Analysis of Zoshchenko's story three documents. Recognized pattern (FAT)

1. The originality of the creativity of Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko.
2. “Aristocrats” in the understanding of ordinary people of Zoshchenko’s time.
3. The significance of the work of Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko.

Already the first satirical works of Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko indicated that Russian literature was replenished with a new name of a writer, unlike anyone else, with his own special view of the world, social life, morality, culture, human relationships. The language of Zoshchenko's prose was also not similar to the language of other writers working in the genre of satire.

Zoshchenko in his works puts the heroes in circumstances to which they cannot adapt, which is why they look funny, absurd, and pitiful. Such, for example, is the character of the story “Aristocrat” Grigory Ivanovich. The narration is narrated by the character himself, that is, we hear the whole story from the first person. Grigory Ivanovich talks about how his infatuation with the aristocrat ended. It must be said that the hero clearly understood for himself what aristocrats look like - they must certainly wear a hat, “she has fildecos stockings,” she can be with a pug in her arms, and have a “golden tooth.” Even if a woman does not belong to the aristocracy, but looks as the narrator described her, then for him she automatically goes into the category of aristocrats hated by him after what happened.

And the following happened: the plumber Grigory Ivanovich saw just one of these “aristocrats” at a meeting and became interested in her. The hero's courtship of the lady he likes causes laughter - he comes to her “as an official person” and is interested “in the sense of damage to the water supply and the restroom.” After a month of such visits, the lady began to answer the gentleman’s questions in more detail about the condition of the bathroom. The hero looks pitiful - he absolutely does not know how to carry on a conversation with the object of his interest, and even when they finally began to walk arm in arm through the streets, he feels awkward because he does not know what to talk about and because people are looking at them.

However, Grigory Ivanovich still tries to join the culture and invites his lady to the theater. He is bored in the theater, and during the intermission, instead of discussing what is happening on stage, he again starts talking about what is closer to him - about the water supply. The hero decides to treat the lady to a cake, and since he has “little money,” he pointedly invites her to “eat one cake.” The narrator explains his behavior during the scene with the cakes as “bourgeois modesty” due to lack of money. This very “bourgeois modesty” prevents the gentleman from admitting to the lady that he is short of money and the hero is trying in every possible way to distract his companion from eating cakes that is ruinous for his pocket. He fails, the situation becomes critical, and the hero, disdaining his former intentions of appearing to be a cultured person, forces the lady to put back the fourth cake, for which he cannot pay: “Put it down,” I say, “back!”, “Put it down,” I say , - to hell with your mother! The situation also looks comical when the assembled people, the “experts,” evaluate the fourth cake and argue whether it has “a bite” or not.

It is no coincidence that the story takes place in the theater. The theater is considered a symbol of spiritual culture, which was so lacking in society. Therefore, the theater here acts as a background against which the lack of culture, ignorance, and bad manners of people appear most clearly.

Grigory Ivanovich does not blame himself for what happened; he attributes his failure in love affairs to the difference in social background with your hobby. He blames the “aristocrat” for everything, with her “aristocratic” behavior in the theater. He does not admit that he tried to be a cultured person, the hero believes that he tried to behave in relation to the lady as a “bourgeois, uncut”, but in fact he is a “proletariat”.

The funny thing is that the lady had a very distant relationship with the aristocracy - perhaps the matter was limited only external resemblance with a representative of high society, and even then in the understanding of Grigory Ivanovich. This is evidenced by both the lady’s behavior and her speech. Not at all like a well-mannered and cultured person belonging to the aristocracy, she says at the end of the story to Grigory Ivanovich: “That’s quite disgusting on your part. Those who don’t have money don’t travel with the ladies.”

The whole narrative evokes comic effect, and in combination with the narrator’s language - laughter. The narrator's speech is replete with jargon, colloquialisms, puns, and blunders. Just look at the expression “an aristocrat is not a woman to me at all, but a smooth place”! About how the main character “walked” the lady, he himself says this: “I’ll take her by the arm and drag myself like a pike.” He calls the lady “sort of a freak” and compares himself to a “uncut bourgeois.” As the story develops the hero no longer minces his expressions - he tells the lady to put the cake “to hell,” and the owner, in the words of Grigory Ivanovich, “twists his fists in front of his face." The narrator gives his own interpretation of some words. So, for example, to remain indifferent means “to play the fool.” . This hero, who claims to be a cultured person, is not one. And all his attempts to get closer to “culture” look ridiculous. The importance of Zoshchenko’s work is difficult to overestimate - his laughter remains relevant in our modern times, because human and social vices, to Unfortunately, they still remain ineradicable.

Heroes of M. Zoshchenko's works

Zoshchenko's hero is an ordinary man, a man with poor morals and a primitive outlook on life. This man in the street personified an entire human layer of the Russia of that time. Zoshchenko, in many of his works, tried to emphasize that this man in the street often spent all his strength fighting various kinds of minor everyday troubles, instead of actually doing something for the good of society. But the writer did not ridicule the man himself, but the philistine traits in him. “I combine these characteristic, often shaded features in one hero, and then the hero becomes familiar to us and seen somewhere,” Zoshchenko wrote. With his stories, Zoshchenko seemed to be calling not to fight people who bear philistine traits, but to help them get rid of these traits. And also, as far as possible, to ease their worries about creating a tolerable life.

Sometimes the narrative is quite skillfully constructed according to the type of well-known absurdity, a tale beginning with the words “walked A tall man short." This kind of awkwardness creates a certain comic effect. The tale is often constructed as if in the form of a casual conversation with the reader, and sometimes, when the shortcomings have become particularly egregious, openly journalistic notes are heard in the author’s voice. In satirical stories, Zoshchenko rarely draws conclusions, and even if he does, he only makes one or two sentences - think for yourself what’s the matter.

Often in stories there is a hero-narrator, a tradesman, on whose behalf the story is told and who was not only afraid to openly declare his views, but also tried to inadvertently not give rise to any reprehensible opinions about himself. In such small masterpieces as “Bait Live”, “Aristocrat”, “Bath”, “ Nervous people", "History of a Case" and others, the author seems to cut off various socio-cultural layers, getting to those layers where the sources of indifference, lack of culture, and vulgarity nest.

Thus, the hero of “The Aristocrat” (1923) became infatuated with one person in fildecos stockings and a hat. While he “as an official person” visited the apartment and then walked along the street, experiencing the inconvenience of having to take the lady’s arm and “drag like a pike,” everything was relatively safe. But as soon as the hero invited the aristocrat to the theater, “she developed her ideology in its entirety.” Seeing the cakes during the intermission, the aristocrat “approaches the dish with a lecherous gait and grabs the cream and eats it.” The lady has eaten three cakes and is reaching for the fourth.

Lay down, I say, back!

After this culmination, events unfold like an avalanche, drawing an increasing number of characters into their orbit. As a rule, in the first half of the story one or two, or even three, characters are presented. And only when the development of the plot reaches its highest point, when the need arises to typify the phenomenon being described, to sharpen it satirically, a more or less written out group of people, sometimes a crowd, appears.

So it is in “Aristocrat”. The closer to the finale, the greater the number of faces the author brings to the stage. First, the figure of the barman appears, who, in response to all the assurances of the hero, who passionately proves that only three pieces have been eaten, since the fourth cake is on the platter, “behaves indifferently.”

“No,” he answers, “although it is in the dish, a bite was made on it and it was crushed with a finger.”

There are also amateur experts, some of whom “say the bite is done, others say it’s not.” And, finally, the crowd, attracted by the scandal, laughs at the sight of the unlucky theatergoer, frantically turning out his pockets with all kinds of junk before their eyes.

In the finale, again only two characters remain, finally clarifying their relationship. The story ends with a dialogue between the offended lady and the hero, dissatisfied with her behavior.

And at the house she says to me in her bourgeois tone:

Quite disgusting of you. Those who have no money go with the ladies.

And I say:

Happiness is not in money, citizen. Sorry for the expression.

As we can see, both sides are offended. Moreover, both sides believe only in their own truth, being firmly convinced that it is the other side that is wrong. The hero of Zoshchenkov's story invariably considers himself infallible, a “respected citizen,” although in reality he acts as a arrogant man in the street.

A strange situation arises in the story “Nervous People” (1925). For us, of course, it is strange, but for that time it was probably an ordinary scene. So, the action in this story takes place in a communal apartment. Undivided hedgehog. “The people,” Zoshchenko writes, “are very nervous. Gets upset over trifles. He's getting hot. And he fights through it roughly, as if in a fog.” All the residents immediately ran to the kitchen where the argument took place. The disabled Gavrilych also appeared:

What, he says, is all this noise, but there is no fight?

Here, immediately after these words, the fight was confirmed.

Began.

The disabled man was hit on the bald head with a frying pan, causing him to fall to the floor and lie there, bored, until the end of the fight. It ended with the police showing up and, in the end, everyone was fined, and the one who mutilated Gavrilych was given six months.

The author’s words sum it up: “This is fair, my brothers. Nerves are nerves, but you shouldn’t fight.” In principle, few of Zoshchenko’s stories directly reflect the author’s thoughts. Basically, they end like this, almost mid-sentence - the reader is given the opportunity to draw his own conclusions.

I think both stories are similar in their idea and make fun of everyday incivility. Well, in fact, if you’ve already invited me to the wake, then be prepared to suffer some losses. On the other hand, life, of course, was difficult, everyone’s nerves were on edge. Both stories encourage you to control yourself and not get angry over trifles.

Zoshchenko can distinguish several types of characters. Some evoke sharp rejection from the author, others - compassion. The revolution did not have a positive impact on their psychology and consciousness, but they are trying to adapt to new conditions, to master the language of slogans and newspapers, which is completely incomprehensible to them.

In 1924 In the book “ Happy life» Zoshchenko, along with short stories, includes “Sentimental Stories”. The original cycle consisted of works written in 1922-1926: “Goat”, “People”, “Wisdom”, “Terrible Night”, “What the Nightingale Sang About”, “Merry Adventure”, “Apollo and Tamara”.

One of the main techniques of the poetics of stories is the discrepancy between titles and endings. The titles of the stories “What the Nightingale Sang About”, “Lilac is Blooming”, suggest romantic content, a story about sublime feelings. Their endings are tragic. The stories are constructed as a system of characters’ actions; they lack external psychologism. But each story reveals a psychological abyss. Zoshchenko uses grotesque techniques that allow him to combine comic elements with dramatic and tragic ones.

Zoshchenko develops techniques for commenting on the events depicted. The comments of Ivan Vasilyevich Kolenkorov make it possible to show that the hero-narrator differs, according to A. Starkov, “from the average citizen in the level of general culture, but in the type and direction of his thinking ... appears as his spiritual brother.”

Characters « Sentimental stories» are experiencing the collapse of hopes and dreams. They are focused on their small everyday needs, the satisfaction of which leaves no strength for higher spiritual goals.

The main motives of the “Sentimental Tales”, variations of which are repeated in each of them, are fear of life; risk of job loss; the threat of poverty; loss of interest in life by a person; death of “heartbreak”; noble blood, pushing to commit suicide.

The little official Zabezhkin from the story “The Goat” lives in constant fear of losing his job and being left without a livelihood. He dreams of finding such support in life that would give him the opportunity to survive even if he loses his service. One day, while walking after work on the outskirts of the city, he notices an advertisement for renting a room to a lonely man. In the courtyard of a house for rent, he sees a goat and perceives what he saw as a sign of hope for a change in his fate. He makes great efforts and loses his last possessions in order to live with the owner of the room. Wanting to strengthen his position, he intends to marry the one he considers to be the owner of the goat. It is the goat that is for him the condition for security and strength of life. When it turns out that the goat belongs to one of the tenants, and not to the owner herself, the marriage is upset. The woman understands Zabezhkin’s selfish intentions and drives him away in shame. Having lost both his service and his property, the hero becomes completely dejected and ultimately disappears. At the end of the story, the image of a beggar appears. The connection of this story with the traditions of Gogol’s “The Overcoat” is obvious.

In the story “The Fitter” (1927), the focus is again on the “little man,” the theater fitter Ivan Kuzmich Myakishev. And this lineman was very offended by the fact that during the photographing, a tenor was seated in the center “on a chair with a back”, and he, the lineman, was “pushed somewhere to the side.” Then, when he wanted to arrange a couple of tickets to the next concert for his friends, he was refused, which made him even more offended and turn off the lights in the entire theater. “Here, of course, there was a typical confusion. The manager is running. The audience is screaming. The cashier squeals and is afraid that someone might take his money in the dark.” We got out of the situation by placing the fitter’s girls who were familiar to us in “prominent places” and continuing the performance. The author ends with his typical phrase: “Now figure it out for yourself who is more important in this complex theatrical mechanism.”

Again, as in many other stories, global problem shown in a special case. On the one hand, the story teaches that no matter how important a person is, he must be treated with respect. On the other hand, each person must objectively assess his importance in this life, but really, don’t put the lineman in the center and the tenor somewhere in the back! To some extent, this story ridicules one of the most negative human vices - envy.

Zoshchenko's works of the 20s are quite different from the works of the 30s. The story and feuilleton of the 30s are built by Zoshchenko on different compositional principles, not because such an important component of the short story of previous years as the hero-narrator disappears. Now the characters of satirical works begin to be opposed not only by the higher author’s position, but also by the very environment in which the heroes find themselves. This social confrontation ultimately moves the internal springs of the plot. Observing how the honor and dignity of a person is trampled underfoot by all sorts of bureaucrats, red tape workers, and bureaucrats, the writer raises his voice in his defense. No, as a rule, he does not give an angry rebuke, but in his preferred sad-ironic style of narration, major intonations arise, and the firm conviction of an optimist is manifested.

