Ludmila Petrushevskaya. Categories of artistic space and time in the works of L

The story "Time is night"

In the whole motley dance of the myth cast roles, the central

the position at Petrushevskaya is most often occupied by Mother and Child.

Her best texts about this: “My circle”, “Daughter of Xenia”, “Case

Mother of God”, “Poor heart of Pani”, “Motherly greetings”,

"Little Terrible", "Never". Finally - her story "Time

night". Namely "Time is night" (1991), the largest prose

the work of the writer, allows you to see the characteristic

Petrushevskaya's interpretation of the relationship between mother and child

topics with maximum complexity and completeness.

Petrushevskaya always, and in this story in particular, brings

everyday, everyday collisions to the last edge. Everyday

life in her prose is located somewhere on the verge of non-existence and requires

from a man of colossal efforts in order not to slip

over this edge. This motif is persistently drawn by the author of the story,

starting with the epigraph, from which we learn about the death of the story

the patroness, Anna Andrianovna, who considered herself a poet and

left after death "Notes on the edges of the table", which, in fact,

and form the body of the story. It seems to us that the story

this death, not directly announced - one can guess about it - her

the arrival is prepared by the constant sensation of the winding down of life,

the steady reduction of its space - to a patch on

edges, to a point, to collapse at last: “It is white, muddy

morning of execution.

The plot of the story is also built as a chain of irreversible losses.

The mother loses contact with her daughter and son, husbands leave their wives,

grandmother is taken to a distant boarding school for psychochronics, daughter vomits

all relations with the mother, and the most terrible, beating to death:

daughter takes grandchildren from grandmother (her mother). Everything to the limit

it is also heated because life, according to outward signs, is completely

intelligent family (mother collaborates in the editorial office of the newspaper, daughter

studies at the university, then works at some scientific institute)

proceeds in a permanent state of absolute poverty,

when seven rubles is a lot of money, and a free potato

A gift of fate. In general, the food in this story is always

event, because each piece counts, but on what! "Shark

Glotovna Hitler, I called her that once in my thoughts at parting,

when she ate two supplements of the first and second, and I did not

knew that at that moment she was already heavily pregnant, and she

there was nothing at all ... ”- this is how a mother thinks of her daughter.

Oddly enough, "Time is Night" is a story about love. About sizzling

mother's love for her children. Characteristic of this love

Pain and even torment. It is the perception of pain as a pro-

the manifestation of love determines the relationship of a mother with children, and before

just with my daughter. Anna's telephone conversation is very revealing

Andrianovna with Alena, when the mother deciphers her every rudeness

in relation to his daughter as words of his love for her. "Will you

to love - they will torment, ”she formulates. Even more

frankly, this theme sounds at the end of the story, when Anna Andri-

anovna returns home and finds that Alena is with children

left her: “They left me alive,” he sighs with relief.

Anna Andrianovna steadily and often unconsciously strives

to dominate is the only form of its self-realization. But

the most paradoxical thing is that it is the authorities that she understands

like love. In this sense, Anna Andrianovna embodies

a kind of "domestic totalitarianism" - historical models

which was imprinted at the level of the subconscious, reflex, instinct1.

The ability to inflict pain is proof of maternal

power, and therefore love. That's why she's despotic

trying to subjugate his children to himself, jealous daughter of her men,

son to his women, and grandson to his mother. In this love

gentle "my little one" pulls the rough: "relentless bastard

". Petrushevskaya's mother's love is monologue in nature.

For all life losses and failures, the mother demands compensation for herself.

love - in other words, the recognition of its unconditional power.

And naturally, she is offended, hates, rages when

children give their energy of love not to her, but to others. love in such

understanding becomes something terribly materialistic, something

like a money debt that must be paid back,

and better - with interest. "Oh mother-in-law's hatred, you are jealousy

and nothing else, my mother herself wanted to be the object of her love

daughters, i.e. me so that I only love her, the object of love and

trust, this mother wanted to be the whole family for me. Replace

everything, and I saw such women's families, mother, daughter and small

a child, a complete family! Horror and nightmare, ”so Anna

Andrianovna describes her own relationship with her mother,

not noticing that her relationship with her daughter is completely within

into this model.

However, despite the "horror and nightmare", Anna Andrianovna's love

never ceases to be great and immortal. Actually go-

1 This interpretation of Petrushevskaya's story was substantiated in most detail

X. Goshchilo. See: Goscilo Helena. Mother as Mothra: Totalizing Narrative

and Nurture in Petrushevskaya / / A Plot of Her Own: The Female Protagonist

Literature / Ed. Sona Stephan Hoisington. - Evanston, 1995. - P. 105-161; Goscilo

Helena. Dexecing Sex: Russian Womanhood During and After Glasnost. - Ann Arbor:

Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996. - P. 40-42. Goshchilo H. Not a single ray in the dark

kingdom: Artistic optics of Petrushevskaya / / Russian literature of the XX century:

Directions and currents. - Issue. 3. - S. 109-119.

telling is an attempt to live by responsibility, and only by it. This attempt

sometimes looks monstrous - like noisy remarks

to a stranger on the bus, who, in the eyes of Anna Ande-

Rianovna caresses her daughter too passionately: “And again I saved

baby! I save everyone all the time! I am alone in the whole city in our

microdistrict I listen at night, if anyone will scream! But one thing is not

cancels the other: the opposing assessments here are combined together.

