In his work, Yuri Mamleev describes a gloomy world filled with mysteries, prompting readers to seriously reflect on the unknown depths of the human soul, the finiteness and meaninglessness of life, the inevitability of death. The heroes of the author, as a rule, are people with serious mental disabilities or simply inadequate outcasts. Their images openly demonstrate all the most pernicious that can exist in the world. They are tireless researchers of everything transcendent, including the nature of death, surrounded by a mystical halo of mystery. How did Mamleev develop these themes in his story “Jump into the Coffin”? We will consider a brief summary of the work and its problems as detailed as possible below.
Characters
The events that the author narrates in his story take place in the most ordinary communal apartment. That's just the people who live in it, are able to break the usual patterns of behavior. There you can meet the sorcerer Kuzma and the most developed member of the Pochkarev family - Nikifor. He was already three and a half years old, but everyone still calls him a baby, because he behaves as if he had not yet left this age. The sorcerer Kuzma is afraid of Nicephorus, because he cannot understand what spirit sent him into this world.
However, no one especially loves the baby. And he communicates mainly with the seventy-year-old Catherine, who suffers from an illness unknown to science. Doctors only shrug their shoulders, and the old woman becomes practically incapacitated, which greatly upsets her always cheerful cousin Vasily, her slightly hysterical sister Natalya and her son Mitya, who abuses alcohol.
Catherine's illness becomes a real stumbling block for her relatives, a problem that prevents them from living. It is with the theme of spiritual callousness that Mamleev begins his story “Jump into the Coffin”.
Vasily, Natalya and Mitya endlessly send Ekaterina to the hospital, which, however, does not change the situation in any way. The old woman cannot serve herself and is getting weaker every day. She comes to life only when Nikifor appears.
And after the final verdict of the doctor: "incurable, will die soon" - relatives begin to tensely expect the end of their torment. Mitya is tired of taking out the pots. Natalya suddenly discovers with surprise the absence of unchanging love for her sister. Vasily is rapidly losing his sense of humor. And since the longed-for moment of Catherine's death does not come, the relatives unanimously decide to bury the old woman alive. They frankly tell their ward about this idea and ask her consent to such a crazy plan. The old woman accepts the proposal to suffocate in a coffin without enthusiasm, but promises to think and give an answer.
Yuri Mamleev offers the reader such an ambiguous plot with a fair amount of grotesque. He frankly exposes in it all the basest thoughts that can be born in a person’s head. The author simply turns human souls inside out, exposing them to the public, and in parallel begins to develop the theme of death.
Relatives demand an immediate response from the old woman, arguing that they themselves will die sooner than Catherine. They thought of everything, including how to get a death certificate and not be dishonored. Ekaterina already looks like a dead woman, the main thing is that she lies quietly and does not inadvertently thwart their plan.
The transition to non-existence frightens the old woman. Vasily just shrugged his shoulders. Through the mouth of an old man, Yuri Mamleev asks "What is death?"
What is the point of being afraid of her if she is an unknown mystery? Death for Vasily is an abstract concept, therefore he treats it superficially and easily.
However, for Catherine, this issue is more pressing. After all, it is not for him to suffocate in a coffin, but for her. However, she knows who to turn to in order to make a decision - to Nikifor.
Image of Nicephorus
It is through the image of the baby that Mamleev develops the idea of transcendental reality in the story “Jump into the Coffin”. The problematics of the work are closely connected with the unknown, imprisoned in Nicephorus, who did not come to the world that he wanted, did not want to grow up, perceived being in a different way and, unlike the elders, knew the highest truth.
Even before the doctor’s verdict about Catherine’s incurability, he understands that she will soon be gone. In Nikifor, all the inhabitants of the communal apartment see something foreign: the baby is shunned by the sorcerer Kuzma, Natalya wants to spit in his direction, Mitya does not consider Nikifor a person at all. However, it is to him that Catherine turns for advice. With his approval, she decides to become a dead woman during her lifetime, and then die.
Unknown knowledge, the metaphysical component of being, is put into the image of a baby in the story "Jump into the Coffin" by Mamleev. We continue to review the summary.
Preparing for death
Having received the approval of Nikifor, the old woman agrees to the crazy idea of \u200b\u200brelatives, who immediately go to the doctor. Gray with illness, she does not arouse any suspicion in the nurse who came to witness the death.
And Vasily, Natalya and Mitya, happy with the speedy deliverance from the ill-fated burden, begin to equate the living Catherine to the real deceased. Even a request for a cup of tea causes them something between bewilderment and indignation. Can the dead eat and drink? They should not have simple human desires. In addition, if you feed and drink Catherine, she will inevitably have to be taken to the restroom, otherwise the smell from the coffin will betray a false death.
Total egocentrism, coupled with exorbitant cynicism, causes some shock when reading the work "Jump into the Coffin". Mamleev, whose story is a storehouse of paradoxes, not only demonstrates the dark side of the human soul, but also leads the reader through the awareness of death as an integral part of life.
Is death part of life?
Of course, Catherine is afraid of her fate, despite the fact that she voluntarily agreed to the funeral and, it seems, resigned herself to her imminent death. The status of the deceased does not prevent her from continuing to feel like a living person, and even in her sleep she screams about her unwillingness to leave this world. Catherine seems to be born again, begins to move quickly and shows all the signs of health.
Seeing the old woman's unusual liveliness, the relatives think about canceling the funeral, despite the possible consequences: the prospect of shame and imprisonment.
However, the sudden surge of strength quickly fades away. Ekaterina is weakening, but in a different way. To the discouraged relatives, she says that she herself wants to fall into the coffin. They do not mind, they only decorate the bed of the living deceased with flowers. Ekaterina says nothing more, doesn’t think about anything, as if falling into the void. Perhaps she is no longer afraid of death and perceives it as a kind of natural part of life. This is partly the meaning of Mamleev's story "The Jump into the Coffin". Analysis of further events is reduced to the metaphysical theme of death/immortality.
Is the soul immortal?
At the funeral, the old woman lies motionless, only winks twice at the priest, who reads prayers. However, he does not even think about checking whether the deceased is really dead, attributing everything to demons who decided to embarrass him.
The coffin is covered with a lid and carried to the cemetery, and an endless distance stretches before the heroes, as if calling to another, eternal unknown life.
Describing nature in this way in the story “Jump into the Coffin”, Yuri Vitalievich Mamleev makes one think about what will be beyond the life line. The end of the work has a sublimely enthusiastic coloring, smacking of mysticism.
The lid of the coffin is hammered without incident. Natalya succumbs to a spiritual impulse and clings to her. At this moment, it seems to her that ominous curses are coming from the coffin, directed against the whole world. Catherine's soul, meanwhile, is separated from the body and goes to the call of the Great Spirit, approaching the Earth.
Metaphysical realism of Y. Mamleev
Yu. Mamleev touches upon the issues of life and death, the unknown depths of the human personality in almost all of his creations, including the story "Jump into the Coffin". The author defined the genre in which it is written as metaphysical realism. Its essence lies in the close relationship of human life with the knowledge of the transcendental component of the world and personality. Mamleev analyzes it, he makes the reader think about it.
The main characters of the author face deep hidden phenomena. It is through their assessments that Mamleev describes the unknown in his story “Jump into the Coffin”. We have analyzed the summary of the work above. This is a kind of fusion of the grotesque and deep philosophical thought, which will not only shock the reader, but also make him reflect on the darkest component of human existence.
Today about cruelty and callousness. Reading..
Y. Mamleeva "Jump into the coffin".
Relatives of the sick old woman Ekaterina Petrovna, tired of caring for her, decided to bury her alive and thereby get rid of her problems. The funeral is a terrible evidence of what a person devoid of compassion, living only in his own interests, turns into.
... There is only one end, Katerina. Well, you will live another six months, well, seven months, and what's the point? And you will exhaust yourself, and you will send us to the grave ahead of time, Vasily put in.
And I cannot die immediately, my dear ones. I have no will, said Ekaterina Petrovna, and laid her head more comfortably on the pillow.
- Give me a drink? - asked the sister.
-Give.
And she brought some water. The old woman drank heavily.
-Well?
- Well, Katerina, - Vasilek perked up. You don't have to die right now. You will not die of your own free will. Let's bury you. Live, Vasilek became serious. You look like you're dead. Anyone will take you for the deceased. Let's bury quietly, without punks. You yourself will fall asleep in your own coffin. You will suffocate quickly, you will not have time to look back. And that's all. Better to lie down in a coffin earlier than to toil and torment us. Do you think it's scary? Not at all. All one in a coffin to lie. We thought about it with Natalia. And Mitya agrees to everything.
An incomprehensible silence reigned. Natalya began to cry, but the grandfather did nothing, even cheered up a little when he spoke to the end. Ekaterina was silent for a long time, she kept blowing her nose.
Then she said:
-I will think.
Natalya exploded:
- Katya! We came out of the same womb with you! But no strength! Go well - hello! And then, maybe I'll follow you soon! The method is good, we thought it all over, our district doctor, Mikhail Semenovich, will sign all the ends, we tell him, she died, then she died. He has no doubts about anything, he knows you.
Vasilek frowned:
- You, most importantly, Katerina, lie quietly in the coffin, do not move. And then you will be dishonored. And us all. And if you don’t move, then you are no longer there. It’s simple.
Katerina Petrovna closed her eyes, folded her hands, and said softly:
-I'll think about it.
