Study about solzhenitsyn matrenin dvor. Solzhenitsyn "Matrenin Dvor" - full text
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The theme of righteousness is heard in the works of artists of the word of different times. Modern writers did not remain equally stifling to her. AI Solzhenitsyn gives his vision of this problem in the story "Matrenin's Dvor".
"Matryona's Dvor" is a completely autobiographical and reliable work. The story described by Solzhenitsyn took place in the village of Miltsevo, Kuplovsky District, Vladimir Region. Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova lived there.
The heroine of Solzhenitsyn's story is modest and unremarkable. The author gives her a discreet appearance and does not give the reader her detailed portrait, but he constantly pays attention to Matryona's smile, radiant, bright, kind. So Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the inner beauty of Matryona, which for him is much more important than the outer beauty. Matryona's speech is unusual. It is replete with colloquial and outdated words, dialectal vocabulary. In addition, the heroine constantly uses words invented by herself (If you don't know how, if you don't varemshi - how do you get lost? "). Thus, the author reveals the idea of the national character of Matryona.
The heroine lives "in the run." Matryona's house "with four windows in a row on the cold, non-red side, covered with wood chips", "the wood chips drove away, the logs of the log house and the gate, once mighty, turned gray with old age, and their casing was ripped through." The heroine's life is unsettled: mice, cockroaches. She had made nothing but ficks, a goat, a bum-legged cat, and a coat that had been altered from an overcoat. Matryona is poor, although she has worked all her life. She procured even a tiny pension for herself with great difficulty. Nevertheless, the description of the heroine's life gives a feeling of harmony with which her poor house is filled. The narrator feels comfortable in her house, the decision to stay with Matryona comes to him immediately. He notes about Matryona's court: "... there was nothing evil in it, there was no lie in it."
Matryona lived a difficult life. The events of the First World War, in which Thaddeus was captured, and the events of the Great Patriotic War, from which her husband did not return, touched her fate. Collectivization was not spared either: on the collective farm, the heroine worked all her life, and “not for money - for sticks”. In recent days, her life is not easy: all day she goes to the authorities, trying to get certificates for applying for a pension, she has big problems with peat, her new chairman trimmed her garden, she cannot start a cow, because they are not allowed to mow anywhere, it is not even possible to buy a ticket for a train. It would seem that a person should long ago become embittered, hardened against the circumstances of life. But no - Matryona holds no grudge against people or her lot. Its main qualities are the inability to evil, love for one's neighbor, the ability to sympathize and compassion. Even during her lifetime, the heroine gave up her room for scrap for Kira, because “Matryona never spared neither work nor her good”. She finds consolation in work and is "clever at all work." The narrator notes: "... she had a sure way to regain her good spirits - work." Matryona gets up every day at four or five in the morning. Digging "kart", going for peat, "picking berries in a distant forest", and "every day she had something else to do." At the first call, the heroine goes to help the collective farm, relatives, and neighbors. Moreover, she does not wait for her work and does not demand reward. Work is a pleasure for her. “I didn’t want to leave the site when I was hunting,” she says once. “Matryona returned, already enlightened, happy with everything, with her kind smile,” the narrator says about her. The surrounding thinks such behavior of Matryona is strange. Today they call her for help, and tomorrow they blame her for not giving up on her. Her "cordiality and simplicity" is spoken of "with contemptuous regret." The villagers themselves do not seem to notice Matryona's problems, and they don’t even come to see her. Even at Matrona's funeral, no one talks about her herself. In the thoughts of those gathered, one thing: how to divide her simple property, how to grab a larger piece for yourself. The heroine was lonely during her life, she remained lonely on that mournful day.
Matryona is opposed to other heroes of the rasskaz, and to the whole world around her, too. Thaddeus, for example, is embittered, inhuman, selfish. He constantly tortures his family, and on the day of the tragedy he thinks only about how to "save the logs of the upper room from the fire and from the machinations of the matryon sisters." Matryona is opposed by her friend Masha, and her sisters, and her sister-in-law.
The basis of relationships in the world around the heroine is lies, immorality. Modern society has adopted moral guidelines, and Solzhenitsyn sees his salvation in the hearts of such lonely righteous people as Matryona. She is the very person “without whom, according to the proverb, the village is not worth it. Neither the city. Not all our land. "
A. Solzhenitsyn is the successor of the Tolstoy tradition. In the story "Matrenin's Dvor" he asserts the Tolstoyan truth that the basis of true greatness is "simplicity, goodness and truth."
Lesson topic: Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn.
Analysis of the story "Matrenin's yard".
The purpose of the lesson: try to understand how the writer sees the phenomenon of the "common man", to understand the philosophical meaning of the story.
During the classes:
- Teacher's word.
History of creation.
The story "Matrynin's Dvor" was written in 1959, published in 1964. "Matrenin's Dvor" is an autobiographical and authentic work. The original title is "A village is not worth it without a righteous man." Published in Novy Mir, 1963, no.
This is a story about the situation in which he found himself after returning "from the dusty hot desert", that is, from the camp. He wanted to “get lost in Russia”, to find “a quiet corner of Russia”. The former prisoner could only be hired for hard work, he also wanted to teach. After rehabilitation in 1957, S. worked for some time as a physics teacher in the Vladimir region, lived in the village of Miltsevo with the peasant woman Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova.
2. Conversation by story.
1) The name of the heroine.
- Which Russian writer of the 19th century had the main character of the same name? With what female images in Russian literature could you compare the heroine of the story?
(Answer: the name of Solzhenitsyn's heroine brings to mind the image of Matryona Timofeevna Korchagina, as well as the images of other Nekrasov women - workers: just like them, the heroine of the story “is dexterous to any work, she had to stop a galloping horse and into a burning hut to enter. ”There is nothing in her appearance from a stately Slav, you cannot call her a beauty. She is modest and not noticeable.)
2) Portrait.
- Is there a detailed portrait of the heroine in the story? What portrait details does the writer focus on?
(Answer: Solzhenitsyn does not give an expanded portrait of Matryona. From chapter to chapter, only one detail is often repeated - a smile: "a radiant smile", "a smile of her roundish face", "smiled at something," "an apologetic half-smile." not so much the external beauty of a simple Russian peasant woman as the internal light streaming from her eyes, and all the more clearly to emphasize her thought, expressed directly: “Those people always have good faces, who are in harmony with their conscience.” Therefore, after the terrible death of the heroine, her face remained intact, calm, more alive than dead.)
3) The speech of the heroine.
Write down the most typical statements of the heroine. What are the features of her speech?
