The story of my contemporary V.G. Korolenko. Autobiography, historicism, artistic originality

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

State Educational Institution

Higher Professional Education

"Tobolsk State Pedagogical

Institute named after DI Mendeleev ".

Department of Russian Language and Literature

Autobiographical basis

"The stories of my contemporary"

V.G. Korolenko

Completed: Student of group 32

Turnaeva Elena Viktorovna

Checked by: Ph.D., associate professor

Nikitina T.Yu.

Tobolsk - 2007

I. Introduction

II. Main part

1. The concept of "History" and the reflection of the previous creativity in it

2. Autobiographical in the work "The history of my contemporary"

3. Genre features of the "Stories of my contemporary"

III. - Conclusion -

IV. Used Books

INTRODUCTION

All the life and work of Korolenko, according to A.M. Gorky, were devoted to the struggle for the realization of "truth-justice", the struggle for the liberation of the people from the yoke of the "hundred-headed monster." His largest work, "The History of My Contemporary", which is the subject of research in this work, is also dedicated to this goal.

As a true patriot of his homeland, Korolenko did not hush up the features of the inertia and passivity of the backward masses. But he was full of faith in the enormous creative powers of the people. During the years of reaction, it was this faith in the people, the belief in the possibility and regularity of its development on the path of struggle to liberation that was the soil that nourished the optimistic orientation of its work. This faith in the people is most fully embodied in his fundamental work - in "The History of My Contemporary".

The first volume of Korolenko's memoirs was published as a separate edition in 1909, when the best people suffocated in a suffocating atmosphere of "dark, dull and sullen reaction" when all kinds of decadent literary trends reached their climax. Against this background, The Story of My Contemporary stood out as a work of high realism, which, in contrast to the apologetics of "supermen" and the unchanging passions in the literature of decadence, asserted the idea of ​​deep humanity and love for the common people.

In his work, the writer strove for the fullest possible historical truth. And he didn't try to give his own portrait. Korolenko wanted to show the life of his time, showing it through his autobiography, which the author of numerous memoirs probably managed to accomplish, showing this in sufficient detail.

Hence, the high assessment given by M. Korolenko, who characterized the author of “The History of My Contemporary” as the first “most talented writer in our country,” and that special attention of Korolenko himself to his memoirs, as to his main work, is understandable.

The concept of the "History" and the reflection of the previous creativity in it

In the rich literary heritage of V.G. Korolenko has one work in which the most characteristic features of his life and work are most fully expressed. This is the four-volume History of My Contemporary, on which Korolenko worked for more than fifteen years of his life. This story adequately completes the creative path of Korolenko and among his works, both in volume and in artistic skill, occupies an important place.

The topic in which the personal would be closely intertwined with the past of Russian society, with the history of the revolutionary struggle and the search for ways of this struggle, has worried Korolenko for a long time, since the mid-80s. She continually rose in the mind of the author over the next twenty years and finally matured only in 1905. True, according to the recollections of Korolenko's relatives, first thoughts about writing "History" date back to 1902-1903. “After moving to Poltava, VG, even during the life of his mother Evelina Iosifovna Korolenko, in conversations with her, tried to remember the details of his childhood life, names and people”. So, back in 1879, in the essay "In Berezovsky Repairs", he tried against the background artistic image Russian reality to display the history of their personal exiled wanderings. In the early 80s, while in Yakut exile, Korolenko worked on the story "Strip", in which "The story of one young man”Also had to closely intertwine with the social events of Russia at that time. All of these works became a kind of "blanks" and were later used by the writer in his work.

But these were only first steps to work, and the writing of it began in the summer of 1905.

Korolenko showed peasant “enmity”, various forms and stages of peasant protest before “The History of My Contemporary”, and the vague romantic impulses of intellectuals' youth in the same way. But the merger of these two principles - this was, in essence, that new topic that has long worried him and led to the "History of my contemporary". This was the very “middle of the process” from which the true “History of My Contemporary” began for Korolenko; everything that preceded it was only an introduction to it. This "introduction" was the content of the first volume.

The first volume was chanted in 1906-1908 in the magazines "Modernity" and in "Russian wealth". He was highly appreciated by A. M. Gorky. In 1910, in a letter to M.M.Kotsyubinsky, A.M. Gorky wrote: on each page you feel the clever, human smile of the one who thought a lot, who cut a lot of the big soul ... I took this excellent book in my hands and - read it again, - wrote Gorky ... - And I will read often, - I like her more and more and her serious tone, and this little familiar to our modern literature, some solid modesty. Nothing screaming, but everything touches the heart. The voice is quiet, but gentle and thick, a real human voice. "

Korolenko considered the chapter "On the Yammalakhsky Cliff" almost the most important part of his work, because it told the story of his liberation from such ideas that prevented him from finding himself as a writer and public figure. (C) Information published on the site
“This is the chapter that made me a writer,” he says.
- After that I wrote "Dream Makar" ...

Ideological content and the meaning of the first volume of "History" is closely connected with the circle of questions that occupied Korolenko even in the period of the eve and maturation of the 1905 revolution and were reflected in his Romanian essays, in Siberian stories, in the story "Not terrible." Korolenko spoke there about the power of tradition, about spontaneity, about the power of the ordinary, everyday, familiar, about everything that creates a psychological basis for passive submission to the established social order, no matter how unfair it may be. In the first volume of "History" the writer turns to the past, showing the roots of these phenomena in pre-reform Russia.

The second volume was published in 1910 (the first chapters in "Russian wealth") and in 1919 (in its entirety, in the publication of "Zadruga"), the third volume - in 1921 ("Zadruga" and the fourth volume, finished by a terminally ill writer, appeared in Chati after his death in The Voice of the Past.

The work on "The History of My Contemporary" proceeded outwardly under extremely unfavorable conditions. She was constantly pushed aside by the circumstances of the current literary life, and, above all, the stormy events of living modernity: the events of 1905, which required a publicistic response, the fight against the death penalty ("Everyday phenomenon" and "Traits of military justice", 1910-1911), the Beilis case, World War, during which the writer lived, moreover, far from Russia; colossal world upheavals of the revolutionary era. The History of My Contemporary was written over seventeen years. Years of war and two revolutions lay between her first volume and the following.

The autobiographical material of the "History of a Contemporary" was selected by the artist from the point of view of its typicality, historical significance.

The fact that the concept of "History" took shape under the influence of the events of 1905 is evidenced by the original author's preface to the first volume. Korolenko directly points to the topicality of his work; he believes that the depiction of "what his generation dreamed of and fought for" is of interest to the living reality itself for the current time, when "our life hesitates and shudders from the acute collision of new beginnings with obsolete ones." It even occurred to the author "to start from the middle, with those events that are already connected by direct living connection with the spite of the present day, like the first actions of a drama with its denouement." But since he wrote "not the history of his time, but the history of life at that time," he wanted "the reader to get acquainted first with the prism in which it was reflected." In the center for Korolenko was "time", while the presentation of his personal biography was, according to his plan, only a prism reflecting the era. Hence self-restraint in the choice of biographical material: “All the facts, impressions, thoughts and feelings set forth in these essays are the facts of my life, my thoughts, my impressions and my feelings, as far as I am able to restore them with a certain degree of liveliness and without an increase later layering. But here are not all facts, not all thoughts, not all movements of the soul, but only those that I consider to be connected with one or another general interest. "

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Korolenko again felt the need to look back, to look back at the past of his generation, where the roots of his own new ideas and sentiments were located. The theme of "a quarrel with a younger brother", partly reproduced by him in "The Artist Alymov", directed his attention towards the petrels of the 70s.

Korolenko repeatedly tried, in one form or another, to portray his personal history against the background of the struggle of the revolutionary part of Russian society with the autocratic system.

As Korolenko wrote in the preface: “In my work, I strove for the fullest historical truth, often sacrificing beautiful or vivid features of artistic truth to it. I am not trying to give my own portrait ... I have recalled and revived a number of paintings of the last half century ... Now I see a lot of what my generation dreamed of and fought for, bursting into the arena of public life anxiously and violently. I think that many episodes from the times of my exiled wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that struggle have not lost even the interest of living reality itself ... our life hesitates and shudders from acute collisions of new principles with obsolete ones. I hope to at least partially highlight some of the elements of this struggle. "

The Story of My Contemporary was left unfinished. The book ends at the events associated with the return of V.G. Korolenko from the Yakut exile in 1884. But even in its unfinished form, "The Story of My Contemporary" remains Korolenko's most important work.

Autobiographical in the work "The history of my contemporary"

Portraying life path his "Contemporary", in the poetic canvas of which it is easy to recognize the biography of the writer himself, Korolenko acquaints the reader with the development of the social movement of the 60-80s, with the outstanding historical events of that time.

Korolenko showed a broad historical background of the era. However, the peculiarities of his personal biography predetermined the range of historical material that made up the content of the four books of The History of My Contemporary.

The writer strove to give a typical image of the hero of his generation, a commoner in living conditions, associated with the democratic aspirations of the epochs of the sixties - seventies. The writer gives a broad generalization, reviving in his memory the most important episodes of his own life, brilliantly analyzing the spiritual searches of Korolenko as a schoolboy, student, "intelligent proletarian" and, finally, a "state criminal".

The range of themes conceived in the "History of my contemporary" is wide and varied. It depicts the family and the gymnasium, the student auditorium and the illegal gatherings of the seventies, the attic slums and prisons, the offices of officials and the life of the peasant hut. The era spans almost thirty years: from the 50s to the mid-80s. The geographic scale is immense. Here is the provincial Ukrainian village of Garny Lug and the provincial city of Zhitomir, Moscow and Petersburg, Kronstadt and Vyatka, Perm, Irkutsk, Berezovskie Pochinki abandoned to the end of the world and, finally, the remote settlement of Amga, Yakutsk region.

In the depiction of the awakening and growing consciousness of a child, to which the first book of "History" is devoted, there is a noticeably critical attitude to the structure of life. The idea of ​​the complete completeness and inviolability of everything that surrounded the child is replaced by an understanding of the “wrong side” of life, some kind of untruth that lies at the heart of bourgeois reality. This feeling of the "inside out" of life gradually develops in the young man into the consciousness of social injustice, into the conviction that the state of the landowners and the bourgeoisie is based on "lies from top to bottom."

The hero of "History" goes through various stages of development, starting with a passion for the romance of the past.

"The story of my contemporary" begins with a picture of the life of a child in the provincial town of Zhitomir and the district town of Rivne, which is quite consistent with the personal biography of V.G. Korolenko. As a child, the hero of the stars at night asks God to send him good couple real wings for flight. The first disappointment also leads to a first, yet unconscious, instinctive outburst of protest. After the collapse of children's fantastic dreams, a blasphemous phrase bursts into the traditional prayer in sleep in addition to consciousness, as if someone whispered it in the ear. Further, real impulses come to the aid of the unreasonable, instinctive voices of human nature, coming from quite concrete facts of social life and passing into the sphere of clear consciousness.

The hero of "History" - a young "contemporary" Korolenko - is carried away in the imagination "into unknown lands and unknown times"; he is already attracted by battles, chases, slaughter. And somewhere out there, outside the estate, there is a working life, unknown and alien.
From her blows into our enchanted limits of alienation, contempt, enmity ... And there is nothing that would connect the life of imagination, dreams, an outburst with this harsh, but real life of labor and hardship ... ".

Many times the previously depicted people from the popular milieu are generalized under the influence of the revolution, into the collective image of the revolutionary people. As elsewhere in The History of My Contemporary, in the depiction of such a hero, old memories acquire the interest of the most vivid modernity.

A vivid memory of the collective image of the people was reflected by Korolenko in the pages of "The History of My Contemporary", which unfolds against the joyful background of spring. Korolenko was looking for this image of the people throughout his literary career and found it in his last work.

During the years of exile, he several times experienced the "temptation" to flee and go to an illegal position. This thought first seized him when he was moving from Glazov to Berezovskie Pochinki; this plan, however, was absolutely fantastic, since it was possible to run to a certain Pyotr Ivanovich Nevolin, who was considered a dangerous revolutionary leader, but turned out to be a completely "peaceful" person. Then in Perm, after Korolenko refused to take the oath, Yuri Bogdanovich came to him with a proposal to join the revolutionary organization. On the way to the Yakut region, he could make a dangerous attempt to escape from the Tobolsk prison; the result of this attempt would be either death, in case of failure, or, with complete success, the final transition to an illegal position. In all these cases, Korolenko overcame his "temptations". For the first time he was restrained from escaping by the desire to get in touch with the life of the people in its very thickness; he refused Yuri Bogdanovich's proposal due to disagreement with the terrorist tactics of the Narodnaya Volya; escape from the Tobolsk prison was prevented by an accident. Korolenko recalls that at the decisive moment of his life, on the Yammalakh cliff, he recovered all these facts in his memory and came to the decisive conclusion: no, he was not a revolutionary. In The History of My Contemporary, summing up all his previous reflections, he resolves this very question in its final and general form.

Korolenko "had no faith in either terror or its consequences ..." - Fight without the people. Korolenko understood this tragedy in the position of the revolutionary intelligentsia already in his youth, he did not want to be left “without the people”.

It was precisely history - the history of society and the history of the individual in their inseparable unity, the history of the people and the history of a person who seeks to link his fate with the people, while preserving his individuality and his dignity. This condition was extremely important for the hero of The History of My Contemporary. Sometimes he openly opposes himself to people from the people, if for some reason they hurt his dignity. He is an educated man, he is an exile, he also owns a craft, and he demands respect for himself, without introducing the slightest shade of lordship into his behavior.

If “The History of My Contemporary” had not been cut short by the death of the author, he could have cited other similar episodes related to a later time in his further narration.

Only from the moment the connection between the abstractly romantic impulses of the intelligentsia's youth and the peasant enmity towards the "panstvo" appeared, would, according to Korolenko's concept, "the consciousness of personal responsibility for the whole order of things" appear. And this consciousness is already the direct opposite of the traditional whole mood of "stable balance of conscience."

The memory of the writer preserved pictures of the life of a bureaucratic family. WITH great art Korolenko embodied in concrete images the figures of officials of the district court familiar to him from childhood - funny characters worthy of comedy plots - gloomy figures of the highest authorities. With special skill, Korolenko spoke about the gymnasium, creating a whole gallery of types of state teachers, supporters of dogmatic education.

The life of a remote province in the image of Korolenko, in its own way, reflected the events taking place far beyond its borders. Gymnasium reforms, all kinds of orders " supreme power"And government charters - all this was reflected in the life of the county town, and" The Story of My Contemporary "creates a picture of how stupid and senseless all these" actions "of the tsarist administration looked when they were implemented. One of the episodes of the 1861 reform is vividly depicted. The father, as usual, waved his hand: "Interpret the patient with the clerk!" The old time bequeathed to the new a part of its initial inheritance ... "

In a splendid essay dedicated to his father, Korolenko tells how the concept of the immutability of the social structure was destroyed and how responsibility only for his personal activities was replaced by “a caustic feeling of guilt for public untruth.

The life of a remote province in the image of Korolenko, in its own way, reflected the events taking place far beyond its borders. Gymnasium reforms, government charters aimed at strengthening the power of the police and governors - all this was reflected in the life of the county town, and "The Story of My Contemporary" creates a picture of how stupid and senseless all these "actions" of the supreme power looked when they were carried out in life.

It is known with what mood Korolenko went to exile in Vyatka. He was ready to experience all the hardships of the "wilderness", just to "sink to the bottom of the people's life." However, the populist hobbies of the author of "History" could not withstand contact with reality. Illusions collapsed as soon as Korolenko learned the harsh life of the village. And only having got rid of “preconceived notions”, Korolenko was able to feel and understand the life of Berezovsky Pochinki with such penetration that almost forty years later he reproduced it in “History” with all the fullness of realistic colors and vivid details.

