2 captains are the most important points. Study of Kaverin's novel “Two Captains

"Two Captains" is perhaps the most famous Soviet adventure novel for young people. It was reprinted many times, was included in the famous "Adventure Library", was filmed twice - in 1955 and in 1976. In 1992, Sergei Debizhev filmed the absurd - st-sky musical parody "Two kapi - tana - 2", in the plot that had nothing in common with the Kaverin romance, but exploited its name as well - known.... Already in the 21st century, the novel became the literary basis of the musical "Nord-Ost" and the subject of a special museum exhibition in Pskov, the author's hometown. Monuments are erected to the heroes of the "Two Captains" and are named after the square and the street. What is the secret of Kaverin's literary success?

Adventure novel and documentary investigation

At first glance, the novel looks like just a socialist realist opus, albeit with a carefully worked out plot and the use of some modernist techniques that are not too familiar for socialist realist literature, for example, such as changing the narrator (two out of ten parts of the novel were written dignity on behalf of Katya). This is not true.--

By the time work began on The Two Captains, Kaverin was already a fairly experienced writer, and in the novel he managed to combine several genres: an adventure novel-journey, a novel of education, a Soviet historical novel about the recent past (the so-called romance with a key) and, finally, a military melodrama. Each of these genres has its own logic and mechanisms for retaining the reader's attention. Kaverin is an attentive reader of the formalists' works Formalists- scientists representing the so-called formal school in literary studies, which arose around the Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOYAZ) in 1916 and existed until the end of the 1920s. The formal school united theoreticians and literary historians, poetry scholars, and lin-guists. Its most famous representatives were Yuri Tynyanov, Boris Ey-khen --- baum and Viktor Shklovsky.- I thought a lot about whether genre innovation is possible in the history of literature. The novel "Two Captains" can be considered the result of these reflections.

The plot of the investigative journey in the wake of the letters of Captain Tatarinov, about the fate of the expedition of which no one knows anything for many years, Kaverin borrowed from the famous novel "Children of Captain Grant" by Jules Verne. Like the French writer, the text of the captain's letters was not completely preserved and the place of the last anchorage of his expedition becomes a mystery, which the heroes have been guessing for a long time. Kaverin, however, reinforces this documentary line. Now we are talking not about one letter, in the footsteps of which searches are being conducted, but about a whole series of documents that gradually fall into the hands of Sana Grigoriev In early childhood, he many times reads the letters of the captain and navigator of "St. Mary" washed ashore in 1913 and literally memorizes them, not knowing that the letters found on the shore in the bag of a drowned postman tell about the same expedition. Then Sanya gets to know the family of Captain Tatarinov, gets access to his books and breaks down notes in letters about the prospects of polar research in Russia and the world. While studying in Leningrad, Grigoriev carefully studied the press of 1912 in order to find out what they wrote at that time about the expedition of "St. Mary". The next stage is the discovery and bloody decryption of the diary of the very storming officer who owned one of the Enskie letters. Finally, in the very last chapters, the protagonist becomes the owner of the captain's suicide letters and the ship's logbook..

"Children of Captain Grant" is a novel about the search for the crew of a sea vessel, the story of a rescue expedition. In The Two Captains, Sanya and Tatarinov's daughter, Katya, are looking for evidence of Tatarinov's death in order to restore a good memory of this man, once not appreciated by his contemporaries, and then completely forgotten. Taking on the reconstruction of the history of Tatarinov's expedition, Grigoriev undertakes to publicly expose Nikolai Antonovich, the captain's cousin, and later Katya's stepfather. Sanya manages to prove its detrimental role in the equipment of the expedition. So Grigoriev becomes, as it were, a living substitute for the deceased Tatarinov (not without allusions to the history of Prince Hamlet). Another unexpected conclusion follows from the investigation of Alexander Grigoriev: letters and diaries need to be written and stored, since this is a way not only to collect and save information, but also to tell later ones that your contemporaries are not yet ready to listen to you. ... Characteristically, at the last stages of his search, Grigoriev himself begins to keep a diary - or, more precisely, to create and store a series of unsent letters to Katya Tatarinova.

Here lies the deep "subversive" meaning of "Two Captains". The novel argued the importance of old personal documents in an era when personal archives were either seized during searches or destroyed by the owners themselves, fearing that their diaries and letters would fall into the hands of the NKVD.

American Slavic scholar Katherine Clarke called her book about the socialist realist novel History as a Ritual. At a time when history appeared on the pages of countless novels as ritual and myth, Kaverin portrayed a romantic hero in his book, restoring history as an eternally elusive secret that needs to be deciphered, endowed with personal meaning. Probably, this double perspective was another reason why Kaverin's novel remained popular throughout the twentieth century.

Upbringing romance

The second genre model used in The Two Captains is an education novel, a genre that emerged in the second half of the 18th century and developed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries. The focus of the upbringing novel is always the story of the growing up of the hero, the formation of his character and worldview. "The Two Captains" adjoin the kind of genre that tells about the biography of the orphan hero: The Story of Tom Jones, the Foundling by Henry Fielding and, of course, the novels of Charles Dickens, above all "The Adventures of Oli-ve-ra Twist ”and“ The Life of David Copperfield ”.

Apparently, the last novel was of decisive importance for "Two captains": for the first time seeing Sani's classmate, Mikhail Romashov, Katya Tatarinova, as if anticipating his sinister role in his and Sanya's fate, says that he is terrible and looks like Uriah Heep, the main villain from The Life of David Copperfield. Other plot parallels also lead to Dickens's novel: the oppressive stepfather; independent long trip to another city, towards a better life; exposure of the "paper" machinations of the villain.