(Answer: Matryona's deeply popular character is manifested, first of all, in her speech. Expressiveness, bright individuality gives her language an abundance of vernacular, dialectal vocabulary and archaism (2 - days I will be in time, for a bit too much, lyubota, letos obapol, help, unsettled). That was what everyone in the village used to say. Matryona's manner of speech is also deeply popular, the way she pronounces her "benevolent words." "They began with some low, warm purr, like grandmothers in fairy tales."
4) Matryona's life.
- What artistic details create a picture of Matryona's life? How are household items related to the spiritual world of the heroine?
(Answer: Outwardly, Matryona's life is striking in its unsettledness ("she lives in a run-down") All her wealth of ficuses, a bent-legged cat, a goat, mice and cockroaches, a coat made from a railway overcoat. All this testifies to the poverty of Matryona, who has worked all her life, but only But it is also important that these scant household details reveal her special world. It is no coincidence that the ficus says: "They filled the loneliness of the hostess. They grew freely ..." - and the rustling of cockroaches is compared to the distant sound of the ocean. It seems that nature itself lives in Matryona's house, all living things are drawn to her).
5) The fate of Matryona.
Recover the story of Matryona's life? How does Matryona perceive her fate? What role does work play in her life?
(Answer: The events of the story are limited by a clear time frame: summer-winter 1956. Restoring the fate of the heroine, her life dramas, personal troubles, in one way or another, are connected with the turns of history: With the First World War, in which Thaddeus was captured, with the Great Patriotic, with which her husband did not return, with a collective farm, which survived all the forces from her and left her without a livelihood. Her fate is a particle of the fate of the whole people.
And today the inhuman system does not let Matryona go: she was left without a pension, and she has to spend whole days obtaining various certificates; peat is not sold to her, forcing her to steal, and even on a denunciation they go with a search; the new chairman cut off vegetable gardens for all disabled people; cows cannot be brought in, since they are not allowed to mow anywhere; they don't even sell train tickets. Matryona does not feel justice, but she does not hold any grudge against fate and people. "She had a sure way to regain her good spirits - work." Receiving nothing for her work, she goes to help her neighbors and the collective farm at the first call. Others willingly take advantage of her kindness. The villagers and relatives themselves, not only do not help Matryona, but also try not to appear in her house at all, fearing that she will ask for help. Each and every Matryona remains absolutely alone in her village.
6) The image of Matryona among relatives.
What colors are Faddey Mironovich and Matryona's relatives painted in the story? How does Thaddeus behave when taking apart the upper room? What is the conflict in the story?
(Answer: The main character is opposed in the story by the brother of her late husband, Thaddeus. Drawing his portrait, Solzhenitsyn repeats the epithet "black" seven times. An almost blind old man revives when he attacks Matryona about the upper room, and then when he breaks the hut of his ex-fiancee. Thaddeus's inhumanity is especially vividly manifested on the eve of Matryona's funeral.
Eventual conflict in the story is almost absent, for the very nature of Matryona excludes conflict relations with people. For her, good is the incapacity for evil, love and compassion. In this substitution of concepts, Solzhenitsyn sees the essence of the spiritual crisis that struck Russia.
7) The tragedy of Matryona.
What signs portend the death of the heroine?
(Answer: From the very first lines, the author prepares us for the tragic denouement of Matryona's fate. Her death is foreshadowed by the loss of a pot of consecrated water and the disappearance of a cat. the narrator is the death of a loved one and the destruction of the whole world, the world of that people's truth, without which the Russian land does not stand)
8) The image of the narrator.
What is common in the fate of the narrator and Matryona?
(Answer: The narrator is a man of a difficult family, behind whose shoulders the war and the camp. Therefore, he is lost in a quiet corner of Russia. And only in Matryona's hut did the hero feel something akin to his heart. And the lonely Matryona felt trust in her guest. Only to him she tells about his bitter past, only he will reveal to her that he spent a lot in prison. The heroes are related both by the drama of their fate, and many life principles. Especially their relationship is reflected in speech. And only the death of the mistress forced the narrator to comprehend her spiritual essence, that is why it sounds so strong in the finale the story of the motive of repentance.
9) - What is the theme of the story?
(Answer: The main theme of the story is “how people live”.
Why is the fate of the old peasant woman described in a few pages so interesting to us?
(Answer: This woman is unread, illiterate, simple toiler. To go through what Matryona Vasilyevna had to endure, and to remain a disinterested, open, delicate, sympathetic person, not to be embittered with fate and people, to keep her “radiant smile” until old age - what mental strength is needed for this!
10) -What is the symbolic meaning of the story "Matrenin's yard"?
(Answer: Many symbols of S. are associated with Christian symbolism: images are symbols of the way of the cross, a righteous man, a martyr. This is directly indicated by the first name “Matryona's court.” And the name itself is generalized. The yard, Matryona's house is the refuge that the storyteller finds after long years of camps and homelessness. In the fate of the house, as it were, the fate of its mistress is predicted. Forty years passed here. In this house, she survived two wars - German and Patriotic, the death of six children who died in infancy, the loss of her husband, who disappeared in the war. The house is decaying - the mistress is getting old. The house is being dismantled like a man - “on the ribs.” Matryona dies along with the upper room. With part of her house. The hostess dies - the house is completely destroyed. like a coffin - buried.
Output:
Righteous Matryona is the writer's moral ideal, on which, in his opinion, the life of society should be based.
Folk wisdom, taken by the writer into the original title of the story, accurately conveys this author's idea. Matryonin's yard is a kind of island in the middle of an ocean of lies that keeps the treasure of the people's spirit. The death of Matryona, the destruction of her yard and hut is a formidable warning of a catastrophe that can happen to a society that has lost its moral guidelines. However, despite all the tragedy of the work, the story is imbued with the author's faith in the vitality of Russia. Solzhenitsyn sees the source of this resilience not in the political system, not in state power, not in the power of arms, but in the simple hearts of no one noticed, humiliated, most often lonely righteous people who oppose the world of lies.)
Analysis of the story of A.I. Solzhenitsyn's "Matrenin Dvor"
A.I.Solzhenitsyn's view of the village of the 1950s and 1960s is notable for its harsh and cruel truth. Therefore, the editor of the magazine "Novy Mir" AT Tvardovsky insisted on changing the duration of the story "Matrenin's Dvor" (1959) from 1956 to 1953. It was an editorial move in the hope of pushing for publication a new work by Solzhenitsyn: the events in the story were postponed to the times before the Khrushchev thaw. The picture depicted leaves too painful impression. “Leaves flew around, snow fell - and then melted. They plowed again, sowed again, reaped again. And again the leaves flew around, and again the snow fell. And one revolution. And another revolution. And the whole world turned upside down. "
The story is usually based on a case that reveals the character of the protagonist. Solzhenitsyn also builds his story on this traditional principle. Fate threw the hero-storyteller to the station with a strange name for Russian places - Torfoprodukt. Here "dense, impenetrable forests stood before and survived the revolution." But then they were cut down, brought to the root. In the village, they no longer baked bread, did not sell anything edible - the table became scarce and poor. Collective farmers "all the way to the whitest flies on the collective farm, all on the collective farm", and hay for their cows had to be collected from under the snow.