Sometimes Zoshchenko’s hero really wants to keep up with progress. A hastily adopted modern trend seems to such a respected citizen the height of not just loyalty, but an example of organic adaptation to revolutionary reality. This desire, which has already reached a grotesque degree, is exposed with caustic sarcasm in the story “A Case History” (1936). Here the life and customs of a certain special hospital are described, in which visitors are greeted on the wall by a cheerful poster: “Issuing corpses from 3 to 4,” and a paramedic admonishes a patient who does not like this announcement with the words: “If,” he says, you If you get better, which is unlikely, then criticize.”

In Zoshchenko’s story “History of a Case,” as in most of his other stories, a very unattractive reality is shown with great humor through the perception of a “simple” layman. This “little” man ended up, as it were, in the mechanism of a large bureaucratic machine - in a hospital.

No one takes him into account, no one thinks about his feelings, emotions, and, in general, no one even cares how it all ends: whether he recovers or not. And when he, this little man, tries to somehow express himself, he encounters the complete indifference and even rudeness of these bureaucratic “cogs”. The receiving paramedic is very surprised that the seriously ill patient is also talking; the nurse is perplexed that he is picky and does not want to undress in front of a woman and sit in the same bathroom with her at the “washing station.”

In a huge ward there are about thirty patients with various diseases, both recovering and seriously ill. And no one cares that they can get infected from each other. So our sick “little man,” in the end, having been admitted to the hospital with typhoid fever, also fell ill with whooping cough. Even his sister was surprised at how strong his body was - he’s got better! It turns out that you can only rely on yourself in life, without relying on this state with its government help!?

In this story, however, as in many others, no compelling reason is given for causing a scandal, because the reader is made to understand that the main character was simply unlucky, he simply ended up in the wrong hospital: “I came across some special hospital, where I didn’t like everything.” Nevertheless, I think there is a hidden hint here that this is not just a special case, but the everyday reality of that time.

Towards the end of his literary career, Zoshchenko increasingly began to appear in more voluminous works. These are the stories - "Michel Sinyagin" (1930), "Youth Restored" (1933), "Blue Book" (1934), "Kerensky" (1937), "Taras Shevchenko" (1939), as well as plays of a satirical nature - "Canvas Briefcase" (1939), "Let the Loser Cry" (1946). Some of Zoshchenko's works (the story "Before Sunrise", 1943, etc.) were sharply criticized in the press. Zoshchenko wrote at this time to M. Slominsky: “They scold me like hell... It’s impossible to explain myself. I’m only now realizing why they’ve been scolding me (for the last year) – for being a philistine! I cover and admire the philistinism! Eva, what's going on! Damn it, how can you explain? The topic is confused with the author... In general, it’s bad, Mishechka! Not funny. Yelling. Yelling. They are ashamed of something. You feel like a bandit and a swindler..."

The writer translated the stories of the Finnish writer Maja Lassila “Behind the Matches” and “Twice Born”. Zoshchenko's books were reprinted many times and translated into foreign languages. Awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and medals. In general, Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko received fame that is rare for a person literary profession. It took him only three or four years of work to suddenly feel famous not only in literary circles, but also among a completely incalculable mass of readers. His books disappeared from the shelves with lightning speed. Zoshchenko was read from all the stages to the enthusiastic laughter of the public.

In 1929, Zoshchenko published the book “Letters to a Writer,” in which he managed, on a documentary basis—based on the letters of his readers—to recreate the living appearance of the people of his time. The publication of this book becomes a turning point in the artist’s work. “Letters to a Writer” was called by Yu. Tomashevsky “a book-epitaph on the grave of triumph among the broadest masses of readers.” Zoshchenko’s sharp change in the “course of the literary ship” was due not only to external pressure, but also to the actual ban on satire in Soviet literature, but also by the writer’s inner desire for edification and moralizing, to create new literature, healthy and wise.

The 1940s were the most difficult period in the writer’s life. In August 1943, the publication of chapters of the story began in the magazine “October”. But publication was stopped. In December 1943, in the resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) “On increasing the responsibility of secretaries of literary and artistic magazines”, “On control over literary and artistic magazines”, the story “Before Sunrise” was called “a politically harmful and anti-artistic work.”

The leaders of the Writers' Union are joining in the persecution of the writer. At an extended meeting of the presidium of the SSP, Fadeev, Kirpotin, Marshak, Shklovsky, Sobolev, I assessed the story in the spirit of party resolutions as a work of “anti-art, alien to the interests of the people.” The disgraced writer is supported by Shostakovich, Slonimsky, Mariengof, Vertinsky.

The persecution of Zoshchenko intensified in the post-war period.

And now - August 1946. Published in the magazine "Murzilka" is very funny, and most importantly, completely innocent children's story“The Adventure of the Monkey,” then republished in three books and later published by the magazine “Zvezda” (by the way, without the author’s knowledge), suddenly becomes criminal, and with it all of Zoshchenko’s work becomes criminal.

Scorched by the fame of a writer unprecedented in the history of Russian literature, who was known to everyone - from yesterday’s education student to an academician, and who has not lost this fame for two decades, in the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) “On the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad”, Zoshchenko will be branded as “vulgar”, “hooligan” and “scum of Russian literature”. He is expelled from the Writers' Union, and his name, having acquired the status of a swear word, falls out of literary use. Many thought that he himself “fell out” of life. But he lived another twelve painful years.

On August 10, 1946, the newspaper “Culture and Life” published a note by V. Vishnevsky “ Harmful story M. Zoshchenko."

It was about the story “The Adventure of a Monkey,” the content of which served as a reason for persecution of the writer. The story tells the story of a monkey who escaped from the zoo after the bombing and wandered around the city of Borisov during the war, ending up with different people and observing their lives. In the story they saw a “concept” that boils down to the fact that the monkey lived better in a cage than among people.

V. Vishnevsky’s note was written on the orders of Stalin, with whom famous playwright met during a meeting of the Organizing Bureau in the Kremlin on August 9, where Leningrad magazines were discussed. Vishnevsky wrote down Stalin’s remarks about Zoshchenko’s story “The Adventure of a Monkey,” on the basis of which he wrote his article, which was urgently published the very next day after the meeting. Stalin said: “The man did not notice the war... Why do I dislike Zoshchenko? Zoshchenko is a preacher of lack of ideas... and the Soviet people will not tolerate the poisoning of the consciousness of young people..."

The real reason why Stalin “disliked” Zoshchenko is preserved in the memories of Yu. Nagibin, who asked the writer why the harmless story “The Adventures of a Monkey” was chosen for criticism. In response, Zoshchenko said: “Stalin hated me and was waiting for an opportunity to get rid of me... since the pre-war period, when I published the story “The Sentinel and Lenin.” But Stalin was distracted by the war... Do you remember... the man with the mustache? I made an unforgivable mistake for a professional. I used to have a man with a goatee. I didn’t need an exact address, and I made a man with a mustache... But the mustache became an integral sign of Stalin..."

A similar version, based on rumors then circulating about Stalin’s personal hatred of Zoshchenko, was expressed in his memoirs by V. Ardov: “In Zoshchenko’s story “The Monkey,” we get into the text of one of the resolutions of 1946, it is simply written about the monkey itself: “Here she sits, small, brown, looking like a bootblack.” (In fact, this phrase is not in the story; it was attributed to Zoshchenko through rumors). It is difficult to say whether the author deliberately made this attack, or whether the lines of the story accidentally coincided with... the fact that the people often called the great leader and teacher a bootblack.”

Stalin reproached the editorial board of the Zvezda magazine for “giving way to a farce”, that “many kowtow to the West.”

In the transcript of the meeting of the presidium of the Writers' Union about this resolution on 4/IX 1946, Vishnevsky's speech contains Stalin's words about Zoshchenko, which determined the writer's fate for many years: “It is not for society to rebuild under Zoshchenko, but he needs to rebuild, and if he doesn’t rebuild, let him go to to the devils." Zoshchenko was pushed out not only from literary life: he was completely deprived of the opportunity to publish his works. He suffered a slow physical and moral destruction. The writer was humiliated and subjected to public persecution at writers' meetings; he had no means of livelihood.

On August 26, 1946, Zoshchenko, on the advice of Fadeev, wrote a letter to Stalin, which contained the following lines: “I have never been an anti-Soviet person... I have never been a literary scoundrel or a low person...”

Zoshchenko's real guilt was that he was honest and did not know how to lie even when his life was in danger. He did not know how to depict in his work what he did not see in real life, and this is exactly what was required of the writer. Trying to support the hunted writer, in the magazine “ New world“K. Simonov publishes his tortured “Partisan Stories.”

When, after Stalin's death, the situation around Zoshchenko began to calm down, on June 23, 1953, he was again accepted into the Writers' Union, and his publications gradually resumed. But in May 1954, a tragic event occurred for the writer. Together with Akhmatova, he met with English students. At the meeting, he was asked how he felt about the resolution of 1946. Zoshchenko said that he did not agree that he was a “scum and a hooligan.” A meeting of Leningrad writers was held, where public repentance was expected from him. But Zoshchenko continued to insist that he could not agree with criticism that erased all his work.

In recent years, the writer lived in humiliating poverty. For a long time he sought to be paid an old-age pension, but received it only before his death. A talented, popularly beloved writer was broken and destroyed during his lifetime. Zoshchenko died in the summer of 1958. Many were afraid to come to his funeral.

But Zoshchenko is not forgotten. No matter how Soviet writers of the mid-century branded him with disgrace, Zoshchenko is still read and loved, his stories are relevant to this day.

Questions and assignments for the topic

1. Writer Konstantin Fedin recalled: “First of all, Zoshchenko found recognition on our Saturdays with things that were quite distant from those that appealed to the readers of humorous magazines. We were captivated by the writer’s extraordinary gift for combining irony with truth of feeling in a finely constructed story.” What is interesting, in your opinion, about “Nazar Ilyich’s Stories by Mr. Sinebryukhov”? Do you agree that in these stories the writer’s ability to combine “irony with truth of feeling” is noticeable? If yes, show this feature of the narrative with specific examples.

2. Critic of the magazine “Book and Revolution” Innokenty Oksenov noted as Zoshchenko’s “exorbitant and great merit” his desire to take advantage of the “rich everyday material of military-revolutionary reality”, the writer’s ability to play with this material “not only plot-wise, but also stylistically, introducing it into literature many facts of a spontaneously emerging new language, a kind of modern jargon.” Do you agree that in such stories as “The High Society Story”, “Victoria Kazimirovna”, “Devil”, “Bad Place” there is rich material of “military-revolutionary reality”? If so, what role does this material play in Zoshchenko’s stories? What elements of “a spontaneously emerging new language, a unique modern jargon” did you notice in the writer’s named stories? What role do these elements of the new emerging language play in the depiction of situations, in the creation of character characteristics?

3. “Zoshchenko read us his new story “The Aristocrat.” The remarkably overheard intonation of everyday philistine speech, the ability to see and describe one’s characters in action and in thought, the finely selected visible details of appearance, behavior, and costume - all this ensured “The Aristocrat” a huge success among readers, who immediately gravitated to the new humorist” (E. Polonskaya). What, in your opinion, is the intonation of everyday philistine speech in the story “The Aristocrat”? Do you agree that this story contains “finely selected details of appearance, behavior, and costume”? If yes, please provide specific examples of such details. Have you noticed in the story “The Aristocrat” Zoshchenko’s ability to “see and describe his heroes in action and in thought”? If yes, talk about how this can be observed in the story.

4. Dm. Moldavsky writes about one of the episodes of the story “The Aristocrat”: “Everything falls into place. The “aristocrat” sees the true value of her gentleman. ...Naturally disappointment. ….His social face is clear from the very first sentences… One can only guess about him...” At what point in the story do you think “everything falls into place”? How does the writer show that the “aristocrat” sees the true value of her “beau”? What social status of the “aristocrat” can you guess about? Is it very different from the social status of her boyfriend? Why?

5. G. Skorokhodov, in connection with the story “Bathhouse,” writes: “The hero’s line of behavior, his habit of accepting life as it is, his vulgar and carnal dreams are ridiculed by Zoshchenko.” How is the “hero’s line of behavior” given in the story “Bathhouse”? What is the main distinctive feature this behavior? How do you understand the literary critic’s statement that Zoshchen’s hero is characterized by “the habit of accepting life as it is”? How does this habit manifest itself? Is it possible, in your opinion, in connection with the hero of “Bath”, as well as in connection with the heroes of Zoshchenko’s other stories, to talk about dreams? If so, what are the dreams of his heroes? Is it true that their dreams are “vulgar and flat”? Support your answer with specific examples.

6. In the first publications, the story “The Fitter” was called “Complex Mechanism” and “Theatrical Mechanism”. What meaning do the two initial titles convey to the story? Do you think that perhaps one of the given titles for the story would be more appropriate than “Fitter”? Give reasons for your opinion.

7. Do you agree that in “Aristocrat”, “Bath” and other stories of the 20s, M. Zoshchenko appears not only as an “empty author of small and funny trifles”? Justify your answer.

M. Zoshchenko “Aristocrat”

I, my brothers, do not like women who wear hats. If a woman is wearing a hat, if she is wearing fildecos stockings, or has a pug in her arms, or has a gold tooth, then such an aristocrat is not a woman at all to me. A smooth place.

And at one time, of course, I was fond of an aristocrat. I walked with her and took her to the theater. It all happened in the theater. It was in the theater that she developed her ideology to its fullest extent.

And I met her in the courtyard of the house. At the meeting. I look, there is such a freck. She is wearing stockings and has a gilded tooth.

