It is difficult to imagine modern Russian literature without the books of Viktor Pavlovich Astafiev. In his works, he reveals taiga romance, the unity of people with nature, depicts characters that fascinate with their strength, primordial nature, and naturalness.
The story of Victor Astafiev "To live life", written in the mid-eighties, cannot leave the reader indifferent, since the author raises vital problems in it. He reflects on mercy, the relationship between man and nature, war as the greatest evil for the earth and man.
The very title of the work invites the reader reflect about his soul, about life, about what he will leave behind on earth. This call to man is repeated twice in the text. At the beginning of the work, he sounds on behalf of nature. "People! People!" - the birch tree seems to resemble with a yellow sparkle. - Autumn is coming soon ... It's time to look back, think ... "
Then the author, reflecting, warns against callousness, hardening of the soul: "Without delving into the life of our neighbor, will we not forget how to feel someone else's joy, someone else's grief, pain ... And will we not permanently lose what is called the ancient kind word - compassion ?"
Compositionally, the narrative is a "story within a story". The plot is based on the life story of Ivan Tikhonovich Zaplatin. In the exposition of the story, the author introduces us to the hero, with whom he has much in common: place of birth, age, events of the war years. Through the portrait of Ivan Astafiev informs its deep connection with the earth: the curls are translucent with "threads of gray hair, that August through, that at the end of the month yellow will exhale from the depths of the forest." In the portrait of the hero's wife Tatyana, one also feels unity with nature: "the pupils ... like the sun in the rain, are crushed in a fluid, changeable light."
The speech of the heroes, full of proverbs, sayings ("One curl costs a ruble, and another - a thousand", "In crowded, but not offended"), dialect words ("tear your hands", "do not bazlay"), vernacular ("stupid" , "nonsense", "to indulge"), immerses us in the world of a simple person. The expressions used by Ivan: “to live, to live”, “is it easy for a fairy tale to tell”, “from across the sea-okiyana” - make his confession folk and melodic.
From the story of Ivan Tikhonovich, we learn how difficult the fate of himself and his family was: the hungry thirties, the war, the premature death of loved ones. Life led the hero through many trials, but his heart did not become indifferent to someone else's grief: "here the zealous will lift, it will shake him like an autumn weathered leaf ...". Ivan Lelka taught to love and feel sorry for people, who took him, an orphan boy, into her poor family. She gave herself to other people: she looked after the parents of her drunkard husband, supported her sick sister, not to mention five children and her disabled son Borka. Lelka passed away early, but the children adopted her kindness and ability to sacrifice themselves.
Ivan, returning from the front, could not betray his relatives and did not leave his father, Borka and his seriously wounded brother. Just as the toiler Lelka is “remembered to this day” by her fellow villagers for her sincerity, so people are drawn to Ivan Tikhonovich and his wife: “Someone always clung to them, warmed themselves near them.” They know how to understand, sympathize with others,
Emphasizing the purity of the soul and mercy paramount heroes, the author uses the technique of antithesis. Lelka "showed patriotism" by not sending Ivan to an orphanage, and the grandmother twice tried to kill her sick grandson Borka, openly trying to get rid of an extra mouth in the family. The image of Ivan's daughter-in-law is also terrible, a rude, vulgar, depraved woman, whom the author does not even endow with a name. She is not kind to people. She needs her own daughter, who has the ability to ballroom dancing, for prestige: Klavochkina's legs are "more expensive and necessary than the daughter herself."
By combining vernacular and high vocabulary, a vivid characterization of the characters is achieved. In the description of the urban family, the author's mockery is felt: a "modern one-child" family; "dressed up with work, planted with power, earthly goods and pleasures" mommy; "tasting only sugar" dog "with a thieves' muzzle."
The popular view of the war is expressed through the memoirs of Ivan Tikhonovich. Nature itself, as it were, seeks to force a person to change his mind and not to commit bloodshed: the sun has been replaced by a snowstorm, "the sun is like crazy," white snow is disfigured by human corpses. And involuntarily the narrator exclaims: "Doomsday! It is clear that people really angered God." The phrase "human rubbish" alone horrifies the reader. The picture of the battlefield the next day is terrible: "Like firewood, people lie, only they are not stacked in woodpile, on top of each other." From this view, Ivan Tikhonovich "almost lost his mind." And to this day the events stand before his eyes. That is why he is especially keenly worried about the fate of his granddaughter: "Really again? Really the children will be beaten and destitute, and my Klavochka too? .."
A hero will never accept war. Everything in him, "what is put into the soul ... rises, protests and will not get tired of protesting until the end of his days against unnatural, against premature death." The death of Lelka and the behavior of the adaptive deserter who lived to see the amnesty also make him think about the issue of life and death. Ivan kept trying to understand why death "certainly chooses those" who are brighter, more conscientious.
In the story, the author speaks with pain about an environmental problem. After all, not only war, but also peaceful human activity destroys and disfigures nature. The construction of the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power plant led to flooding approximately six hundred kilometers of land along the Yenisei, including Izagash. People left, forever leaving their beloved nature, the graves of their relatives, their homeland. How fertile were the places along the Yenisei, and now "the whole taiga and the earth are in wounds"! And the Yenisei itself was "drowned, made into a wide puddle, and thrown over with rubbish, like dead carrion." The earth was given to man not for him to destroy all living things. Astafiev emphasizes that nature and man are a single whole, the violation of this unity will certainly have an effect. Even Petrusha, a kind, honest man, loses his self-respect, becomes a "scumbag" in the city.
Ivan, who grew up among forests, fields and mountains, on the banks of a majestic river, does not understand how one can live in gray, smoky cities: settle in their souls?.. What business will they do? Whom to love? Whom to pity? What to remember?"
