Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol has established himself as a great artist who expressed beauty in words. Nature appears before the reader like a living organism, successfully fitting into the plot narrative. The work "Taras Bulba" tells about the brave warriors, the difficult choice and the personal drama of three Cossacks. The steppe in the story "Taras Bulba" becomes not just a background against which the main events unfold, but represents something more.
To begin with, it should be said that Gogol's creative consciousness was formed under the influence of the romantic tradition. Having adopted from sentimentalists ways of reflecting spiritual experiences with the help of a landscape, romantic writers significantly expanded the use of this technique. The element in romanticism was understood as something powerful and great, something that must necessarily evoke a response in the human soul. There were landscape-moods that reflected the fluidity of life and the changeability of emotions, a landscape-ruins that awakens fantasy, a landscape-element, which shows the crushing nature of forces, and a landscape-mirage that takes you to the sphere of the surreal, mysteriously sublime. In the text of the work "Taras Bulba" the steppe is rather represented by the first subspecies: landscape-mood, but with some reservations (we must not forget that in the work of N. Gogol, as well as in the works of other writers of that time, the change of the romantic paradigm to the realistic one is reflected).
The description of the steppe appears for the first time already in the second chapter, when two young men and an old Cossack set off for the Sich. Each of the characters is overcome by their own thoughts. Taras thought about his past, about his bygone youth, about whom he would meet in the Sich, whether his comrades were still alive. In the same chapter, the reader learns about the two sons of Taras. Ostap was kind and straightforward, he was considered the best friend. Farewell to his mother and her tears touched the young man to the core, somewhat embarrassing him. Andriy, on the other hand, “had feelings somewhat more alive.” On the way to the Sich, he thought about the beautiful Polish woman whom he once met in Kyiv. Seeing the beauty of the steppe, the heroes forget about all those thoughts that haunted them.
For clarity, it is worth placing here an excerpt from Taras Bulba about the steppe:
“The further the steppe became more beautiful… Nothing in nature could be better. The entire surface of the earth seemed to be a green-gold ocean, over which millions of different colors splashed. Through the thin, tall stalks of grass, blue, blue and purple hairs showed through; white porridge was full of umbrella-shaped caps on the surface; God knows where the ear of wheat poured into the thicket from where... Damn you, steppes, how good you are!
How subtly and sensually every detail of the landscape is written. One gets the impression that it is not the Sich that should accept the new Cossacks, but the steppe itself: "the steppe has long accepted them into its green embrace ...". This phrase is not used for the sake of the beauty of the syllable. The image of the steppe turns out to be a symbolic embodiment of freedom, strength, power, faith in purity. The homeland in the story is associated, first of all, with the beauties of nature and the steppe. Free steppes are identical to the freedom-loving character of the Cossacks. Everything in the steppe breathes freedom and spaciousness. The author says that travelers stopped only for lunch and sleep, and the rest of the time they rode against the wind. It is no coincidence that in the text of the story there is no description of any buildings on the territory of Ukraine, there are only kurens, which are easy to remove and put up again. In other words, there are no fetters that could limit or kill nature. In this vein, it is necessary to say about the military campaigns of the Cossacks: it is known that they burned cities to the ground, compared villages to the ground. This fact can also be understood as a kind of struggle against the limitation of precisely nature, the proclamation of freedom and the absence of conventions. At the same time, the Cossacks do not appear to the reader as some kind of masters of the elements, on the contrary, they organically fit into nature, live by it and in it.
In the story "Taras Bulba" descriptions of the steppe are rich in bright colors. The text turns out to be extremely visualized, that is, the described picture immediately appears in the reader's imagination. Pictures change each other, accents move to an amazing soundtrack:
“Across the sky, from the dark blue, as if with a gigantic brush, broad stripes of pink gold were smeared; from time to time light and transparent clouds shone white in tufts, and the freshest, seductive, like the waves of the sea, the breeze barely swayed over the tops of the grass and barely touched the cheeks. All the music that sounded during the day subsided and was replaced by another. The motley gophers crawled out of their holes, stood on their hind legs and announced the steppe with a whistle. The crackling of the grasshoppers became more audible. Sometimes the cry of a swan was heard from some secluded lake and, like silver, echoed in the air.
Only a person who truly loved her, who understood her wealth could paint the steppe so lyrically.
Landscape sketches also appear in the episode of the siege of Dubno: Andriy walks around the field, looking at the endless expanses, but feels stuffiness in his heart. The July heat is combined with the inner state of the hero, a feeling of impotence and fatigue. A similar technique is used in the first chapter of the work. The travelers had just left their home, and other Cossacks took away the mother of Ostap and Andriy, who did not want to come to terms with their departure. This scene confused Taras Bulba himself, but, nevertheless, the internal state of the characters is again described by means of the natural world: "the day was gray ... the birds chirped somehow in discord." It is the last word that sets the general mood: Ostap and Andriy still do not feel that unity with their father and the steppe, as if the heroes have not yet gained integrity. Here the subjective perception of nature by the character is combined with the author's objective word about the inner state of the character.
Thanks to detailed descriptions and melodic artistic language, Gogol creates a living image of the steppe, permeated with freedom, beauty and strength.
Artwork test
Speaking about the life of ordinary Cossacks, about the existence of the Zaporizhzhya Sich, N.V. Gogol creates a unique work about the Ukrainian Cossacks of the past years "Taras Bulba". When describing the events of the past, N.V. Gogol is not so much concerned with historical authenticity as with the attitude to life, love, duty, the homeland of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks. Therefore, thanks to its artistic features, the story "Taras Bulba" became an original, original work of the writer.
N.V. Gogol for his work uses the genre of the story. The plot is based on key events in the life of the main characters: the arrival of Ostap and Andriy home from the Kyiv bursa, their meeting with their father and mother, a quick departure to the Zaporizhzhya Sich, life there, military battles, death of heroes. The literary character is characterized by the writer through his portrait, deed, relationships with other characters. So, when describing Taras Bulba, the attitude of the old Cossack to the partnership, to the Cossack life, behavior during the battle is important.
Landscape plays an important role in Gogol's story. Nature here is not just a background against which events unfold, but it is a way of revealing the character's character. For example, when describing the trip of Taras Bulba with his sons to the Zaporizhzhya Sich, the steppe is depicted along which the heroes are traveling, and “everything that was vague and sleepy in the soul of the Cossacks instantly flew off; their hearts fluttered like birds."
Depicting the events in the story, revealing the characters of the characters, describing nature, N.V. Gogol uses various artistic and expressive means: epithets, metaphors, comparisons, which make the objects characterized by bright, unique, original. For example, depicting the Zaporozhye steppe, the writer uses such epithets: “virgin desert”, “green-gold ocean”, “silver-pink light”. When describing the siege of the city of Dubno, the story contains such metaphors and comparisons: “buckshot burst from the shaft”, “copper caps shone like the sun, feathered with white feathers like a swan”. Showing the death of Ostap, N.V. Gogol uses such comparisons and epithets: "he endured torment and torture like a giant", "terrible grunt", "shabby rags".
The listed artistic features of the story "Taras Bulba" help the reader to see the beauty of the artistic word, the brightness, the originality of literary images.
(Option 2)
The atmosphere of constant danger, heroism and betrayal keeps the reader in suspense.
The story of N.V. Gogol "Taras Bulba" is close to the heroic epic and historical novel.
The peaceful life of the Zaporizhzhya Sich is described in detail, a picture of the Ukrainian steppe appears before us. The city besieged by the Cossacks is described in detail. He is shown through the eyes of Andriy, who is able to admire the beauty of nature, women, and music. The beauty of the Cossack, which delights Taras Bulba at the entrance to the Sich, is the beauty of hidden strength, power. The hyperbole used by the author helps to recreate the epic, heroic image. External beauty and the beauty of an act are often contrasted in the text. From the point of view of Taras Bulba, the beauty of the Polish woman ruined Andriy.
Peaceful life and military life are necessary for the author to show the formation of his characters, their maturation. We see several opposing sides: Cossacks and Poles, Cossacks and Tatars. Taras Bulba deliberately immerses his sons in the element of war in order to test them, temper them, and see what these knights are capable of. Andriy, having fallen in love, moves from one camp to another and dies, because in the choice between love for the motherland and love for a woman, a woman turned out to be in the first place.
All three main characters die: Andrii is killed by his father, who has not forgiven the betrayal, Ostap and Taras are captured and die, one under torture, the other at the stake. The cruelty of the customs of that time, the description of a hungry city, numerous battles, torture create an image of the time that the author describes. There are no well-known historical figures in the text, the main characters are ordinary people, unknown to anyone, fictional heroes, which there could be many at that time, but it is this “ordinary” that makes them unusual for the reader, and the era described is heroic. If the behavior of people like Ostap and Taras in battle and in captivity is normal, then what should be unusual, heroic behavior.
The author praises and condemns his heroes, is proud of them and is horrified by what they do, what they do to them. He is objective. The atmosphere of constant danger, almost never-ending battle or expectation of battle, heroism and betrayal, love and cunning keeps the reader in constant suspense, and the author's digressions make us compare times.
At the beginning of his creative activity, the famous writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol established himself as a writer who supported the course of romanticism. However, soon the place of romanticism in Gogol's works was taken by critical realism.
Features of Gogol's creativity
The work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was largely influenced by Alexander Pushkin. However, one should not assume that Gogol was an imitator of Alexander Sergeevich.
He brought to his works that elusive literary charisma that made them truly unique. The originality of Gogol's language lies in the fact that it was this writer who, for the first time in the history of Russian literature, was able to depict all aspects of the life of bureaucratic landowner Russia and the "little man" who lives in it.
Thanks to his amazing literary talent, Gogol managed to reveal the whole essence of the Russian reality of those times. The social orientation can be traced in all his works.
Heroes of Gogol's works
Reading Gogol's works, we notice that most of his heroes are typical - the author specifically focuses on one character trait, often exaggerating it in order to emphasize the hero's virtues or shortcomings as much as possible.
This literary device was used for the first time in Russian literature.
The originality of Gogol's language
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was not afraid to use common expressions in his works that were characteristic of the inhabitants of the hinterlands of the Russian Empire.
Reading The Night Before Christmas, we cannot help but notice a lot of old Ukrainian words, most of which have already fallen out of use in modern speech. Thanks to this, the author seems to take us to a real Ukrainian village, where we can get acquainted with the life, customs and mores of ordinary people.
The following literary devices are also inherent in Gogol's works:
1. One sentence consists of many simple sentences, some of which are not always connected by meaning. This technique is especially vividly traced in the works "Taras Bulba" and "May Night or the Drowned Woman".
2. The presence in the works of lyrical dialogues and monologues. Thanks to lyrical monologues, the author reveals to the reader the inner essence of his literary heroes.
3. A large number of words and sentences of increased emotionality.
8th grade
Style as a means of creating an artistic image of a character
Analysis of an excerpt from the story by N.V. Gogol
"Old World Landowners"
Starting in the 5th grade, we talk about the style of the writer. We study with students the stories of A.P. Chekhov, we analyze the language, highlight the main features of Chekhov's style, then the students write stories about modern life in his style.
We read fairy tales by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin - we create fairy tales in the style of Saltykov-Shchedrin. We study epics - we compose our own epics. Today we have to analyze the style of N.V. Gogol.
What means of creating an artistic image of a character does the writer use?
(Description of the appearance and actions of the hero, interior, creation of landscapes, etc.)