With a feeling of deep pain, Korolenko told about "sparks ... of direct talent" that "were born and died in a deep forest." In the conditions of an almost extraordinary existence, Korolenko saw a talented girl-storyteller, painted the image of Gavri Biserov with his desire for poetry.

Not all periods of Korolenko's life are presented with the same completeness in the History of My Contemporary. It briefly describes, for example, the events preceding the second arrest of V.G. Korolenko, although here, with the expressiveness characteristic of the author, colorful figures of representatives of the then intelligentsia are drawn (for example, the figure of the publisher of the newspaper "Novosti" Notovich).

The story gives portraits of many members of the social movement of the 60-70s. In this environment there were also "amateurs from the revolution", random people who, after they fell into the hands of the police, gave treacherous testimony and considered it their duty to make lengthy confessions. However, the exiled wanderings of Korolenko brought him together with people of significant revolutionary temperament and unyielding will, with participants in major political processes. He met with people involved in the case of Chernyshevsky and Pisarev.

An important place in "The History of My Contemporary" is occupied by the student period of Korolenko's life. V bright pictures Korolenko depicts Korolenko's half-starved existence during his studies at the Technological Institute, work in a proofreader, and a "student revolt" at the Petrovskaya Academy.

The writer's student years coincided with the rise of the Russian social movement. Young people came to the auditoriums of institutes and universities, familiar with the ideas of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov. This diverse youth huddled in attics and basements, lived from hand to mouth, and vague ideas about the liberation of the people ripened in their midst, issues of worldview and norms of behavior were discussed. The chapters devoted to the "artel of poor students" who lived in attic no. 12 provide one of the most characteristic pictures of the life of raznochinny students in Russian literature.

The last chapters of the story more fully illuminate the activities of the populist intelligentsia. Korolenko's fictional memoirs, of course, cannot pretend to provide a comprehensive coverage of the era. The author is sometimes subjective in assessing persons and contemporary phenomena of reality, sometimes he expounds historically significant material in less detail than material of limited significance. Nevertheless, in general, Korolenko's fictional memoirs are of great interest to the Soviet reader, who will find in them a vivid depiction of a significant period of Russian history.

Genre features of "The Stories of My Contemporary"

Memoir literature is a very broad concept that unites very diverse works of literature. Memoirs in the narrow sense of the word are memories from the author's personal life or memories of the life of a certain stratum (strata) of society. But, first of all, these are purely personal memories.

If we approach Korolenko's memoirs from this point of view, that is, if we consider his "History of my Contemporary" only personal memories of the writer, then, quite understandably, this work will need to be ranked among the memoirs of the type "Underground Russia" by S. M. Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, "Land and Freedom of the 70s", etc.

“The history of my contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko, along with the direct observations of the author, absorbed numerous historical and artistic sources, which the writer incorporated into his own artistic canvas, reflecting the multifaceted aspects of Russian reality. Consequently, Korolenko's memoirs are not memoirs in the narrow sense of the word, like “Notes to the Land of M.R. Popov.

In "The History of My Contemporary" Korolenko, along with the presence of the actual memoir material, the main place is occupied by artistic and historical images. And actually the memoir material, due to the special biography of the writer, which for the most part was intertwined with the social events of Russian reality, represents an organically whole, a single, in which the private characterizes the public, and the public characterizes the private.

Korolenko's History of My Contemporary contains fictional prose approaching Tolstoy's trilogy and Aksakov's chronicles. History is an example of a mixture of different genres, and the composition is characterized by a certain discontinuity in the presentation of historical facts.

Korolenko tells about himself, starting with the description of early childhood and ending with the events of the time when he refused to serve. Specific historical figures depicted in memoirs become heroes and types literary works... This is the strength of the creative talent of writers, this is the dignity of his memoirs as works of art, in contrast to memoirs in the narrow sense of the word.

The combination of genre diversity at the beginning of the narrative is gradually falling from volume to volume. In the third and especially in the fourth volumes of "The History of My Contemporary" the picture of "genre" combinations completely changes. There are many "genres" here. But such "genres" as the historical essay and journalism, which in the first two volumes occupied a secondary, and in some places even barely noticeable place, here, in the third, and especially in the fourth volume, are promoted to the first plan.

Korolenko wrote about the third volume: “I set myself ... the task: to tell exactly“ the story of my contemporary ”, that is, events that he witnessed, and these events in themselves are of interest for their memoir side, in addition to their artistic interest... I talk about this a little in one of the first chapters of the third volume. I’m talking about how the artist and the artist sometimes struggle in me. And I have to give preference to the writer of everyday life. "

The last two volumes of Korolenko's memoirs contain many biographical memoirs. In this regard, it is quite understandable that in relation to these houses one should speak not simply of the predominance of the "genre" of historical and biographical artistic essays. pages describing how he does agriculture and lived in a Yakut yurt, can be attributed to the best parts autobiographical story of Korolenko. But at the same time, it is in this book that there are more and more factual errors and omissions of everyday details.

From the very beginning of the narrative of the memoirs to the last line, the image of the biographical data itself is presented by the writer on a wide and truthful artistic canvas of Russian historical reality in 1853-1885. The very development of the personality of a “contemporary” is organically predetermined by historical social and everyday pictures. But if in the first two volumes of memoirs the depiction of the personality of a contemporary is the center of the narrative, in the second half of them the presence of a “contemporary” is sometimes barely noticeable. We observe the last phenomenon, for example, in chapters such as: “Walkers. - The history of Fyodor Bogdan, who came down to the tsar himself ”,“ The history of Petya Popov ”,“ The history of the young man Shvetsov ”and in other chapters of the third volume,“ Amga cultural layers, “Pyotr Davidovich Ballod” and others - the fourth volume.

Consequently, in the very artistic method of display there is a certain evolution, the character is a transition from the refraction of the phenomena of reality through the prism of perception of a “contemporary” in the first half of the memoirs to a comprehensive and objective typical display of the same real world in the second half of the memoirs. From this, of course, it does not at all follow that the content of the first half of Korolenko's memoirs, as given through the perception of a “contemporary”, is not objective.

The second half of the memoirs was created by the writer in the period of his illness and old age, and in this regard, in an artistic sense, this part of the memoirs is weaker. There is some truth in such a statement. The second half of the memoirs was really created by Korolenko during the period of his health deterioration, which naturally affected the quality of artistic processing. For example, there are facts of almost verbatim repetition of some episodes from the first half of the memoirs in the second half; it is quite understandable that it should be explained by the writer's poor health. (C) Information published on the site
For these reasons last pages memoirs are only sketches and even excerpts.

However, the vividness of the narrative and the richness of the facts of social life, the second half of the memoirs ʜᴎϲ is not inferior to the first. Moreover, a number of chapters even of the fourth volume of memoirs, for example, such as "On Lena", "My Lena visions", "Yakut poetry", etc., on artistic execution perhaps better than any chapters in the first half of the memoirs. Meanwhile, these chapters were written just a few days before the death of the writer. (C) Information published on the site
There is all the more reason to say the same when comparing the narrative of the third volume, for example, with the second or first volume of memoirs. As for the wealth of facts and the breadth of the depiction of Russian reality, hardly anyone will dispute the superiority of the second half of the memoirs over Yerva.

As a subtle observer and deep realist, Korolenko reflected in his works different sides of Russian reality in its different historical periods. Naturally, original forms were required to display diverse content. The writer, by the way, testifies that he “from his youth had the habit of putting his impressions into words, looking for best shape without calming down until he found her. " In this regard, we have every reason to believe that it was precisely the rapid change in the events of social life that was one of the stimuli for Korolenko's genre searches.

True, the memoirs tell about a much distant period in the history of Russia. However, the writer saw the change in the social foundations of life there, which, under the impression of modern events, especially should have influenced the entire content of the History of My Contemporary.

Naturally, the narrative about the childhood impressions of the Sovremennik had to be limited to a narrower range of material than the narrative about his exiled period of life. Hence the author's transition from the reproduction of life through the prism of perceptions of a “contemporary” at the beginning of his memoirs to a comprehensive objective display of life in the second half.

So, we came to the conclusion that the phenomenon of "mixing" of many "genres", changing in the degree of predominance in the course of the narrative in accordance with the evolving and changing reality, is quite understandable, should be recognized as a single, but special type of genre of fictional memoirs.

- Conclusion -

Reading Korolenko's fictional memoirs, one cannot but recall many of his stories, essays and novellas, the plots and themes of which, as it were, grew out of the material of “The History of My Contemporary”.

Our life hesitates and shudders from sharp clashes of new principles with obsolete ones, and I hope to at least partially illuminate some of the elements of this struggle. Later in the note "From the Author" the same thought was repeated: "We will continue our essays amid the creak of gear and the splash of the storm. With the quiet movements of a child's thought, they must go to events and motives closely related to the very painful motives of our time. "

In general, Korolenko's fictional memoirs are of great interest to the Soviet reader, who finds in them a vivid depiction of a significant period of Russian history.

The History of My Contemporary is of enduring importance both as an outstanding historical document that authentically conceived a number of social events of the era, and as a great work of fiction, in which the peculiarities of the remarkable talent of the outstanding Russian writer were manifested with the greatest completeness and force.

These indisputable merits of The History of My Contemporary raise it above the usual level of memoir literature and put it on a par with Herzen's Past and Thoughts and the autobiographical trilogies of L. Tolstoy and M. Gorky.

The Story of My Contemporary is a direct conclusion to The Dream of Makar, a test of the path traversed by the writer, the result of his artistic and social activities.

A distinctive feature of "History" is its extraordinary warmth, sincerity of intonation, heartfelt trust in the reader. This is a typical feature of the best works of Russian literature, according to M. Gorky, "the most cordial literature in the world."

LIST LITERATURE

1. Balabanovich E.V. V.G. Korolenko. M., 1947 .-- 164 p.

2. Bialy G.A. V.G. Korolenko. L .: Fiction, 1983 .-- 350 p.

3. Korolenko V.G. The story of my contemporary. In 5 volumes - T. I - L., 1989 .-- 624 p.

4. Korolenko V.G. The story of my contemporary. In 6 volumes - T. I - M .: Pravda, 1971. - 496 p.

5. Korolenko V.G. The story of my contemporary. In 4 volumes - M., 1965 .-- 1054 p.

6. Korolenko V.G. The story of my contemporary. M .: Pravda, 1953 .-- 408 p.

7. Kotov A.K. V.G. Korolenko. Essay on life and literary activity. M., 1957 .-- 86 p.

8. Mironov G. Korolenko. Moscow: Young Guard, 1962 .-- 367 p.

9. Kuklin E.A. Siberian pages of the life and work of V.G. Korolenko. Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1987 .-- 206 p.

10. Rostov N. V.G. Korolenko. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya literatura, 1965 .-- 111 p.

11. Skatov N.N., Lebedev Yu.V. Russian history Literature XIX century. Second half. Textbook. for students ᴨȇд. in-tov. - M., Education, 1991 .-- 512 p.

12. Storozhev A.I. The story of my contemporary Korolenko. Minsk, 1953 .-- 190 p.

Full text of the dissertation abstract on the topic "" The history of my contemporary "VG Korolenko: artistic originality"

As a manuscript

SAVELIEVA Elena Sergeevna

"THE HISTORY OF MY CONTEMPORARY" V. G. KOROLENKO: ARTISTIC PERSONALITY

Krasnodar 2009,

The work was carried out at the Department of Literature and Teaching Methods of the Pedagogical Institute of the Southern Federal University

Academic Supervisor: Candidate philological sciences, assistant professor

Tukodyan Nvart Khazarosovna

Official opponents: Doctor of Philology, Professor

Prokurova Natalya Sergeevna Candidate of Philology Panaetov Oleg Grigorievich

Lead organization: Krasnodar State

University of Culture and Arts

The defense will take place «) [>> TsuTsR ^ SL 2009 at a meeting of the dissertation council D 212.101.04 at the Kuban State University at the address: 350018, Krasnodar, st. Sormovskaya, 7, room 309.

The dissertation can be found in the scientific library of the Kuban state university(350040, Krasnodar, st.Stavropolskaya, 149).

Scientific Secretary of the Dissertation Council< 7 М.А.Шахбазян

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF WORK

Currently, there is a tendency in the literature to address the problems of classical literature. AND; now, after many years, the works of writers who created the culture of the Russian people, laid the foundations of the modern Russian language, and participated in historical events are worthy of attention. Undoubtedly, one of these writers is Vladimir Galaktshyuvich Korolenko, a great humanist, fighter for justice and freedom, author of many fictional and publicistic works, in particular, the memoir novel "The Story of My Contemporary."

Researches of scientists in the field of classical works are carried out in two directions: firstly, these are attempts at a new interpretation of texts that have already become textbooks, studied by many generations of scientists, and secondly, the search for new works of classics that have not yet been captured by science. “The history of my contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko, undoubtedly, is one of the insufficiently illuminated works in literary criticism: in the works of recent years, researchers have limited themselves to problem-chemical analysis or analysis of the genre specificity of individual works or cycles.

“The history of my contemporary” by V. G. Korolenko, being a highly moral work, reflecting the essential features of the grand, is modern in its ideological orientation and should be present in the reading circle of the modern reader, therefore, we consider it promising to further study both the integral artina of V. G. Korolenko's work, as well as and some of his works in the spectrum of the author's worldview, moral evolution hero and narrative structure.

In our time, it is necessary to more often refer to the works of classical literature for many reasons. So, firstly, many undeservedly ignored

Literary critics and the public, the works raise problems that are not alien to our time. Works with documentary elements help a person, looking into the past and understanding the problems of the past, to understand their own time. Secondly, the appeal to "The History of My Contemporary" as a work of a major genre allows us to assess some of the trends of modern literary process... Thirdly, the works of the classics are highly ideal, and reading them, a person raises his cultural level.

In this dissertation research, an attempt was made, based on classical works and works modern researchers: philologists, partly philosophers, teachers, linguists and culturologists, to determine the place of the "History of my contemporary" in Russian autobiographical literature and in the works of V. G. Korolenko, and also to explore the main features of the poetics of the "History of my contemporary".

The relevance of the dissertation. 1. The novel under consideration, "The History of My Contemporary", is rightfully considered one of the summit creations in Russian literature, but no special research has been done on this work. 2. Addressing this novel by V. G. Korolenko as a work with documentary elements allows, looking into the past and understanding the problems of the past years, to understand one's own time both from the point of view of literary criticism and from the point of view of history.

The novelty of the dissertation. 1. In the dissertation research, VG Korolenko's autobiographical novel-reminiscence "The History of My Contemporary" is subjected to such an integral study for the first time. 2. Essentially new judgments about the specifics of this work as a kind of genre symbiosis. We define the Stories of My Contemporary genre as an autobiographical memoir novel. Z. In the literary analysis of the work, we for the first time presented the classification of literary portraits of the novel, made a number of significant conclusions,

concerning the architectonics of the work, the features of the depiction of heroes and the specifics of the chronotope.

The object of the research is the autobiographical novel-reminiscence "The history of my contemporary" by V. G. Korolenko.

Purpose of the study. After comprehending the theoretical aspects of the problem of the genre of a work with an autobiographical orientation, determine the place of "The History of My Contemporary" in the context of V. G. Korolenko's work and consider the poetics of this novel-reminiscence.

To achieve this goal, it seems necessary to solve a number of tasks:

4) consider the features of the genre of the work;

5) to study the system of images, features of the literary portraits of "The Stories of My Contemporary", to classify them;

6) study the chronotopic structure of the novel.

The theoretical and methodological basis of the dissertation research is formed by the principles of cultural-historical and comparative-historical research methods, as well as the provisions and concepts developed in the works of M.M.Bakhtin, B.O.Korman, Yu.M. Lotman, D.S. Likhachev , G. O. Vinokura, V. V. Vinogradova, G. N. Pospelova, G. A. Belaya, B. M. Eikhenbaum, Yu. N. Tynyanova, L. Ya. Ginzburg, S. S. Averintseva, A G. Tartakovsky, N. A. Nikolina, A. B. Esin, I. O. Shaitanov and others.