The paradoxical duality of evaluation is also embodied in

the structure of the story.

"Memory of the genre", shining through "notes on the edge

table," is an idyll. But if Sokolov in Palisandria has a genre

the archetype of the idyll becomes the basis of metaparody, then

Petrushevskaya, idyllic motifs arise quite seriously,

as a hidden, repetitive rhythm underlying the family

collapse and permanent scandal. So, "specific

a spatial corner where fathers lived, children and grandchildren will live

» (Bakhtin), an idyllic symbol of infinity and wholeness

being, Petrushevskaya is embodied in the chronotope of a typical two-room

apartments. Here the meaning of "secular attachment to

life" acquires everything - from the inability to retire anywhere and

never, except at night, in the kitchen (“my daughter ... there will be

celebrate loneliness, as I always do at night. I have no place here!

"") up to the sagging on the sofa ("... my

turn to sit on the couch with a mink").

Moreover, Petrushevskaya's grandmother - mother - daughter repeat

each other "literally", stepping footsteps, coinciding even in

little things. Anna is jealous and torments her daughter Alena, just like

how her mother Sima was jealous and tormented her. "Debauchery" (in terms of

Anna) of Alena is completely similar to Anna's adventures in her

younger years. Even the spiritual intimacy of a child with a grandmother, and not with

mother, already was - with Alena and Sima, as now with Tima

Anna. Even the mother's claims about the allegedly "excessive"

son-in-law's appetite are repeated from generation to generation: "... grandmother

openly reproached my husband, “gobbles everything up in children,” etc. ”1.

Even Alena's jealousy for her brother Andrey responds in hostility

six-year-old Tima to one-year-old Katenka. They all shout the same:

"...carrying an open mouth...on the inhale: and...Aaaah!"). This repeatability

the characters of the story themselves notice, “... what other

1 It is interesting that these eternal scandals between different generations due to

meals in their own way are also justified by the "memory" of the idyllic genre: "Eating and drinking

are idyllic or social in nature (Anna Andrianovna's campaigns with

grandson Tima visiting guests in the hope of a free treat, a trip with a performance

to the pioneer camp - with the same purpose. - Auth.), or - most often - family

character: generations, ages converge for food. Typical of an idyll

and aesthetics. - M., 1975. - S. 267).

rye, old songs,” Anna Andrianovna sighs. But surprisingly

no one is trying to learn at least some lessons from already

made mistakes, everything is repeated anew, without any

no attempt was made to go beyond the painful circle. Can

explain this by the blindness of the heroes or the burden of social circumstances.

The idyllic archetype aims at a different logic: "Unity

places of generations weakens and softens all temporal boundaries

between individual lives and between different phases

the same life. The unity of the place brings together and merges the cradle

and the grave... childhood and old age... It is determined by unity

place, the softening of all facets of time also contributes to the creation of a characteristic

for the idyll of the cyclic rhythm of time" (Bakhtin)

In accordance with this logic, we have before us not three characters, but

one: a single female character in different age stages -

from cradle to grave. It is impossible to gain experience here, because

that in principle the distance between the characters is impossible -

they smoothly flow into each other, belonging not to themselves, but to this

cyclical flow of time, bearing only losses for them,

only destruction, only loss. Moreover, Petrushevskaya emphasizes

bodily character of this unity of generations. Cradle

These are "the smells of soap, phlox, ironed diapers." Grave -

"our shit and piss-smelling clothes." This bodily unity

It is also expressed in confessions of the opposite nature. From one

side: "I love him carnally, passionately," - this is a grandmother about her grandson.

And on the other hand: “Andrei ate my herring, my potatoes,

my black bread, drank my tea, having come from the colony, again, as

before, ate my brain and drank my blood, all cobbled together from my

food ... "- this is a mother about her son. An idyllic archetype in this interpretation

devoid of traditional idyllic semantics. Before

us an anti-idyll that nevertheless retains the structural frame

old genre.

Signals of recurrence in the life of generations, developing into

this frame, form the central paradox of "Time is night" and the whole

Petrushevskaya's prose as a whole: what seems to be self-destruction

family, turns out to be a repeatable, cyclic, form of its sustainable

existence. Order - in other words: illogical, "crooked

"("Crooked family," says Alena), but in order. Petrushevskaya

deliberately blurs the signs of time, history, society

This order is, in essence, timeless, i.e. eternal.

