhenitsyn. Story " Matrenin Dvor"
• V. Shukshin. Stories “I Believe!”, “Boots”, “Space” nervous system and a lot of fat", "Pardon me, madam!", "Stalled"

Before completing task 6, consult a dictionary and establish the exact meaning of the concept you will be working with.

• Grechnev V.Ya. Russian story of the end XIX - early XX century. - L., 1979.
• Zhuk A.A. Russian prose second half of the 19th century century. - M.: Education, 1981.
• Literary encyclopedic Dictionary. - M., 1987.
• Literary studies: Reference materials. - M., 1988.
• Russian story of the 19th century: History and problems of the genre. - L., 1973.

A. N. Solzhenitsyn, having returned from exile, worked as a teacher at the Miltsevo school. He lived in the apartment of Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova. All the events described by the author were real. Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matrenin’s Dvor” describes the difficult lot of a Russian collective farm village. We offer for your information an analysis of the story according to plan; this information can be used for work in literature lessons in the 9th grade, as well as in preparation for the Unified State Exam.

Brief Analysis

Year of writing– 1959

History of creation– The writer began working on his work, dedicated to the problems of the Russian village, in the summer of 1959 on the coast of Crimea, where he was visiting his friends in exile. Beware of censorship, it was recommended to change the title “A village is not worth it without a righteous man,” and on the advice of Tvardovsky, the writer’s story was called “Matrenin’s Dvor.”

Subject– The main theme of this work is the life and everyday life of the Russian hinterland, the problems of relationships common man with power moral problems.

Composition– The narration is told on behalf of the narrator, as if through the eyes of an outside observer. The features of the composition allow us to understand the very essence of the story, where the heroes will come to the realization that the meaning of life is not only (and not so much) in enrichment, material values, but in moral values, and this problem is universal, and not a single village.

Genre– The genre of the work is defined as “monumental story.”

Direction– Realism.

History of creation

The writer’s story is autobiographical; after exile, he actually taught in the village of Miltsevo, which is named Talnovo in the story, and rented a room from Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova. In his a short story the writer depicted not only the fate of one hero, but also the entire epochal idea of ​​​​the formation of the country, all its problems and moral principles.

Myself meaning of the name“Matrenin’s yard” is a reflection of the main idea of ​​the work, where the boundaries of her yard are expanded to the scale of the whole country, and the idea of ​​morality turns into universal human problems. From this we can conclude that the history of the creation of “Matryona’s Yard” does not include a separate village, but the history of the creation of a new outlook on life and on the power that governs the people.

Subject

Having carried out an analysis of the work in Matryona's Dvor, it is necessary to determine main topic story, to find out what the autobiographical essay teaches not only the author himself, but, by and large, the whole country.

The life and work of the Russian people, their relationship with the authorities are deeply covered. A person works all his life, losing his personal life and interests in his work. Your health, in the end, without getting anything. Using the example of Matryona, it is shown that she worked all her life without any official documents about her work, and did not even earn a pension.

All recent months Her existence was spent collecting various pieces of paper, and the red tape and bureaucracy of the authorities also led to the fact that she had to go and get the same piece of paper more than once. Indifferent people sitting at desks in offices can easily put the wrong seal, signature, stamp; they do not care about people’s problems. So Matryona, in order to achieve a pension, goes through all the authorities more than once, somehow achieving a result.

The villagers think only about their own enrichment; for them there is no moral values. Thaddeus Mironovich, her husband's brother, forced Matryona during her lifetime to give the promised part of the house to her adopted daughter, Kira. Matryona agreed, and when, out of greed, two sleighs were hooked up to one tractor, the cart was hit by a train, and Matryona died along with her nephew and the tractor driver. Human greed is above all, that same evening, her only friend, Aunt Masha, came to her house to pick up the thing promised to her before Matryona’s sisters stole it.