- One of the means will be discussed in today's lesson. We will continue to analyze the style of N.V. Gogol. In the 6th grade, you already wrote a Russian folk tale about the chicken Ryaba in the style of Gogol. Let's remember one of the stories.
Russian folk tale, retold by N.V. Gogol
and 6th grade student Andrey Fesenko
In some deaf, God-forgotten village lived a grandfather and a woman. The grandmother was of ancient years, she wore a cap on her head and three warts on her nose, and a shabby, faded dress with yellow flowers and continuous patches. She herself looked like an old cucumber tub, and therefore it was as difficult to understand where her waist was as it was to see her nose without a mirror. Her legs were short, like two pillows. Most of all, she loved visiting her gossips, where she gossiped and ate with great appetite, while her expression never changed, which is inherent only in women.
Grandfather was an old man who had seen the world and life, with a swarthy face and long mustaches. In his youth, grandfather did not let down any of his fellow villagers, for which he was afraid and shunned. It used to happen that a grandfather with his fists would appear between the fighters, everyone, like pears, would fall to the ground. Grandfather did not like to talk a lot. When he got tired of listening to the chatter of his old woman, he sat on a bench near the hut and smoked a pipe.
Their hut was dilapidated, and of all the living creatures, a hen Ryaba and one mouse. Chicken Ryaba was grandfather's favorite. Being of a pockmarked color, she had a gift unusual for poultry - to capture the mood of the owners and gracefully, like a lady at a secular ball, touch with her thin chiseled paws.
The mouse was not loved and compared with the devil. Her small, button-like eyes seemed to be the epitome of universal cunning, her thieving, always mincing gait created the feeling that the mouse had stolen something and was in a hurry to hide it. Her long tail, constantly dragging behind her, finally completed this dull, pitiful image of everything truly gray in every sense of the creature.
And then one day in this godforsaken corner something happened. In the basket of Ryaba's chicken, the grandmother found golden egg! Grandfather beat, beat - did not break, grandmother beat, beat - did not break. A mouse ran up, waved its tail - the testicle fell and broke. The grandfather is crying, the woman is crying, the chicken is cackling, the gates are creaking, chips are flying from the yard. The chicken came up to the grandfather and grandmother, sighed and said: “Don't cry, woman, don't cry, grandfather. I will lay another egg, not golden, but simple.
The hen laid an egg towards nightfall. And a clear winter night came. On one side, the stars looked up at the sky. The month majestically rose to the sky to shine for good people and the whole world, so that everyone would have fun. On the other hand, small clouds were growing stronger, there were no stars and the darkness was thickening. And as if there was a confrontation between the forces of darkness and light. An ordinary egg was a gift from the Almighty.
- Today we have to analyze an excerpt from the story "Old World Landowners" and look at one of the types of creating an artistic image - at the style of N.V. Gogol.
Let's remember what style is.
Writer's style- among the ancient Greeks and Romans, a style was called a stick pointed at one end, and at the other ending with a spatula, which was used to write on a tablet covered with a thin layer of wax (with a spatula it was possible to erase what was written). Further, the style began to be called the handwriting of the writer, then the features of the very manner of writing - the syllable - and, finally, the ideological and artistic features of the writer's work as a whole.
F. Raskolnikov in his book Articles on Russian Culture writes: “If we have a really talented writer, then his style is individual, and this applies to all components: vocabulary, syntax, rhythm, intonation” (p. 180).
– What is the difference between the language of N.V. Gogol from the language of A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov?
(In the prose of A.S. Pushkin and M.Yu. Lermontov, on the one hand, there are magnificent, beautiful phrases, on the other hand, very short, dynamic sentences. The style of N.V. Gogol is completely different: wordy sentences, heavy on the ear. )
But this is precisely what makes Gogol's language diverse and alive. Let's observe the style of the writer on a specific example.
- What do we learn from the story "Old World Landowners"?
(Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna, kind, hospitable, sweet old men, the Tovstoguba spouses, Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna, live in Little Russia, all their interests come down to food, to their own household and caring for each other.)
- What is interesting about the exposition of the story?
(We get acquainted with the everyday life of the heroes, and see the world of the old people through the eyes of the narrator.)
- What important features of Gogol's style did you see in the story "Old World Landowners"?
(It contains a lot of everyday paintings, descriptions of the prosaic aspects of the life of the Tovstogub spouses.)
Let's compare two passages - the beginning of A.S. Pushkin "The Young Lady-Peasant Woman" and the 1st paragraph of the story "Old World Landowners".
1. In one of our remote provinces was the estate of Ivan Petrovich Berestov. In his youth, he served in the guards, retired at the beginning of 1797, left for his village, and since then he has not left there. He was married to a poor noblewoman who died in childbirth while he was away in the field. Household exercises soon consoled him. He built a house according to his own plan, started a cloth factory, tripled his income and began to consider himself the smartest person in the whole neighborhood, in which the neighbors who came to visit him with their families and dogs did not contradict him ...
2. Reading the 1st paragraph of N.V. Gogol.
- What catches your eye in the 1st paragraph in the construction of sentences?
(Gogol has very long, multi-part sentences, so the phrases seem complex and cumbersome. Pushkin's prose is dynamic - Gogol, on the contrary, has few verbs, but a large number of homogeneous members and different definitions.)
– What definitions do we find in N.V. Gogol?
(Simple and common. Simple definitions are expressed by adjectives and participles (“fragrant bird cherry”, “yakhont sea of plums”, “inexplicable charm”). But the writer has more common definitions (“an unharnessed ox lying lazily near it”; “a long-necked goose drinking water with young and tender, like fluff, goslings.”)
What types of definitions do you know?
(Agreed and inconsistent.)
– Are there sentences in the writer where there are both agreed and inconsistent definitions?
("... a mirror in thin gold frames, carved with leaves, which the flies dotted with black dots." There are agreed definitions in this passage ("black dots") and uncoordinated ("framed mirror") and participial phrases.)
The guys in the 8th grade already know the types of complex sentences well (compound, complex and non-union), but it is still difficult for them to determine the types of subordinate clauses. However, such work is necessary, and N.V. Gogol is the best suited for this.
– What is the structure proposal?
(Complex subordinate.)
- What question can be put to the subordinate clause?
(What?)
Which part of the sentence answers this question?
(Definition.)
- What will be the name of the subordinate clause that answers the question of definition?
(Attributive clause.)
Such propaedeutic work to determine the types of subordinate clauses is necessary both in the 7th and 8th grades. It is best to bring children up to date when analyzing the style of a Russian writer.
- So, we saw that in the story of N.V. Gogol a large number of enumerations and definitions, but very few verbs. What kind of speech do N.V. Gogol all these features of the language?
(They make a speech N.V. Gogol heavy and slow down the rhythm of speech. Such a detailed description of the prose of life seems boring, when reading, you want to skip this story.)
What do you think the writer's goal was to slow down the pace of the story?
(This is the best way to create the image of the Tovstogubs. The slow rhythm of the narration shows the originality of the life of the old-world landowners: everything happens slowly, viscous, boring, monotonous, dreary, old-fashioned.)
(Gogol uses archaic expressions: “in its natural form”, “in which antiquity usually differs”; “a mirror in thin gold frames, carved with leaves, which flies dotted with black dots.” There are also vernacular in the writer’s speech: "The door ... made a sound, so ... it was very clearly heard: "fathers, I will get cold!". More than once we find even discordant words: "skryp", "corroded hinges", "triangular tables".)
What conclusion can be drawn from all that has been said?
(A large number of enumerations and definitions, a minimum of verbs, the use of vernacular and archaic speech turns are the means of creating an artistic image of old-world landowners.)
– How does Gogol feel about his heroes and their way of life?
This question causes controversy among students. Some believe that the writer laughs at the meaningless life of old people, whose life resembles an animal existence. Other schoolchildren express the idea that Gogol likes such a calm patriarchal antiquity. The goal of the teacher is to warn the students against such an unequivocal answer. And this is where slow reading, or, as I usually say, "reading between the lines" will help.
We take for analysis an excerpt from the exposition of the story (from the words "But the most remarkable thing in the house were the singing doors ..." to the words "... the house where my old people lived").
How would you define the genre of this passage?
(Ode in prose.)
- What ode did we study? What is an ode? Why can this passage be called an ode?
(M.V. Lomonosov in his ode sang the daughter of Peter the Great Elizabeth for her virtues - N.V. Gogol also sings a hymn ... to doors, chairs, tables, a mirror, a carpet.)
– How does Gogol sing of furniture? What literary means does the author use?
(The writer sings the anthem of the furniture with comic solemnity, using personifications: the door sings in a special voice - either in a thin treble, or wheezing in bass, or uttering a moan: “Fathers, I will be chilly!” These phrases cannot be read without a smile. We also meet humorous comparisons: "a carpet in front of a sofa with birds that look like flowers and flowers that look like birds." How not to laugh at the mirror "in gold frames carved with leaves, which the flies dotted with black dots».)
By the way, in the "Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" N.V. Gogol will sing... a puddle: “If you approach the square, then, surely, stop for a while to admire the view: there is a puddle on it, an amazing puddle! The only one you've ever seen! It occupies almost the entire area. Beautiful puddle!” .
– Why N.V. Gogol shows the furniture in such detail, because it clutters up the description, makes it boring?
(This helps the writer to show the Tovstogubs, whose whole life is subordinated to ordinary worldly concerns and for whom every piece of furniture has a high purpose.)
– Don’t such descriptions help the writer to express his attitude to the patriarchal way of life? What is this attitude?
(Ironic, with good humor. It’s funny to read: “Duchess Lavaliere, stained with flies, looked out of narrow frames.” Gogol openly mocks the boring and monotonous life of the landowners. And how can one not mock people for whom a puddle is the greatest asset of the city, but food is a priority?
Do you have literary associations?
(A.P. Chekhov's story "Chameleon" shows a city where the same boredom, melancholy and monotony reign, that even an absurd incident is of great interest.)
It is this kind of provincial life that makes N.V. Gogol.
– Are irony and humor the only components of Gogol's style in this passage?
(Not only humor, there is also lyricism. On the one hand, Gogol openly laughs at the life of spouses who deify household items, and on the other hand, he shows the reader the charm of old-world life. For example, describing the village, the author directly says that fragrant bird cherry, crimson cherries and a sea of plums, spreading maples, fresh grass, a long-necked goose, a palisade, an ox - all this has an “inexplicable charm” for him, which, alas, does not appear when observing the writer’s contemporary life. Gogol bluntly declares that even his soul accepts " surprisingly pleasant and calm state "when approaching the house of the spouses. Why is there a human soul -" the horses merrily rolled up, "even the barking of" phlegmatic watchdogs "was pleasing to the narrator's ears and" the rain rustled luxuriously ".)
With what love the narrator describes this patriarchal way of life! How can one love this "sphere ... of a solitary life, where not a single desire flies over the palisade"?
(There are no high thoughts, smart thoughts here - but everything in this region is good, there is no "evil spirit", people give themselves up to good desires to feed another, listen to a guest.)
(Kindness, cordiality and sincerity of old men and women, when meeting with whom you give up “all daring dreams”, that is, you become kinder, purer in soul, more natural. It is this naturalness, “naturalness” that is absent in a modern city.)
What technique does the writer use to express his own point of view?
