A real writer is always a thinker, seeking to look into the future, to predict the life of his descendants. But a writer is also a person who creates a system: moral values, views on history, the development of society. Literature often became a means of promoting the writer's ideas. With this, in particular, the emergence of the genre of utopia in literature is connected. In the works of this genre, the ideal, from the point of view of the author, principle of building a society was depicted. But in parallel, the genre of dystopia is also developing.
Life forced writers to think: will the results that humanity can come to be so good? In general, what is progress? What helps a person to become the master of nature, the world of feelings, his own nature? But won't this lead to the loss of individuality by a person, to the depersonalization of the same gray mass?
E. Zamyatin is a writer who managed to quite accurately discern the signs of some kind of anti-progress in the surrounding reality of the first years of Soviet power. Of course, the subject of his reflections is not only technical progress, but also those social ideals that were put forward as indisputable truths. Zamyatin asks the question: what should be the future for a person to feel happy, to fulfill his hopes, to realize his ideals? One of the possible answers to this question is the famous "fourth dream" of Vera Pavlovna from the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky "What is to be done?". E. Zamyatin seems to specifically repeat the description of this one of the classic utopias: his characters live as a commune in a city of glass and metal.
In the novel "We" in a fantastic and grotesque guise, a possible variant of the society of the future appears before the reader. The dream of the powerful of this world is given: "Life should become a harmonious machine and with mechanical inevitability lead us to the desired goal." Unfortunately, in such a society there is nothing that the writer's contemporary reality does not portend. The "mathematical perfect life" of the United State is unfolding before us. The symbolic image of the "fire-breathing integral", a miracle of technical thought and at the same time a tool of the most cruel enslavement, opens the book. Soulless technology, together with despotic power, turned man into an appendage of the machine, took away his freedom, brought him up in voluntary slavery. A world without love, without a soul, without poetry. The “numbered” person, deprived of a name, was inspired that “our lack of freedom” is “our happiness” and that this “happiness” is in the rejection of the “I” and dissolution in the impersonal “we”. It is suggested that artistic creativity is “no longer a shameless nightingale whistle”, but “public service”. Personal life is also considered as a state duty, carried out in accordance with the "report card of sexual days."
The novel by E. Zamyatina is a warning about the double danger threatening humanity: the hypertrophied power of machines and the power of the state. "Uniformity" undividedly and vigilantly dominates the life of all members of society. This is ensured by perfect technique and the watchful eyes of the "keepers".
Zamyatin's writing is imbued with reflections on Russian post-revolutionary reality. In it, one can guess the innermost thoughts about the possible perversions of the socialist idea that were already revealed during the life of the writer.
The policy of the general construction of communism aroused the most difficult thoughts in the writer. It provided for a purely centralization of political and economic life in the country, a series of cruel repressive measures against dissidents. Even in the first post-revolutionary years, E. Zamyatin realized that there would be no other choice and that the only model of further movement was imposed on people - a new version of totalitarianism.
E. Zamyatin's novel acquired special significance as a warning about possible distortions of the beautifully presented idea of socialism, about the danger of deviations from the democratic path and abuse of violence against the human person. Subsequent events in national and world history showed that the writer's anxieties were not in vain. Our people have gone through the bitter lessons of collectivization, and Stalinism, and repressions, and universal fear, and stagnation.
Many scenes of the novel make you remember the recent past. Manifestation in honor of the Benefactor, official, unanimous elections, "guardians" who follow every step of a person. But Yevgeny Zamyatin shows that in a society where everything is aimed at suppressing the individual, where the human "I" is ignored, where the sole power is unlimited, rebellion is possible. The ability and desire to feel, love, be free in thoughts and actions push people to fight. But the authorities find a way out: with the help of an operation, a person’s fantasy is removed - the last thing that made him raise his head proudly, feel reasonable and strong. Still, there is hope that human dignity will not die under any regime. This hope is expressed by a woman who, with her beauty, incites to fight.
But does the writer want to give his model of an ideal society? No, on the contrary, he insists that the ideal society does not exist. Life is a pursuit of the ideal. And when this desire is absent, the human personality gradually begins to die. The author of the novel "We" belongs to those major artists who urged us to pay attention to eternal values and not to forget about them in the context of the global historical shifts of the 20th century. At the time, the novel was not accepted. But now, works like the novel “We” that have returned to us from non-existence, perhaps, will allow us to take a “new” look at the events of history, to comprehend the role of man in them. “We” is a warning against refusing to resist if they want to turn the human community into a set of “cogs”, replace moral values with a “grand universal equation”, and leave only one of all lines - a straight line.
MOU secondary school No. 40
Literature examination essay
The problem of personality and state in the novel
E.I. Zamyatin "We".
Checked by: Pashina Tatyana Evgenievna, teacher of Russian language and literature
Completed by: Marina Borovaya, student of the 11th grade
1) Introduction………………………………………………….....3-4
2) Personality and the state in Zamyatin’s novel “We”………5-10
3) Conclusion…………………………………………………10-12
4) List of references…………………………………………………13
INTRODUCTION .
Evgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin - prose writer (1884-1937), was born in Lebedyan, Tambov province, in the family of a priest. He studied well at school and at the shipbuilding institute. In his student years, during the first Russian revolution, he took part in the revolutionary movement, which indicates his indifferent attitude to the fate of people. Zamyatin began to print his works in 1908, for some stories he was prosecuted because the authorities did not like this truth. In 1931, Zamyatin told Stalin: "The habit of saying is not what is profitable at the moment, but what seems to me to be true." This really determined the position of Yevgeny Ivanovich as a true citizen of his country. But due to persecution, he was forced to leave his native country and go abroad in 1931.
Zamyatin is one of the few people who did not reject the revolution out of hand. In his student years, during the first Russian revolution, he took part in the revolutionary movement. He believed the change was for the better. But, having understood what the Soviet government was leading to, Evgeny Ivanovich began to fight against such changes.
Written in 1920, Zamyatin's novel since 1921 has been widely circulated in handwritten lists - so wide that literary criticism of the 20s polemicized on magazine pages with this not yet published novel. This novel is one of the first in a series of dystopias of the twentieth century. These are works about the future, which depict it by no means as ideal and bright. They predict a social structure in which the human person will be devalued, suppressed by the power of machines or political dictatorship. Particularly close to Zamyatin's novel "We" seems to be the novel by John Orwell. However, the author himself claimed that he got acquainted with Zamyatin's book after he had written his own. Apparently, this is indeed the case and testifies, first of all, to how sensitively and accurately the free writer's thought reacted to the danger lurking in socialist utopias about the ideal structure of human society.
There is a point of view that Zamyatin's novel was inspired not only by the realities after October Russia, that Zamyatin warned not only and not so much about the danger of the coming totalitarianism, but even more about the danger of the growing power of things, technology, progress. There is no point in arguing about it. Zamyatin really saw the other side of Western civilization. Evidence can serve, for example, full of irony story "Islanders", written in England and about England. And yet, in 1920, in Russia tormented by war communism, Zamyatin was worried, presumably, not by the future power of things and machines over people, but already in those days by the power of a totalitarian state advancing on a person. He understood that she was a more real and more dangerous threat to the human future. And the main point of his warning is directed precisely against any form of dictatorship. Machines, the world of things in its dystopia, are only a tool for the United State. Zamyatin imagined, of course, that they themselves did not pose a danger: it was important what they served.
The form shown in the novel is the United State, an “ideal” state. But Zamyatin believes that the ideal state does not exist, and life is a pursuit of the ideal. And when this desire is absent, the human personality gradually begins to die. The author of the novel “We” belongs to those major writers who urged us to pay attention to eternal values and not to forget about them in the context of the global historical shifts of the 20th century. At the time, the novel was not accepted. But now, works like the novel “We” that have returned to us from non-existence, perhaps, will allow us to take a “new” look at the events of history, to comprehend the role of man in them. “We” is a warning against refusing to resist if they want to turn the human community into a set of “cogs”, replace moral values with a “grand universal equation”, and leave only one of all lines - a straight line.