And Thaddeus Mironovich, who also had a coffin with his late son in his house, still managed to transport the logs abandoned at the crossing before the funeral, and did not even come to pay tribute to the memory of the woman who died terrible death because of his insatiable greed. Matryona’s sisters, first of all, took her funeral money and began to divide the remains of the house, crying over their sister’s coffin not out of grief and sympathy, but because that’s how it was supposed to be.

In fact, humanly speaking, no one felt sorry for Matryona. Greed and greed blinded the eyes of fellow villagers, and people will never understand Matryona that with her spiritual development the woman stands at an unattainable height from them. She is a true righteous woman.

Composition

The events of that time are described from the perspective of an outsider, a tenant who lived in Matryona’s house.

Narrator starts his story from the time he was looking for a job as a teacher, trying to find a remote village to live in. As fate would have it, he ended up in the village where Matryona lived and settled down with her.

In the second part, the narrator describes the difficult fate of Matryona, who has not seen happiness since his youth. Her life was hard, with daily labors and worries. She had to bury all of her six children who were born. Matryona endured a lot of torment and grief, but did not become embittered, and her soul did not harden. She is still hardworking and selfless, friendly and peaceful. She never judges anyone, treats everyone evenly and kindly, and still works in her yard. She died trying to help her relatives move their own part of the house.

In the third part, the narrator describes the events after Matryona’s death, the same callousness of people, the woman’s relatives and friends, who, after the woman’s death, flew like crows into the remains of her yard, trying to quickly steal and plunder everything, condemning Matryona for her righteous life.

Main characters

Genre

The publication of Matryona's Court caused a lot of controversy among Soviet critics. Tvardovsky wrote in his notes that Solzhenitsyn is the only writer who expresses his opinion without regard to the authorities and the opinions of critics.

Everyone clearly came to the conclusion that the writer’s work belongs to "monumental story", so in high spiritual genre a description is given of a simple Russian woman who personifies universal human values.

"Matryonin Dvor"- the second of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s stories published in the magazine “New World”. The author's title “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man” was changed at the request of the editors in order to avoid censorship obstacles. For the same reason, the time of action in the story was changed by the author to 1956.

Andrei Sinyavsky called this work “the fundamental thing” of all Russian “village literature”.

History of creation and publication

The story began at the end of July - beginning of August 1959 in the village of Chernomorskoye in western Crimea, where Solzhenitsyn was invited by friends from exile in Kazakhstan by the spouses Nikolai Ivanovich and Elena Alexandrovna Zubov, who settled there in 1958. The story was completed in December of the same year.

Solzhenitsyn conveyed the story to Tvardovsky on December 26, 1961. The first discussion in the magazine took place on January 2, 1962. Tvardovsky believed that this work could not be published. The manuscript remained with the editor. Having learned that censorship had cut Veniamin Kaverin’s memories of Mikhail Zoshchenko from “New World” (1962, No. 12), Lydia Chukovskaya wrote in her diary on December 5, 1962:

...What if they don’t publish Solzhenitsyn’s second work? I liked her more than the first one. She stuns with her courage, astonishes with her material - and, of course, literary skill; and “Matryona”... is already visible here great artist, humane, giving back to us native language, loving Russia, as Blok said, mortally insulted by love.<…>So Akhmatova’s prophetic oath comes true:

And we will save you, Russian speech,
Great Russian word.

Saved - revived - film by Solzhenitsyn.

After the success of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Tvardovsky decided to re-edit the discussion and prepare the story for publication. In those days, Tvardovsky wrote in his diary:

Before Solzhenitsyn’s arrival today, I re-read his “Righteous Woman” since five in the morning. Oh my god, writer. No jokes. A writer who is solely concerned with expressing what lies “at the core” of his mind and heart. Not a shadow of a desire to “hit the bull’s eye”, to please, to make the task of an editor or critic easier - whatever you want, get out of it, but I won’t get out of my way. I can only go further.