(An antithesis technique. Gogol contrasts the old-world landowners with a “crowd of fashionable tailcoats.” The old-world landowners even have natural furniture: “The chairs were wooden, massive ... with high carved backs, in their natural form, without any varnish and paint; they were not even upholstered matter". This is what the old-world landowners value: naturalness, "naturalness", false is not for them. This is what causes Gogol's delight and admiration. After all, he knew very well with what contempt modern nobles treated everything simple, natural, brought to their estates features of an English garden, furniture was upholstered with Indian silk. How can modern landowners hear the "singing of doors", each of which sings in its own voice?! Gogol even declares: "I know that many people really do not like this sound, but I really love it." )
- Find a sentence where Gogol openly declares his position?
("God ... what a long string of memories is brought back to me then.)
- What is this sentence in terms of intonation?
(Exclamation point.)
– What is rich in this proposal in terms of sound recording?
(alliteration: n a in e in aye - in here n itza - in poop n a n uh.)
Why does Gogol use these means?
(This allows the writer to "humanize" the interior and landscape, to elevate the description of household items to high poetry, to show the beautiful in the outwardly ugly.)
“The interior becomes a kind of “portrait” of the heroes of the story, revealing their funny and touching sides, and the stylistic manner of its description helps Gogol to express his contradictory attitude towards patriarchy,” writes F.A. Raskolnikov (p. 186).
- Now you can say what is the peculiarity of Gogol's style.
Language N.V. Gogol is an important means of creating a literary image that objectively reflects both modern reality and the author's subjective perception of it.
LITERATURE
1. Pushkin A.S. Collected Works in eight volumes. Volume seven. Novels and stories 1827–1833. M .: Publishing house Fiction, 1970.
2. Gogol N.V. Favorites. M.: Education, 1986.
3. Raskolnikov F. Articles about Russian literature. M.: Vagrius, 2002.
4. Literature. Reference materials. Brief dictionary of literary terms. Moscow: Education, 1988.
M.N. HEAD,
NCO "School of Cooperation",
Moscow city
Gogol's stories PLAN Russian classics. Comparison of "Mirgorod" and "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka". "Viy". Continuity and differences of Gogol's cycles in the story "Viy". "Viy" and Nerezhny's novel "Bursak". The image of the philosopher Homa. "Old World Landlords". The life of the main characters Difference from the stories "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka". "The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich." Deepening realistic and satirical tendencies. History of the story. Comparison of the story with the novel by V. Nerezhny "Two Ivans, or Passion for Litigation". “Taras Bulba” is a historical novel. Cossack life. Sources of the story. Editions of "Taras Bulba". Zaporizhzhya Sich and its heroes. Life of Taras Bulba. Image of Andriy. Gogol humor. Russian romanticism. The last months of Gogol's life.
Every great artist is a whole world. To enter this world, to feel its versatility and unique beauty means to bring oneself closer to the knowledge of the infinite diversity of life, to put oneself on some higher level of spiritual, aesthetic development. The work of every major writer is a precious storehouse of artistic and spiritual, one might say, “human experience”, which has a tremendous development of society. Shchedrin called fiction a "reduced universe". By studying it, a person gains wings, is able to understand history more broadly, deeper and that always restless modern world in which he lives. The great past is connected with the present by invisible threads. The “artistic heritage captures the history and soul of the people. That is why it is an inexhaustible source of his spiritual and emotional enrichment.
This is also the real value of the Russian classics. With her civic temperament, her romantic impulse, her deep and fearless analysis of the real contradictions of reality, she had an enormous influence on the development of the liberation movement in Russia. Heinrich Mann rightly said that Russian literature was a revolution "even before the revolution happened."
Gogol played a special role in this respect. “... We do not know,” wrote Chernyshevsky, “how Russia could have managed without Gogol.” In these words, perhaps, the attitude of revolutionary democracy and all progressive Russian social thought of the 19th century towards the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls was most clearly reflected.
Herzen spoke about Russian literature: “... composing songs, she destroyed; laughing, she burrowed. Gogol's laughter also had tremendous destructive power. He undermined faith in the imaginary inviolability of the police-democratic regime, to which Nicholas I tried to give an aura of invincible power; he exposed to "the eyes of the whole people" the rottenness of this regime, everything that Herzen called "the insolent frankness of autocracy."
The appearance of Gogol's work was historically natural. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, new, big tasks arose before Russian literature. The rapidly developing process of the disintegration of serfdom and absolutism evoked in the advanced strata of Russian society an increasingly persistent, passionate search for a way out of the crisis, awakened the idea of further ways of Russia's historical development. Gogol's work reflected the growing dissatisfaction of the people with the feudal system, its awakening revolutionary energy, its desire for a different, more perfect reality. Belinsky called Gogol "one of the great leaders" of his country "on the path of consciousness, development, progress."
One of his collections was called "Mirgorod" (1835). The stories that serve as a continuation of "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka" - such is the subtitle of "Mirgorod".
But this book was not just a continuation of Evenings. Both by the content and the characteristic features of her style, she opened a new stage in the creative development of the writer. In the depiction of the life and customs of the Mirgorod landlords, there is no longer room for romance and beauty that prevailed in the stories of the beekeeper Rudy Pank. Human life is entangled here in a web of petty interests. There is no lofty romantic dream, no song, no inspiration in this life. Here - the kingdom of self-interest and vulgarity.
In Mirgorod, Gogol parted ways with the image of the simple-minded storyteller Rudy Pank and spoke to readers as an artist who openly and sharply poses important questions of life, boldly hiding the social contradictions of our time. It was in this book that a typical feature of Gogol's work appeared - its exploratory, analytical character.
From cheerful and romantic boys and girls, inspirational and poetic descriptions of Ukrainian nature, Gogol moved on to depicting the prose of life. In this book, the critical attitude of the writer to the musty life of the old-world landowners and the vulgarity of the Mirgorod "existents" is sharply expressed. The reality of feudal Russia appeared in prosaic everyday life.
The continuity and, meanwhile, the differences between Gogol's cycles are very clearly felt, for example, in the story "Viy". The romantic element of folk fiction, which is characteristic of "Evenings on a Farm", collides in this story with clearly expressed features of realistic art, characteristic of the entire cycle of "Mirgorod". Suffice it to recall the scenes of Bursak life sparkling with humor, as well as brightly and juicy portraits of Bursaks - the philosopher Khoma Brutus, the rhetorician Tiberius Gorobets and the theologian Freebies. The bizarre interweaving of fantastic and real-everyday motifs acquires here, as in Evenings, a fairly clear ideological subtext. Bursak Homa Brut and the pannochka witch appear in “Viya” as exponents of two different life concepts. The democratic, folk principle is embodied in the image of Khoma, the evil, cruel principle is embodied in the image of a lady, the daughter of a rich centurion.
In a footnote to "Viy" the author points out that "this whole story is a people's giving" and that he conveyed it exactly as he heard it, almost without changing anything. However, not a single work of folklore has yet been discovered, the plot of which would exactly resemble a story. Only some motifs of "Wii" are comparable with some folk tales and legends.
At the same time, the well-known closeness of this story to the folk poetic tradition is felt in its artistic atmosphere, in its general concept. The forces that oppose the people appear in the guise of witches, sorcerers, and devils. They hate everything human and are ready to destroy a person with the same vicious determination with which the lady-witch is able to destroy Khoma.
In some episodes of "Viya" one can find echoes of the novel by V. Nerezhny "Bursak" (1824). The similarity of details is especially noticeable in the description of the bursat life. Some researchers in the past were inclined on this basis to hasty conclusions about Nerezhny's influence on Gogol. However, there are hardly any serious grounds for such conclusions. Here, obviously, the fact that both writers were familiar with the same literary sources devoted to the depiction of this life mattered; in addition, what is especially important, Gogol and Nerezhny (compatriots, both Mirgorodians) brought out from the Ukrainian provinces in many respects similar impressions. Rich in a variety of everyday and psychological observations, Nerezhny's novel ultimately had little in common with Gogol's story, seriously inferior to it in the depth and integrity of the ideological and artistic design. Gogol shows how hard life was for the philosopher Khoma Brutus in this wide world. Orphaned at an early age, he somehow ended up in a bursa. Here he drank plenty of grief. Hunger and cherry rods became everyday companions of his existence. But Homa was a wayward man. Cheerful and mischievous, he seemed to give little thought to the sad circumstances of his life. Only sometimes, it happened, would a feeling of self-respect rise in him, and then he was ready to disobey the most powerful of this world.
But then the rumor spread about the death of the daughter of the richest centurion. And she punished before her death hour that Khoma Brut read the funeral for her and prayers for three days. The rector himself summoned the seminarian and ordered him to immediately get ready for the journey. Tormented by a dark presentiment, Khoma dared to declare that he would not go. But the rector paid no attention to those words: “No devil asks you whether you want to go or not. I will only tell you that if you once again show your lynx and philosophize, then I will order you on the back and, for other reasons, so unfasten you with a young birch forest that you no longer need to go to the bathhouse.
This is how they all behave, those in power. And the weak and defenseless depend on them and are forced to obey them. But Khoma Brut does not want to obey and is looking for a way to evade the assignment that causes anxiety and fear in his soul. He understands that disobedience can end very sadly for him. Gentlemen do not like jokes: “It is already a well-known fact that the gentlemen sometimes want something that even the most literate person cannot understand; and the proverb says; “Jump, enemy, like a sir!” Khoma says this, in whose mind the pan is both the rector and the centurion, and anyone who can order, push others around, who prevents a person from living as he wants. Can't stand Khoma pans in any guise.
We talked about the proximity of "Vii" to folk poetic motives. But in the artistic conception of this story, elements also appear that significantly distinguished it from both the folklore tradition and Evenings. These new elements indicated that important changes had taken place in Gogol's public consciousness.
The poetic world of "Evenings" was distinguished by its romantic integrity, internal unity. The heroes of the overwhelming majority of the stories of this cycle reflected some kind of romanticized, ideal reality, which was basically opposed to the rough prose of modern life. In “Vii”, however, according to the researcher’s fair remark, there is no longer a unity of the world, “but there is, on the contrary, a world split in two, dissected by an irreconcilable contradiction.” Khoma Brut lives, as it were, in two dimensions. A romantic legend intrudes into the hopeless prose of his hard-to-bursat life. And Khoma lives alternately - either in one world, real, or in another fantasy. This duality of being of the hero of the story reflected the duality of human consciousness, which is formed in the conditions of disorder and tragedy of modern reality.
Notable for the new stage of Gogol's work was the image of the philosopher Khoma. Simple and generous, he is opposed to the rich and arrogant centurion, just like Khoma Brut - a completely earthly person, with his characteristic quirks, daring, recklessness and contempt for “holy life” - opposes the mysteriously romantic image of the lady.
The whole fantastic story with the lady-witch is illuminated by Gogol's characteristic irony and humor. The social issues of the story seem somewhat muffled. But it is nevertheless clearly visible. Khoma Brut and his friends live surrounded by evil, soulless people. Everywhere Homa is in danger and deprivation. The terrible image of Viy becomes like a poetic generalization of this false, cruel world.
What is the outcome? Why didn't Khoma survive the single combat with this world? Freebie and Gorobets, having learned about the death of a friend, went into the tavern to commemorate his soul. “Glorious was the man Homa!” - says Freebie. “He was a noble man. And disappeared for nothing.” But why, anyway? And this is how Gorobets answers: “And I know why he disappeared: because he was afraid. And if he had not been afraid, then the witch would not have been able to do anything with him. You just need to cross yourself and spit on her very tail, then nothing will happen. ”
As always, Gogol intertwines the serious and the funny, the important and the trifling. Of course, Gorobets' idea that he should have spit on the witch's tail is ridiculous. But regarding the fact that Khoma was afraid, this is serious. This is where the grain of Gogol's thought is.