Used literary categories considered in the historical and theoretical terms, traced the history of the formation of the genre of artistic autobiography, attempts were made to analyze the principles of creating images of heroes, to identify artistic means of expressing the author's position in an autobiographical novel-memory.

When determining the place of "The History of My Contemporary" in the writer's work, we studied the works of D.N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, N.D.Shakhovskaya, G.A. Gushchin, P. E. Lyon, V. E. Tatarinov, A. V. Trukhanenko and others), dedicated to the work of V. G. Korolenko. The theoretical significance of the dissertation lies in the fact that the work is a single study dedicated to the autobiographical novel-memory "The History of My Contemporary" by V. G. Korolenko, determines its significance and artistic originality.

"The scientific and practical value of this dissertation research lies in the possibility of using its results when reading university courses on the history of Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century, special courses on the work of V.G. Korolenko and writers of the sixties, as well as for further research on the work of V.G. Korolenko.

The main provisions for the defense:

1) "The history of my contemporary" occupies a central position in the work of V. G. Korolenko due to the analytical form of thinking of the writer, the specific ideological orientation of the work and its value paradigm.

2) "The history of" my contemporary "V. G. Korolenko ---

an autobiographical novel-reminiscence with specific features characteristic of this genre: the fusion of various genres, the selection of images, techniques psychological image heroes, creating a special chronotope.

Approbation. The main provisions of the dissertation research were the subject of discussion at meetings of the Department of Russian Literature and Teaching Methods of the Pedagogical Institute of the Southern Federal University, and were also reflected in 3 publications of the author and presented in 4 reports at conferences at various levels (international scientific conference ^ "Conceptual problems of literature: fiction cognitiveness ", Rostov-on-Don, international scientific conference (correspondence) of XXIII Chekhov's readings in Taganrog, scientific conference - XI Sheshukov readings" Historiosophy in Russian literature of the XX and XIX centuries: traditions and a new look. Moscow) with the subsequent publication articles.

The structure and scope of the thesis. The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a bibliographic list of 214 titles. When working with the texts, we studied two collected works of V.G.Korolenko: in 9 volumes, 1914, and in 10 volumes, 1954. References in the text of the thesis are from a later collected works.

The total volume of the dissertation is 189 pages.

The introduction defines the subject, goals and objectives of the study, establishes the degree of study of the problem, relevance, scientific novelty, research material, and also identifies a number of issues related to the problem of studying biographical literature in Russian literary criticism.

The first chapter of the dissertation research, "" The history of my contemporary "in the context of the era", has four paragraphs.

In the first paragraph. "The prerequisites for the appearance of" The History of My Contemporary "in the work of V. G. Korolenko: analytism as a form of thinking of the writer", we consider novel thinking

gschsatel, serving as a prerequisite for the creation of a work of a large genre. In developing this thesis, we rely on the judgments of V. Belinsky and M. Bakhtin about the syncretic nature of the novel genre, its versatility and the ability to influence other genres (the concept of genre romanization). We consider, using the example of Korolenko's stories and novellas, the formation of a large genre form in his work and find in The History of My Contemporary the features of a complex genre symbiosis, combinations in the structure of a work of many genres: autobiography, memoirs, novel, diary, story, essay, article. Reading The History of My Contemporary, we can observe how the conception of certain works was born, their details were laid, we see elements of intertextuality: “Having passed Tobolsk, our barge began to climb north along the Irtysh, and the wonderful views of the Volga and Kama were replaced by dull the banks of Siberian rivers with rare settlements. Here I devoted myself to recollections and wrote the essay "The Fake City", in which, strongly imitating Uspensky, described Glazov "(vol. 7, p. 159). In the work we found more than 65 references to the texts of stories, articles, letters by V.G.Korolenko. So, we conclude that "The history of my contemporary" is the logical result of all the work of V. G. Korolenko, it follows from previous works while simultaneously enclosing them. One cannot but pay attention to the journalistic elements in all of Korolenko's work. Almost every work has a subtitle that speaks of its genre or the place of writing or origin of the idea ("From a trip to Vetluga and Kerzhenets", "From Siberian life"). The system of genres to which the author himself relates his works seems to us extensive and varied. We meet here both generally accepted names (story, story, sketch), and rare variations of small genres (pictures, pages, excerpts). In addition to the aforementioned genres of documentary prose, V.G.Korolenko has works belonging to allegorical genres (fairy tale, legend, fantasy), but most of his

Korolenko's works in genre belong to documentary ^ biographical prose (portrait, writing, memoirs, observations):

Korolenko's art is characterized by a multi-stage cyclization system. The works are grouped according to the belonging of the main characters to a particular social group, for example, cycles of essays ("Pavlovskie sketches", "At the Cossacks", "In a hungry year"), cycles of stories "about vagabonds", "about random people." There are also macrocycles that unite works by genre: essays, stories, lyrical miniatures, works of conventional genres (Siberian, children's). In addition, in the genre system of Korolenko, one can distinguish the Volga, American and Romanian macrocycles on the subject.

The cycle is a step towards mastering the great novel form. The writer did not limit himself to a partial development of the topic in one or two stories. He tried to express everything, to draw out the topic to the end. One story led another - and multiple cycles arose: Siberian, children's, "Pavlovsk essays", cycles of essays "In a hungry year", "Sorochinskaya tragedy" and others.

This fact of cyclization of works, undoubtedly, speaks of V.G.Korolenko's gravitation towards a large epic form. Thus, novel thinking determines the movement of genres in the writer's work.

The Story of My Contemporary is built of a multitude of essays, stories, united by the image of the main character - the author, which he sets out in chronological order. At the same time, many of the components of the novel are unthinkable outside of it (they do not have an ending or beginning, their motives are tightly connected with the motives of other stories), but others can exist separately. Also in the novel we see elements of parallel construction (the division of characters into groups, simultaneously occurring diverse events). These parallels follow from the ideological views and values ​​of the writer.

Second paragraph. “Historiosophical, value paradigm (orientation) of Korolenko in the embodiment of fate, choice, law.

responsibility of man and the picture of the world ”, is devoted to the artistic and stylistic system of the concept of the writer and his moral and ethical program, reflected in the“ History of my contemporary ”in comparison with some stories.

In the literary life of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, there are many qualitative changes associated with the process of renewal and transformation of already existing literary movements, the emergence and movement of new ones. The complication of the literary process (multiplicity of currents and directions, extraordinary mobility and rapid change of forms and styles, sharp polemics) is also due to the inherent huge country multi-structure, combining elements of different historical stages, which is why there was an extraordinary complexity of manifestation of socio-ideological conflicts. At the same time, there were such diverse, heterogeneous, sometimes opposite tendencies as the boundless aestheticism of adherents of "pure art" and the asceticism of the late Tolstoy, the desire of Chekhov, Korolenko to go beyond the circle only literary work, the emergence of literature of the Gorky direction.

However, one can single out a feature that unites these many-sided phenomena: in literature, as in life, the problem of a person, his personality, dignity, value is raised with special force. The great merit of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Korolenko consisted in the fact that in their artistic model of social life they portrayed the people as a value center with which everything else was correlated.

The question of personality in literature cannot be considered outside of connection with the humanistic concept of the writer, with his “idea of ​​man”.

“The fact of the matter is that there is no“ muzhik ”, single and indivisible, just a muzhik; there are Fedots, Ivans, poor people, rich people, beggars and kulaks, virtuous and vicious, caring and drunkards, living on a full allotment, and donations, with allotments in one bast shoe, owners and workers ... the people seem to be all the same, and by the first muzhik we judge all the muzhiks ”(vol. 9, p.

166). The writer depicts the people not as a homogeneous faceless mass, but embodies their destinies in concrete vivid artistic images.

The object of our attention is the problems of fate, freedom, in particular free choice, morality.

"To love this people - isn't this our task?" - this is the problem posed by the author. Even having descended to the bottom of life, dark, rude, people remain people, live as they can, love, give birth to children, no matter how hard their lot is. We see that in revealing this or that problem, Korolenko returns to it more than once in his subsequent works, and this feature again makes it possible to assert the romance of V. G. Korolenko's thinking.

The third paragraph of the first chapter is called "The ideological content of the" History of my contemporary "and its compositional expression in the novel." Based on the philosophical and literary definitions of ideas, ideology, aesthetic ideal, we see that they are closely related.

The dictionary of philosophical terms defines the ideal as follows: "an example, something sublime, good and beautiful, the highest goal of striving" (p. 245).

In art, the aesthetic ideal is the artistic world, arising from the correlation of life as it is and what it should be, however, the ideal must be deduced from reality, rely more on reality than on the fictional world.

Our thought in defining the ideological content is guided by the author's understanding of the idea of ​​his novel.

“Now I see much of what my generation dreamed of and fought for, bursting into the arena of life anxiously and violently. I think that many episodes from the times of my exiled wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that environment have not lost even now the interest of living reality itself. I would like to think that they will still retain their significance for the future ”(vol. 5, p. 7).

Depicting the events in the life of his "contemporary", V.G. people, the development of the social revolutionary movement), the literary and aesthetic aspect (the influence of literature on people and people on literature).

In the preface to The History of My Contemporary, V. G. Korolenko wrote: “There will be nothing here that I did not meet in reality, that I did not experience, did not feel, did not see” (vol. 5, p. 8). The autobiographical nature of this work did not prevent it from becoming the chronicle of a whole generation. D. N. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky (141) argued that Korolenko's memoirs can be placed next to "Childhood" and "Adolescence" by L. N. Tolstoy, and the brightness of the reconstruction of the era, as well as the depth and substantiveness of reflections, they resemble "The Past and Thoughts »Herzen.

"History ..." is a broad epic story about the dramatic fate of the generation of the 1870s, full of genuine tragedy. In the foreground in the novel are thoughts about the people, about their capabilities. Korolenko draws attention to the overly bookish, abstract theoretical nature of the heritage of the "sixties". Korolenko rejected "going to the people" and people's terrorism as naive-utopian theories. The writer does not join any of the existing underground revolutionary organizations, seeing in them a sectarian character, revolutionaries without people. Korolenko preferred to act openly, with the pen of a publicist and artist. His work, in particular "The Story of My Contemporary", is a reflection of the political and social views of the writer.

Korolenko begins a story about himself from infancy. This technique corresponds to the canons of the genre and is used by the author to identify the origins of the formation of his personality, nature, and predispositions. In the first parts, the author uses, of course,

reception of direct recollection, but given the young age of the hero and often the spontaneity, inaccuracy of his judgments, Korolenko sometimes has to create complete picture what happened to introduce inserted episodes (for example, highlighted in separate chapters "My father", "Father and mother"), narratives, replete with facts, dates and events that could not be known to the little boy.

Another form of such explanations is a compositionally small episode that explains the feelings of the child. Here, an adult from the height of his past years explains what he felt then and what caused it, according to his present ideas. “During this painful period of my childhood life, the memory of God was very formless. With this word, somewhere in the depths of consciousness, the idea of ​​something vast and completely bright, but impersonal, was born. The closest thing to say is that it seemed to me like a distant and huge patch of sunlight. But the light did not work at night, and the night was all in the power of a hostile, other world, which, together with darkness, moved into the limits of ordinary life ”(vol. 5, p. 45).

V.G.Korolenko also describes those who had a great influence on him works of art(the book "Fomka from Sandomir" by Jan Gregorovich, the historical theatrical play "Ursula, or Sigismund III"). Describing the process of his acquaintance with these works, the writer, relying on real events and his immediate impressions, gives a story with elements of analysis, defining their belonging to literary movements (book-sentimentalism, play-romanticism).

The striving of the individual for an emotionally anticipated universal ideal indicates a romantic stream in a work written, undoubtedly, in realistic traditions.

In the dissertation, we consider the transformation of the ideal of V.G.Korolenko. When the writer was in childhood, it can be argued that his father had the traits of an ideal for him. but

Korolenko from the very early age it was inherent to look at everything from different angles, so he perfectly saw his ambiguous qualities or disadvantages. Having paid attention to several false ideals (Theodor Negri, Vasily Veselitsky), we come to the conclusion that the image of Kliment Arkadyevich Timiryazev is closest to the ideal in the understanding of the writer.

When, in the first days of exile, Korolenko concludes: “No, I will no longer go into the service of this state with the Lievens and Valuevs at the top, with a network of petty irresistible predation at the bottom. This is a decaying past ... And I will go towards an unknown future ”, we are convinced that the real ideal is the author himself. The minute when such a strong feeling visits a person is very important for his self-determination and the course of his entire future life. In The History of My Contemporary, a feature that can be called programmatic: the author gives character to the personal, intimate social value and interest. In the era reproduced by the writer, one feels living people, living life and, above all, one's own humane, righteous soul of a contemporary, - and in the personal and his own, the socially valuable of the experience is refracted, and not the accidental and narrowly individualistic.

We analyze the peculiarities of the plot and the construction of the plot by Korolenko, relying on the compositional decision of the author. The History of My Contemporary is provided with an extensive system of titles for parts and chapters. This gravitation towards headlines and subheadings is explained by the high publicism of V.G.Korolenko's works.

Intertextual headings (chapters) can be divided into several main groups related to the thematic range of the novel and its chronotopic structure. We distinguish the following groups:

1) A static description of the current situation in one place or another, as well as a characteristic of a group of people: "Old students", "Workers", etc.

2) Individual portrait descriptions of specific personalities: "Father and Mother", "Alexander Kapitonovich Malikov".

3) A narration about events extended in time: "I find myself in a robber's nativity scene", "Arrival in Perm".

“We have carried out calculations and calculations, allowing to testify about the distribution of material in the novel, and concluded that the distribution of textual material in the novel reflects the real content of the described life period. simultaneously highlights the dominants of each period, (Childhood - development, description of the situation; student years, the first link - development, eventfulness; period of references - portrait sketches, description of the situation.)

Also in this paragraph, we emphasize the connection between content and form, arguing that the division of a work into architectonic parts (books, chapters) is subordinated to the author's main idea: to reflect the history of his life in his time, therefore the main criterion for distinguishing chapters is the importance of certain events for the author, their stages in his life, influence on the future destiny.

Fourth paragraph. "The author's concept creative personality V. G. Korolenko (the hero and the image of the author ^ ", is devoted to the author's concept of the creative personality of Korolenko, lyrical expression. We use the term" author ", meaning" a certain view of reality, the expression of which is the whole work ", using the definition of Bakhtin. We consider the image of the author in his formation. "History ..." covers the period 1854-1885, that is, the time from the early childhood of the writer to his arrival in Nizhny Novgorod as a thirty-three-year-old man.

the main idea of ​​"The history of my contemporary", expressed in paragraph 1.3, concerning the creation of the image of the hero of the era of the 60-80s. XIX century, let us turn to the image of the author presented in the novel.

Korolenko.

In 1905, when Korolenko began work on the novel, he was 53 years old. Naturally, the views of the portrayed young man and the mature person do not always coincide. At the beginning of the narrative, monologues, reflections, lyrical digressions belonging to the author have more weight; the share of accidents that happened directly to the described child is not very high.

In works baby cycle the specificity consists in a double look at what is happening: from the point of view of the protagonist or hero-storyteller in childhood and the adult narrator or hero-storyteller, and the adult only balances the child's ideas and conclusions, corrects some accents. In the first volume of "The History of My Contemporary", consisting of five parts, which tells about the early childhood of the writer, about her studies at the boarding school of Mrs. Okrashevskaya, in the Zhytomyr and Rovno gymnasiums, there is just such an image of the author. The reader perceives the work in two temporal planes, then transferring to the 50-60s of the XIX century and taking the position of a child, then rising to the author's point of view on the events that happened then.