The name “Matryonin Dvor” was proposed by Alexander Tvardovsky before publication and approved during an editorial discussion on November 26, 1962:

“The title shouldn’t be so edifying,” argued Alexander Trifonovich. “Yes, I have no luck with your names,” Solzhenitsyn responded, however, quite good-naturedly.

The story was published in the January notebook of the New World for 1963 (pages 42-63) along with the story “The Incident at Kochetovka Station” under the general heading “Two Stories”.

Unlike Solzhenitsyn’s first published work, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which was generally positively received by critics, Matryonin’s Dvor caused a wave of controversy and discussion in the Soviet press. The author's position in the story was at the center of a critical discussion on the pages of Literary Russia in the winter of 1964. It was started by the article young writer L. Zhukhovitsky “Looking for a co-author!”

In 1989, “Matryonin Dvor” became the first publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s texts in the USSR after many years of silence. The story was published in two issues of the magazine “Ogonyok” (1989, No. 23, 24) with a huge circulation of more than 3 million copies. Solzhenitsyn declared the publication “pirated” because it was carried out without his consent.

Plot

This reconciles the narrator with his lot: “A wind of calm blew over me from these names. They promised me a crazy Russia.” He settles in one of the villages called Talnovo. The owner of the hut in which the narrator lives is called Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva or simply Matryona.

Matryona, not considering her fate interesting for a “cultured” person, sometimes in the evenings tells a guest about herself. The life story of this woman fascinates and at the same time stuns him. He sees in her special meaning, which Matryona’s fellow villagers and relatives do not notice. My husband went missing at the beginning of the war. He loved Matryona and did not beat her, like the village husbands of their wives. But it’s unlikely that Matryona herself loved him. She was supposed to marry her husband's older brother, Thaddeus. However, he went to the front in the First world war and disappeared. Matryona was waiting for him, but in the end, at the insistence of Thaddeus’s family, she married younger brother- Efima. And then Thaddeus, who was in Hungarian captivity, suddenly returned. According to him, he did not hack Matryona and her husband to death with an ax only because Efim is his brother. Thaddeus loved Matryona so much that new bride I found one for myself with the same name. The “second Matryona” gave birth to six children to Thaddeus, but the “first Matryona” had all the children from Efim (also six) die without living three months. The whole village decided that Matryona was “corrupted,” and she herself believed it. Then she took in the daughter of the “second Matryona”, Kira, and raised her for ten years, until she got married and left for the village of Cherusti.

Matryona lived all her life as if not for herself. She constantly worked for someone: for a collective farm, for neighbors, while doing “peasant” work, and never asked for money for it. In Matryona there is a huge inner strength. For example, she is able to stop a running horse, which men cannot stop. Gradually, the narrator understands that Matryona, who gives herself to others without reserve, and “... is... the very righteous man, without whom... the village does not stand. Neither the city. Neither the whole land is ours.” But he is hardly pleased with this discovery. If Russia rests only on selfless old women, what will happen to it next?

Hence the absurdly tragic death of the heroine at the end of the story. Matryona dies while helping Thaddeus and his sons drag across railway on the sleigh is part of his own hut, bequeathed to Kira. Thaddeus did not want to wait for Matryona’s death and decided to take away the inheritance for the young people during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry out of obligation rather than from the heart, and think only about the final division of Matryona’s property. Thaddeus doesn't even come to the wake.

Characters

• Ignatich - narrator
• Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva - the main character, righteous woman
• Efim Mironovich Grigoriev - Matryona's husband
• Thaddeus Mironovich Grigoriev - Efim's older brother ( ex-lover Matryona and who deeply loved her)
• “Second Matryona” - wife of Thaddeus
• Kira is the daughter of the “second” Matryona and Thaddeus, the adopted daughter of Matryona Grigorieva
• Kira's husband, machinist
• sons of Thaddeus
• Masha - close girlfriend Matryona
• 3 Matryona sisters

Performances

Data

Matryona Zakharova's house reconstructed after a fire

Notes

1. Andrey Sinyavsky, Golden Lace. (undefined) (unavailable link). Retrieved January 24, 2008. Archived January 5, 2004.
2. Chukovskaya, L. Notes about Anna Akhmatova. - M.: Consent, 1997. - T. 2. - P. 560.