However, in the story of Grigoriev's growing up, motives appear that are not characteristic of the literature of the 18th and 19th centuries. Sani's personal formation is a process of gradual accumulation and concentration of will. It all starts with overcoming dumbness Due to an illness suffered in early childhood, Sanya lost his ability to speak. Dumbness actually becomes the reason for the death of Sanya's father: the boy cannot tell who actually killed the watchman and why his father's knife ended up at the scene of the crime. Sanya finds speech thanks to the wonderful doctor - the fugitive convict Ivan Ivanovich: in just a few sessions, he shows his patient the first and most important exercises for training the pronunciation of vowels and short words. Then Ivan Ivanovich disappears, and Sanya makes the further path to gaining speech himself., and after this first impressive act of will, Grigoriev undertakes others. While still in school, he decides to become a pilot and begins to systematically temper and play sports, as well as read books that are directly or indirectly related to aviation and aircraft construction. At the same time, he trains the ability to self-control, as he is too impulsive and impressionable, and this greatly interferes in public speeches and when communicating with officials and bosses.

Aviation biography of Grigoriev demonstrates even greater determination and concentration of will. First, training at a flight school - in the early 1930s, with a shortage of equipment, instructors, flight hours and just money for life and food. Then there was a long and patient wait for the appointment to the North. Then work in civil aviation in the Arctic Circle. Finally, in the final parts of the novel, the young captain fights against external enemies (fascists), and the traitor Romashov, and with illness and death, and with longing of separation. In the end, he emerges victorious from all the tests: he returns to the profession, finds the place of the last stop of Captain Tatarinov, and then Katya, lost in the evacuation perturbations. Romashov was exposed and arrested, and his best friends - Dr. Ivan Ivanovich, teacher Korab-lion, friend Petka - are again nearby.

Behind this whole epic of the formation of human will, one can read the serious influence of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, assimilated by Kaverin from the original and from indirect sources - the works of authors who had previously been influenced by Nietzsche, for example, Jack London and Maxim Gorky. The main motto of the novel, borrowed from the poem “Ulysses” by the English poet Alfred Tennyson, is also reinterpreted in the same willful Nietzschean key. If Tennyson has the lines "fight and seek, find and do not give up" The original is "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield". describe an eternal wanderer, a romantic traveler, then in Kaverin they turn into the credo of an unyielding and constantly educating warrior.

The action of "Two Captains" begins on the eve of the 1917 revolution and ends on the same days and months when the last chapters of the novel are written (1944). Thus, we have before us not only the life story of Sani Grigor-ev, but also the history of the country going through the same stages of formation as the hero. Kaverin is trying to show how, after the downtroddenness and "dumbness", the chaos of the early 1920s and the heroic labor impulses of the early 1930s, by the end of the war, she began to confidently move towards a bright future, which Grigor-eva, Katya, should build, their close friends and other unnamed heroes with the same reserve of will and patience.

There was nothing surprising and especially innovative in Kaverin's experiment: the revolution and the Civil War quite early became the subject of historical descriptions in complex synthetic genres, combining, on the one hand, features of a historical chronicle, and on the other, a family saga or even quasi-folklore epic. The process of incorporating the events of the late 1910s - early 1920s into historical fictional narratives began in the second half of the 1920s. For example, "Russia Washed in Blood" by Artyom Vesely (1927-1928), "Walking Through the Torment" by Alexei Tolstoy (1921-1941) or "Quiet Don" by Sholokhov (1926-1932).... From the genre of the historical family saga of the late 1920s, Kaverin borrows, for example, the motive of the division of the family for ideological (or ethical) reasons.

But the most interesting historical layer in "Two Captains", perhaps, is connected not with the description of the revolutionary Ensk (under this name Kaverin depicted his native Pskov) or Moscow during the Civil War. More interesting here are later fragments describing Moscow and Leningrad in the late 1920s and 1930s. And these fragments reveal the features of another prose genre - the so-called novel with a key.

Romance with a key

This old genre, which arose in France in the 16th century to ridicule court clans and groupings, suddenly found itself in demand in Soviet literature of the 1920s and 1930s. The main principle roman à clef consists in the fact that real persons and events are encoded in it and displayed under different (but often recognizable) names, which makes it possible to make prose both chronicle and pamphlet at the same time, but at the same time draw the reader's attention to what transformations it is going through "Real life" in the writer's imagination. As a rule, very few people can figure out the prototypes of a novel with a key - those who know these real persons in person or in absentia.

"Goat Song" by Konstantin Vaginov (1928), "Crazy Ship" by Olga Forsh (1930), "Theatrical Novel" by Mikhail Bulgakov (1936), finally, Kaverin's early novel "The Brawler, or Evenings on Vasilyevsky Island" (1928) - all these works represented contemporary events and real persons acting in fictional literary worlds. It is no coincidence that most of these novels are dedicated to people of art and their collegial and friendly communication. In The Two Captains, the basic principles of the novel with the key are not consistently maintained - however, depicting the life of writers, artists or actors, Kaverin boldly uses techniques from the arsenal of the genre he is familiar with.

Remember the scene of the wedding of Petya and Sasha (Grigoriev's sister) in Leningrad, where the artist Filippov is mentioned, who "lined [the cow] into small squares and wrote each square separately"? In Filippov, we can easily recognize his "analytical method". Sasha takes orders in the Leningrad branch of Detgiz, which means that she is collaborating with the legendary Marshakov editorial board, which was tragically destroyed in 1937 Kaverin was clearly at risk: he began writing his novel in 1938, after the editorial office was disbanded and some of its employees were arrested.... The subtexts of theatrical scenes are also interesting - with visits to various (real and semi-fictional) performances.