In his work "To Live Life" Viktor Petrovich Astafiev calls on readers to be responsible for everything that happens on earth, to fight against lack of spirituality for the establishment of moral principles: "The earth can be destroyed, civilization and life can be destroyed, having created the most grandiose suicide in the universe, but our spirit, which will soar in the immensity of time, space, seek shelter on some living planet, someone's living soul.
It is difficult to imagine modern Russian literature without the books of Viktor Pavlovich Astafiev. In his works, he reveals taiga romance, the unity of people with nature, depicts characters that fascinate with their strength, primordial nature, and naturalness.The story of Victor Astafiev "To live life", written in the mid-eighties, cannot leave the reader indifferent, since the author raises vital problems in it. He reflects on mercy, the relationship between man and nature, war as the greatest evil for the earth and man.
The very title of the work encourages the reader to think about his soul, about life, about what he will leave behind on earth. This call to man is repeated twice in the text. At the beginning of the work, he sounds on behalf of nature. "People! People!" - the birch tree seems to resemble with a yellow sparkle. - Autumn is coming soon ... It's time to look back, think ... "
Then the author, reflecting, warns against callousness, hardening of the soul: "Without delving into the life of our neighbor, will we not forget how to feel someone else's joy, someone else's grief, pain ... And will we not permanently lose what is called the ancient kind word - compassion ?"
Compositionally, the narrative is a "story within a story". The plot is based on the life story of Ivan Tikhonovich Zaplatin. In the exposition of the story, the author introduces us to the hero, with whom he has much in common: place of birth, age, events of the war years. Through the portrait of Ivan, Astafiev conveys his deep connection with the earth: the curls are translucent with "threads of gray hair, that August through that at the end of the month the yellow will exhale from the depths of the forest." In the portrait of the hero's wife Tatyana, one also feels unity with nature: "the pupils ... like the sun in the rain, are crushed in a fluid, changeable light."
The speech of the heroes, full of proverbs, sayings ("One curl costs a ruble, and another - a thousand", "In crowded, but not offended"), dialect words ("tear your hands", "do not bazlay"), vernacular ("stupid" , "nonsense", "to indulge"), immerses us in the world of a simple person. The expressions used by Ivan: “to live, to live”, “is it easy for a fairy tale to tell”, “from across the sea-okiyana” - make his confession folk and melodic.
From the story of Ivan Tikhonovich, we learn how difficult the fate of himself and his family was: the hungry thirties, the war, the premature death of loved ones. Life led the hero through many trials, but his heart did not become indifferent to someone else's grief: "here the zealous will lift, it will shake him like an autumn weathered leaf ...". Ivan Lelka taught to love and feel sorry for people, who took him, an orphan boy, into her poor family. She gave herself to other people: she looked after the parents of her drunkard husband, supported her sick sister, not to mention five children and her disabled son Borka. Lelka passed away early, but the children adopted her kindness and ability to sacrifice themselves.
Ivan, returning from the front, could not betray his relatives and did not leave his father, Borka and his seriously wounded brother. Just as the toiler Lelka is “remembered to this day” by her fellow villagers for her sincerity, so people are drawn to Ivan Tikhonovich and his wife: “Someone always clung to them, warmed themselves near them.” They know how to understand, sympathize with others,
Emphasizing the purity of the soul and the mercy of the main characters, the author uses the technique of antithesis. Lelka "showed patriotism" by not sending Ivan to an orphanage, and the grandmother twice tried to kill her sick grandson Borka, openly trying to get rid of an extra mouth in the family. The image of Ivan's daughter-in-law is also terrible, a rude, vulgar, depraved woman, whom the author does not even endow with a name. She is not kind to people. She needs her own daughter, who has the ability to ballroom dancing, for prestige: Klavochkina's legs are "more expensive and necessary than the daughter herself."
By combining vernacular and high vocabulary, a vivid characterization of the characters is achieved. In the description of the urban family, the author's mockery is felt: a "modern one-child" family; "dressed up with work, planted with power, earthly goods and pleasures" mommy; "tasting only sugar" dog "with a thieves' muzzle."
The popular view of the war is expressed through the memoirs of Ivan Tikhonovich. Nature itself, as it were, seeks to force a person to change his mind and not to commit bloodshed: the sun has been replaced by a snowstorm, "the sun is like crazy," white snow is disfigured by human corpses. And involuntarily the narrator exclaims: "Doomsday! It is clear that people really angered God." The phrase "human rubbish" alone horrifies the reader. The picture of the battlefield the next day is terrible: "Like firewood, people lie, only they are not stacked in woodpile, on top of each other." From this view, Ivan Tikhonovich "almost lost his mind." And to this day the events stand before his eyes. That is why he is especially keenly worried about the fate of his granddaughter: "Really again? Really the children will be beaten and destitute, and my Klavochka too? .."
A hero will never accept war. Everything in him, "what is put into the soul ... rises, protests and will not get tired of protesting until the end of his days against unnatural, against premature death." The death of Lelka and the behavior of the adaptive deserter who lived to see the amnesty also make him think about the issue of life and death. Ivan kept trying to understand why death "certainly chooses those" who are brighter, more conscientious.
In the story, the author speaks with pain about an environmental problem. After all, not only war, but also peaceful human activity destroys and disfigures nature. The construction of the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station led to the flooding of about six hundred kilometers of land along the Yenisei, including Izagash. People left, forever leaving their beloved nature, the graves of their relatives, their homeland. How fertile were the places along the Yenisei, and now "the whole taiga and the earth are in wounds"! And the Yenisei itself was "drowned, made into a wide puddle, and thrown over with rubbish, like dead carrion." The earth was given to man not for him to destroy all living things. Astafiev emphasizes that nature and man are a single whole, the violation of this unity will certainly have an effect. Even Petrusha, a kind, honest man, loses his self-respect, becomes a "scumbag" in the city.