You only, mother, rather think, Vasilek scratched his head. We don't have time or energy. If you pull, you will still die, but you will also drag Natalya away. What am I going to do without my cousins? The emptiness is one, and the fun will subside from me. Thanks to you and I'm holding on.
Natalya cried.
It's still wild for her to die, Vasek.
How wild is that? What is dying? It’s just that she will be gone, and that’s it, but, maybe, on the contrary, we will be gone, but she will be. Why think about death, if it is a mystery? You are stupid, I am stupid. And all my life I have been fools, for which I loved you.
Remember "Telegram" Paustovsky
Maybe you watched a play or a movie
based on the book L. Razumovskaya "Dear Elena Sergeevna"? Or read the book itself?
Zheleznyakov "Scarecrow"(watch the movie)
Nothing, I didn't understand anything. Well, people, well, cities. And suddenly one terrible moment. I was outside the city, in the forest. This nature struck me with its melancholy, but with some kind of higher melancholy, as if this nature were a symbol of distant and mysterious forces. And suddenly a girl of fourteen years old came out of the forest. She was beaten, there was a bruise under her eye, some blood, her leg was dragging. Maybe she was raped (and this happens everywhere) or beaten. But she was not afraid of me - a hefty man of about forty, alone in the middle of the forest. She quickly looked in my direction and moved closer. And looked into my eyes. It was a look from which my heart froze and seemed to turn into a ball of endless love, despair and ... detachment. She forgave me with that look. She forgave everything that is bottomlessly vile in a person, for all evil, and hell, and for her blood, and these beatings. She didn't say anything. And she went on along the path leading to the horizon. She was like a resurrected Rus'.
I looked around. And suddenly I clearly felt that in this poor, aloof nature, from the mere sight of which the soul pierces, in these houses and in the temple far away, in this country, there is a hint of something that can never be fully understood and that goes beyond the limits of this world .. .
Okay, that's the end of it. Then, back in the West, I started spinning in the usual human wheel: money, pointless work, idiot howling on television, alcohol. Stress. Somewhere in the side of homosexuality. Accounts. Underground. Stress. And then there is this disease. Only two or three days left, I think; and I can hardly move. And now - hello, beer with poison! I put an end to this and drink ... So the letters blur ... I can hardly write anymore.
Farewell, stupid world!
Jump into the coffin
The time was gloomy, battered, perestroika. Old man Vasily spoke loudly about this.
And so life is bad, - he taught in the yard. - And if you still rebuild it, then you will end up in a madhouse ... Forever.
His cousin, old Ekaterina Petrovna, was ill all the time. She was under seventy, but in recent years she had already ceased to resemble herself, so that her acquaintances did not recognize her - only close relatives recognized her. There were few of them, and they all lived in a communal apartment in a suburban town near Moscow - within easy reach, as they say. In the large room, in addition to the old woman herself, there was also her sister, a half-old woman, twelve years younger than Katerina, her name was Natalya Petrovna. Natalya's son also lived there - a guy of about twenty-two, Mitya, infantile and stupid from the face, but only from the face. The old man Vasily, or, as they called him in the yard, Vasilek, was nearby, in the next room, oblong, like a coffin on some giant anyway.
Others also lived in the communal apartment: either the observer, or the sorcerer Kuzma, of an incomprehensible age, and the Pochkarev family, of which the infant Nikifor was the most developed. True, by this time he was already out of infancy and he was three and a half years old. But his expression remained the same, as if he did not want to come out of his dreams, and perhaps even from the prenatal state. That's why the neighbors called him that: the baby.
Ekaterina Petrovna was seriously ill, even somehow mad. The disease clung to her like a plague, but unknown to the world. They took her to doctors, put her in hospitals - and the disease took its toll, although one important doctor said that she allegedly recovered. But, probably, only her mother recovered - and then in the next world, if only they get sick and recover there. Another doctor was so angry with her incurability that he even shoved the old woman during the reception. After each treatment Ekaterina Petrovna had a hard time resting at home, but withered and withered. Relatives - and her sister, and Mitya, and grandfather Vasilek - were exhausted with her and almost exhausted her soul.
Months dragged on, and the old woman served herself less and less often. Only the maturing baby Nikifor was not embarrassed and confidently, as if set free by his parents, sometimes wandered to Ekaterina Petrovna and, frozen on the threshold, looked at her for a long time, putting his finger in his mouth. Ekaterina Petrovna sometimes winked at him, despite the fact that she felt that she was dying. He would take it and wink, especially when they were left alone in the room, except for the shadows. Nicephorus really liked this wink. And he smiled back. True, it sometimes seemed to Ekaterina Petrovna that he was not smiling at her, but laughing, but she attributed this to her weakening mind, for she believed that not only the body, but also the mind was dying.
Nikifor thought in his own way, only about one thing - the real Ekaterina Petrovna or not. However, he was not sure that he himself was real. The little boy often dreamed that he was actually a toy. And in general, he did not come to the world where he wanted to.
Mitya did not love the baby.
Korytniks, when will they still be people, - he smiled from ear to ear, glancing at a glass of vodka. - They still swim and swim before us. I don't understand them.
Old man Vasily often pulled him up:
Enough for you, Mitya, to reproach the baby. Restless. Give you freedom - you will rebuild everything topsy-turvy. Your old men will suck your pacifier, he added sternly.
Either the observer or the sorcerer Kuzma would sniff, sometimes, past the open door, would glance at the little boy Nikifor, who opened his mouth in surprise, at the martyr Ekaterina Petrovna, dumbfounded from the inability to help herself, and at the rest of the hunched family - and would not say a word, but forward along the corridor - run.
Natalya Petrovna wanted to spit in his direction as soon as she saw him, but she could not explain to herself why exactly to spit. She could not explain much to herself - for example, why she loved her sister so much during her lifetime and became almost indifferent about her death, now.
Maybe she was just numb from grief and constant courtship of her sister. Indeed, deep down, she still loved her, although she did not understand why Katya was born her sister, and not anyone else.
Old man Vasilek, he only cheered up when he saw the dying Katya, although he did not want her death at all and, on the contrary, with might and main helped her shift and make a bed for her. He cheered from the complete absence in him of any understanding of what death is. He didn't believe in her somehow, that's all.
Omsk State University F. M. Dostoevsky
Faculty of Culture and Arts
Department of social and cultural activities
Ideological and artistic analysis of the works of Yuri Vitalyevich Mamleev.
Performed: 1st year student
KD groups - 511
Suvorova Natalia
Alexandrovna
Checked: candidate
pedagogical sciences,
Bykova Natalia
Ivanovna
1. Biography page 3
2. Interview page 5
3. Criticism page 8
4. Analysis of works p. 13
Subject page 13
Problem page 16
Idea page 19
Composition page 19
Style page 22
Styling page 23
5. Conclusion page 24
6. References p. 25
Biography
Yuri Vitalievich Mamleev was born on December 11, 1931. In 1956 he graduated from the Moscow Forestry Institute. From 1956 to 1974 taught mathematics in schools for working youth, but the main field of his activity was literature. His stories and novel were distributed in samizdat: since his works went beyond the framework of socialist realism, he was denied access to Soviet publishing houses and the press.
Due to the impossibility of publishing his works, he emigrated with his wife to the United States, where he taught at Cornell University; and later, in 1983, he moved to live in France, where he lectured at the Institute of Oriental Civilizations in Paris. During the period of forced emigration, the writer's work received worthy recognition in the West: his prose was translated into the main European languages, articles and reviews of his works were published in major periodicals, diplomas and dissertations were defended on his work.
In 1993, he was one of the first to return to his homeland and continued active writing. Wide recognition in Russia came to the writer almost immediately: in seven years, 8 books were published with a total circulation of over 250 thousand. During these years, he actively collaborates with literary magazines - from the Banner to the Questions of Philosophy, where he publishes his new works; his essays and articles are readily published by newspapers of various directions, he speaks on radio and television, he is often approached by interviewers from leading publications.
In recent years, he has also acted as a playwright and poet. His plays, published in the journal Dramaturg, were shown at the Saratov Drama Theatre, at the Moscow State Theater in Perov, and at a theater in the city of Tomsk. One of the plays was shown in German at the International Theater Festival in Graz (Austria) and was a great success.
Yuri Mamleev is not only a writer, playwright, poet, but also a philosopher: his main philosophical work, The Fate of Being, was published in 1993 in the journal Questions of Philosophy.
From 1994 to 1999 he taught Indian philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University.
He is vice-president and member of the executive committee of the Russian-Indian Friendship Society, a member of the French International PEN Club, the Writers' Union of Russia, the Union of Theater Workers, the Writers' Union of the Russian Federation.
In the mid-1990s, Yuri Mamleev was a member of the Citizenship Commission under the President of the Russian Federation.
Yu. Mamleev works a lot with creative youth in the Union of Writers of Russia: at present he is the chairman of the section "Metaphysical Realism", the main provisions of which are set forth in the philosophical works of the writer.
A huge number of reviews and analytical articles have been written about the work of Yuri Mamleev both in Russia and abroad. According to his prose, literary works are written, diplomas and dissertations are defended. You can read articles about the writer and his work in literary and other encyclopedias and dictionaries (including those in foreign languages), in the encyclopedic dictionary "Fatherland" (RE publishing house, 1999), which includes the most prominent figures of Russia in the field of culture, science , politics, etc. for the entire period of the existence of Rus' (from the distant past to our time).
Yu. Mamleev was repeatedly awarded various literary prizes: the highly prestigious Pushkin Prize for 2000 (Germany, Hamburg), the international prize named after. Andrei Bely (St. Petersburg, 1993), French Literary Academy Prize (1986).