Where are you from, I say, citizen? From which number?

“I am,” he says, “from the seventh.”

Please, I say, live.

And somehow I immediately liked her terribly. I visited her often. To number seven. Sometimes I would come as an official person. They say, how are things with you, citizen, in terms of damage to the water supply and toilet? Does it work?

Yes, he answers, it works.

And she herself wraps herself in a flannel scarf, and nothing more. Only cuts with his eyes. And the tooth in your mouth shines. I came to her for a month - I got used to it. I began to answer in more detail. They say the water supply works, thank you, Grigory Ivanovich.

Well, since she tells me:

“Why are you,” he says, “keep taking me around the streets?” My head started spinning. You, he says, as a gentleman and in power, would take me, for example, to the theater.

It’s possible, I say.

And just the next day the little girl sent tickets to the opera. I received one ticket, and Vaska the locksmith donated the other to me.

I didn’t look at the tickets, but they are different. Which one is mine - to sit downstairs, and which Vaskin - is right in the gallery itself.

So we went. We sat down in the theater. She boarded my ticket, I boarded Vaskin’s. I’m sitting at the top of the river and can’t see shit. And if I lean over the barrier, I’ll see her. It's bad though. I got bored, got bored, and went downstairs. I look - intermission. And she walks around during intermission.

Hello, I say.

Hello.

I wonder, I say, is there any running water here?

“I don’t know,” he says.

And to the buffet myself. I'm following her. She walks around the buffet and looks at the counter. And there's a dish on the counter. There are cakes on the platter.

And I, like a goose, like an uncut bourgeois, hover around her and offer:

If, I say, you want to eat one cake, then don’t be shy. I will cry.

Mercy says.

And suddenly he walks up to the dish with a lecherous gait and grabs the cream and eats it.

And I have money - the cat cried. At most, enough for three cakes. She eats, and I anxiously rummage through my pockets, checking with my hand how much money I have. And the money is with - gulkin's nose.

She ate it with cream, but something else. I already grunted. And I’m silent. This kind of bourgeois modesty took over me. They say the gentleman has no money.

I walk around her like a rooster, and she laughs and asks for compliments.

I speak:

Isn't it time for us to go to the theater? They called, maybe.

And she says:

And he takes the third.

I speak:

On an empty stomach - isn't it a lot? Might make you sick.

No, he says, we’re used to it.

And he takes the fourth.

Then the blood rushed to my head.

Lay down, I say, back!

And she was scared. She opened her mouth and the tooth glistened in her mouth.

And it was as if the reins had gotten under my tail. All the same, I think, now I can’t go out with her.

Lie, I say, to hell!

She put it back. And I tell the owner:

How much do we charge for eating three cakes?

But the owner behaves indifferently - he plays around.

“You’ll be charged so much for the four pieces you’ve eaten,” he says.

How, I say, in four?! When the fourth is in the dish.

“No,” he answers, “although it is in the dish, a bite was made on it and it was crushed with a finger.”

Like, I say, a bite, have mercy! These are your funny fantasies.

And the owner behaves indifferently - he twirls his hands in front of his face.

Well, people, of course, gathered. Experts.

Some say the bite is done, others say it’s not.

And I turned out my pockets - all sorts of junk, of course, fell out on the floor - people laughed. I'm counting money.

I counted the money - only four pieces left. In vain, honest mother, I argued.

Paid. I turn to the lady:

Finish your meal, I say, citizen. Paid.

But the lady doesn't move. And he is embarrassed to finish eating.

And then some guy got involved.

“Come on,” he says, “I’ll finish eating.”

And he finished eating, you bastard. For my money.

We sat down in the theater. We finished watching the opera. And home.

And at the house she says to me in her bourgeois tone:

Quite disgusting of you. Those without money don’t travel with ladies.

And I say:

Happiness is not in money, citizen. Sorry for the expression.

That's how we parted ways.

I don't like aristocrats.

M. Zoshchenko “Bath”

They say, citizens, the baths in America are excellent.

For example, a citizen will come there, throw his laundry into a special box and go wash himself. He won’t even worry - they say, it’s theft or loss, he won’t even take the number.

Well, maybe another restless American will say to the bathhouse attendant:

Gut bye, they say, take a look.

That's all.

This American will wash himself, come back, and they will serve him clean linen - washed and ironed. Foot wraps, I suppose whiter than snow. The underpants are sewn up and patched. Life!

And our baths are fine too. But worse. Although you can also wash yourself.

The only problem we have is with the numbers. Last Saturday I went to the bathhouse (I don’t think I should go to America) - they gave me two numbers. One for underwear, the other for a coat with a hat.

Where would a naked man put his number plates? Frankly speaking, there is nowhere. There are no pockets. All around is the stomach and legs. There is only one sin with numbers. You can't tie it to a beard.

Well, I tied a number to my legs so as not to lose it at once. I went to the bathhouse.

The license plates are now slapping on the legs. Walking is boring. But we need to walk. Then we need a gang. Without a gang, what is washing? There is only one sin.

I'm looking for a gang. I see one citizen in three gangs is washing himself. He stands in one, washes his head in another, and holds the third with his left hand so that they don’t steal it.

I pulled the third gang, I wanted, by the way, to take it for myself, but the citizen wouldn’t let me in.

What are you doing, he says, stealing other people’s gangs? If I blurt out, he says, you won’t be happy with the gang between your eyes.

I speak:

It’s not a tsar’s regime, I say, a regime of blurting out gangs. Selfishness, I say, what. “It’s necessary,” I say, “to wash others too.” Not in the theater, I say.

And he turned his back and washed himself.

“Don’t stand,” I think, “over his soul. Now, I think, he will wash himself for three days on purpose.”

An hour later, I saw that some guy was gaping and let go of the gang. He bent down to get the soap or was daydreaming - I don’t know. But I only took that gang for myself.

Now there is a gang, but there is nowhere to sit. And to wash while standing – what kind of washing? There is only one sin.

Fine. I'm standing, holding a gang in my hand, washing myself.

And all around, dear fathers, the washing is going on on its own. One washes his pants, another rubs his underpants, the third twirls something else. Just, let's say, he washed himself - he was dirty again. Splash, devils. And there is so much noise from washing - I don’t feel like washing. You can’t hear where you’re rubbing the soap. There is only one sin.

“Well,” I think, “they’ll go to hell. I’ll wash up at home.”

I'm going to the dressing room. Linen is provided for your room. I look - that’s it, the pants are not mine.

Citizens, I say. “On mine there was a hole here.” And where on these Avons?

And the bath attendant says:

“We,” he says, “are not assigned to the holes.” Not in the theater, he says.

Fine. I put on these pants and go get my coat. They don't give you a coat - they ask for a number. And the number on his leg is forgotten. You need to undress. I took off my pants and looked for the number, but there was no number. The rope is here on the leg, but there is no piece of paper. The paper was washed away.

I give the bathhouse attendant a rope - he doesn’t want it.

“I don’t give it away on the rope,” he says. “This,” he says, “every citizen will cut ropes - you can’t get enough of it.” Wait,” he says, “when the audience disperses, I’ll reveal what’s left.”

I speak:

Little brother, what if the rubbish remains? Not in the theater, - I say. - Give it out, - I say, - according to signs. One, I say, is a torn pocket, the other is missing. As for the buttons, I say, the top one is there, but the bottom ones are not in sight.

Still, he gave it away. And I didn’t take the rope.

I got dressed and went outside. Suddenly I remembered: I forgot the soap.

Came back again. They don't let you in with a coat.

Take off your clothes, they say.

I speak:

I, citizens, cannot undress for the third time. “Not in the theater,” I say. “Then at least give me the cost of the soap.”

They don’t give it - it’s not necessary. I went without soap.

Of course, the reader may be curious: what kind of bathhouse is this? Where is she? Address?

What kind of bath? Ordinary. Which is a dime.