In the novel "We", the writer tries to study and expose the authorities, believing in the power of the writer's word, in the possibility of correcting the Russian revolution. But the reality of the 20th century in the USSR surpassed all the worst fears of Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin. After writing the dystopian novel, Zamyatin's works were banned, and Yevgeny Ivanovich himself asked permission from the authorities to go abroad to France, in the hope that he could return when the writer's words were treated better. But, unfortunately, he did not wait for this day and died in Paris in 1937.
In the course of writing the essay, I will try to deeply consider the model of the United State created by the author, to reveal the problem of the relationship between the individual and the state, to show that a prosperous life of people cannot be built on the rejection of one's own personality, to show that a person cannot be a pawn in someone's hands .
The topic of the essay is interesting because having deeply studied the content of the novel, having considered the grotesque model of the State created by the author, we come to understand the main idea of the novel: human nature cannot stand an impersonal existence.
INDIVIDUALITY AND THE STATE IN E.I.ZAMYATIN'S NOVEL "WE".
The novel "We" by Evgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin is a famous dystopian novel. It was created in Petrograd in 1920-1921. Immediately after writing, it was banned, printed only closer to the 1990s. "We" is the most significant work of the dystopian genre in Russian literature.
On the first pages of the novel "We" appears an ideal state in which everyone is happy, no one needs anything. At first glance, this is true: everyone is on an equal footing, avoiding such vicious feelings as envy, anger, and so on. In real life, the Soviet government is really trying to equalize people. But are they happier?
The October Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century gave birth to hope for a happy future in people's minds. It seemed to many that the revolution would change their lives for the better. Therefore, in the works of some writers of that era, utopian motifs were read. The other part of the people realized earlier what socialism was leading to. And it led to the most terrible bloody wars on a global scale, revolutions, and the rapid growth of industry. All this has devalued human personalities, turned people into a kind of mechanism in which there are no irreplaceable parts.
Zamyatin in his novel "We" shows the future based on reality. But in reality, people are hardly happy, because every day their lives are in danger: physical violence, starvation, camps in correctional institutions and others. The book shows a model of the future, in which people are provided with all material benefits. Such a person has neither hunger nor fear. But in this state there is no freedom, it resembles an island enclosed by the Green Wall. And happiness here is artificial. Citizens of the United State have achieved material perfection, but they have degraded spiritually and socially. The ruler of this state made slaves out of people with a “number” instead of a name, turned them into part of the mechanism of state administration.
Before the protagonist of the novel D-503, a picture of universal equality, an ideal social structure appears: “As always, the Musical Factory sang the March of the United State with all its pipes. In measured rows, four at a time, enthusiastically beating time, there were numbers - hundreds, thousands of numbers, in bluish unifs, with gold plaques on their chests - the state number of each and every one. And I - we four - one of the countless waves in this mighty stream. People in uniform, without names, do not differ from each other either externally or internally. "We have nothing to hide from each other" - and what to hide if people are the same? All actions of people are prescribed by the Tablet of Hours. But after all, if the people have freedom of action, then it is unlikely that everyone will know what to do, and, accordingly, they will not be happy. Thus, in the United State, universal “mathematical infallible happiness” dominates. This happiness is only material. In order to be always full, not to be tired, people gave up their freedom of choice, their own aspirations, desires, attachments, they gave up their own personality. There is no person here, as such, there is only a “number”. Life here has ceased to be the highest value, goals are more important than the life of the "number".
Spiritual life is suppressed by the state. Love was reduced to physiology, to "pleasantly - useful functions of the body." Thus, the One State deprived a person of attachments, a sense of kinship, because any strong ties, except for connection with the One State, are criminal. Numbers are not related to each other in any way, respectively, they are easy to manage. With the Green Wall, people are fenced off from the outside world, they have nothing to compare their life with. Created the Unified State Science, mechanical music and state poetry. Here are the titles of the works of the United State: the tragedy "Late to Work", "Flowers of Court Sentences", "Stanzas on Sexual Hygiene".
Even having suppressed the identities of the people, the One State does not feel safe, therefore, the Bureau of Guardians, the Operations Bureau with its Gas Bell, and the Great Operation are created. Informing is elevated to the rank of virtue.
The inhabitants of this state believe that life without freedom is happiness. The poet R-13 reasoned as follows: “Those two in paradise were given a choice: either happiness without freedom - or freedom without happiness; There is no third. They, boobies, chose freedom - and what: it's understandable - then for centuries they yearned for fetters. And only we again guessed how to return happiness ... ". But is "Benefactor, Machine, Cube, Gas Bell, Keepers" - this is happiness?
The government of the One State wants everyone to know about the existence of such a happy place on Earth. For this, an integral is created. “A thousand years ago, your heroic ancestors subjugated the entire globe to the authorities of the One State. You have an even more glorious feat: to integrate the infinite equation of the universe with a glass, electric, fire-breathing INTEGRAL. You have to subdue the beneficent yoke of the mind to unknown creatures that live on other planets - perhaps still in a wild state of freedom. If they do not understand that we bring them mathematically unmistakable happiness, it is our duty to make them happy. But before weapons, we test the word.” It is with the help of the word that the One State subordinates the people to its will, justifies violence and slavery, makes them believe that the absence of freedom is happiness. The government wants to do the same with other creatures, and if it doesn’t work out, then there is the Gas Bell, the Great Operation. ... In the meantime: “On behalf of the Benefactor, it is announced to all the numbers of the One State: Anyone who feels strong is obliged to compose treatises, poems , manifestos, odes or other writings about the beauty and grandeur of the United State. This will be the first load that INTEGRAL will carry. Long live the One State, long live the numbers, long live the Benefactor!” Some of these works exactly convey the slogans of the first years of the revolution - about the triumph of brotherhood, labor and freedom, about the victory of the world Revolution, about the spread of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism to everything, or at least to nearby states ... actions.
From the first pages, the author ridicules the principles of the One State: “I am free again, that is, or rather, again imprisoned in orderly, endless, Assyrian ranks”, “the most difficult and lofty love is cruelty”, “The benefactor who wisely tied our hands and feet with beneficent snares of happiness. Here, cruelty is a manifestation of love, and truly good feelings, personal qualities are crimes. People cannot simply exist, even if they are fully provided for, so sooner or later human qualities will break free. As it happened with D-503 - a mathematician who idolizes "mathematical infallible happiness", "mathematical perfect life of the United State", "square harmony". The goal of his life is “to integrate the grandiose universal equation”, “to straighten the wild curve, straighten it along the tangent - the asymptote - along the straight line. Because the line of the United State is the straight line, the wisest of the lines.” D-503 lives a very reasonable life by the standards of the United State, mechanicalness is visible in his actions. But the only thing that torments him is fantasies - the makings of a criminal. He thinks that "the instinct of unfreedom has been organically inherent in man since ancient times." D-503 tries to justify the unfreedom of citizens of the United State by mathematical methods: “Freedom and crime are as inextricably linked as ... well, like the movement of an aero and its speed: the speed of an aero = 0, and it does not move; man's freedom = 0, and he does not commit crimes. It is clear. The only way to save a person from crime is to save him from freedom. D-503 feels insignificant in relation to the entire State, but over time, the hero discovers the whole Universe inside him. To D-503, thoughts often come to mind that people are not the same, that there is something in the world that is not amenable to logic, common sense. And the hero thinks that he is not like everyone else, that he is not an ideal number. For example, he has hairy arms - "a drop of forest blood." And this human nature is not subject to the One State. After meeting I-330, D-503's life changed. The hero began to feel differently, to perceive reality differently. Something in the face of I-330 resembles an X, that is, the unknown. When talking with I, D-503's speech, usually calm and measured, begins to stray, filled with repetitions. For D-503, a new side of himself, previously unknown, opened up. “... There was no Single State, there was no me. There were only gently sharp, clenched teeth, there were eyes wide open to me - and through them I slowly entered deeper and deeper. And silence - only in the corner - thousands of miles away - drops drip in the washbasin, and I am the universe, and from drop to drop - eras, eras ... ". Love for I-330 led to a terrible "disease" - the formation of the soul. This love story runs throughout the story. The heroine of I-330 pushes D-503 out of her usual life into another reality. Their love for each other, regardless of the "pink coupons" - all this goes against the One State, saying that human nature and freedom of choice cannot be destroyed in any way.