Interview
“...NOW LET'S TALK ABOUT THE DARKNESS”
Elements interview with one of the most unique modern writers Yuri Mamleev
“Elements”. In the preface to your famous novel The Rods, you wrote that literature and art must turn to metaphysics. You explain this by the fact that a person has already been sufficiently studied, examined from different angles, and in general, from the point of view of art, has been exhausted as a topic. This is a rather unexpected and even shocking proposal, but you have already confirmed it with all the volume of your creativity. In your works there are such characters as corpses, ghouls, ideas, angels, objects, animals...
What led you to this: some general tendencies or your own will?
Yuri Mamleev. Of course, this is all subjective to some extent. But at the same time - and our whole eschatological history approaches this - we live in the greatest turning point, which, among other things, will mean that the end of man, in the form in which we know him, will come sooner or later. So the subjective beginning here coincides with the objective.
The very emergence of art beyond the "limits of the human" existed before as a method. An example is Dante, Homer with their "surreal" characters. But for these authors, non-human heroes are presented only from the outside, without penetrating into their essence, which, in fact, is the main thing in art.
Another example is the depiction of “non-human” beings by Leo Tolstoy. Perhaps he chose animal heroes because their psyche has been studied to a certain extent and is accessible to man.
My experiments were based mainly on intuition, on metaphysical knowledge, which served for me as a kind of springboard ...
"El"You said that a person in the traditional sense has studied himself. Please explain your idea.
Yu. M. No matter how difficult it may be, we must think about the fact that the current man, who has developed over the centuries, is only one of the particular manifestations of the eternal man. There is a lot of evidence for this, by the way. Ancient people, for example, differed from us in many ways, and we can say that they were completely different creatures than we are.
"El"What task does the person perform in your works? After all, he is present in them.
Yu. M. The introduction of metaphysical ideas into art, on the one hand, expands the very scope of art, on the other hand, expands the idea of a person. And so, a person becomes the bearer of secret hidden forces that are in him, forces that are impossible to imagine under normal conditions.
"El"Revealing the limitations of the ordinary idea of a person, destroying the usual species complacency of an ordinary human being, who believes that it is the only measure of things, putting a person in the position of a guinea pig, analyzing not how he thinks, but how these thoughts flow in his head, You thereby strike a strong blow to the reader. Naturally, this turns a lot of people off.
Why, nevertheless, do you make such an emphasis on, so to speak, the dark sides of being and consciousness? On darkness?
Yu. M. Let's talk about darkness. Well, firstly, art differs from doctrinal metaphysics in that it is free from the oppression of ideas, the philosophical system. Subordinating to the Great Irrational, it can, in principle, achieve such metaphysical discoveries that are beyond the power of metaphysics itself.
My heroes are born by intuition. So these are not monsters and not carriers of evil in themselves. Perhaps they simply entered some forbidden realm that made them that way. They seem insane, just like the heroes of Dostoevsky. But I repeat: they seem. They are just people asking themselves questions that the mind cannot answer.
"El" That is, they become so “gloomy”, unable to withstand the burden of metaphysics?
Yu. M. Yes. They are travelers into the unknown, into the invisible realm.
"El"Whatever category or genre a work belongs to, it must still contain an element of authenticity...
Yu. M. He is, of course. In creating it, my knowledge of psychopathology helps me a lot; many cases are taken from life. But I did not use them directly, but as a starting material. Based on the knowledge of the features and external manifestations of the traumatized psyche, it is easier to penetrate into its hidden depths, to look for the processes, the initial shocks leading to this.
"El"Your literature is called “doomsday literature”. Do you agree with this definition?
Yu. M. A correction is needed here. What is the end of the world? The problems I am writing about belong to the category of eternal ones, and this has nothing to do with either the end of the world or the transition to a new world. Eternal metaphysical problems always taste of LIMIT. It may be taken as the end of the world, because the questions asked and their consequences go beyond the world we are familiar with.
To some extent, these questions are already familiar to mankind. It is known about the existence of such texts in the famous Library of Alexandria. Maybe there are similar treatises somewhere else, say, in India. And if they are kept secret, then this is not surprising.
And the heroes of my books... well, they are willy-nilly embraced by darkness, because they go “to something else” and are not beings directed towards God-realization. Perhaps it is true that they carried out God-realization, but then they went beyond it. These are some strange creatures, prepared for a monstrous journey - from our absolute to another absolute.
"El"You turn a person upside down, but you don't stop there. You also carry out the “change of poles” at the metaphysical level, posing well-known metaphysical questions in paradoxical terms. In addition, you, despite your transcendentalism, are interested not only in the soul, but also in the body. Why?
Yu. M. Yes, it would seem strange... But after all, the flesh is the extreme expression of the absolute, it is brought here to an extreme, after which it is difficult to imagine the world even more manifest. It is possible, of course, that there is also a sub-material world, a hell, where gravity prevails over everything. After all, they say that in Satan is the whole burden of the world. Or: Satan is the “black stone” at the center of the Earth, the source of gravity. Maybe it is. But I, in my works, are more interested in the struggle or the relationship between spirit and flesh, since we constantly face this issue - both theoretically and practically.
Criticism
Critical article by Nikita Eliseev about the work of Y. Mamleev.
Mamleev? There is no such writer. The Mamleev phenomenon is not a literary phenomenon, but a socio-psychological one. Here (as in the case of Marinina or Pikul) it is necessary to talk not about the writer, but about the readers; not about the text, but about the perception of the text. But I am lost. Here we need a real sophisticated sociologist, ethnographer, psychologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, along with Sigmund Freud, but what am I? A pitiful dilettante. Reader.
I can still understand the foundations of both Marinina's and Pikul's reading success. Both of them are talented writers, that is, to put it simply, they think up stories well and retell them well, but Mamleev's success is absolutely mysterious to me. Here, not without mystical, occult forces, not without the help of the astral plane. When Mamleev's characters begin to talk in the petty-bourgeois Zoshchenko Volapyuk about eternity, infinity, gaps in time, Russia's light-magical role in the world and entering the lasting moment of death, which (which) is God, at first it becomes very funny, but when you understand, that this is not a reception, but seriously ... it is done not for laughter. But why not laugh? This is where the real, genuine laughter comes through, because a marvelous picture is instantly drawn: "The Birth of a Genius." Gray as a firefighter's underpants, a man read in the year 80 a "blind" photocopy of a book about "yogis" and was so stunned by it that he still cannot come to his senses. I had such a friend. I remember how he described his supersensible experiences: "And now, dudes, I feel: a cool astral is rushing at me." Approximately this describes the state of his characters Mamleev. To denote strong mental shocks, he has two verbs - "squealed" and "jumped", well, maybe also "squeaked" and "ran". Since the book is dedicated to paranormal phenomena, all its characters do nothing but “squeal”, “jump”, “squeak”, sometimes they “run”, even less often they “stupefy”, and very rarely (so as not to tire the reader ) - "a chill runs along the ridge" of one or another lucky person, marked by a meeting with Eternity. Also, the eyes. Mamleev reports with pleasure about the eyes of his chosen ones - in them, they say, eternity, infinity, God, death, the Universe. Moreover, the number of these ever-eyed, big-eyed gods in his book is such that it is not clear how they are each other with some kind of divine supersensible fire that is released without anger and burns without pain - will they not burn? Terribly, sir.
Not only in The Wandering Time, but also in his interviews, Yuri Mamleev spoke disparagingly of the Enlightenment and the writers of that amazing time - Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau. Like, wild, uneducated, without God in the soul, and so on. No, of course they are bad, they are not good. Yuri Mamleev surpasses them in all respects. Russian, read Aidanta-Vedanta, with the boundless on a friendly footing, since he calls the boundless quite familiarly - lawlessness. Only in one point is Mamleev inferior. About prose. Voltaire writes better. Voltaire? "Three Yanlo down my throat!" - as it was said in one wonderful detective story. Chernyshevsky, Nikolai Gavrilovich, masters the technique of writing better than Mamleev. The plot, at least, Chernyshevsky builds more competently, jokes more witty.
It was not for nothing that I remembered Nikolai Gavrilovich. "Wandering time" - exactly "What to do?" our days. Composition, characterology, optimistic finale, finally! - everything betrays its fatal relationship with the democrat-raznochinets. It’s not even done on its own, but what if Mamleev’s novel “plows everything” for someone? Someone who has "dry milk on his lips" and who even knows such a learned word as "atman"?
I hope that the topic of the school essay: "Comparative analysis of the novel" What is to be done? "And the novel" Wandering Time "" - will save us from the "plowed". Look: both in "What is to be done?" and in "Wandering Time" there are the same circles of "ours", opposing the filth and vulgarity of life ("new people" - in Chernyshevsky; "exoterics" - in Mamleev), the same unusual people, who have risen above "ours" by a step or even two steps (for Chernyshevsky - Rakhmetov; for Mamleev - Buranov-Orlov-Cherepov), but the main thing is the final! Both there and here - a complete victory for "ours"! All conflicts are resolved. All knots are untied. Only in comparison with the rickety, graphomaniac creation of Mamleev of average artistic merit, Chernyshevsky's text strikes with downright Shakespearean power. Compare at least the "special person" - Rakhmetov with the way Mamleev portrays his "special people" (Buranova-Orlova-Cherepova). Rakhmetov - eccentric, unexpected (sleeping on nails, remember?); sometimes he speaks not at all stupidly (“The mixing of mind and madness in all heads without exception is a world-historical question” - well said, right?); draws attention to what seems to lie outside the circle of his interests (reads, say, "Explanation on the Apocalypse" by Isaac Newton); and all the "special heroes" of Mamleev - on the same face, all - big-eyed or ever-eyed and all talk the same thing: Russia is a great metaphysical country, let's plunge into the Abyss, the mind is weak and weak, we will go beyond the limits of the mind, we will destroy Time, we will touch Eternity, let's not be afraid of Horror, we carry our corpses in ourselves, our soul is out of time and space, we will be saved - and off we go, as in an exam in diamat the answers bounce off the teeth, for nothing that instead of "Anti-Dühring" - aidanta - Vedanta.