One can speak of a novel with a key in relation to “Two Captains” rather conditionally: it is not a full-scale use of a genre model, but a translation is a lack of a few techniques; most of the heroes of The Two Captains are not encrypted historical figures. Nevertheless, it is very important to answer the question of why such heroes and fragments were needed in The Two Captains. The genre of a novel with a key presupposes the division of the reader's audience into those who are capable and those who are not able to find the right key, that is, those who are initiated and who perceive the narrative as such, without restoring the real background ... In the "artistic" episodes of "Two Captains" we can observe something similar.

Production novel

In "Two Captains" there is a hero whose surname is encrypted only by the initial, but any Soviet reader could easily guess it, and no key was required for this. The pilot Ch., Whose successes are watched with bated breath by Grigoriev, and then with some timidity turns to him for help, is, of course, Valery Chkalov. Other "aviation" initials were easily deciphered: L. - Sigismund Levanevsky, A. - Aleksander Anisimov, S. - Mavriky Slepnev. Launched in 1938, the novel was intended to summarize the turbulent Soviet Arctic epic of the 1930s, where polar explorers (land and sea) and pilots were equally active.

Let us briefly reconstruct the chronology:

1932 - icebreaker "Alexander Sibiryakov", the first voyage along the Northern Sea Route from the White Sea to Beringovo in one navigation.

1933-1934 - the famous Chelyuskin epic, an attempt to sail from Murmansk to Vladivostok in one navigation, with the death of a ship, landing on an ice floe, and then rescuing the entire crew and passengers with the help of the best pilots of the country: many years later, the names of these pilots could be recited by heart any Soviet schoolchild.

1937 - Ivan Papanin's first drifting polar station and Valery Chkalov's first non-stop flight to the North American continent.

Polar explorers and pilots were the main heroes of our time in the 1930s, and the fact that Sanya Grigoriev not only chose the aviation profession, but wanted to link his fate with the Arctic, immediately gave his image a romantic halo and great attractiveness.

Meanwhile, if we separately consider the professional biography of Grigor-ev and his steady attempts to achieve the sending of an expedition to search for the crew of Captain Tatarinov, it becomes clear that "Two Captains" contain the features of another type of novel - a production novel, which received widespread -some spread in the literature of socialist realism in the late 1920s, with the beginning of industrialization. In one of the varieties of such a novel, the center was a young hero-enthusiast, who loves his work and country more than himself, ready for self-sacrifice and obsessed with the idea of ​​a “breakthrough”. In his desire to make a "breakthrough" (to introduce some kind of technical innovation or just work tirelessly), he will definitely be hindered by a pest hero The role of such a saboteur can be a bureaucrat leader (of course, a conservative by nature) or several such leaders.... The moment comes when the main character is defeated and his cause, it seems, is almost lost, but still the forces of reason and good win, the state, represented by its most reasonable representatives, intervenes in the conflict, encourages the innovator and punishes the conservative.

"Two Captains" are close to this model of a production novel, which is most memorable to Soviet readers from the famous book by Dudintsev "Not by Bread Alone" (1956). The antagonist and envious of Grigoriev Romashov sends letters to all authorities and spreads false rumors - the result of his activities is the sudden cancellation of the search operation in 1935 and the expulsion of Grigoriev from his beloved North.

Perhaps the most interesting line in the novel today is the transformation of the civilian pilot Grigoriev into a military pilot, and the transformation of peaceful research interests in the Arctic into military and strategic interests. For the first time, such a development of events is predicted by an unnamed sailor who visited Sanya in a Leningrad hotel in 1935. Then, after a long "exile" in the Volga land reclamation aviation, Grigoriev decides to change his fate on his own and volunteers for the Spanish war. From there he returns as a military pilot, and then his entire biography, like the history of the exploration of the North, is shown as a military one, closely related to the security and strategic interests of the country. It is no coincidence that Romashov turns out to be not just a pest and traitor, but also a war criminal: the events of the Patriotic War become the last and ultimate test for both heroes and antiheroes.

Military melodrama

The last genre that was embodied in "Two Captains" is the genre of military melodrama, which during the war years could be realized both on the stage and in the cinema. Perhaps the closest analogue of the novel is the play "Wait for Me" by Konstantin Simonov and the film of the same name (1943) based on it. The action of the last parts of the novel unfolds as if following the plot of this melodrama.

In the very first days of the war, the plane of an experienced pilot is shot down, he finds himself in the occupied territory, and then, under unexplained circumstances, disappears for a long time. His wife does not want to believe that he is dead. She changes the old civilian profession associated with intellectual activity to a simple rear one and refuses to evacuate. Bombing, digging trenches on the outskirts of the city - she goes through all these trials with dignity, never ceasing to hope that her husband is alive, and in the end she waits for him. This description is quite applicable to both the film "Wait for Me" and the novel "Two Captains" Of course, there are also differences: Katya Tatarinova in June 1941 did not live in Moscow, like the Simon Liza, but in Leningrad; she has to go through all the tests of the blockade, and after her evacuation to the mainland, Grigoriev cannot get on her trail..

The last parts of Kaverin's novel, written alternately on behalf of Katya and then on behalf of Sanya, successfully use all the techniques of military melodrama. And since this genre continued to be exploited in post-war literature, theater and cinema, “Two Captains” for a long time just fell into the horizon of readers and viewers' expectations Waiting horizon(German Erwartungs-horizont) is a term of the German historian and literary theorist Hans-Robert Jauss, a complex of aesthetic, socio-political, psychological and other ideas that determine the author's attitude to society, and also the attitude of the reader to the product.... Youthful love, which originated in the trials and conflicts of the 1920s and 1930s, passed the last and most serious test of the war.