D-503's inner world changes greatly after meeting I-330 at the Ancient House. The situation at home irritates him: “I could hardly bear this chaos. But my companion seems to have a stronger body.” “An idea came to me: after all, a person is arranged just as wildly as these ridiculous “apartments” - human heads are opaque, and only tiny windows inside: eyes. The doubt that a person should not obey comes to D-503, but he tries to drive him away. The changes that have occurred to the hero do not allow him to report to I-330. He justifies his act by the fact that he was tired, then by the fact that he was busy. Even when D-503 tried to report to I-330, he failed.
The attitude of the hero is changing, now he does not feel like a small part of the universe, but on the contrary - he feels the universe in himself. The doctor concluded: "You seem to have formed a soul." After this statement, the whole perception of the world has changed, D-503 now notices things that he did not pay attention to before. Everything that seemed wrong, strange, becomes due, without which life is wasted. “... This ridiculous “soul” is as real as my unif, as my boots – although I don’t see them now. And if boots are not a disease, why is the “soul” a disease?
So the hero enters into an irreconcilable conflict not only with the United State, but also with himself. The hero of the novel is a man with an awakening soul. And D-503 is not alone, we are talking about an "epidemic of the soul." The logical, fair United State is opposed by the awakening soul. The soul that makes a person a person capable of feeling, loving, compassionate.
All numbers in the One State are limited on all sides: movements - by the Green Wall, lifestyle - by the Tablet, scientific life - by the Unified State Science, which does not make mistakes. You can, it would seem, escape into space. But the Integral brings to other worlds "treatises, poems, manifestos, odes or other writings about the beauty and grandeur of the United State." The flight of the Integral is the desire to subordinate the Universe to the will of the One State.
As the novel progresses, the author's point of view changes. The writer, who was simply the creator of the text, becomes the creator of his own reality. Diary D-503 now becomes another character in the novel (the manuscript lies on the table, it opens, a tear falls on it O - 90, he throws his stockings I - 330 on her, the hero is forced to hide what is written from prying eyes), he now influences fate characters, including the fate of the author himself. The manuscript is read, reported about, it becomes the reason for the failure of the conspirators, the basis of assumptions I - 330 about the betrayal of D - 503, the embodiment of the internal transformation of D - 503.
“Stockings - thrown on my table, on the open 193rd page of my notes. In a hurry, I touched the manuscript, the pages fell apart and could not be put in order, and most importantly - if they were folded, anyway - there would be no real order, anyway - there would be some thresholds, pits, Xs. The fall of the diary symbolically expresses the confusion of thoughts. Falling, the manuscript crumbles into separate, unrelated fragments, thus losing its artistic integrity. After the appearance of an "incurable soul" in D - 503, the tragic story of his "death" unfolds. The emerging multidimensionality of his consciousness becomes one-dimensional with the help of the Great Operation, used in the United State as a radical method of influencing the inhabitants. Anticipating this, D - 503 says goodbye to readers: “I'm leaving - into the unknown. These are my last lines. Farewell - you, unknown, you, beloved, with whom I have lived so many pages, to whom I, who have fallen ill in soul, have shown all of myself, to the last ground screw, to the last bursting spring ... I'm leaving ”; "I can't write anymore - I don't want to anymore!".
Another protagonist of the novel, I-330, with all his behavior challenges the United State: “... I don’t want others to want for me, but I want to want it myself.” Not only D-503 falls under her influence, but also the poet R-13, and the doctor who issues fake certificates, and even one of the Guardians. And many other people feel the need for freedom: O-90 suddenly felt the need for simple human happiness, for the happiness of motherhood; a woman who rushed through the line to one of the arrested; and the thousands who tried to vote "no" on the Day of Unanimity; and those who tried to capture the Integral; and those who blew up the Wall; and those wild ones living beyond the Green Wall, miraculously surviving after the Bicentennial War, who called themselves Mephi. Zamyatin endows each of these heroes with some expressive feature: splashing lips and scissor lips, a doubly curved back and an annoying X. This shows that all people are different, that they cannot act in the same way, that is, as they are told.
The conspiracy and rebellion against the One State becomes the culminating event of man's resistance against unfreedom. This movement was led by I-330. This is a rebellion in the name of love, in the name of the right to one's own feelings and passions, in the name of a return to natural life.
The world in Zamyatin's novel is given through the perception of a person with an awakening soul. And if at the beginning of the book the author, trusting the narration to his character, nevertheless looks at him with a detached look, often laughs at him, then gradually their positions converge: the moral values that the author himself professes become more and more dear to the hero.
D - 503 unwittingly becomes a participant in the conspiracy, almost helps the rebels to seize the spaceship, but because of Yu's denunciation, the rebels' plan is revealed, and the United State finds means to finally pacify its citizens. However, in the Green Wall separating the United State from the rest of the world, there is a free space. The wall is moved, that is, the One State has to retreat, and some people manage to escape from the "benevolent yoke".
But the ending of the novel is gloomy. The rational and soulless machine of the United State overcomes resistance. An operation was developed and carried out to remove a person's fantasies, and with it all human - living experiences, imagination. At the end of the novel, D-503 is finally cured of the bouts of his illness: a “Great Operation” is performed on him - the removal of the “fantasy center”, by “triple cauterization” of X - with the rays of a “miserable brain nodule”. The mathematical organization of mankind is transferred inside the human consciousness - a kind of triumph of "genetic engineering", a revolutionary intervention of the state in the structure of the personality, in the course of its creative activity, emotional sphere, morality. The most perfect, refined forms of violence against the human "I"; destruction along with the fantasy of personal self-consciousness. “I” ceases to exist as such - it becomes only an organic cell of “we”, a grain of sand of a large collective that makes up the crowd. Becomes a victim of I - 330. She fell into the Gas Bell. O-90 is the only saved soul, she gained freedom and herself thanks to the sacred eternal duty of man, thanks to the thirst for procreation, the natural desire to have a child, and not a state "number". She goes beyond the Green Wall. The child that is to be born to her symbolizes the hope of victory over a totalitarian utopia. There, in the breach of the wall, rush more "from fifty loud, cheerful, hard-toothed." Thus, according to Zamyatin, a person is able not to break down internally, but the opposition to evil in the era of the United State is a tragic confrontation.
The last entry in the novel was already made by the “new hero”: “from the former” only handwriting has been preserved. The "new" D - 503 is absolutely happy. The relationship between the builder of the Integral and the manuscript changes. The writer does not recognize his own work: “Did I, D-503, write these two hundred and twenty pages? Have I ever felt - or imagined I feel it? The handwriting is mine. And then - the same handwriting. No nonsense, no ridiculous metaphors, no feelings: just facts. Now that “some kind of thorn has been pulled out of D-503’s head,” he again returns to a “clear” view of the world, to the original type of text.
The next day after the operation, he appeared to the Benefactor and told about everything without any moral difficulties. He calmly watched the torture inflicted on I-330 and other conspirators. The hero believes that the uprising will be crushed. “I hope we win. More: I am sure - we will win. Because the mind must win." The question remains: whose mind should win? A person with a soul or a single state?
CONCLUSION.
Among those who return to Russian literature today is Evgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin. He failed to “break through” to the reader in the 60s of the “thaw” - when the voices of Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Yesenin, Platonov, Grin, Zoshchenko, which seemed to have gone into oblivion, sounded again, when the veil over what had been created had just begun to open in the "catacomb" period in the development of our culture, and the appearance of the "Master and Margarita" made us convinced that "manuscripts do not burn." Zamyatin's work even in those years remained sealed with seven seals - it seemed so heretical to those on whom the fate of our heritage depended in those years.
The question of what phenomena, events of the 20th century was foreseen by Zamyatin arises by itself when reading his novel, because the writer not only depicted the victory of technology over man in a conditionally fantastic form (the process of the rapid development of science and science that he saw in England made the writer think about this). technology), but also managed to predict the socio-political regime, which is called totalitarian.
There is every reason to consider the novel "We" not only as a novel about a novel, as a psychological, love, philosophical novel, but also as a historical novel: the laws of the development of human history are extremely interesting to Zamyatin.