By the way, thanks to these reasonings and Mamleev's mediocrity as a writer, the depth of the abyss into which the entire humanities of Russia flies with a mystical whistle becomes clear. Mamleev does not know how to invent. He has no more fantasies than a bull. (I mean - the reinforced concrete support of the bridge.) "He came, he left, he squealed, shuddered, jumped up and squeaked. Very scary eyes and very strange ears" - the peaks of Yuri Mamleev's fantasies. "Traveling in time", into the past and the future, which since the time of Wells and Mark Twain has become a cliché in fantastic and mystical literature, is the pinnacle of Mamleev's literary fiction. "Hyperborean Plague" by Mikhail Uspensky and Andrey Lazarchuk, an American cartoon about a duckling and a time machine - intricate philosophical treatises next to the scenario of the Christmas tree show, which Mamleev called a novel. Therefore, Mamleev, due to his complete mediocrity, describes his circle, his acquaintances, and he certainly described himself somehow (maybe Cherepov?). So, telling uninteresting stories about all this audience, Mamleev, no, no, and yes, he will say: they say, this or that "exoteric" earns money by teaching literature and philosophy. But judging by all the vulgarity about the insignificance of the mind and "plunging into chaos" (Mamleev means the infinite), which are carried by "exoterics" - they are very gray, witty and poorly educated people. What can they teach? What kind of literature? What philosophy?
For a pure literary experience, for a literary experiment, this book is a treasure trove and a treasure trove. No, not in the sense that this is what can happen with a little skill from a collective farm sheaf binder and a Singer sewing machine, and not even in the sense that, using the example of this book, one can demonstrate the importance of mastering the basics of literary technique, for example plot construction.
The plot of the book is simple and absurd, like any fantastic plot, but how Mamleev arranged this plot! A man falls into the past, in the past he punches his future father in the face and rapes some woman in a "huge closet." He comes to his senses in the present, begins to find out what happened to him, but since he "enters" the near exoteric circle, he very soon understands: he was - in the past! He is frightened (which is incomprehensible, since he is so ... enlightened) and begins to look for his son, conceived by the poor fellow before his own birth. The son turns out to be a member of a powerful organization (Masons, perhaps?), Which is busy destroying people, having access to the astral plane. Is it clear how things will end? The son will first kill his father, and then, having guessed who he killed and who he himself is, he will kill the head of his vile organization. Since all the plot secrets are revealed from the first pages, the reader is left to chew on the raw elephant meat of mystical nonsense. Much more interesting, much more convincing would be the book if a person who has fallen into the past would be in no way and in no way connected with exoteric circles, if he were a flat rationalist, a positivist, would believe only in the conclusions of the mind and the data of experience. Now, if such a person, investigating, investigating a strange incident, would be convinced of the correctness of the exotericists, the terrible rightness for him - that would be ... not the novel "Wandering Time", but the tragedy "Oedipus Rex", and not Mamleev, but Sophocles. But Mamleev does not even dare to take that terrible mystical move that is prompted by the logic of the plot: the woman whom his hero raped before his birth is his mother. Our bold mystics, ready to look into the eyes of Horror, are organically incapable of such blasphemy.
No, no, not even in this sense, Mamleev's book is a treasure trove for a literary experiment. Here is something else. For obvious reasons, I would like to compare Mamleev's novel with Marktven's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" and "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells. Positivists, rationalists, liberals write about the same thing that our irrationalist, mystic, real reactionary writes about - about the shock that a person of the present experiences when confronted with the past or the future. Who has the image of this collision more metaphysical, scary, if you like - hopeless? Of course, the positivists Mark Twain and HG Wells. What is the only ending of Marktven's book, which began so cheerfully, so burlesque - a ditch full of corpses, barbed wire through which current is passed, and a dying wizard who did not have time to prepare the last miracle - this is how the attempt to transfer the XIX century to the X century ends . Wells is not so gloomy, not so oxymoronic, although his Morlocks and Eloi ... are also an impressive picture, as well as an unfortunate time traveler who can no longer stop and is transported either a thousand years ahead, or a thousand years ago. To what extent, next to these artistically convincing finals, is the denouement of the Mamlei puppet show so thin and inexpressive: Klim Cherepov (one of the "special ones") became famous as a guru and writer, a circle of readers and admirers formed around him; the fatal beauty Marina has departed for the future that she likes; even the murders fit into a happy ending - Pavel Dalinin, who fell into the past and was sent by his one-year-old son to death, rushed off not to death, but to eternity, where he met his heavenly love - Verochka. Psychologically, such a difference between the tragic endings in the novels of the positivists and the snotty happy ending in the novel of the mystic is understandable. Mark Twain and H. G. Wells had a very strong mystical intuition, because they were gifted, talented people. They balanced their mystical intuition with positivist husks. And Mamleev's mystical intuition is not developed at all, so he invigorates with all sorts of infinities and "terrible eyes." But I am writing about a pure literary experiment that does not take into account any personal circumstances. Using the example of the Mamlei novel, one can show how science fiction or detective stories are formed from mystical prose. When the techniques of mystical prose are so automated that graphomaniacs begin to write mystical texts, the hour of mysticism strikes in novels and short stories; the time has come for a rational explanation of the incomprehensible and sinister. The author of The Fall of the House of Escher is writing Murder in the Rue Morgue, and the creator of The Golden Pot is sculpting The Sandman. In my opinion, both "Murder in the Rue Morgue" and "The Sandman" require much more imagination than "The Golden Pot" or "The Fall of the House of Escher". Well, I got carried away again. Which Edgar Poe? Which Hoffmann? Mark Twain? Herbert Wells? What am I talking about? "A sardonic, as it seemed to Pavel, smile passed over Marina's face, and she burst out laughing." A smile crossed his face, then burst out laughing... Our aidant-Vedantist writes gloriously. Here it is not Poe and not Hoffmann, here literary consultation is needed. And how gloriously the mystic Mamleev blurted out at the end of the curtain: “And the toast was like this: “So that our Paul would be comfortable there, so that he would find where he is now, not just comfort, but an abyss for himself. And such an abyss that the head does not spin all the same "". In this toast to Paul, escorted into a cozy eternity, all the mystical secrets of Mamleev are illuminated with a clear light. He and his heroes dive into the abyss not for the sake of truth, God, the devil and other Faustianism, but for the sake of COMFORT. Not with a capital letter comfort, but from some capital letters. Comfort in the abyss - this is the plot-forming oxymoron of Yuri Mamleev, and indeed of any graphomaniac. How is Tyutchev about "pathetic madness"? "And he imagines that he hears boiling jets, that he hears the current of underground waters and their lullaby singing and noisy exodus from the earth." That's it.
Analysis of works
1. Theme.
One of the central themes of most of Mamleev's works is the theme of death. Victor Erofeev in his book “Russian Flowers of Evil” writes: “The main character of Mamleev is death. This is an all-consuming obsession, the delight of discovering a taboo plot (for Marxism, the problem of death did not exist), a black hole into which any thoughts are sucked.
The hero is driven to death by the will to the transcendent. This will is sometimes generated by the experience that the earthly world is a prison, even that this world is the center of hell. But this attraction, this will to the transcendent means that a person has a spiritual passion to surpass himself. This passion can be accompanied by self-destruction. The further fate of the hero can develop in two directions: 1) the hero either does not return to what is usually called life; 2) either returns to everyday existence, but returns to others. This unusualness lies, first of all, in the changes in his consciousness. Usually, according to Mamleev, death is dressed in the shell of life. The most difficult thing is to make out where is life, where is death.
"Death, of course, in general is nothing, just a change of scenery." says Tanya Samarova (4 p. 10)
In an interview with the Elements newspaper, Mamleev said: “America is a whole continent. I spoke about the "dead", referring to the unfortunate, albeit outwardly pleased people who fell under the rule of a materialistic-pragmatic, comedy-bourgeois, I would say, civilization. Most of them are there. The goal of this civilization is to destroy the very idea of death in people. Up to the point that even the funeral of a loved one should not take more than ten minutes, after which a coffee-break is a must.”
I will try to prove what I wrote above using the example of several stories from the American Stories series.
"Charlie"
The theme of death is the basis of the story "Charlie".
The story begins with a description of the place where the main character Crack lives - a huge stone cemetery in Manhattan. “Just Crack, not understanding anything, loved to live near the stones”(p. 10) - the author explains.