The author reveals the character of the main heroine of the story, Matryona, through a tragic event - her death. It was only after death that "the image of Matryona floated before me, which I did not understand, even living side by side with her." Throughout the story, the author does not give a detailed, specific description of the heroine. Only one portrait detail is constantly emphasized by the author - the "radiant", "kind", "apologetic" smile of Matryona. But by the end of the story, the reader imagines the character of the heroine. The author's attitude to Matryona is felt in the tonality of the phrase, in the selection of colors: “From the red frosty sun, the frozen window of the canopy, now shortened, poured a little pink - and this reflection warmed Matryona's face”. And then there is a direct author's characteristic: "Those people always have good faces, who are in harmony with their consciences." The flowing, melodious, primordially Russian speech of Matryona is remembered, beginning with "some kind of low warm purr, like grandmothers in fairy tales."
The world around Matryona in her darkish hut with a large Russian stove is, as it were, a continuation of herself, a part of her life. Everything here is organic and natural: the cockroaches rustling behind the partition, the rustle of which resembled the “distant sound of the ocean,” and the bent-legged cat picked up by Matryona out of pity, and the mice, which on the tragic night of Matryona’s death darted about behind the wallpaper as if Matryona herself was “invisible she tossed about and said goodbye here to her hut. " Favorite ficuses "flooded the loneliness of the hostess with a silent, but lively crowd." The same ficuses that Matryona once saved in a fire, not thinking about the meager wealth she had acquired. The "frightened crowd" froze the ficuses on that terrible night, and then they were forever taken out of the hut ...
The author-narrator unfolds the story of Matryona's life not immediately, but gradually. She had to sip a lot of grief and injustice in her lifetime: broken love, the death of six children, the loss of her husband in the war, hellish labor in the village, a serious illness-illness, a bitter resentment against the collective farm, which squeezed all her strength out of her, and then wrote it off as unnecessary leaving without pension and support. In the fate of Matryona, the tragedy of a village Russian woman is concentrated - the most expressive, outrageous.
But she was not angry with this world, she kept a good mood, a feeling of joy and pity for others, her radiant smile still illuminates her face. "She had a sure way to regain her good spirits - work." And in her old age, Matryona did not know rest: she grabbed a shovel, then she went with a bag to the swamp to mow grass for her dirty white goat, then she went with other women to steal peat from the collective farm secretly for winter kindling.
“Matryona was angry with someone invisible,” but she did not hold any grudge against the collective farm. Moreover, according to the very first decree, she went to help the collective farm, without receiving, as before, anything for the work. Yes, and any distant relative or neighbor did not refuse help, without a shadow of envy later telling the guest about the neighbor's rich potato crop. Work was never a burden for her, “Matryona never spared neither work nor her good”. And everyone around Matrenin's unselfishness was shamelessly used.
She lived poorly, miserably, lonely - a "lost old woman", exhausted by work and illness. Relatives almost did not appear in her house, fearing, apparently, that Matryona would ask them for help. All in unison condemned her that she was funny and stupid, that she worked for others for free, always crawling into peasant affairs (after all, she got under the train, because she wanted to knock the peasants to drag the sleigh through the crossing). True, after Matryona's death, the sisters immediately flew in, "seized the hut, the goat and the stove, locked her chest, and gutted two hundred funeral rubles from the lining of her coat." Yes, and a half-century friend, "the only one who sincerely loved Matryona in this village," who came running in tears with the tragic news, nevertheless, leaving, took Matryona's knitted blouse with her so that the sisters would not get it. The sister-in-law, who recognized Matryona's simplicity and cordiality, spoke of this "with contemptuous regret." Mercilessly everyone used Matryona's kindness and innocence - and amicably condemned for it.
The writer devotes a significant place in the story to the scene of the funeral. And this is no coincidence. In the house of Matryona for the last time gathered all the relatives and friends, in whose environment she lived her life. And it turned out that Matryona was leaving life, never understood by anyone, not humanly mourned by anyone. At the memorial supper they drank a lot, they said loudly, "not at all about Matryona." According to custom, they sang "Eternal Memory", but "the voices were hoarse, rosy, their faces were drunk, and no one already put feelings into this eternal memory."
The death of the heroine is the beginning of decay, the death of the moral foundations that Matryona strengthened with her life. She was the only one in the village who lived in her own world: she arranged her life with work, honesty, kindness and patience, preserving her soul and inner freedom. In a popular way, wise, judicious, able to value goodness and beauty, smiling and sociable in her disposition, Matryona managed to resist evil and violence, preserving her “court”, her world, the special world of the righteous. But Matryona dies - and this world collapses: they drag her house down a log, eagerly share her modest belongings. And there is no one to protect Matryona's yard, no one even thinks that with the departure of Matryona something very valuable and important, not amenable to division and primitive everyday assessment, is leaving this life.
“We all lived next to her and did not understand that she is the same righteous person, without whom, according to the proverb, the village is not worth it. Neither the city. Not all of our land. "
The bitter ending of the story. The author admits that he, having become related to Matryona, does not pursue any selfish interests, nevertheless, he did not fully understand her. And only death revealed before him the majestic and tragic image of Matryona. The story is a kind of author's repentance, bitter repentance for the moral blindness of everyone around him, including himself. He bows his head before a man of a disinterested soul, absolutely unrequited, defenseless.
Despite the tragedy of events, the story is sustained on some very warm, light, piercing note. It sets the reader up for good feelings and serious thoughts.
The history of the creation of the work of Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
In 1962, the magazine "New World" published the story "One Day in Ivan Denisovich", which made the name of Solzhenitsyn known throughout the country and far beyond its borders. A year later, in the same magazine, Solzhenitsyn published several stories, including "Matrenin's Dvor". At this point, the publication stopped. None of the writer's works were allowed to be published in the USSR anymore. And in 1970 Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Initially, the story "Matrenin's yard" was called "A village is not worth it without the righteous." But, on the advice of A. Tvardovsky, in order to avoid censorship obstacles, the name was changed. For the same reasons, the year of action in the story from 1956 was changed by the author to 1953. "Matrenin's Dvor", as the author himself noted, "is completely autobiographical and reliable." All the notes to the story tell about the prototype of the heroine - Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova from the village of Miltsovo, Kurlovsky district, Vladimir region. The narrator, like the author himself, teaches in the Ryazan village, living with the heroine of the story, and the very patronymic of the narrator - Ignatich - is consonant with the patronymic of A. Solzhenitsyn - Isaevich. The story, written in 1956, tells about the life of the Russian countryside in the fifties.