The artist, on the other hand, who is able to see the whole before the parts, the general before the particular, the main, the essential through many details, foresaw the course of Russia's social development for many decades to come. We learn on the pages of the novel "We" Soviet history - for over seventy years. “Industrialization” and “collectivization”, famine, “cultural revolution” under the control of the apparatus, political processes against “enemies of the people” and dissidents, unanimous elections, “indestructible unity of the party and people”, the cult of the Personality (I.V. Stalin), “ Cold War, the Berlin Wall, a country turned into a single Gulag archipelago and filling the camps with millions under faceless numbers: Shch - 854 (the famous hero of Solzhenitsyn - Ivan Denisovich) or Shch - 202 (A.I. Solzhenitsyn himself). Let us also recall Stalin's "brilliant" aphorisms that filled the minds of Soviet people for decades: "Technology decides everything", "Cadres decide everything", "Writers are engineers of human souls", "Life has become better, life has become more fun" - and we will understand how much in our life was predicted by Zamyatin's novel "We".
The novel "We" can be called a warning novel. A warning against the future as it will be if everything goes the way it started. These fears of the writer had serious grounds. The revolutionary society was indeed ready to reject the entire human culture, morality and psychology, namely the individual. And the new culture, new morality and psychology were presented as entirely collectivist, completely unrelated to the world of the individual. And the “new” social mass itself was presented as impersonal, devoid of individual experiences, knowing only class feelings.
It is possible that Zamyatin directly parodied these ideas. But it's not just about them. Born as a warning against social and ideological extremes, the novel "We" is important not only for its criticism of these extremes, it has not just a historical and literary significance. He continues to live, because he is involved in the most acute, not losing tension problems of the century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
1) Akimov V.M. Man and the United State: Return to E. Zamyatin. – Akimov V.N. Rereading L., 1989
2) A.N. Arkhangelsky, D.P. Buck, E.A. Shklovsky All heroes of works of Russian literature. -M.: AST, 1997.
3) Pavlovets M.G., Pavlovets T.V. E.I. Zamyatin. "We". Text analysis. Main content. Works. M.: Bustard, 2000.
4) Skorospelova E.B. Rereading the classics. Zamyatin and his novel "We". - M.: Publishing House of Moscow State University, 1998.
5) From Gorky to Solzhenitsyn: a guide for applicants to universities. 2nd ed., Corrected. and additional - M .: Higher. school, 1995
A real writer is always a thinker, seeking to look into the future, to predict the life of his descendants. But a writer is also a person who creates a system: moral values, views on history, the development of society. Literature often became a means of promoting the writer's ideas. With this, in particular, the emergence of the genre of utopia in literature is connected.
In the works of this genre, the ideal, from the point of view of the author, principle of building a society was depicted. But in parallel, the genre of dystopia is also developing. Life forced writers to think: will the results that humanity can come to be so good. In general, there is progress. That which helps a person to become the master of nature, the world of feelings, his own nature. But will this not lead to the loss of a person's individuality, to the depersonalization of the same gray mass.
Zamyatin is a writer who managed to quite accurately discern the signs of some kind of anti-progress in the surrounding reality of the first years of Soviet power. Of course, the subject of his reflections is not only technical progress, but also those social ideals that were put forward as indisputable truths. Zamyatin asks the question: what should be the future for a person to feel happy, to fulfill his hopes, to realize his ideals. One of the possible answers to this question is the famous fourth dream of Vera Pavlovna from the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky What to do.
E. Zamyatin seems to specifically repeat the description of this one of the classic utopias: his characters live as a commune in a city of glass and metal. In the novel We, in a fantastic and grotesque guise, a possible version of the society of the future appears before the reader.
The dream of the mighty of this world is given: Life should become a harmonious machine and with mechanical inevitability lead us to the desired goal. Unfortunately, in such a society there is nothing that the writer's contemporary reality does not portend. Mathematically perfect life of the United State unfolds before us. The symbolic image of the fire-breathing integral, a miracle of technical thought and at the same time a tool of the most cruel enslavement, opens the book.
Soulless technology, together with despotic power, turned man into an appendage of the machine, took away his freedom, brought him up in voluntary slavery. A world without love, without a soul, without poetry. The numberless man, deprived of a name, was inspired that our lack of freedom is our happiness and that this happiness lies in the rejection of the I and dissolution in the impersonal we. It is suggested that artistic creativity is no longer a shameless nightingale whistle, but a public service. Personal life is also considered as a state duty, carried out in accordance with the report card of sexual days. Roman E. Zamyatina warning about the double danger threatening humanity: the hypertrophied power of machines and the power of the state.
Uniformity undividedly and vigilantly dominates the life of all members of society. This is ensured by perfect technology and the watchful eyes of the keepers. Zamyatin's writing is imbued with reflections on Russian post-revolutionary reality. In it, one can guess the innermost thoughts about the possible perversions of the socialist idea that were already revealed during the life of the writer. The policy of the general construction of communism aroused the most difficult thoughts in the writer.
It provided for a purely centralization of political and economic life in the country, a series of cruel repressive measures against dissidents. Even in the first post-revolutionary years, E. Zamyatin realized that there would be no other choice and that the only model for further movement, a new version of totalitarianism, was imposed on people. Roman E.
Zamyatin acquired special significance as a warning about possible distortions of the beautifully presented idea of socialism, about the danger of deviations from the democratic path and the abuse of violence against the human person. Subsequent events in national and world history showed that the writer's anxieties were not in vain. Our people have gone through the bitter lessons of collectivization, and Stalinism, and repressions, and universal fear, and stagnation. Many scenes of the novel make you remember the recent past. Manifestation in honor of the Benefactor, semi-official, unanimous elections, guardians who follow every step of a person. But Yevgeny Zamyatin shows that in a society where everything is aimed at suppressing the individual, where the human self is ignored, where the sole power is unlimited, rebellion is possible. The ability and desire to feel, love, be free in thoughts and actions push people to fight.
But the authorities find a way out: with the help of an operation, a person’s fantasy is removed, the last thing that made him raise his head proudly, feel reasonable and strong. Still, there is hope that human dignity will not die under any regime. This hope is expressed by a woman who, with her beauty, incites to fight. But does the writer want to give his model of an ideal society. No, on the contrary, he insists that the ideal society does not exist. Life is the pursuit of perfection. And when this desire is absent, the human personality gradually begins to die.
The author of the novel We belongs to those major artists who urged us to pay attention to eternal values and not to forget about them in the context of the global historical shifts of the 20th century. At the time, the novel was not accepted. But now, works like the novel We have returned to us from oblivion, perhaps, will allow us to take a fresh look at the events of history, to comprehend the role of man in them. We are a warning against refusing to resist if they want to turn the human community into a set of cogs, replace moral values with a grandiose universal equation, and leave only one straight line of all lines.
"Society of the Future" and the Present in E. Zamyatin's Novel "We"
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Composition
"Personality and the State" in the work of Zamyatin "We".
Zamyatin's novel "We" was written in 1921, in a difficult
our country's time. Russia says goodbye to the "old world"
and building a new life. The novel is first published in
our country in 1988 in the Znamya magazine.
Zamyatin in his dystopia "We" draws the future
dark colors. Describing a society where worship
everything technical and mathematical brought to
absurdity, he seeks to warn people that
technological progress without corresponding moral
laws can do terrible harm. In his One
State, despite the high level of development
science and technology, distorted universal concepts of
good and evil, the creative principle in man is denied,
the value of the human person the author shows us
state, which is a huge well-coordinated
mechanism that works exactly according to
schedule programmed by the Tablet. Author
shows readers not the state in which it is
of individuals, but the state, where a person is only
part of the state. People in this society are petty
cogs that hold the whole structure of the One
States. All these "cogs" are deprived
human "I", and the author emphasizes this by the fact that
does not name the characters in his novel. Instead of names, he gave
them "numbers". In this novel, in my opinion, one of the main
problems is depersonalization, dehumanization, machine
of people. In the novel, personality means nothing. "I just
does not exist. "I" turned into "We", here everyone
a person is “not one”, but “one of”. Compare "I" and "We"
can be on the example of scales. Two scales: on one
gram - "I", on the other ton - "We", the One
State. A gram can't balance a ton, out
it follows that a ton is right, a gram is
responsibilities. Clear schedule down to the smallest detail
details, in which it was forgotten and not felt
own "I". The main feature of the United State is
lack of own freedom, own "I". Was
created a mechanism consisting of thousands of cogs "I". "We
let's go - one million-headed body, and in each of us -
that humble joy that molecules probably live,
atoms, phagocytes. "We" are from God, and "I" are from the devil."