Crack sometimes (during hysterical laughter) has a vision of his own funeral: “Best of all, Crack foresaw his own death.<…>he usually immediately saw his own funeral ... "(page 11)
Throughout the story, Crack is very afraid of losing his life:
“Frankly, Crack - for all his familiarity with the slums of New York - was a little afraid to enter the subway or similar gloomy places. There was nothing to take from him, but they could kill him. (page 24)
“There was such a ferocious type nearby that Crack almost threw up with fear. Crack knew that if he showed his fear - he tried, for example, to immediately sneak away to another place - there could be consequences. They can even slaughter – in spite of the police…” (p. 26)
In the middle of the story, he is actually threatened with murder: “And at that moment, out of the corner of his eye, Crack saw: they were going to kill him.”(p. 32) And as a result of a furious attempt to escape from this death, he meets a mutant named Charlie: “And at that very moment he, majestic and secret, made the only move that he could save. He threw himself into the arms of the mutant." (page 32)
The work ends with a detailed description of the death of the protagonist Crack:
“Crack (Gregory Dutt) for a moment realized at last that he was dying, but dying some special, maybe inhuman, death, inaccessible even to rats ...” (p. 39)
"Crack - no longer with a human mind, but with some other mind that suddenly appeared for a moment - realized that there was no return, that he was no longer dying, he had died ..." (p. 40)
In addition, the story is not only about death as a physical phenomenon, but also about moral, spiritual death. The author tells about the so-called past life of Crack: he was a priest. He had a wife, a job that brought a good income, and, as a result, a car, a house. But soon Crack lost all his fortune, simply drank it away. Falling lower and lower, he eventually finds himself on the lowest rung of human existence. Thus, he “morally died”, there was not a trace left of his spirituality:
“He, like all his contemporaries, adored statistics. Facts, facts first! Facts first! Or rather, first money, then facts, and then God. (page 12)
Thus, the theme of the story "Charlie" is death, both in the physical and in its moral, spiritual aspect.
"Carol"
The theme of the story "Carol" is also Death in all its manifestations (spiritual and physical).
The main character named Carol is an absolutely lost, beggar, fallen person:
“He didn’t even understand who he was and what it really was now: the twentieth century or the twenty-third.”(page 54)
His worthless, vile existence, loudly called by the author "life", flowed in a hole that he almost never left:
"He lived in a hole."(page 54)
And his decision to get out of this hole forever ended up with the fact that he died:
"And gently - the airy Carol began to die."(page 56)
But the story doesn't end there. After Carol was buried (in a mass grave for the poor), consciousness returned to him:
"And Carol, lying in her grave,(among other corpses) laughed out loud and mentally.<…>because he understood: he was lost forever ... "(page 57)
Something similar is observed in other stories: “It”, “Eternal Femininity”, “Other”, “Kruglyash, or the Goddess of Corpses”, etc. I think that further analysis of these works to identify themes is not required, since nothing special , from the presented analyzes of the two stories, will not differ. All these works are united by one theme - Death.
2.Problem.
The main problem of the entire series of "American stories" is the opposition of one force to another. An exorbitant desire to become as rich as possible closes a person’s eyes to the fact that there are more important forces: such as life, death, God, freedom, etc.
“A person who thinks about death is a bad consumer, he forgets the power of money in the face of a power that is higher than money,” says Y. Mamleev. - When I lived in America, the wife of Toni Damiani told me: there are two forces that are fighting in the world today. It is Spirit and Money. It struck me, because such a balancing of these forces occurs for the first time. They used to say: Spirit and Evil, Spirit and Passion, at worst - Spirit and Power. But in such a way that the despicable metal is balanced with the Spirit - this is the first in the world.
Mamleev is interested in the “backyards of life”. The characteristic details of these "backyards": slums, communal apartments, cemeteries - this is the habitat of Mamleev's characters. For the most part, Y. Mamleev's characters are not human beings in the usual sense, but some of their likeness, spiritual and physical mutants, victims of modern civilization. Their whole miserable being strives for money. They go crazy for money .
“Money dreamed of him at night; they rained down from the star paths, they wound around his throat. He would have made his own coffin out of dollars.” ("Eternal Femininity" p. 65)
“... the cherished word of America<…>This sacred word was, of course, "money" (money)."("Charlie" p. 19)
"... people experience a micro-orgasm when they pronounce"money"…"("Charlie" pp. 19 - 20)
“White-toothed deities flashed on the TV. Their attributes were dollars.("It" p.59)
"Money is power."("Morel" p. 63)
"Eternal Femininity"
The main character named M. suffered a complete bankruptcy, and the meaning of life ceased to exist for him. "He was thrown out of a pack of wolves..."(page 65)
“He no longer has the nerve to live and fight for prestige, power and money. He is broken in this fight."(p.66)
He was determined to commit suicide: “I should have gone up to the forty-first floor<…>and from there rush down ... "(page 66)
"He knew that he must die, because he did not have money - the only reality, the engine of the universe"(p. 67 - 68)
And when he finally jumped out the window. He flew down without losing consciousness. "While flying<…>I thought about what I always thought about - about money.(page 68)
And even during the funeral ceremony, the pastor said:
“He left us because he went bankrupt, and money for him was the path to God, the materialization of searches and hopes, the direct path to heaven on earth…” (p. 68)
In this story, the struggle between the power of money and the power of the spirit ended with the fact that the power of green bills won over the self-preservation instinct inherent in all living organisms on earth.
“I know this hole. You are not alone."(p. 67) - says the crazy old woman who was waiting for him near the window - the hole. This suggests that the case described in the story is not an isolated one. And just one of a huge number.
"Face"
P. lived in a small room "...somewhere in the corner of New York"(page 49)
P. dropped so much that "...his being is gone."(page 49)
One day, on his birthday, he turned on the TV and saw the “Face” of a “semi-celebrity” that struck him:
“In this face, everything was more monstrously expressed. P. I was amazed, it reflected what is below Death.(page 52)
And from that moment (as soon as he saw the "Face" and began to resemble him), everything in his life went well. After seven years, he turned out to be a celebrity. And one day his face struck a certain P.P.
And this P.P. took over the expression of P. And ten years later he became famous.
In the same story, the power of money moved a person to obtain moral and material well-being. The consciousness of the protagonist was transformed under the influence of metaphysical phenomena. Thanks to this, his thinking, behavior, facial expression changed, he received everything he dreamed of: money, fame, honor. However, in return, he gave his whole being, his soul. But not even to the devil: after death he “…stayed in a region lower in relation to hell…”(page 53)
The concept of man and the world in the stories of Yu Mamleev appears as an ironic author's reflection on the state of society, the diagnosis of the troubles of society. All the heroes of the stories are terribly insignificant, so poor that they have no possibility of further existence. In this regard, their consciousness is transformed, which leads to bodily transformation - death, or to other metaphysical consequences.
3. Idea.
So, the most important problem of Y. Mamleev's works is the confrontation between the power of the Spirit and the power of Money. And as a consequence of this problem follows the idea. Despite the fact that Yuri Mamleev depicts “hell on earth” in his works, there is a certain elusive light in his most gloomy things, but in a special way - apophatically. The presence of higher powers is indefinable, it eludes the human mind, but at the same time, it is, as it were, spilled around. In the work of Mamleev, this effect of light is associated, first of all, with the state of catharsis, the purification of the soul (it does not matter which way: whether it will be death or transformation).
Indeed, after reading even the most hopeless works of Mamleev, there is no feeling of doom. Mamleev introduces into his stories and novels a human movement towards hope, which shows through in the very fabric of the narrative.
Thus, the main idea of the works of Yuri Vitalievich can be described as catharsis, the purification of the human soul.
4. Composition
The material that forms the structure of all stories is the consciousness of the characters, their spiritual life, which is not typical for a traditional story, which is based on events unfolding in reality visible to the eye.
If we consider stories Mamleev, they usually have a complex retrospective composition. In the course of events, small digressions into the past are made. For example, in the story "Charlie", the sequential description of the actions of the protagonist Crack unobtrusively introduces a story about what kind of life preceded his ruin and, accordingly, the events happening to him at this time.
“He began to remember his life. A time when he possessed wealth and power."("Charlie" p. 15) What follows is a direct description of these memories.
Or it's a simple, linear composition. As, for example, in the story "Other". The author tells that the main character (emigrant Gregory) has a friend - a blue creature. And about how later Grigory and the “blue character” exchanged the circumstances of their deaths. Here (in the story "Other") there are no digressions, a clearly constructed chronological chain, there is only one storyline.
"Wandering Time"
But the most interesting material for analysis from the position of compositional construction is the novel by Y. Mamleev "Wandering Time".
All of Mamleev's works are terribly gloomy stories about metaphysical ghouls, about earthly hell, etc. The novel "Wandering Time" is positive in Mamleev's way: the heroes of the novel drink tea from a samovar, drink kvass and eat apples, discuss the fate of the world. At the same time, the sun is shining, bmzhi suddenly inherit apartments, etc.
The novel is about the exotic searches of the modern Moscow intelligentsia, which is either transported into the past, or finds a mystical “beyond-mortal” peace.
Among the heroes are homeless people and intellectuals, murderers, crazy and the most normal people, placed, however, in a certain specific Mamleian atmosphere - in which almost everything and everything is distorted in a very bizarre way. “In the “basement” (more precisely, in the “underground kingdom”) the homeless lived”(p. 5) All the characters in the novel are obsessed with the future.
The plot of the novel unfolds in the 90s of the XX century around people and circles involved in metaphysical practices. For example, such a character as Klim Cherepov expects a "metaphysical revolution from above": "a New Abyss will come from above and sweep away everything (both nature, and culture, and religions, and hopes for unity with Herself, with this Abyss), and from her The abyss will be erected a completely different, different Being ... ". (p. 89) And someone even more incomprehensible - and he is no longer a person at all - moves into the unknown, and behind him "leaves the visible world" and Marina Vorontsova - "not only an educated, but also a mysterious, even unusual woman". (page 9)
More mundane characters are looking both in themselves and outside for some strength that allows them to preserve their own "I", on the one hand, but at the same time, look beyond the line that separates life from death, being from non-being.