Ivan, who grew up among forests, fields and mountains, on the banks of a majestic river, does not understand how one can live in gray, smoky cities: settle in their souls?.. What business will they do? Whom to love? Whom to pity? What to remember?"
In his work "To Live Life" Viktor Petrovich Astafiev calls on readers to be responsible for everything that happens on earth, to fight against lack of spirituality for the establishment of moral principles: "The earth can be destroyed, civilization and life can be destroyed, having created the most grandiose suicide in the universe, but our spirit, which will soar in the immensity of time, space, seek shelter on some living planet, someone's living soul.
“Vanka and Tanka, more precisely, Ivan Tikhonovich and Tatyana Finogenovna Zaplatin, in the evenings they liked to sit on a bench near their house. And they did it well, sitting on a bench, it was comfortable. And it’s not that there, clinging to each other, or holding hands and kissing - all for show on the new culture. No, they sit, they used to be dressed in ordinary clothes, in what the evening found in the yard, they sit in that: Ivan Tikhonovich in a padded jacket, in an old river cap, already without a gold-colored badge. The cap is baked in the sun, shrunken from rains, winds and old age, and he is not put on - as if hastily thrown over a still curly head, excessively large from curls, like a cabbage that is not tied into a fork ... "
Mikhail Alexandrovich Ulyanov
Vanka and Tanka, more precisely, Ivan Tikhonovich and Tatyana Finogenovna Zaplatin, liked to sit on a bench near their house in the evenings. And they did it well, sitting on a bench, it was comfortable. And it’s not that there, clinging to each other, or holding hands and kissing - all for show on the new culture. No, they sit, they used to be dressed in ordinary clothes, in what the evening found in the yard, they sit in that: Ivan Tikhonovich in a padded jacket, in an old river cap, already without a gold-colored badge. The cap was baked in the sun, shriveled from the rains, winds and old age, and he was not put on - as if in a hurry he was thrown over the still curly head, excessively large from the curls, like a cabbage that was not tied into a fork. A cap with a speck graying in place of a chipped cockade seems ridiculous, sort of like a circus performer, and with its turbidity sets off or exposes the pitch of large curls, translucent with threads of gray hair, that August through that at the end of the month yellow will exhale from the depths of the forest, from the fall or onto a hanging branch birch, curl it with a pigtail and sadly subside. "People! People! - it seems to be reminiscent of a yellow sparkling of birches. - Autumn is coming soon. Why are you running somewhere? It’s time to look back, think…”
Tatyana Finogenovna did not want to lag behind Ivan Tikhonovich in curls, until the last time she curled herself at the district hairdresser's when she was ill - at home, with hardened forged tongs of pre-revolutionary production, she cheered up something on her head, although, to tell the truth, there was nothing to cheer up there, the hair was almost completely worn out under the root, and again he did not have the strength and time to ascend into the clearing. But even with rare curls, in a cotton dress that had long gone out of fashion, in a tight uniform with pockets, called a jacket in the villages, in little white, like children's socks, Tatyana Finogenovna still looked good, most importantly - friendly. Tatyana Finogenovna never wore a jacket, it was closer to autumn, in the cold season, so everything was in a dress, in socks, and if there was no handkerchief on her shoulders, something would certainly bristle around her neck, more often - a gauze patch, gray smoky, caught in a knot on the side of the neck.
Ivan Tikhonovich is closer to the heart, of course, a blue handkerchief - the beauty and memory of the unforgettable years of the war, a handkerchief that has almost faded, with a burgundy border on a faded field. When Ivan Tikhonovich sees him, his heart will move, or something will move in his heart to the place where warm tears are, they will boil out of nowhere, sometimes because of a perfect trifle, because of a picture in a newspaper , or they’ll show on TV that it’s military, or they’ll whine about separation on the radio - and now it will wash away the zealous, shake it like an autumn weathered leaf ...
Y-yes, time! He was not the only one who became so tearful. Not only did life crush him, rolled, ironed, soaked and dried. Why does his neighbor Semka the tear-off - he was in prison seven times for robbery and fights - just like a woman, falls into hysterics, clutching his head with a sob. "Why did you ruin your life?" - screams.
Ivan Tikhonovich's dashing side of life has passed. And everything in his biography is in perfect order. However, there is also something to remember, there is something to sing about and cry about. And he deserved a quiet old age. There is a house, there is a garden, a front garden with viburnum and bird cherry, neat woodpile under the roof - firewood from the carpentry shop, planed. “I still want to paint them,” Ivan Tikhonovich laughs. Two little pigs are croaking in the yard, the kitchenette with their brew is smoking, well, flocks are there, on the ground, a greenhouse, earth, grass, floors in the house, buckets of slop, washing, whitewashing, painting, chores, worries and everything else, like everyone else villagers. But sometimes such longing, such unbearable languor and forebodings are bad for Ivan Tikhonovich, at least get drunk. And I would get drunk, but you can’t. All because of Tanya. Tatyana Finogenovna. She pushes around the house, helps, bustles, and he never saw her with unwashed hands, in that premature men's jacket, to which Russian women in the villages are accustomed, and they disfigure their appearance to this day, when the rags are full, they strive not only women, but also young girls, walk down the street, to the store, to the market in rag slippers and jackets. Once, laughter to say, Ivan Tikhonovich saw in the rest house: two tipsy maidens with painted lips came to the dance and let's bang to the cry of Rymbaeva - a pillar of dust from under worn slippers.
