Best writings: prose of the 19th century. Bunkovskaya Z.P.

Due to the presence of various programs, especially for schools with an in-depth study of literature, gymnasiums and lyceums of a humanitarian profile, indicating the complication of the literary education of schoolchildren, the deepening of their scientific and theoretical orientations, understanding the Russian literary process of the middle of the 19th century acquires a special role.

In the senior classes, the history of Russian literature is studied, the features of the literary process: art world literature of the 40-50s of the XIX century; the development of Russian literature in the 1940s and 1970s; the problem of the formation of Russian literary criticism different ideological and aesthetic orientations; formation of directions, creative groups writers (literary schools); the problem of the nationality of literature, as well as the typology of realism and the individual originality of the writer (“the artistic world of the writer”) 1 .

Consideration of the literary process of the 60s implies familiarity with the work of democratic writers: N.V. Uspensky, V.A. Sleptsova, F.M. Reshetnikova, A.I. Levitova. Students should be well aware that the pictures folk life reproduced not only by N.A. Nekrasov in his poem "To whom it is good to live in Russia" (a program work), but also by other writers of the time, who create a broad picture of people's life. The peasant theme was dominant in literature during these years, which is a kind of sign of the times.

The manual reveals the origins of democratic prose in Russian realism in the development of the theme of the peasantry, in connection with which attention is drawn to the role of the natural school and its representatives. In addition to writers known to students - I.S. Turgenev, A.N. Ostrovsky, N.A. Nekrasova, I.A. Goncharov, it seems necessary to turn to the work of V.I. Dahl, D.V. Grigorovich, A.F. Pisemsky, P.I. Melnikov-Pechersky, whose works make it possible to realize many aspects of the peasant life in Russia, to note the role of A.N. Ostrovsky in common process national ethnology, emphasize the ethnological interests of the playwright. Such writers as P.I. Yakushkin, S.V. Maksimov, F.D. Nefedov - collectors, folklorists, ethnographers - whose works, based on folk culture, represent a unique phenomenon in Russian literature and make a significant contribution to the aesthetic education of schoolchildren, their introduction to the originality of the spiritual essence of the people, to the origins of moral aesthetic values.

The allowance is considered in accordance with the requirements school curriculum features of the Russian literary process of the middle of the 19th century, democratic prose, represented by individual works by V.A. Sleptsova, F.M. Reshetnikova, N.V. Uspensky, G.I. Uspensky, A.I. Levitova, S.V. Maksimova, P.I. Yakushkin, the features of democratic prose and its originality are clarified. The manual draws attention for the first time to the folklore and ethnographic orientation of the democratic prose of the sixties. It characterizes the specifics of the Russian literary process of the 50-60s of the XIX century and the features of democratic prose as artistic phenomenon, are given biographical information by writers, analysis of their works, control questions and tasks, a list of recommended literature for independent reading and study.

The cycle of short stories "Dark Alleys" was Bunin's attempt to settle the triple score - with modernism and modernists, with Nabokov and with his own past.

Bunin's dispute with modernism and modernists lasted more than half a century. From the very beginning of his journey in literature, the writer did not consider himself a modernist. Bunin's initially bitter hostility to Russian modernists was the result of his difficult entry into literature in the late 19th century. The reasons for Bunin's dislike of the modernists are partly rooted in his origins, his youth, and his first encounters with the Symbolists in Moscow and St. Petersburg at the turn of the century. Let us also recall Bunin's close relationship with the neo-realists, with the Sreda group, which included Leonid Andreev, Maxim Gorky, Nikolai Teleshov, the Wanderer, Evgeny Chirikov, who outwardly developed the representative-realistic and naturalistic traditions of classical Russian prose. Bunin hated the idea of ​​modernism as literary direction- and especially Russian symbolism, considering itself the last bastion of the classical tradition. As far as we can judge from Bunin's unfinished book "On Chekhov", he inherited the disdain for Russian modernists precisely from Chekhov, who called them "the other camp." Bunin especially liked to recall the following words of Chekhov: "What decadents they are - these are the heaviest men."