Analysis of the works of M. Zoshchenko. The work of Mikhail Zoshchenko is a unique phenomenon in Russian Soviet literature. The writer, in his own way, saw some of the characteristic processes of contemporary reality, brought out under the blinding light of satire a gallery of characters who gave rise to the common concept of “Zoshchenko’s hero.” All the characters were shown with humor. These works were accessible and understandable to the common reader. “Zoshchenko’s heroes” showed people who were modern at that time... just a person, so to speak, for example, in the story “Bathhouse” you can see how the author shows a man who is clearly not rich, who is absent-minded and clumsy, and his phrase about clothes when he loses his number “let's look for him by signs ” and gives a rope from the license plate. After which he gives the following signs of an old, shabby coat on which there is only 1 button on the top and a torn pocket. But meanwhile, he is sure that if he waits until everyone leaves the bathhouse, he will be given some kind of rags, even though his coat is also bad. The author shows how comical this situation is... These are the situations usually shown in his stories. And most importantly, the author writes all this for the common people in a simple and understandable language. MIKHAIL ZOSHCHENKO (Zoshchenko M. Selected. T. 1 - M., 1978) The work of Mikhail Zoshchenko is a unique phenomenon in Russian Soviet literature. The writer, in his own way, saw some of the characteristic processes of contemporary reality, brought out under the blinding light of satire a gallery of characters who gave rise to the common concept of “Zoshchenko’s hero.” Being at the origins of Soviet satirical and humorous prose, he became the creator of an original comic novella, which continued the traditions of Gogol, Leskov, and early Chekhov in new historical conditions. Finally, Zoshchenko created his own, completely unique artistic style. Zoshchenko devoted about four decades to Russian literature. The writer went through a difficult and hard way quest. Three main stages can be distinguished in his work. The first occurs in the 20s - the heyday of the writer’s talent, honing the pen of an accuser social vices in such popular satirical magazines of that time as “Behemoth”, “Buzoter”, “Red Raven”, “The Inspector General”, “Eccentric”, “Smekhach”. At this time, the formation and crystallization of Zoshchenko’s short story and story takes place. In the 30s, Zoshchenko worked mainly in the field of large prose and dramatic genres, looking for ways to “optimistic satire” (“Youth Returned” - 1933, “The Story of a Life” - 1934 and “Blue Book” - 1935). Zoshchenko's art as a short story writer also underwent significant changes during these years (a series of children's stories and stories for children about Lenin). The final period falls on the war and post-war years. Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko was born in 1895. After graduating from high school, he studied at the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. Without completing his studies, in 1915 he volunteered for the active army, so that, as he later recalled, “to die with dignity for his country, for his homeland.” After February Revolution battalion commander Zoshchenko, demobilized due to illness ("I took part in many battles, was wounded, gassed. I ruined my heart...") served as commandant of the Main Post Office in Petrograd. During the anxious days of Yudenich's attack on Petrograd, Zoshchenko was the adjutant of the regiment of the village poor. The years of two wars and revolutions (1914-1921) are a period of intense spiritual growth of the future writer, the formation of his literary and aesthetic convictions. Civil and moral formation Zoshchenko as a humorist and satirist, an artist of significant social themes, dates back to the pre-October period. IN literary heritage, which had to be mastered and critically reworked by Soviet satire, three main lines stand out in the 20s. Firstly, folklore and fairy tale, coming from the raeshnik, anecdote, folk legend, satirical fairy tale; secondly, classical (from Gogol to Chekhov); and, finally, satirical. In the work of most of the major satirical writers of that time, each of these trends can be traced quite clearly. As for M. Zoshchenko, when developing the original form of his own story, he drew from all these sources, although the Gogol-Chekhov tradition was closest to him. The 1920s saw the heyday of the main genre varieties in the writer’s work: a satirical story, a comic novella and a satirical-humorous story. Already at the very beginning of the 20s, the writer created a number of works that were highly appreciated by M. Gorky. Published in 1922, “Nazar Ilyich’s Stories of Mr. Sinebryukhov” attracted everyone’s attention. Against the background of the short stories of those years, the figure of the hero-storyteller, a seasoned, experienced man, Nazar Ilyich Sinebryukhov, who went through the front and saw a lot in the world, stood out sharply. M. Zoshchenko searches for and finds a unique intonation, in which a lyrical-ironic beginning and an intimate and confidential note are fused together, eliminating any barrier between the narrator and the listener. “Sinebryukhov’s Stories” says a lot about the great culture of comic tales that the writer achieved at an early stage of his work: “I had a close friend. A terribly educated man, I’ll tell you straight - gifted with qualities. He traveled to various foreign powers with the rank of valet, He even understood French, maybe, and drank foreign whiskey, but he was just like me, all the same - an ordinary guardsman of an infantry regiment." Sometimes the narrative is quite skillfully constructed according to the type of well-known absurdity, beginning with the words “a tall man of short stature was walking.” This kind of awkwardness creates a certain comic effect. True, for now it does not have that distinct satirical orientation that it will acquire later. In “Sinebryukhov’s Stories” such specifically Zoshchenko-esque turns of comic speech appear for a long time in the reader’s memory, such as “as if the atmosphere suddenly smelled on me”, “they will pick you up like crazy and throw you behind their dear relatives, even though they are your own relatives”, “second lieutenant wow, but he’s a bastard,” “disturbing the riots,” etc. Subsequently, a similar type of stylistic play, but with an incomparably more acute social meaning, will appear in the speeches of other heroes - Semyon Semenovich Kurochkin and Gavrilych, on whose behalf the narration was conducted in a number of the most popular comic short stories by Zoshchenko in the first half of the 20s. The works created by the writer in the 20s were based on specific and very topical facts, gleaned either from direct observations or from numerous letters from readers. Their themes are motley and varied: riots in transport and in hostels, the grimaces of the NEP and the grimaces of everyday life, the mold of philistinism and philistinism, arrogant pompadour and creeping lackeyness and much, much more. Often the story is constructed in the form of a casual conversation with the reader, and sometimes, when the shortcomings became particularly egregious, the author’s voice sounded frankly journalistic notes. In a series of satirical short stories, M. Zoshchenko angrily ridiculed cynically calculating or sentimentally pensive earners of individual happiness, intelligent scoundrels and boors, and showed in their true light vulgar and worthless people who are ready to trample on everything truly human on the way to achieving personal well-being (“Matrenishcha”, "Grimace of NEP", "Lady with Flowers", "Nanny", "Marriage of Convenience"). In Zoshchenko's satirical stories there are no effective techniques for sharpening the author's thoughts. They, as a rule, are devoid of sharp comedic intrigue. M. Zoshchenko acted here as an exposer of spiritual smoking, a satirist of morals. He chose as the object of analysis the bourgeois owner - a hoarder and money-grubber, who from a direct political opponent became an adversary in the sphere of morality, a breeding ground for vulgarity. The circle of people acting in Zoshchenko’s satirical works is extremely narrowed; there is no image of the crowd, the mass, visibly or invisibly present in humorous short stories. The pace of plot development is slow, the characters lack the dynamism that distinguishes the heroes of other works of the writer. The heroes of these stories are less rude and uncouth than in humorous short stories. The author is primarily interested in spiritual world, the system of thinking of an outwardly cultured, but even more disgusting in essence, bourgeois. Oddly enough, in Zoshchenko’s satirical stories there are almost no cartoonish, grotesque situations, less comic and no fun at all. However, the main element of Zoshchenko’s creativity in the 20s is still humorous everyday life. Zoshchenko writes about drunkenness, about housing issues, about losers offended by fate. In a word, he chooses an object that he himself quite fully and accurately described in the story “People”: “But, of course, the author will still prefer a completely shallow background, a completely petty and insignificant hero with his trifling passions and experiences.” The movement of the plot in such a story is based on constantly posed and comically resolved contradictions between “yes” and “no”. The simple-minded and naive narrator assures with the whole tone of his narration that exactly the way he does is how one should evaluate what is depicted, and the reader either guesses or knows for sure that such assessments and characteristics are incorrect. This eternal struggle between the narrator’s statement and the reader’s negative perception of the events described gives special dynamism to Zoshchenkov’s story, filling it with subtle and sad irony. Zoshchenko has it short story “The Beggar” is about a hefty and impudent man who got into the habit of regularly going to the hero-narrator, extorting fifty dollars from him. When he got tired of all this, he advised the enterprising earner to drop in uninvited visits less often. “He didn’t come to me anymore - he was probably offended,” the narrator noted melancholy in the finale. It’s not easy for Kostya Pechenkin to hide double-mindedness, to mask cowardice and meanness with pompous words (“Three Documents”), and the story ends with an ironically sympathetic sentiment: “Eh, comrades, it’s hard for a person to live in the world!” This sad and ironic “probably offended” and “it’s difficult for a person to live in the world” is the nerve of most of Zoshchenko’s comic works of the 20s. In such small masterpieces as “On Live Bait”, “Aristocrat”, “Bathhouse”, “Nervous People”, “Scientific Phenomenon” and others, the author seems to cut away various socio-cultural layers, getting to those layers where the origins of indifference nest , lack of culture, vulgarity. The hero of "The Aristocrat" became infatuated with one person in fildecos stockings and a hat. While he “as an official person” visited the apartment and then walked along the street, experiencing the inconvenience of having to take the lady’s arm and “drag like a pike,” everything was relatively safe. But as soon as the hero invited the aristocrat to the theater, “she developed her ideology in its entirety.” Seeing the cakes during the intermission, the aristocrat “approaches the dish with a lecherous gait and grabs the cream and eats it.” The lady has eaten three cakes and is reaching for the fourth. “Then the blood rushed to my head. “Get down,” I say, “back!” After this culmination, events unfold like an avalanche, drawing an increasing number of characters into their orbit. As a rule, in the first half of Zoshchenko's short story one or two, or even three, characters are presented. And only when the development of the plot reaches its highest point, when the need arises to typify the phenomenon being described, to sharpen it satirically, a more or less written out group of people, sometimes a crowd, appears. So it is in "The Aristocrat". The closer to the finale, the greater the number of faces the author brings to the stage. First, the figure of the barman appears, who, in response to all the assurances of the hero, who passionately proves that only three pieces have been eaten, since the fourth cake is on the platter, “behaves indifferently.” “No,” he answers, “although it is in the dish, the bite is made on it and crushed with a finger.” There are also amateur experts, some of whom “say the bite is made, others – no.” And finally, the crowd, attracted by the scandal, laughs at the sight of the unlucky theatergoer, frantically turning out his pockets with all kinds of junk before their eyes. In the finale, again only two characters remain, finally clarifying their relationship. The story ends with a dialogue between the offended lady and the hero, dissatisfied with her behavior. “And at the house she says to me in her bourgeois tone: “That’s quite disgusting of you. Those who don’t have money don’t go with the ladies.” And I say: “Money, citizen, is not happiness. Excuse the expression.” As we can see, both sides are offended. Moreover, both sides believe only in their own truth, being firmly convinced that it is the other side that is wrong. The hero of Zoshchenkov's story invariably considers himself infallible, a “respected citizen,” although in reality he acts as a arrogant man in the street. The essence of Zoshchenko’s aesthetics is that the writer combines two planes (ethical and cultural-historical), showing their deformation, distortion in the consciousness and behavior of satirical and humorous characters. At the junction of true and false, real and fictional, a comic spark flashes, a smile appears or the reader laughs. Breaking the connection between cause and effect is a traditional source of comedy. It is important to capture the type of conflicts characteristic of a given environment and era and convey them through the means of satirical art. Zoshchenko is dominated by the motif of discord, everyday absurdity, some kind of tragicomic inconsistency of the hero with the tempo, rhythm and spirit of the times. Sometimes Zoshchenko’s hero really wants to keep up with progress. A hastily adopted modern trend seems to such a respected citizen the height of not just loyalty, but an example of organic adaptation to revolutionary reality. Hence the addiction to fashionable names and political terminology, hence the desire to assert one’s “proletarian” insides through bravado through rudeness, ignorance, and rudeness. It is no coincidence that the hero-narrator sees a bourgeois bias in the fact that Vasya Rastopyrkin - “this pure proletarian, non-party member, God knows from what year - was thrown out from the tram platform just now” by insensitive passengers for dirty clothes (“Bourgeois”). When clerk Seryozha Kolpakov was finally given the personal telephone he had been fussing over so much, the hero felt like “a true European with cultural skills and manners.” But the problem is that this “European” has no one to talk to. Out of sadness, he called the fire department and lied that there was a fire. “In the evening, Seryozha Kolpakov was arrested for hooliganism.” The writer is concerned about the problem of life and everyday anomalies. Looking for its causes, carrying out exploration of the social and moral origins of negative phenomena, Zoshchenko sometimes creates grotesquely exaggerated situations that give rise to an atmosphere of hopelessness, a widespread spill of everyday vulgarity. This feeling is created after reading the stories “Dictaphone”, “A Dog’s Scent”, “After a Hundred Years”. Critics of the 20-30s, noting the innovation of the creator of “The Bath” and “The Aristocrat,” eagerly wrote on the topic of “face and mask” of Mikhail Zoshchenko, often correctly comprehending the meaning of the writer’s works, but embarrassed by the unusual relationship between the author and his comic “double” . The reviewers were not satisfied with the writer's commitment to the same mask chosen once and for all. Meanwhile, Zoshchenko did this deliberately. S.V. Obraztsov in his book “Actor with a Puppet” talked about how he searched for his path in art. It turned out that only the doll helped him find his “manner and voice.” The actor was able to “enter into the character” of this or that hero more relaxed and freely “through the doll.” Zoshchenko’s innovation began with the discovery of a comic hero, who, according to the writer, “almost never appeared before in Russian literature,” as well as with the techniques of a mask, through which he revealed aspects of life that often remained in the shadows and did not come into view satirists. All comic heroes from the ancient Petrushka to Schweik acted in an anti-national society, but Zoshchenko’s hero “unfolded his ideology” in a different environment. The writer showed the conflict between a person burdened with the prejudices of pre-revolutionary life, and morality, the moral principles of the new society. By developing deliberately ordinary plots, telling private stories that happened to an unremarkable hero, the writer elevated these individual cases to the level of significant generalization. He penetrates the inner sanctum of a tradesman who involuntarily exposes himself in his monologues. This skillful mystification was achieved through mastery of the manner of narration on behalf of the narrator, a tradesman who was not only afraid to openly declare his views, but also tried to inadvertently not give rise to any reprehensible opinions about himself. Zoshchenko often achieved a comic effect by playing on words and expressions taken from the speech of an illiterate tradesman, with characteristic vulgarisms, incorrect grammatical forms and syntactic constructions (“plituar”, “okromya”, “hres”, “this”, “in it”, “brunette”, “dragged”, “for the bite”, “weep crying”, “that poodle”, “a dumb animal”, “at the stove”, etc. ). Traditional humorous schemes were also used, which have come into wide use since the time of the Satyricon: the enemy of bribes, giving a speech in which he gives recipes on how to take bribes (“Speech delivered at a banquet”); an opponent of verbosity, who himself turns out to be a lover of idle and empty talk (“The Americans”); a doctor sewing a “pan gold” watch into a patient’s stomach (“The Clock”). Zoshchenko is a writer not only of a comic style, but also of comic situations. The style of his stories is not just funny words, incorrect grammatical phrases and sayings. This was the sad fate of the authors who tried to write “like Zoshchenko”, that they, in the apt expression of K. Fedin, simply acted as plagiarists, taking off from him what was convenient to take off - his clothes. However, they were far from comprehending the essence of Zoshchenko’s innovation in the field of skaz. Zoshchenko managed to make the tale very succinct and artistically expressive. The hero-narrator only speaks, and the author does not complicate the structure of the work with additional descriptions of the timbre of his voice, his demeanor, the details of his behavior. However, through the tale manner, the hero’s gesture, the tone of his voice, and his tone are clearly conveyed. psychological condition, and the author’s attitude to what is being told. What other writers achieved by introducing additional artistic details, Zoshchenko achieved with a skaz style, a short, extremely concise phrase and at the same time a complete absence of “dryness.” At first, Zoshchenko came up with various names for his fantastic masks (Sinebryukhov, Kurochkin, Gavrilych), but later abandoned this. For example, “Funny Stories”, published on behalf of the gardener Semyon Semenovich Kurochkin, subsequently began to be published without reference to the personality of this character. The