Critics praised the story. The essence of Solzhenitsyn's work was noted by A. Tvardovsky: “Why is the fate of an old peasant woman, told in a few pages, of such great interest to us? This woman is unread, illiterate, simple toiler. And yet her inner world is endowed with such qualities that we talk to her like we do with Anna Karenina. " After reading these words in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Solzhenitsyn immediately wrote to Tvardovsky: “Needless to say, the paragraph of your speech relating to Matryona means a lot to me. You pointed to the very essence - a loving and suffering woman, while all the criticism was scouring all the time over the top, comparing the Talnovsky collective farm and the neighboring ones. "
The first title of the story "A village is not worth it without the righteous" contained a deep meaning: the Russian village is based on people whose lifestyle is based on the universal values of goodness, work, sympathy, and help. Since they call a righteous, first, a person who lives in accordance with religious rules; secondly, a person who does not in any way sin against the rules of morality (rules that determine morals, behavior, spiritual and mental qualities that a person needs in society). The second name - "Matrenin's Dvor" - somewhat changed the angle of view: moral principles began to have clear boundaries only within the Matrenin's Dvor. On a wider scale of the village, they are blurred, the people surrounding the heroine often differ from her. Having titled the story "Matrenin's Dvor", Solzhenitsyn focused the readers' attention on the wonderful world of the Russian woman.
Genre, genre, creative method of the analyzed work
Solzhenitsyn once remarked that he rarely turned to the genre of the story, for “artistic pleasure”: “You can put a lot in a small form, and it is a great pleasure for an artist to work on a small form. Because in a small form, you can sharpen the edges with great pleasure for yourself. " In the story "Matrenin's Dvor" all facets are brilliantly honed, and meeting with the story becomes, in turn, a great pleasure for the reader. The story is usually based on an incident that reveals the character of the protagonist.
There were two points of view in literary criticism about the story "Matrenin's Dvor". One of them presented the story of Solzhenitsyn as a phenomenon of "village prose". V. Astafiev, calling "Matrenin's Dvor" "the pinnacle of Russian short stories," believed that our "village prose" came out of this story. Somewhat later, this idea was developed in literary criticism.
At the same time, the story "Matrenin's Dvor" was associated with the original genre of "monumental story" that emerged in the second half of the 1950s. An example of this genre is the story of M. Sholokhov "The Fate of a Man".
In the 1960s, the genre features of the “monumental story” are recognized in A. Solzhenitsyn’s Matrenin’s Dvor, V. Zakrutkin’s Human Mother, and E. Kazakevich’s In the Light of Day. The main difference between this genre is the image of a common man who is the custodian of universal values. Moreover, the image of a common man is given in sublime tones, and the story itself is focused on a high genre. So, in the story "The Fate of a Man" features of the epic can be seen. And in "Matryona's Dvor" the bias is made on the lives of the saints. Before us is the life of Matryona Vasilyevna Grigorieva, a righteous woman and great martyr of the era of "continuous collectivization" and a tragic experiment over an entire country. Matryona was portrayed by the author as a saint (“Only she had fewer sins than a bouncy cat”).
The subject of the work
The theme of the story is a description of the life of a patriarchal Russian village, which reflects how flourishing selfishness and predation disfigure Russia and "destroy ties and meaning." The writer raises in a short story the serious problems of the Russian countryside in the early 50s. (her life, customs and mores, the relationship between the authorities and the person-worker). The author repeatedly emphasizes that the state needs only working hands, and not the person himself: "She was lonely around, and since she began to get sick, she was released from the collective farm." A person, according to the author, must do his own thing. So Matryona finds the meaning of life in work, she is angry at the unfair attitude of others to work.
An analysis of the work shows that the problems raised in it are subordinated to one goal: to reveal the beauty of the heroine's Christian-Orthodox worldview. Using the fate of a village woman as an example, show that life's losses and suffering only more clearly manifest the measure of the human in each of the people. But Matryona dies - and this world collapses: they drag her house down a log, eagerly share her modest belongings. And there is no one to protect Matryona's yard, no one even thinks that with the departure of Matryona something very valuable and important, not amenable to division and primitive everyday assessment, is leaving this life. “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she is the same righteous person, without whom, according to the proverb, the village is not worth it. No city. Not all our land. " The last phrases expand the boundaries of Matryona's yard (as the heroine's personal world) to the scale of humanity.
The main characters of the work
The main heroine of the story, as indicated in the title, is Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva. Matryona is a lonely, disadvantaged peasant woman with a generous and disinterested soul. She lost her husband in the war, buried six of her own and raised other people's children. Matryona gave her pupil the most precious thing in her life - the house: “... she didn’t feel sorry for the upper room, which stood idle, no matter how much her labor or her good was ...”.
The heroine has endured many hardships in life, but has not lost the ability to empathize with others, joy and sorrow. She is disinterested: she sincerely rejoices at someone else's good harvest, although she herself never has it on the sand. All the wealth of Matryona is made up of a dirty white goat, a lame cat and large flowers in tubs.
Matryona is the concentration of the best traits of the national character: she is shy, understands the "education" of the narrator, respects him for this. The author appreciates in Matryona her delicacy, the absence of annoying curiosity about the life of another person, her diligence. For a quarter of a century she worked on a collective farm, but because she was not at a factory, she was not entitled to a pension for herself, and she could only achieve it for her husband, that is, for the breadwinner. As a result, she never got her pension. It was extremely difficult to live. She got grass for a goat, peat for warmth, collected old hemp turned up by a tractor, soaked lingonberries for the winter, grew potatoes, helping those who were nearby to survive.
Analysis of the work says that the image of Matryona and individual details in the story are symbolic. Solzhenitsyn's Matryona is the embodiment of the ideal of the Russian woman. As noted in the critical literature, the appearance of the heroine is like an icon, and life is like the lives of the saints. Her house, as it were, symbolizes the ark of the biblical Noah, in which he is saved from the worldwide flood. The death of Matryona symbolizes the cruelty and meaninglessness of the world in which she lived.
The heroine lives according to the laws of Christianity, although her actions are not always clear to those around her. Therefore, the attitude towards her is different. Matrona is surrounded by sisters, sister-in-law, adopted daughter Cyrus, the only friend in the village, Thaddeus. However, no one appreciated her. She lived poorly, miserably, lonely - a "lost old woman", exhausted by work and illness. Relatives almost did not appear in her house, everyone condemned Matryona in chorus that she was funny and stupid, she worked for others for free all her life. Everyone mercilessly used Matryona's kindness and innocence - and amicably judged her for this. Among the people around her, the author treats her heroine with great sympathy; both her son Thaddeus and her pupil Kira love her.