Such authorial returns from the events described to his own modern opinion continue throughout the novel. Let us note some of their peculiarities. In the first chapters, V.G.Korolenko, by right of seniority, expresses his opinion about the actions and thoughts of the child that the author once was, as a rule, in the form of an affirmation, explanation, assessment; the form of maxim, morality, and aphorism is also acceptable. Copyright interference may be in the nature of a report on historical facts brought in for lighting and

clarification of events that cannot be told by a child-There are also remarks in the first person in the text, in which irony is felt, a fatherly mockery of the hero: “How long ago it was” and how stupid I was then ... And how stupid I am now smarter than that a boy who put his ear to the telegraph poles or was proud of ... what then? The title of a baby boarder ... But now I am already an "old schoolboy" and I am going to new places for some new life ... "(vol. 5, pp. 144-145).

In the chapters devoted to the description of student time, the author expresses his attitude to the hero's actions in a different way. In the narration, irony is clearly felt, it permeates the entire text, sometimes being inseparable from the hero's own words. Often ironic thoughts take the form of first-person remarks: “I have an arrogant conviction that I am perhaps the smartest in this city. The measure I had was this: I can understand all the people flashing in front of me in this stream, swaying like water in a plate, from the barrier to the post office and back.<...>And they don't even know what thoughts about them and what dreams are wandering in my head ”(vol. 6, p. 12). The character seems to be talking about his superiority over the people around him, but we can easily isolate the hidden meaning put by the author in the lips of the hero. The author does not hide his thoughts that really arose in him in his youth, even if they run counter to his modern convictions. Further, the author adds from the height of his life experience: “I was stupid. Subsequently, when I became smarter, I easily found people above myself in the most remote nooks and crannies of life ”(vol. 6, p. 12).

Then the picture changes - the divergence of views is reduced to a minimum and the proportion of events and actions of the hero increases. To directly address the reader, to express his point of view, Korolenko resorts to digressions in which he speaks of the hero in the third person. In subsequent chapters, the coincidence of the opinions of the hero and the author increases, so the author uses less and less irony and the characteristics of the hero's actions. The author's deviations now pursue one goal: to make the narrative more coherent by introducing into the text

messages, reviews and generalizations about historical events that did not touch the hero personally, but are important for explaining further events. So, for example, without naming the source of the message, V.G. Korolenko talks about the Chigirinsky case, about the attempt on the life of Solovyov - the events that took place while the hero was under arrest in the Lithuanian castle. Thus, we see that the image of the author in "History ..." changes, grows with the writer. The text of the novel reflects the course of memory, the process of remembering, therefore, there is a "double look" at what is happening: from the point of view of the hero and from the point of view of the author, although they are essentially the same person at different periods of his life.

The second chapter, "The Poetics of the Stories of My Contemporary" ", is devoted to a multifaceted literary analysis of the work. It includes four sections.

In the first paragraph. "" The history of my contemporary "in the general typology of Russian autobiographical literature." an attempt was made to locate autobiographical novel- Memories in the general typology of Russian autobiographical literature. Problems of the genre nature of autobiographical fiction in modern literary criticism are among the complex, debatable. The main problems that are in the center of attention: the relationship between historical truth and fiction, the documentary nature of autobiographical information, the role of the author's principle in the artistic interpretation of the life and work of the hero, and others. These problems are due to the fact that the criteria of the genre are very broad, the range of its understanding. Obviously, the explanation for this must be sought in the genre's synthetic nature, its constant evolution, interaction with other literary genres. We consider "The History of My Contemporary" in comparison with other works of a major autobiographical genre. S. T. Aksakov, A. I. Herzen, L. N. Tolstoy, V. G. Korolenko, I. A. Bunin - all of them in their works tell in detail about the history of their family, about

relatives, about their origin. The History of My Contemporary is undoubtedly one of the great works of autobiographical literature. !

The second paragraph - "Genre specificity of the" History of my contemporary "". Considering "The History of My Contemporary"; we define the genre of this work as an autobiographical memoir novel. The first place in "The History of My Contemporary" is undoubtedly the autobiographical component. The desire for factual accuracy, consistency is easy to trace in the text of the work, this is repeatedly emphasized by the author.

Having studied the history of the genre of Russian fictional biography from lives to modern autobiographical novels, we argue that in the process of its development, autobiography was enriched by the traditions of other genres (in Russia): life, educational novel, historical novel, biography, diary, literary portrait, etc.

We see that from the point of view of the genre nature, "The History of My Contemporary" combines the features of several genres, three of which are fundamental: autobiography, that is, a description of the facts of his life, memoirs (memories) - a description of the "work of the soul", reflections, reasoning , relations to the surrounding events characteristic of the described character at a certain period of his life, and a novel, the main feature of which is the absence of prohibitions on the depiction of anything.

In the third paragraph. "Literary portrait as part of the artistic originality of the" History of my contemporary "", we consider the system of images of the work, the features of their embodiment. We support the point of view of VS Barakhov, who considers a literary portrait in three mutually related manifestations of it: 1) a literary portrait as a means of creating an image of a character in a novel, story, story; 2) a literary portrait as an integral part, a component of a more complex genre structure; 3) literary portrait as an independent genre.

In our opinion, all these three types of literary portrait are reflected in Korolenko's work. We will consider the first two manifestations based on the material of the memoir novel "The Story of My Contemporary". Directly in the novel, a literary portrait acts, firstly, as an integral part, a component of a more complex genre structure, and, secondly, as a means of creating an image of a character in the novel. We are making an attempt to give a typology of the characters portrayed in The History of My Contemporary, highlighting portraits, stories and memories. The main differentiating factor underlying the division of portraits into stories and memories is the passage of time. If in a portrait-story time moves independently of the narrative or stops altogether, then in memory the passages selected by the writer to characterize the character continue the storyline. Also, regardless of the passage of time, we have singled out portraits-types in a separate category. V. G. Korolenko creates galleries of images: officials, judges, teachers, students, exiles, political, folk images: Pochinkovites, Glazovites, Amginsky. In our study, we consider literary portraits parents of the writer, teachers, some representatives of the petty bureaucracy, teachers (classifying them into "old", "maniacs", "chronographs" and "new", relying on the author's attitude and borrowing his definitions), as well as teachers of higher educational institutions.

Portrait elements abound in the third book, which is devoted to exiled wanderings and at the same time tells about the places where the author visited exactly then (Berezovskie Pochinki, Vyshnevolotsk political prison, Perm, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yakutsk, Irkutsk). So, we see, “by the portrait of the character prevails in the chapters, which have as their main purpose the creation of a picture of the life of a particular group, a layer of people (landowners, court workers, teachers). All these paintings are given to us in refraction through the prism of the author's personality, respectively, each of them adds features to the image of a contemporary. ;

We consider it necessary to draw attention to another interesting feature of Korolenko's narration. The principle underlying his work in general and The Stories of My Contemporary in particular is the desire to reproduce. events from the point of view of "then perception". We will talk about the problem of comparing time plans a little below, but here we will highlight this technique insofar as it is a means of expressing the author's subjectivity.

»Talking about the past years, Korolenko always clearly distinguishes between his current position and the position of his autobiographical hero at this stage of his development. The author's point of view can complement or clarify the point of view of a "contemporary", but it does not replace it at all. It is remarkable that Korolenko never tries to hide his "then" views and beliefs, even if they run counter to his modern thoughts. He can only afford to express his point of view on the former. Describing the first year of study at the Technological Institute, talking about the fact that he had to starve, Korolenko says as if by the way: “In essence, it was a slow dying of hunger, only stretched out for a long time” (vol. 6, p. 90), “ But then I was stupid and did not notice it ... ". The author is not ashamed of even his most ridiculous, ridiculous mistakes and delusions, laughing at his susceptibility to literary motives and types. In an effort to find such words "that would come closest to the phenomena of life" (vol. 5, p. 295), the "contemporary" finds a definition even for his costume made of cheap fabric, made for a trip to the capital by a provincial tailor: On the fashion side, I felt dressed up and down, “quite simply, but tastefully” ”(vol. 6, p. 11). The author puts these words in quotation marks, showing that this is the definition chosen by a young youth who wants to look good, while despising fashion and having no means to do it. After the remarks of ladies' acquaintances about the unsuitability of such a suit for the capital, Korolenko speaks of his feelings: “But I was left with a terrible longing of loneliness in my heart and an unpleasant consciousness,

that my “unfashionable, but simple and elegant” costume attracts ironic attention ... ”(vol. 6, p. 14). The author again takes the characterization of the costume in quotation marks. Of course, the person who wrote these lines no longer thinks so, and with these quotes he emphasizes the difference between himself and this young man, so young and naive.

In the same vein, the author recalls his youthful vivid impressions of students, reaching the point of enthusiasm. In The History of My Contemporary, a work that is undoubtedly based on real facts, there are passages that speak of deliberately fictional events. First of all, these are the dreams of the author. So a young man is carried away by his thoughts on a journey on a steam locomotive in the role of a "smart and strong" worker-machinist, seeing a third-year trainee, or experiencing a temporary admiration for the image of Lazovsky, "a dance-class Mephistopheles, who creates scandals with such beautiful carelessness" (vol. 6, p. 63 ). Such passages are characteristic of the hero's youth.

In the study, we also pay attention to the methods of psychological portrayal of heroes using the example of the owner of the proofreading bureau, Studensky.

So, the main component of The Story of My Contemporary is artistic portraits of people who helped the writer to form his views and beliefs.

Fourth paragraph. "Features of the chronotope" Stories of my contemporary "". In the work we see several interconnected and flowing into each other types of chronotopes. The chronotope of an autobiographical memoir-novel has several components: calendar time (such a variety as biographical time is presented), event time (historical, everyday time, chronotope of the road, meetings), perceptual time (the author's chronotope). We give a brief description of the main types of chronotopes identified by Bakhtin (biographical, event, historical, author's chronotope, everyday, road chronotope). The biographical chronotope prevails in the work under study. So

as the narrative is about a really completed past, the author uses the techniques of prospecting and retrospection, thus focusing attention on one or another stage of the hero's life. So, V.G.Korolenko's attention for a long time dwells on education, young years, the process of growing up "contemporary".

The flow of biographical time stops, and we get to know both the hero's reading circle and his friends, thus getting into the spiritual atmosphere of entire generations.

* The reading circle of the hero allows the author to more deeply imagine the formation of his worldview, his formation as a person. There is a chapter in The History of My Contemporary, partly devoted to a work of fiction ("Fomka from Sandomierz and the landowner Deshert"), in which the author shares his childhood direct impressions of the first book he read in his life. However, children's perception of the book is specified by the author's opinion. The essay “My first acquaintance with Dickens”, supplementing Chapter XXIX of the first book, which the author has placed in the appendices, has a different chronotope structure. Here, undoubtedly, a lot of attention is paid to books, works of art, but their perception is given almost without stopping time. Perhaps this form is dictated by the specifics of the hero's reading at that period: the elder brother of the writer, trying to separate from the younger ones, did not allow Korolenko to read his books, allowing only to change them in the library / The boy began to read on the go. “This manner gave the very process of reading a peculiar and, so to speak, reckless character” (vol. 5, p. 366). The writer notes that such a superficial reading did not allow him to understand the work in all its versatility, allowing only the main characters and the main storyline to be noted. However, such a shallow reading did not at all form the hero's further careless attitude to the literary text; on the contrary, having received the opportunity to read the books he desired, the hero understands the value of this.

Events can be described as occurring in biographical time, following the events of life, or they can represent

a flashback, memories of events that took place in reality, but at the point in time described in the text, have already ended. The course of the action, its distribution in time is associated with the artistic goal set for itself by the author. We have identified some differences in. reflection of the passage of time in the "History of my contemporary" in passages related to different types of text (narration, description, reasoning). After analyzing the various chapters of The History of My Contemporary from the point of view of the length of the action in time, we see that the choice of speech means largely depends on the type of text. When choosing this or that means, V. G. Korolenko is guided by his communicative intentions.

In the conclusion, the results of the research are summed up, the place of the autobiographical novel-reminiscence "The Story of My Contemporary" by V. G. Korolenko in the history of Russian literature of the XX century is determined, the ways of further research in this area are outlined.

The main provisions of the dissertation research are reflected in 9 publications of the author:

1. Savelyeva E. S. The concept of man in the work of V. G. Korolenko / E. S. Savelyeva // Epistemology of poetics: artistic semantics and genre syncretism. Intra-university collection scientific papers... Issue 5. Rostov-on-Don, 2005.S. 64-70.

2. Savelyeva ES Features of the manifestation of author's subjectivity VG Korolenko in the aspect of the genre / ES Savelyeva // Conceptual problems of literature: artistic cognition. G. Rostov-on-Don, 2006.S. 198-201.

3. Savelyeva E. S. The portrait-meaningful part of the novel-memoirs of V. G. Korolenko "The history of my contemporary" and the means of creating an image / E. S. Savelyeva // Epistemology of poetics:

artistic semantics and genre syncretism. Intra-university collection of scientific papers. Issue 6. Rostov-on-Don, 2006.S. 44-52.

4. Savelyeva E. S. The theme of childhood in the works of A. P. Chekhov and V. G. Korolenko / E. S. Savelyeva // Works of A. P. Chekhov. Collection of materials of the International Scientific Conference (correspondence) - XXIII Chekhov Readings in Taganrog. Taganrog, 2007.S. 28-32.

5. Savelyeva E. S. The concept of man as an expression of the historiosophical and aesthetic orientation of V. G. Korolenko / E. S. Savelyeva // Historiosophy in Russian literature of the XX and XIX centuries: traditions and a new look. Materials of the scientific conference - XI Sheshukov readings. Moscow, 2007.S. 54-58.

6. Savelyeva E. S. Exiled wanderings of V. G. Korolenko - part of the ideological content of "The history of my contemporary" / E. S. Savelyeva // Conceptual problems of literature: artistic cognition. Rostov-on-Don, 2007.S. 274-277.

7. Savelyeva ES Features of the reflection of novel thinking in the "History of my contemporary" VG Korolenko / ES Savelyeva // Conceptual problems of literature: typology and syncretism of genres. - Rostov-on-Don, 2007.S. 211-215.

*eight. Savelyeva E. S. Psychologism and lyrical expression of images of "The history of my contemporary" V. G. Korolenko. Scientific-methodical journal "Bulletin of the Kostroma State University named after N. A. Nekrasov." Main issue, No. 1, January-March, 2008. Volume 14). S. 131-134.

9. Savelyeva E. S. Temporary organization of the autobiographical novel-memoirs of V. G. Korolenko "The history of my contemporary" / E. S. Savelyeva // Epistemology of poetics: artistic semantics and genre syncretism. - Intra-university collection of scientific papers. Issue 8. Rostov-on-Don, 2009.S. 52-61.

Legend: * marked work published in the publication recommended by the Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for the publication of the main materials of candidate dissertations.

Savelyeva E. S. "The history of my contemporary" V. G. Korolenko: artistic originality: Author's abstract. day. ... Cand. philologist, sciences: 10.01.01. Rostov n / a: SFU, 2009, 24 p.

Signed for printing on 05/08/2009. Format 60x84 1/16. Offset printing. Volume 1.5 conv. print l. Circulation 100 copies. Order Ns fáí.