This story is characterized by a tragic perception of the world. Life confronts a person with evil and cruel forces. In the fight against them, a person, his will, his soul is formed. In this struggle, only the brave and brave survive. And woe to the one who is faint-hearted and afraid, death will inevitably befall the one who is crushed by fear. As already noted, in "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" devils, witches and all evil spirits are more funny than scary. They try to naughty a person, but in essence they succeed little in this. He is stronger and easily overcomes them. All this corresponded to the optimism of the folk-poetic tradition underlying "Evening". The evil spirit is humiliated there and put to shame. This is exactly what happens most often in a fairy tale, in a folk legend. The poetic consciousness of the people willingly drew pictures of the easy and joyful victory of light over darkness, good over evil, man over the devil. And this feature of the artistic worldview of the people was reflected with remarkable force in the Evenings.
The poetic atmosphere of “Viy” is completely different. The action takes place here not in a fictional, romanticized world, but in a real one. That's why it's not so easy for a person to cope with a witch. The balance of power between good and evil, light and darkness in the real world is different than in a fairy tale. Here a person always comes out a winner, there everything is more difficult. In real life, everything becomes a victim of evil. This is what happened to the philosopher Homa Brutus. He did not have the courage, he was overcome by fear. And he fell victim to a witch.
"Viy" is a story about the tragic disorder of life. The whole story is based on the contrast: good and evil, a fantastic element and a real everyday, tragic and cosmic. And in this colorful polyphony of artistic techniques that Gogol so generously uses here, the passionate voice of the writer, unusually sensitive to the joys and sorrows of the common man, to the living soul of the people, clearly sounds. No wonder Khoma Brut, standing at the coffin of the lady and with horror recognizing in her the very witch he had killed, “felt that his soul began to somehow painfully whine, as if suddenly, in the midst of a whirlwind of fun and a swirling crowd, someone sang a song about an oppressed people."
Preparing the stories of "Mirgorod" for the second volume of his works, Gogol went through "Viy" again. For example, the place where the old witch turns into a young beauty was redone, the details of the episode in the church were reduced, the description of Khoma Brut's dying minutes changed significantly, and a new finale of the story appeared - the wake of Freebie and Gorobets for their friend. In artistic terms, the whole work undoubtedly benefited as a result of these revisions.
In 1835, in the article “On the Russian story and the stories of Gogol,” Belinsky gave a very positive assessment of “Viya” (“this story is a wondrous creation”), but immediately noted Gogol’s failure “in the fantastic.” Belinsky fundamentally did not share Gogol's fascination with "demonic" fantasy. He believed that this nature of fantasy does not correspond to the writer's talent and distracts him from the main thing - from the depiction of real life.
Gogol's evolution from "Evenings" to "Mirgorod" was the result of a more in-depth critical understanding of reality by the writer.
According to Gogol, Pushkin told him that not a single writer had "the gift to expose so vividly ... the vulgarity of a person, so that all that little thing that escapes the eyes would flash into the eyes of everyone." “Here is my main property,” Gogol adds, “which belongs to me alone and which, for sure, other writers do not have.” Later, in the second volume of "Dead Souls", Gogol wrote that the image of "the imperfection of our life" is the main theme of his work. The writer came close to her already in Mirgorod.
Characteristic in this regard is the story "Old World Landowners".
The writer reflected in it the collapse of the old, patriarchal-landowner life. With irony - sometimes soft and sly, sometimes with a touch of sarcasm - he draws the life of his "old men of the past century", the meaninglessness of their vulgar existence.
The days of Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna pass dull and monotonous, not a single desire of them "flies over the palisade surrounding the small courtyard." No glimmer of spirituality can be suspected in these people. The world in which the heroes of Gogol's story live is small. It is completely enclosed by the boundaries of their small and steadily declining estate. Tovstogubs are engaged in subsistence farming. It fully satisfies all their unpretentious needs. And these people don't have any motivation to bring business, to make the land bring more income. They have no interests and no worries. The life of Afanasy Ivanovich Pulcheria Ivanovna flows idly and serenely. And it seems to them that the whole world ends behind the palisade of their yard. Everything that is there, behind the palisade, seems to them strange, distant and infinitely alien.
Gogol draws the interior of the house where the Tovstogubs live. Pay attention to one detail here. Several paintings hang on the walls of their rooms. What they depict is the only reminder in this house that there is some kind of life outside of it. But, Gogol notes, “I am sure that the owners themselves have long forgotten their contents, and if some of them were taken away, they would probably not notice it.” Among the paintings are several portraits: some bishop, Peter III, the Duchess of Lavaliere. In the senseless speed of these portraits, the senselessness of the existence of these masters is reflected.
Gogol chuckles at the ingenuous existence of his heroes. But at the same time, he pities these people, bound by the bonds of patriarchal friendship, quiet and kind, naive and helpless.
Pushkin praised this story as "a playful, touching idyll that makes you laugh through tears of sadness and tenderness." Of course, the idyll here is playful and, in essence, ironic. Sympathizing with his heroes, the writer at the same time sees their emptiness and insignificance. The idyll eventually turns out to be imaginary.
The story is permeated with bright, kind, human participation and its heroes. They really could become people in a different reality! But who is to blame that they did not become them, that the human in them is crushed and belittled? The story is imbued with a sad smile about the fact that the life of the old-world landowners turned out to be so empty and worthless.
The humanistic meaning of this story is ambiguous: it is expressed both in the writer's deep sympathy for his heroes, and in the condemnation of those conditions of social life that made them what they are. But the same reality could turn a person into a soulless huckster, tearing "the last penny from his fellow countrymen" and making a fair amount of capital on this fair business. Gogol's pen acquires a scourging satirical power when he passes from the patriarchal old men to those "Little Russians who tear themselves out of the tar, traders, fill the chambers and offices like locusts, tear the last penny from their fellow countrymen, flood St. ...”
"Old-world landowners" developed the trend in Gogol's work, which was first outlined in the second part of "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" - in the story "Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his aunt." But The Old World Landowners marked the next and more mature stage in Gogol's artistic development. The pettiness and vulgarity of Gogol's heroes grew here already into a symbol of the stupid senselessness of the entire dominant order of life. The feeling of love, friendship, and emotional attachment, characteristic of the heroes of the “Old World Landowners”, becomes worthless, even to some extent vulgar - because a wonderful feeling is incompatible with the empty, ugly life of these people. The originality of Gogol's story was subtly noticed by N. V. Stankevich, who wrote to his friend Ya. M. Neverov: “I read one story from Gogol's Mirgorod - it's lovely! (“Old-fashioned landowners” - that’s how it seems to be called). Read! How wonderful human feeling is captured here in an empty, insignificant life!
The essence of the matter, however, is that this “wonderful human feeling” itself also turns out to be not real, imaginary. Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna are affectionately attached to each other. It seems that they love each other. But Gogol complicates this impression by thinking that the relationship between the heroes of the story is dominated by the force of habit: “Whatever it was, but at that time all our passions against this long, slow, almost insensible habit seemed childish to me.” The quoted lines attracted the attention of a contemporary writer of criticism. Shevyrev took up arms against them, noting that he really did not like the “deadly thought of a habit that seems to destroy the moral impression of the whole picture” in the story. Shevyrev declared that he would black out these lines. Belinsky spoke in their defense. He wrote that he could not understand "this fear, this timidity before the truth." The mention of habit really destroyed the "moral impression" originally created by Gogol's "idyll." But this impression should have been destroyed, according to the writer. No illusions! Even in the environment in which, it seemed, the high human feeling of the heroes of the story could manifest itself, it is distorted even there.
In artistic terms, "Old World Landowners" is quite noticeably different from the romantic stories "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka". The poetics, and the very style of this work, very clearly testified to the maturation in Gogol of a new outlook on life and art. The principles of depicting characters and their daily living conditions, the life-writing of the “Old World Landowners” - all this foreshadowed the mighty look of Gogol’s realistic work and opened a direct road to “Dead Souls”.
The realistic and satirical tendencies of Gogol's work are deepened in The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich. The story of the stupid litigation of two inhabitants of Mirgorod is comprehended by Gogol in a sharply accusatory way. The life of these townsfolk is already devoid of the atmosphere of patriarchal simplicity and immediacy characteristic of the old-world landowners. The behavior of both heroes arouses in the writer no longer a soft smile, but a feeling of bitterness and anger: "It's boring in this world, gentlemen!" This sharp replacement of the humorous tone with the naked satirical one reveals the meaning of the story with the utmost clarity. A seemingly funny, funny anecdote turns into a deeply dramatic picture of reality in the minds of readers. Gogol, as it were, wants to say: people like Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich, unfortunately, are not a whimsical game of writer's fantasy; they really exist, they are among us, and that is why our life is so sad. "Yes! It is sad to think, Belinsky wrote, that man, this most noble vessel of the spirit, can live and die as a ghost and in ghosts, without even suspecting the possibility of real life! And how many such people are in the world, how many Ivanov Ivanovich and Ivanov Nikiforovich are in the world!
Gogol, with his characteristic thoroughness, peers into the characters of his heroes: two bosom friends. They are “the only two friends” in Mirgorod - Pererepenko and Dovgochkhun. But each of them is on their own. There seemed to be no such force that could upset their friendship. However, a stupid accident caused an explosion, arousing the hatred of one for the other. And one unfortunate day, friends became fierce enemies.
Ivan Ivanovich really misses the gun, which he saw at Ivan Nikiforovich. The gun is not just “a good thing, it should strengthen Ivan Ivanovich in the minds of his noble birthright. His nobility, however, was not ancestral, but acquired: his father was in a “clerical rank”. All the more important for him to have his own gun! But Ivan Nikiforovich, too, and even real, hereditary! He also needs a gun, although since he bought it from a Turchin and had in mind to enroll in the police, he has not yet fired a single shot from it. He considers it sacrilege to exchange such a “noble thing” for a brown pig and two sacks of oats. That is why Ivan Nikiforovich became so inflamed, and this ill-fated “gander” flew off his tongue.
In this story, even much stronger than in the previous one, the ironic manner of Gogol's writing makes itself felt. Gogol's satire is never revealed naked. His attitude to the world seems good-natured, gentle, friendly. Well, really, what bad can be said about such a wonderful person as Ivan Ivanovich Pererepenko! He has such a bekesha, with such smushkas! And what a house he has in Mirgorod! Yes, the Poltava commissar himself, Dorosh Tarasovich Pukhivochka, stops by to his house, and Archpriest Father Peter does not know anyone who would fulfill his Christian duty better than he did. Natural kindness wells up from Ivan Ivanovich. And what a godly person he is! But stop! So far there have been only words. And here are the deeds of Ivan Ivanovich - pious. Every Sunday he puts on his famous bekesha and goes to church. And after the service, he, prompted by natural kindness, will surely bypass the poor. He sees a beggar woman and starts a cordial conversation with her.