Closer to autumn and autumn, Ivan Tikhonovich and Tatyana Finogenovna put on socks knitted from dog wool, galoshes, old, old, but still gleaming glossy. The owner sits on a bench leg to leg, folding them like scissors and stretching them out as far as the not so expressive length allows. For some reason, he kept his hands intertwined on his chest, as if warming his fingers under his armpits, a pose more feminine than masculine. Tatyana Finogenovna usually has her hands in her knees, palm in palm, legs wide apart, stubbornly, but not often she had a chance to sit like this, at ease, for her own pleasure. As if inadvertently clinging to the bench, leaning on her hands, swaddled in pain and internal tension, like a helpless baby in a swaddle - this is how she sat on the bench lately: she began to grab more often.
Ivan Tikhonovich imperceptibly persuaded his wife to go to the hut, lie down, shed drops. She is just as imperceptible to him - repulse: I will have time, they say, I will have time. “After all, to lie there, in the deep earth, and lonely, and dark ...” Tatyana Finogenovna did not know these verses, but she thought about the same - she would still lie down and drink more drops and pills, she was already tired of them, there was still no sense from them, and, while it is still possible, it is better for her to sit in the light, look at the sun, at the mountains, at the people passing by, because she has always been and is friendly to people.
On a rare evening there were Zaplatin alone on the bench. Everyone clung to them, basked near them. And Tatyana Finogenovna screwed up her narrow eyes mockingly, completely sinking them into slits from the pleasure of communicating with people, her mouth with a wide bracket, which the devil had, that “crawled under the mare” - this mouth, with folds in the corners, is it always so mobile in laughter , every now and then he would bare rows of state teeth, and, rejoicing at the joy of his lovable wife, Ivan Tikhonovich would roll himself, it happened, whether from his own or someone else's joke, he would roll around like a hen growing a testicle, and begin to roll his head along the raft - the cap would roll to the ground, and , lifting it, he beats his cap on his knee:
“B-but, what are you skating, boy?” Where are you all riding?
Tatyana Finogenovna groans with laughter, wiping her tears with her hand:
- Yah you! Dead, unclean spirit! Completely pissed me off!
With laughter, with a joke, it is easier to deceive time. After all, it’s not just that Ivan Tikhonovich and Tatyana Finogenovna are sitting on a bench, deliberately sitting - they are waiting for an evening train from a nearby city, suddenly Klavochka, their only granddaughter, will arrive with her, with an electric train. They are waiting for her all the time, every day, every evening. And although the granddaughter is very busy, her parents are even busy, but an unexpected opportunity happens: quarantine in the kindergarten or the mother gets sick with the flu, the child cannot be with her - it is contagious; with them, with grandparents, just right, there is never any infection here. Yes, Klavochka's mom is a healthy person. Highly. They rarely bring Klavochka to the village. Mamulya at Klavochka is in charge of the production of a trust of restaurants, consider that the most important enterprise in the city. Mammy, as befits the head of a reputable enterprise, is all in gold, in a gray-haired ducal wig from the time of King Louis the Fair, in a safari dress, either cracked on the back from a restaurant grub, or ripped open for style.
Tatyana Finogenovna, seeing her daughter-in-law on the village street, always timidly froze in herself, fearing that something on her daughter-in-law would burst publicly and be exposed. The child, Klavochka, is also dressed up in all fashion according to foreign, according to her last cry, the echo of which, having reached Siberian limits, becomes more like a wheeze and takes on such tones and forms that those who gave birth to fashion in Europe, seeing, how here, in our vast expanses, everything has improved, they would have given up on their craft, put the cutting scissors in the chest: go naked again, people - naked is even more decent ...
A modernly dressed family, modernly one-child, tired of the city, leisurely walks along the village street from the train in this order: in front is the head of the family, dressed up with work, planted with power, earthly goods and pleasures; jumping behind her, in a French beret with a bomber jacket, in foreign golfs, in a blouse with a silk jabot, in yellow trousers with white stripes, with a funny chick appliqué stuck to such a place that grandparents, at the sight of a terrible obscenity, on some time, as if in paralysis, they remain - mute, motionless. It’s good, at least it’s a baby - Klavochka still doesn’t understand anything, doesn’t accept shame, jumps on her one leg and doesn’t see that the cheeky chick is constantly on the move, pecking grains on her pisul.
Mammy snarls hostilely through her teeth, covered with Italian varnish, so as not to spoil from fatty food:
- You have me, you bastard, fall! You, sikuha, hurt your legs! I'll hurt you!
Klavochka will go to school in the fall and, together with the most gifted pupils of her kindergarten, is already studying in the preparatory class of the local choreographic school. Her mother's legs are dear, perhaps more expensive and more necessary than her daughter herself. Mommy, when she drinks, croaks in a smoke-filled voice:
- My Klavka, when she grows up, will surpass everyone in dancing! And the one like her - yes, the biksu, that from the ballet, that the people's artist, we have seen such people! - that one at the coffin will drive! ..
At a respectful distance from the family, daddy trudges and mommy echoes:
- Klava, don't fall! Daughter, be careful! Why are you upsetting mommy? You on purpose, right? On purpose?!
The son of the Zaplatins, Petrusha, is curly-haired, like his father, like his mother, sparkling-eyed, big-mouthed, handsome, without character and without a profitable position. He works on the conveyor or on the container - Mommy can't remember. He earns four hundred re a month, but it is still considered that a woman keeps him, and he agrees with this, as well as with the fact that he would have disappeared long ago and drank himself without her. There’s nothing to talk about on the part of the peasant, the daughter-in-law contemptuously assures, and something must really be wrong with Petrusha - why would the guy fawn over his wife, endure the lover, with whom she considers openly confused.