The image of Matryona is contrasted in the story with the image of the cruel and greedy Thaddeus, who seeks to get Matryona's house during her lifetime.
Matryona's yard is one of the key images of the story. The description of the courtyard and the house is detailed, with a lot of details, devoid of bright colors. Matryona lives "in a mess". It is important for the author to emphasize the inseparability of the house and the person: if the house is destroyed, its mistress will also die. This fusion is already stated in the title of the story. The hut for Matryona is filled with a special spirit and light, a woman's life is connected with the “life” of the house. Therefore, for a long time she did not agree to break the hut.
Plot and composition
The story is divided into three parts. In the first part, we are talking about how fate threw the hero-storyteller to the station with a strange name for Russian places - Torfoprodukt. A former prisoner, and now a school teacher, eager to find peace in some remote and quiet corner of Russia, finds shelter and warmth in the house of the elderly and familiar Matryona. “Maybe, to some of the village, some richer, Matryona’s hut didn’t seem to be kind, but we were quite good with her that autumn and winter: it didn’t flow from the rains yet and the chilly winds didn’t blow the heat out of it right away, only in the morning , especially when the wind blew from the leaky side. Besides Matryona and me, there were also cats, mice and cockroaches living in the hut. " They immediately find a common language. Next to Matryona, the hero calms down his soul.
In the second part of the story, Matryona recalls her youth, about the terrible ordeal that befell her. Her fiancé Thaddeus went missing in the First World War. The younger brother of her missing husband, Efim, who was left alone after death with his younger children in his arms, wooed her. She took pity on Matryona Efim and married the unloved one. And here, after three years of absence, Thaddeus himself unexpectedly returned, whom Matryona continued to love. The hard life did not harden Matryona's heart. In caring for her daily bread, she went her way to the end. And even death overtook a woman in labor chores. Matryona dies, helping Thaddeus and his sons to drag a part of their own hut, bequeathed to Kira, across the railway on a sleigh. Thaddeus did not want to wait for Matryona's death and decided to take the inheritance for the young during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death.
In the third part, the tenant learns about the death of the mistress of the house. The description of the funeral and commemoration showed the true attitude of people close to her towards Matryona. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry more out of duty than heartily, and think only about the final division of Matryona's property. And Thaddeus does not even come to the commemoration.
Artistic features of the analyzed story
The artistic world in the story is built linearly - in accordance with the story of the heroine's life. In the first part of the work, the entire story about Matryona is given through the perception of the author, a person who has endured a lot in his lifetime, who dreamed of "getting lost in the interior of Russia itself." The narrator evaluates her life from the outside, compares it with the environment, becomes an authoritative witness of righteousness. In the second part, the heroine tells about herself. The combination of lyric and epic pages, the linking of episodes according to the principle of emotional contrast allows the author to change the rhythm of the narrative, its tonality. This is the way the author goes to recreate a multi-layered picture of life. Already the first pages of the story serve as a convincing example. It opens with an opening telling about the tragedy at the railway sidings. We learn the details of this tragedy at the end of the story.
Solzhenitsyn in his work does not give a detailed, specific description of the heroine. Only one portrait detail is constantly emphasized by the author - the "radiant", "kind", "apologetic" smile of Matryona. Nevertheless, by the end of the story, the reader imagines the appearance of the heroine. Already in the very tonality of the phrase, the selection of "colors", one can feel the author's attitude to Matryona: "From the red frosty sun, the frozen window of the canopy, now shortened, poured a little pink, and this reflection warmed Matryona's face." And then there is a direct author's characteristic: "Those people always have good faces, who are in harmony with their consciences." Even after the terrible death of the heroine, her "face remained intact, calm, more alive than dead."
In Matryona, the folk character is embodied, which is primarily manifested in her speech. Expressiveness, vivid individuality gives her language an abundance of vernacular, dialectal vocabulary (prispeyu, kujotkamu, leto, molonia). The manner of her speech is also deeply popular, the way she pronounces her words: "They began with some kind of low warm purr, like grandmothers in fairy tales." “Matryonin Dvor” minimally includes the landscape, he pays more attention to the interior, which does not appear on its own, but in a lively interweaving with “inhabitants” and sounds - from the rustle of mice and cockroaches to the state of ficuses and a bent-legged cat. Every detail here characterizes not only the peasant life, Matryonin's yard, but also the storyteller. The voice of the narrator reveals in him a psychologist, a moralist, even a poet - in how he observes Matryona, her neighbors and relatives, how he evaluates them and her. Poetic feeling is manifested in the emotions of the author: “Only she had less sins than the cat ...”; "But Matryona rewarded me ...". The lyrical pathos is especially obvious at the very end of the story, where even the syntactic structure changes, including paragraphs, translating speech into blank verse:
“Weems lived in rows with her / and did not understand / that she is the same righteous person / without whom, according to the proverb, / the village is not worth it. / Neither the city. / Not our whole land. "
The writer was looking for a new word. An example of this is his convincing articles about language in Literaturnaya Gazeta, his fantastic adherence to Dahl (researchers note that about 40% of the vocabulary in the story Solzhenitsyn borrowed from Dahl's dictionary), and ingenuity in vocabulary. In the story "Matrenin's Dvor," Solzhenitsyn arrived at the language of preaching.
The meaning of the work
“There are such inborn angels,” wrote Solzhenitsyn in his article “Repentance and Self-Restriction,” as if describing Matryona, “they seem to be weightless, they slide, as it were, on top of this slurry, not drowning in it at all, even touching the surface with their feet? Each of us met such, they are not ten and not one hundred in Russia, these are the righteous, we saw them, we were surprised ("eccentrics"), we used their good, in good moments they answered them the same, they have, and immediately plunged again to our doomed depth. "
What is the essence of Matryona's righteousness? Life is not a lie, we will say now in the words of the writer himself, uttered much later. By creating this character, Solzhenitsyn places him in the most mundane circumstances of rural collective farm life in the 1950s. Matryona's righteousness lies in her ability to preserve her humanity even in such inaccessible conditions. As NS Leskov wrote, righteousness is the ability to live "not lying, not deceiving, not condemning a neighbor and not condemning a biased enemy."
The story was called "brilliant", "truly brilliant work." In the reviews about him, it was noted that among the stories of Solzhenitsyn, he stands out for his strict artistry, the integrity of the poetic embodiment, the consistency of artistic taste.
A.I. Solzhenitsyn's "Matrenin Dvor" - for all times. It is especially relevant today, when the issues of moral values and life priorities are acute in modern Russian society.