Publishing and Printing Department of Rostov State Pedagogical University 344082, Rostov-on-Don, st. B. Sadovaya, 33

Chapter 1. "The history of my contemporary" in the context of the era

1. Prerequisites for the appearance of "The history of my contemporary" in the work of V. G. Korolenko: analytism as a form of thinking of the writer

2. Historiosophical, value paradigm (orientation) of Korolenko in the embodiment of fate, choice, rights, human responsibility and worldview

3. Ideological content of the "History of my contemporary" and its compositional expression in the novel

Chapter 2. Poetics "The Stories of My Contemporary"

1. "The history of my contemporary" in the general typology of Russian autobiographical literature

2. Genre specificity of the "Stories of my contemporary"

3. Literary portrait as part of the artistic originality of the "History of my contemporary"

4. Features of the chronotope "Stories of my contemporary"

Dissertation introduction 2009, abstract on philology, Savelyeva, Elena Sergeevna

Currently, there is a tendency in the literature to address the problems of classical literature. And now, after many years, the works of writers who created the culture of the Russian people, laid the foundations of the modern Russian language, and participated in historical events are worthy of attention. Undoubtedly, one of these writers is Vladimir Galpktionovich Korolenko, a great humanist, fighter for justice and freedom, author of many fiction and journalistic works, in particular, the memoir novel "The Story of My Contemporary."

Researches of scientists in the field of classical works are carried out in two directions: firstly, these are attempts at a new interpretation of texts that have already become textbooks, studied by many generations of scientists, and secondly, they are searching for new classical works that have not yet been captured by the spider. "The history of my contemporary" by V. G. Korolenko, undoubtedly, is one of the insufficiently illuminated works in literary criticism.

Relevance of this study. 1) The novel under consideration, "The History of My Contemporary", is considered to be one of the summit creations in Russian literature, but no special research has been done on this work. 2) This study allows us to visually reflect the analysis of the peculiarities of the author's consciousness, the specifics of his manifestation; since, on the one hand, all scientists and researchers recognize the ultimate activation of the author's personality in autobiographical prose on the other hand, this problem has rarely been the subject of special consideration. 3) Turning to this novel by V.G.Korolenko as a work with documentary elements allows, looking into the past and understanding the problems of the past, to understand one's own time both from the point of view of literary criticism and from the point of view of history.

The novelty of the dissertation. 1. In the dissertation research, VG Korolenko's autobiographical novel-reminiscence "The History of My Contemporary" is subjected to such an integral study for the first time. 2. Essentially new judgments about the specifics of this work as a kind of genre symbiosis. We define the Stories of My Contemporary genre as an autobiographical memoir novel. 3. In the literary analysis of the work, we for the first time presented the classification of literary portraits of the novel, made a number of significant conclusions regarding the architectonics of the work, the features of the depiction of heroes and the specifics of the chronotope.

The theoretical and methodological basis of the dissertation research is formed by the principles of cultural-historical and comparative-historical research methods, as well as the provisions and concepts developed in the works of M.M.Bakhtin, B, O! Kormapa, Yu.M. Lotman, D.S.Likhachev, G.O. Vinokura, V.V. Tynyanov, L. Ya. Ginzburg, S. S. Averitsev, A. G. Tartakovsky, I. A. Nikolina, A. B. Esin, I. O. Shaitanov and others.

The used literary categories are considered in historical and theoretical terms, the history of the formation of the genre of fictional autobiography is traced, attempts are made to analyze the principles of creating images of heroes, to identify artistic means of expressing the author's position in an autobiographical novel-reminiscence.

When determining the place of "The History of My Contemporary" in the writer's work, we studied the works of D.P. Ovsyayiko-Kulikovsky (141), I.D.Shakhovskaya (210), A.V. ), and also got acquainted with dissertation research of recent years, dedicated to creativity V.G. Korolenko. These are the works of G. Z. Gorbunova ("Korolenko and Dostoevsky" (56)), S. N. Guskov ("V, G, Korolenko and L. N. Tolstoy: the problem of the writer's ethical position" (63)), Yu. Gushchina ("Sketch cycle V. G, Korolenko" In a hungry year ": Creative history and genre originality"(64)), N. N. Gushchina (" V. G. Korolenko and literary populism (1870-1880s) "(65)), D. A * Zavelskoy (" The semantic and artistic unity of the text in I works V. G. Korolenko ”(79)), I. V. Kochergina (“ V. G ”Korolenko and literary criticism and journalism of the late 19th century” (102)), P. E. Lyon (“The literary position of V. G. Korolenko "(109)), L. I. Skreminskaya (" "West - East" - spiritual and creative searches of V. G. Korolenko "(170)), V. R. Tagarinov (" Poetics of stories and sketches by V. Korolenko "(180)), A. V. Trukhapenko (" Some stylistic features of the stories and stories of V. G. Korolenko: (The principles of portraiture and colorism as a means of expressing the author's idea) "(184)), O. L. Fetiseiko (" The story "The Artist Alymov" and the unfulfilled plan of V. G. Korolenko "In a quarrel with his younger brother" "(192)).

After analyzing the direction of the named works, we see that the researchers limited themselves to a problem-thematic analysis or analysis of the specificity of Girona of individual works or cycles.

The object of the study is the autobiographical novel-reminiscence "The history of my contemporary" by V. G. Korolenko.

The novel is recognized as the leading genre of literature in recent centuries. Despite the fact that this genre is the subject of deep contemplation of writers, attracts close attention of literary scholars and critics, it still remains a mystery.

Hegel, comparing the novel with the traditional epic, wrote that the novel lacks the "initially poetic state of the world" inherent in the epic, there is a "conflict" between the poetry of the heart and the opposing prose of everyday relations "and" prosaically ordered reality. " calling the novel an epic of private life, he defined the subject of this genre: “the fate of a private person,” “everyday life.” MM Bakhtin expressed similar thoughts in his work “Epic and novel (On the methodology of researching the novel)” (19). The scientist claims that “the hero of the novel is shown not as ready and unchanging, but as becoming, changing, brought up by life,” he “combines both positive and negative traits, both low and high, both funny and serious ", the novel shows the" live contact "of a person" with an unprepared, becoming modernity "," more deeply, substantially, sensitively and quickly "than any other genre," reflects the formation reality itself. "

The genre of the novel arises and is consolidated where there is interest in a person who somehow differs from the average image of a citizen, breaks out of the framework adopted in society, of stereotypes of behavior.

Undoubtedly, the genre nature of the novel is synthetic. This genre incorporates features from many other genres. "War and Peace" by L. N. Tolstoy, "Gone with the Wind" by M. Mitchell, "Quiet Don" by M. A. Sholokhov - in these works, which captured not only privacy people, but also the events of the national-historical mastggab, there are features of the epic. Novels are also capable of embodying meanings characteristic of a parable. According to OA Sedakova, “in the depths of the Russian novel there is usually something like a parable” (167, 12). It cannot be denied that the novel is involved in the traditions of hagiography - the hagiographic principle is clearly expressed in the works of Dostoevsky and Leskov.

As a genre prone to synthetics, the novel, in contrast to other, less complex genres (story, essay, novella) "that preceded it and acted in various limited areas of comprehension of the artistic world, turned out to be able to bring them closer!" literature with life in its diversity and complexity, contradictions and wealth. This genre is capable of not only combining the meaningful principles of many genres, both serious and humorous, with easy freedom, but also transforming their structural properties.

The most important feature of the novel is the author's close attention to surrounding heroes microenvironment in which they act, live, communicate. Without recreating the microenvironment, it is very difficult for a writer to reveal the character's inner world. Novels that focus on a person's connections with a reality close to him and, as a rule, give preference to inner action, have become a kind of center of literature. They influenced all other genres in the most serious way, even transformed them. In the words of M. M. Bakhtin, there has been a romanization of verbal art: when a novel comes into literature, other genres are sharply modified, "more or less romanized."

The subject of study is the author, who is at the same time the hero of this work, from the point of view of his role in the artistic organization of the text, means of expressing the author's position and creating the image of the main character. And although logic requires us to consider the problem in the order of "author-hero", we first consider the problem of the hero, then the author, leaving the traditional order of concepts in the formulation of the topic.

One of the central problems of social thought, artistic creativity and culture in recent years has become the spiritual formation of a person, changes that occur not only in his life, but also in his soul. Internal action successfully competes with external action, the consciousness of the hero in its versatility and complexity, with its endless dynamics and psychological nuances, comes to the fore.

The purpose of the dissertation research is to comprehend the theoretical aspects of the problem of the genre of a work with an autobiographical orientation, to determine the place of the "History of my contemporary" in the context of the work of V.G., Korolenko and to consider the poetics of the novel-reminiscence.

To do this, the following tasks have to be solved:

1) to generalize and systematize literary works on the problems of fiction autobiographical literature;

2) comprehend the theoretical aspects of the stated problem;

3) determine the position of the novel "The History of My Contemporary" in the general typology of Russian autobiographical literature and in the work of V. G. Korolenko;

4) consider the features of the genre of the studied work;

5) to study the system of images, features of the literary portraits of "The Stories of My Contemporary", to classify them;

6) study the chronotopic structure of the novel.

The structure of the work is determined by the nature of this dissertation research and is organized in accordance with its purpose and objectives. The thesis consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, a bibliography. When working with the texts, we studied two collected works of V.G.Korolenko: in 9 volumes, 1914, and in 10 volumes, 1954. References in the text of the thesis are from a later collected works.

Conclusion of scientific work dissertation on the topic "" The history of my contemporary "VG Korolenko: artistic originality"

Conclusions on the 2nd chapter:

1. Generalization, systematization and analysis of literary works on the problem of the genre nature of artistic autobiography give reason to believe that the genre of autobiography on the present stage its formation is complex, it has features of confession, chronicle, memoirs, and in Russian literature - life, confession and sermon. The main stages in the evolution of the genre: ancient biography, medieval life, autobiographies of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, autobiographies of the 19th and 20th centuries. The main elements of the specificity of the works of this genre are: 1) documentary (to varying degrees); 2) aesthetic value; 3) the identity of the author and the narrator, 4) the features of the chronotope (fundamentally retrospective organization of the narrative, the principle of double vision),

5) the mindset to recreate history individual life, 6) some features of poetics, etc.

2. After considering autobiographical genres, the genre "Stories of My Contemporary" is defined by us as an autobiographical novel-reminiscence. The synthesis of various genres in the autobiographical prose of V.G. Korolenko, in our opinion, is the most accurate confirmation of the stated thesis about the orientation of this author towards a large epic form and novel thinking.

3. An important part of The History of My Contemporary, which carries a significant semantic and narrative load, are literary portraits, which constitute a broad, detailed picture of the life of Russia in the 60s-80s of the XIX century. In our study, we distinguish portraits-stories, portraits-memories and portraits-types. The classification is based on the passage of time in the portrait relative to the main narrative.

4. The chronotope of an autobiographical memoir has several components: calendar time (such a variety as biographical time is presented), event time (historical, everyday time, chronotope of the road, meetings), perceptual time (author's chronotope). After analyzing the various chapters of The History of My Contemporary from the point of view of the length of the action in time, we see that the choice of speech means largely depends on the type of text. When choosing this or that means, V. G. Korolenko is guided by his communicative intentions. He achieves the greatest accuracy of description, expressiveness of narration and clarity of logical reasoning. When describing phenomena, objects in the text, imperfect verbs predominate with the meaning of a repetitive and specific procedural action (example 1.1 and 1.2). For this type of text as narration, the use of perfective verbs with the meaning of instantaneous action (example 2.5), or a process limited in time (2.6), when it comes to isolated cases, or imperfective verbs with the meaning of constant , everyday action (2. 2), when it comes to everyday and repetitive events. In reasoning, the temporal system is most dependent on the communicative intentions of the speaker and is subject to the general logical structure of the text.

Conclusion

In the works of Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko, which have a lot of weight in Russian literary heritage, the historical memory of Russia, the spiritual creation of its best representatives, the inextricable connection of generations are captured.

The creative heritage of V.G.Korolenko is large and diverse - there are rare variations of small genres (pictures, pages, excerpts), and allegorical (fairy tales, legends, fantasies), journalism and works belonging to the genres of documentary and documentary-biographical prose (portraits , letters, memories, observations, stories, essays, stories). However, everywhere - both in journalism and in everyday life - a fiction writer, a prose writer with his own style, is seen everywhere - in the traditions of the classics, but at the same time sharply modern, propagandistic, oratorical.

The autobiographical novel-reminiscence "The Story of My Contemporary", which is the pinnacle of all the writer's work, is a work of a complex genre that includes most of the above. That is why "The History of My Contemporary" is the final work of V. G. Korolenko.

The history of my contemporary ”occupies a central place in the work of V. G. Korolenko, absorbing everything he had written before her and illuminating a part of the author's life framed by a wide panorama of the life of society in the 60s-80s. XIX century.

In the center of the analyzed work is a creative personality. Fate outstanding personality attracted the attention of writers throughout the history of literature. In the image of the hero, the artist's aesthetic and social ideals are embodied. Ideals are a moving category, developing, like a person himself. The author's personality is an active principle.

In the novel under study, an artistic image of a creative personality is created. Even such traditional biographical narrative methods of creating a hero's image as a biographical element, portrait characteristics, a system of leitmotifs allow one to accurately recreate the hero's image, while psychological characteristics make him convincing and reliable. The author managed to show the complex interaction of a creative personality and environment through a biographical, cultural and historical context.

Literary portraits are an important part of the "History of my contemporary" We are creating a classification that separates the literary portraits of the "History of my contemporary" portrait-history, portrait-memories and portraits-types. The classification is based on the passage of time in the portrait relative to the main narrative.

Artistic time and artistic space are essential forms of creating the image of a hero. The plot is based on a part of the hero's life - from early childhood to his arrival in Nizhny Novgorod. We analyze various chapters of The History of My Contemporary from the point of view of the length of the action in time and come to the conclusion that the choice of speech means largely depends on the type of text. When choosing this or that means, V. G. Korolenko is guided by his communicative intentions. He achieves the greatest accuracy of description, expressiveness of narration and clarity of logical reasoning.

In our time, no doubt, it is necessary to refer more often to the works of classical literature for many reasons. Many works undeservedly ignored by literary critics and the public raise problems that are not alien to our time. Works with documentary elements help a person, looking into the past and understanding the problems of the past, to understand their own time. Turning to The History of My Contemporary as a work of a major genre allows one to assess some of the tendencies of the contemporary literary process. It is also important that the works of the classics are highly ideal, and by reading them a person raises his cultural level.

Let us outline the range of problems for further research. First, these are issues related to the national idea, which is very clearly expressed in the History of My Contemporary. Secondly, these are the problems of researching a national autobiographical novel written by representatives of different cultures and nations, comparing the works of different authors.

Thus, we affirm that V.G. Korolenko's “The History of My Contemporary”, being a highly moral work reflecting the essential features of the past, is modern in its ideological orientation and should be present in the reading circle of the modern reader, and is also of interest to researchers of Russian literature turn of XIX-XX centuries.

List of scientific literature Savelyeva, Elena Sergeevna, dissertation on "Russian literature"

1. Averin BV Personality and creativity of VG Korolenko // Sobr. cit .: In 5v. M., 1989.T. 1.S. 5-22.

2. Averin BV The novels of VV Nabokov in the context of Russian autobiographical prose and poetry: Author's abstract. dis. for a job. degree doct. philol. sciences. SPb., 1999.32 p.

3. Averintsev S. S. Plutarch and antique biography // Averintsev S. S. image of antiquity. SPb, 2004.S. 225-479.

4. Azbukin VN Literary-critical activity of Russian writers of the XIX century: Textbook. allowance. Kazan, 1989.228 p.

5. Allakhverdov VM Psychology of art. Essay on the secret-emotional impact of works of art. SPb., 2001.201 p.

6. Andronikov IL Sobr. cit .: In 3 volumes. M., 1980.Vol. 2.S. 370-378.

7. Andronikova MI From prototype to image. On the problem of portrait in literature and cinema. M., 1974.200 s.

8. Arefieva I. T. Education of Russian literary symbolists as historical

The story of my contemporary

"The history of my contemporary" "" is the final work of Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko.

In terms of the scale and epic nature of the events described, VG Korolenko's "History of My Contemporary" can be placed alongside such large-scale works of the autobiographical genre as "Childhood" and "Adolescence" by L. N. Tolstoy, "Past and Thoughts" by A. I. Herzen.