From the very beginning, Bunin associated modernism not with the search for new forms, but with a new system of public behavior, associating Russian modernists with gypsy lyrics and Alexander Blok's Carmen, with the theosophical movement, with the Vyacheslav Ivanov Tower, later with the Stray Dog cabaret, with what he preferred to consider aesthetic and ethical "perversions". He despised the open modernist innovators - Bely, Blok and Sologub - both as individuals and as writers. (This is obvious not only from Bunin's letters and diaries, but also from his Memoirs, where one of the leitmotifs is the failure of Russian modernists and especially symbolists.)

Rejecting Blok, Bely, Sologub and other Russian modernists, Bunin presented himself to the reading public as the bearer of the tradition of the 19th century, the tradition of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Chekhov. It is now difficult to judge to what extent anti-modernism was Bunin's posture, and to what extent it was Bunin's social position. But it is obvious that the role of the militant guardian of the Russian classical tradition prevented Bunin from realizing his own "hidden modernism". Let's clarify the terminology: "open" Russian modernists sought to develop their own innovative stylistic methods in order to keep up with the cataclysms of the era (like Bely or Sologub) or to preserve the disappearing culture of Russia (like Remizov). Obsessed with striving for ultimate stylistic perfection, Bunin brought the stylistic conventions of Russian classical prose before the highest degree voltage. In addition, Bunin consistently violated such thematic taboos in Russian literature of the 19th century as the description of sex and the female body. This was Bunin's hidden modernism. I recall the words of Oleg Mikhailov, who considered "Dark Alleys" to be Bunin's controversy with the "flagships of Russian realism."

How to understand Bunin's selective blindness to the assessments of his contemporaries? Bunin, of course, knew that some critics considered him one of the leading representatives of modernism of that time. For example, in a 1939 article, one of the most talented émigré culturologists, Vladimir Weidle, ranked Bunin's name on a par with Marcel Proust, André Gide, Thomas Mann, Miguel de Unamuno, William Butler Yeats, Stefan George, and Rainer Maria Rilke. But Bunin was not blind to Nabokov's latent modernism, especially pronounced in his late Russian prose, where Nabokov combines nineteenth-century narrative aspirations with his own metaphysics. Moreover, Bunin perceived Nabokov's prose of the late 1930s (including "Invitation to the Execution", "The Gift", "Spring in Fialta", "Visit to the Museum", "Cloud, Lake, Tower" and other novels and stories) as a departure from the classical tradition that he tried to preserve in exile.

And finally, in "Dark Alleys" Bunin relies on autobiographical material - not only from the writer's provincial youth that has sunk into oblivion, but also from his recent emigrant past. Bunin never recovered from his love for Galina Kuznetsova and her departure from his life. Many of the heroines of "Dark Alleys", including those who appear in the stories "Heinrich" and "Clean Monday", were written off from Bunin's last lover. This required the choice of a form that would crown Bunin's entire career as a prose writer and would allow him to address the issues that were the essence of his creative quest. Desire, the riddle of the female body, love and its tragic consequences - this is the thematic core of the book.

In "Dark Alleys" Bunin returned to an idea that already arises in his 1915 story "Grammar of Love". Creating the grammar of the Russian love story, which will summarize his highest formal achievements and present his entire thematic repertoire in a concise form, Bunin was ahead of the theoretical ideas about the “grammar of narration”. Literary critics, among whom, first of all, the narratologist Tsvetan Todorov, turned to the problems of narrative grammar in the 1960s.

Bunin began work on the future collection in 1937, even before the outbreak of World War II, and managed to publish five stories in " latest news». Most of stories was written in Grasse during the war. The first edition of Dark Alleys was published in New York in 1943 and included eleven stories. The first complete edition appeared in Paris in 1946 and included thirty-eight stories. In his literary testament, Bunin requested that two more post-war stories be added to the 1946 edition. In the final version, "Dark Alleys" is a collection of forty stories, divided into three unequal parts.