Any writer has the right to fiction. But where does it go, the line, the invisible line between truth and fiction? Sometimes truth and fiction are so closely intertwined, as, for example, in the novel “Two Captains” by Veniamin Kaverin, a work of fiction that most reliably resembles the real events of 1912 in the development of the Arctic.

Three Russian polar expeditions entered the Northern Ocean in 1912, all three ended tragically: the expedition of V.A. Rusanov died entirely, the expedition of G.L. Brusilov - almost entirely, and in the expedition of G. Sedov. I killed three, including the head of the expedition ... In general, the 20s and 30s of the twentieth century were interesting for through voyages along the Northern Sea Route, the Chelyuskin epic, the heroes of the Papanin people.

The young, but already well-known writer V. Kaverin became interested in all this, became interested in people, bright personalities, whose deeds and characters aroused only respect. He reads literature, memoirs, collections of documents; listens to the stories of NV Pinegin, a friend and member of the expedition of the brave polar explorer Sedov; sees finds made in the mid-thirties on unnamed islands in the Kara Sea. Also during the Great Patriotic War, he himself, being a correspondent for Izvestia, visited the North.

And in 1944 the novel "Two Captains" was published. The author was literally inundated with questions about the prototypes of the main characters - Captain Tatarinov and Captain Grigoriev. “I used the story of two brave conquerors of the Far North. From one I took on a courageous and clear character, purity of thought, clarity of purpose - everything that distinguishes a man of great soul. It was Sedov. The other has the actual history of his journey. It was Brusilov, "- this is how Kaverin wrote about the prototypes of Captain Tatarinov.

Let's try to figure out what is true, what is fiction, how the writer Kaverin managed to combine the realities of the expeditions of Sedov and Brusilov in the history of the expedition of Captain Tatarinov. And even though the writer did not mention the name of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rusanov among the prototypes of his hero, Captain Tatarinov, we take the liberty of claiming that the realities of Rusanov's expedition were also reflected in the novel “Two Captains”. This will be discussed later.

Lieutenant Georgy Lvovich Brusilov, a hereditary sailor, in 1912 led an expedition on the sailing-steam schooner "Saint Anna". He intended to pass with one wintering from St. Petersburg around Scandinavia and further along the Northern Sea Route to Vladivostok. But "Saint Anna" did not come to Vladivostok either a year later or in subsequent years. On the western coast of the Yamal Peninsula, the ice covered the schooner, she began to drift northward, to high latitudes. The ship failed to escape from the ice captivity in the summer of 1913. During the longest drift in the history of Russian Arctic research (1,575 kilometers in a year and a half), Brusilov's expedition conducted meteorological observations, depth measurements, studied currents and ice regime in the northern part of the Kara Sea, which until that time was completely unknown to science. Almost two years of ice captivity have passed.

On April 23 (10), 1914, when the "Saint Anna" was at 830 north latitude and 60 0 east longitude, with Brusilov's consent, eleven crew members left the schooner, led by navigator Valerian Ivanovich Albanov. The group hoped to reach the nearest coast, to Franz Josef Land, in order to deliver the materials of the expedition, which allowed scientists to characterize the underwater topography of the northern part of the Kara Sea and identify a meridional depression at the bottom about 500 kilometers long (St. Anna Trough). Only a few people reached the Franz Josef archipelago, but only two of them, Albanov himself and the sailor A. Konrad, were lucky to escape. They were accidentally discovered at Cape Flora by members of another Russian expedition under the command of G. Sedov (Sedov himself had already died by this time).

The schooner with G. Brusilov himself, the sister of mercy E. Zhdanko, the first woman to participate in the high-latitude drift, and eleven crew members disappeared without a trace.

The geographical result of the campaign of the navigator Albanov's group, which cost the lives of nine sailors, was the assertion that King Oscar and Peterman, previously marked on the maps of the Land, do not actually exist.

We know in general terms the drama of "Saint Anne" and her crew thanks to Albanov's diary, which was published in 1917 under the title "South to Franz Josef Land". Why were only two saved? This is quite clear from the diary. The people in the group that left the schooner were very motley: strong and weak, reckless and weak in spirit, disciplined and dishonest. Those who had the most chance survived. Albanov from the ship "St. Anna" was transferred mail to the mainland. Albanov reached, but none of those to whom they were intended received the letters. Where did they go? This still remains a mystery.

And now let's turn to Kaverin's novel "Two Captains". Of the members of the expedition of Captain Tatarinov, only the navigator of the long voyage I. Klimov returned. This is what he writes to Maria Vasilievna, the wife of Captain Tatarinov: “I hasten to inform you that Ivan Lvovich is alive and well. Four months ago, according to his instructions, I left the schooner and with me thirteen crew members I will not talk about our difficult journey to Franz Josef Land on floating ice. I will only say that from our group I alone safely (except for the frostbitten legs) reached Cape Flora. The "Saint Foka" of the expedition of Lieutenant Sedov picked me up and brought me to Arkhangelsk. The "Saint Mary" froze in the Kara Sea and since October 1913 has been constantly moving north along with the polar ice. When we left, the schooner was at latitude 820 55 '. She stands calmly in the middle of the ice field, or rather, stood from the autumn of 1913 until I left. "

Sanya Grigoriev's senior friend, Doctor Ivan Ivanovich Pavlov, after almost twenty years, in 1932, explains to Sanya that the group photo of the members of the expedition of Captain Tatarinov “was presented by the navigator of the“ St. Mary ”Ivan Dmitrievich Klimov. In 1914 he was brought to Arkhangelsk with frostbitten legs, and he died in a city hospital from blood poisoning. " After the death of Klimov, two notebooks and letters remained. The hospital sent these letters to the addresses, but the notebooks and photographs remained with Ivan Ivanovich. The persistent Sanya Grigoriev once said to Nikolai Antonich Tatarinov, a cousin of the missing captain Tatarinov, that he would find the expedition: "I do not believe that it disappeared without a trace."