Point of view
Anna Akhmatova
When his big piece came out (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), I said: all 200 million should read it. And when I read "Matryona's yard", I cried, and I rarely cry.
V. Surganov
In the end, after all, it is not so much the appearance of Solzhenitsyn's Matryona that evokes an internal rebuff in us, as an open author's admiration for beggarly disinterestedness and an equally frank desire to uplift and oppose it to the predatory predicament of the owner, nesting in the people around her, close to her.
(From the book "The Word Forces Its Way."
Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn.
1962-1974. - M .: Russian way, 1978.)
It is interesting
On August 20, 1956, Solzhenitsyn left for his place of work. There were many such names as "Peatproduct" in the Vladimir region. Peat product (the local youth called it "Tyr-pyr") was a railway station 180 kilometers away and a four-hour drive from Moscow along the Kazan road. The school was located in the nearby village of Mezinovsky, and Solzhenitsyn happened to live two kilometers from the school - in the Meshchera village of Miltsevo.
Only three years will pass, and Solzhenitsyn will write a story that will immortalize these places: a station with a clumsy name, a village with a tiny bazaar, the house of the landlady Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova and Matryona herself, a righteous woman and a sufferer. A photograph of the corner of the hut, where the guest will put a cot and, pushing aside the master's ficuses, arrange a table with a lamp, will go around the whole world.
The teaching staff of Mezinovka numbered about fifty members that year and significantly influenced the life of the village. There were four schools here: elementary, seven-year, middle and evening for working youth. Solzhenitsyn received a referral to a secondary school - it was in an old one-story building. The academic year began with the August teachers' conference, so, having arrived at Torfoprodukt, the teacher of mathematics and electrical engineering in grades 8-10 managed to go to the Kurlovsky district for a traditional meeting. “Isaich,” as his colleagues christened him, could, if desired, refer to a serious illness, but no, he did not speak to anyone about it. We just saw him looking for a birch chaga mushroom and some herbs in the forest, and shortly replies to the questions: “I make medicinal drinks”. He was considered shy: after all, a person suffered ... But that was not the point at all: “I came with my purpose, with my past. What could they know, what could they tell them? I sat with Matryona and wrote a novel every free minute. Why am I going to talk to myself? I did not have such a manner. I was a conspirator to the end. " Then everyone will get used to the fact that this thin, pale, tall man in a suit and tie, who, like all teachers, wore a hat, coat or cloak, keeps his distance and does not get close to anyone. He will remain silent when, six months later, the document on rehabilitation comes - just the school head teacher B.S. Protserov will receive a notification from the village council and send a teacher for help. No more talking about when my wife starts arriving. “Who cares? I live with Matryona and live. " Many were alarmed (wasn’t a spy?) That he was walking everywhere with a Zorky camera and was shooting something quite different from what amateurs usually shoot: instead of relatives and friends - houses, ruined farms, boring landscapes.
Arriving at school at the beginning of the school year, he proposed his own methodology - giving all classes a control, based on the results, he divided the students into strong and mediocre ones, and then worked individually.
In the classroom, everyone received a separate assignment, so there was no opportunity or desire to cheat. Not only the solution to the problem was appreciated, but also the way of solving it. The introductory part of the lesson was shortened as much as possible: the teacher spared time on "trifles". He knew exactly who and when to call to the board, whom to ask more often, to whom to entrust independent work. The teacher never sat at the teacher's table. I did not enter the classroom, but burst in. He kindled everyone with his energy, knew how to build a lesson in such a way that there was no time to be bored or doze off. He respected his students. He never shouted, he didn't even raise his voice.
And only outside the class was Solzhenitsyn silent and withdrawn. After school, he left home, ate the "cardboard" soup prepared by Matryona and sat down to work. The neighbors remembered for a long time how inconspicuously the guest lodged, did not arrange parties, did not participate in the fun, but read and wrote everything. “I loved Matryona Isaich,” used to say Shura Romanova, Matryona's adopted daughter (in the story she is Kira). - It used to come to me in Cherusti, I persuade her to stay longer. “No,” he says. "I have Isaich - he needs to cook, heat the stove." And back home. "
The tenant also became attached to the lost old woman, cherishing her disinterestedness, conscientiousness, heartfelt simplicity, a smile, which he tried in vain to catch in the camera lens. “So Matryona got used to me, and I to her, and we lived easily. She did not interfere with my long evening studies, did not annoy me with any questions. " There was absolutely no woman's curiosity in her, and the tenant also did not disturb her soul, but it turned out that they opened up to each other.
She learned about the prison, and about the serious illness of the guest, and about his loneliness. And there was no worse loss for him in those days than the ridiculous death of Matryona on February 21, 1957 under the wheels of a freight train at the one hundred and eighty-fourth kilometer crossing from Moscow along the branch that goes to Murom from Kazan, exactly six months after the day he settled in her hut.
(From the book by Lyudmila Saraskina "Alexander Solzhenitsyn")
Matryona's yard is poor as before
Solzhenitsyn's acquaintance with "kondova", "interior" Russia, in which he so wanted to end up after his exile in Ekibastuz, was embodied in the world-famous story "Matrenin's Dvor" several years later. This year marks 40 years since its creation. As it turned out, in Mezinovsky itself, this work of Solzhenitsyn became a second-hand book rarity. This book is not even in Matryona's yard, where Lyuba, the niece of the heroine of Solzhenitsyn's story, now lives. “I had pages from the magazine, somehow the neighbors asked, when they began to pass it at school, they did not return it,” complains Lyuba, who today brings up her grandson in the “historical” walls on disability benefits. Matryona's hut came from her mother - Matryona's youngest sister. The hut in Mezinovsky was transported from the neighboring village of Miltsevo (in Solzhenitsyn's story - Talnovo), where the future writer lived with Matryona Zakharova (with Solzhenitsyn - Matryona Grigorieva). In the village of Miltsevo, for Alexander Solzhenitsyn's visit here in 1994, a similar, but much more solid house was hastily erected. Soon after Solzhenitsyn's memorable visit, the countrymen uprooted the window frames and floorboards from this unprotected building of Matrenina, standing on the outskirts of the village.
The "new" Mezinovo school, built in 1957, now has 240 students. In the old building that has not survived, in which Solzhenitsyn taught lessons, about a thousand studied. For half a century, not only the Miltsevskaya river has become shallow and the reserves of peat in the surrounding swamps have become scarce, but the neighboring villages have also been deserted. And at the same time, Solzhenitsyn's Thaddeans, who call the good of the people "ours" and think that losing it "is shameful and stupid", did not disappear.