That is why the death of the central heroine inevitably comes

at the moment when Anna falls out of the chain of addicts

relationships: when she discovers that Alena has left with everyone

three grandchildren from her, and therefore, she no longer cares about anyone

1 Ibid. - S. 266.

huddle. She is dying from the loss of a burdensome dependence on

their children and grandchildren, carrying the only tangible meaning

her terrible existence. Moreover, as in any "chaotic

system, there is a mechanism in the family anti-idyll

feedback. A daughter who hates (and not without reason) her mother

throughout the story, after her death - as follows from the epigraph

mother is a graphomaniac, she now gives these notes a few

different meaning. This, in general, trivial literary

gesture in Petrushevskaya's story is filled with a special meaning

It contains both reconciliation between generations and recognition

transpersonal order that unites mother and daughter. Themselves "Notes

» acquire the meaning of formulas of this order, precisely because

its transpersonal nature, requiring going beyond the family

Ludmila Petrushevskaya

Night time

They called me, and a woman's voice said: - Sorry for the trouble, but here after my mother, - she was silent, - after my mother there were manuscripts. I thought you might read it. She was a poet. Of course, I understand you are busy. A lot of work? Understand. Well then, excuse me.

Two weeks later, a manuscript arrived in an envelope, a dusty folder with a lot of scribbled sheets, school notebooks, even telegram forms. Subtitled Notes on the edge of the table. No return address, no last name.

He does not know that when visiting, one cannot greedily rush to the mirror and grab everything, vases, figurines, bottles, and especially boxes with jewelry. You can't ask for more at the table. He, having come to a strange house, fumbles everywhere, a child of hunger, finds somewhere on the floor a little car that has driven under the bed and believes that this is his find, is happy, presses it to his chest, beams and tells the hostess that he has found something for himself, and where - drove under the bed! And my friend Masha, it’s her grandson who rolled her own gift, an American typewriter, under the bed, and forgot, she, Masha, rolls out of the kitchen on alarm, her grandson Deniska and my Timochka have a wild conflict. A good post-war apartment, we came to borrow money until retirement, they were all already swimming out of the kitchen with oily mouths, licking their lips, and Masha had to return to the same kitchen for us and think about what to give us without prejudice. So, Denis pulls out a little car, but this one grabbed the unfortunate toy with his fingers, and Denis has just an exhibition of these cars, strings, he is nine years old, a healthy tower. I tear Tima away from Denis with his typewriter, Timochka is embittered, but they won’t let us in here anymore, Masha was already thinking when she saw me through the peephole in the door! As a result, I lead him to the bathroom to wash himself, weakened from tears, hysteria in a strange house! That's why they don't like us, because of Timochka. I behave like an English queen, I refuse everything, everything from everything: tea with crackers and sugar! I drink their tea only with my brought bread, I involuntarily pinch it out of the bag, because the pangs of hunger at someone else's table are unbearable, Tim leaned on crackers and asked if it was possible with butter (the butter dish was forgotten on the table). "And you?" - Masha asks, but it is important for me to feed Timofey: no, thanks, anoint Timochka more, do you want Tim, more? I catch the sidelong glances of Deniska, who is standing in the doorway, not to mention the son-in-law Vladimir and his wife Oksana, who has gone up the stairs to smoke, who immediately comes to the kitchen, knowing my pain perfectly, and right in front of Tim says (and she looks great), says:

And what, Aunt Anya (it's me), Alena comes to you? Timochka, does your mother visit you?

What are you, Dunechka (this is her childhood nickname), Dunyasha, didn’t I tell you. Alena is sick, she constantly has breasts.

Mastitis??? - (And it was almost like that from whom did she have a baby, from whose such milk?)

And I quickly, grabbing a few more crackers, good creamy crackers, lead Tim from the kitchen to watch TV in the big room, let's go, let's go, "Good night" soon, although there is at least half an hour left before that.

But she follows us and says that it is possible to apply for Alena's work, that the mother left the child to the mercy of fate. Is it me, or what, an arbitrary fate? Interesting.

What kind of work, what are you, Oksanochka, she is sitting with a baby!

Finally, she asks, is it, or what, from the one about which Alena once told her on the phone that she did not know that this happens and that this does not happen, and she cries, wakes up and cries with happiness? From that? When Alena asked for a loan for a cooperative, but we didn’t have it, did we change the car and repair it in the country? From this? Yes? I answer that I don't know.

All these questions are asked with the aim that we no longer go to them. But they were friends, Dunya and Alena, in childhood, we rested side by side in the Baltic States, I, young, tanned, with my husband and children, and Masha and Dunya, and Masha was recovering from a cruel run after one person, had an abortion from him, and he stayed with his family without giving up anything, neither from the fashion model Tomik, nor from Leningrad Tusi, they were all known to Masha, and I added fuel to the fire: because I was also familiar with another woman from VGIK, who was famous for her wide hips and the fact that she later got married, but a summons came to her house from the dermatovenerological dispensary that she missed another infusion due to gonorrhea, and with this woman he broke out of the window of his Volga, and she, then still a student, ran after the car and cried, then he threw an envelope to her from the window, and in the envelope (she stopped to pick it up) there were dollars, but not a lot. He was a professor on the Leninist theme. But Masha stayed with the Dun, and my husband and I entertained her, she languidly went with us to a tavern hung with nets at the Maiori station, and we paid for her, we live alone, despite her earrings with sapphires. And she said to my plastic bracelet of a simple modern form 1 ruble 20 kopecks Czech: “Is this a napkin ring?” “Yes,” I said, and put it on my arm.