What matters most to understanding Bunin's duel with modernism, Nabokov, and his own past is the second part of Dark Alleys, fourteen stories, of which thirteen were written between September and November 1940, shortly after Nabokov and his family fled from France to America. It was a titanic creative effort, similar to the Boldin autumn of 1830. The second section of "Dark Alleys" includes, perhaps, the most famous stories Bunina - "Rusya", " Business Cards”, “Tanya”, “In Paris”, “Heinrich”, “Natalie”. The stories of the second part of "Dark Alleys" demonstrate the highest economy means of expression and the perfect balance between description and dialogue. Bunin himself considered "Dark Alleys" to be his best work both in style and in plot construction. He was convinced that he managed to say "a new word in art", to create " new approach" to life.

"Library of Fantasy" in 24 volumes

01 Russian science fiction prose of the 19th - early 20th centuries

Dream Invitation

“There are few people whose fantasy is directed to the truth real world. Usually they prefer to go to unknown countries and environments about which they have not the slightest idea and which fantasy can decorate in the most bizarre way.

I.-V. said this at the beginning of the 19th century. Goethe, but how true his words sound in relation to many of today's works! Naked fantasizing will not achieve the certainty of the probable, will not awaken the Dream in the reader, and therefore not all literature will rise to the level of the Dream, if we mean by this a directed desire.

A dream is a child of the fantasy underlying all creativity. Fantasy allows a scientist to make discoveries, put forward hypotheses, a poet - to take off on the wings of feelings, an engineer - to create machines that did not exist before, a philosopher - to see the foundations of society without oppression and enslavement of some by others, without wars and injustice. In a word, fantasy, elevating man above the animal world, makes us able to see what is not yet, but what can be achieved.

At the same time, fantasies owe their origin to various religions and their myths. Fantasy, with the help of ignorance, gave rise to a host of supernatural beings, superstition and obscurantism, which could not but be reflected in science fiction,

In this regard, it is worth recalling the delusions of respectable scientists, who not so long ago seriously discussed the prospect of ousting humanity from the Earth by cybers, more adapted to life in the future with energy fields that are deadly for the human body, caused by unrestrainedly growing energy.

I do not miss an opportunity to refute these conclusions, because it does not follow from anywhere that the energy supply of mankind will continuously grow "exponentially". It is not the "law of unlimited growth" that operates in the Universe, but the "law of conservation of energy and matter" and the "law of saturation" that follows from it. It manifests itself both in the formation of stars from the substance of the nebula, and in the magnetization of iron along the hysteresis curve, as well as in the quenching of hunger and thirst by any organisms that consume only the necessary, and do not turn into in their development. cisterns or oil tanks out of a desire to eat and drink more.

I would like to challenge the notorious "fan method" proposed by other science fiction writers for "research" of the future. The writer, they say, should stand above the interests today above all philosophies. This supra-class, supra-state position of the writer supposedly allows him to better explore the future with the artistic method. It seems that such a method of pseudoscientific research, as well as the blind method of “trial and error” found in technology, is unlikely to be effective in literature, because it does not get along with our tasks of building the future (which fantasy should serve) and directly contradicts Marxist philosophy.

From all that has been said, it by no means follows that the "Library of Science Fiction", offered to a wide range of readers, in which an attempt is made to at least partially reflect the history of the search for the humanistic ideals of the society of the future, refuses warning or scientific novels; fairy tales, even individual works of "Demonic" literature. However, the main emphasis in it is nevertheless placed on the literature of the "lookout".

Along with Russian science fiction of the last century, represented by the names of V. Odoevsky, O. Senkovsky, K. Aksakov, A. Bogdanov, K. Tsiolkovsky and others, the Library includes a volume of Western utopias (Thomas More, Tommaso Campanella, Cyrano de Bergerac) . The following volumes will feature the names of K. Čapek ("The War with the Salamanders"), J. Weiss ("The House of 1000 Floors"), S. Lem ("Solaris", "The Magellanic Cloud"). The writers of Japan, France, England are represented by S. Komatsu (“The Death of the Dragon”), J. Verne (“20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”), G. Wills (“The Time Machine”, “The Invisible Man”). The volume of American science fiction will include the works of R. Bradbury, A. Asimov, K. Simak, R. Sheckley. A separate volume will include works of science fiction socialist countries created in recent years.