tale has become more complex and artistically polysemantic. The skaz form was used by N. Gogol, I. Gorbunov, N. Leskov, and Soviet writers of the 20s. Instead of pictures of life, in which there is no intrigue, and sometimes any plot action, as was the case in I. Gorbunov’s masterfully honed miniature dialogues, instead of the emphatically sophisticated stylization of the language of the urban philistinism, which N. Leskov achieved through the lexical assimilation of various speech elements and folk etymology , Zoshchenko, not shying away from these techniques, seeks and finds means that most accurately correspond to the character and spirit of his hero. Zoshchenko in his mature years followed the path paved by Gogol and Chekhov, without, however, copying their manners, unlike numerous accusers of the 20s. K. Fedin noted the writer’s ability to “combine irony with truth of feeling in a finely constructed story.” This was achieved using Zoshchenko’s unique techniques, among which an important place belonged to especially intonated humor. Zoshchenko's humor is completely ironic. The writer called his stories: “Happiness”, “Love”, “Easy Life”, “Pleasant Meetings”, “Honest Citizen”, “ Rich life", "Happy childhood", etc. And they were talking about the exact opposite of what was stated in the title. The same can be said about the cycle of “Sentimental Stories”, in which the dominant principle was the tragicomism of the everyday life of the tradesman and the average person. One of the stories bore the romantic title "Lilac is Blooming". However, the poetic haze of the title dissipated already on the first pages. Here, the life of the musty bourgeois world, usual for Zoshchenkov's works, flowed thickly with its insipid love, betrayals, disgusting scenes of jealousy, massacres. The dominance of the trifle, the slavery of trifles, the comedy of the absurd " Goats", "Wisdom" and "People", where the characters of all kinds of "former" people were drawn, broken by the revolution, knocked out of their usual everyday rut, a completely "fire-resistant type" was recreated, which was not shaken by any storms and thunderstorms of the past social revolution. Vasily Vasilyevich Bylinkin steps broadly and firmly on the ground. “Blinkin wore his heels inward all the way to the heels.” If there is anything that crushes this “philosophically minded man, burned by life and fired by heavy artillery,” it is the feeling that suddenly surges over him for Lizochka Rundukova. In essence, the story “What the Nightingale Sang About” is a subtly parodic, stylized work that sets out the story of the explanations and yearnings of two hotly in love heroes. Without betraying the canons of a love story, the author sends a test to the lovers, albeit in the form of a childhood disease (mumps), with which Bylinkin unexpectedly becomes seriously ill. The heroes stoically endure this formidable invasion of fate, their love becomes even stronger and purer. They walk a lot, holding hands, and often sit over a classic river cliff, albeit with a somewhat undignified name - Kozyavka. Love reaches a climax, after which only the death of loving hearts is possible, if the spontaneous attraction is not crowned with a marriage. But here the force of such circumstances invades, which crush the carefully nurtured feeling at the root. Bylinkin sang beautifully and captivatingly, his intermittent voice carried out gentle roulades. And the results? Let's remember why in the previous satirical literature The matrimonial advances of equally unlucky suitors failed. It’s funny, very funny, that Podkolesin jumps out the window, although there is not that extreme decline of the hero as in Zoshchenko. Khlestakov's matchmaking is disrupted because somewhere in the depths of the scene the figure of the true auditor looms with stern retribution. Krechinsky’s wedding cannot take place because this clever swindler aims to get a million dowry, but in last moment takes a too clumsy step. What explains the sad and farcical outcome in the story “What the Nightingale Sang About”? Lizochka did not have her mother’s chest of drawers, which the hero was counting on. This is where the mug of the tradesman comes out, which before - though not very skillfully - was covered with thin petals of "haberdashery" treatment. Zoshchenko writes a magnificent ending, where the true cost of what at first looked like a reverently generous feeling is revealed. The epilogue, presented in peacefully elegiac tones, is preceded by a scene of a stormy scandal. In the structure of Zoshchenko’s stylized and sentimental story, like veins of quartz in granite, caustic sarcastic inclusions appear. They give the work a satirical flavor, and, unlike the stories where Zoshchenko openly laughs, here the writer, using Mayakovsky’s formula, smiles and mocks. At the same time, his smile is most often sad and sad, and his mockery is sardonic. This is exactly how the epilogue of the story “What the Nightingale Sang About” is constructed, where the author finally answers the question posed in the title. As if returning the reader to happy days Bylinkin, the writer recreates the atmosphere of love ecstasy, when Lizochka, overwhelmed “by the chirping of insects or the singing of a nightingale,” innocently asks her admirer: “Vasya, what do you think this nightingale is singing about?” To which Vasya Bylinkin usually answered with restraint: “He wants to eat, that’s why he sings.” The originality of “Sentimental Tales” is not only in the more meager introduction of elements of the actually comic, but also in the fact that from work to work the feeling of something evil inherent , it seems, in the very mechanism of life, which interferes with its optimistic perception. The disadvantage of most of the heroes of "Sentimental Tales" is that they slept through an entire historical period in the life of Russia and therefore, like Apollo Perepenchuk ("Apollo and Tamara"), - Ivan Ivanovich Belokopytov ("People") or Michel Sinyagin ("M.P. Sinyagin"), have no future. They rush through life in fear, and every even smallest incident is ready to play a fatal role in their restless fate. Chance takes on the form of inevitability and regularity , determining much in the contrite spiritual mood of these heroes. The fatal slavery of trifles distorts and eradicates the human principles of the heroes of the stories “The Goat”, “What the Nightingale Sang About”, “A Merry Adventure”. There is no goat - and the foundations of Zabezhkin’s universe collapse, and after this Zabezhkin himself dies. They don’t give mother’s chest of drawers to the bride - and the bride herself, to whom Bylinkin sang so sweetly, is not needed. The hero of "A Merry Adventure" Sergei Petukhov, who intends to take a girl he knows to the cinema, does not find the required seven hryvnia and because of this is ready to finish off his dying aunt. The artist depicts petty, philistine natures, busy meaninglessly circling around dull, faded joys and familiar sorrows. Social upheavals have bypassed these people, who call their existence “worm-eaten and meaningless.” However, it sometimes seemed to the author that the foundations of life remained unshaken, that the wind of revolution only stirred up the sea of ​​everyday vulgarity and flew away without changing the essence of human relations. This worldview of Zoshchenko also determined the nature of his humor. Next to the cheerful things in the writer, sad things often appear. But, unlike Gogol, with whom Zoshchenko was sometimes compared by contemporary critics, the heroes of his stories so crushed and drowned out everything human in themselves that for them the tragic simply ceased to exist in life. In Gogol, through the fate of Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, one could see the tragedy of a whole layer of disadvantaged people just like this petty official. Their spiritual poverty was determined by prevailing social relations. The revolution eliminated the exploitative system and opened up wide opportunities for every person to have a meaningful and interesting life. However, there were still many people who were either dissatisfied with the new order, or simply skeptical and indifferent. Zoshchenko at that time was also not yet sure that the bourgeois swamp would recede and disappear under the influence of social transformations. The writer feels sorry for his little heroes, but the essence of these people is not tragic, but farcical. Sometimes happiness wanders onto their street, as happened, for example, with the hero of the story “Happiness,” glazier Ivan Fomich Testov, who once grabbed the bright peacock of luck. But what sad happiness this is! Like a hysterical drunken song with tears and heavy stuporous oblivion. Tearing off the new overcoat from the shoulders of Gogol's hero, the kidnappers took away with it all the most cherished things that Akaki Akakievich could have had. A world of immense possibilities opened up before the hero Zoshchenko. However, this hero did not see them, and they remained treasures for him with seven seals. Occasionally, of course, such a hero may experience an anxious feeling, like the character in “The Terrible Night.” But it quickly disappears, because the system of former everyday ideas is tenaciously held in the consciousness of the tradesman. A revolution took place that shook up Russia, but the average person for the most part remained almost unaffected by its transformations. Showing the power of the inertia of the past, Zoshchenko did a great, useful thing. “Sentimental stories” were distinguished not only by the originality of the object (according to Zoshchenko, he takes in them “an exceptionally intelligent person”, but in small stories he writes “about a simpler person”), but they were also written in a different manner than short stories. The narration is conducted not on behalf of the tradesman, the layman, but on behalf of the writer Kolenkorov, and this, as it were, resurrects the traditions of Russian classical literature. In fact, instead of following the humanistic ideals of the 19th century, Kolenkorov turns out to be imitation and epigonism. Zoshchenko parodies and ironically overcomes this outwardly sentimental manner. Satire, like all Soviet fiction, changed significantly in the 30s. Creative destiny the author of "The Aristocrat" and "Sentimental Tales" was no exception. The writer who exposed philistinism, ridiculed philistinism, wrote ironically and parodically about the poisonous scum of the past, turns his gaze in a completely different direction. Zoshchenko is captivated and fascinated by the tasks of socialist transformation. He works in the large circulation of Leningrad enterprises, visits the construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal, listening to the rhythms of the grandiose process of social renewal. There is a turning point in his entire work: from his worldview to the tone of the narrative and style. During this period, Zoshchenko was seized by the idea of ​​merging satire and heroics. Theoretically, this thesis was proclaimed by him at the very beginning of the 30s, and practically realized in “Youth Restored” (1933), “The Story of a Life” (1934), the story “The Blue Book” (1935) and a number of stories of the second half: 30s. Our enemies abroad often explain Zoshchenko’s attraction to a heroic theme and a bright positive character by the dictates of external forces. In fact, this was organic for the writer and testified to his internal evolution, so common in the Russian national tradition since the time of Gogol. It is enough to recall Nekrasov’s confession bursting out of his aching chest: “The heart is tired of feeding on malice...”, Shchedrin’s burning thirst for the lofty and heroic, Chekhov’s unquenched longing for a man for whom everything is fine. Already in 1927, Zoshchenko, in his characteristic manner at that time, made the following confession in one of his stories: “Today I would like to try something heroic. Some kind of grandiose, extensive character with many progressive views and moods. Otherwise, everything is petty and petty - just disgusting... And I miss, brothers, a real hero! I wish I could meet such a one!" Two years later, in the book “Letters to a Writer,” M. Zoshchenko again returns to the problem that worried him. He claims that “the proletarian revolution has raised up a whole and enormous layer of new, “indescribable” people.” The writer's meeting with such heroes took place in the 30s, and this contributed to a significant change in the entire appearance of her short story. Zoshchenko of the 1930s completely abandoned not only the usual social mask, but also the fantastic manner developed over the years. The author and his heroes now speak in completely correct literary language. At the same time, naturally, the speech range fades somewhat, but it became obvious that it would no longer be possible to embody the previous Zoshchenko style new circle ideas and images. Several years before this evolution took place in Zoshchenko’s work, the writer foresaw the possibility for him of new creative solutions dictated by the conditions of the developing reality. “They usually think,” he wrote in 1929, “that I distort the “beautiful Russian language”, that for the sake of laughter I take words in a meaning that is not given to them in life, that I deliberately write in broken language in order to make the most respectable audience laugh . This is incorrect. I distort almost nothing. I write in the language in which the street now speaks and thinks. I did this (in small stories) not for the sake of curiosity and not in order to more accurately copy our life. I did it for "In order to fill, at least temporarily, the colossal gap that has occurred between literature and the street. I say temporarily, because I really write so temporarily and parodicly." In the mid-30s, the writer declared: “Every year I removed and am removing more and more exaggeration from my stories. And when we (the general mass) speak in a completely refined manner, believe me, I will not lag behind the century.” The departure from skaz was not a simple formal act; it entailed a complete structural restructuring of Zoshchenko’s short story. Not only the style changes, but also the plot and compositional principles, and psychological analysis is widely introduced. Even externally, the story looks different, being two to three times larger in size than the previous one. Zoshchenko often seems to return to his early experiences the early 20s, but at a more mature stage, using the legacy of the fictionalized comic novel in a new way. The very names of the stories and feuilletons from the mid and second half of the 30s (“They acted tactlessly,” “Bad wife,” “ Unequal marriage", "On respect for people", "More on the fight against noise") quite accurately indicate the issues that now concern the satirist. These are not everyday curiosities or communal problems, but problems of ethics, the formation of new moral relations. Feuilleton "Good Impulses" (1937 ) was written, it would seem, on a very private topic: about tiny windows at the cashiers of entertainment enterprises and at information kiosks: “There are only the cashier’s hands sticking out, a ticket book and scissors. Here is the whole panorama." But the further, the more the theme of respectful attitude towards the visitor, client, every Soviet person unfolds. The satirist rebels against the cloth-slumbering uniform well-being and the indispensable trepidation before the official "point." "It's not that I want to see the expression on the face of the one who gives me the certificate, but I might want to ask him again, seek advice. But the window fences me off and, as they say, chills my soul. Especially , just a little - it slams shut with a bang and you, realizing your insignificant place in this world, again leave with a constricted heart." The basis of the plot is a simple fact: the old woman needs to get a certificate. "Her lips are whispering, and you can see that she wants to talk to someone, find out, question and find out. Here she comes to the window. The window opens. And there the head of a young nobleman appears. The old woman begins her speech, but the young gentleman says abruptly: “Abra sa se kno... And the window slams shut.” The old woman was about to lean towards the window again, but again, having received the same answer, she walked away in some fear. Having thought up this phrase “Abra sa se kno” in my head, I decide to make a translation from the language of the poetry of bureaucracy into the everyday everyday language of prose. And I get it: “Turn to the next window.” I tell the old woman the translated phrase, and she walks with an uncertain gait to the next window. No, she was not detained there for long either, and she soon left along with the prepared speeches." The feuilleton is pointed against, as Zoshchenko delicately puts it, the "unsympathetic style" of life and work of institutions, according to which a not very outwardly distinguishable, but quite real system was established dividing people into two clearly unequal categories. On the one hand, “they say we are, but, they say, you are.” But in fact, the author claims, “you are us, and we are partly you ". The ending sounds sad and warning: “There is, we would say, some kind of incongruity." This incongruity, which has already reached a grotesque degree, is exposed with caustic sarcasm in the story “A Case History” (1936). Here the life and customs of a certain a special hospital, in which visitors are greeted on the wall by a cheerful poster: “Issuing corpses from 3 to 4,” and the paramedic admonishes the patient who does not like this announcement with the words: “If, he says, you recover, which is unlikely, then criticize." In the 20s, many thought that the damned legacy of the past could be done away with quite quickly. M. Zoshchenko neither then nor a decade later shared these complacent illusions. The satirist saw the amazing tenacity of all kinds of social weeds and did not at all underestimate the abilities of the tradesman and the average person for mimicry and opportunism. However, in the 30s, new prerequisites arose for the solution of the eternal question of human happiness, conditioned by gigantic socialist transformations and the cultural revolution. This has a significant impact on the nature and direction of the writer’s work. Zoshchenko appears to have teaching intonations that were not there before. The satirist not only and even not so much ridicules and castigates, but patiently teaches, explains, interprets, appealing to the mind and conscience of the reader. High and pure didactics were embodied with particular perfection in a cycle of touching and affectionate stories for children, written in 1937 - 1938. In the comic novella and feuilleton of the second half of the 30s, sad humor increasingly gives way to instructiveness, and irony to lyrical and philosophical intonation (“Forced Landing,” “Wake,” “Drunk Man,” “Bathhouse and People,” “Meeting” , “On the tram”, etc.). Take, for example, the story “On the Tram” (1937). This is not even a novella, but simply a street scene, a genre sketch, which in past years could easily have become an arena for funny and funny situations, thickly seasoned with comic salt of witticisms. Suffice it to recall “On live bait”, “Galoshes”, etc. Now the writer’s anger and joy rarely burst out. More than before, he declares high moral position the artist, clearly identified in the key places of the plot - where issues of honor, dignity, and duty are particularly important and dear to the writer’s heart. Defending the concept of active good, M. Zoshchenko pays more and more attention to positive characters, bolder and more often introduces satirical humorous story images of positive heroes. And not just in the role of extras, standards frozen in their virtue, but characters actively acting