And the time has passed, I'm not talking about how I was fired, but I'm talking about the fact that we were at different levels and will be with this Masha, and now her son-in-law Vladimir is sitting and watching TV, that's why they are so aggressive every evening, because now Deniska will have a fight with his father to switch to Good Night. My Timochka sees this program once a year and says to Vladimir: “Please! Well, I beg you!" - and folds his hands and almost kneels, he copies me, alas. Alas.

Vladimir has something against Tima, and Denis is generally tired of him like a dog, son-in-law, I’ll tell you a secret, he’s clearly running out, he’s already melting, hence Oksanina’s poisonousness. My son-in-law is also a graduate student on the Lenin theme, this topic sticks to this family, although Masha herself publishes anything, the editor of the calendars, where she gave me extra money languidly and arrogantly, although I helped her out by quickly scribbling an article about the bicentenary of the Minsk Tractor Plant, but she wrote me a fee, even unexpectedly small, apparently, I imperceptibly spoke with someone in collaboration, with the chief technologist of the plant, as they are supposed to, because competence is needed. Well, then it was so hard that she told me not to appear there for the next five years, there was some kind of remark that what could be the bicentenary of the tractor, in 1700 what year was the first Russian tractor produced (came off the assembly line)?

As for the son-in-law of Vladimir, at the moment described, Vladimir is watching TV with red ears, this time some important match. Typical joke! Denis is crying, his mouth gaped, he sat on the floor. Timka climbs to help him out to the TV and, inept, blindly pokes his finger somewhere, the TV goes out, the son-in-law jumps up with a scream, but I’m ready for anything right there, Vladimir rushes to the kitchen for his wife and mother-in-law, he didn’t stop, thank God, Thank you, I came to my senses, did not touch the abandoned child. But already Denis drove away the alarmed Tim, turned on what was needed, and they were already sitting, peacefully watching the cartoon, and Tim was laughing with a special desire.

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INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. PROSPECTS FOR STUDYING LITERARY WORKS THROUGH THE CATEGORIES OF ARTISTIC SPACE AND TIME

1.1 Ideas M.M. Bakhtin in the study of literary works through the categories of artistic space and time. The concept of chronotope

1.2 Structuralist approach to the study of works of art through the categories of space and time

1.3 Ways of studying artistic space and time in the literary experience of V. Toporov, D. Likhachev and others

CHAPTER 2

2.1 Apartment as the main topos of domestic space

2.2 Structure and semantics of natural space

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION

Lyudmila Stefanovna Petrushevskaya is a modern prose writer, poet, playwright. She stands in the same honorary rank with such modern writers as Tatyana Tolstaya, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Victoria Tokareva, Viktor Pelevin, Vladimir Makanin and others. It stands in the same row - and at the same time stands out in its own way, as something, of course, out of this range, not fitting into any rigid framework and not subject to classification.

The appearance of the first publications of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya caused a sharp rejection of official criticism. Recognition and fame came to the writer in the second half of the 1980s, after significant changes in the political and cultural life of the country. In 1992, her story The Time is Night was nominated for the Booker Prize. For her literary activity, Petrushevskaya was awarded the A.S. Pushkin International Prize, the Moscow-Penne Prize for the book The Ball of the Last Man, and finally, she became the owner of the Triumph Prize. Despite all this premium splendor, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya is one of the few Russian prose writers who continue to work without reducing either the pace or the quality of writing.

What is important for us is that at the center of Petrushev's stories is a man living in a special time and space. The writer shows a world that is far from prosperous apartments and official reception rooms. It depicts an awkward life that lacks any meaning. In her stories, she creates an autonomous world that exists according to its own laws, often frightening because of the disastrous and hopeless situation within this world of its inhabitants. Accordingly, access to Petrushevskaya's work through the study of spatio-temporal paradigms of her artistic world seems extremely promising to us. From all of the above it follows relevance our researchAniya.

The work of the prose writer and playwright Lyudmila Petrushevskaya caused lively debate among readers and literary critics as soon as her works appeared on the pages of thick magazines. More than thirty years have passed since then, and during this time numerous interpretations of her work have been published: book reviews, scientific and journalistic articles. In critical assessments, the writer was destined to go from almost "the ancestor of the domestic chernukha" to a recognized classic of literature of recent decades. Despite the recognition Petrushevskaya received, the controversy surrounding her works, which has accompanied the writer from the very first publications, continues to this day. The main body of research is journal and newspaper criticism.