Close attention is paid in our "Library" to the works of Soviet authors who found their own methods of showing the paths to the future and creating images of heroes - carriers of the traits of a future person. As conceived by the publishers, the collections “Soviet Science Fiction. 20-40s”, “Soviet science fiction. 50-70s”, “Soviet Fantastic Tale”, two-volume collection “Soviet Fantastic Tale” should acquaint the reader not only with a wide range of authors, but also with their history of Soviet science fiction, with the process of its formation. The best fantastic works of Soviet writers that have become classics, such as Aelita and the Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin by A. Tolstoy, Plutonia and Savinkov's Land by V. Obruchev, Professor Dowell's Head and Amphibian Man by A. Belyaeva, and others will be published in separate volumes.

The novel by Ivan Efremov "The Andromeda Nebula" ranks in this series special place. A scientist of great erudition; who came to literature, Efremov lifted the veil over the picture of the communist future, boldly drawing its appearance and showing heroes in which traits appear the best people modernity, the people of socialism. He also paid considerable attention to the cardinal issue of all times - education, while rejecting the "primacy of education over education" - a judgment that, until recently, was almost not disputed.

Communism is not achieved by representatives of a new biological or cybernetic species. No, not “tentacled brains” or machines devoid of human emotions and not in need of human needs will populate the communist planet Earth - it will still have people like us, but ... brought up to live in a new society.

The "Library of Fantasy" will fulfill its purpose if it instills in the reader a taste for books that show who the person of the future may be like, for example and imitation of the best will always be the most effective methods of education.

Each of the books in the Library answers these questions in one way or another. I would like to believe that it will really become a Dream library and will strengthen the reader's desire for a better, brighter, inevitably future one.

Alexander Kazantsev

Osip Senkovsky

Scientific trip to Bear Island

So, I proved that people who lived before the flood were much smarter than today: what a pity that they drowned! ..

What nonsense!..

April 14 (1828) we set off from Irkutsk to further way, in the direction of the northeast, and in the first days of June arrived at the Berendinsky station, having ridden more than a thousand miles on horseback. My friend, Ph.D. Shpurzmann, an excellent naturalist, but a very bad rider, was completely exhausted and could not continue the journey. It is impossible to imagine anything more amusing than a venerable tester of nature, bent over on a lean horse and hung on all sides with guns, pistols, barometers, thermometers, snake skins, beaver tails, gophers stuffed with straw and birds, of which one hawk of a special kind, for lack of space behind back and on his chest, he planted it on his hat. In the villages through which we passed, the superstitious Yakuts, mistaking him for a great wandering shaman, reverently offered him koumiss and dried fish and tried in every possible way to make him at least a little shaman over them. The doctor got angry and scolded the Yakuts in German; those, believing that he spoke to them in the sacred Tibetan dialect and did not understand another language, showed him even more respect and insistently asked him to expel the devils from them. We laughed almost the entire way.

As we approached the banks of the Lena, the view of the country became more and more entertaining. Whoever has not been to this part of Siberia will hardly comprehend the splendor and variety of pictures that here, at almost every step, entice the gaze of the traveler, arousing in his soul the most unexpected and most pleasant sensations. Everything that the Universe, according to its various destinies, contains in itself beautiful, rich, captivating, terrible, wild, picturesque: shrunken mountain ranges, cheerful velvet meadows, gloomy abysses, luxurious valleys, formidable cliffs, lakes with a shining surface dotted with beautiful islands , forests, hills, groves, fields, streams, majestic rivers and noisy waterfalls - everything is collected here in incredible abundance, sketched with taste or set with incomprehensible art. It seems as if nature, with special care, has carved out this country for man, not forgetting anything in it that can only serve to his convenience, happiness, pleasure; and, in anticipation of the arrival of the owner, keeps it in all its freshness, in all the gloss of a new product. This remark repeatedly presented itself to our minds, and we almost did not want to believe that, having used so much effort, having exhausted so many treasures to arrange and decorate this part of the planet, the same nature voluntarily blocked the entrance of its beloved pet to it with a cruel and inhospitable climate. But Shpurzmann, as a personal friend of nature, receiving money from the king of Hanover to maintain his ties with her, excused her in this case, asserting positively that she was forced to do so. external force, one of the great and sudden upheavals that turned the former warm regions, where palm trees and bananas grew, where mammoths, elephants, mastodons lived, into cold countries, littered with eternal ice and snow, in which polar bears now crawl and pine and birch trees vegetate with difficulty. As proof that the northern part of Siberia was once a hot zone, he cited bones and whole skeletons of animals belonging to southern climates, scattered in multitude over its surface or together with trees and fruits warm countries light buried in the upper layers of its fat soil. The doctor was purposely sent by the University of Göttingen to collect these bones and enthusiastically pointed to an elephant's tooth or a fig turned into stone, which was sold to him by a Yakut near the banks of the Aldan. He had no doubt that before this upheaval, which could be a general flood or one of the private floods not even mentioned in St. Scripture, in the vicinity of Lena, instead of the Yakuts and Tungus, there lived some antediluvian Indians or Italians who rode these petrified elephants and ate these petrified wine berries.