And in 1935, Sanya Grigoriev, day after day, parses Klimov's diaries, among which he finds an interesting map - a map of the drift of "St. Mary" "from October 1912 to April 1914, and the drift was shown in those places where the so-called Earth lay. Peterman. “But who knows that this fact was first established by Captain Tatarinov on the schooner“ Saint Mary ”?” Exclaims Sanya Grigoriev.

Captain Tatarinov had to go from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. From the captain's letter to his wife: “About two years have passed since I sent you a letter through a telegraphic expedition to the Yugorsky Shara. We walked freely on the planned course and since October 1913 we have been slowly moving north along with the polar ice. Thus, willy-nilly, we had to abandon the original intention to go to Vladivostok along the coast of Siberia. But every cloud has a silver lining. A completely different thought now occupies me. I hope she does not seem to you - as some of my companions - childish or reckless. "

What is this thought? Sanya finds the answer to this in the notes of Captain Tatarinov: “The human mind was so absorbed in this task that its solution, despite the harsh grave that travelers for the most part found there, became a continuous national competition. Almost all civilized countries took part in this competition, and only there were no Russians, but meanwhile the ardent impulses of the Russian people for the opening of the North Pole manifested themselves back in the time of Lomonosov and have not faded away to this day. Amundsen wants to leave Norway the honor of discovering the North Pole at all costs, and we will go this year and prove to the whole world that the Russians are capable of this feat. "(From a letter to the head of the Main Hydrographic Directorate, April 17, 1911). So this is where Captain Tatarinov was aiming !. "He wanted, like Nansen, to go as far north as possible with drifting ice, and then get to the pole on dogs."

Tatarinov's expedition failed. Even Amundsen said: "The success of any expedition depends entirely on its equipment." Indeed, his brother Nikolai Antonich rendered a "disservice" in preparing and equipping Tatarinov's expedition. For reasons of failure, Tatarinov's expedition was similar to the expedition of G. Ya. Sedov, who in 1912 tried to penetrate the North Pole. After 352 days of ice captivity off the north-western coast of Novaya Zemlya in August 1913, Sedov took the ship “Holy Great Martyr Fock” out of the bay and sent it to Franz Josef Land. The Foka's second wintering place was Tikhaya Bay on Hooker Island. On February 2, 1914, despite complete exhaustion, Sedov, accompanied by two sailors, volunteers A. Pustoshny and G. Linnik, went to the Pole on three dog sleds. After a severe cold, he died on February 20 and was buried by his companions at Cape Auk (Rudolf Island). The expedition was poorly prepared. G. Sedov was not familiar with the history of the exploration of the Franz Josef Land archipelago, he did not know the latest maps of the ocean section along which he was going to reach the North Pole. He himself did not check the equipment thoroughly. His temperament, desire to conquer the North Pole faster at all costs prevailed over the clear organization of the expedition. So these are important reasons for the outcome of the expedition and the tragic death of G. Sedov.

We have already mentioned the meetings between Kaverin and Pinegin. Nikolai Vasilievich Pinegin is not only an artist and writer, but also a researcher of the Arctic. During Sedov's last expedition in 1912, Pinegin shot the first documentary about the Arctic, the footage of which, combined with the artist's personal memories, helped Kaverin to brighten up the picture of the events of that time.

Let's go back to Kaverin's novel. From a letter from Captain Tatarinov to his wife: “I am writing to you about our discovery: there are no lands to the north of the Taimyr Peninsula on the maps. Meanwhile, at latitude 790 35 ', east of Greenwich, we noticed a sharp silvery stripe, slightly convex, extending from the very horizon. Sanya Grigoriev finds out that it was Severnaya Zemlya, discovered in 1913 by Lieutenant B.A. Vilkitsky.

After defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, Russia needed to have its own way of escorting ships to the Great Ocean, so as not to depend on Suez or other channels of warm countries. The authorities decided to create a Hydrographic Expedition and carefully survey the least difficult section from the Bering Strait to the mouth of the Lena, so that it would be possible to pass from east to west, from Vladivostok to Arkhangelsk or St. Petersburg. The head of the expedition was at first A.I. Vilkitsky, and after his death, since 1913 - his son, Boris Andreevich Vilkitsky. It was he who, during the navigation of 1913, dispelled the legend about the existence of Sannikov Land, but discovered a new archipelago. On August 21 (September 3), 1913, a huge archipelago covered with eternal snow was seen north of Cape Chelyuskin. Consequently, from Cape Chelyuskin to the north is not an open ocean, but a strait, later called the B. Vilkitsky Strait. The archipelago was originally named the Land of Emperor Nicholas 11. It has been called the Northern Land since 1926.

In March 1935, pilot Alexander Grigoriev, having made an emergency landing on the Taimyr Peninsula, accidentally discovered an old brass hook, which had turned green with time, with the inscription “Schooner“ Holy Mary ”. Nenets Ivan Vylko explains that a boat with a hook and a man was found by local residents on the coast of Taimyr, the coast closest to Severnaya Zemlya. By the way, there is reason to believe that it was no coincidence that the author of the novel gave the Nenets hero the surname Vylko. A close friend of the Arctic explorer Rusanov, a participant in his 1911 expedition was the Nenets artist Ilya Konstantinovich Vylko, who later became the chairman of the council of Novaya Zemlya ("President of Novaya Zemlya").