And it all starts with the fact that, by coincidence and not without the efforts of a well-wisher named Bezluny, the main character Pavel Dalinin falls into the past. Where, at a party in the 60s, he meets his own mother (perhaps with himself in the womb), beats his own father in the face: “Pavel immediately dealt a strong blow to the face - Kostya staggered, stood on his feet for a second and collapsed.» (page 23)
Enters into a relationship with a random acquaintance. “Drunk Alina was dumbfounded, resisted a little, but quickly succumbed. He took possession of it in a large closet, "so that it was not visible," as he muttered stupidly. (p. 21) From this connection, as it turns out already in the present, a son is born, with whom our hero will meet later.
He returned from the past only the next morning: “Pavel woke up in the morning in his one-room apartment, where he lived alone.<…>My head was cracking, everything was dry in my mouth, my pants were wet.(page 24)
Unexpectedly for himself, he begins to understand: everything that happened to him that evening was a stay in the past: “In an old photograph of his father - he was taken when he was still very young - Pavel recognized yesterday's Kostya.<…>Kostya was his father, Konstantin Dmitrievich, who died in the eighties.(page 25)
“But that one, yesterday, Lena, this is his own, who died from a serious illness, mother, Elena Sergeevna ...”(p.26)
“... at the same time, he seduced or raped, as you like, Alina, received from her a son, who, perhaps, is older than myself, fell in love and love Vera, the deceased.” (page 34)
At the end of the novel, Paul finds his son. The son turns out to be Yuri Poseev, a member of an organization that is busy destroying people who have access to the astral . The son kills the father first:
“- Julius, you are fierce ... Think: I am your father!<…>
- What?!! Father?!. What am I - a monster, in your opinion... Hippopotamus??! You're the same age as me! .. What are you talking about, bastard?!!
- Well, that's the end, - he whispered, - thank you, son ... "(p. 231)
And then, guessing who killed and who he himself: “- I killed my father! .. I killed him! I am a parricide!”(p. 232), decided Artur Mikhailovich Krushuev, the head of his vile organization: “And with a frantic jerk, Julius knocked the old man to the floor and began to choke him.<…>Krushuev twitched, writhed, but, indeed, he died in three minutes.(p. 235)
It is difficult to say what the compositional nature of the work is. Here you can really speculate.
In his work, Yu. Mamleev continually takes the reader from one place of events to another - from one character to another: first, the author “shows” the basement:: “It happened at the end of the second millennium, in Moscow, in the basement”(page 1). Then the apartment of Marina Vorontsova: “Her one-room apartment, quite spacious…”(p. 10) and so on.
In the course of the novel, the hero finds himself in the past, but this is not a retreat, but just one of the links in a consistent chain of events taking place in the present.
I believe that the novel still has a complex retrospective type of composition. No matter what, digressions into the past take place in the novel, even if they are metaphysical in nature.
4.Style.
The style in which Yu. Mamleev writes is metaphysical realism. What is metaphysical realism?
First of all, the very definition of "metaphysics" should be clarified. This concept was first defined by Aristotle. To designate metaphysics, he used the term "first philosophy", separating it from physics as the "second philosophy". The first philosophy, according to Aristotle, is the designation of an attempt of thought to go beyond the limits of the empirical world, the exit of reason into non-empirical reality.
Here is what Yuri Mamleev, the founder of metaphysical realism, writes about this: “The word "metaphysics" refers to the world of principles, the world of pure spiritual essences, that is, to the supracosmic, divine sphere. Metaphysical principles permeate all times and worlds, especially the "invisible" ones, and these principles underlie all worlds. And those "eternal questions" that the human mind often poses to the silent Origin - no matter how naive they are from an absolute point of view, can relate to metaphysical questions.
The metaphysical nature of Mamleev's method is due to the fact that, in addition to describing ordinary reality, it addresses the unknown - whether it is the unknown in the depths of the human soul or intruding from the outside. However, this is precisely realism, and not only because its basis is everyday reality, the point is that the unknown appears not in terms of fantasy, but as an intelligible intuitive reality, including dreams, consciousness, self-knowledge. This is not a game of imagination, but a desire to expand the possibilities of narrow materialism and gain a more voluminous view of being.
Stylization.
All the works of Y. Mamleev have "one language" - the metaphysical language. “Suddenly, the illusions ended. He unexpectedly felt for himself that the blue creature was just the ultimate concentration of that other thing that - in an invisible way - was present in all this monstrous city surrounding him. (“Other” p. 70)
A huge number of tropes and stylistic figures help the author to show, along with everyday earthly reality, something invisible, hidden in the depths of man. But the main artistic device is the grotesque.
All Mamleev's works are based on the grotesque: grotesqueness in situations, the improbability of the words and actions of the characters. For example, in one of his most terrible stories, “I will be satisfied!” drinking and philosophizing men and women, sitting by the corpse of a comrade who had just hanged himself, "Vladimir brought vodka, and everyone sat around the corpse, like around a fire"(“I will be satisfied!” p. 126) solve the eternal question: what is death? And shouldn't they hang themselves too? But one of them "Innocent, whom everyone loved for his warm attitude towards hell"(“I will be satisfied!” p. 127) finds another way to feel closer to death: roast and eat the still warm meat of Apollo. “Lizonka was the queen of breakfast. Her face brightened, as if boas were peeping through the incomprehensibility; all in spots - eyes in teary-elevated urine - she conjured around several huge frying pans, where the severed meat of Apollo was fried. "How much good," - stupidly thought Vladimir. Everyone was giggling, almost jumping on the walls. This is how they imagined the afterlife. They already felt half in the next world. (“I will be satisfied!” p.
In the story “Petrova”, Mamleev describes a case: a gentleman (N. N.) and a lady came to the registry office, who had only one oddity - “... instead of a face, she had an ass, however, comfortably covered with a feminine downy handkerchief. Two buttocks protruded slightly, like cheeks. That which corresponded to the mouth, nose, eyes and, in a sense, the soul, was hidden in the black anus. (Petrova, p. 110) Further, we also learn that “... even on the photograph of Petrova, instead of a face, there was an ass. With stamp.("Petrova" p. 112) Having been in the registry office, scaring the people she met to death (in the literal sense), Nelly Ivanovna, with her ass instead of a face, disappears into nowhere, appearing from nowhere.
These stories are a typical illustration of the metaphorical depiction of hell. The state of despair in life pushes a person to something super-possible, which in the writer's presentation takes the form of a grotesque.
Conclusion
Yuri Mamleev is a writer and philosopher, many of whose books were published not only in Russian, but also in a number of European languages. Mamleev's prose is an amazing fusion of the grotesque and deep philosophy, shocking, sometimes obviously outrageous texts carry a deep mystical overtones. His heroes are strange, and sometimes scary people, monster people living in an equally strange and scary world. But they can also be called peculiar thinkers who know about the existence of the Great Unknown and consider their existence only as a journey to it.
Bibliography
1. Conversations // Literary review. 1998. No. 2.
2. "The evolution of monstrousness: Mamleev et al." // New literary review. 1991. No. 3
3. Yu. Mamleev "American stories" cycles M .: Vagrius 2003 - 207 p.
4. Yu. Mamleev "Wandering time" novel. - St. Petersburg: Limbus Press, 2001. - 280s
Problems associated with negative personality traits.
17. Heartlessness, mental callousness
A. Aleksin "Division of property"
The mother of the heroine Verochka is so callous that she forced her mother-in-law, who raised and cured her daughter, to leave for a remote village, dooming her to loneliness.
Y. Mamleev "Jump into the coffin"
Relatives of the sick old woman Ekaterina Petrovna, tired of caring for her, decided to bury her alive and thereby get rid of her problems. A funeral is a terrible testament to what a person devoid of compassion, living only in his own interests, turns into.
K.G. Paustovsky "Telegram"
Nastya lives a bright, full life away from her lonely, old mother. Daughter all matters seem so important and urgent that she completely forgets to write letters home, does not visit her mother. Even when a telegram about her mother's illness arrived, Nastya did not immediately go, and therefore did not find Katerina Ivanovna alive. The mother never waited for her only daughter, whom she loved very much.
L. Razumovskaya "Dear Elena Sergeevna"
Heartless, cynical students began to reproach the teacher for her old-fashioned clothes, her honest attitude to work, for the fact that she had been teaching all her life, but she herself had not accumulated any capital and did not know how to profitably sell her knowledge. Their arrogance, callousness caused the death of Elena Sergeevna.
V. Tendryakov "Night after graduation"
On the night after graduation, for the first time in their lives, classmates decided to frankly tell each other in the eyes what each of them thinks about those present. And it turned out that each of them is a heartless egoist who does not put a penny on the pride and dignity of the other.
18. Tests of conscience
V. Tendryakov "Bumps"
Having got into a car accident, a young man dies, and the MTS director becomes the culprit of his death, refusing, referring to instructions, to give a tractor to take the victim to the hospital.
V. Rasputin "Farewell to Matera"
One of the heroines of Rasputin's story "Farewell to Matera" recalls the main of the precepts of the fathers: "The main thing is to have a conscience and not to endure from conscience."
The journalist and writer K. Akulinin told about one of the cases of his life when he wanted to skip the queue to the doctor, paying the nurse, but the gullible eyes of the child awakened the conscience in the soul of the hero, and he realized that it was dishonest to solve his problems at the expense of other people.