Serious studies of the work of this author appeared relatively recently (1990s - early 2000s), while individual publications began to appear a dozen years earlier, in the late 1980s, after the release of the first works. A. Kuralekh A. Kuralekh turned to the study of Petrushevskaya's creativity in their works. Life and being in L. Petrushevskaya's prose // Literary Review. - M., 1993. - No. 5. - S. 63 -67. , L. Pann Pann L. Instead of an interview, or the experience of reading L. Petrushevskaya's prose. Far from literary life

metropolis // Zvezda. - St. Petersburg, 1994. - No. 5. - P. 197 - 202., M. Lipovetsky Lipovetsky M. Tragedy and who knows what else // New World. - M., 1994. - No. 10. - P. 229 - 231., L. Lebedushkina Lebedushkina O. The Book of Kingdoms and Opportunities // Friendship of Peoples. - M., 1998. - No. 4. - S. 199 - 208. , M. Vasilyeva Vasilyeva M. So it happened // Friendship of peoples. - M., 1998. - No. 4. - S. 208 - 217. etc. In most studies, the prose of L. Petrushevskaya is considered in the context of the work of modern prose writers, such as Y. Trifonov, V. Makanin, T. Tolstaya and others. , and the most studied aspects of the writer’s creative heritage include the theme and image of the “little man”, the themes of loneliness, death, fate and fate, the features of the image of the family, the relationship of a person with the world, and some others. It is noteworthy that although artistic space and time were not specially studied in the works of L. Petrushevskaya, many critics and scientists pointed out the prospects of studying this particular level of poetics. So, for example, E. Shcheglova in the article “A Suffering Man” speaks about the archetypes of Petrushevskaya and focuses on the features of the spatio-temporal paradigm of her artistic world. She writes that the writer, reproducing a lot of the most difficult everyday circumstances, draws not so much a person as precisely these circumstances, not so much his soul as his sinful bodily shell. The author of this article notes: “A person in her falls into the darkness of circumstances, as into a black hole. Hence, apparently, such an addiction of the writer to the accumulation signs these circumstances - from empty plates, holes and stains of all kinds to countless divorces, abortions and abandoned children. The signs reproduced, it must be said directly, are apt, fearless and exceptionally recognizable, since we all live in the same painful and oppressive life, but, alas, rarely revealing something (more precisely, someone) worth after them» [Shcheglova 2001: 45].

Interesting in this direction is the work of N.V. Kablukova "Poetics of dramaturgy of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya". The researcher notes that the categories of space and time, not only in drama, but also in creativity in general, are characterized as follows: “The semantics of artistic space determines the loss of a sense of reality in a person at the end of the Soviet era, leading to the destruction of reality itself; the hierarchy of everyday - social - natural spaces is violated; the values ​​of the material-objective environment are deformed, in which, it would seem, modern man is immersed (lifeless life); what is fundamental is the lack of rootedness of a person of modern civilization - movement in the spaces of reality” [Kablukova 2003: 178]. OA Kuzmenko, studying the traditions of skaz narration in the writer's prose, devotes a separate paragraph to the study of "one's own" and "foreign" worlds in Petrushevskaya's microcosm.

Studying the categories of space and time in the work of a writer, researchers often focus their attention on threshold situations. So M. Lipovetsky in his article "Tragedy and who knows what else" notes that the threshold between life and death is the most stable viewing platform for Lyudmila Petrushevskaya's prose. “Its main collisions are the birth of a child and the death of a person, given, as a rule, in inseparable fusion. Even when drawing a completely passing situation, Petrushevskaya, firstly, still makes it a threshold one, and secondly, inevitably places it in the cosmic chronotope. A typical example is the story “Dear Lady”, which, in fact, describes the silent scene of parting of failed lovers, an old man and a young woman: “And then a car arrived, ordered in advance, and it was all over, and the problem of her appearance on Earth too late and too early disappeared. him - and everything disappeared, disappeared in the cycle of stars, as if nothing had happened"" [Lipovetsky 1994: 198].

Literary critics and literary scholars quite often in their works turn to the elements of poetics, through which they try to determine both the ways of depicting the artistic world of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya and the ways of worldview, comprehending the aesthetic position of the author. From our point of view, it is through the categories of artistic space and time that one can understand the artistic world of the writer Petrushevskaya, see the root causes of the tragedies of her hero.

Respectively, novelty our work is determined, firstly, by an attempt to study the features of the artistic world of Petrushevskaya through the categories of artistic space and time on the scale of a special study; secondly, to offer "their own" version of the interpretation of the laws of the world of the heroes of L. Petrushevskaya.

object studies become such works by L. Petrushevskaya as "Your Circle" (1979), "Cinderella's Way" (2001), "Country" (2002), "To the Beautiful City" (2006) and others, already in the titles of which images of spatial - temporary nature. In addition, in choosing an object, we were guided by the fact that we studied works with the most typical situations that characterize the spatial boundaries of Petrushevskaya's heroes, their relationship with the world.

Subject research is the level of spatio-temporal organization of works, i.e. all those elements of the form and content of a work of art that make it possible to reveal the specifics of the writer's artistic world in this aspect.