Vladimir Alexandrovich Rusanov was a polar geologist and navigator. His last expedition on the motor-sailing vessel "Hercules" sailed to the Arctic Ocean in 1912. The expedition reached the Spitsbergen archipelago and discovered four new coal deposits there. Rusanov then made an attempt to go through the Northeast Passage. Having reached Cape Desire on Novaya Zemlya, the expedition went missing.

It is not known exactly where the Hercules died. But it is known that the expedition not only sailed, but also some part of it went on foot, for "Hercules" almost certainly died, as evidenced by objects found in the mid-30s on the islands near the Taimyr coast. In 1934, on one of the islands, hydrographers discovered a wooden post on which was written "Hercules -1913". Traces of the expedition were found in the Minin skerries off the western coast of the Taimyr Peninsula and on Bolshevik Island (Severnaya Zemlya). And in the seventies, the search for Rusanov's expedition was conducted by the expedition of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. In the same area, two hooks were found, as if in confirmation of the intuitive guess of the writer Kaverin. According to experts, they belonged to the "Rusanovites".

Captain Alexander Grigoriev, following his motto "Fight and seek, find and not give up", in 1942 nevertheless found the expedition of Captain Tatarinov, or rather, what was left of it. He calculated the path that the captain Tatarinov had to take, if it is considered indisputable that he returned to the Severnaya Zemlya, which he called the "Land of Mary": from 790 35 latitude, between the 86th and 87th meridians, to the Russian Islands and to the Nordenskjold archipelago. Then, probably after many wanderings, from Cape Sterlegov to the mouth of the Pyasina, where the old Nenets Vylko found a boat on sledges. Then to the Yenisei, because the Yenisei was for Tatarinov the only hope to meet people and help. He walked along the seaward side of the coastal islands, if possible - straight Sanya found the last camp of Captain Tatarinov, found his farewell letters, photographic films, found his remains Captain Grigoriev conveyed to the people the farewell words of Captain Tatarinov: “It’s bitter for me to think about all the deeds that I could have done, if only they didn’t help me, but at least they didn’t interfere. What to do? One consolation is that by my labors, vast new lands have been discovered and annexed to Russia. "

In the finale of the novel we read: “Ships entering the Yenisei Gulf from afar see the grave of Captain Tatarinov. They walk past her, flags at half-mast, and a mourning salute thunders from the cannons, and a long echo rolls on incessantly.

The tomb was built of white stone, and it sparkles dazzlingly under the rays of the unsetting polar sun.

At the height of human growth, the following words are carved:

“Here rests the body of Captain IL Tatarinov, who made one of the most courageous voyages and died on the way back from the Severnaya Zemlya discovered by him in June 1915. Fight and seek, find and not give up! "

Reading these lines of Kaverin's novel, one involuntarily recalls the obelisk erected in 1912 in the eternal snows of Antarctica in honor of Robert Scott and four of his comrades. There is a gravestone inscription on it. And the final words of the poem "Ulysses" by the classic of British poetry of the 19th century Alfred Tennyson: "To strive, to seek, to find and not yield" (which in English means: "Fight and seek, find and not give up!"). Much later, with the publication of the novel "Two Captains" by Veniamin Kaverin, these very words became the life motto of millions of readers, a loud appeal for Soviet polar explorers of different generations.

Probably, the literary critic N. Likhacheva was wrong, who attacked The Two Captains when the novel was not yet fully published. After all, the image of Captain Tatarinov is generalized, collective, fictional. The right to fiction gives the author an artistic style, not a scientific one. The best traits of the characters of the Arctic explorers, as well as mistakes, miscalculations, historical realities of the expeditions of Brusilov, Sedov, Rusanov - all this is connected with the beloved hero of Kaverin.

And Sanya Grigoriev, like Captain Tatarinov, is an artistic invention of the writer. But this hero also has his own prototypes. One of them is professor-geneticist M. I. Lobashov.

In 1936, in a sanatorium near Leningrad, Kaverin met the silent, always internally focused young scientist Lobashov. “This was a man in whom fervor was combined with straightforwardness, and perseverance with an amazing determination of purpose. He knew how to succeed in any business. A clear mind and the ability to deep feeling were visible in every judgment. " In everything, the character traits of Sani Grigoriev are guessed. And many of the specific circumstances of Sanya's life were directly borrowed by the author from Lobashov's biography. These are, for example, the silence of Sanya, the death of his father, homelessness, the commune school of the 1920s, the types of teachers and students, falling in love with the daughter of a school teacher. Talking about the history of the creation of "Two Captains", Kaverin noticed that, unlike the parents, sister, and comrades of the hero, about whom the prototype of Sanya told, only individual touches were outlined in the teacher Korablev, so that the image of the teacher was completely created by the writer.

Lobashov, who became the prototype of Sani Grigoriev, told the writer about his life, immediately aroused an active interest in Kaverin, who decided not to let his imagination run wild, but to follow the story he had heard. But in order for the hero's life to be perceived naturally and vividly, he must be in conditions that are personally known to the writer. And unlike the prototype, who was born on the Volga, and graduated from school in Tashkent, Sanya was born in Ensk (Pskov), and graduated from school in Moscow, and she absorbed much of what happened at the school where Kaverin studied. And the state of Sanya the youth also turned out to be close to the writer. He was not a resident of an orphanage, but he recalled the Moscow period of his life: “As a sixteen-year-old boy, I was left completely alone in huge, hungry and deserted Moscow. And, of course, I had to spend a lot of energy and will so as not to get lost. "

And the love for Katya, which Sanya carries through her whole life, is not invented and embellished by the author; Kaverin is here next to his hero: having married a twenty-year-old boy to Lidochka Tynyanova, he remained faithful to his love forever. And how much in common is the mood of Veniamin Alexandrovich and Sani Grigoriev when they write to their wives from the front, when they are looking for them, taken from besieged Leningrad. And Sanya fights in the North, too, because Kaverin was a military commander of TASS, and then Izvestia in the Northern Fleet and knew firsthand both Murmansk and Polyarnoye, and the specifics of the war in the Far North, and its people.