Best essays: prose of the 19th century. Bunkovskaya Z.P.

Rostov n / a: Phoenix, 2003. - 320 p. (Student library.)

The collection of essays will help graduates and applicants repeat the course of Russian prose of the 19th century, avoid factual errors in the presentation of the material, and prepare for writing graduation or introductory essays.

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Table of contents
Intro 3
The vulgar and tragic face of St. Petersburg in N. V. Gogol's story "Nevsky Prospekt" 6
Discord between "dreams and reality" in N. V. Gogol's St. Petersburg stories "Ah, Nevsky ... Almighty Nevsky! ..". 16
The poetic world of A. N. Ostrovsky 21
Katerina - "a ray of light in the dark kingdom" (based on the play by A. N. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm") 28
Katerina as a tragic character 34
Thunderstorm over Kalinovo (based on the play by A. N. Ostrovsky "Thunderstorm") 39
The theme of sin in A. N. Ostrovsky's drama "Thunderstorm", its solution in the images of representatives of the "dark kingdom" and Katerina 45
Reflection of the cruelty of life in the drama of A. N. Ostrovsky "Dowry" 52
Roman I. A. Goncharova "Oblomov" - the arena of the struggle of eternal ideals with everyday life 57
The theme of love in the novel by I. A. Goncharov "Oblomov". 64
"Oblomov's Dream" as the ideological and artistic center of the novel by I. A. Goncharov 67
What is "Oblomovism"? (for the novel by I. A. Goncharov "Oblomov") 70
Reflections on the meaning and manifestation of the highest human feeling in the novel Oblomov by I. A. Goncharov 75
Dynamics of creativity of I. S. Turgenev 81
Philosophical idealism of Rudin in the novel of the same name by I. S. Turgenev 87
My reading of "Poems in Prose" by I. S. Turgenev. 92
Ideological and artistic originality of the novel "Fathers and Sons" by I. S. Turgenev. 98
"... They are the best of the nobles - and that is why I have chosen them to prove their failure" (based on the novel by I. S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons") 102
"Fathers" and "children" in the novel by I. S. Turgenev 105
The artistic device of the "Psychological couple" in the novel "Fathers and Sons" by I. S. Turgenev 109
The role of the episode in the novel by I. S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons" (arrival of Arkady and Bazarov in Maryino). „ 116
The last chapter of the novel "Fathers and Sons" by I. S. Turgenev. Episode analysis. . . . .121
The originality of the language of the novel by I. S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons" 124
The mythological and metaphorical context of the novel by I. S. Turgenev "Fathers and Sons" 128
Controversy around the novel "Fathers and Sons" 134
The Russian people and its huge inner potential in the stories of N. S. Leskov 143
Nikolai Semenovich Leskov is a master in creating images of the righteous. 149
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin - the great humanist satirist.153
Satirical depiction of power and people in M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin's story "The History of a City" 161
Reflection of vices public life in the story of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The History of a City", 168
Reflection of the complex life path in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky 174
“The creature is trembling, or do I have the right?” (based on the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment") 182
The tragedy of the collapse of Raskolnikov's theory (based on the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment *) 187
moral law and objective reality in the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment" 194
Spiritual resurrection by Rodion Raskolnikov (based on the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment") 201
Petersburg in Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment. 208
The artistic originality of F. M. Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment" ... 214
The originality of the humanism of F. M. Dostoevsky (on the example of the novel "Crime and Punishment") 220
Reflections on honor and conscience (based on the works of Russian literature of the 19th century) .. 226
Vitality and brightness of images in Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" 231
Depiction of the War of 1812 in Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" 238
The skill of L. N. Tolstoy in depicting the glorious victory of Russian weapons in the Battle of Borodino (based on the novel "War and Peace")... 243
"People's Thought" in L. N. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" 248
Images of Kutuzov and Napoleon in the novel "Leo Tolstoy" War and Peace "254
Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" as assessed by the writer's contemporaries 259
Pictures of nature in Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" 264
Condemnation of vulgarity and spiritual callousness in the stories of A.P. Chekhov 270
A. P. Chekhov's story "The Man in the Case" - condemnation of the tyrannical power of prejudice 275
How Startsev became Ionych (according to A.P. Chekhov's story "Ionych") 280
Features of the artistic worldview of A.P. Chekhov. 285
The past, present and future of Russia in the play by A.P. Chekhov " The Cherry Orchard» 290
Who will save the beauty? (based on the play by A.P. Chekhov "The Cherry Orchard") 295
Comic situations and images in A. P. Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchard" 299
Reflecting on the pages of A. P. Chekhov's play "The Cherry Orchard" 303
The role of landscape in the stories of A.P. Chekhov. 307