History of creation and publication

The story began in late July - early August 1959 in the village of Chernomorskoye in western Crimea, where Solzhenitsyn was invited by friends in Kazakhstan exile by the spouses Nikolai Ivanovich and Elena Alexandrovna Zubov, who settled there in 1958. The story was completed in December of the same year.

Solzhenitsyn conveyed the story to Tvardovsky on December 26, 1961. The first discussion in the magazine took place on January 2, 1962. Tvardovsky believed that this work could not be published. The manuscript remained with the editor. Having learned that censorship had cut Veniamin Kaverin’s memories of Mikhail Zoshchenko from “New World” (1962, No. 12), Lydia Chukovskaya wrote in her diary on December 5, 1962:

After the success of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Tvardovsky decided to re-edit the discussion and prepare the story for publication. In those days, Tvardovsky wrote in his diary:

Before Solzhenitsyn’s arrival today, I re-read his “Righteous Woman” since five in the morning. Oh my god, writer. No jokes. A writer who is solely concerned with expressing what lies “at the core” of his mind and heart. Not a shadow of a desire to “hit the bull’s eye”, to please, to make the task of an editor or critic easier - whatever you want, get out of it, but I won’t get out of my way. I can only go further.

The name “Matryonin Dvor” was proposed by Alexander Tvardovsky before publication and approved during an editorial discussion on November 26, 1962:

“The title shouldn’t be so edifying,” argued Alexander Trifonovich. “Yes, I have no luck with your names,” Solzhenitsyn responded, however, quite good-naturedly.

Unlike Solzhenitsyn’s first published work, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which was generally positively received by critics, Matryonin’s Dvor caused a wave of controversy and discussion in the Soviet press. The author's position in the story was at the center of a critical discussion on the pages of Literary Russia in the winter of 1964. It began with an article by the young writer L. Zhukhovitsky “Looking for a co-author!”

In 1989, “Matryonin Dvor” became the first publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s texts in the USSR after many years of silence. The story was published in two issues of the magazine “Ogonyok” (1989, No. 23, 24) with a huge circulation of more than 3 million copies. Solzhenitsyn declared the publication “pirated” because it was carried out without his consent.

Plot

In the summer of 1956, “at the one hundred and eighty-fourth kilometer from Moscow along the line that goes to Murom and Kazan,” a passenger gets off the train. This is the narrator, whose fate resembles the fate of Solzhenitsyn himself (he fought, but from the front he was “delayed in returning for ten years,” that is, he served in a camp and was in exile, which is also evidenced by the fact that when the narrator got a job, every letter in his documents was “searched”). He dreams of working as a teacher in the depths of Russia, away from urban civilization. But it didn’t work out to live in the village with the wonderful name Vysokoye Polye: “Alas, they didn’t bake bread there. They didn't sell anything edible there. The whole village was dragging food in bags from the regional city.” And then he is transferred to a village with a monstrous name for his ears, Torfoprodukt. However, it turns out that “not everything is about peat mining” and there are also villages with the names Chaslitsy, Ovintsy, Spudny, Shevertny, Shestimirovo...

This reconciles the narrator with his lot: “A wind of calm blew over me from these names. They promised me a crazy Russia.” He settles in one of the villages called Talnovo. The owner of the hut in which the narrator lives is called Matryona Vasilyevna Grigorieva or simply Matryona.