The crumbling house of Matryona, moved to a new place without a foundation, has grown into the ground for two crowns, buckets are placed under the thin roof in the rains. Like Matryona, there are cockroaches here with might and main, but there are no mice: there are four cats in the house, two of their own and two nailed down. A former foundry worker at a local factory, Lyuba, who once spent months correcting Matryona's pension, goes to the authorities to extend her disability benefit. “No one but Solzhenitsyn helps,” she complains. - Once one came in a jeep, called himself Alexei, looked around the house and gave money. Behind the house, like Matryona's, there is a 15 hectare garden where Lyuba is planting potatoes. As before, “potato-spearmint”, mushrooms and cabbage are the main products for her life. In addition to cats, she does not even have a goat in the courtyard, which Matryona had.
This is how many Mezin's righteous people lived and live. Local historians write books about the stay of the great writer in Mezinovsky, local poets compose poems, new pioneers write essays "On the difficult fate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel laureate", as they once wrote essays about Brezhnev's "Virgin Land" and "Malaya Zemlya". They are thinking again to revive Matryona's museum hut on the outskirts of the deserted village of Miltsevo. And the old Matrenin's yard still lives the same life as half a century ago.
Leonid Novikov, Vladimir region.
Y. Gang Service of Solzhenitsyn // New time. - 1995. No. 24.
Zapevalov V.A. Solzhenitsyn. On the 30th anniversary of the publication of the story "One Day in Ivan Denisovich" // Russian Literature. - 1993. No. 2.
Litvinova V.I. Don't live a lie. Methodical recommendations for the study of A.I. Solzhenitsyn. - Abakan: publishing house of KSU, 1997.
Murind. One hour, one day, one human life in the stories of A.I. Solzhenitsyn // Literature at school. - 1995. No. 5.
Palamarchuk P. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Guide. - M.,
1991.
Saraskina L. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. ZhZL series. - M .: Young
guard, 2009.
The word makes its way. Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn. 1962-1974. - M .: Russian way, 1978.
Chalmaev V. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Life and Work. - M., 1994.
Urmanov A.V. Creativity of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. - M., 2003.
Teacher's word
A writer is judged by his best works. Among the stories of Solzhenitsyn, published in the 60s, Matrenin's Dvor was always put in first place. He was called "brilliant", "truly brilliant work." “The story is true,” “the story is talented,” criticism noted. "Among the stories of Solzhenitsyn, he stands out for his strict artistry, the integrity of the poetic embodiment, the consistency of artistic taste."
Question
Where does the story take place?
Answer
At "one hundred and eighty-fourth kilometers from Moscow." Specifying the exact location is important. On the one hand, it gravitates towards the center of European Russia, towards Moscow itself, on the other - the remoteness, the wilderness of the regions described in the story is emphasized. This is the place that is most typical for the then Russia.
Question
What is the name of the station where the events of the story unfold? What is the absurdity of this name?
Answer
The production and prosaic name of the station "Torfoprodukt" is striking: "Ah, Turgenev did not know that it is possible to compose such a thing in Russian!"
The lines that follow this ironic phrase are written in a completely different tonality: "The wind of calm pulled me from the names of other villages: Vysokoe Pole, Talnovo, Chaslitsy, Shevertni, Ovintsy, Spudni, Shestimirovo."
This inconsistency of toponymy is the key to the subsequent understanding of the contrasts of everyday life and being.
Question
Who is the narrator from? What is the role of the storyteller?
Answer
The narrator leading the story, being an intellectual teacher, constantly writing "something of his own" at a dimly lit table, is placed in the position of an outside observer-chronicler, trying to understand Matryona and everything "that is happening to us."
Teacher comment
"Matryona's Dvor" is an autobiographical work. This is the story of Solzhenitsyn and about himself, about the situation in which he found himself, returning in the summer of 1956 "from the dusty hot desert." He "wanted to get lost in the interior of Russia", to find "a quiet corner of Russia, away from the railways."
Ignatich (under this name the author appears before us) feels the delicacy of his position: a former camp prisoner (Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated in 1957) could only be hired for hard work - carrying a stretcher. He also had other desires: "And I was drawn to teach." And in the structure of this phrase with its expressive dash, and in the choice of words, the mood of the hero is conveyed, the most cherished is expressed.
Question
What is the theme of the story?
Answer
The main theme of the story "Matrenin's yard" is "how people live". This is what Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn wants to understand and wants to tell about it. The entire movement of the plot of his story is aimed at comprehending the mystery of the character of the main character.
Exercise
Tell about the heroine of the story.
Answer
The heroine of the story is a simple village woman Matryona. Numerous troubles have fallen to her lot - the capture of the groom, the death of her husband, the death of six children, a serious illness and resentment - deceptions when calculating for hellish labor, poverty, expulsion from the collective farm, deprivation of pension, heartlessness of bureaucrats.
Poverty Matryona looks from all angles. Where will prosperity come from in a peasant house?
“I only found out later,” says Ignatich, “that year after year, for many years, Matryona Vasilyevna never earned a ruble from anywhere. Because she was not paid her pension. Her family did not help her much. And on the collective farm she did not work for money - for sticks. For the sticks of workdays in the grubby book of the bookkeeper. "
These words will be supplemented by the story of Matryona herself about how many grievances she suffered, bustling about her pension, about how she extracted peat for the stove, hay for a goat.
Teacher comment
The heroine of the story is not a character invented by the writer. The author writes about a real person - Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova, with whom he lived in the 50s. Natalia Reshetovskaya's book "Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Reading Russia" contains photographs taken by Solzhenitsyn of Matryona Vasilievna, her house, and the room that the writer rented. His recollection story echoes the words of A.T. Tvardovsky, who remembers his neighbor aunt Daria,
With her hopeless patience,
With her hut without a passage,
And with a workday empty,
And with difficulty - not more complete ...
With all the trouble -
By yesterday's war
And a grave present misfortune.
It is noteworthy that these lines and Solzhenitsyn's story were written at about the same time. In both works, the story of the fate of the peasant woman develops into reflections on the brutal devastation of the Russian countryside during the war and post-war times. “But can you tell about this, in what years you lived ...” This line from a poem by M. Isakovsky is consonant with the prose of F. Abramov, who tells about the fate of Anna and Lisa Pryaslin, Martha Repina ... "!
But Solzhenitsyn's story was not written just to tell once again about the sufferings and troubles that the Russian woman endured. Let us turn to the words of AT Tvardovsky, taken from his speech at the session of the Governing Council of the European Association of Writers: “Why is the fate of an old peasant woman, told in a few pages, of such great interest to us? This woman is unread, illiterate, simple toiler. And, nevertheless, her spiritual world is endowed with such a quality that we talk to her as to Anna Karenina. "
After reading this speech in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Solzhenitsyn immediately wrote to Tvardovsky: “Needless to say, the paragraph of your speech relating to Matryona means a lot to me. You pointed to the very essence - a loving and suffering woman, while all the criticism was scouring all the time over the top, comparing the Talnovsky collective farm and the neighboring ones. "
Question
How can we characterize Matryona? How did the troubles affect her character?