Petrusha rushes forward with two bags in his hands, grabbing another can of city drink, infused with overseas herbs. The village stands in the mountains, the water here is calcareous, excess lime is harmful to bones, some famous professor told Mommy at the resort. These herbs, expensive and useful, are now drunk by all highly intelligent and developed people. True, Petrusha saw those overseas grasses on the Yenisei mowing, but who would believe him? You need an infusion, so drag it - for losing weight to your wife, for skin elasticity and to strengthen your daughter's bones. Petrusha also presses a dog with a thieves' muzzle to his chest with his elbow. The dog's eye gleams from under the bangs of a spitting Kachin urka. Living in modern apartments, sleeping on a separate ottoman and eating only sugar and minced poultry with cream, the dog is indignant at the black people, barks out of fear and impudence, barks at everyone he meets and crosses in the train, on the street, in the city and in the countryside. Mommy comforts the dog
- Josephine, don’t spoil your nerves, the same people, they won’t bite you, they feed on each other. - And immediately from the dog to the husband, so much so that the parents could hear: - On purpose, the car pulls rubber! .. So that the wife is not taken away with the car! Go Go go! That I myself will drag even an artist, even a general!
Petrusha pulls his head into his shoulders and is ready to drag himself all over, somewhere to hide from this all-crushing rudeness, confident in his right to crush everything in his path that is unfriendly to him, that does not correspond to his right and high cultural level.
Petrusha, still from afar, looks for his mother and father on the bench, catches them with his eyes and begins to smile at them affably and guiltily: what, they say, to do, I got into trouble, I endure, I sniff, but I myself am still the same Petrusha of yours, I didn’t mess up, I didn’t betray the house and did not stain your blood...
- Grandpa! Granny! - overtaking the mother, Klavochka rings. - Hello!
Ivan Tikhonovich, at the sight of his daughter-in-law, begins to emerge with black foam, it seems to be smoking under his cap. “Yaaaaaaa, otter tavern! She made her parents happy, pass-with-ku-da! .. ”- but, seeing Klavochka flying towards him, he loses both evil and. every reason, rushes towards her granddaughter, on the go grabbing a cap that is rolling away somewhere, and, dropping a galosh, or even both, slaps in her socks through dust or mud towards a creature rushing, doubling and tripping in the eyes from suddenly rolling tears, for the sake of which Ivan Tikhonovich puts up with a bitch daughter-in-law, I will smear Petrusha, for the sake of his granddaughter he will die, if necessary, he will endure any baseness, reproach, execution, he will commit a feat or a robbery of a local store, murder, arson and any other dishonor ... But God had mercy on him from extreme deeds and deeds, nothing needs to be broken yet, no one needs to be exterminated yet. Let both the daughter-in-law and Petrusha exist in order for the granddaughter to be in the world, which, perhaps, was created exclusively for her.
Grandfather carries a squealing girl in pregnancy with joy and tickling, burrows as if jokingly, but in fact hides a drooping nose with tears rolling down it in a magnificent rag called a jabot, hears his granddaughter's hands, hairs, smells her, still small, bird warmth , from which he completely goes crazy, suffocates, as if from oven heat, invents and cannot come up with the best word:
- A tutyushenki-tyutyu! And darlings, darlings! And little ones...
- Grandpa, what are you talking about? I'm big! - Ivan Tikhonovich hears and, sobering up, releases his granddaughter to the ground, leads her by the hand and, disagreeing, repeats:
- How big are you? Eco invented it! .. Eco ... - But you need to please the spoiled girl in everything, for this he was waiting for her, meeting her, not arguing with her, he endured so much, he looked through all his eyes, and, stopping, he perplexedly curls under the cap and, as if he had just seen the granddaughter, he is amazed aloud: - And the truth! And the truth! What a wave! She's become a total girl! – But he wants to protest, call out: “Don’t rush to be big, don’t rush, don’t! Stay in childhood, in the golden time! Can you stop life with a shout? And he agrees and bewilderedly repeats, bringing his granddaughter to her grandmother: - Oh, you are my girl!
"My girl! My girl!" - the granddaughter does not know that so the grandfather once called her grandmother. And there was never for her a more affectionate, more secret, very, very, only spoken word for her, taken from the bottom of her soul, from a hard shell, like a pearl, plucked out. And to this day, when grandmother feels bad, when grandfather dares with her, reassures her, asks, he prays - you won’t understand right away - with that single word: “Don’t leave me, girl! How will I be without you? .. "
The clavicle grows well, develops normally. Chaldon root girl, grandfather's and grandmother's sourdough. She pretends to be afraid of her mother, but obeys her father and pities him with childish, deep, womanish pity. Klavochka loves her grandfather and grandmother, beats the dog Josephine with anything, smears her nose with mustard. Once Klavochka had already caressed her mother with her shoes, which were still soft, but she sternly warned: when she grows up, she will beat her with a log, and if she, drunk, does not realize anything, she will go with her father to her grandparents.
- Oh, grandma! - Klavochka says sadly, seeing how Tatyana Finogenovna clutches at the bench, and her eyes, filled with tears of love and suffering, become mournfully wild, like those of a sorcerer. Silent cry, mute complaint in them. Are you sick again, grandma?
Cautiously climbing onto her knees, the girl presses her cheek against her grandmother's cheek, fumbles with her hand over the worn jacket and strokes, soothes, heals. Grandmother, mortally clasping her granddaughter's tight body with her hands, pulls her to her, presses her tighter to her chest and can neither shout out, nor say anything, even move, moan, complain. And only her eyes are getting heavier and heavier from bitter impotence. The pupils are covered with moisture, and they, like the sun in the rain, are crushed in a fluid, changeable light, rolled away behind the mountains, behind the eye of the earth, behind the living blue, into colorlessness, into obscurity, into obscurity ...