and fighting (“ Fun game", "New Times", "City Lights", "Debt of Honor"). Previously, the development of Zoshchenko's comic plot consisted of incessant contradictions that arose between the ironic "yes" and the real "no". The contrast between high and low, bad and good, comic and tragic was revealed by the reader himself as he delved deeper into the satirical text of the story. The author sometimes obscured these contrasts, not clearly differentiating the speech and function of the narrator and his own position. The story and feuilleton of the 30s are built by Zoshchenko on different compositional principles not because , that such an important component of the short story of previous years as the hero-storyteller disappears. Now the characters of satirical works begin to be opposed not only by the higher author’s position, but also by the very environment in which the heroes find themselves. This social confrontation ultimately moves the internal springs of the plot Observing how the honor and dignity of a person is trampled underfoot by all sorts of bureaucrats, red tape workers, and bureaucrats, the writer raises his voice in his defense. No, as a rule, he does not give an angry rebuke, but in his preferred sad-ironic style of narration, major intonations arise, and the firm conviction of an optimist is manifested. Zoshchenko’s trip to the White Sea-Baltic Canal (1933) became a memorable milestone for him not only because there he saw with his own eyes how people, much worse than those who were the main characters of his works of the 20s, were degenerated under the conditions of a gigantic construction site . New perspectives opened up for the writer further path, for the direct study of the socialist novelty has given a lot to the solution of such fundamental issues for the satirist as man and society, the historical doom of the past, the inevitability and inevitability of the triumph of the lofty and beautiful. The social renewal of the native land promised and moral rebirth personality, returning not only to the individual, but also to the entire planet its long-lost youth. As a result of the trip, the story “The Story of One Life” (1934) appears, telling about how a thief, “who went through a harsh school of re-education,” became a man. This story was favorably received by M. Gorky. New times break into not only Zoshchenko’s essays, short stories and small feuilletons, but also onto the pages of his great prose. The former idea of ​​the vitality and indestructibility of philistinism is being replaced by a growing confidence in the victory of new human relations. The writer moved from general skepticism at the sight of seemingly invincible vulgarity to criticism of the old in the new and to the search for a positive hero. This is how a chain of stories of the 30s is gradually built up from “Youth Restored” (1933) through “The Blue Book” (1935) to “Retribution” (1936). In these works, negation and affirmation, pathos and irony, lyricism and satire, heroic and comic merged in a bizarre fusion. In "Youth Restored" the author is especially interested in the interrelationship between sociological and biological, class-political and universal aspects. If previously the teaching tone appeared only in the finale of small feuilletons, now the features of didactics and preaching permeate the entire fabric of the work. Persuasion and suggestion gradually begin to crowd out the means of satirical ridicule and imperceptibly reach foreground , determining the very movement of the plot. Compositionally, “Youth Restored” falls into three unequal parts. The first part is a series of short stories that precede the main content of the story and present in an unpretentiously funny form the author’s views on the possibility of returning youth. The last two short stories, as Zoshchenko himself noted, even “make you think about the need to learn to control yourself and your extremely complex body.” Then follows the actual fictional part, dedicated to the story of how the elderly astronomy professor Volosatov regained his lost youth. And finally, the previous most extensive part concludes - scientific comments on the plot-narrative section of the work. The genre uniqueness of Zoshchenko’s large prose paintings is undeniable. If “Youth Restored” could still be called a story with some degree of convention, then the other works of the lyrical-satirical trilogy (“Blue Book”, “Before Sunrise”, 1943) have tried and tested genre definitions - “novel”, “story”, “ memoirs" etc. - they didn’t come any more. Implementing his theoretical principles, which amounted to a synthesis of documentary and artistic genres, Zoshchenko created large works at the intersection of fiction and journalism in the 30s and 40s. Although in The Blue Book the general principles of combining the satirical and didactic, pathos and irony, touching and funny remained the same, much has changed compared to the previous book. So, for example, the method of active authorial intervention in the course of the narrative remains, but no longer in the form of scientific comments, but in a different form: each main section of the Blue Book is preceded by an introduction and ends with an afterword. Reworking his old short stories for this book, Zoshchenko not only frees them from the fantastic manner and half-criminal jargon, but also generously introduces an element of teaching. Many stories have introductory or concluding lines of a clearly didactic nature. The general tone of "Blue Book" also changes in comparison with "Youth Restored" towards further clarification of the background. Here the author still acts primarily as a satirist and humorist, but in the book there is “more joy and hope than ridicule, and less irony than real, heartfelt and tender affection for people.” There is no plot similarity between these works. At the same time, it is no coincidence that the writer called The Blue Book the second part of the trilogy. Here the theme of humanism, the problem of genuine and imaginary human happiness, was further developed. This gives integrity to the heterogeneous historical and modern material and imparts internal grace and unity to the narrative. In "Youth Restored" for the first time Zoshchenko sounded with great force the motif of the historical doom of the legacy of the old world, no matter how unshakable and tenacious it may seem at first. From this point of view, the primary task of the satirist was redefined: “to beat out of people all the rubbish that has accumulated over thousands of years.” Deepening social historicism is the achievement of the author of the Blue Book. The reader is presented with a kind of comic parade of the age-old values ​​of a proprietary society, their poverty and squalor are shown against the backdrop of the ideals and achievements that the socialist revolution demonstrates to the world. Zoshchenko historically surveys the distant and relatively close past of humanity, the moral norms generated by the morality of owners. In accordance with this plan, the book is divided into five main sections: “Money”, “Love”, “Cunning”, “Failures” and “Amazing Events”. In each of the first four sections, Zoshchenko takes the reader through different centuries and countries. So, for example, in “Money” the satirist tells how in Ancient Rome the praetorians traded for the throne of the emperor, how popes absolved sins for money, how His Serene Highness Prince Menshikov finally stole, coveting the chervonets that the St. Petersburg merchants presented to Peter I on his name day. The satirist, in a comically reduced manner, retells the events of world history associated with the constant triumph of the golden calf, he says about the blood and dirt that has stuck to money over the years. Zoshchenko uses the material of a historical anecdote to make from it not only a murderous satirical sketch of the knights of profit, but also a parable, that is, to lead a contemporary to comprehend the genesis of those vices of the past that have been preserved in the bourgeois and ordinary people of our days. Historical excursions of Zoshchenko have an accurate and verified address. The satirist, remembering emperors and kings, princes and dukes, takes aim at home-grown grabbers and burners, whom he talks about in comic short stories. History and modernity are tied here in a tight knot. Events of the past are reflected in comic novels of today, as in a series of distorting mirrors. Using their effect, the satirist projects the false grandeur of the past onto the screen of the new era, which is why both the past and the absurdities still preserved in life take on a particularly stupid and unsightly appearance. A number of responses to the Blue Book correctly noted the fundamental innovation of this writer’s work. “Zoshchenko saw in the past,” wrote A. Dymshits, “not only the prototypes of modern philistines, but also saw in it the sprouts of our revolution, which he spoke about with great lyricism in the best section of the Blue Book in all respects - its fifth section -” Amazing events." The pathetic and lyrical fifth section, crowning the book as a whole, gave it a sublime character. The heroic-romantic and educational beginnings were more and more boldly and decisively asserted in Zoshchenko's prose of the second half of the 30s. The artistic principles of "Returned Youth" and "Blue books" the writer develops in a series of new stories and short stories. In 1936, three stories were completed: "The Black Prince", "The Talisman (The Sixth Story by I.P. Belkin)", which is a stylization brilliant in form and content Pushkin's prose, and "Retribution". In "Retribution" the writer moved from trying to succinctly talk about the best people revolution to a detailed showing of their lives and activities. The completion of the heroic and educational-didactic line in Zoshchenko’s work of the 30s are two cycles of stories - stories for children and stories about Lenin (1939). Now we know how natural and organic the appearance of these works was for the artist. But at one time they created a sensation among readers and critics, who saw the popular humorist from an unexpected side to many. In 1940, Detizdat published a book of stories for children, “The Most Important Thing.” Here we're talking about not about choosing a profession, not about “who to be,” because for Zoshchenko the main thing is what to be. The theme of the formation of high morality is the same as in works for adults, but it is revealed in relation to the children's level of perception and thinking. The writer teaches children to be brave and strong, smart and kind. With a gentle and cheerful smile, he talks about animals, recalls episodes from his childhood (“Christmas tree”, “Grandma’s gift”), being able to extract from everywhere moral lesson and convey it to the young reader in an extremely simple and intelligible form. Zoshchenko approached the Leninist theme for about twenty years. The first and, perhaps, the only test of strength was written in the first half of the 20s, “The Story of How Semyon Semyonovich Kurochkin Met Lenin,” which was then reprinted under the title “ Historical story"The writer returned to this topic only at the end of the 30s, enriched by the experience of developing historical and revolutionary issues, having experienced a significant change in worldview and creativity. Zoshchenko wrote sixteen stories about Lenin (twelve of them were published in 1939). In they reveal the traits of Lenin's character. But in general, the book of short stories recreates the earthly and charming image of a leader who embodied all the best that revolutionary Russia put forward. Zoshchenko also intended stories about Lenin for children. Therefore, from the many components of Lenin's personality, the main thing, what is accessible, was carefully selected young consciousness and without which the idea of ​​Lenin is unthinkable. The artistic form of the stories is also subordinated to this task. Although the main provisions of this book were inspired by the memoirs of Gorky and Mayakovsky’s poem about Lenin, their specific embodiment was innovative, and therefore Zoshchenko’s short stories were perceived by critics and readers as a discovery. During the Great Patriotic War Mikhail Zoshchenko lived in Almaty. The tragedy of blockaded Leningrad, the formidable attacks near Moscow, the great battle on the Volga, the battle on Kursk Bulge- all this was deeply experienced in the undarkened city on the slopes of Ala-Tau. In an effort to contribute to the common cause of defeating the enemy, Zoshchenko writes a lot on front-line topics. Here we should mention screenplays for short films, small satirical plays ("The Cuckoo and the Crows" and "The Fritz's Pipe" - 1942), a number of short stories "From the Stories of Soldiers" and humorous stories published in "Ogonyok", "Crocodile", "Red Army Man", a film story "Soldier's Happiness" During the same period, the writer continued to work on his largest work of the war years - the final part of the trilogy, the idea of ​​which arose back in the 30s. In the article “About my trilogy” M. Zoshchenko wrote: “Now I’m thinking of starting new book, which will be the last in my trilogy, begun by Youth Reclaimed and continued by Blue Book. All these three books, although not united by a single plot, are connected by an internal idea." Revealing the content of the new work, the writer noted that "the last book of the trilogy is conceived to be much more complex; it will take a slightly different approach to all the material than in Youth Recovered and The Blue Book, and the issues that I touched on in the previous two books will be completed in a special chapter of the new book. This book will bear little resemblance to ordinary fiction. It will be more of a treatise, philosophical and journalistic, than fiction." The story "Before Sunrise" (1943) is indeed "little similar" to ordinary literary prose. Elements of a philosophical-journalistic treatise and essay memoir literature are presented here with greater completeness than in the previous ones books of the trilogy. But the fundamental difference between the third part lies in something else. The story “Before Sunrise” does not continue, but in many ways revises the principles developed by the writer before. The gap between intentions and the creative result led the author to an ideological and artistic failure. The miscalculation was that that the writer focused his attention on the gloomy, melancholy, obsession with fear and thereby began to move back from the major and optimism of the first parts of the trilogy. The place of bright lyrics was taken by a gloomy and sometimes simply boring narrative, only occasionally illuminated by the semblance of a faint smile. In the story “Before Sunrise” sun" Zoshchenko made another miscalculation, completely freeing his narrative from humor, seriously turning to medicine and physiology for help in understanding social problems. In the war and post-war years, M. Zoshchenko did not create works that significantly deepened his own achievements of the previous period. His humor has faded and weakened significantly. Much of what was written during the stormy years of the war was received with gratitude by the reader and had a positive response in critical articles and reviews. Yu. German spoke about the difficult voyage of our warships in the Arctic Ocean during the Great Patriotic War. There were enemy mines all around, a thick red fog hung over. The sailors' mood is far from positive. But then one of the officers began to read Zoshchenko’s “Rogulka” (1943), which had just been published in a front-line newspaper. "They started laughing at the table. At first they smiled, then someone snorted, then the laughter became general, endemic. People, who had hitherto turned to the portholes every minute, literally cried with laughter: the menacing mine suddenly turned into a funny and stupid flyer. Laughter conquered fatigue.. "The laughter turned out to be stronger than the mental attack that had been going on for four days." This story was placed on a board where the numbers of the marching combat sheet were posted, and then went around all the ships of the Northern Fleet. In the feuilletons, stories, dramatic scenes, and scripts created by M. Zoshchenko in 1941-1945, on the one hand, the theme of pre-war satirical and humorous creativity is continued (stories and feuilletons about the negative phenomena of life in the rear), on the other hand (and the majority of such works) - the theme of a struggling and victorious people is developed. A special place in Zoshchenko’s work belongs to the book of partisan stories. In the partisan cycle, the writer again turned to the peasant, rustic theme - almost a quarter of a century after he wrote his first stories about men. This meeting with the same theme in a new historical era brought both creative excitement and difficulties. The author was not able to overcome all of them (the narrative sometimes takes on a somewhat conventionally literary character, with book-correct speech coming from the lips of the characters), but he still accomplished the main task. What we have before us is really not a collection of short stories, but a book with a coherent plot. In the 50s, M. Zoshchenko created a number of stories and feuilletons, a cycle of “Literary Anecdotes”, and devoted a lot of time and energy to translations. The translation of the book by the Finnish writer M. Lassila “Behind the Matches” is especially remarkable for its high skill. M. M. Zoshchenko died on July 22, 1958. When you think about the main thing in Zoshchenko’s work, the words of his colleague in literature come to mind. Speaking at the discussion of the “Blue Book,” V. Sayanov classified Zoshchenko as one of the most democratic writers and language creators: “Zoshchenko’s stories are democratic not only in language, but also in their characters. It is no coincidence that other writers could not and will not be able to take the plot of Zoshchenko’s stories -humorists. They lack the great internal ideological positions of Zoshchenko. Zoshchenko is as democratic in prose as Mayakovsky was democratic in poetry." Gorky’s assessments are of fundamental importance for characterizing M. Zoshchenko’s contribution to Soviet satirical and humorous literature. M. Gorky closely followed the development of the artist’s talent, suggested themes for some of his works, and invariably supported his searches in new genres and directions. For example, M. Gorky saw the “hidden significance” of the story “The Lilac is Blooming,” energetically supported the innovative book “Letters to a Writer,” and briefly analyzed the “Blue Book,” specially noting: “In this work, your unique talent is revealed even more confidently and lighter than in the previous ones. The originality of the book will probably not immediately be appreciated as highly as it deserves, but this should not bother you" (p. 166). M. Gorky especially highly appreciated the comic art of the writer: “Your qualities as a satirist are obvious, the sense of irony is very sharp, and the lyricism accompanies it in an extremely original way. I don’t know of such a ratio of irony and lyricism in anyone’s literature” (p. 159). Zoshchenko's works were of great importance not only for the development of satirical and humorous literature in the 20-30s. His work became a significant social phenomenon, the moral authority of satire and its role in social and moral education thanks to Zoshchenko increased enormously. Mikhail Zoshchenko managed to convey the originality of the nature of a man in a transitional time, unusually brightly, sometimes in sad-ironic, sometimes in lyrical-humorous lighting, showed how the historical breakdown of his character took place. Paving his path, he set an example for many young writers trying their hand in the complex and difficult art of reproaching with laughter