19. Loss of spiritual values
B. Vasiliev "Deaf"
The events of the story allow us to see how in today's life the so-called "new Russians" strive to enrich themselves at any cost. Spiritual values are lost because culture has left our lives. The society has split, in it the bank account has become the measure of a person's merits. Moral wilderness began to grow in the souls of people who had lost faith in goodness and justice.
E. Hemingway "Where it's clean, it's light"
The heroes of the story, having finally lost faith in friendship, love and severed ties with the world, are lonely and devastated. They have become the living dead.
V. Astafiev "Lyudochka"
Growing up in a village amid poverty and drunkenness, cruelty and immorality, the heroine of the story seeks salvation in the city. Having become a victim of brutal violence, in an atmosphere of general indifference, Lyudochka commits suicide.
V. Astafiev "Postscript"
The author describes with shame and indignation the behavior of the audience at the concert of the symphony orchestra, who, despite the excellent performance of famous works, “began to leave the hall. Yes, if only they left him just like that, silently, carefully - no, with indignation, cries, abuse, as if they had deceived them in their best desires and dreams.
20. Loss of connection between generations
V. Astafiev "Hut"
Young people come to the Siberian timber industry enterprises for big money. The forest, the land, once protected by the older generation, turns into a dead desert after the work of lumberjacks. All the moral values of the ancestors are overshadowed by the pursuit of the ruble.
F Abramov "Alka"
The heroine of the story, in search of a better life, left for the city, leaving her old mother, who died without waiting for her daughter. Alka, having returned to the village and acutely aware of the loss, decides to stay there, but this impulse quickly passes when she is offered a profitable job in the city. The loss of native roots is irreparable.
21. Inhumanity, cruelty
Katerina Izmailova, the wife of a wealthy merchant, fell in love with the worker Sergei and was expecting a child from him. Fearing exposure and separation from her beloved, she kills her father-in-law and husband with his help, and then little Fedya, her husband's relative.
R. Bradbury "Dwarf"
Ralph, the hero of the story, is cruel and heartless: he, being the owner of the attraction, replaced the mirror in which the dwarf came to look, consoled by the fact that at least in the reflection he sees himself tall, slender and handsome. Once again, the dwarf, who expected to see himself the same again, runs away with pain and horror from the terrible sight reflected in the new mirror, but his suffering only entertains Ralph.
Y. Yakovlev "He killed my dog"
The hero of the story picked up a dog abandoned by the owners. He is full of concern for a defenseless creature and does not understand his father when he demands to expel the dog: "What prevented the dog? .. I could not drive the dog out, it was already kicked out once." The boy is shocked by the cruelty of his father, who called the gullible dog and shot him in the ear. He not only hated his father, he lost faith in goodness, in justice.
22. Betrayal, irresponsible attitude to the fate of others
V. Rasputin "Live and remember"
The desertion of Andrei Guskov, his selfishness and cowardice caused the death of his mother and the suicide of his pregnant wife Nastya.
L. Andreev "Judas Iscariot"
Judas Iscariot, betraying Christ, wants to test the loyalty of his disciples and the correctness of the humanistic teachings of Jesus. However, they all turned out to be cowardly philistines, like the people, who also did not stand up for their Teacher.
N.S. Leskov "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District"
Sergei, the lover, and then the husband of the merchant Katerina Izmailova, committed the murders of her relatives with her, wanting to become the sole heir to a rich fortune, and subsequently betrayed his beloved woman, calling her an accomplice in all crimes. At the hard labor stage, he cheated on her, mocked her as best he could.
S. Lvov "Friend of my childhood"
Arkady Basov, whom the narrator Yuri considered his true friend and to whom he entrusted the secret of his first love, betrayed this trust, exposing Yura to universal ridicule. Basov, later becoming a writer, remained a vile and dishonorable person.
23. Social Injustices
N. S. Leskov "Lefty"
The protagonist - Lefty - shod the "English" flea, but his talent is not appreciated at its true worth in his homeland: he dies in a hospital for the poor.
N. A. Nekrasov. The poem "Reflections at the front door."
Peasants from distant villages with a petition to the nobleman, but they were not accepted, they were driven away. condemnation of the authorities.
24. Meanness, dishonor
A.S. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter"
Shvabrin Aleksey Ivanovich is a nobleman, but he is dishonest: having wooed Masha Mironova and having been refused, he takes revenge, speaking ill of her; during a duel with Grinev, he stabs him in the back. The complete loss of notions of honor also predetermines social treason: as soon as Pugachev gets the Belogorsk fortress, Shvabrin goes over to the side of the rebels.
25. Permissiveness
F.M. Dostoevsky "Demons"
For Verkhovensky Pyotr Stepanovich, one of the main characters of the novel, the concept of freedom has turned into the right to lie, crime and destruction. He became a slanderer and a traitor.
A.S. Pushkin "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish"
As soon as the greedy Old Woman achieved the power of a pillar noblewoman from the fish, and then the queen, she began to see in her husband a serf who could be beaten with impunity, forced to do the most menial work, exposed to general ridicule.
26. Dullness and aggressiveness
A.P. Chekhov "Unter Prishbeev"
Non-commissioned officer Prishibeev has kept the entire village in fear for 15 years with his absurd demands and brute physical strength. Even after spending a month in custody for his illegal actions, he could not get rid of the desire to command.
M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "History of one city"
Foolov's stupid and aggressive city governors, especially Ugryum-Burcheev, amaze the reader with the absurdity and grotesqueness of their orders and decisions.
27. Bureaucracy
A. Platonov "Doubting Makar"
Makar Gannushkin, the hero of the story, went to Moscow in search of truth and soul. But the Chumovye bureaucrats, as he was convinced, reign everywhere, developing lack of initiative in people, disbelief in their own strengths and capabilities, and fear of official paper. Bureaucracy is the main brake on all living innovative ideas.
28. Reverence (human insignificance)
A.P. Chekhov "Death of an official"
The official Chervyakov is infected to an incredible degree with the spirit of servility. While watching the performance, he sneezed and splashed his bald head in front of the sitting General Bryzzhalov. The old man muttered and wiped his bald head and neck with a glove, but accepted Chervyakov's apology. But the next day Chervyakov again went to Bryzzhalov. He, irritated by his obtrusiveness, shouted at him and put him out. Chervyakov was so shocked by this that he came home, lay down on the sofa without taking off his uniform, and died.
A.P. Chekhov "Thick and Thin"
The hero of the story, the official Porfiry, met a school friend at the station of the Nikolaev railway and found out that he was a privy councilor, i.e. moved up significantly in career. In an instant, the “thin” turns into a servile creature, ready to humiliate and fawn.
A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit"
Molchalin, the negative character of the comedy, is sure that one should please not only "all people without exception", but even "the janitor's dog, so that it is affectionate." The need to tirelessly please also gave rise to his romance with Sophia, the daughter of his master and benefactor Famusov. Maxim Petrovich, the “character” of the historical anecdote that Famusov tells Chatsky as an edification, in order to earn the favor of the empress, has turned into a jester, amusing her with ridiculous falls.
29. Bribery, embezzlement
N.V. Gogol "Inspector
Gorodnichiy, Skvoznik - Dmukhanovsky, a bribe-taker and embezzler who has deceived three governors in his lifetime, is convinced that any problems can be solved with the help of money and the ability to splurge.
30. Spiritual wretchedness (false understanding of happiness)
A.P. Chekhov "Gooseberry"
Chimsha-Himalayan, dreaming of a manor with gooseberries, is malnourished, denies himself everything, marries for convenience, dresses like a beggar, and saves money. He practically starved his wife to death, but he fulfilled his dream. How pitiful he is when he eats sour gooseberries with a happy, self-satisfied look!
31. Insolence and rudeness
M. Zoshchenko "History of the disease"
A satirical story that tells about the attitude of medical personnel towards an unfortunate patient makes it possible to see how rudeness is indestructible in people: “Perhaps you will be ordered to put you in a separate ward and put a guard on you so that he drives away flies and fleas from you?” - the nurse said in response to a request to clean up the department.
A.N. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm"
The character of the drama Wild is a typical boor who insults both Boris' nephew, calling him a "parasite", "damned", and many inhabitants of the city of Kalinov. Impunity gave rise to utter unbridledness in Diky.
D. Fonvizin "Undergrowth"
Mrs. Prostakova considers her boorish behavior towards others to be the norm: she is the mistress of the house, whom no one dares to argue with. Therefore, she has Trishka "cattle", "dumbass" and "thieves' mug".
S. Dovlatov "This is an untranslatable word" rudeness "
The writer is sure that "rudeness is nothing but rudeness, arrogance, impudence, taken together, but at the same time multiplied by impunity." Man has nothing to oppose to this phenomenon, except for his own humiliation. The impunity of its rudeness and kills you on the spot.
Quotes
“Insolence is nothing but a false sign of greatness” (Seneca, Roman philosopher, poet and statesman)
“It is vain to think that a harsh tone is a sign of frankness and strength” (William Shakespeare, English playwright and poet)
“The one who embarrasses the least number of people has good manners” (D. Swift, Anglo-Irish writer, philosopher, public figure).
32. Moral fall
N.V. Gogol "Taras Bulba"
For the sake of the love of a beautiful Polish woman, Andriy renounces his homeland, relatives, comrades, voluntarily goes over to the side of the enemy. This betrayal was aggravated by the fact that he rushed into battle against his father, brother, and former friends. An unworthy, shameful death is the result of his moral fall.