Another person who was well acquainted with aviation and who knew the North perfectly — the talented pilot S. L. Klebanov, a wonderful, honest man, helped Sanya to “fit in” into the life and life of polar pilots, whose consultations in the study of flying business were invaluable. From the biography of Klebanov, the story of a flight to the remote camp of Vanokan entered the life of Sani Grigoriev, when a disaster broke out on the way.

In general, according to Kaverin, both prototypes of Sani Grigoriev resembled each other not only by their stubbornness of character and extraordinary determination. Klebanov even outwardly resembled Lobashov - short, dense, stocky.

The great skill of the artist lies in creating such a portrait in which everything that is his and everything that is not his becomes his own, deeply original, individual. And this, in our opinion, was achieved by the writer Kaverin.

Kaverin filled the image of Sani Grigoriev with his personality, his life code, the writer's credo: "Be honest, not pretend, try to tell the truth and remain yourself in the most difficult circumstances." Veniamin Alexandrovich could be mistaken, but he always remained a man of honor. And the hero of the writer Sanya Grigoriev is a man of his word, of honor.

Kaverin has a wonderful property: he gives the heroes not only his own impressions, but also his habits, and relatives, and friends. And this cute touch brings the characters closer to the reader. In the novel, the writer endowed Valya Zhukov with the desire of his older brother Sasha to cultivate the power of his gaze by looking at the black circle drawn on the ceiling for a long time. During the conversation, Doctor Ivan Ivanovich suddenly throws a chair to his interlocutor, which must be caught by all means - this was not invented by Veniamin Alexandrovich: KI Chukovsky loved to talk so much.

The hero of the novel "Two Captains" Sanya Grigoriev lived his own unique life. Readers believed in him seriously. And for more than sixty years now, readers of several generations have understood and loved this image. Readers admire his personal qualities of character: by willpower, thirst for knowledge and search, loyalty to the given word, dedication, perseverance in achieving the goal, love for the homeland and love for his work - all those that helped Sana to reveal the mystery of Tatarinov's expedition.

In our opinion, Veniamin Kaverin managed to create a work in which the realities of the real expeditions of Brusilov, Sedov, Rusanov and the fictional expedition of Captain Tatarinov were skillfully intertwined. He also managed to create images of people who are seeking, decisive, courageous, such as Captain Tatarinov and Captain Grigoriev.

, Extracurricular work

Purpose: to teach the analysis of an epic work through an episode from the text of the work, to master the necessary theoretical knowledge, taking into account the elements of artistic analysis.

Literary terms: novel, theme, idea, literary hero, morality, morality.

Epigraph: "Fight and seek, find and not give up."

Today in the lesson we will talk about everyone's favorite writer VA Kaverin and his amazing novel "Two Captains". This book is a novel worthy of entering the golden fund of our Russian literature. In the novel, the author raises and solves a number of important moral and ethical problems, which today remain as important as they were in the 40s of the 20th century when the book was written.

Who is he Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin? (Autobiographical note. Student message).

This book is a novel. Let's remember the peculiarities of the novel as an epic genre of literature. What are the main features of The Two Captains as a novel:

versatility,

branching of storylines,

temporary spaces,

large coverage of events,

multi-heroism.

The connection between times is traced through the letters in the novel, therefore there is an epistolary genre (lit. Genre of works written in the form of letters).

Did you like Kaverin's book? (Student feedback on the novel. Assessment of opinions).

So, you have already been able to decide for yourself what this book is about. What is the theme of the novel? A story about the life of Sani Grigoriev, who is the main character of the novel.

What are the main problems of the novel?

choice of life path,

what is true and false,

honor and dishonor,

courage, heroism and duty.

So a circle of moral and ethical problems has emerged.

Kaverin himself said about the idea: “Restoration of justice”.

So, let's look at the moral and ethical problems of the novel.

What is the true beauty of a person? When can a person be called a person with a capital letter, that is, a real person?

Let's name the main characters of the novel.

The fates of the heroes are intertwined. They live in pre-war times according to the laws of morality and ethics of their time.

You already understood that they are different people. Someone can be called a man of honor and conscience, someone a vile and insignificant person. They made their life choices.

The problem of honor and dishonor

Let's turn to the image of the main character of the novel - Sana Grigoriev.

How do you imagine it? How did he grow up? What influenced the formation of his character? How did he temper and mature?

A scene from school life (ch. 12 "Serious conversation").

Is Sanya Grigoriev to blame for the death of Marya Vasilievna? Did he have the courage to continue searching for the missing expedition? Did Sanya have mistakes?

He has no life experience, this leads him to mistakes. A person is formed by resistance to the environment, as happened with Sanya. He cannot act like everyone else. He chooses his decision. Remember the oath they made with Petka Skovorodnikov “Fight and seek ...”? Fight first of all with yourself, with your own weaknesses. Selfishness, negligence in relation to other people's feelings wins in himself Sanya Grigoriev.

He brought out high moral purity from childhood, and this helped him to remain a real person with a high dream. For him, “seeking” means having a clear goal in front of him and striving for it. He will become a pilot - that is his goal.