Zamyatin showed a terrible situation when the attitude towards
person as "one of" causes depreciation
human life. You need to remember the episode in which
people are dying during the test of "Integral". Attitude
builders of "Integral" to the dead people: what to protect
someone alone, when he is the same as everyone else, and it is easy
is replaced by another. The depersonalization of people has led to
that all the inhabitants of the United State are similar to each other
friend. So similar that they think the same.
Zamyatin depicts in his novel the state, in
where all problems are solved. Here everyone is fed, dressed,
Everyone has their own housing, everyone has a job. Conquered and
all natural elements are subordinate to man. Besides
the state freed man from necessity
make decisions, make a choice, thereby removing from him
the heaviest burden of human existence. But people
I had to pay for "one hundred percent happiness." Behind
they had to pay for this “happiness” with the loss of personality,
rejection of fatherhood and motherhood, loss of culture,
exile outside the city, beyond the wall of wildlife, and
the main thing is lack of freedom. Total tyranny seeks
suppress and crush the personality, but, on the other hand,
depersonalization, the desire for equalization in
consumption, fear of taking responsibility
for choice, hatred for the vivid manifestations of human
individuality, intolerance to dissent,
conformism creates a breeding ground for the manifestation
all kinds of benefactors. In this totalitarian
the state is not accustomed to reckon with the opinion of everyone,
the Benefactor rules here. happiness is here
considered "pleasantly useful formula". Bliss and
envy for the inhabitants of the United State is “the numerator and
the denominator of the fraction called happiness. Total
surveillance, torture, executions are the necessary attributes of the One
States. One can draw a parallel with the fact that
happened in Russia. After the revolution of the seventeenth
years Lenin wanted to build a state in which not
there would be neither poor nor rich. To achieve this
goals, the country's leadership resorted to torture, surveillance,
links. But no deformations could destroy
the living soul of the people, to kill in it the desire for freedom,
the fullness of human existence. One of the testimonies
moreover, our literature, the guardian of the moral
non-fund of the people, their hopes, their conscience.
Other writings on this work
"without action there is no life..." VG Belinsky. (According to one of the works of Russian literature. - E.I. Zamyatin. "We".) “The great happiness of freedom should not be overshadowed by crimes against the individual, otherwise we will kill freedom with our own hands ...” (M. Gorky). (Based on one or more works of Russian literature of the 20th century.) "We" and they (E. Zamyatin) "Is happiness possible without freedom?" (based on the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We") “We” is a dystopian novel by E. I. Zamyatin. "Society of the Future" and the Present in E. Zamyatin's Novel "We" Dystopia for anti-humanity (Based on the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We") The future of humanity The protagonist of the dystopian novel by E. Zamyatin "We". The dramatic fate of the individual in a totalitarian social order (based on the novel "We" by E. Zamyatin) E.I. Zamyatin. "We". The ideological meaning of the novel by E. Zamyatin "We" The ideological meaning of Zamyatin's novel "We" Personality and totalitarianism (based on the novel by E. Zamyatin "We") Moral problems of modern prose. According to one of the works of your choice (E.I. Zamyatin "We"). Society of the future in the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We" Why is E. Zamyatin's novel called "We"? Predictions in the works "Pit" by Platonov and "We" by Zamyatin Predictions and warnings of the works of Zamyatin and Platonov ("We" and "The Pit"). The problems of the novel by E. Zamyatin "We" The problems of the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We" Roman "We" E. Zamyatina's novel "We" as a dystopian novel E. I. Zamyatin’s novel “We” is a dystopian novel, a warning novel A dystopian novel by E. Zamyatin "We" The meaning of the title of the novel by E. I. Zamyatin "We" Social forecast in E. Zamyatin's novel "We" E. Zamyatin's social forecast and the reality of the 20th century (based on the novel "We") Composition based on the novel by E. Zamyatin "We" Happiness of the "number" and the happiness of a person (based on the novel "We" by E. Zamyatin) The theme of Stalinism in literature (based on the novels by Rybakov "Children of the Arbat" and Zamyatin "We") What brings together Zamyatin's novel "We" and Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel "The History of a City"? I-330 - characteristics of a literary hero D-503 (Second Option) - characterization of a literary hero O-90 - characterization of a literary hero The main motive of Zamyatin's novel "We" The central conflict, problems and the system of images in the novel "We" by E. I. Zamyatin A dystopian novel in Russian literature (based on the works of E. Zamyatin and A. Platonov) Unification, leveling, regulation in the novel "We" Happiness of "numbers" and happiness of a person (essay-miniature based on the novel "We" by E. Zamyatin) The diversity of the world and the artificial "formula of happiness" in the novel "We" Life in paradise? (the ideological subtext of the dystopian novel by E. Zamyatin "We") Reflections on the dystopia of Zamyatin Literary work by Evgeny Zamyatin "We" Dramatic fate of the individual in a totalitarian social order (based on the novel "We" by E. Zamyatin)1.The closed model of the world in the novel by E.I. Zamyatin "We".
The novel "We" is not only the most significant work of Yevgeny Zamyatin, but also the most vivid embodiment of the dystopian genre in Russian literature. The beginning of the 20th century, and especially the October Revolution, gave birth to new utopian illusions in the minds of people. It seemed to many who lived in that beautiful and tragic era that the revolution, like a locomotive, would instantly drive humanity to the “socialist paradise”. That is why the elements of utopia are so tangible in the Soviet literature of the first post-October years. But even in those years, more insightful artists discovered the inhuman meaning of the realization of a great dream, the enormity of attempts to “drive humanity to happiness with an iron hand.” The events of the following decades confirmed the correctness of their predictions. The twentieth century, instead of the much-desired harmony between man and the world, brought world wars and bloody revolutions, totalitarian regimes and environmental disasters, the rapid growth of industrial production, which turned people into a kind of mechanisms. This century, like no other, has devalued the individual human life.
Renouncing today, the revolutionary romantics created an ideal model for tomorrow. Zamyatin models the future based on the features of the present. What future can a person dream of, before whom the present has set the only task - to physically survive; who faced the threat of starvation and physical violence face to face?
Zamyatin answers this question with a book in which, contrary to all the utopian concepts of contemporary Soviet literature, he creates a model of the world of the future, in which all material problems have been solved. Man in this world knows no fear, no hunger, no cold. There the flesh triumphs, and the equality of universal satiety is achieved by eliminating individual freedom. And it is no coincidence that the country depicted in the novel "We" is surrounded by the Green Wall. The country of artificial happiness resembles a closed island, fenced off from the whole universe. The society depicted in the novel has reached material perfection and stopped in its development.
2. The appearance and principles of the United State.
The action of the novel, moved forward several centuries, takes place in a certain United State, sheltered from the "wild" space by the Green Wall, cast from "the most unshakable, eternal glass", at a moment when the inhabitants of a fantastic city have to go beyond their own space and "beneficial to subjugate the yoke of the mind to unknown creatures living on other planets.
The motif of glass symbolizes a paradoxical combination of the forced “publicity” of existence, life with the disunity of people, since glass not only reveals the life of another to the eye, but also serves as an invisible border, an obstacle that seems accessible to the eye does not mean kinship, even a simple acquaintance. Glass is associated with the idea of fragility and fragility - another reminder of the artificiality, man-made of the United State. Fragility motivates the motives of simplification: a number, instead of a name, a gray-blue unif as clothing for everyone, walks in ranks, love for pink coupons - such is the grotesque expression of the idea of simplification, on the basis of which it is possible to organize, with the help of which the “glass” is fragile. , artificial - the world protects itself from death, just as it does, according to the version of Russian literature, the "most reduced" city of Russian history.
Already on the first pages of the novel, E. Zamyatin creates a model of an ideal state, from the point of view of utopians, where the long-awaited harmony of public and personal was found, where all citizens finally found the desired happiness.