Target work is to identify the features of the spatio-temporal organization of the artistic world in the stories of L. Petrushevskaya. To achieve the goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:

· as a result of the analysis, to reveal the features of the organization of artistic space and time in the works of L. Petrushevskaya - the stories "Country", "Cinderella's Way", "Happy End", etc.;

· describe the semantics of the main chronotopes in L. Petrushevskaya's stories;

· consider the specifics of the artistic space and time underlying L. Petrushevskaya's world modeling.

Theoretical and methodological basis This study consists mainly of the works of M.M. Bakhtin, Yu.M. Lotman, D.S. Likhachev, V.N. dedicated to the work of L. Petrushevskaya and writers of her generation (M. Lipovetsky, A. Kuralekh, L. Lebedushkina, etc.)

We consider the system-holistic, structural, textological and comparative-typological approaches to be the main methods of our research; in the process of work, we use elements of motivic analysis.

Practical value The work lies in the possible application of the results of the study in the professional activities of a language teacher in the classroom and extracurricular activities in Russian literature of the twentieth century.

Approbation results was carried out at the "Mendeleev Readings" (2010), the material of this work was published in a collection of student scientific papers, and was also used during state practice in the preparation and conduct of an extracurricular event in literature (grade 10).

Work structure. The final qualifying work consists of an Introduction, two chapters, a Conclusion and a list of used literature (51 titles), an Appendix, which proposes the development of an extracurricular reading lesson for 11th grade students.

CHAPTER 1. PROSPECTS FOR STUDYING LITERARY WORKS THROUGH THE CATEGORIES OF ARTISTIC SPACE AND TIME

As you know, in every work of literature, through the external form (text, speech level), an internal form of the work is created - the artistic world that exists in the minds of the author and the reader, reflecting reality through the prism of the creative idea (but not identical to it). The most important parameters of the inner world of a work are artistic space and time.

The interest of literary critics in the categories of space and time at the beginning of the 20th century was natural. By that time, A. Einstein's "theory of relativity" had already been formed, not only scientists, but also philosophers became interested in this problem. It is important to note that interest in the categories of space and time was due not only to the development of science and technology, discoveries in physics, the advent of cinema, etc., but also to the fact of the existence of man in the world, which has extension in space and time.

Interest in these categories in the perspective of knowledge of artistic culture is emerging gradually. In this regard, the works of philosophers and art critics were of great importance (for example, the book by P.A. Florensky “Analysis of space and time in artistic and visual works”, 1924/1993). The fundamental ideas in the study of these categories as elements of the poetics of works of art are developed by M.M. Bakhtin. He also introduces the term "chronotope" into scientific circulation, denoting the relationship of artistic space and time, their "fusion", mutual conditioning in a literary work.

In the 60-70s. In the twentieth century, the interest of literary scholars in the problem is growing, representatives of various schools and traditions are engaged in it. For example, in line with structuralism, Yu.M. Lotman. Special sections about the nature of artistic space and time appear in the book by D.S. Likhachev on the poetics of ancient Russian literature. V.N. Toporov, M.M. Steblin-Kamensky, A. M. Pyatigorsky. The tendency to interpret spatio-temporal paradigms through myth is also characteristic of V.E. Miletinsky, who continues the mythopoetic tradition.

Modern studies actively use the ideas of M.M. Bakhtin (his “chronotope” has gained extreme popularity), Lotman’s experience in studying literary texts through the category of artistic space, and the approach to studying the spatio-temporal features of the artistic world in line with mythopoetics is also widespread.

1.1 Ideas M.M. Bakhtin in the study of literary works through the categories of artistic space and time. The concept of chronotope

For M.M. Bakhtin, spatial and temporal representations captured in a work of art constitute a kind of unity. A significant relationship between temporal and spatial relations, artistically mastered in literature, M.M. Bakhtin called "chronotope" (which means in literal translation - "time-space"). This term is used in mathematical science, and was introduced and justified on the basis of Einstein's theory of relativity. The scientist transferred it to literary criticism almost as a metaphor; the expression of the continuity of space and time is significant in it (time as the fourth dimension of space). The chronotope is understood by him as a formally substantive category of literature.

In the literary and artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal signs merge into a meaningful and concrete whole.: “Time here thickens, condenses, becomes artistically visible; space is intensified, drawn into the movement of time, plot, history. Signs of time are revealed in space, and space is comprehended and measured by time” [Bakhtin 2000:10].

The chronotope, according to M.M. Bakhtin, performs a number of important artistic functions. So, it is through the image in the product of space and time becomes a visual and plot-visible era, which the artist comprehends aesthetically, in which his characters live. At the same time, the chronotope is not focused on adequately capturing the physical image of the world, it human-oriented: it surrounds the person, reflectsAno connection with the world, often refracts in itself the spiritual movements of the PersianOpressing, becoming an indirect assessment of the rightness or wrongness of the choice,Andby the hero, the solvability or insolubility of his litigation with the actionAndvalidity, achievability or unattainability of harmony between personalOstu and the world. Therefore, individual space-time images and chronotopes of a work always carry in own value sense.