Which of the heroes uttered the phrase: “Everyone wants to grab a tidbit”? What can you say about Gayer Kulia? Which of the heroes of the novel can be called lovers of "tidbits"?

The problem of lies and truth

We remember that the idea of ​​the novel is the restoration of justice. Fight against lies and hypocrisy.

Which of the heroes is the bearer of lies and hypocrisy? Who killed Captain Tatarinov? Whose meanness almost caused Sanya's death? How do you explain this coincidence?

Let us dwell on the attitude of the heroes to the woman. Why does the love of Nikolai Antonovich and Romashov not make them attractive?

How does the dispute end between people who follow the motto “fight and seek” and those for whom the main thing in life is “grab a tidbit”? Not only Sania has a strong will, but also Romashov. Why is it attractive in Sana'a, but repulsive with him?

The problem of courage, heroism and duty

She is revealed in the form of two captains.

Proving the truth, Sanya Grigoriev showed great courage and heroism, because he considered it his duty to find traces of the dead expedition. This path was difficult. The moral lessons that Sanya received at the same time made him a real person.

How are the fates of Captain Tatarinov and Captain Grigoriev connected?

The events in the book seem so believable that it seems that it was created on real life facts. What is the truth about it? And what about fiction?(Student post about the prototypes of the two captains in real life.)

Ivan Lvovich Tatarinov, after the death of the expedition, goes to the land he discovered. Why? He believed that this was his duty. For Sani Grigoriev, it became a duty to search for this missing expedition.

The novel ends with an epilogue - a description of an obelisk erected in memory of Tatarinov on an Arctic rock. It is at the same time a monument to Grigoriev's case, since it is engraved with the words of his boyish vow “Fight and seek, find and not give up”. And he fulfilled his duty with honor.

How he will follow this motto of his life, becoming an adult, we learn by reading the second book of the novel "Two Captains", in which all the same moral and ethical problems are solved.

"Two Captains" is a novel written by the writer Veniamin Kaverin. Its name is associated with two heroes, captains - our narrator Sanya Grigoriev and captain Tatarinov, whose story Grigoriev is trying to uncover. These people, who have never seen each other live, are connected by a thin thread that stretches through the years - their life paths constantly intersect.

The story is told in the first person, as if Sasha's diary - there are the events of his by no means cloudless childhood, and bright memories from his youth, his first, sincere love and the first serious difficulties. In general, the whole work tells about a person's life - it would seem to be such an uncomplicated thing, but at the same time, unusually interesting and incomprehensible.

In the novel "Two Captains" the author raises the set topics that are relevant even for our twenty-first century: determination and perseverance on the path to a dream, the ability not to give up and face difficulties face to face; a description of sincere, pure love and vice versa - selfish, vile; a choice problem that everyone faces: which path should I take? What to choose: honesty and pride, or dastardly tricks?

Plot rather uncomplicated: the first chapters tell about the childhood of the protagonist Sanya, his best friend, his father arrested by mistake and letters caught from the river and then turned his life upside down.

The main character Alexander Grigoriev is an honest, courageous and intelligent person who always keeps his word. He is a born fighter for justice, therefore he does not tolerate lies in any of its manifestations, he seeks to unravel the mysterious disappearance of Captain Tatarinov and prove the guilt of his, perhaps, the main enemy - his cousin Katya.

Katya Tatarinova is Sanya's first and only love. They met in childhood. Brave, who knows how to sincerely love and give all of herself to her beloved, she becomes a real and faithful companion of life for Grigoriev, despite all the obstacles that were encountered on the way: betrayal, imaginary friends and the death of loved ones.

Katya's mother is an unhappy woman who learned the whole truth too late and, being in a depressed state, poisoned herself due to the fact that she had allegedly betrayed her husband. The main part of her life, Nikolai Antonovich, her husband's cousin, convinced her that without him they simply wouldn’t have lived, that they owe everything they have to him. In fact, he was in love with Marya Vasilievna and specially supplied Tatarinov's expedition with low-quality equipment.

Observing the main characters, we can sometimes recognize ourselves in them, sometimes our acquaintances; in relation to the author, one can understand what is good and what is bad. It would seem that Kaverin raises such everyday problems - but nevertheless, we still encounter the above negative qualities inherent in many people. And following the development of events, everyone draws conclusions for themselves. Who do you want to be like: Alexander Grigoriev or Nikolai Antonovich? The author shows that in the end everything secret becomes clear, the guilty person gets what they deserve, and the decent and purposeful one always achieves his goal.

I want to complete my analysis main idea and motto Main character:

"Fight and seek, find and not give up."

Several interesting compositions

• Composition The main characters of the story Chameleon (characteristic, Chekhov)

  The main character of the story is policeman Ochumelov. It is his author who ironically compares it to a chameleon. This overseer's investigation is fraught with conflicting approaches to assessing the situation.

St. Petersburg is an ancient and very beautiful city of our country, Russia. It is the second largest after Moscow, it is the most important center of tourism, economy, medicine, science, culture of our state

Everyone has their own understanding of honesty. As for me, this is a person who does not deceive first of all himself, and then those around him.

People often scold their neighbors. They prevent sleep on weekends, make noise during the holidays, and listen to loud music. But few people praise their neighbors. What should an ideal neighbor look like?

• Composition based on the painting by Mavrina the Cat scientist (description)

  Artist T.A. Mavrina made a whole cycle of paintings entitled "The Cat Scientist". In her works, she portrayed a cat that was not habitually bright. With such a technique, T.A. Mavrina emphasized the peculiarity of the animal.