V. G. Rasputin "Farewell to Matera"
The island, on which people lived for centuries, they want to flood. Next to the problems of ecology, there are problems of a moral nature, historical memory.
V. P. Astafiev
The well-known writer and publicist V.P. Astafiev wrote in one of his essays that the moral health of the nation depends on each of us. People should understand that it is not necessary to look for the causes of vices on the side. The fight against drunkenness, lies, etc. in society must begin with eradicating this in oneself.
33. Drunkenness
F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment"
Marmeladov's drunkenness has made him a pitiful creature, who, realizing the extremely plight of the family, nevertheless does not find the strength to cope with this vice.
M. Gorky "At the bottom"
The actor is a drunkard who suffers from the emptiness and meaninglessness of his life. Drunkenness led him to the fact that he even forgot his name, favorite monologues and roles. The picture of the terrible "bottom" in the play is a natural ending for those who seek salvation from life's problems in drunkenness.
Drunkenness, according to the writer, is the cause of murders, robberies, the breakdown of family relationships, the complete decomposition of the individual.
(Addiction)
34. Infringement of human rights in modern society
B. Vasiliev "Ring A"
Comparing Western Europe and Russia, the author notes that Europe inherited Roman law from the Catholic Church, in which individual rights were a priority. Ancient Rus', having accepted the Christianity of Byzantium, accepted its law, in which the priority of power turned out to be the most important. The Soviet government took on board the Byzantine understanding of priority rights, and therefore in Russia, unlike Western Europe, many human rights are still infringed.
35. Selfishness
L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace"
Anatole Kuragin invades Natasha Rostova's life in order to satisfy his own ambitions.
A. P. Chekhov "Anna on the neck"
Anyuta, having become the wife of a wealthy official, considers herself a queen, and the rest as slaves. She even forgot about her father and brothers, who are forced to sell the bare necessities in order not to die of hunger.
D. London "In a distant land"
Weatherby and Cuthfert, having gone to the North for gold, are forced to spend the winter together in a hut standing far from inhabited places. And here their boundless selfishness comes out with cruel obviousness. The relationship between them is the same competitive struggle, only not for profit, but for survival. And under the conditions in which they found themselves, its outcome cannot be other than in the finale of the novel: the dying Cuthfert, crushed by the body of Weatherby, whom he killed in an animal fight over a cup of sugar.
36. Barbarism, cruelty
B. Vasiliev "Do not shoot at white swans"
The little hero of this story and his father, the forester Egor Polushkin, are horrified by how barbarically people can treat wildlife: poachers burn anthills, strip lindens, and kill defenseless animals.
V. Astafiev "The Sad Detective"
37. Vandalism
D.S. Likhachev "Letters about the good and the beautiful"
The author tells how indignant he felt when he learned that in 1932 a cast-iron monument on the grave of Bagration had been blown up on the Borodino field. At the same time, someone left a giant inscription on the wall of the monastery built on the site of the death of another hero, Tuchkov: “Enough to keep the remnants of the slave past!” At the end of the 60s, the Travel Palace was demolished in Leningrad, which even during the war our soldiers tried to preserve, not to destroy. Likhachev believes that "the loss of any cultural monument is irreparable: after all, they are always individual."
I. Bunin "Cursed days"
Bunin assumed that a revolution was inevitable, but even in a nightmare he could not imagine that atrocities and vandalism, like elemental forces, escaping from the recesses of the Russian soul, would turn people into a distraught crowd destroying everything in its path.
38. Slave love (submissive, humiliated submission to a loved one)
A. Kuprin "Garnet bracelet"
The story of General Anosov about the novels of lieutenant Vishnyakov and Lenochka, an ensign and the wife of a regimental commander, allows you to see how unhappy people can be, whom love has made slaves: they become a laughingstock in the eyes of others, they are despised and pitied.
39. Love of convenience
A.N. Ostrovsky "Our people - let's settle!"
Podkhalyuzin, the hero of a comedy, loves Lipochka, the daughter of a merchant, as a means of achieving wealth, a favorable place and a symbol of his success in life: he is flattered that his wife speaks French.
40. Love and jealousy
William Shakespeare "Othello"
Jealousy is a destructive force that can destroy even the strongest bonds, bright feelings between people. It can take a person to the extreme. No wonder Othello, under the influence of groundless jealousy, killed Desdemona, the love of his life.
41. Careerism
D. Granin "I'm going into a thunderstorm"
The world of physicists in the novel is a battlefield on which there is a struggle between genuine scientists (Dan, Krylov) and careerists (Denisov, Agatov, Lagunov). Incapable of creativity, by hook or by crook seeking an administrative career in science, these opportunists almost destroyed the scientific search of Tulin and Krylov, who were looking for an effective method of destroying a thunderstorm.
42. Responsibility of a person to himself and society as a whole for the realization of his abilities (responsibility for his deeds)
A.P. Chekhov "Ionych"
Dr. Startsev, a talented doctor in his youth, gradually getting richer, becomes important and rude, he has one passion in life - money.
M. A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita"
The image of Yeshua is the image of Jesus Christ, who carries the idea of genuine kindness and forgiveness. He says about all people, even about those who bring him pain and suffering: "A good person." He forgives the procurator of Judea, who doomed him to a painful death. The image of the procurator of Judea symbolizes how a person can be punished for cowardice. Because of cowardice, he sends the innocent Yeshua to execution, to terrible torment, for which he suffers both on earth and in eternal life.
43. Loneliness (indifference, indifference to the fate of others)
A.P. Chekhov "Vanka"
Vanka Zhukov is an orphan. He was given to study as a shoemaker in Moscow, where he lives very hard. You can learn about this from the letter that he sent "to the village of grandfather" Konstantin Makarovich with a request to pick him up. The boy will remain lonely, uncomfortable in a cruel and cold world.
A.P. Chekhov "Tosca"
The cab driver Iona Potapov's only son died. To overcome longing and an acute feeling of loneliness, he wants to tell someone about his misfortune, but no one wants to listen to him, no one cares about him. And then Jonah tells the horse his whole story: it seems to him that it was she who listened to him and sympathized with grief.
Hermann, the central character of the story, passionately longs to get rich, and for this he, wanting to seize the secret of three card numbers and win, becomes the unwitting killer of the old countess, the cause of the suffering of Lizaveta Ivanovna, her pupil. The cherished three cards helped the hero win several times, but the passion for money played a cruel joke on him: Hermann went crazy when he accidentally put the Queen of Spades instead of the Ace.
The author showed the fate of a man who served false values. Wealth was his God, and that God he worshiped. But when the American millionaire died, it turned out that true happiness passed him by.
45. True and false values in life
A.P. Chekhov "Jumper"
Olga Ivanovna spent her whole life looking for famous people, trying at any cost to earn their favor, not noticing that her husband, Dr. Dymov, was the very person whom she was looking for. Only after his tragic death did the heroine realize her frivolity.
L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace"
For the Kuragin family, the main value in life was money, so both Anatole and Helen grew up selfish. In the Rostovs' house, everything was the opposite: in their family, everything was built on love and mutual understanding. Therefore, Natasha, Nikolai and Petya grew up to be kind and sympathetic people. Thus, the Kuragins chose false values, and the Rostovs chose true ones.
N. V. Gogol "Dead Souls"
The pursuit of false values leads to the impoverishment and moral degradation of a person. In the poem, Gogol brings to the reader a whole series of "dead souls": Manilov, Korobochka, Nozdrev, Sobakevich, Plyushkin, Chichikov himself, city officials. All of them, to one degree or another, are seized with a passion for hoarding and gain, they lose their living souls, turning into puppets.
L. Tatyanicheva. Poem "What good have you done"
To do good to people is to be good to yourself. Happiness lies in doing good, eternal, helping people. These are the true values of human life.
46. True and false goals in life
I. A. Bunin "The Gentleman from San Francisco"
The writer denies the kind of life that the gentleman from San Francisco and the rich gentlemen from the steamer Atlantis led. He shows in the story how insignificant the life of such people is. The main idea of the story is that everyone is equal before death, that some class, property lines that separate people are not important before death, so the life goal should be such that after death a long and good memory of a person remains.
A. P. Chekhov "Gooseberry"
Life without purpose is a meaningless existence. But the goals are different, such as, for example, in the story "Gooseberry". His hero, Nikolai Ivanovich Chimsha-Gimalaysky, dreams of acquiring his estate and planting gooseberries there. This goal consumes him entirely. As a result, he reaches it, but at the same time he almost loses his human appearance (“he has become fat, flabby ... - just look, he will grunt in a blanket”). A false goal, fixation on the material, narrow, limited disfigures a person. He needs constant movement, development, excitement, improvement for life.
Quote
“In life, you should set yourself two goals. The first goal is the realization of what you aspire to. The second goal is the ability to rejoice at what has been achieved. Only the wisest representatives of mankind are capable of achieving the second goal. (Logan Pearsall Smith, American essayist and critic)
She tells her husband that she will leave him if he commits even one mean act. Then the husband explained to his wife in detail why their family lives so richly. The heroine of the text “left ... to another room. For her, living beautifully and richly was more important than deceiving her husband, although she says quite the opposite.
There is also no clear position in Chekhov's story "Chameleon" by the police overseer Ochumelov. He wants to punish the owner of the dog that bit Khryukin's finger. After Ochumelov learns that the possible owner of the dog is General Zhigalov, all his determination disappears.