Answer
Despite the misfortunes endured, Matryona managed to retain in herself exceptional kindness, mercy, humanity, selflessness, a willingness to always come to the aid of others, great diligence, gentleness, patience, independence, delicacy.
That is why she married Yefim, because there were not enough hands in his house. That is why she took Kira upbringing, that it was necessary to alleviate the fate of Thaddeus and somehow connect herself with his family. She helped any neighbor, the sixth was harnessed to the plow during plowing, she always went out to general work, not being a collective farmer. To help Kira acquire a piece of land, she gave her room. She even picked up a lame cat out of compassion.
Due to her delicacy, she did not want to interfere with another, could not burden someone. By virtue of her kindness, she rushed to help the peasants who were taking away part of her hut.
This benevolent soul lived in the joys of others, and therefore a radiant, kind smile often illuminated her simple round face.
To go through what Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova went through, and to remain a disinterested, open, delicate, sympathetic person, not to be embittered by fate and people, to preserve her “radiant smile” until old age ... What kind of mental strength is needed for this ?!
Question
How is the character of the heroine revealed in the story?
Answer
Matryona reveals herself not so much in her everyday present as in her past. She herself, remembering her youth, confessed to Ignatich: “You haven't seen me before, Ignatich. All my sacks were; I didn’t consider five poods to be tigers. The father-in-law shouted: “Matryona! You’ll break your back! ” The divir did not come up to me to put my end of the log on the front end ”.
Young, strong, beautiful, Matryona was one of the breed of Russian peasant women who "will stop a galloping horse." And it was like this: “Once the horse with fright carried the sled into the lake, the men jumped off, but I, however, grabbed the bridle, stopped ...” - says Matryona. And at the last moment of her life, she rushed to "help the peasants" on the move - and died.
Matryona will fully reveal herself in the dramatic episodes of the second part of the story. They are connected with the arrival of the "tall black old man", Thaddeus, the brother of Matryona's husband, who did not return from the war. Thaddeus came not to Matryona, but to the teacher to ask for his eighth-grader son. Left alone with Matryona, Ignatich forgot to think about the old man, and even about herself. And suddenly from her dark corner was heard:
“- I, Ignatich, once almost married him.
She got up from the shabby rag bed and slowly walked out to me, as if following her words. I leaned back - and for the first time I saw Matryona in a completely new way ...
- He first wooed me ... before Yefim ... He was an elder brother ... I was nineteen, Thaddeus was twenty-three ... They lived in this very house then. Theirs was home. Built by their father.
I involuntarily looked around. This old gray rotting house suddenly, through the faded green skin of the wallpaper, under which the mice were running, appeared to me with young, not yet darkened, shaved logs and a cheerful resinous smell.
- And you him? .. And what? ..
“That summer… we went to sit in the grove with him,” she whispered. - There was a grove ... Almost did not come out, Ignatich. The German war began. They took Thaddeus to the war.
She dropped it and flashed before me blue, white and yellow July of the fourteenth year: still peaceful sky, floating clouds and people boiling with ripe stubble. I presented them side by side: a resin hero with a scythe across his back; her, ruddy, embracing the sheaf. And - a song, a song under the sky ...
- He went to war - he disappeared ... For three years I hid, waited. And not a word, and not a bone ...
Tied with an old, faded handkerchief, Matryona's round face looked at me in the indirect soft reflections of the lamp - as if freed from wrinkles, from everyday careless attire - frightened, girlish, before a terrible choice.
Answer
The former lover and groom appears as a kind of "black man", foreshadowing misfortune, and then becomes the direct culprit in the death of the heroine.
Solzhenitsyn generously, seven times uses the epithet "black" within one paragraph at the beginning of the second chapter. The ax in the hands of Thaddeus (Ignatius clearly imagines him in the hands of this man) gives rise to associations with the ax of Raskolnikov, killing an innocent victim, and at the same time with the ax of Lopakhin.
The story also evokes other literary associations. "The Black Man" also reminds of Pushkin's gloomy stranger in "Mozart and Salieri".
Question
Are there any other symbols in the story "Matrenin's Dvor"?
Answer
Many of Solzhenitsyn's symbols are associated with Christian symbolism: images-symbols of the way of the cross, a righteous man, a martyr.
Question
What is the symbolic meaning of the story?
Answer
The courtyard, the house of Matryona, is the "refuge" that the narrator finally finds in search of "interior Russia" after years of camps and homelessness: "I did not like the miles of this place in the whole village." It is not by chance that Solzhenitsyn called his work "Matrenin's Dvor". This is one of the key images of the story. The description of the courtyard, detailed, with a lot of details, is devoid of bright colors: Matryona lives "in a run-down". It is important for the author to emphasize the inseparability of the house and the person: if the house is destroyed, its mistress will also die.
"And the years passed, as the water floated ..." As if from a folk song this amazing proverb came into the story. It will contain the whole life of Matryona, all forty years that have passed here. In this house, she will survive two wars - German and Patriotic, the death of six children who died in infancy, the loss of her husband, who disappeared in the war. Here she will grow old, remain lonely, endure hardship. All her wealth is a bumpy cat, a goat and a crowd of ficuses.
The symbolic assimilation of the house of Russia is traditional, because the structure of the house is likened to the structure of the world.
Teacher's word
Righteous Matryona is the writer's moral ideal, on which, in his opinion, the life of society should be based. According to Solzhenitsyn, "the meaning of earthly existence is not in prosperity, but in the development of the soul." Associated with this idea is the writer's understanding of the role of literature, its connection with the Christian tradition.
Solzhenitsyn continues one of the main traditions of Russian literature, according to which the writer sees his purpose in preaching truth, spirituality, and is convinced of the need to pose “eternal” questions and seek answers to them. He talked about this in his Nobel lecture: “In Russian literature, the idea that a writer can do a lot in his people - and should have long been rooted in us ... he is the culprit in all the evil committed in his homeland or by his people. "
Literature
N.V. Egorova, I. V. Zolotareva. Literature "thaw". A.I. Solzhenitsyn. // Lesson developments in Russian literature. XX century. Grade 11. II half of the year. M., 2004
V. Lakshin. Ivan Denisovich, his friends and foes // New world. - 1964. - No. 1
P. Palamarchuk. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Guide. - M., 1991
Georges Niva. Solzhenitsyn. - M., 1993
V. Chalmaev. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: life and work. - M., 1994
E.S. Rogover. Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn // Russian literature of the XX century. SPb., 2002