“- Poor little head, why did you come here?” - “And so, panochka, ask for alms, if someone will give at least bread.” - “Hm! Well, do you want bread?” - Ivan Ivanovich usually asked. “How not to want! hungry as a dog." - “Hm!” - Ivan Ivanovich usually answered: - “so, maybe you want some meat too?” - "Yes, whatever your mercy gives, I will be satisfied with everything." - “Hm! Is meat better than bread? On that, Ivan Ivanovich will send her “with God”, turning with the same questions to another and a third.
This is how the “natural kindness” and compassion of Ivan Ivanovich looks like, turning into hypocrisy and perfect cruelty. And after that we get acquainted with his friend. “Ivan Nikiforovich is also a very good person.” And such a kind soul. Gogol has no direct invectives in this story. But the accusatory thrust of his writing reaches extraordinary strength. His irony seems good-natured and gentle. But there is so much true indignation and satirical fire in it!
For the first time in this story, bureaucracy also becomes the object of Gogol's satire. Here are the judge Demyan Demyanovich, and the judge Dorofey Trofimovich, and the secretary of the court Taras Tikhonovich, and the nameless clerk (with “eyes that looked askance and drunk”) with his assistant, from whose breath “the presence room turned into a drinking house for a while” , and mayor Pyotr Fedorovich. All these characters seem to us to be prototypes of the heroes of The Inspector General and the officials of the provincial city on Dead Souls.
“But I have those thoughts that there is no better home than the county court.” And we, knowing the manner of Gogol's ironic writing, are already beginning to guess what kind of "best house" it is and what kind of orders reign in it. The roof of the house had to be painted red, “if the stationery oil prepared for that, seasoned with onions, had not been eaten.” The judge signs the decisions, the content of which he had no idea. And as soon as the judge left the presence, the stationery began to be quickly put into a bag of chickens, eggs, loaves of bread, pies, knishes and other squabbles caused by petitioners. Everyone is unusually busy with business and it had to happen - it was at that moment that the brown pig ran into the courtroom and carried away Ivan Ivanovich's petition ...
Cheerfully and naturally, Gogol strings one episode onto another. And the picture, which depicts the “venerable nobility” of Mirgorod, turned out to be murderous.
The story has its own history. It was first published in Smirdin's almanac "Housewarming", with the subtitle "One of the unpublished stories of the beekeeper Rudy Panka." In 1835, the story appeared with minor stylistic corrections in the collection Mirgorod. It was written earlier than other works in this collection. In the almanac "Housewarming" "The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" is dated 1831. However, researchers question this date. The story could not have been written until the summer of 1833.
Preparing the story for reprinting in Mirgorod, Gogol wrote a short preface:
“I consider it my duty to warn you that the incident described in this story dates back to a very ancient time. Moreover, it is a complete invention. Now Mirgorod is not the same at all. Buildings are different; the puddle in the middle of the city has long dried up, and all the dignitaries: the judge, the judge and the mayor are respectable and well-intentioned people.
This preface was a disguised mockery of the censorship, which cut off the story at the first edition. However, at the very last moment before the publication of Mirgorod, Gogol, for reasons not sufficiently clarified, removed this preface. It survived only in the first few copies of the book.
The material for the plot of “The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich” was the facts of litigation known to Gogol, between landowners and partly family memories. Gogol's story is often compared with the novel by V. Nerezhny "Two Ivans, or Passion for Litigation". It tells the story of a quarrel and an endless lawsuit between two friends - Ivan Zubar and Ivan Khmara - with their neighbor Khariton Zanoza. Nerezhny's novel was an expressive picture of the mores of the provincial landlord environment. Some plot lines of the novel “Two Ivans” and “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich” are also similar. But Gogol's story is fundamentally different from the novel. The realism of the idea of Nerezhny's novel was largely weakened by the author's didactic tendency. A certain sentimental and wise pan Artamon is opposed to the litigious idlers, who in the end manages to reconcile the heroes and turn them on the path of moral rebirth. For the greater strengthening of the friendship of yesterday's enemies, the sons of the two Ivans marry the daughters of Khariton. This false idyll, crowning the novel, weakened its satirical focus.
Gogol's story is free from the artificially complicated adventurous intrigue of Nerezhny's novel. Gogol's attention is focused primarily on the characters of the heroes, who acquire tremendous power of artistic generalization and social expressiveness. Unlike Nerezhny, Gogol creates a work of great satirical intensity.
The composition of "Mirgorod" reflected the breadth of Gogol's perception of modern reality and at the same time testified to the scope and range of his ideological and artistic searches. The works, so heterogeneous in content and style, were internally interconnected and together formed a single, integral artistic cycle. Both parts of “Mirgorod” are built in contrast: the poetry of the heroic deed in “Taras Bulba” opposed the vulgarity of the old-world “existents”, and the tragic struggle and death of the philosopher Khoma Brut further set off the pitiful squalor and insignificance of the heroes of “The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich".
All four stories of the "Mirgorod" cycle are connected, therefore, by the internal unity of the ideological and artistic design. However, each of them has its own distinctive style features. The originality of “The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich” lies in the fact that here the technique of satirical irony characteristic of Gogol is most clearly and vividly expressed. The narration in this work, as well as in the "Old World Landowners", is conducted in the first person - not from the author, but from some fictional narrator, naive and ingenuous. It is he who admires the valor and nobility of Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich. It is the “beautiful puddle” of Mirgorod, the “glorious bekesh” of one of the heroes of the story and the wide trousers of the other that bring him to tenderness. And the more pathetic his delights are expressed, the more obvious the emptiness and insignificance of these characters is revealed to the reader. The narrator is a representative of the same realm of vulgarity, and thus he contributes to its self-disclosure.
It is easy to see that the narrator from the story of the quarrel is significantly different from Rudy Panok. In "Evenings" the narrator is a completely different socio-psychological character. He acts as a spokesman for the self-consciousness of the people. In the way Rudy Panko perceives and evaluates the phenomena of reality, one can see the humor and grin of Gogol himself. Pasichnik is the spokesman for the moral position of the author. In “Mirgorod” the artistic function of the narrator is different. Already in "Old World Landowners" he cannot be identified with the author. And in the story of the quarrel, he is even more distant from him. The irony of Gogol is more naked and sharper here. And we already guess that the subject of Gogol's satire is, in essence, the image of the narrator. His special compositional role in the story helps to complete the solution of the satirical task set by the writer. “... The author, as it were, pretends to be a simpleton,” wrote Belinsky. - Mr. Gogol speaks with importance about Ivan Ivanovich's bekesh, and some simpleton will seriously think that the author is really in despair because he does not have such a beautiful bekesh. Yes, Mr. Gogol pretends to be very nice; and although you have to be too stupid not to understand his irony, but this irony suits him extremely well. However, this is only a manner ... ".
Only once in the story about a quarrel does the image of the narrator, who was not touched by the author's irony, appears before us in the final phrase of the story: "It's boring in this world, gentlemen!" This phrase was uttered, of course, by no longer the fictional character who admires Ivan Ivanovich's bekeshi and Ivan Nikiforovich's trousers. No, it was Gogol himself who, as it were, pushed the boundaries of the story and entered it in order to openly and angrily, without any shadow of irony, pronounce his sentence. This phrase acquires all the more significant meaning because it crowns not only the story of the quarrel, but the entire “Mirgorod” cycle. This is the focus of the entire book. Belinsky subtly and accurately noted that Gogol's stories are "funny when you read them, and sad when you read them." Throughout the book, the writer creates a judgment on human vulgarity, which becomes, as it were, a symbol of modern life. But it is precisely here, at the end of the story of the quarrel, that Gogol openly, in his own name, pronounces the final verdict on this life.
The historical story "Taras Bulba" at a superficial glance does not seem to be organic enough in "Mirgorod". It differs from other things in this book both in its content and style. In fact, “Taras Bulba” is a very important part of “Mirgorod”. Moreover, the inclusion of this story in the collection was necessary. It allowed to look at the heroes of other stories of the same book from some other, essential side.
In the Author's Confession, Gogol wrote: “I had no attraction to the past. My subject was modernity and life in its current way of life, perhaps because my mind was always inclined towards essentiality and towards more tangible utility. The further, the more the desire to be a modern writer intensified in me. This remark by Gogol may seem strange, unreliable. After all, it was made by a man for whom the study of the past has almost become a professional attachment and whose artistic consciousness has so deeply entered the historical theme. And yet, Gogol was quite sincere in his "Author's Confession". He never became a historian, despite the serious and thorough nature of his hobbies. As for his interest in the historical theme in artistic creativity, his character is perhaps best reflected by the well-known lines of Gogol's letter to N. M. Yazykov: "Beat the present in the past, and your word will be clothed with triple power." It is this attitude to history and the historical theme that was reflected in Taras Bulba.
We have long been accustomed to call "Taras Bulba" a story. And, of course, there are good reasons for this. According to many of its objective genre characteristics, "Taras Bulba" is a historical story. But nevertheless, the breadth of the epic coverage of reality and the thoroughness in the depiction of folk life, the diversity of the compositional structure - all this makes it possible to see in Gogol's story a work close to the genre of a historical novel. Moreover, in the history of the Russian historical novel "Taras Bulba" is a very important milestone.
The development of this genre in Western European and Russian literature followed difficult paths. In the 18th and at the very beginning of the 19th century, the historical novels of Florian, Marmontel, Genlis were widely known in the West. Actually, history played in their works only the role of a general decorative background, on which various, mainly love collisions were built. In these novels, there were no living human characters as spokesmen for specific historical epochs; the fates of the characters developed in isolation and independently of the fates of history.
Great merit in the development of the European historical novel belonged to Walter Scott. He freed the historical theme from fiction. History for the first time began to acquire in his works not only real, life-reliant outlines, but also a deep philosophical meaning. On this occasion, Balzac, in the preface to The Human Comedy, rightly noted that Walter Scott raised the novel "to the level of the philosophy of history." Combining in his novels the image of a private person with the image of history, Walter Scott investigated the serious phenomena of public life and posed on the material of past eras the big problems of contemporary reality.
Decembrist writers used the historical theme widely and in a wide variety of genre forms, for example, in a poem (Ryleev, Marlinsky), a thought (Ryleev), a tragedy (Küchelbecker), a story (Marlinsky), a novel (F. Glinka, Lunin). Turning to the historical past, the Decembrists first of all looked for plots in it that would allow them to vividly express their civic ideals - their patriotism, their love of freedom, their hatred of despotism. But the well-known narrowness of the worldview of the Decembrists, their inherent underestimation of the role of the masses in the historical process - all this was also reflected in their artistic and historical works. The main attention of the writers was focused on the depiction of a heroic personality, romantically elevated and not connected with the life of the people. Suffice it to recall, for example, Voinarovsky from Ryleev's poem of the same name or the hero of Glinka's novel Zinovy Bogdan Khmelnitsky, or Liberated Little Russia. In these works there was still no artistic study of the historical past, a deep understanding of the spirit of the era. Decembrist writers were more interested in abstract didactic analogies between the past century and the present, superficial, sometimes arbitrary guesses based mainly on the author's imagination or intuition. As Marlinsky once wrote in a letter to N. Polevoy about his novel “The Oath at the Holy Sepulcher”: “Let others rummage through the annals, torturing whether it was so, could it be so in the time of Shimyaki? I am sure, I am convinced that it was so ... my Russian heart, my imagination, in which our old times have long lived such as they came to life with you, guarantee this.
Already Pushkin realized the inadmissibility of such treatment of history. He believed that the writer is obliged to objectively, without any prejudices, understand the past, "his task is to resurrect the past century in all its truth." Although Pushkin spoke here of the genre of tragedy, the task he set was more topical for a historical novel.