Each culture has its own understanding of time and space. The nature of artistic space and time reflects the ideas about time and space that have developed in everyday life, in science, in religion, in the philosophy of a certain era. M. Bakhtin studied the main typological spatio-temporal models: chronicle, adventurous, biographical chronotope, etc. In the nature of the chronotope, he saw the embodiment of types of artistic thinking. Thus, according to Bakhtin, in traditionalist (normative) cultures, the epic chronotope dominates, turning the image into a complete and distant tradition from modernity, while in innovative-creative (non-normative) cultures, the novelistic chronotope dominates, oriented towards living contact with an unfinished, becoming reality. About this M.M. Bakhtin writes in detail in his work "Epos and Novel".

According to Bakhtin, the process of assimilation of the real and historical chronotope in literature proceeded in a complicated and discontinuous way: some certain aspects of the chronotope that were available under given historical conditions were mastered, only certain forms of artistic reflection of the real chronotope were developed. Bakhtin considers several of the most important novelistic chronotopes: the chronotope of the meeting, the chronotope of the road (path), the threshold (spheres of crises and fractures) and the adjacent chronotopes of the stairs, the entrance and the corridor, the street, the castle, the square, the chronotope of nature.

Consider the chronotope of the meeting. This chronotope is dominated by a temporal shade, and it is distinguished by a high degree of emotional and value intensity. The chronotope of the road associated with it has a wider volume, but somewhat less emotional and value intensity. Encounters in the novel usually take place on the "road". "Road" is a predominant place of chance meetings.

On the road ("high road"), the spatial and temporal paths of the most diverse people - representatives of all classes, states, religions, nationalities, ages - intersect at one temporal and spatial point. Here, those who are normally separated by social hierarchy and spatial distance can accidentally meet, any contrasts can arise here, various destinies can collide and intertwine. This is the point of tying and the place where events take place. Here, time seems to flow into space and flows through it, forming roads.

The metaphorization of the path-road is varied: “life path”, “enter a new road”, “historical path”, but the main core is the passage of time. The road is never just a road, but always either all or part of the life path; choice of road - choice of life path; a crossroads is always a turning point in the life of a folklore person; exit from home to the road with a return to their homeland - usually the age stages of life; road signs are signs of fate [Bakhtin 2000:48].

According to M. Bakhtin, the road is especially beneficial for depicting an event controlled by chance. This explains the important plot role of the road in the history of the novel.

The chronotope of the threshold is imbued with a high emotional and value intensity; it can be combined with the motive of the meeting, but its most significant completion is the chronotope of the crisis and the turning point in life. The very word "threshold" already in speech life (along with the real meaning) received a metaphorical meaning and was combined with a moment of turning point in life, a crisis, a life-changing decision (or indecision, fear of crossing the threshold).

Against the background of this general (formal-material) chronotopicity of the poetic image, as an image of temporary art depicting a spatial-sensory phenomenon in their movement and formation, the peculiarity of genre-typical plot-forming chronotopes is clarified. These are specific novel-epic chronotopes that serve to master the real temporal reality, allowing to reflect and introduce into the artistic plane of the novel the essential moments of this reality.

Each large significant chronotope can include an unlimited number of small chronotopes: each motif can have its own special chronotope.

Within one work and within the work of one author, following Bakhtin, we can observe many chronotopes and relationships between them specific to a given work or author. Chronotopes can include each other, coexist, intertwine, change, compare, contrast or be in more complex relationships. The general nature of these relationships is dialogic, but this dialogue is outside the world depicted in the work, although not outside the work as a whole. He enters the world of the author and the world of readers. And these worlds are also chronotopic.

The author is a person living his biographical life, he is outside the work, we meet him as a creator and in the work itself, but outside the depicted chronotopes, but as if on a tangent to them. The author-creator moves freely in his time: he can start his story from the end, from the middle and from any moment of the depicted events, without destroying the objective course of time in the depicted event.

The author-creator, being outside the chronotopes of the world he depicts, is not just outside, but, as it were, on a tangent to these chronotopes. He depicts the world either from the point of view of the hero participating in the depicted event, or from the point of view of the narrator, or the dummy author, or he leads the story directly from himself as a purely author.

The considered chronotopes can be the organizational centers of the main plot events of the novel. In the chronotope, plot knots are tied and untied, they have the main plot-forming meaning.

At the same time, chronotopes have a pictorial significance. Time acquires a sensuously visual character in them; plot events in the chronotope are concretized, overgrown with flesh, filled with blood. An event can be reported, informed, and precise instructions about the place and time of its occurrence can be given. But the event does not become an image. The chronotope, on the other hand, provides an essential ground for showing and depicting events. And this is precisely due to the special thickening and concretization of the signs of time - the time of human life, historical time - in certain areas of space. This creates the opportunity to build an image of events around the chronotope. It serves as the primary point for the development of scenes in the novel, while other connecting events, located far from the chronotope, are given in the form of dry information and communication.