The synthesis of various genres in the autobiographical prose of V.G. Korolenko, in our opinion, is the most faithful confirmation of the author's orientation towards a large epic form and novel thinking.

The novel creates an artistic image of a creative person. Even such traditional biographical narrative methods of creating a hero's image as a biographical element, portrait characteristics, a system of leitmotifs allow one to accurately recreate the hero's image, while psychological characteristics make him convincing and reliable. The author managed to show the complex interaction of a creative personality and environment through a biographical, cultural and historical context.

Korolenko, by virtue of his intention, strove for the greatest possible accuracy of the facts: “If I were to write a fictional essay, the topic would be very grateful. And even now the artist in me tempts the everyday painter. It is so tempting to eliminate random features too real to be beautiful. But I write only what I saw myself and what I experienced among these forest people. Therefore, I will only tell the story as I saw it ”(vol. 7, pp. 55-56).

Artistic time and artistic space are essential forms of creating the image of a hero. The plot is based on a part of the hero's life - from early childhood to his arrival in Nizhny Novgorod. In order to convey his idea to the reader living in a time other than the author, Korolenko recreates an artistic panorama of the social, political, literary life of Russia in the 1860-1880s. XIX century.

Korolenko the citizen was formed earlier than Korolenko the writer. The civil theme turned out to be the main one in his work. Korolenko reflected many of his searches and experiences in The History of My Contemporary (1905-1921, separate ed. 1922). Everything that is told in this unfinished work was, but the writer conjectures a lot in order to more vividly describe the ascetic of the ideas of the 1870-1880s. As you would expect from a work with autobiographical elements, "The History of My Contemporary" is built on a certain chronological sequence, highlighting the main milestones of the described period of the author's life: childhood, gymnasium, student periods, the time of Vyatka, Yakut exile.

History of creation

"History ..." was written by Korolenko in his declining years, when he already had the opportunity to cast a retrospective look at the events of the past and assess their significance with great sobriety.

The novel was created in the difficult times of the February and October revolutions, the subsequent fierce civil war. There is not a single hint of burning modernity and topicality in the work. This emphasizes the gap between the past populism and the present and makes it even more tangible. Passing historical events through the prism of his own consciousness, the author has every right to give preference to some events over others.

Ideological content

The author achieves the embodiment of his idea, using, as mentioned above, a synthetic, complex, multi-component genre - an autobiographical novel-memory, which allows him to express his thoughts in a volumetric manner both in the eventual and temporal plan. G. Korolenko unfolds to the reader a panorama of the life of society in the 1860-1880s of the XIX century, including the event aspect (outstanding historical events that took place at that time), the socio-political aspect (the change in the status of many people, the development of the social revolutionary movement), literary -aesthetic aspect (the influence of literature on people and people on literature).

Korolenko begins a story about himself from "infancy". This technique does not contradict the canons of the genre and is used by the author to identify the origins of the formation of his personality, nature, and predispositions. V. G. Korolenko describes works of art that had a great influence on him (the book "Fomka from Sandomir" by Jan Gregorovich, the historical theatrical play "Ursula or Sigismund III"). Describing the process of his acquaintance with these works, the writer, relying on real events and his immediate impressions, gives a story with elements of analysis, defining their belonging to literary currents (the book is sentimentalism, the play is romanticism). V. G. Korolenko creates a whole gallery of images of automaton teachers who had direct contact with sensitive children's souls. The years spent here, where revolutionary-democratic books were distributed secretly from the administration, played a huge role in shaping the character and worldview of the writer. Consciousness V. G. Korolenko early began to understand the injustice and "social untruth" of life.

In 1871, after graduating from a real gymnasium, Korolenko left for St. Petersburg to enter the Technological Institute. In the 1870s, wide circles of student youth and intelligentsia - including Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko - were captured and carried away by the stream of revolutionary populism.

The striving of the individual for an emotionally anticipated universal ideal indicates a romantic stream in a work written, undoubtedly, in realistic traditions. Gradually, the hero realizes that the ideal, the guide of ideas and thoughts young generation a person with an empty soul and a beautiful wrapper on it cannot and should not become.

Before us is a broad picture of mental fermentation among the "student youth of the 1870s - early 1880s": the writer talks about his friends at the Technological and Mining Institutes in St. Petersburg or the Petrovskaya Academy in Moscow, about the terrorists I. Mlodetsky, A. Zhelyabov, S. Stepnyak-Kravchinsky, about G. Lopatin. However, Korolenko does not create a chronicle of ideological searches: more emphasis is placed on the general emotional tone of their selfless activities, their service to the people, heroism and self-sacrifice.

Korolenko described the life of the exiles not by hearsay, but from the inside. The Story of My Contemporary describes the writer's stay in nine prisons (the Yaroslavl prison, the Spasskaya part and the Lithuanian castle in St. Petersburg, the Basmanny part in Moscow, the Vyshnevolotsk political prison, Tomsk, Tobolsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk prisons) and five exiles (in Kronstadt, Glazov , Berezovskiye Pochinki, Perm, Amge settlement in Yakutia).

Talking about his exiled wanderings, the writer reveals to us the features of the judicial machinery of Russia, its constituent parts.

"Yaroslavl Prison" was the first one visited by Korolenko. The writer is somewhat surprised to find himself in this prison. Placing him in a privileged noble corridor, unlocked cells, the opportunity to visit other prisoners, rolls and rolls left after a church holiday and brought for Korolenko after dinner - all speaks of his special position.

Then the fate of V. G. Korolenko was softened to mark the difference between him and former officers Werner and Grigoriev, as more responsible, and instead of the original place of exile he went to "Kronstadt". "Now you are free," the admiral tells him. Indeed, the exile in Kronstadt did not impose any particular restrictions on the activities of Vladimir Galaktionovich. Chief of Police Golovachev allows him to move freely: "Drive as much as you like, just don't get into any history" (v. 6, 184). He also arranges for him as a draftsman in a mine officer class. Korolenko explains this appointment by the fact that "then the terror had not yet flared up, chemistry and explosives did not play any role in the revolution" (v. 6, 184). The time of this exile passed unnoticed, and a year later, V. G. Korolenko was really free.

The second arrest, carried out on suspicion in connection with the murder of the chief of gendarmes Mezentsev, shows Korolenko that he and his brother “have already been recognized as irrevocably 'suspicious' and should expect the same surprises on any occasion” (v. 6, 219). Further, more than once, he confirms this idea as a feature of the then Russian government: a person who fell out of favor will never be fully justified. Echoes of the same thought can be heard in the words of the “handsome police chief” in Tobolsk: “If you get here again, then it’s over! .. Twice such miracles do not happen. Then, Mr. Korolenko, just marry a Siberian woman and get a house ... ”(v. 7, 167).

Korolenko found himself "in the Spasskaya part" on suspicion of organizing a secret printing house for printing illegal publications. Here he gets acquainted with the conventional alphabet, with the help of which the prisoners spoke by knocking on the wall of the cell.

"In the Lithuanian castle" VG meets people, mostly young, arrested for no reason, on someone's secret denunciation. “It was really some kind of orgy of denunciations, searches, searches, arrests and deportations. The autocracy experienced a fit of violent insanity, and the entire Russian society “without distinction of rank and status” was declared seditious and outlawed. ”In addition, V. G. Korolenko noted another interesting feature of arrest: if there was one person in prison, then all his acquaintances, especially relatives, were under suspicion. This is how he himself fell under this wave of general arrests and suspicions (mainly because he had already been arrested once for political reasons, and also because all the men in his family worked in typographic proofreading and could theoretically, by delivering fonts, contribute to illegal activities typography).

The fourth part of the second book ends with an allegorical comparison: "... the locomotive whistled, and the foggy spot over Petersburg soon disappeared on the horizon" (v. 6, 253). The foggy spot, undoubtedly, existed in reality due to the well-known peculiarity of the climate of St. Petersburg, has one more significance. It embodies V. G. Korolenko's dissatisfaction with the order that existed in the capital.

It would seem that, being cut off from family and friends, expelled from an inhabited city to the end of the world, all the more not knowing for certain where and for what, the young man had to fall into a severe depression. But no: “After the Spassky solitary confinement and the Lithuanian castle, everything seemed wonderful to me on the way, everything caused vivid and strong impressions. holiday. "Do you remember that I dreamed about summer travel Well, at least I'm on a leash, but I'm traveling, "Korolenko wrote to VN Grigoriev from May 31, 1879 from Vyatka.

“Despite the age of twenty-two, I felt a boyish sense of pride: in the Basmanny unit, they formally announced to me that I was being sent 'by the highest order' to Ust-Sysolsk, Vologda province” (v. 6, p. 163). The first link is not taken seriously by the writer, partly because of its young age, partly because of the novelty of the impressions, partly because of its quick and successful completion. Another thing - "Berezovskie Pochinki." Already on the way, which ran through the city of Glazov, the villages of Biserovo and Afanasyevskoye, the writer several times emphasized the abandonment and distance of the destination. Even the titles of some chapters of the fifth part "To the End of the World", "Forests, Forests" tell us about it. Korolenko says this about Pochinki, the village of Biserovskaya volost: "Not a single governor has ever been to this volost, not a single police chief has been to the village of Afanasyevskoye, which is closest to Berezovskiye Pochinki, and not even a single policeman has ever been to Pochinki since the creation of the world." (vol. 6, p. 266). This place is characterized as one from which they do not return. Thus, the link in Pochinki was taken more seriously by the hero, it is with her that it begins new stage in his life. The entire third book consists of five parts, telling about the prisons and the places where the author got to his next destination.

The fourth, unfinished, book is entirely devoted to the "Yakut exile".

The autobiographical novel-memoir "The Story of My Contemporary", which is the pinnacle of the writer's entire work, is a work of a complex genre.

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what "The history of my contemporary" is in other dictionaries:

For the convenience of reviewing the main phenomena of its development, the history of Russian literature can be divided into three periods: I from the first monuments to Tatar yoke; II until the end of the 17th century; III to our time. In reality, these periods are not sharply ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

Village Biserovo Country Russia Russia ... Wikipedia

Korolenko, Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko's request is redirected here; see also other meanings. Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko Date of birth: July 15 (27), 1853 (18530727) ... Wikipedia

- (1853 1921), writer and publicist. Honorary Academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1900 1902) and the Russian Academy of Sciences (1918). In 1879 he was arrested on suspicion of having connections with revolutionary leaders; in 1881 84 in exile (Yakutia). Editor of the magazine "Russian wealth" (1895 1918). ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Korolenko's request is redirected here; see also other meanings. Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko Date of birth: 15 (27) July 1853 (1853 07 27) Place of birth ... Wikipedia

Korolenko, Vladimir Galaktionovich is an outstanding writer. Born on July 15, 1853 in Zhitomir. On his father's side he is an old Cossack family, the mother is the daughter of a Polish landowner in Volyn. His father, who served as a district judge in Zhitomir, Dubna, Rovna, ... ... Biographical Dictionary

Current page: 1 (the book has a total of 28 pages)

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko
The story of my contemporary. Book one

V.G. Korolenko. Collected works in ten volumes.

Volume five. The story of my contemporary M., GIHL, 1954

Preparation of the text and notes S.V. Korolenko

OCR Lovetskaya T. Yu.

From the author

In this book, I try to recall and revive a number of pictures of the past half-century, how they were reflected in the soul of first a child, then a young man, then an adult. Early childhood and the first years of my youth coincided with the time of liberation. The middle of his life passed in a period of dark, first government, and then public reaction and among the first movements of the struggle. Now I see much of what my generation dreamed of and fought for, bursting into the arena of life anxiously and violently. I think that many episodes from the times of my exiled wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that environment have not lost even now the interest of living reality itself. I would like to think that they will still retain their significance for the future. Our life hesitates and shudders from sharp clashes of new principles with obsolete ones, and I hope to at least partially illuminate some of the elements of this struggle.

But earlier I wanted to draw the attention of readers to the first movements of the nascent and growing consciousness. I realized that it would be difficult for me to focus on these distant memories with the rumble of the present, in which the thunder of an impending thunderstorm is heard, but I had no idea how difficult it would be.

I am not writing the history of my time, but only the history of one life at that time, and I would like the reader to get acquainted first with the prism in which it was reflected ... And this is possible only in a consistent story. Childhood and adolescence constitute the content of this first part.

One more remark. These notes are not a biography, because I was not particularly concerned with completeness of biographical information; not confession, because I do not believe in the possibility or in the usefulness of public confession; not a portrait, because it is difficult to paint your own portrait with a guarantee for the resemblance. Any reflection differs from reality in that it is a reflection; reflection is deliberately incomplete - even more so. It always, so to speak, reflects the chosen motives more densely, and therefore often, for all its truthfulness, it is more attractive, more interesting and, perhaps, purer than reality.

In my work, I strove for the fullest possible historical truth, often sacrificing beautiful or vivid features of artistic truth to it. There will be nothing here that I have not encountered in reality, that I have not experienced, felt, or seen. And yet I repeat: I am not trying to give my own portrait. Here the reader will find only features from the "history of my contemporary", a person known to me closer to all other people of my time ... 1
The preface was written at the end of 1905 and prefaced to the first chapters of The History of My Contemporary, which appeared in the January 1906 book of Sovremennye Zapiski.

Part one
Early childhood

I
First impressions of being

I remember myself early, but my first impressions are scattered, like brightly lit islands amid colorless emptiness and fog.

The earliest of these memories is a strong visual impression of a fire. I could go then the second year 2
I could go then the second year- Vladimir Galaktionovich was born on July 15 (old style) 1853 in Zhitomir, Volyn province.

But even now I can see quite clearly the tongues of flame above the roof of the shed in the courtyard, the walls of a large stone house, strangely illuminated in the middle of the night, and its windows gleaming with flames. I remember myself, warmly wrapped up, in someone's arms, among a bunch of people standing on the porch. From this vague crowd, memory distinguishes the presence of the mother, while the lame father, leaning on a stick, climbs the stairs of the stone house in the courtyard opposite, and it seems to me that he is walking into the fire. But that doesn't scare me. I am very much interested in the helmets of firefighters flashing around the yard like firecrackers, then one fire barrel at the gate and a schoolboy entering the gate with a shortened leg and a high heel. It seems that I did not feel any fear or anxiety, I did not establish any connection between phenomena. For the first time in my life, so many fires, fire helmets and a schoolboy with a short leg fell into my eyes, and I carefully examined all these objects against the deep background of the night darkness. At the same time, I do not remember the sounds: the whole picture only silently shimmers in my memory with floating reflections of a crimson flame.

I remember, then, several completely insignificant cases when they hold me in their arms, soothe my tears or amuse me. It seems to me that I remember, but very vaguely, my first steps ... My head in childhood was big, and when I fell, I often knocked it on the floor. Once it was on the stairs. I was in great pain and cried loudly until my father consoled me with a special welcome. He hit the rung of the stairs with a stick, and this gave me satisfaction. Probably, I was then in the period of fetishism and assumed an evil and hostile will in the wooden board. And so they beat her for me, and she can't even leave ... Of course, these words very roughly translate my feelings at that time, but I clearly remember the board and as if the expression of her submissiveness under the blows.

Subsequently, the same sensation was repeated in a more complex form. I was already somewhat larger. It was an unusually light and warm moonlit evening. This is generally the first evening that I remember in my life. My parents had gone somewhere, the brothers must have been asleep, the nanny went into the kitchen, and I was left with only one footman who bore the dissonant nickname Gandylo. The door from the front door to the courtyard was open, and from somewhere, from the moonlit distance, the rumble of wheels rushed along the cobbled street. And for the first time I also singled out the rumbling of the wheels in my mind as a special phenomenon, and for the first time I did not sleep for so long ... I was scared - probably, they were talking about thieves during the day. It seemed to me that our yard at moonlight very strange and that a "thief" will certainly enter the open door from the yard. It was as if I knew that the thief was a man, but together he seemed to me and not quite a man, but some kind of humanoid mysterious creature who would make me evil by his very sudden appearance. This made me cry loudly.