With his "Arap of Peter the Great", and then with "The Captain's Daughter", Pushkin laid the foundation for a new historical novel in Russia - social in its content and realistic in its method. “Taras Bulba” is also included in this channel. The historical novel of a new type, which took shape in Russia in the 1930s, differed significantly from the novel by Walter Scott.
At the center of his novel is the depiction of the life of a private person, more or less accidentally involved in the maelstrom of historical events. But even becoming a participant in these events, he does not organically merge with them. The personal interests of the hero, as a private person, may in one way or another intersect with the goals of the historical movement, but never completely coincide with them. This method of highlighting the historical past limited the artist's ability to depict the deep processes of history and the main driving forces of the historical process - the broad masses of the people.
This shortcoming is revealed to an even greater extent in the historical prose of Zagoskin, Lazhechnikov, and Veltman. Their works were imbued with a patriotic feeling, they more or less truthfully recreated the pictures of a bygone era. But the features of the worldview, as well as the scale of the talent of these novelists, did not allow them to artistically explore the true springs of historical events and reveal the characters of historical figures in all the depth and complexity of their inherent contradictions.
The author of "Taras Bulba" took the strong side of the Decembrist tradition, giving the historical theme a bright civic orientation. But he was free from the schematism and didactics characteristic of the Decembrist writers in interpreting the historical past, as well as the one-sided depiction of a hero cut off from the life of the people, characteristic of their works. With extraordinary breadth and epic scope, the people's liberation movement is revealed in Taras Bulba. The protagonist of the story presents himself as a participant and spokesman for this movement.
Freely disposing of historical material, without producing a single specific historical event, almost no real figure, Gogol at the same time created a work of art in which, with brilliant artistic power, he revealed the true history of the people, or, as Belinsky said, exhausted “the whole life of historical Little Russia and in a marvelous, artistic creation forever imprinted her spiritual image.
There is no need to look for a specific historical prototype of Taras Bulba, as some researchers did. As there is no reason to assume that the plot of the story captured some particular historical episode. Gogol did not even care about the accuracy of the chronology of the events depicted. In some cases it seems that the events are attributed to the 15th century, while others - to the 16th, and even to the beginning of the 17th century. In fact, the writer had in mind to draw a picture that would reflect the most typical, fundamental features of the entire national-heroic epic of the Ukrainian people.
In the image of the Sich and its heroes, Gogol combines the historical concreteness characteristic of a realist writer and the high lyrical pathos characteristic of a romantic poet. The organic fusion of various artistic colors creates the poetic originality and charm of "Taras Bulba".
Belinsky, the first critic among contemporary Gogol to guess the originality of this story, wrote that it is nothing more than "an excerpt, an episode from the great epic of the life of an entire people." Here is an explanation of the genre originality of the creation created by Gogol. Belinsky called this work an epic story, a folk-heroic epic. “If in our time a Homeric epic is possible, then here is its highest example, ideal and prototype!...”.
In Gogol's story, the whole life of the Cossacks looms before us - its private and public life, its life in peacetime and wartime, its administrative structure and everyday customs. The amazing capacity of "Taras Bulba", the compositional scope and depth of its content - this is what significantly pushes the genre boundaries of this unique epic story and makes it one of the remarkable events in the history of the Russian historical novel.
Gogol's work on "Taras Bulba" was preceded by a thorough, in-depth study of historical sources. Among them, one should name “Description of Ukraine” by Beauplan, “The History of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks” by Myshetsky, handwritten lists of Ukrainian chronicles - Samovydets, Velichko, Grabyanka, etc.
But these sources did not fully satisfy Gogol. He lacked a lot in them: first of all, characteristic everyday details, living signs of the time, a true understanding of the past era. Special historical studies and chronicles seemed to the writer too dry, sluggish and, in fact, did little to help the artist to comprehend the spirit of folk life, characters, and the psychology of people. In 1834, in a letter to I. Sreznevsky, he wittily noted that these chronicles, created not in the hot pursuit of events, but “when memory gave way to oblivion,” remind him of “the owner who nailed the castle to his stable when the horses were already stolen."
Among the sources that helped Gogol in his work on Taras Bulba was another, most important: Ukrainian folk songs, especially historical songs and thoughts.
Gogol considered the Ukrainian folk song to be a treasure trove for the historian and poet who wished to "explore the spirit of the past century" and comprehend the "history of the people." From annalistic and scientific sources, Gogol drew historical information, the factual details he needed regarding specific events. Thoughts and songs gave him something much more substantial. They helped the writer to understand the soul of the people, His national character, living signs of his way of life. He extracts plot motifs from a folk song, sometimes even whole episodes. For example, the dramatic story about Mosiah Shila, who was captured by the Turks and then deceived them and rescued all his comrades from enemy captivity, was inspired by Gogol by the well-known Ukrainian thought about Samoil Kishka. Yes, and the image of Andriy was created under the undoubted influence of Ukrainian thoughts about the apostate Teterenko and the traitor Savva Chal.
Gogol takes a lot in folk poetry, but he takes it as a writer, sensitive and receptive to its artistic structure, with his own attitude to reality, to the material. The poetics of the folk song had a huge impact on the entire artistic and visual system of "Taras Bulba", on the language of the story.
A vivid pictorial epithet, a colorful comparison, a characteristic rhythmic repetition - all these techniques enhanced the songlike sound of the story's style. “Am I not worthy of eternal complaints? Is not the mother who gave birth to me unhappy? Has not a bitter share come to me? Are you not my fierce executioner, my ferocious fate? Or: "Curls, curls he saw, long, long curls, and like a river swan chest, and a snowy neck, and shoulders, and everything that was created for crazy kisses." The unusually emotional, lyrical coloring of the phrase, as well as all its other artistic features, creates a feeling of organic closeness of the manner of Gogol's narration to the style of a folk song.
In the story, the influence of the epic-song technique of common comparisons is felt:
“Andriy looked around: Taras is in front of him! He was shaking all over and suddenly became pale... So a schoolboy, having inadvertently lifted his comrade and received a blow from him on the forehead with a ruler, flares up like fire, madly jumps out of the shop and chases after his frightened comrade, ready to tear him to pieces. , and suddenly comes across a teacher entering the class: in an instant, the mad impulse subsides and impotent rage falls. Like him, in an instant, Andriy's anger disappeared, as if it had not happened at all. And he saw in front of him only one terrible father.
The comparison becomes so extensive that the word grows into an independent picture, which in fact is not at all self-sufficient, but helps to more concretely, more fully, deeply reveal the character of a person or his state of mind.
"Taras Bulba" has a long and complex creative history. It was first published in 1835 in the Mirgorod collection. In 1842, in the second volume of his "Works," Gogol placed "Tarasa Bulba" in a new, radically altered edition. Work on this work continued intermittently for nine years: from 1833 to 1842. Between the first and second editions of Taras Bulba, a number of intermediate editions of some chapters were written.
There is one very remarkable feature in the writer's appearance of Gogol. Having written and even printed his work, he never considered his work on it finished, continuing to tirelessly improve it. That is why the works of this writer have so many editions. Gogol, according to N.V. Berg, said that he rewrote his works up to eight times: “Only after the eighth correspondence, without fail with his own hand, the work is completely artistically finished, reaches the pearl of creation.”
Gogol's interest in Ukrainian history after 1835 did not weaken at all, and sometimes even acquired a special acuteness, as it happened, for example, in 1839. “Little Russian songs are with me,” he tells Pogodin in mid-August this year from Marienbad. “I stock up and try as much as possible to breathe in antiquity.” Gogol at this time reflects on Ukraine, its history, its people, and new creative ideas excite his mind. At the end of August of the same year, he wrote to Shevyrev: “The times of the Cossacks are being clarified and passed in a poetic order before me, and if I do nothing of this, then I will be a big fool. Whether the Little Russian songs that are now at my fingertips inspired me, or the clairvoyance of the past found itself in my soul, only I feel a lot of things that rarely happen now. Bless!"
Gogol's increased interest in history and folklore in the autumn of 1839 was connected with the Shaved Mustache drama he had planned from Ukrainian history, as well as with the work on the second edition of Taras Bulba. I had to turn again to the rough drafts of the new edition written at various times, rethink a lot of things, eliminate some contradictions that accidentally crept in, etc. Intensive work continued for three years: from the autumn of 1839 to the summer of 1842.
The second edition of Taras Bulba was created simultaneously with Gogol's work on the first volume of Dead Souls, that is, during the period of the writer's greatest ideological and artistic maturity. This edition has become deeper in its idea, its democratic pathos, more perfect in artistic terms.
The evolution that the story has undergone is extremely characteristic. In the second edition, it has significantly expanded in its scope, becoming almost twice as large. Instead of nine chapters in the first edition - twelve chapters in the second. There are new characters, conflicts, situations. The historical and everyday background of the story was significantly enriched, new details were introduced in the description of the Sich, battles, the scene of choosing a koshevoi was rewritten, the picture of the siege of Dubno was greatly expanded, etc.
The most important thing is elsewhere. In the first, "Mirgorod" version of "Taras Bulba", the movement of the Ukrainian Cossacks against the Polish gentry was not yet comprehended on the scale of the nationwide liberation struggle. It was this circumstance that prompted Gogol to radically rework the entire work. While in the “Mirgorod” edition “many strings of the historical life of Little Russia” remained, according to Belinsky, “untouched”, in the new edition the author exhausted “the whole life of historical Little Russia”. The theme of the people's liberation movement is revealed here more vividly and more fully, and the story takes on the character of a folk-heroic epic to an even greater extent.
The battle scenes acquired a truly epic scope in the second edition.
To the well-trained, but disunited army of the Polish gentry, in which everyone is responsible only for himself, Gogol contrasts the close, iron, imbued with a single impulse system of the Cossacks. The writer's attention is almost not fixed on how this or that Cossack fights. Gogol invariably emphasizes the unity, commonality, and power of the entire Zaporozhian army: “Without any theoretical concept of regularity, they marched with amazing regularity, as if coming from the fact that their hearts and passions were in one beat the unity of universal thought. None separate; this mass was not torn anywhere.” It was a spectacle, Gogol continues, which could be adequately conveyed only by a painter's brush. The French engineer, who fought on the side of the enemies of the Sich, “threw the wick with which he was preparing to light the cannons, and, forgetting, beat in his palms, shouting loudly:“ Bravo, Monsieur zaporogi!
This bright, somewhat theatrical episode then underwent a significant evolution. It unfolds into a larger battle scene, epic in its breadth. In the first edition, the French engineer, about whom it is said that he “was a true artist in his soul,” admires the beauty of the Cossack system, which in a single impulse rushes to the bullets of the enemy. In the second edition, the battle itself is depicted in detail, and the foreign engineer marvels not at the formation of the Cossacks, but at their “unprecedented tactics” and at the same time utters a completely different phrase: “Here are the brave fellow Cossacks! This is how others in other lands should fight!”