And until those two approached, until they darkened the radiance of the evening, ruined the happiness of the meeting, grandfather, looking over the red lead painted raft at the dark passes and something there, behind them, noting, perhaps, only to him, an old soldier, the visible sky or some other firmament, complains to her granddaughter:
- Here, girl, here, our dear, scold your grandmother, scold her well. Inventing here ... was about to leave us ...
Tatyana Finogenovna died of an old heart disease in the dead of winter, and I thought that Ivan Tikhonovich would never again go out of the gate to the bench in the evening, and even dig up the bench itself, chop it up for firewood.
But as soon as it warmed up, he appeared outside the gates, still in the same cap, in socks knitted by himself, but he no longer held his hands on his chest with an idle challenge, they seemed to hang out as unnecessary. The noble curls of Ivan Tikhonovich were tied up, matted into a gray damp feather, the head and legs, which were, as it were, attached to a short-haired figure, from a distance resembling a duchess pear, lengthened, the abdomen and buttocks fell off, a short neck was exposed in flaccid skin, in bloodless veins - in shelter because, without light, it all grew.
– What will you do? Ivan Tikhonovich sighed when I arrived from the city, sat down beside him and, finding my hand, pressed it to the block of the bench. - Someone must leave this world first ... It would be better for me ... Yes, you can’t order life ...
Once, in the mood, Ivan Tikhonovich told me the most intimate: how he married his unforgettable Tatyana Finogenovna. And at first I wanted to call the simple story he told "How Vanka married Tanka." Yes, Ivan Tikhonovich “stepped up” for the “topic”, ruined my plan and a peppy, almost cheerful headline. The narrator Ivan Tikhonovich, like many of my countrymen, is a traveling narrator, and I will not interfere with his narration with my intervention. Let a person forget, remember the joyful, unique that was only in his life and will not be in any other, although sometimes it seems to us that the life of a person, especially a simple one, is the same everywhere and everywhere. And if this is so, let's pause anyway - we already so rarely listen to each other. Without delving into the life of our neighbor, will we not forget how to feel someone else's joy, someone else's grief, pain, and, you see, when it hurts us, no one will help us, will not regret, will not hear us. And will we not lose forever what is called the ancient good word - compassion?
“I am not from here. From the village of Izagash. Recently, our village was flooded by the reservoir. It stood in the Anisei freedom: bays, capes, strings, islands along the river - Cossack, Sour, on the islands there are pastures, mowing, sea berries, in spring and early summer they will bloom, it used to be, shores, especially islands, and purely Christmas pies, rich, ruddy , all in lit candles - they float on the water, they litter with crumbs and sparks in the bir. From Anisey to the sky, mountains go one another higher, one more beautiful than the other. The rivers cut the passes with a sharp eye, the mountains are cut into chunks: Kirzhach, Small Maltat, Big Maltat, Snezhny Klyuch, Nezhensky Bay, Derbino, Tubil, Pogromnaya, further Sisim, Kill - both rivers are stormy, fanned with all kinds of fiction-witchcraft, good noble fish, furry and rich in horned beasts. Large villages stood along the banks: Osharovo, Derbino, Daurskoye, Ust-Pogromnoye, Novoselovo.
I was orphaned early and, like many rural orphans, began my career as a shepherd. Well, I had seen enough of our local beauties, I didn’t know where to go from them, my eyes wouldn’t look at them! I was orphaned very simply and almost at once. Shortly after the hungry thirty-three. Father had just passed thirty, mother had not even reached thirty. In the winter, my father got tired of logging. To death. In the spring, the mother that forest that the father prepared, rafted with the village brigade, planted a hook in a seasoned log - it was pulled into the trap and pulled off. While they were pulling out of the water, the worker was crushed with logs and, moreover, she caught a cold. Toiled for a short time.
And I was left alone in the tenth year, and the village Soviet benefactors thought of taking me to the Novoselovsky orphanage, and my aunt, godmother, I called her Lyolka, as the stream flooded in: “I won’t let the boy go to the shelter! What are you up to, villains?!”
She screamed, showing patriotism, but she herself was four, and her husband, Kostintin, was ill, they knocked him down with a Lithuanian, and his leg became twisted, like a poker. The bone in my leg hurt and rotted. He, as befits a Russian peasant, drowned out pain and grief with wine and drank to such an extent that from the collective-farm shornitskaya, where he was engaged in fastening, he led our collective farm called “Firstborn” with an awl-draught, did not climb out, spent the day there and spent the night, his children I didn’t remember my relatives, who’s name and what kind of appearance they had, because I saw them only exclusively on holidays, and they spoke insultingly about us and about Lyolka: “The whole village is the father of the soldiers’ children!” Daddy Kostintin laughed and winked at people, it seemed like he had nothing to do with it, truly a resourceful soldier is to blame for everything - he was returning from a campaign, he was skidded to Izagash, the lamp was burning at the Sysolyatins, so he turned the serviceman on the light ...
We began to live and live: five children, grandma and grandpa, Kostintinov's parents, Lyolka's sister-overage named Daria, bruised by her mind and beauty, labeled with an eyesore. They lived badly, poorly, strained and unfriendly, they danced wildly, as they say in the villages. Nothing was enough for us: no bread, no potatoes, no corners, no oven, no blankets, no clothes, no shoes, only bedbugs, cockroaches and lice in abundance. Lyolka tried her best, pulled the cart so that her bones rattled, her veins creaked - but where is the woman alone? Orava! But her disposition is cheerful, her character is accommodating, diligence and patience through all difficulties, through malnutrition and lack of sleep, helped us to cross, even with shortness of breath.