“As always, the Musical Factory sang the March of the United State with all its pipes. In measured rows, four at a time, enthusiastically beating time, there were numbers - hundreds, thousands of numbers, in bluish unifs, with gold plaques on their chests - the state number of each and every one. And I - we four - one of the countless waves in this mighty stream. Note that in the fictional country created by Zamyatin's imagination, not people live, but numbers, devoid of names, dressed in unifs (that is, uniforms). Externally similar, they are no different from each other and internally. It is no coincidence that the hero exclaims with such pride, admiring the transparency of the dwellings: "We have nothing to hide from each other." “We are the happiest arithmetic mean,” echoes another hero, the state poet R-13. The sameness, mechanicalness distinguishes all their vital activity, the prescriptions of the Tablet of Hours. These are the characteristic features of the depicted world. To deprive the opportunity to perform the same functions day after day means to deprive happiness, doom to suffering, as evidenced by the story “About the Three Freedmen. This story is about how three Numers, in the form of experience, were released from work for a month: do what you want, go where you want. The unfortunate loitered near the place of habitual labor and looked inside with hungry eyes; they stopped in the squares and for whole hours they did those movements that at a certain time of the day were already the need of their body: they sawed and planed the air, rattled with invisible hammers, thumped into invisible blanks. And finally, on the tenth day, they could not stand it: holding hands. We entered the water and, to the sounds of the March, plunged deeper and deeper. Until the water stopped their torment...
Universal "mathematical infallible happiness" reigned in the One State. It is provided by the United State itself. But the happiness that it gives people is only material, and most importantly, in general, identical and obligatory forms for all. Everyone gets satiety, peace, occupation according to his abilities, full satisfaction of all physical needs - and for this he must give up everything that distinguishes him from others: from living feelings, his own aspirations, natural affections and his own motives, in a word, from his own personality. The very concept of "man" is replaced by the concept of "numbers", and everyone wears gold plaques with assigned numbers on their chests. Human life has ceased to be the highest value, which is also evidenced by the episode of the test of the Integral: the narrator calls ten numbers that died during the test an infinitesimal of the third order. Material problems were solved during the Bicentennial War. The victory over hunger was won due to the death of 0.8 of the population. But the victory in the Bicentennial War has another important significance. The city conquers the village, and man is completely alienated from mother earth, now content with oil food.
As for spiritual demands, the state did not follow the path of their satisfaction, but the path of their suppression and limitation. The One State has deprived a person of personal attachments, feelings of kinship, for any strong ties, except for the connection with the One State, are criminal. Despite the seeming monolithic nature, the rooms are absolutely disunited, alienated from each other, and therefore easily manageable.
The Green Wall plays a big role in creating the illusion of happiness. It is easier to convince a person that he is happy by protecting him from the whole world, not allowing him to come into contact with other forms of life, taking away the opportunity to compare and analyze.
The state subjugated not only space, but also the time of each number, creating the Hourly Tablet. It took away from its citizens the ability for intellectual and artistic creativity, replacing it with the Unified State Science, mechanical music and state poetry. The element of creativity is forcibly tamed and placed at the service of society. It is worth paying attention to the titles of poetic books that testify to art in this world: Flowers of Court Sentences, the tragedy Late to Work, Stanzas on Sexual Hygiene. However, even having solved all these problems, the United State does not feel completely safe. It is no coincidence that a whole system of suppression of dissent has been created in this country. This is the Bureau of Guardians, the Operations Bureau with its monstrous Gas Bell, and the Great Operation, and whistleblowing elevated to the rank of virtue.
Violence against a person does not cause a natural pain reaction in people, but delight. This is explained by the fact that the One State has a weapon more terrible than the Gas Bell. And the weapon is the word. It is the word that can not only subordinate a person to someone else's will, but also form a special type of consciousness, justify violence and slavery, make a person believe that lack of freedom is happiness.
Confirmation of the ideas of the United State sounds in the words of R13. He finds it in the religion of the ancients, that is, in Christianity, interpreting it in his own way: “Those two in paradise were given a choice: either happiness without freedom - or freedom without happiness; There is no third. They, boobies, chose freedom - and what: it's understandable - then for centuries they yearned for fetters. And as soon as we figured out again how to return happiness ... Benefactor, Machine, Cube, Gas Bell, Keepers - all this is good, all this is majestic, beautiful, noble, sublime, crystal clear. Because it protects our lack of freedom - that is, our happiness.
On the first page of the novel, an image appears that will become central in it and acquire a special symbolic meaning. This is the image of the Integral. The integral is an important detail belonging to the science fiction plan of Zamyatin's work. This is a space projectile capable of breaking out of the near-Earth atmosphere, reaching other worlds, bringing there the Good News about the existence of the One State and, with the help of absolute knowledge, which this man-made paradise has, re-create, "integrate" the Universe, which is still in a state of "wild freedom". ". “You have to subdue the beneficent yoke of the mind to unknown creatures that live on other planets - perhaps still in a wild state of freedom. If they do not understand that we bring them mathematically infallible happiness, it is our duty to make them happy.” “Newspaper literature of the distant and gloomy future, word for word, recreates the slogans of the first years of the revolution - about the victory of the world Revolution, about the spread of the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism to all or at least nearby states, about the triumph of brotherhood, labor and freedom ... There was also this:“ With an iron hand, we will drive humanity into a happy future!” It is around the Integral that the main events are tied up, the love, adventurous, psychological plots of the novel are built.
But the image of the integral is not only psychological, it introduces into the novel a discussion about the possibility of creating a "new world" and a "new man". having received an additional impetus in a revolutionary situation, did not subside throughout the 20s of the twentieth century and continues, one might say, to this day.
Man and power. What is it: eternal opponents or allies for centuries? And in general, is a person capable of living on his own, without a “guiding and guiding” hand. The question is not only from the field of philosophy, it is enough to remember how much blood was shed because of this question. From ancient times, a person was torn from the fetters of power: he rebelled, burned, killed, and, calmed by iron and blood, endured oppression even more difficult and bitter. And always, especially in the twentieth century, there were people who proclaimed their power as absolute and infallible, creating a myth about " divinity" of their destiny. It was this myth that formed the basis of the image of the Benefactor in the novel by E.I. Zamyatin "We", an image that is largely visionary. After all, the Benefactor is no longer a person - it is a symbol, a symbol of power. No wonder he doesn't have a name. No name, no personality. The benefactor is always alone, he has no friends, no loved ones, only his double. God is always one - that is the motto of such people. But man is not God, he can and must make mistakes. Only the man-god has no one to tell about it. Only the man-god will never admit this to himself. And the crowd, confident in the wisdom of the leader, will blindly follow him.
This vicious circle is difficult to break. But you can. Only those who are able to think, to disagree, to look for answers, and not to take them ready-made from the books and speeches of the Benefactor, are able to break this mythical halo of divinity. They will always be. In the novel, a similar thing happened on the day of Unanimity, when suddenly there were numbers who voted against the sole ruler against the Benefactor - who is against?
It has always been the most majestic moment of the holiday to sit still, joyfully bowing our heads to the beneficent yoke of Numer of Numers. But then I was horrified... I raised my eyes - ... saw: thousands of hands waved up - "against" - and fell!!!". There are few such people, but they will always be. For such myths - only myths. Lies are just lies.
God is only human. Such people were always afraid of the earthly "gods", because it was they who overthrew their thrones. After all, there is nothing more terrible for volumes of myths than one word of truth. And one is capable of expressing the fantasy of millions for this word, while others are able to give their lives. The myth is always based on fear and violence, the truth is always good. This is what Zamyatin wanted to say with his Benefactor.
3. Narrator, number D - 503, and his spiritual illness.
At the very beginning of the novel, we see how delighted the hero-narrator is with the daily march to the sounds of the Musical Plant: he experiences absolute unity with the rest, feels solidarity with his own kind.