Matryona's fate, about which she does not immediately, not considering it interesting for a “cultured” person, sometimes tells the guest in the evenings, fascinates and at the same time stuns him. He sees a special meaning in her fate, which Matryona’s fellow villagers and relatives do not notice. My husband went missing at the beginning of the war. He loved Matryona and did not beat her, like the village husbands of their wives. But it’s unlikely that Matryona herself loved him. She was supposed to marry her husband's older brother, Thaddeus. However, he went to the front in the First World War and disappeared. Matryona was waiting for him, but in the end, at the insistence of Thaddeus’s family, she married her younger brother, Efim. And then Thaddeus, who was in Hungarian captivity, suddenly returned. According to him, he did not hack Matryona and her husband to death with an ax only because Efim is his brother. Thaddeus loved Matryona so much that he found a new bride with the same name. The “second Matryona” gave birth to six children to Thaddeus, but all the children from Efim (also six) of the “first Matryona” died without even living for three months. The whole village decided that Matryona was “corrupted,” and she herself believed it. Then she took in the daughter of the “second Matryona”, Kira, and raised her for ten years, until she got married and left for the village of Cherusti.

Matryona lived all her life as if not for herself. She constantly worked for someone: for a collective farm, for neighbors, while doing “peasant” work, and never asked for money for it. Matryona has enormous inner strength. For example, she is able to stop a running horse, which men cannot stop. Gradually, the narrator understands that Matryona, who gives herself to others without reserve, and “... is... the very righteous man, without whom... the village does not stand. Neither the city. Neither the whole land is ours.” But he is hardly pleased with this discovery. If Russia rests only on selfless old women, what will happen to it next?

Hence the absurdly tragic end of the story. Matryona dies while helping Thaddeus and his sons drag part of their own hut, bequeathed to Kira, across the railroad on a sleigh. Thaddeus did not want to wait for Matryona’s death and decided to take away the inheritance for the young people during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry out of obligation rather than from the heart, and think only about the final division of Matryona’s property. Thaddeus doesn't even come to the wake.

Characters and prototypes

Notes

Literature

• A. Solzhenitsyn. Matryonin's yard and other stories. Texts of stories on the official website of Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Zhukhovitsky L. Looking for a co-author! // Literary Russia. - 1964. - January 1
• Brovman Gr. Is it necessary to be a co-author? // Literary Russia. - 1964. - January 1
• Poltoratsky V. “Matryonin Dvor” and its surroundings // Izvestia. - 1963. - March 29
• Sergovantsev N. The tragedy of loneliness and “continuous life” // October. - 1963. - No. 4. - P. 205.
• Ivanova L. Must be a citizen // Lit. gas. - 1963. - May 14
• Meshkov Yu. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Personality. Creation. Time. - Ekaterinburg, 1993
• Suprunenko P. Recognition... oblivion... fate... Experience of a reader's study of the work of A. Solzhenitsyn. - Pyatigorsk, 1994
• Chalmaev V. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Life and Creativity. - M., 1994.
• Kuzmin V.V. Poetics of stories by A.I. Solzhenitsyn. Monograph. - Tver: TvGU, 1998. Without ISBN.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Stories and novellas	One day of Ivan Denisovich (1959) · Matryonin yard (1959) · Right hand (1960) · The incident at Kochetovka station (1963) · For the good of the cause (1963) · Zakhar-Kalita (1965) · What a pity (1965) · Easter procession (1966) · Tiny (1958-1963, 1996-1999)
Novels	In the first circle (1955-1958) · Cancer building (1963-1966)
Memories	A calf butted heads with an oak tree (1967-1974) · A grain landed between two millstones
Poems, poems	Dorozhenka (1947–1952) · Prussian nights (1947–1952)
Dramaturgy	Feast of the Winners (1951-1953) · Prisoners (1952-1953) · Deer and bowerbird (1954)
Essays and journalism	It’s not the custom to whiten cabbage soup with tar, that’s why sour cream (1965) · Peace and violence (1973) · On the return of breathing and consciousness (1974) · Repentance and self-restraint as categories of national life (1974) · Education (1974) · Don't live by lies (1974) · Shredding Freedom (1976) · Our pluralists (1982) · ...Your tripod is shaking (1984) · How can we arrange Russia? (1990) · Russia in collapse (1998) · Reflections on the February Revolution (2007)
Other	Gulag Archipelago (1973) · Red wheel · The Russian question towards the end of the 20th century (1994) · Russian language extension dictionary (1990-2000) · Two hundred years together (2001-2002)
Film adaptations	One day of Ivan Denisovich (1970) · In the first circle (2006)