I don’t know by what logic — but the footman Gandylo again brought my father’s stick and led me out onto the porch, where I — perhaps in connection with a previous episode of the same kind — began to beat hard on the step of the staircase. And this time it was again satisfying; my cowardice had passed so much that once or twice I fearlessly went out alone, without Gandyl, and again pounded on the stairs of an imaginary thief, reveling in a peculiar feeling of my courage. The next morning, I enthusiastically told my mother that yesterday, when she was not there, a thief came to us, whom Gandyl and I severely beat. The mother condescendingly agreed. I knew that there was no thief and that my mother knew it. But I loved my mother very much at that moment because she did not contradict me. It would be hard for me to give up that imaginary creature that I was at first afraid of, and then positively "felt", in the strange moonlight, between my stick and the rung of the stairs. It was not a visual hallucination, but there was some ecstasy from my victory over fear ...

The trip to Chisinau to my paternal grandfather is still an island in my memory ... 3
... to my paternal grandfather ...- Afanasy Yakovlevich Korolenko - grandfather of Vladimir Galaktionovich. Born in 1787, died around 1860 in Bessarabia. He served in the customs department. He was married to a Polish woman, Eva Malskaya.

From this trip, I remember crossing the river (Prut, I think), when our carriage was installed on the raft and, smoothly swaying, separated from the shore, or the shore separated from it - I still could not distinguish this. At the same time, a detachment of soldiers was crossing the river, and, I remember, the soldiers sailed in twos and threes on small square rafts, which, it seems, does not happen when troops cross ... I looked at them with curiosity, and they looked into our carriage and they said something incomprehensible to me ... It seems that this crossing was in connection with the Sevastopol war ... 4
... in connection with the Sevastopol war- Eastern (or Crimean) War of 1853-1856.

That evening, shortly after crossing the river, I experienced the first feeling of sharp disappointment and resentment ... It was dark inside the spacious travel carriage. I was sitting in someone's arms in front, and suddenly my attention was attracted by a reddish dot that flashed and then faded away in the corner, in the place where my father was sitting. I began to laugh and reached out to her. My mother said something warning, but I was so anxious to get a closer look at interesting subject or the creature that I cried. Then my father pushed a little red star towards me, tenderly hiding under the ashes. I reached for her with the index finger of my right hand; for some time it did not work, but then suddenly it flashed brighter, and I was suddenly burned by a sharp bite. I think that in terms of the strength of the impression now, this could only be equal to a strong and unexpected bite of a poisonous snake, lurking, for example, in a bouquet of flowers. The light seemed to me deliberately cunning and evil. Two or three years later, when I remembered this episode, I ran to my mother, began to tell and began to cry. These were again tears of resentment ...

The same disappointment caused my first bathing. The river made a fascinating impression on me: the small greenish waves of swell that burst under the walls of the bath were new, strange and beautiful to me, and the way they played with sparkles, fragments of heavenly blue and bright pieces of a seemingly broken bath. All this seemed to me cheerful, lively, cheerful, attractive and friendly, and I begged my mother to bring me into the water as soon as possible. And suddenly - an unexpected and harsh impression of either cold or burn ... I cried loudly and so huddled in my mother's arms that she almost dropped me. This time my bathing did not take place. While my mother was splashing in the water with pleasure incomprehensible to me, I sat on the bench, pouting, looking at the crafty ripple, which continued to play just as temptingly with fragments of the sky and the pool, and was angry ... At whom? It seems to the river.

These were the first disappointments: I rushed towards nature with the confidence of ignorance, she responded with spontaneous dispassion, which seemed to me deliberately hostile ...

Another of those primary sensations, when the phenomenon of nature for the first time remains in the consciousness isolated from the rest of the world, as special and sharply finished, with its main properties. This is the memory of the first walk in the pine forest. Here I was positively mesmerized by the lingering noise of the forest tops, and I stopped, rooted to the spot, on the path. Nobody noticed this, and our whole society moved on. The path a few fathoms ahead sloped steeply downward, and I watched as at this break, first the legs, then the bodies, then the heads of our company disappeared. I waited with an eerie feeling for the last bright white hat of Uncle Heinrich to disappear 5
... uncle Henry- Genrikh Iosifovich Skurevich - lawyer, forensic investigator ("Uncle Henry" in the story "At Night"). He died in the early 70s.

The tallest of my mother's brothers, and, finally, was left alone ... I seem to feel that “alone in the forest” is, in essence, scary, but, like a bewitched one, I could neither move nor utter a sound and only listened then a quiet whistle, then a ringing, then a vague talk and sighs of the forest, merging into a prolonged, deep, endless and meaningful harmony, in which the general hum, and individual voices of living giants, and the swaying, and quiet creaking of red trunks were caught at the same time ... All this it seemed to penetrate me with an exciting mighty wave ... I ceased to feel separate from this sea of ​​life, and it was so strong that when they missed me and my mother's brother came back for me, I stood in the same place and did not respond ... my uncle, in a light suit and a straw hat, I saw as if a stranger, a stranger in a dream ...

Subsequently, this minute often arose in my soul, especially in hours of fatigue, as a prototype of deep but living peace ... Nature affectionately attracted the child at the beginning of his life with its endless, incomprehensible secret, as if promising somewhere in infinity the depth of knowledge and the bliss of solving ...

How, however, rudely our words express our sensations ... There is also a lot of incomprehensible dialect in the soul, which cannot be expressed with coarse words, like the speech of nature ... And this is exactly where the soul and nature are one ...

All these are scattered, separate impressions of a semi-conscious existence, as if not connected by anything but personal sensation. The last of them is a move to a new apartment ... And not even a move (I don’t remember it, just as I don’t remember the previous apartment), but again the first impression of the "new house", of the "new courtyard and garden." All this seemed to me a new world, but strange: then this memory falls out of my memory. I remembered about him only after a few years, and when I did, I was even surprised, because at that time it seemed to me that we lived in this house forever and that in general there are no major changes in the world. The main background of my impressions for several childhood years is an unconscious confidence in the complete completeness and immutability of everything that surrounded me. If I had a clear idea of ​​creation, I would probably have said then that my father (whom I knew as a lame) was created with a stick in his hand, that God created my grandmother exactly by my grandmother, that my mother was always just as beautiful a blue-eyed woman with a fair-haired braid that even the shed behind the house was born lopsided and with green lichens on the roof. It was a quiet, steady increase in vitality that smoothly carried me away along with the surrounding world, and the shores of a third-party immense world, through which one could notice movement, were not visible to me then ... And I myself, it seemed, was always the same boy with a big head, and the older brother 6
…Older brother- Julian Galaktionovich Korolenko. Born on February 16, 1851, died on November 25, 1904. He studied first in the Zhytomyr, and then in the Rovno gymnasium, but did not finish the course. In the mid-70s he moved to St. Petersburg, where he was engaged in proofreading work. He had acquaintances with members of the populist movement and provided them with some services. On March 4, 1879, he was arrested along with his brothers and imprisoned in the Lithuanian Castle, but on May 11 of the same year he was released and left in St. Petersburg under the secret police surveillance. Subsequently he lived in Moscow, where for many years he was a proofreader of Russkiye Vedomosti and delivered notes to this newspaper for the Moscow Chronicle department. Yulian Galaktionovich possessed literary abilities. In his early youth, he was fond of writing poetry, translation and correspondence (see in this volume chapter XXIX "My elder brother becomes a writer"). He translated together with Vladimir Galaktionovich (under the general signature of Cor-o) Michelet's book "Loiseau" ("Bird", published by N. V. Vernadsky, Petersburg, 1878). Vladimir Galaktionovich appreciated his brother's literary abilities and subsequently tried to induce him to more serious literary work. In one of his letters in 1886, V.G. wrote to his brother: "The question comes to me, why don't you add literature to your studies ..." I got it from you, you walked in this direction ahead of me for a very long time, and I remember very well how some of your thoughts, your arguments in the hot “Haraluzh” disputes raised a whole series of new ideas in me. Your literary ability is beyond doubt, and I think now you can still use it. " However, having left his literary hobbies quite early, Yulian Galaktionovich never returned to them.

He was somewhat taller than me, and the younger 7
…younger- Illarion Galaktionovich Korolenko (his family nickname was "Peretz", "Pepper"). Born October 21, 1854, died November 25, 1915. He studied at the Rovno real gymnasium, and then at the St. Petersburg construction school. In his youth he was engaged in proofreading work. Prepared to "go to the people" and for this purpose he studied the locksmith craft. In 1879, simultaneously with Vladimir Galaktionovich, he was arrested and exiled to Glazov, Vyatka province, where he served administrative exile for five years. Living in Glazov, he was engaged in locksmith work, working in a workshop organized by him with a friend (see about this book. II "Stories of my contemporary", chapter "Life in Glazov"). Upon his return from exile at the end of 1884, he lived in Nizhny Novgorod, working as a cashier at a steamship pier. Subsequently, he was an inspector of the Northern Insurance Society, in connection with which he traveled a lot. By the way, he lived in Astrakhan, was familiar with N. G. Chernyshevsky, whom he helped in compiling an index to his translation " Of the general history»Weber. Through Illarion Galaktionovich V. G. Korolenko met Chernyshevsky. He also lived in Siberia, where he had many connections among political exiles. The last years of his life he spent in the Caucasus, in Dzhanhot, near Gelendzhik. Vladimir Galaktionovich was especially friendly with his brother Illarion from an early age; later he tried to reflect his image in two stories dedicated to childhood memories - "Night" and "Paradox".

Below ... And this mutual relationship had to remain forever ... We sometimes said: "when we are big", or: "when we die", but it was a stupid phrase, empty, without living content ...

One morning my younger brother, who both fell asleep and got up before me, came up to my bed and said with a special expression in his voice:

- Get up, hurry ... What will I show you!

- What?

- You will see. Hurry, I won't wait.

And he again went into the yard with the air of a serious man who did not want to waste time. I dressed hastily and went out after him. It turned out that some men unfamiliar to us completely destroyed our front porch. From it remained a pile of boards and various wood rot, and the exit door hung strangely high above the ground. And most importantly, there was a deep wound under the door made of peeled plaster, dark logs and piles ... The impression was sharp, partly painful, but even more striking. The brother stood motionless, deeply interested, and watched every movement of the carpenters with his eyes. I joined his silent contemplation, and soon my sister joined us both 8
… My sister joined in.- V. G. Korolenko had two sisters. The eldest of them - Maria Galaktionovna (Vladimir Galaktionovich called her "Typewriter") - was born on October 7, 1856, died on April 8, 1917. She graduated from the Catherine Institute in Moscow, then studied obstetric courses in St. Petersburg. She married a student of the Military Surgical Academy Nikolai Alexandrovich Loshkarev and in 1879 followed him into exile in Krasnoyarsk. Upon their return from exile, the Loshkarev family lived for several years in Nizhny-Novgorod.
The second sister of V.G.Korolenko - Evelina Galaktionovna was born on January 20, 1861, died in September 1905. She studied at the gymnasium and then graduated from obstetric courses in St. Petersburg. When in 1879 almost all members of the Korolenko family were sent into exile, Evelina Galaktionovna, in need of earnings, took up proofreading (the usual work in the Korolenko family) and in 1882 she married a workmate, Mikhail Efimovich Nikitin.

And so we stood for a long time, not saying anything or moving. Three or four days later, the new porch was ready in place of the old one, and it seemed to me positively that the physiognomy of our house had completely changed. The new porch was clearly "attached", while the old one seemed to be an organic part of our venerable solid house, like a nose or eyebrows on a person.

And most importantly, the first impression of the "wrong side" and the fact that under this smoothly planed and painted surface are hidden damp piles corroded by rot and gaping voids ...

II
My father 9
My father- Galaktion Afanasevich Korolenko. Born on December 26, 1810 in Letichev, Podolsk province. He died on July 31, 1868 in the city of Rivne. Some features of his father Vladimir Galaktionovich reproduced in the image of a judge in the story "In a Bad Society".

According to family legend, our family came from some Mirgorod Cossack colonel 10
... the Mirgorod Cossack colonel.- A copy of an old document has been preserved in the Korolenko family archive, from which it can be seen that the Mirgorod Cossack colonel mentioned here was called Ivan Korol. He lived in the 17th century.

Received the coat of arms of the nobility from the Polish kings. After the death of my grandfather, my father, who went to the funeral, brought back an intricate seal, which depicted a boat with two dog heads on the bow and stern, and with a toothed tower in the middle. When one day we children asked what it was, my father replied that it was our "coat of arms" and that we have the right to stamp our letters on them, while other people do not have this right. The name of this thing in Polish is rather strange: "Korabl i Lodzia" (ark and boat), but what meaning it makes, the father himself cannot explain to us; perhaps it doesn't make any sense ... But there is also a coat of arms, so it is called more simply: "pchła na bęnbenku hopki tnie" 1
The flea is dancing on the drum.

And it makes more sense, because the Cossacks and the gentry were bitten by fleas on their campaigns ... And, taking a pencil, he vividly sketched on paper a flea dancing on a drum, surrounding it with a shield, a sword and all the coat of arms. He drew decently, and we laughed. Thus, to the very first idea of ​​our noble "kleinods" father added a shade of mockery, and it seems to me that he had it deliberately. My great-grandfather, according to my father, was a regimental clerk, my grandfather was a Russian official, like my father. It seems that they never owned serf souls and lands ... Father never aspired to restore his hereditary - noble rights, and when he died, we turned out to be "sons of the court councilor", with the rights of a placeless serving nobility, without any real connections with the noble milieu , yes, it seems, and with any other.

The image of my father remained in my memory quite clearly: a man of average height, with a slight inclination to be overweight. As an official of the day, he shaved carefully; his facial features were thin and beautiful: an aquiline nose, large brown eyes and lips with strongly curved upper lines 11
... with strongly curved top lines.- Not a single portrait of Galaktion Afanasyevich exists; according to family tradition, he was never photographed.

It was said that in his youth he looked like Napoleon the First, especially when he put on the Napoleonic bureaucratic hat. But it was hard for me to imagine Napoleon lame, and my father always walked with a stick and dragged his left leg slightly ...

On his face there was always an expression of some kind of hidden sadness and concern. Only occasionally did it become clear. Sometimes he gathered us to his office, allowed us to play and crawl on his own, drew pictures, told funny jokes and fairy tales. Probably, in the soul of this man there was a large supply of complacency and laughter: even his teachings he gave a semi-humorous form, and at that moment we loved him very much. But these glimpses became less and less frequent over the years, natural gaiety was twitched more and more by melancholy and care. In the end, he was only enough to manage somehow our upbringing, and in more conscious years we no longer had any inner intimacy with my father ... So he went to the grave, little known to us, his children. And only a long time later, when the years of youthful carelessness passed, I gathered line by line what I could about his life, and the image of this deeply unhappy man came to life in my soul - both dearer and more familiar than before.

He was an official. The objective history of his life has therefore been preserved in his "service records." Born in 1810, in 1826 entered the scribe ... Died in 1868 with the rank of court councilor ... Here is a meager canvas, on which, however, were embroidered with human life... Hopes, expectations, glimpses of happiness, disappointment ... Among the yellowed papers, one remained, actually unnecessary later, but which my father kept as a memory. This is a semi-official letter from Prince Vasilchikov. 12
Vasilchikov I. I. - Kiev, Volyn and Podolsk Governor-General in 1852-1862.