The narrator in Zamyatin's novel, number D - 503, is "only one of the mathematicians of the One State", but it is precisely a mathematician who idolizes "square harmony", "mathematical infallible happiness", "the mathematically perfect life of the One State", the apotheosis of "logical thinking". His cherished dream is “to integrate the grandiose universal equation”, “to straighten the wild curve, straighten it along the tangent - the asymptote - along the straight line. Because the line of the United State is the straight line, the wisest of the lines.” The ideal of life behavior is “reasonable mechanicalness”, everything that goes beyond it is “wild fantasy”, and “fits of inspiration” are an unknown form of epilepsy. It is fantasies that frighten the Zamyatin hero most of all, weigh him down: these are “criminal instincts”, especially tenacious in the “human breed”, violating, exploding from within the “algebraic world” of the number D - 503. All fantasies, any manifestations of the miserable freedom of the “I”, expressed in the slightest deviation from countless prohibitions, legalizations, the daily routine, are perceived by the builder of the Integral as placing oneself in the position: - 1, as a transformation into an irrational, imaginary number.
Most often, Zamyatin puts into the mouth of the protagonist evidence of the truth of the happiness of all numbers, who is constantly looking for more and more confirmation of the correctness of the One State. He finds an aesthetic justification for lack of freedom: “Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is not a free movement, because the whole deep meaning of the dance lies precisely in absolute, aesthetic subordination, ideal non-freedom. An engineer, he looks at the dance from this point of view, the inspiration in the dance allows him to conclude only that "the instinct of freedom has been organically inherent in man since ancient times."
But more often, these proofs are based on the language of exact sciences familiar to him: “Freedom and crime are inextricably linked, like ... well, like the movement of an aero and its speed ...
It is clear. The only way to save a person from crime is to save him from freedom. Likening the laws of human life to the laws of Physics, the hero justifies the lack of rights of an individual, and the happiness of being like everyone else: ton is exactly the same thing. Hence the distribution: a ton of rights, a gram of duty; and the natural path from insignificance to greatness: forget that you are a gram and feel like a millionth part of a ton ... ".
Zamyatin depicts the spiritual evolution of the hero, traces how D - 503 comes from realizing himself as a microbe in this world to the feeling of the whole universe inside himself. The hero is haunted by noses, which, for all the same numbers, retain different shapes; personal hours that everyone spends in their own way and much more. And although the hero strives to drive away these inappropriate thoughts, in the depths of consciousness, he guesses that there is something in the world that is not amenable to logic, reason. Moreover, in the very appearance of D - 503 there is something that prevents him from feeling like an ideal number - hairy hands, "a drop of forest blood." Thus, in D - 503 there were tiny rudiments of human nature, not subject to the One State. However, turbulent changes begin to occur to him from the moment when I - 330 enters his life.
The first feeling of mental illness comes to the hero when he listens to Scriabin's Music performed by her. Perhaps this music was for Zamyatin not only a symbol of spirituality, but also a symbol of irrationality, the unknowability of human nature, the embodiment of harmony, not verified by algebra, that force that makes the most secret strings of the soul sound.
The main detail of the portrait I - 330 in the perception of the hero is the X, formed by the folds near the mouth and eyebrows. X for mathematics is a symbol of the unknown. Thus, clarity is replaced by uncertainty, clear wholeness is replaced by painful duality. The hero's perception of the world is also bifurcated. The clear cloudless sky gradually turns into a heavy cast-iron sky in the hero's mind. The speech of the hero also changes. Usually logically built, it becomes confused, full of repetitions and inconsistencies. And the point is not only in confusion, in the emotional extreme stress experienced by the hero, but also in the fact that the words of love, jealousy are unfamiliar to him. D - 503 is accustomed to relationships with women as a "pleasant and useful function of the body", as a duty to the United State. Loving the I - 330 is something else entirely.
The love story of D - 503 to I - 330 may seem purely personal, private against the background of collisions full of significance in the state of the future construction of the Integral and a conspiracy against it. lIo it is not by chance that it permeates the entire narrative. It is in her, this authentic human drama, that Zamyatin's main idea finds a figurative embodiment - his anxiety about a person, his hopes and doubts about a brighter future.
In fact, what happens to the hero of Zamyatin is something that is forever repeated on earth, and repeated many times in literature: a beautiful, alluring woman pushes him out of the usual rut of the generally accepted life into another reality, into a circle of unknown joys and anxieties, which appears dangerous and enticing. simultaneously. However, for this world in which Zamyatin's heroes exist, this is not just another drama of the meeting of a man and a woman - it is a shock to its very foundations, a refutation of its fundamental prohibitions on the private life of "numbers". And Zamyatin's ordinary earthly history is filled with deep meaning. The love of two for each other, regardless of the “pink coupons” and the Table of Sexual Days, is a manifestation of true being in the world, organized and emasculated by the “beneficent yoke of the mind”, this is the message that human existence inevitably exists outside the United State and never will be defeated.
The scenes of love meetings, which are key in the narrative, combine emotional, sensual intensity and a clear, as if graphic, verified drawing: “She was in a light, saffron-yellow, ancient dress. It was a thousand times angrier than if she was without everything. Two sharp points - through a thin fabric, smoldering pink - two coals through the ashes. Two tenderly round knees...” This is not eroticism - this is eternally living human nature acting in its bodily fullness.
A nervous, excited story about love experiences D - 503 is constantly intersected by a story about the construction of the Integral, about everyday life and celebrations of that world ruled by the United State with its merciless logic of mathematical equations, physical constants, and proof theorems. All this is stated in a dry and strict language, as it were, of a report, a reportage. The verbal fabric itself here conveys an atmosphere of an almost mechanical existence devoid of joys and passions. AND at the same time, the author's irony is guessed here, a hidden mockery of the social structure, which makes people simply functional units of the labor collective. The right of each number to any number was for him proof of the equality, sameness, interchangeability of people. Loving the I - 330 is something else entirely. “... There was no Single State, there was no me. There were only gently sharp, clenched teeth, there were eyes wide open to me - and through them I slowly entered deeper and deeper. And silence - only in the corner - thousands of miles away - drops drip in the washbasin, and I am the universe, and from drop to drop - eras, eras ... ". There is a radical change in the attitude of the hero. He does not feel himself a particle of the universe at this moment, but vice versa - he feels the universe in himself. “After that, the doctor makes a diagnosis: “Apparently, your soul has formed.” The plane, the mirror surface become voluminous. The familiar two-dimensional world collapses. What seemed irrational suddenly becomes a reality, only different, invisible. “... This ridiculous "soul" is just as real as my unif, like my boots - although I don't see them now. And if the boots are not a disease, why is the "soul" a disease?"
The feeling of loss of balance is further aggravated in the hero of the novel in connection with a visit to the Ancient House. And the cloud on the surface of the sky, and the opaque doors, and the chaos inside the house, which the hero can hardly endure - all this confuses him, makes him think about something that never occurred to him: “... after all, a person is arranged in the same way wildly, like these ridiculous "apartments" - human heads are opaque; and only tiny windows inside: the eyes." The fact that he does not inform on I-330 testifies to the profound changes that have occurred to the hero. True, with his usual logic, he tries to justify his act by objective circumstances (illness, the fact that he was detained in the Medical Bureau), and yet the usual clarity of thought has been lost.
After the appearance of an "incurable soul" in D - 503, the tragic story of his "death" unfolds. The multidimensionality of his consciousness that had arisen is reduced to one-dimensionality with the help of the Great Operation, used in the United State as a radical method of "ideological" influence on the inhabitants and a general answer to all questions asked by D - 503. Anticipating this, D - 503 says goodbye to readers: "I I'm leaving for the unknown. These are my last lines. Farewell - you, unknown, you, beloved, with whom I have lived so many pages, to whom I, who have fallen ill in soul, have shown all of myself, to the last ground screw, to the last bursting spring ... I'm leaving ”; "I can't write anymore - I don't want to anymore!"
4. "The resistance of human nature."
With all his behavior he defies the One State I -330. Not accepting the general “butter” happiness, she declares: “... I don’t want others to want for me, but I want to want myself.” Not only D-503 falls under her influence, but also the loyal poet R-13 (remember his pale face and trembling lips on the day of execution), and the doctor who issues fake certificates, and even one of the Guardians. a poet who wrote blasphemous poetry. And even 0-90, so weak and defenseless, suddenly felt the need for simple human happiness, for the happiness of motherhood, which she is denied by a single state, because 0-90 is 10 cm below the established Maternal Norm .
And how many more! And the woman who rushed through the lines to one of the arrested, and those thousands who tried to vote "no" on the Day of Unanimity, and those who tried to capture the Integral, and those who blew up the Wall, finally, those wild ones living beyond Zelena The wall, miraculously surviving after the Bicentennial War, calling themselves Mephi.