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Matryonin Dvor is the second of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s stories published in the magazine “New World”. Andrei Sinyavsky called this work the “fundamental thing” of all Russian “village” literature. The author's title of the story “The village is not worth it... ... Wikipedia

Wikipedia has articles about other people with this last name, see Solzhenitsyn. Alexander Solzhenitsyn ... Wikipedia

The magazine “New World” published several works by Solzhenitsyn, among them “Matrenin’s Dvor”. The story, according to the writer, is “completely autobiographical and reliable.” It talks about the Russian village, about its inhabitants, about their values, about goodness, justice, sympathy and compassion, work and help - qualities that fit into the righteous man, without whom “the village is not worth it.”

"Matrenin's Dvor" is a story about the injustice and cruelty of human fate, about the Soviet order of post-Stalin times and about the life of the most ordinary people living far from city life. The narration is not told from a person's point of view main character, but on behalf of the narrator, Ignatyich, who in the whole story seems to play the role of only an outside observer. What is described in the story dates back to 1956 - three years passed after the death of Stalin, and then Russian people I still didn’t know and didn’t understand how to live further.

“Matrenin’s Dvor” is divided into three parts:

1. The first tells the story of Ignatyich, it begins at the Torfprodukt station. The hero immediately reveals his cards, without making any secret of it: he is a former prisoner, and now works as a teacher at a school, he came there in search of peace and tranquility. In Stalin's time, it was almost impossible for people who had been imprisoned to find workplace, and after the death of the leader, many became school teachers (a profession in short supply). Ignatyich stays with an elderly, hardworking woman named Matryona, with whom he finds it easy to communicate and has peace of mind. Her dwelling was poor, the roof sometimes leaked, but this did not mean at all that there was no comfort in it: “Maybe to someone from the village, someone richer, Matryona’s hut did not seem friendly, but for us that autumn and winter it was quite good."
2. The second part tells about Matryona’s youth, when she had to go through a lot. The war took her fiancé Fadey away from her, and she had to marry his brother, who still had children in his arms. Taking pity on him, she became his wife, although she did not love him at all. But three years later, Fadey, whom the woman still loved, suddenly returned. The returning warrior hated her and her brother for their betrayal. But hard life could not kill her kindness and hard work, because it was in work and caring for others that she found solace. Matryona even died while doing business - she helped her lover and her sons drag part of her house across the railroad tracks, which was bequeathed to Kira (his daughter). And this death was caused by Fadey’s greed, avarice and callousness: he decided to take away the inheritance while Matryona was still alive.
3. The third part talks about how the narrator learns about Matryona’s death and describes the funeral and wake. Her relatives are not crying out of grief, but rather because it is customary, and in their heads there are only thoughts about the division of the property of the deceased. Fadey is not at the wake.

Main characters

Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva - elderly woman, a peasant woman who was released from work on the collective farm due to illness. She was always happy to help people, even strangers. In the episode when the narrator moves into her hut, the author mentions that she never intentionally looked for a lodger, that is, she did not want to make money on this basis, and did not profit even from what she could. Her wealth was pots of ficus trees and an old domestic cat that she took from the street, a goat, as well as mice and cockroaches. Matryona also married her fiancé’s brother out of a desire to help: “Their mother died...they didn’t have enough hands.”

Matryona herself also had children, six, but they all died in early childhood, so she later adopted youngest daughter Fadeya Kiru. Matryona rose early in the morning, worked until dark, but did not show fatigue or dissatisfaction to anyone: she was kind and responsive to everyone. She was always very afraid of becoming a burden to someone, she did not complain, she was even afraid to call the doctor again. Matryona wanted to give her room to the grown-up Kira, which required dividing the house - during the move, Fadey’s things got stuck in the sled on railway tracks, and Matryona got hit by a train. Now there was no one to ask for help, there was no person ready to unselfishly come to the rescue. But the relatives of the deceased kept in mind only the thought of profit, of dividing what was left of the poor peasant woman, already thinking about it at the funeral. Matryona stood out very much from the background of her fellow villagers, and was thus irreplaceable, invisible and the only righteous person.