Yes, these old Sysolyatinsky bastards, Kostintin's parents, heavily weighed down the cart, ate the children, me and my sister Lyolkina - poor Daria, frankly, lived with the world, reproached with a piece and a corner. And so I began to notice behind myself that I was being cowardly and mean: a little something - I smiled at everyone, just in case, for a passbook, as is now customary, to curry favor, where they ask and don’t ask, what they secretly eat - it’s a shepherd girl, in he is a field, and grub breaks off in the yards. Shame to remember, denunciations against brothers and sisters, well, of course, to beat me, so I’ll start rolling a barrel on the wretched Daria, slandering and slandering her - I was mean, however, I would have completely, but Lelka realized herself and from the village shepherd to the collective farm shepherds screwed me over. He keeps me away from home and from the old Sysolyatins, so that I don’t turn out to be a prison sidekick or a full-fledged six. The cauldron at the zaimka is an artel, you can’t snatch much, the people are busy with business, angry, a little something - an ear in a handful and raises in the sun to dry.
End of introductory segment.
Written in the mid-eighties, Viktor Astafiev's story "Life to Live" raises important issues. The author reflects on the relationship between man and nature, their unity, mercy, war as the greatest evil for the earth and man. Astafiev's works amaze the reader with their depth and scale. With incredible love, he draws capacious and voluminous pictures of the nature of his native Siberia, depicts characters that fascinate with their originality, originality and strength.
The very title of the work encourages the reader to think about his soul, about life, about what he will leave behind on earth. This call to man is repeated twice in the text. At the beginning of the work, he sounds on behalf of nature. “People! People!” the birch tree reminds with a yellow sparkle. “Autumn is coming soon ... It’s time to look back, think ...”
Then the author, reflecting, warns against callousness, hardening of the soul: "Without delving into the life of our neighbor, will we not forget how to feel someone else's joy, someone else's grief, pain ... And will we not permanently lose what is called the ancient kind word - compassion ?"
Compositionally, the narrative is a "story within a story". The plot is based on the life story of Ivan Tikhonovich Zaplatin. In the exposition of the story, the author introduces us to the hero, with whom he has much in common: place of birth, age, events of the war years. Through the portrait of Ivan, Astafiev conveys his deep connection with the earth: the curls are translucent with "threads of gray hair, that August through that at the end of the month the yellow will exhale from the depths of the forest." In the portrait of the hero's wife Tatyana, one also feels unity with nature: "the pupils ... like the sun in the rain, are crushed in a fluid, changeable light."
The speech of the heroes, full of proverbs, sayings ("One curl costs a ruble, and another - a thousand", "In crowded, but not offended"), dialect words ("tear your hands", "do not bazlay"), vernacular ("stupid" , "nonsense", "to indulge"), immerses us in the world of a simple person. The expressions used by Ivan: “to live, to live”, “is it easy for a fairy tale to tell”, “because of the sailor” - make his confession folk and melodic.
From the story of Ivan Tikhonovich, we learn how difficult the fate of himself and his family was: the hungry thirties, the war, the premature death of loved ones. Life led the hero through many trials, but his heart did not become indifferent to someone else's grief: "here the zealous will lift, it will shake him like an autumn weathered leaf ...". Ivan Lelka taught to love and feel sorry for people, who took him, an orphan boy, into her poor family. She gave all of herself to other people: she looked after the parents of her husband, she supported her sick sister, not to mention five children and her disabled son Borka. Lelka passed away early, but the children adopted her kindness and ability to sacrifice themselves.
Ivan, returning from the front, could not betray his relatives and did not leave his father, Borka and his seriously wounded brother. Just as the toiler Lelka is “remembered to this day” by her fellow villagers for her sincerity, so people are drawn to Ivan Tikhonovich and his wife: “Someone always clung to them, warmed themselves near them.” They know how to understand and empathize with others.
Emphasizing the purity of the soul and the mercy of the main characters, the author uses the technique of antithesis. Lelka "showed patriotism" by not sending Ivan to an orphanage, and the grandmother twice tried to kill her sick grandson Borka, openly trying to get rid of an extra mouth in the family. The image of Ivan's daughter-in-law is also terrible, a rude, vulgar, depraved woman, whom the author does not even endow with a name. She is not kind to people. She needs her own daughter, who has the ability to ballroom dancing, for prestige: Klavochkina's legs are "more expensive and necessary than the daughter herself."
By combining vernacular and high vocabulary, a vivid characterization of the characters is achieved. In the description of the urban family, the author's mockery is felt: a "modern one-child" family; "dressed up with work, planted with power, earthly goods and pleasures" mommy; "tasting only sugar" dog "with a thieves' muzzle."
The popular view of the war is expressed through the memoirs of Ivan Tikhonovich. Nature itself, as it were, seeks to force a person to change his mind and not to commit bloodshed: the sun has been replaced by a snowstorm, "the sun is like crazy," white snow is disfigured by human corpses. And involuntarily the narrator exclaims: "Doomsday! It is clear that people really angered God." The phrase "human rubbish" alone horrifies the reader. The picture of the battlefield the next day is terrible: "Like firewood, people lie, only they are not stacked in woodpile, on top of each other." From this view, Ivan Tikhonovich "almost lost his mind." And to this day the events stand before his eyes. That is why he is especially keenly worried about the fate of his granddaughter: "Really again? Really the children will be beaten and destitute, and my Klavochka too? .."
A hero will never accept war. Everything in him, "what is put into the soul ... rises, protests and will not get tired of protesting until the end of his days against unnatural, against premature death." The death of Lelka and the behavior of the adaptive deserter who lived to see the amnesty also make him think about the issue of life and death. Ivan kept trying to understand why death "certainly chooses those who are brighter, more conscientious."