Zamyatin endows each of these heroes with some expressive feature: splashing lips and scissor lips, a doubly curved back and an annoying X. A whole chain of associations is caused by the epithet "round", associated with the image 0-90: arises. a feeling of something homely, calm, peaceful; the circle is repeated twice even in her issue. The culmination of human nature's resistance to mechanical prosperity is a conspiracy against the One State and an uprising. They are headed by I - 330 - the woman whom the hero loved. This is a rebellion in the name of love, in the name of the right to one's own feelings and passions, in the name of a return to natural life.
So, the One State, its absurd logic in the novel is opposed by the awakening soul, that is, the ability to feel, love, suffer. The soul, which makes a person a person, a person. The United State could not kill a person's spiritual, emotional beginning. So the hero enters into an irreconcilable conflict not only with the United State, but also with himself. The feeling of illness struggles with the unwillingness to recover, the awareness of duty to society - with love for I - 330, reason - with the soul, dry mathematical logic - with unpredictable human nature.
The world in Zamyatin's novel is given through the perception of a person with an awakening soul. And if at the beginning of the book the author, trusting the narration to his character, still looks at him with a detached look, often ironically at him, then gradually their positions converge: the moral values that the author himself professes become more and more dear to the hero. And the hero is not alone. It is no coincidence that the doctor speaks of an "epidemic of the soul."
D - 503 unwittingly becomes a participant in the conspiracy, almost helps the rebels to capture the spaceship, but thanks to Yu's denunciation, the rebels' plan is revealed and the United State finds the means to finally pacify its subjects. However, a gap appears in the Green Wall that separates the United State from the rest of the space. The wall is being moved, that is, the United State has to retreat, and some people manage to escape from the "benevolent yoke".
But the ending of the novel is gloomy. The rational and soulless machine of the United State overcomes resistance. An operation to remove a person's fantasies, and with it all human - dissatisfaction, live experiences, and imagination, has been developed and is being carried out without exception. So at the end of the novel, D - 503 is finally cured of the bouts of his illness: they perform the “Great Operation” on him - the removal of the “fantasy center”, through"triple cauterization" X - with the rays of a "miserable brain nodule". The mathematical organization of mankind is transferred inside the human consciousness - a kind of triumph of "genetic engineering", a revolutionary intervention of the state in the structure of the personality, in the course of its creative activity, emotional sphere, morality. The most perfect, refined forms of violence against the human "I"; destruction along with the fantasy of personal self-consciousness. “I” ceases to exist as such - it becomes only an organic cell of “we”, a grain of sand of a large collective that makes up the crowd. Becomes a victim of I - 330. She ended up in Gazovy Bell. 0-90 - the only soul that was saved, gained freedom and itself thanks to the sacred eternal duty of man, thanks to the thirst for procreation, the natural desire to have a child, and not a state "number". She goes beyond the Green Wall. The child that is to be born to her symbolizes the hope of victory over a totalitarian utopia. There, in the breach of the wall, rush more "from fifty loud, cheerful, hard-toothed." Thus, according to Zamyatin, a person is able not to break down internally, but the opposition to evil in the era of the collapse of humanism is a tragic confrontation.
The last entry in the novel was already made by the “new hero”: “from the former” only handwriting has been preserved. The "new" D - 503 is absolutely happy. The relationship between the lobotomized Integral builder and the manuscript changes. The writer does not recognize his own work: “Did I, D - 503, write these two hundred and twenty pages? Have I ever felt - or imagined I feel it? The handwriting is mine. And then - the same handwriting. No nonsense, no ridiculous metaphors, no feelings: just facts. Now, back to the text.
The next day after the operation, he appeared to the Benefactor and told about everything without any moral difficulties. He calmly watched the torture to which I - 330 and other conspirators were subjected. The hero believes that the uprising will be crushed. “I hope we win. More: I am sure - we will win. Because the mind must win."
Conclusion.
Among those who return to Russian literature today is Evgeny Zamyatin. He failed to “break through” to the reader in the 60s of the “thaw” - when the voices of Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Yesenin, Platonov, Grin, Zoshchenko, which seemed to have gone into oblivion, sounded again, when the veil over what was created in "catacomb" period in the development of our culture, and the appearance of "Master and Margarita" made us convinced that "manuscripts do not burn." Zamyatin's work even in those years remained sealed with seven seals - it seemed so heretical to those on whom the fate of our heritage depended in those years.
The question of what phenomena, events of the twentieth century foresaw Zamyatin, arises by itself when reading his novel, because the writer not only depicted the victory of technology over man in a conditionally fantastic form (the process of the rapid development of science and science that he saw in England made the writer think about this). technology), but also managed to predict the socio-political regime, which is called totalitarian.
There is every reason to consider the novel "We" not only as a novel about a novel, as an adventurous, psychological, love, philosophical novel, but also as a historical novel: the laws of the development of human history are extremely interesting to Zamyatin.
The artist, on the other hand, who is able to see the whole before the parts, the general before the particular, the main, the essential through many details, foresaw the course of Russia's social development for many decades to come. We recognize on the pages of the novel "We" the milestones of Soviet history - for over seventy years. "Industrialization" and "collectivization", famine, "cultural revolution" under the control of the state apparatus, political processes against the defeat of the next real or imaginary opponents of the general line, unanimous elections, "indestructible unity of the party and people", the cult of the Benefactor (I.V. Stalin), the “bicentennial” cold war, the “Iron Curtain” and the Berlin Wall, a country turned into a single archipelago of the GU LAG and filling the camps with millions under faceless numbers: Shch - 854 (the famous hero of Solzhenitsyn - Ivan Denisovich) or Shch - 202 (himself A.I. Solzhenitsyn). Let us also recall Stalin's "brilliant" aphorisms that filled the minds of Soviet people for decades: "Technology decides everything", "Cadres decide everything", "Writers are engineers of human souls", "Life has become better, life has become more fun" - and we will understand how much in our lives was predicted by Zamyatin's novel We.
The novel "We" can be called a warning novel. A warning against the future as it will be if everything goes the way it started. These fears of the writer had serious grounds. The revolutionary society was indeed ready to reject the entire human culture, morality and psychology precisely as individualistic. And the new "proletarian" culture, the new morality and psychology were presented as entirely collectivist, completely unrelated to the world of the individual. And the “new” proletarian mass itself was presented as impersonal, devoid of individual experiences, knowing only class feelings.
It is possible that Zamyatin directly parodied these ideas. But it's not just about them. Born as a warning against social and ideological extremes, the novel "We" is important not only for its criticism of these extremes, it has not just a historical and literary significance. He continues to live, because he is involved in the most acute, not losing tension problems of the century.
Written in 1920, Zamyatin's novel since 1921 has been widely circulated in handwritten lists - so wide that literary criticism of the 20s polemicized on magazine pages with this not yet published novel. This novel is one of the first in a series of dystopias of the twentieth century. These are works about the future, which depict it by no means as ideal and bright. They predict a social structure in which the human person will be devalued, suppressed by the power of machines or political dictatorship. John Orwell's novel seems especially close to Zamyatin's "We". However, the author himself claimed that he got acquainted with Zamyatin's book after he had written his own. Apparently, this is indeed the case and testifies, first of all, how sensitively and accurately the free writer's thought reacted to the danger lurking in socialist utopias about the ideal structure of human society.
There is a point of view that Zamyatin's novel was inspired not only by the realities after October Russia, that Zamyatin warned not only and not so much about the danger of the coming totalitarianism, but even more about the danger of the growing power of things, technology, progress. There is no point in arguing about it. Zamyatin really saw the other side of Western civilization. Evidence can serve, for example, full of irony story "Islanders", written in England and about England. And yet, in 1920, in Russia tormented by war communism, Zamyatin was worried, presumably, not by the future power of things and machines over people, but already in those days by the power of a totalitarian state advancing on a person. He understood that she was a more real and more dangerous threat to the human future. And the main point of his warning is directed precisely against any form of dictatorship. Machines, the world of things in its anti-utopia, are only a tool for the United State. Zamyatin imagined, of course, that they themselves did not pose a danger: it was important what they served.