Narrator, Ignatyich, to some extent, is a prototype of the writer. He served his exile and was acquitted, after which he set out in search of a calm and serene life, wanted to work school teacher. He found refuge with Matryona. Judging by the desire to move away from the bustle of the city, the narrator is not very sociable and loves silence. He worries when a woman takes his padded jacket by mistake, and is confused by the volume of the loudspeaker. The narrator got along with the owner of the house; this shows that he is still not completely antisocial. However, he doesn’t understand people very well: he understood the meaning by which Matryona lived only after she passed away.

Topics and issues

Solzhenitsyn in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” talks about the life of the inhabitants of the Russian village, about the system of relationships between power and people, about the high meaning of selfless work in the kingdom of selfishness and greed.

Of all this, the theme of labor is shown most clearly. Matryona is a person who does not ask for anything in return and is ready to give herself all for the benefit of others. They don’t appreciate her and don’t even try to understand her, but this is a person who experiences tragedy every day: first, the mistakes of her youth and the pain of loss, then frequent illnesses, hard work, not life, but survival. But from all the problems and hardships, Matryona finds solace in work. And, in the end, it is work and overwork that leads her to death. The meaning of Matryona’s life is precisely this, and also care, help, the desire to be needed. Therefore, active love for others is the main theme of the story.

The problem of morality also occupies an important place in the story. Material values in the village they exalt themselves over human soul and her work, on humanity in general. Understand the depth of Matryona's character minor characters they are simply incapable: greed and the desire to possess more blinds them to their eyes and does not allow them to see kindness and sincerity. Fadey lost his son and wife, his son-in-law faces imprisonment, but his thoughts are on how to protect the logs that were not burned.

In addition, the story has a theme of mysticism: the motive of an unidentified righteous man and the problem of cursed things - which were touched by people full of self-interest. Fadey made the upper room of Matryona's hut cursed, undertaking to knock it down.

Idea

The above-mentioned themes and problems in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” are aimed at revealing the depth of the main character’s pure worldview. An ordinary peasant woman serves as an example of the fact that difficulties and losses only strengthen a Russian person, and do not break him. With the death of Matryona, everything that she figuratively built collapses. Her house is torn apart, the remains of her property are divided among themselves, the yard remains empty and ownerless. Therefore, her life looks pitiful, no one realizes the loss. But won't the same thing happen with palaces and jewels? powerful of the world this? The author demonstrates the frailty of material things and teaches us not to judge others by their wealth and achievements. True meaning It has moral character, which does not fade even after death, because it remains in the memory of those who saw its light.

Maybe over time the heroes will notice that a very important part of their life is missing: invaluable values. Why reveal global moral problems in such poor settings? And what then is the meaning of the title of the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”? Last words that Matryona was a righteous woman erases the boundaries of her court and expands them to the scale of the whole world, thereby making the problem of morality universal.

Folk character in the work

Solzhenitsyn reasoned in the article “Repentance and Self-Restraint”: “There are such born angels, they seem to be weightless, they seem to glide over this slurry, without drowning in it at all, even if their feet touch its surface? Each of us has met such people, there are not ten or a hundred of them in Russia, these are righteous people, we saw them, were surprised (“eccentrics”), took advantage of their goodness, good moments They answered them in kind, they disposed, - and immediately plunged again into our doomed depths.”

Matryona is distinguished from the rest by her ability to preserve her humanity and a strong core inside. To those who unscrupulously used her help and kindness, it might seem that she was weak-willed and pliable, but the heroine helped based only on her inner selflessness and moral greatness.

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