Regarding the appointment of my father as a district judge in the city of Zhitomir. "This court," writes Prince Vasilchikov, "on the occasion of the joining of the magistrate, taking on a wider and, consequently, more important range of actions, requires a presiding officer who, fully comprehending his purpose, would give the legal proceedings a satisfactory start." 13
"... gave the legal proceedings a satisfactory start."- City magistrates were judicial and administrative institutions, the court of which was subordinate to all criminal and civil cases that arose between persons of the merchant and bourgeois class. During the General Governorship of Prince. Vasilchikov's magistrates in all cities of the Southwestern Territory, except for Kiev, were connected with the district courts.

It is in these forms that the prince chooses his father. At the end of the letter, the "nobleman" with great attention enters the position of a modest official, as a family man, for whom the translation is fraught with inconveniences, but at the same time indicates that the new appointment opens him wide views of the future, and asks to come as soon as possible ... Last lines written by the author of the letter with his own hand, and the tone is imbued with respect. It was a modest, now forgotten, failed, but nevertheless reform, and a brilliant nobleman, tyrant and satrap, like all nobles of that time, not without, however, some "good intentions and impulses," a new person for a new business ...

It was ... in 1849, and my father was offered the position of a district judge in a provincial town. Twenty years later, he died in the same position in a remote district town ...

So, he was an obvious loser in the service ...

For me, there is no doubt that this is due to his quixotic honesty.

Wednesday does not really appreciate exceptions, which it does not understand, and therefore worries ... Each time at the new place of the father's service the same scenes were invariably repeated: representatives of different urban estates with offerings came to the father "according to the time-honored custom". The father refused at first rather calmly. On the next day, the deputations appeared with offerings in an increased size, but the father met them already rudely, and on the third day he unceremoniously chased the “representatives” with a stick, and they crowded at the door with an expression of amazement and fright ... deep respect. Everyone recognized, from a small merchant to the provincial authorities, that there was no force that would make the judge twist his heart against conscience and the law, but ... and at the same time they found that if the judge, in addition, accepted moderate "thanks", it would be clearer, simpler and generally "more human" ...

Already in the period of my rather conscious life, a rather vivid episode of this kind happened. In the district court there was a trial between a rich landowner, Count E - sky, with a poor relative, it seems, the widow of his brother. The landowner was a magnate with great connections, means and influence, which he actively used. The widow led the process “by the law of poverty,” without paying stamp duties, and everyone predicted her failure, since the case was still complicated, and pressure was put on the court. Before the end of the case, the count himself appeared: his carriage with the coats of arms stopped two or three times at our modest house, and a lanky hayduk in livery stuck out at our rickety porch. The first two times the count behaved stately, but cautiously, and his father only coldly and formally removed his approaches. But the third time, he probably made a direct offer. Father, suddenly flushed, cursed the aristocrat with some indecent word and rapped with a stick. The count, red and furious, left his father with threats and quickly got into his carriage ...

The widow also came to her father, although he did not particularly like these visits. The poor woman, in mourning and with tear-stained eyes, depressed and timid, came to her mother, told her something and cried. It seemed to the poor man that she still had to explain something to the judge; Probably, these were all unnecessary trifles, which the father only dismissed and uttered the usual phrase he used in such cases:

- A! Interpret the patient with the doctor! .. Everything will be done according to the law ...

The trial was decided in favor of the widow, and everyone knew that she owed this exclusively to her father's firmness ... The Senate somehow unexpectedly soon approved the decision, and the modest widow immediately became one of the richest landowners not only in the district, but, perhaps, in the province.

When she again came to our apartment, this time in a carriage, everyone could hardly recognize her as the former modest petitioner. Her mourning was over, she seemed even younger and shone with joy and happiness. Her father received her very cordially, with the kindness that we usually feel for people who owe us a lot. But when she asked for a “talk in private,” she too soon left the office with a flushed face and tears in her eyes. The kind woman knew that the change in her position entirely depended on the firmness, perhaps even of some service heroism of this modest lame man ... But she herself was not able to express her gratitude to him in any significant way ...

It upset her, even offended her. The next day, she came to our apartment when my father was at work, and my mother accidentally left the house, and brought in various materials and goods, which she filled up all the furniture in the living room. By the way, she called her sister and brought her a huge doll, beautifully dressed, with large blue eyes that closed when she was put to bed ...

Mother was very scared when she found all these gifts. When my father came home from court, one of the most violent outbreaks I can remember burst into our apartment. He scolded the widow, threw the cloths on the floor, blamed his mother and calmed down only when a cart appeared in front of the entrance, on which they piled all the gifts and sent back.

But then an unexpected difficulty arose. When it came to the doll's turn, the sister strongly protested, and her protest took on such a dramatic character that the father, after several attempts, nevertheless yielded, albeit with great displeasure.

“Through you I became a bribe-taker,” he said angrily, going into his room.

Everyone looked at it then as an aimless eccentricity.

“Well, to whom, please tell me, is the harm from gratitude,” one virtuous judge, “who did not take bribes,” said to me: after all, the matter is over, the person feels that he owes everything to you, and goes with a grateful soul ... almost dogs ... For what?

I'm pretty sure my father never discussed this issue in terms of immediate harm or benefit. I guess that he entered life with great and, probably, not quite usual expectations for that time. But life wiped him out in a gray and dirty environment. And he treasured, as the last shrine, this feature, which distinguished him not only from the crowd of notorious "bribe-takers", but also from among the virtuous people of the then golden mean ... And the more difficult it was for him with a large and growing family, the more sensitive and by his exclusiveness he fenced off his spiritual independence and pride ...

At the same time, one feature was for me later some psychological riddle: all around (it was “standing”, like a decayed swamp) rampant bribery and untruth. The "officials" of the very court where my father served, undoubtedly, took right and left, and, moreover, not only thanks, but also notorious "swag". I remember how one "respected" gentleman, a good friend of our family, a lively and witty person, at one evening with us in a rather large company, very picturesquely told how he once helped a Jewish smuggler to dodge responsibility and save a huge consignment of seized goods ... The smugglers promised to enrich the petty official who was starting his career, but ... he fulfilled their request earlier than they did their promise ... To calculate, he was assigned a date at night in some secluded place, where he waited until dawn ... I remember very vividly the picture description of that night; the official was waiting for the Jew as "in love with his beloved." He keenly listened to the sounds of the night, he feverishly rose to meet every rustle ... And the whole society followed with breathtaking attention the transitions from hope to disappointment in this bribery drama ... , it was guessed and indignation against the Jews, and some sympathy for the deceived. My father was right there, and my memory clearly paints a picture: a card table, lit by tallow candles, behind him four partners. Among them is my father, and against him is the hero of a contraband anecdote, accompanying with witticisms every card thrown. Father laughs merrily ...

In general, he treated the environment with great complacency, protecting only a small circle from falsehood, on which he had a direct influence. I remember several times when he came home from court deeply grieved. Once, when his mother, looking with anxious concern into his upset face, handed him a bowl of soup, he tried to eat, ate two or three spoons and pushed the plate aside.

“I can't,” he said.

- Is it over? - asked the mother quietly.

- Yes ... hard labor ...

- My God! - said the mother, frightened. - And what are you?

- A! Interpret the patient with the clerk, - answered the father with irritation: - Me! me! .. What can I do!

But then he added in a softer tone:

- I did what I could ... The law is clear.

He did not dine that day and did not go to bed after dinner as usual, but walked around the office for a long time, tapping his stick as he walked. When, two hours later, my mother sent me into the study to see if he had fallen asleep, and, if he was awake, to call for tea, I found him kneeling in front of the bed. He fervently prayed for the image, and his whole somewhat fat body trembled ... He wept bitterly.

But I am sure that these were tears of regret for the "sacrifice of the law", and not a corroding consciousness of their guilt, as its instruments. In this respect, his conscience has always been unshakably calm, and when I think about it now, the main difference in the mood of honest people of that generation with the mood of our days becomes clear to me. He acknowledged himself responsible only for his personal activities. The pungent feeling of guilt for social untruths was completely unfamiliar to him. God, the king and the law stood for him at a height inaccessible to criticism. God is almighty and just, but there are many triumphant villains and suffering virtue on earth. This is included in the unknown plans of the Highest Justice - and nothing more. The king and the law are also inaccessible to human judgment, and if sometimes, with some applications of the law, the heart turns in the chest with pity and compassion, this is a spontaneous misfortune that is not subject to any generalizations. One perishes from typhus, the other from the law. Unhappy fate! It is the judge's business to see that the law, once put into operation, is correctly applied. But if this is not the case, if the bribery bureaucratic environment distorts the law to please the strong, he, the judge, will fight this within the court by all means available to him. If he has to suffer for this, he will suffer, but in the case of number such and such, any line entered by his hand will be clean from falsehood. And in this form, the case will go beyond the district court to the Senate, and maybe even higher. If the Senate agrees with his considerations, he will be sincerely happy for the right side. If the senators are bribed by power and money, it is a matter of their conscience, and someday they will answer for this, if not before the king, then before God ... That laws can be bad, this again lies with the responsibility of the king before God, - he, judge, just as not responsible for this, as well as for the fact that sometimes a thunder from the sky kills an innocent child ...

In this book, I try to recall and revive a number of pictures of the past half-century, how they were reflected in the soul of first a child, then a young man, then an adult. Early childhood and the early years of my adolescence coincided with the time of liberation. The middle of his life passed in a period of dark, first government, and then public reaction and among the first movements of the struggle. Now I see much of what my generation dreamed of and fought for, bursting into the arena of life anxiously and violently. I think that many episodes from the times of my exiled wanderings, events, meetings, thoughts and feelings of people of that time and that environment have not lost even now the interest of living reality itself. I would like to think that they will still retain their significance for the future. Our life hesitates and shudders from sharp clashes of new principles with obsolete ones, and I hope to at least partially illuminate some of the elements of this struggle.

But earlier I wanted to draw the attention of readers to the first movements of the nascent and growing consciousness. I realized that it would be difficult for me to focus on these distant memories with the rumble of the present, in which the thunder of an impending thunderstorm is heard, but I had no idea how difficult it would be.

I am not writing the history of my time, but only the history of one life at that time, and I would like the reader to get acquainted first with the prism in which it was reflected ... And this is possible only in a consistent story. Childhood and adolescence constitute the content of this first part.

One more remark. These notes are not a biography, because I was not particularly concerned with completeness of biographical information; not confession, because I do not believe in the possibility or in the usefulness of public confession; not a portrait, because it is difficult to paint your own portrait with a guarantee for the resemblance. Any reflection differs from reality in that it is a reflection; the reflection is deliberately incomplete - even more so. It always, so to speak, reflects the chosen motives more densely, and therefore often, for all its truthfulness, it is more attractive, more interesting and, perhaps, purer than reality.

In my work, I strove for the fullest possible historical truth, often sacrificing beautiful or vivid features of artistic truth to it. There will be nothing here that I have not encountered in reality, that I have not experienced, felt, or seen. And yet I repeat: I am not trying to give my own portrait. Here the reader will find only features from the "history of my contemporary", a person known to me closer to all other people of my time ...

I remember myself early, but my first impressions are scattered, like brightly lit islands amid colorless emptiness and fog.

The earliest of these memories is a strong visual impression of a fire. I could have been in my second year then, but I can see quite clearly even now the tongues of flame over the roof of the shed in the courtyard, the walls of a large stone house, strangely illuminated in the middle of the night, and its windows glowing with flames. I remember myself, warmly wrapped up, in someone's arms, among a bunch of people standing on the porch. From this vague crowd, memory distinguishes the presence of the mother, while the lame father, leaning on a stick, climbs the stairs of the stone house in the courtyard opposite, and it seems to me that he is walking into the fire. But that doesn't scare me. I am very much interested in the helmets of firefighters flashing around the yard like firecrackers, then one fire barrel at the gate and a schoolboy entering the gate with a shortened leg and a high heel. It seems that I did not feel any fear or anxiety, I did not establish any connection between phenomena. For the first time in my life, so much fire, fire helmets and a schoolboy with a short leg, fell into my eyes, and I carefully examined all these objects against the deep background of the night darkness. At the same time, I do not remember the sounds: the whole picture only silently shimmers in my memory with floating reflections of a crimson flame.

I remember, then, several completely insignificant cases when they hold me in their arms, soothe my tears or amuse me. It seems to me that I remember, but very vaguely, my first steps ... My head in childhood was big, and when I fell, I often knocked it on the floor. Once it was on the stairs. I was in great pain and cried loudly until my father consoled me with a special welcome. He hit the rung of the stairs with a stick, and this gave me satisfaction. Probably, I was then in the period of fetishism and assumed an evil and hostile will in the wooden board. And so they beat her for me, and she can't even leave ... Of course, these words very roughly translate my feelings at that time, but I clearly remember the board and as if the expression of her submissiveness under the blows.

Subsequently, the same sensation was repeated in a more complex form. I was already somewhat larger. It was an unusually light and warm moonlit evening. This is generally the first evening that I remember in my life. My parents had gone somewhere, the brothers must have been asleep, the nanny went into the kitchen, and I was left with only one footman who bore the dissonant nickname Gandylo. The door from the front door to the courtyard was open, and from somewhere, from the moonlit distance, the rumble of wheels rushed along the cobbled street. And for the first time I also singled out the rumbling of wheels in my mind as a special phenomenon, and for the first time I did not sleep for so long ... I was scared - probably, they were talking about thieves during the day. It seemed to me that our courtyard in the moonlight was very strange and that a "thief" would certainly enter the open door from the courtyard. It was as if I knew that the thief was a man, but together he seemed to me and not quite a man, but some kind of humanoid mysterious creature who would make me evil by his very sudden appearance. This made me cry loudly.

I don’t know by what logic, but the lackey Gandylo again brought my father’s stick and led me out onto the porch, where I — perhaps in connection with a previous episode of the same kind — began to beat hard on the step of the staircase. And this time it was again satisfying; my cowardice had passed so much that two more times I fearlessly went out alone, without Gandila, and again pounded on the stairs of an imaginary thief, reveling in a peculiar feeling of my courage. The next morning, I enthusiastically told my mother that yesterday, when she was not there, a thief came to us, whom Gandyl and I severely beat. The mother condescendingly agreed. I knew that there was no thief and that my mother knew it. But I loved my mother very much at that moment because she did not contradict me. It would be hard for me to give up that imaginary creature that I first feared, and then positively "felt" in the strange moonlight between my stick and the rung of the stairs. It was not a visual hallucination, but there was some ecstasy from my victory over fear ...

Still an island in my memory is the trip to Chisinau to my grandfather on my father's side ... From this trip I remember crossing the river (Prut, I think), when our carriage was installed on a raft and, smoothly swaying, separated from the coast or the coast separated from it - I didn’t distinguish it yet. At the same time, a detachment of soldiers was crossing the river, and, I remember, the soldiers sailed in twos and threes on small square rafts, which, it seems, does not happen when troops cross ... I looked at them with curiosity, and they looked into our carriage and they said something incomprehensible to me ... It seems that this crossing was in connection with the Sevastopol war ...

That evening, shortly after crossing the river, I experienced the first feeling of sharp disappointment and resentment ... It was dark inside the spacious road carriage. I was sitting in someone's arms in front, and suddenly my attention was attracted by a reddish dot that flashed and then faded away in the corner, in the place where my father was sitting. I began to laugh and reached out to her. Mother said something warning, but I was so anxious to get to know an interesting object or creature so much that I burst into tears. Then my father pushed a little red star towards me, tenderly hiding under the ashes. I reached for her with the index finger of my right hand; for some time it did not work, but then suddenly it flashed brighter, and I was suddenly burned by a sharp bite. I think that in terms of the strength of the impression now, this could only be equal to a strong and unexpected bite of a poisonous snake, lurking, for example, in a bouquet of flowers. The light seemed to me deliberately cunning and evil. Two or three years later, when I remembered this episode, I ran to my mother, began to tell and began to cry. These were again tears of resentment ...