"Analysis of artistic creative method M. Zoshchenko when depicting a “poor man” in the works of the 20-30s"

Identification of creative stages and the essence of M. Zoshchenko’s creative method when depicting a “poor man”

The work of Mikhail Zoshchenko is a unique phenomenon in Russian Soviet literature. The writer, in his own way, saw some of the characteristic processes of contemporary reality, brought out under the blinding light of satire a gallery of characters who gave rise to the common concept of “Zoshchenko’s hero.” Being at the origins of Soviet satirical and humorous prose, he became the creator of an original comic novella, which continued the traditions of Gogol, Leskov, and early Chekhov in new historical conditions. Finally, Zoshchenko created his own, completely unique artistic style.

Zoshchenko devoted about four decades to Russian literature. The writer went through a complex and difficult path of quest. Three main stages can be distinguished in his work.

The first occurs in the 20s - the heyday of the writer’s talent, who honed his pen as an exposer of social vices in such popular satirical magazines of the time as “Behemoth”, “Buzoter”, “Red Raven”, “The Inspector General”, “Crank”, “Smekhach” " At this time, the formation and crystallization of Zoshchenko’s short story and story takes place.

In the 30s, Zoshchenko worked mainly in the field of large prose and dramatic genres, looking for ways to “optimistic satire” (“Youth Returned” - 1933, “The Story of a Life” - 1934 and “Blue Book” - 1935). Zoshchenko's art as a short story writer also underwent significant changes during these years (a series of children's stories and stories for children about Lenin).

The final period falls on the war and post-war years.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko was born in 1895. After graduating from high school, he studied at the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University. Without completing his studies, in 1915 he volunteered for the active army, so that, as he later recalled, “to die with dignity for his country, for his homeland.” After the February Revolution, battalion commander Zoshchenko, demobilized due to illness (“I took part in many battles, was wounded, gassed. Spoiled my heart...”) served as commandant of the Main Post Office in Petrograd. During the anxious days of Yudenich's attack on Petrograd, Zoshchenko was the adjutant of the regiment of the village poor.

The years of two wars and revolutions (1914-1921) are a period of intense spiritual growth the future writer, the formation of his literary and aesthetic convictions. The civil and moral formation of Zoshchenko as a humorist and satirist, an artist of significant social themes, occurred in the pre-October period.

In the literary heritage that Soviet satire had to master and critically rework in the 1920s, three main lines stand out. Firstly, folklore and fairy tale, coming from the raeshnik, anecdote, folk legend, satirical fairy tale; secondly, classical (from Gogol to Chekhov); and, finally, satiricon. In the work of most of the major satirical writers of that time, each of these trends can be traced quite clearly. As for M. Zoshchenko, when developing the original form of his own story, he drew from all these sources, although the Gogol-Chekhov tradition was closest to him.

The 1920s saw the heyday of the main genre varieties in the writer’s work: the satirical story, the comic novella and the satirical-humorous story. Already at the very beginning of the 20s, the writer created a number of works that were highly appreciated by M. Gorky.

Published in 1922, “Nazar Ilyich’s Stories of Mr. Sinebryukhov” attracted widespread attention. Against the background of the short stories of those years, the figure of the hero-storyteller, a seasoned, experienced man, Nazar Ilyich Sinebryukhov, who went through the front and saw a lot in the world, stood out sharply. M. Zoshchenko searches for and finds a unique intonation, in which a lyrical-ironic beginning and an intimate and confidential note are fused together, eliminating any barrier between the narrator and the listener.

“Sinebryukhov’s Stories” says a lot about the great culture of comic tales that the writer achieved at an early stage of his work:

“I had a close friend. A terribly educated person, I will say frankly - gifted with qualities. He traveled to various foreign powers with the rank of valet, he even understood French and drank foreign whiskey, but he was just like me, all the same - an ordinary guardsman of an infantry regiment.”

Sometimes the narrative is quite skillfully constructed according to the well-known absurdity that begins with the words “a tall man of short stature was walking.” This kind of awkwardness creates a certain comic effect. True, for now it does not have that distinct satirical orientation that it will acquire later. In “Sinebryukhov’s Stories” such specifically Zoshchenko-esque turns of comic speech appear for a long time in the reader’s memory, such as “as if the atmosphere suddenly smelled on me,” “they’ll pick you off like a stick and throw you behind their dear relatives, even though they’re your own relatives,” “second lieutenant, wow, but he’s a bastard,” “disturbing the riots,” etc. Subsequently, a similar type of stylistic play, but with an incomparably more acute social meaning, will appear in the speeches of other heroes - Semyon Semenovich Kurochkin and Gavrilych, on whose behalf the narration was conducted in a number of the most popular comic short stories by Zoshchenko in the first half of the 20s.

The works created by the writer in the 20s were based on specific and very topical facts, gleaned either from direct observations or from numerous letters from readers. Their themes are motley and varied: riots in transport and in hostels, the grimaces of the NEP and the grimaces of everyday life, the mold of philistinism and philistinism, arrogant pompadour and creeping lackeyness and much, much more. Often the story is constructed in the form of a casual conversation with the reader, and sometimes, when the shortcomings became particularly egregious, the author’s voice sounded frankly journalistic notes.

In a series of satirical short stories, M. Zoshchenko angrily ridiculed cynically calculating or sentimentally pensive earners of individual happiness, intelligent scoundrels and boors, and showed in their true light vulgar and worthless people who are ready to trample on everything truly human on the way to achieving personal well-being (“Matrenishcha”, “Grimace of NEP”, “Lady with Flowers”, “Nanny”, “Marriage of Convenience”).

In Zoshchenko's satirical stories there are no effective techniques for sharpening the author's thoughts. They, as a rule, are devoid of sharp comedic intrigue. M. Zoshchenko acted here as an exposer of spiritual smoking, a satirist of morals. He chose as the object of analysis the bourgeois owner - a hoarder and money-grubber, who from a direct political opponent became an adversary in the sphere of morality, a breeding ground for vulgarity.

The circle of people acting in Zoshchenko’s satirical works is extremely narrowed; there is no image of the crowd, the mass, visibly or invisibly present in humorous short stories. The pace of plot development is slow, the characters lack the dynamism that distinguishes the heroes of other works of the writer.

The heroes of these stories are less rude and uncouth than in humorous short stories. The author is primarily interested in the spiritual world, the thinking system of an outwardly cultured, but even more so essentially disgusting, bourgeois. Oddly enough, in Zoshchenko’s satirical stories there are almost no cartoonish, grotesque situations, less comic and no fun at all.

However, the main element of Zoshchenko’s creativity in the 20s is still humorous everyday life. Zoshchenko writes about drunkenness, about housing issues, about losers offended by fate. In a word, he chooses an object that he himself quite fully and accurately described in the story “People”: “But, of course, the author will still prefer a completely shallow background, a completely petty and insignificant hero with his trifling passions and experiences.” The movement of the plot in such a story is based on constantly posed and comically resolved contradictions between “yes” and “no.” The simple-minded and naive narrator assures with the whole tone of his narration that exactly the way he does is how one should evaluate what is depicted, and the reader either guesses or knows for sure that such assessments and characteristics are incorrect. This eternal struggle between the narrator’s statement and the reader’s negative perception of the events described gives special dynamism to Zoshchenkov’s story, filling it with subtle and sad irony.

Zoshchenko has a short story “The Beggar” - about a hefty and impudent man who got into the habit of regularly going to the hero-storyteller, extorting fifty dollars from him. When he got tired of all this, he advised the enterprising earner to drop in uninvited visits less often. “He didn’t come to me anymore - he was probably offended,” the narrator noted melancholy in the finale. It’s not easy for Kostya Pechenkin to hide double-mindedness, to mask cowardice and meanness with pompous words (“Three Documents”), and the story ends with an ironically sympathetic sentiment: “Eh, comrades, it’s hard for a person to live in the world!”

This sad and ironic “probably offended” and “it’s difficult for a person to live in the world” is the nerve of most of Zoshchenko’s comic works of the 20s. In such small masterpieces as “On Live Bait”, “Aristocrat”, “Bathhouse”, “Nervous People”, “Scientific Phenomenon” and others, the author seems to cut off various socio-cultural layers, getting to those layers where the origins of indifference nest , lack of culture, vulgarity.

The hero of “The Aristocrat” became infatuated with one person in fildecos stockings and a hat. While he “as an official person” visited the apartment and then walked along the street, experiencing the inconvenience of having to take the lady’s arm and “drag like a pike,” everything was relatively safe. But as soon as the hero invited the aristocrat to the theater, “she developed her ideology in its entirety.” Seeing the cakes during the intermission, the aristocrat “approaches the dish with a lecherous gait and grabs the cream and eats it.” The lady has eaten three cakes and is reaching for the fourth.

“Then the blood rushed to my head.

“Lie down,” I say, “back!”

After this culmination, events unfold like an avalanche, drawing an increasing number of characters into their orbit. As a rule, in the first half of Zoshchenko's short story one or two, or even three, characters are presented. And only when the development of the plot reaches its highest point, when the need arises to typify the phenomenon being described, to sharpen it satirically, a more or less written out group of people, sometimes a crowd, appears.

So it is in “Aristocrat”. The closer to the finale, the greater the number of faces the author brings to the stage. First, the figure of the barman appears, who, in response to all the assurances of the hero, who passionately proves that only three pieces have been eaten, since the fourth cake is on the platter, “behaves indifferently.”

“No,” he answers, “although it is in the dish, a bite was made on it and it was crushed with a finger.”

There are also amateur experts, some of whom “say the bite is done, others say it’s not.” And finally, the crowd, attracted by the scandal, laughs at the sight of the unlucky theatergoer, frantically turning out his pockets with all kinds of junk before their eyes.

In the finale, again only two characters remain, finally clarifying their relationship. The story ends with a dialogue between the offended lady and the hero, dissatisfied with her behavior.

“And at the house she says to me in her bourgeois tone:

- Quite disgusting of you. Those who don't have money don't travel with ladies.

And I say:

Happiness is not in money, citizen. Sorry for the expression."

As we can see, both sides are offended. Moreover, both sides believe only in their own truth, being firmly convinced that it is the other side that is wrong. The hero of Zoshchenkov's story invariably considers himself infallible, a “respected citizen,” although in reality he acts as a arrogant man in the street.

The essence of Zoshchenko’s aesthetics is that the writer combines two planes (ethical and cultural-historical), showing their deformation, distortion in the consciousness and behavior of satirical and humorous characters. At the junction of true and false, real and fictional, a comic spark flashes, a smile appears or the reader laughs.

Breaking the connection between cause and effect is a traditional source of comedy. It is important to capture the type of conflicts characteristic of a given environment and era and convey them through the means of satirical art. Zoshchenko is dominated by the motif of discord, everyday absurdity, some kind of tragicomic inconsistency of the hero with the tempo, rhythm and spirit of the times.

Sometimes Zoshchenko’s hero really wants to keep up with progress. A hastily adopted modern trend seems to such a respected citizen the height of not just loyalty, but an example of organic adaptation to revolutionary reality. Hence the addiction to fashionable names and political terminology, hence the desire to assert one’s “proletarian” insides through bravado through rudeness, ignorance, and rudeness.

It is no coincidence that the hero-narrator sees a bourgeois bias in the fact that Vasya Rastopyrkin - “this pure proletarian, non-party member, God knows from what year - was thrown out from the tram platform just now” by insensitive passengers for dirty clothes (“Bourgeois”). When clerk Seryozha Kolpakov was finally given the personal telephone he had been fussing over so much, the hero felt like “a true European with cultural skills and manners.” But the problem is that this “European” has no one to talk to. Out of sadness, he called the fire department and lied that there was a fire. “In the evening, Serezha Kolpakov was arrested for hooliganism.”

The writer is concerned about the problem of life and everyday anomalies. Looking for its causes, carrying out exploration of the social and moral origins of negative phenomena, Zoshchenko sometimes creates grotesquely exaggerated situations that give rise to an atmosphere of hopelessness, a widespread spill of everyday vulgarity. This feeling is created after reading the stories “Dictaphone”, “A Dog’s Scent”, “After a Hundred Years”.