The period of the end of the nineteenth - the beginning of the twentieth century can safely be called a "turning point". Social upheavals were brewing, public consciousness was changing, and values ​​were being reassessed. Literature has also changed. Many new directions appeared, new topics and problems entered the field of literary consideration.

Russian prose of this era is very diverse. Then many talented authors wrote, and each brought something new to literature. First of all, it should be said about the change of genres. If in the sixties of the nineteenth century the long novel form dominated literature, now the short story has taken its place (although novels were also written). small form implies a much greater concentration of information than a large one, hence the authors' attention to artistic detail. Description of life with the help of such details that create a comic effect is the basis of the work of Leikin and early Chekhov - Antosha Chekhonte. The detail carries a huge informational load in all of Chekhov's work, so Misyu's "weak hands" in the "House with a Mezzanine" tell us about her mental weakness, and the smell of fried onions in "Ionych" further emphasizes the vulgarity of the existence of the Turkin family.

For Bunin, the artistic detail is primarily of aesthetic value. His prose is the prose of a poet, this must not be forgotten. He lists details that may not contain specific information, but are absolutely necessary to create a mood, to convey the author's intonation.

In Merezhkovsky's novels, a detail always has a symbolic meaning. He is a theorist of symbolism and almost the head of the school - he writes nothing in vain, and every detail is a symbol. When Peter in "Peter and Alexei" accidentally steps on the icon with his foot and splits it in half, then this acquires a philosophical meaning in the context of the novel. In general, symbolist prose is very meaningful. It is characterized by an interest in philosophical questions, in the problems of Christianity. Hence their interest in antiquity (“Julian Otsupnik” by Merezhkovsky, “Altar of Victory” by Bryusov), to the Middle Ages (“Fiery Angel” by Bryusov), to mysticism and, in general, everything mysterious.

The stories of L. Andreev cannot be attributed to a certain direction. He himself called himself a "neorealist", and sought to show "the unreal in the real." Hence the completely symbolist theme of his stories, which are purely realistic in form. His favorite topic is the relationship between man and fate, and the whole pathos of his work is pessimistic. Along with "neo-realism" there was also "neo-romanticism". The early stories of M. Gorky, such as "Chelkash", "Old Woman Izergil" are imbued with a romantic attitude.

We see that Russian prose of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries developed in several directions, groped for different paths, in a word, lived a full-blooded and creative life.