In the story, the author speaks with pain about an environmental problem. After all, not only war, but also peaceful human activity destroys and disfigures nature. The construction of the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station led to the flooding of about six hundred kilometers of land along the Yenisei, including Izagash. People left, forever leaving their beloved nature, the graves of their relatives, their homeland. How fertile were the places along the Yenisei, and now "the whole taiga and the earth are in wounds"! And the Yenisei itself was "drowned, made into a wide puddle, and thrown over with rubbish, like dead carrion." The earth was given to man not for him to destroy all living things. Astafiev emphasizes that nature and man are a single whole, the violation of this unity will certainly have an effect. Even Petrusha, a kind, honest man, loses his self-respect, becomes a "scumbag" in the city.
Ivan, who grew up among forests, fields and mountains, on the banks of a majestic river, does not understand how one can live in gray, smoky cities: settle in their souls?.. What business will they do? Whom to love? Whom to pity? What to remember?"
In his work "To Live Life" Viktor Petrovich Astafiev calls on readers to be responsible for everything that happens on earth, to fight against lack of spirituality for the establishment of moral principles: "The earth can be destroyed, civilization and life can be destroyed, having created the most grandiose suicide in the universe, but our spirit, which will soar in the immensity of time, space, seek shelter on some living planet, in someone's living soul.
The author affirms the impossibility of human life without roots, without the memory of ancestors, the memory of the earth that raised him. And it's scary when the connection, nourished for centuries, is forcibly broken, when nature and the people who are vitally connected with it are mutilated. Ivan, who does not remember kinship, cannot be fully called a man, there is no one and nothing to teach him to appreciate, love and pity neither other people, nor his native land, nor life itself.
Victor Astafiev
life to live
Mikhail Alexandrovich Ulyanov
Vanka and Tanka, more precisely, Ivan Tikhonovich and Tatyana Finogenovna Zaplatin, liked to sit on a bench near their house in the evenings. And they did it well, sitting on a bench, it was comfortable. And it's not that there, clinging to each other, or holding hands and kissing - all for show on the new culture. No, they usually sit, usually dressed in ordinary clothes, in what the evening found in the yard, and they sit in that: Ivan Tikhonovich in a padded jacket, in an old river cap, already without a gold-colored badge. The cap was baked in the sun, shrunken from the rains, winds and old age, and he was not put on - as if in a hurry he was thrown over his still curly head, which was excessively large because of the curls, like a cabbage that was not tied into a fork. A cap with a spot graying in place of a chipped cockade seems ridiculous, sort of like a circus performer, and with its turbidity sets off or exposes the pitch of large curls, translucent with threads of gray hair, that August through that at the end of the month yellow will exhale from the depths of the forest, from the fall or onto a hanging branch birch, curl it with a pigtail and sadly subside. "People! People! - reminiscent of a birch with a yellow sparkle. - Autumn is coming soon. Why are you running somewhere? It’s time to look back, think…”
Tatyana Finogenovna did not want to lag behind Ivan Tikhonovich in curls, until the last time she curled herself in the district hairdresser's when she was ill - with her own hands at home, with red-hot forged tongs of pre-revolutionary production, she cheered up something on her head, although, to tell the truth, there was nothing to cheer up there, the hair was almost completely worn out under the root, and again he did not have the strength and time to ascend into the clearing. But even with sparse curls, in a cotton dress that had long gone out of fashion, in a tight uniform with pockets, called in the villages a jacket, a blue scarf thrown over her shoulders, in white, like children's socks, Tatyana Finogenovna still looked good, the main thing - friendly. Tatyana Finogenovna never wore a jacket, it was closer to autumn, in the cold season, so everything was in a dress, in socks, and if there was no handkerchief on the shoulders, something would certainly bristle around the neck, more often - a gauze patch, gray smoky, caught in a knot on the side of the neck.
Ivan Tikhonovich is closer to the heart, of course, a blue handkerchief - the beauty and memory of the unforgettable years of the war, a handkerchief that has almost faded, with a burgundy border on a faded field. When Ivan Tikhonovich sees him, his heart will move from its place, or something will move in his heart to the place where warm tears are, they will boil for no reason, sometimes because of a perfect trifle, because of a picture in a newspaper, or they’ll show on TV that it’s military, or they’ll sing about separation on the radio - and now it will wash the zealous, shake it like an autumn weathered leaf ...
Y-yes, time! He was not the only one who became so tearful. Not only did life crush him, rolled, ironed, soaked and dried. Why is his neighbor Semka the tear-off - he has been in prison seven times for robbery and fights - so little that, like a woman, falls into hysterics, clutching his head with a sob. "Why did you ruin your life?" - screams.
Ivan Tikhonovich's dashing side of life has passed. And everything in his biography is in perfect order. However, there is also something to remember, there is something to sing about and cry about. And he deserved a quiet old age. There is a house, there is a garden, a front garden with viburnum and bird cherry, neat woodpile under the roof - firewood from the carpentry shop, planed. “I still want to paint them,” Ivan Tikhonovich laughs. Two little pigs are croaking in the yard, the kitchenette with their brew is smoking, well, flocks are there, on the ground, a greenhouse, earth, grass, floors in the house, buckets of slop, washing, whitewashing, painting, chores, worries and everything else, like everyone else villagers. But sometimes such longing, such unbearable languor and forebodings are bad for Ivan Tikhonovich, at least get drunk. And I would get drunk, but you can’t. All because of Tanya. Tatyana Finogenovna. She pushes around the house, helps, bustles, and he never saw her with unwashed hands, in that premature men's jacket, to which Russian women in the villages are accustomed, and they disfigure their appearance to this day, when the rags are full, they strive not only women, but also young girls, walk down the street, to the shop, to the bazaar in rag slippers and jackets. Once, laughter to say, Ivan Tikhonovich saw in a rest house: two tipsy maidens with painted lips came to the dance and let's bang to the cry of Rymbaeva - a column of dust from under worn-out slippers.