The image of Taras Bulba is being seriously reworked: it becomes socially more expressive and psychologically whole. If in the “Mirgorod” edition he quarreled with his comrades because of the unequal division of booty - a detail that clearly contradicted the heroic character of Taras Bulba - then in the final test of the story he “quarreled with those of his comrades who were inclined towards the Warsaw side, calling their lackeys of the Polish pans.” We find a similar strengthening of the ideological emphasis in a number of other cases. For example, in the “Mirgorod” edition: “In general, he was a big hunter before raids and riots.” In the final edition of 1842, we read: “Restless forever, he considered himself the legitimate defender of Orthodoxy. Arbitrarily entered the villages, where they only complained about the harassment of tenants and the increase in new duties on smoke. Thus, Taras Bulba turns from a “hunter to raids and riots” into a “legitimate” defender of the oppressed people. The patriotic sound of the image is enhanced. It is in the second edition that Taras delivers his speech about “what our partnership is”.
Andriy's image is also undergoing some important changes. It acquires a perceptibly greater psychological certainty. Gogol manages to overcome the well-known schematic and one-line character previously inherent in the image of Andrii. The inner world of his experiences becomes more capacious, complex. His love for a Polish woman is now not only more deeply motivated, but also obtained, but also receives a brighter emotional lyrical coloring.
In a word, in the second edition the story turns into a broad lyric-epic canvas, which has become, in the words of Belinsky, "infinitely more beautiful."
In working on the final test of Taras Bulba, Gogol undoubtedly took into account the artistic experience of Pushkin's historical prose. It was in the second edition that the story acquired that realistic fullness and completeness of the poetic form that distinguishes this great work of Russian classical literature.
"Taras Bulba" is not the first work of Gogol, in which he turned to the image of the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people. Suffice it to recall the story "Terrible Revenge". Almost simultaneously, but in a slightly different artistic way, Gogol tried to solve the historical theme that occupied him in the unfinished novel Hetman, on which he worked in the early 30s. The fragments of the novel that have come down to us make it possible to judge the breadth, but at the same time, the well-known inconsistency of Gogol's idea. Realistic tendencies in the depiction of major historical events, as well as some fictional characters, suddenly collided here with the techniques of the old, romantic school, and the work began to lose its internal artistic integrity. Probably sensing this, Gogol lost interest in the novel and left it unfinished. But the experience that the writer acquired in the process of working on "Terrible Revenge" and "Hetman" was not in vain for him.
In the article “On the Teaching of World History,” written almost simultaneously with the start of work on “Taras Bulba,” there are several lines that are essential for understanding this story. “Everything that is in history: peoples, events - must certainly be alive and, as it were, be before the eyes of listeners or readers, so that every people, every state preserves its world, its colors, so that the people with all their exploits and influence on the world flashed brightly, in exactly the same form and costume in which he had been in bygone times. To do this, you need to collect not many features, but those that would express a lot, the most original, the rarest features that the depicted people had.” Although Gogol does not touch here on the specific tasks facing the author of a historical novel, the quoted lines help to understand a lot not only about Gogol's theoretical views on history, but also about his artistic historical method. What was new in the story “Taras Bulba” and distinguished it from Gogol’s previous works on a historical theme was primarily associated with taking into account the “living”, “rarest” features of the people, the originality of its national character.
The innovative significance of "Taras Bulba" was that the main force of historical events was the people in it. Pushkin and Gogol for the first time in our national literature approached the depiction of the masses as the main driving force of the historical process, and this became the greatest achievement of Russian realism, and in particular the Russian historical novel of the 19th century.
In the center of "Taras Bulba" is a heroic image of the people fighting for their freedom and independence. Never before in Russian literature has the scope and expanse of folk life been so fully and vividly depicted. Each of the heroes of the story, no matter how individual and peculiar he may be, feels himself an integral part of the life of the people. In the boundless fusion of a person's personal interests with the interests of the whole people - the ideological pathos of this work.
Gogol's depiction of the Zaporizhian Sich reaches a truly epic scale - this nest, "from where all those proud and strong like lions fly out! .. from where the will and Cossacks spill over all of Ukraine." The poetic image of the Sich created by the artist is inseparable from the bright powerful characters that inhabit it.
With sympathy and sympathy, Gogol draws a picture of the social structure of the Sich with its characteristic atmosphere of democracy and self-will, severe discipline and anarchy, with its “slightly complicated administration” and a system in which “youth was brought up and educated ... by experience”. The whole everyday and moral way of the Sich contributed to the education of high moral qualities in people. Relations between Koschevoi and Cossacks are based on the principles of humanity and justice. The power of the Koschevoi does not entail the need for blind obedience to him. He is not so much the master of society as its servant. He leads the Cossacks in the war, but is obliged to fulfill all their requirements in peacetime. Any of the Cossacks could be elected to the chieftains, and each chieftain could be dismissed at any time.
Having learned from the messenger about the enemy’s raid on the Sich, the Cossacks gathered for advice: “Every single one of them stood in hats, because they came not to listen to the ataman’s order from the authorities, but to confer as even among themselves.”
The Zaporizhian Sich in the image of Gogol is the kingdom of freedom and equality, it is a free republic in which people of a wide scope of soul live, absolutely free and equal, where strong, courageous characters are brought up, for whom there is nothing higher than the interests of the people, than freedom and independence homeland.
Of course, this patriarchal democracy has its weaknesses. Gogol could not help but see the backwardness inherent in the Cossacks, the relatively low level of their culture, as well as the power of routine, which penetrated various areas of their life and social life. All this could not but testify to the well-known limitations of the “strange republic” and the serious contradictions inherent in it, which historically hastened its death. Being true to the truth of life, Gogol hides nothing of this. He is far from idealizing the Sich. Glorifying the immortal exploits of the Cossacks, the writer at the same time does not embellish them, does not hide the fact that daring in them was combined with carelessness and revelry, feats of arms - with cruelty. Such was the time, such were right. “A hair would now stand on end from those terrible signs of the ferocity of the semi-savage age that the Cossacks carried everywhere,” writes Gogol. But the pathos of his image is still different. Zaporizhzhya Cossacks for Gogol is an example of a just and healthy social order based on the principles of humanity and brotherhood. With its ideological aspirations, the story came into sharp contrast with the norms of public morality that the official Russia of today imposed on the writer. The historical problems of the story acquired an extremely topical sound.
With sharp and expressive strokes, Gogol draws the heroes of the Sich. Ostap, fearlessly rising to the chopping block; Bovdyug, passionately calling for fellowship; Shilo, overcoming incredible obstacles to return to his native Sich; Kukubenko, who expresses his cherished dream before his death: “Let them live even better after us than we do,” these people have one thing in common: selfless devotion to the Sich and the Russian land. Gogol sees in them the embodiment of the best features of the national Russian character.
The whole story is permeated by the thought of the indissoluble unity of the two fraternal peoples - Ukrainian and Russian. Gogol calls the Cossacks "the broad riotous manner of Russian nature." This Russian nature reflected the soul of the Russian and Ukrainian. Defending their national independence and freedom, the Cossacks in the face of a foreign enemy call themselves Russians. In the minds of the Cossacks, the Ukrainian is the brother of the Russian, the Ukrainian land is an inseparable part of the vast Russian land. It is not for nothing that Taras Bulba speaks of “the best Russian knights in Ukraine”. In his famous speech about partnership, Taras again returns to this idea: “There were comrades in other lands, but there were no such comrades as in the Russian land.” The “Russian land” is also praised by Mosiy Shilo (“Let the Orthodox Russian land stand forever and be eternally honored by it!”), Balaban, and Stepan Guska, and many other “good Cossacks”. All of them rank themselves among the Russian army and consider themselves the defenders of the Russian land.
Each of the characters in Gogol's story could become the hero of an inspired poem. But the first among these heroes is Taras.
Severe and adamant, Taras Bulba leads a life full of hardships and dangers. It was not created for the family hearth. His “nezhba” is an open field and a good horse. Seeing his sons after a long separation, Taras the next day hurries with them to the Sich, to the Cossacks. Here is his true element. A man of great will and remarkable natural intelligence, touchingly tender to his comrades and merciless to the enemy, he punishes the Polish magnates and tenants and defends the oppressed and destitute. This is a powerful image, fanned by a poetic legend, in the words of Gogol, "as if an extraordinary manifestation of Russian strength." This is a wise and experienced leader of the Cossack army. He was distinguished, writes Gogol, "the ability to move the army and the strongest hatred of enemies." And at the same time, Taras is not in the least opposed to his environment. He “loves the simple life of the Cossacks” and does not stand out among them in any way.
The whole life of Taras was inextricably linked with the life of the Sich. He devoted himself undividedly to serving the comradeship, the fatherland. Appreciating in a person, first of all, his courage and devotion to the ideal of the Sich, he is inexorable towards traitors and cowards. The image of Taras embodies the prowess and scope of people's life, all the spiritual and moral strength of the people. This is a man of great intensity of feelings, passions, thoughts. The strength of Taras is in the power of those patriotic ideas that he expresses. There is nothing selfish, petty, selfish in it. His soul is imbued with only one desire - for the freedom and independence of his people.
At the center of Gogol's story is the theme of the people's liberation movement. But the struggle of the heroes of the story is comprehended not only in the aspect of the national liberation movement, but also as a conflict between two age-old antagonists: the people and the feudal landowner system that oppresses them.
Gogol by no means depicts the Cossacks as a socially unified, homogeneous mass. Separate strokes show and lead the social stratification of the Cossacks. The image of Taras Bulba is quite definitely opposed to those who “already adopted Polish customs, brought in luxury, magnificent servants, falcons, hunters, dinners, courtyards”. At the same time, Gogol remarks: “Taras was not to his liking. He loved the simple life of the Cossacks...” Taras is deeply democratic. He hates oppressors who were of the same blood and faith with him, as well as foreign ones.
Of great interest in this connection are some fragments of Gogol's Hetman that have come down to us. In one of its fragments, the idea of social retribution is embodied in the symbolic and allegorical image of a mighty pine tree that comes to life at night and pursues a cruel pan. Pine, being a witness to many of the pan's crimes, unexpectedly takes on the role of an avenger.
The theme of social retribution is revealed by Gogol in another passage from the same Hetman, which first appeared in print after the writer's death, in 1855. There is a scene, amazing in its tragedy, when Ostranitsa stands up for a beaten hundred and twenty-year old man and, in a fit of rage, pulls out a mustache from a Pole policeman. The crowd hangs the moneylender and immediately wants to deal with the policeman. But Opage persuades the crowd not to do this, for it is not he, the policeman, who is the main culprit of everything, - and in response, a terrible, frantic cry resounds throughout the square: “It’s the king’s fault, the king’s fault! ..”
The people are depicted here not as humble and silent, but as aware of the power hidden in them and violently reacting to their humiliation. The high appraisal given by Gogol to the personality of Pugachev shortly before the start of work on Taras Bulba is characteristic. Reporting in one of his letters to Pogodin about the completion of Pushkin's work on the "History of Pugachev", he emphasizes: "The whole life of Pugachev is very remarkable." Taras Bulba, of course, is significantly different from Pugachev, but the reflection of the writer's thoughts on the image of an outstanding peasant leader lies on the character of Gogol's hero.
Taras is written out sharply, large, plastically. It is accurately carved from granite. And at the same time, the image is softened by humor - kind, crafty, bright. In Taras, as in other characters of the story, tenderness and rudeness, serious and funny, great and small, tragic and comic are mixed. In this depiction of human character, Belinsky saw Gogol's remarkable gift "to expose the phenomena of life in all their reality and truth."
With perfect artistic authenticity, the image of Taras Bulba is drawn to us - in the Sich and at home, in peacetime and in war, in his relations with friends and enemies. Just as large, expressive and reliable, although in a different psychological key, the character of Taras is revealed in a tragic conflict with Andriy.