Critics of the 20-30s, noting the innovation of the creator of “The Bath” and “The Aristocrat,” eagerly wrote on the topic of “face and mask” of Mikhail Zoshchenko, often correctly comprehending the meaning of the writer’s works, but embarrassed by the unusual relationship between the author and his comic “double” . The reviewers were not satisfied with the writer's commitment to the same mask chosen once and for all. Meanwhile, Zoshchenko did this deliberately.

S. V. Obraztsov in his book “Actor with a Puppet” talked about how he looked for his path in art. It turned out that only the doll helped him find his “manner and voice.” The actor was able to “enter into the character” of this or that character more relaxed and freely “through the doll.”

Zoshchenko’s innovation began with the discovery of a comic hero, who, according to the writer, “almost never appeared before in Russian literature,” as well as with the techniques of a mask, through which he revealed aspects of life that often remained in the shadows and did not come into view satirists.

All comic heroes from the ancient Petrushka to Schweik acted in conditions of an anti-people society, but Zoshchenko’s hero “unfolded his ideology” in a different environment. The writer showed the conflict between a person burdened with the prejudices of pre-revolutionary life, and morality, the moral principles of the new society.

By developing deliberately ordinary plots, telling private stories that happened to an unremarkable hero, the writer elevated these individual cases to the level of significant generalization. He penetrates the inner sanctum of a tradesman who involuntarily exposes himself in his monologues. This skillful mystification was achieved through mastery of the manner of narration on behalf of the narrator, a tradesman who was not only afraid to openly declare his views, but also tried to inadvertently not give rise to any reprehensible opinions about himself.

Zoshchenko often achieved a comic effect by playing on words and expressions taken from the speech of an illiterate tradesman, with characteristic vulgarisms, incorrect grammatical forms and syntactic constructions (“plituar”, “okromya”, “hres”, “this”, “in it”, “brunette”, “dragged”, “for the bite”, “weep crying”, “this poodle”, “a dumb animal”, “at the stove”, etc.).

Traditional humorous schemes were also used, which have come into wide use since the time of the Satyricon: the enemy of bribes, giving a speech in which he gives recipes on how to take bribes (“Speech delivered at a banquet”); an opponent of verbosity, who himself turns out to be a lover of idle and empty talk (“The Americans”); a doctor sewing a “pan gold” watch into a patient’s stomach (“The Clock”).

Zoshchenko is a writer not only of a comic style, but also of comic situations. The style of his stories is not just funny words, incorrect grammatical phrases and sayings. This was the sad fate of the authors who sought to write “like Zoshchenko”, that they, in the apt expression of K. Fedip, simply acted as plagiarists, taking off from him what was convenient to take off - his clothes. However, they were far from comprehending the essence of Zoshchenko’s innovation in the field of skaz. Zoshchenko managed to make the tale very succinct and artistically expressive. The hero-narrator only speaks, and the author does not complicate the structure of the work with additional descriptions of the timbre of his voice, his demeanor, the details of his behavior. However, through the skaz style, the hero’s gesture, the tone of his voice, his psychological state, and the author’s attitude to what is being told are clearly conveyed. What other writers achieved by introducing additional artistic details, Zoshchenko achieved with a skaz style, a short, extremely concise phrase and at the same time a complete absence of “dryness.”

At first, Zoshchenko came up with various names for his fantastic masks (Sinebryukhov, Kurochkin, Gavrilych), but later abandoned this. For example, “Funny Stories”, published on behalf of the gardener Semyon Semenovich Kurochkin, subsequently began to be published without reference to the personality of this character. The tale has become more complex and artistically polysemantic.

The skaz form was used by N. Gogol, I. Gorbunov, N. Leskov, and Soviet writers of the 20s. Instead of pictures of life, in which there is no intrigue, and sometimes any plot action, as was the case in I. Gorbunov’s masterfully honed miniature dialogues, instead of the emphatically sophisticated stylization of the language of the urban philistinism, which N. Leskov achieved through the lexical assimilation of various speech elements and folk etymology , Zoshchenko, not shying away from these techniques, seeks and finds means that most accurately correspond to the character and spirit of his hero.

Zoshchenko in his mature years followed the path paved by Gogol and Chekhov, without, however, copying their manners, unlike numerous accusers of the 20s.

K. Fedin noted the writer’s ability to “combine irony with truth of feeling in a finely constructed story.” This was achieved using Zoshchenko’s unique techniques, among which an important place belonged to especially intonated humor.

Zoshchenko's humor is completely ironic. The writer called his stories: “Happiness”, “Love”, “Easy Life”, “Pleasant Meetings”, “Honest Citizen”, “Rich Life”, “Happy Childhood”, etc. And they were talking about the exact opposite of what was stated in the title. The same can be said about the cycle of “Sentimental Stories”, in which the dominant principle is; became the tragicomism of the everyday life of the tradesman and the layman. One of the stories bore the romantic title “Lilac is Blooming.” However, the poetic haze of the title dissipated already on the first pages. Here the life of the musty bourgeois world, usual for Zoshchenko’s works, flowed thickly with its insipid love, betrayals, disgusting scenes of jealousy, and massacres.

The dominance of trifles, the slavery of trifles, the comedy of the absurd and absurd - this is what the writer draws attention to in a series of sentimental stories. However, there is a lot here that is new, even unexpected for the reader who knew Zoshchenko the short story writer. In this regard, the story “What the Nightingale Sang About” is especially indicative.

Here, in contrast to “Goat”, “Wisdom” and “People”, where the characters of all kinds of “former” people were drawn, broken by the revolution, knocked out of their usual everyday rut, a completely “fire-resistant type” was recreated, which was not shaken by any storms and thunderstorms past social revolution. Vasily Vasilyevich Bylinkin steps broadly and firmly on the ground. “Blinkin wore his heels inward all the way to the heels.” If anything crushes this “philosophically minded man, burned by life and fired at by heavy artillery,” it is the sudden feeling that surges through him for Lizochka Rundukova.

In essence, the story “What the Nightingale Sang About” is a subtly parodic, stylized work that sets out the story of the explanations and yearnings of two hotly in love heroes. Without betraying the canons of a love story, the author sends a test to the lovers, albeit in the form of a childhood disease (mumps), with which Bylinkin unexpectedly becomes seriously ill. The heroes stoically endure this formidable invasion of fate, their love becomes even stronger and purer. They walk a lot, holding hands, and often sit over a classic river cliff, albeit with a somewhat undignified name - Kozyavka.

Love reaches a climax, after which only the death of loving hearts is possible, if the spontaneous attraction is not crowned with a marriage. But here the force of such circumstances invades, which crush the carefully nurtured feeling at the root.

Bylinkin sang beautifully and captivatingly, his intermittent voice carried out gentle roulades. And the results?

Let us remember why in previous satirical literature the matrimonial advances of equally unlucky suitors failed.

It’s funny, very funny, that Podkolesin jumps out the window, although there is not that extreme decline of the hero as in Zoshchenko.

Khlestakov's matchmaking is disrupted because somewhere in the depths of the scene the figure of the true auditor looms with stern retribution.

Krechinsky's wedding cannot take place because this cunning swindler aims to get a million in dowry, but at the last moment he makes a too clumsy step.

What explains the sad and farcical outcome in the story “What the Nightingale Sang About”? Lizochka did not have her mother’s chest of drawers, which the hero was counting on. This is where the mug of the tradesman comes out, which before - though not very skillfully - was covered with thin petals of “haberdashery” treatment.

Zoshchenko writes a magnificent ending, where the true cost of what at first looked like a reverently generous feeling is revealed. The epilogue, presented in peacefully elegiac tones, is preceded by a scene of a stormy scandal.

In the structure of Zoshchenko’s stylized and sentimental story, like veins of quartz in granite, caustic sarcastic inclusions appear. They give the work a satirical flavor, and, unlike the stories where Zoshchenko openly laughs, here the writer, using Mayakovsky’s formula, smiles and mocks. At the same time, his smile is most often sad and sad, and his mockery is sardonic.

This is exactly how the epilogue of the story “What the Nightingale Sang About” is constructed, where the author finally answers the question posed in the title. As if returning the reader to Bylinkin’s happy days, the writer recreates the atmosphere of love ecstasy, when Lizochka, overwhelmed “by the chirping of insects or the singing of a nightingale,” innocently asks her admirer:

Vasya, what do you think this nightingale is singing about?

To which Vasya Bylinkin usually responded with restraint:

He wants to eat, that’s why he sings.”

The originality of “Sentimental Tales” is not only in the more meager introduction of elements of the actually comic, but also in the fact that from work to work there is a growing feeling of something unkind, embedded, it seems, in the very mechanism of life, interfering with its optimistic perception.

The disadvantage of most of the heroes of “Sentimental Tales” is that they slept through an entire historical period in the life of Russia and therefore, like Apollo Perepenchuk (“Apollo and Tamara”), Ivan Ivanovich Belokopytov (“People”) or Michel Sinyagin (“M.P. . Sinyagin"), have no future. They rush through life in fear, and even the smallest incident is ready to play a fatal role in their restless fate. Chance takes on the form of inevitability and regularity, determining much in the crushed spiritual mood of these heroes.

The fatal slavery of trifles distorts and corrodes the human principles of the heroes of the stories “The Goat”, “What the Nightingale Sang”, “A Merry Adventure”. There is no goat - and the foundations of Zabezhkin’s universe collapse, and after this Zabezhkin himself dies. They don’t give mother’s chest of drawers to the bride - and the bride herself, to whom Bylinkin sang so sweetly, is not needed. The hero of “A Merry Adventure” Sergei Petukhov, who intends to take a girl he knows to the cinema, does not find the required seven hryvnia and because of this is ready to finish off his dying aunt.

The artist depicts petty, philistine natures, busy meaninglessly circling around dull, faded joys and familiar sorrows. Social upheavals have bypassed these people, who call their existence “worm-eaten and meaningless.” However, it sometimes seemed to the author that the foundations of life remained unshaken, that the wind of revolution only stirred up the sea of ​​everyday vulgarity and flew away without changing the essence of human relations.

Zoshchenko appears to have teaching intonations that were not there before. The satirist not only and even not so much ridicules and castigates, but patiently teaches, explains, interprets, appealing to the mind and conscience of the reader. High and pure didactics were embodied with particular perfection in a cycle of touching and affectionate stories for children, written in 1937 - 1938.

In the comic novella and feuilleton of the second half of the 30s, sad humor increasingly gives way to instructiveness, and irony to lyrical and philosophical intonation (“Forced Landing,” “Wake,” “Drunk Man,” “Bathhouse and People,” “Meeting” , “On the tram”, etc.). Take, for example, the story “On the Tram” (1937). This is not even a novella, but simply a street scene, a genre sketch, which in past years could easily have become an arena for funny and funny situations, thickly seasoned with comic salt of witticisms. Suffice it to recall “On live bait”, “Galoshes”, etc.

Now the writer’s anger and joy rarely burst out. More than before, he declares the artist’s high moral position, clearly revealed in the key places of the plot - where issues of honor, dignity, and duty are particularly important and dear to the writer’s heart.

Defending the concept of active good, M. Zoshchenko pays more and more attention to positive characters, bolder and more often introduces images of positive heroes into the satirical and humorous story. And not just in the role of extras, standards frozen in their virtue, but characters actively acting and fighting (“Funny Game”, “Modern Times”, “Lights” big city", "Debt of Honor").

Previously, the development of Zoshchenko’s comic plot consisted of incessant contradictions that arose between the ironic “yes” and the real “no”. The contrast between high and low, bad and good, comic and tragic was revealed by the reader himself as he delved deeper into the satirical text of the narrative. The author sometimes obscured these contrasts, not clearly differentiating the speech and function of the narrator and his own position.

The story and feuilleton of the 30s are built by Zoshchenko on different compositional principles, not because such an important component of the short story of previous years as the hero-storyteller disappears. Now the characters of satirical works begin to be opposed not only by the higher author’s position, but also by the very environment in which the heroes find themselves. This social confrontation ultimately moves the internal springs of the plot. Observing how the honor and dignity of a person is trampled underfoot by all sorts of bureaucrats, red tape workers, and bureaucrats, the writer raises his voice in his defense. No, as a rule, he does not give an angry rebuke, but in his preferred sad-ironic style of narration, major intonations arise, and the firm conviction of an optimist is manifested.

Zoshchenko’s trip to the White Sea-Baltic Canal (1933) became a memorable milestone for him not only because there he saw with his own eyes how people, much worse than those who were the main characters of his works of the 20s, were degenerated under the conditions of a gigantic construction site . The prospects for the future path were revealed to the writer in a new way, because the direct study of the socialist novelty gave a lot for solving such fundamental issues for the satirist as man and society, the historical doom of the past, the inevitability and inevitability of the triumph of the lofty and beautiful. The social renewal of the native land also promised a moral revival of the individual, returning not only to the individual, but, as it were, to the entire planet its long-lost youth.

As a result of the trip, the story “The Story of One Life” (1934) appears, telling about how a thief, “who went through a harsh school of re-education,” became a man. This story was favorably received by M. Gorky.

New times break into not only Zoshchenko’s essays, short stories and small feuilletons, but also onto the pages of his great prose. The former idea of ​​the vitality and indestructibility of philistinism is being replaced by a growing confidence in the victory of new human relations. The writer moved from general skepticism at the sight of seemingly invincible vulgarity to criticism of the old in the new and to the search for a positive hero. This is how a chain of stories of the 30s is gradually built up from “Youth Restored” (1933) through “The Blue Book” (1935) to “Retribution” (1936). In these works, negation and affirmation, pathos and irony, lyricism and satire, heroic and comic merged in a bizarre fusion.