The youngest son of Taras is a man of windy, albeit passionate impulses. Easily and thoughtlessly, he was carried away by a beautiful Polish woman and, despising a sacred duty, went over to the side of the enemies of the Sich. “And what about my father, comrades and fatherland?” he says. The harsh and stormy heroism of the Sich did not capture Andria. His romantic-minded soul was more drawn to the quiet joys of love. This striving for personal happiness eventually suppressed all other strivings in him and made him a traitor to his homeland.
But the image of Andrii, however, is not so simple. Gogol did not at all mean to present him as a petty villain. Andria is distinguished by the wealth of spiritual forces, his inner world is complex and dramatic in its own way. Gogol noted both the prowess and courage inherent in this man, and the strength of his hand in battle. One should not think that the stern, warlike Ostap is opposed to the dreamy and lyrical Andriy. No, they are both men of great heart and courage. Belinsky called them both “mighty sons” of Taras Bulba. More than once, the father’s heart rejoiced at the sight of his youngest son: “And this kind one - the enemy would not have taken him - a warrior!” Even in the bursa, Andriy distinguished himself among his comrades by his sharpness, dexterity, strength, and for this he was repeatedly elected by them as the leader of dangerous enterprises. But Andriy not only "seethed with a thirst for achievement, but along with it his soul was accessible to other feelings." It was they who plunged him into disaster.
It is important to note that Gogol does not at all seek to reduce, compromise the love that has gripped Andrii. His feelings for the beautiful Polish girl are full of high lyrical movement. Moreover, in the second edition of the story, Gogol substantiated the psychological motives for Andriy's betrayal much more deeply, and thereby went even further from the folklore sources of this image - thoughts about Savva Chal and the apostate Teterenok, in which the characters are depicted as petty ambitious people and rogues.
Andriy passionately loves a beautiful Polish girl. But there is no true poetry in this love. The sincere, deep passion that flared up in Andrii's soul came into tragic conflict with a sense of duty to his comrades and his homeland. Love loses here its usual light, noble features, it ceases to be a source of joy. Love did not bring happiness to Andriy, it fenced him off from his comrades, from his father, from his homeland. This will not be forgiven even to the bravest of the "Knights of the Cossacks", and the seal of the curse fell on the traitor's forehead. “Gone, gone ingloriously, like a vile dog...” Nothing can redeem or justify treason to the motherland.
The ideological pathos of "Taras Bulba" is in the boundless merging of a person's personal interests with the interest of the whole people. Only one image of Andriy is sharply isolated from the story. It opposes the folk character and, as it were, breaks it out of its main theme. The shameful death of Andriy. which is a necessary moral retribution for his apostasy and betrayal of the people's cause, further emphasizes the greatness of the central idea of the story.
"Taras Bulba" is one of the most beautiful poetic creations of Russian fiction. The depth and capacity of the characters of Golev's heroes are in harmony with the perfection of the compositional structure of the story and the amazing completeness of all elements of its style.
The characteristic features of Gogol's craftsmanship are remarkably expressed in landscape painting. Gogol was a great painter of nature. His landscape is always very lyrical, imbued with a strong feeling and is distinguished by the richness of colors and picturesqueness. Suffice it to recall, for example, the description of the Ukrainian steppe that has long been included in the anthology.
Nature helps the reader to more fully and sharply shade the inner psychological world of the characters in the story. When Andriy and Ostap, having said goodbye to their saddened mother, leave their native farm together with Taras, Gogol, instead of a lengthy description of the oppressive mood of the travelers, is limited to one phrase: “It was a gray day; the green sparkled brightly; the birds chirped somehow in discord. And it instantly reveals the state of mind of the characters. People are upset, they cannot concentrate, and everything around them seems to be deprived of unity and harmony. And then even the birds chirp "somehow at odds." Nature lives in Gogol's intense and multifaceted life - almost the same as his heroes.
Another important element of the style of "Taras Bulba" is a kind of Gogol's humor. The whole story sparkles with sly, subtle humor. It is worth mentioning here at least the famous meeting of Taras with his sons, or that nameless Cossack who, “like a lion, stretched out on the road” in his trousers made of scarlet expensive cloth, stained with tar, “to show complete contempt for anyone.”
But the nature of Gogol's laughter in this story is different than, let's say. in "The Examiner" or "Dead Souls". If in Gogol's satirical works humor was a form of manifestation of the writer's critical attitude to reality. here humor serves a completely opposite task: it contributes to the affirmation of a positive ideal. The humor of "Taras Bulba" shines and radiates with tender love for the heroes of the story. He gives charm and humanity to the heroes of the story, deprives them of stiltedness and false pathos, sets off their high moral qualities, their patriotism, their selfless devotion to the Sich, the Russian land.
"Taras Bulba" is evidence of the amazing diversity of Gogol's genius. It seems that no writer in the world combined the possibilities of such a versatile reflection of life, such a variety of artistic colors in the depiction of heroic and satirical images, as we see in Taras Bulba and, say, The Government Inspector.
It has already been noted that the fascination with romanticism had deep roots in the artistic consciousness of Gogol. He paid tribute to this passion only in Evenings, but also in Mirgorod, when he had already fully tasted the fruits of realistic creativity. In "Taras Bulba" Gogol's romanticism found its most mature forms. And the way of depicting an era free from the despotic power of a historical document, and the manner of revealing characters, completely relaxed and lyrically elevated, and the general emotional style of writing, very bright, picturesque - in all these examples, the romantic mood of Gogol's soul is clearly visible. And here it is interesting - it is worth emphasizing once again this circumstance, which has a general methodological interest - that "Taras Bulba" in its first edition was written at about the same time when the realistic classic was created - "Old-world landowners" and the story of two Ivans, some Petersburg story, and in the second edition, when the author worked especially hard and selflessly on Dead Souls. Gogol began as a romantic, but then, after the story of Shponka, romanticism and realism developed in his work in two parallel streams. The writer almost simultaneously walked different paths, sometimes, however, intersecting. That is why it is not surprising that the various elements of both artistic methods are intertwined even in the same work - both in Taras Bulba and, for example, in Dead Souls, whose lyrical digressions in their artistic structure, in their style, bear on the undoubted stamp of Gogol's romantic impulses.
Russian romanticism of the 1920s and 1930s manifested itself most fruitfully in poetry. In prose, he revealed mainly his weak sides. The depiction of certain aspects of reality resonated in romantic stories with extreme subjectivism, which led to stiltedness and all sorts of falsehood. Gogol's romantic prose is a completely new phenomenon in Russian literature, expanding the possibilities of artistic depiction of folk life, enriching the stylistic and pictorial colors of all literature. High pathos and heartfelt lyrics characteristically colored the most significant pages of Gogol's realistic art. His romanticism not only did not oppose realism, but, on the contrary, contributed in every possible way to its consolidation. No wonder the romantic beginning is so vividly expressed in Gogol's realistic works.
"Taras Bulba" was one of the writer's favorite offspring, but this story was never published during his lifetime as a separate edition. It appeared for the first time in 1835, in "Mirgorod", the second and last time - in 1842, in Gogol's "Works", in the same "Mirgorod" cycle.
The poetry of the heroic deed seemed to harmonize little with the sleepy realm of the old-world landowners and the adventures of the two Ivans. But the historical story was not accidentally included by the writer in a cycle of works, the main theme of which was modernity.
In The Old World Landowners and The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich, Gogol first spoke to readers as a “poet of real life,” as an artist boldly exposing the ugliness of social relations in feudal Russia. Gogol's laughter did a great job. He had tremendous destructive power. He destroyed the legend about the inviolability of the feudal-landowner foundations, debunked the halo of imaginary power created around them, exposed to the "people's eyes" all the abomination and inconsistency of the contemporary political regime of the writer, made a judgment on him, awakened faith in the possibility of a different, more perfect reality.
Gogol remained a writer with a keen sense of modernity even when he turned to the historical theme. Gogol advised the poet N. Yazykov to descend “into the depths of Russian antiquity” and strike “the shame of the present time” in it. Such an attitude to the historical theme was characteristic of the author of Taras Bulba himself.
Gogol dreamed of a strong, heroic character. In the centuries-old history of the struggle of the Ukrainian people for their liberation from the oppression of the Polish gentry, he found such characters. The human charm of the heroes of the story, the beauty and nobility of their moral principles, the greatness of their national and patriotic ideals - all this could not but act as a sharp contrast to the contemporary reality of the writer, the petty, vulgar world of Ivanov Ivanovich and Ivanov Nikiforovich. The heroic way of life of the Zaporizhzhya Sich further emphasized the insignificance of the Mirgorod inhabitants, greatly enhancing the accusatory sound of Gogol's satirical stories.
That these contrasting colors in the compositional structure of "Mirgorod" were not accidental, that they expressed the conscious intention of the writer, who was concerned about the most modern sounding of his historical story, is evidenced by a characteristic detail. In the manuscript of the first edition of Taras Bulba, the author's excited lyrical voice once openly pushed the boundaries of the historical plot and directly addressed his contemporaries. The picture of unbridled joy and prowess that was revealed to the eyes of Taras and his two sons, who had just arrived in the Sich, Gogol unexpectedly ends with the following reasoning: “Only in music is there a will for a person. He is chained everywhere. He forges even more burdensome fetters for himself than imposes society and power on him wherever he touches life. He is a slave, but he is free, only lost in a frantic dance, where his soul is not afraid of the body and rises in free jumps, ready to have fun for eternity.
This place, for censorship reasons, did not see the press - neither in the first edition of the story, nor in the second. But in this case it is something different. Glorifying the heroic deeds of the free Cossacks, Gogol could not distract himself for a single moment from those bitter thoughts that modern Russia aroused in him. From the depths of hoary antiquity, Gogol really reeked of the "shame of the present time."
The last months and weeks of Gogol's life were especially dramatic. The writer felt how quickly his creative and physical strength was drying up. Exhausted by constant illnesses, he begins to think about the approach of death and plunges even more into reading church books. Religious and mystical moods take possession of him more and more.
At the very beginning of 1852, Archpriest Matvey Konstantinovsky came to Moscow from Rzhev, with whom Gogol had long been introduced by Count A.P. Tolstoy. The archpriest took it upon himself to "cleanse" Gogol's conscience and prepare him for a "Christian, shameless death." He demanded that Gogol strictly observe all church rites, fasts, and whispered to him that the only way to save the soul is to renounce literary activity, go to the monastery. He also urged Gogol to renounce Pushkin. But these exhortations of “Father Matvey” only irritated Gogol and brought him out of balance - so much so that one day, unable to control himself, he cut off the priest:
Gogol still tried to resist the influence to which he was subjected. But his strength was already too strained.
Gogol lived in the house of A.P. Tolstoy and was constantly exposed to this gloomy fanatic with a strong will. Once he turned to the count with a request to hide his manuscripts. Tolstoy refused to do this, so as not to confirm Gogol in the thought of approaching death. On the night of February 12, 1852, the manuscripts were burned.
Gogol's disease progressed catastrophically. He starved himself, refused medical care. Brought to an extreme degree of exhaustion, he died on February 21 (March 4, according to the new style), 1852.
Used Literature S. Mashinsky “The Artistic World of Gogol”, M., “Enlightenment”, 1971 N. V. Gogol “Selected Works”, “Gosizdat” ChASSR, 1941 N. V. Gogol “Collected Works”, “ State publishing house of fiction”, Moscow, 1952
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