Thus, the chronotope, as the predominant materialization of time in space, is the center of pictorial concretization, embodiment for the entire work. All the abstract elements of the novel - philosophical and social generalizations, ideas, analyzes of causes and effects gravitate towards the chronotope and through it are filled with "flesh and blood", join the artistic imagery. Such, according to Bakhtin, is the imageAndthe real meaning of the chronotope. In addition, M. Bakhtin singled out and analyzedAndroved some of the most characteristic types of chronotopes: the chronotope of a meeting, roads, etc.Oprovincial town, square, etc.

1.2 Structuralist approach to the study of works of art through the categories of space and time

Yuri Mikhailovich Lotman characterized the artistic space as "a model of the world of a given author, expressed in the language of his spatial representations." Namely: “The language of spatial relations” is a kind of abstract model that includes as subsystems both the spatial languages ​​of different genres and types of art, and the models of space of varying degrees of abstractness created by the consciousness of different eras” [Lotman 1988: 252].

According to Lotman, the plot of narrative literary works usually develops within a certain local continuum. A naive reader's perception tends to identify it with the local relation of episodes to real space (for example, to geographic space). The notion that an artistic space is always a model of some natural space, which has grown up in certain historical conditions, is by no means always justified.

The space in a work of art models different connections of the picture of the world: temporal, social, ethical, etc. In one or another model of the world, the category of space is intricately merged with certain concepts that exist in our picture of the world as separate or opposite.

Thus, in Lotman's artistic model of the world "spacen“stvo” sometimes metaphorically assumes the expression of completely non-spatial relations in the modeling streamTotour of the world.

In the classification of Yu.M. Lotman artistic space mOCan be point, linear, planar or volumetric. The second and third can also have a horizontal or vertical orientation. Linear space may or may not include the concept of directionality. In the presence of this feature (the image of a linear directed space in art is often a road), linear space becomes a convenient artistic language for modeling temporal categories (“life path”, “road” as a means of deploying character in time). The notion of a boundary is an essential differential feature of the elements of the "spatial language", which are largely determined by the presence or absence of this feature both in the model as a whole and in one or another of its structural positions [Lotman 1988:252]. According to the scientist, the concept of a boundary is not characteristic of all types of perception of space, but only those that have already developed their own abstract language and separate space as a certain continuum from its concrete filling.

Yu.M. Lotman argues that "the spatial limitation of the text from non-text is evidence of the emergence of the language of artistic space as a special modeling system" [Lotman 1988: 255]. The scientist proposes to make a mental experiment: take some landscape and present it as a view from a window (for example, a painted window opening acts as a frame) or as a picture.

The perception of a given (same) pictorial text in each of these two cases will be different: in the first it will be perceived as a visible part of a larger whole, and the question of what is in the part that is closed from the observer’s gaze is quite appropriate.

In the second case, the landscape, hung in a frame on the wall, is not perceived as a piece cut out of any larger real view. In the first case, the painted landscape is felt only as a reproduction of some real (existing or able to exist) view, in the second, while retaining this function, it receives an additional one: perceived as an artistic structure closed in itself, it seems to us correlated not with a part of the object, but with some universal object, becomes a model of the world.

The landscape depicts a birch grove, and the question arises: "What is behind it?" But it is also a model of the world, reproduces the universe, and in this aspect the question "What is beyond it?" - loses all meaning. Thus, Lotman's spatial delimitation is closely connected with the transformation of space from the totality of things that fill it into some kind of abstract language that can be used for various types of artistic modeling.

The absence of a boundary sign in texts in which this absence is the specificity of their artistic language should not be confused with a similar absence of it at the level of speech (in a specific text), when stored in the system. Thus, the artistic symbol of the road contains a prohibition on movement in one direction, in which space is limited (“get off the path”), and the naturalness of movement in one in which there is no such border. Since the artistic space becomes a formal system for constructing various, including ethical, models, it becomes possible to morally characterize literary characters through the type of artistic space corresponding to them, which already acts as a kind of two-dimensional local ethical metaphor. So, in Tolstoy one can distinguish (of course, with a high degree of conventionality) several types of heroes. These are, firstly, the heroes of their place (their circle), the heroes of spatial and ethical immobility, who, if they move according to the requirements of the plot, then carry with them their own locus. These are heroes who are not yet able to change or who no longer need it. They represent the starting or finishing point of the trajectory - the movement of the characters.

The heroes of the immobile, “closed” locus are opposed by the heroes of the “open” space. Here, too, two types of heroes are distinguished, which can be conditionally called: the heroes of the “path” and the heroes of the “steppe”.

The hero of the path moves along a certain spatial and ethical trajectory. Its inherent space implies a ban on lateral movement. Staying at each point in space (and the moral state equivalent to it) is conceived as a transition to another, following it.

Tolstoy's linear space has the sign of a given direction. It is not unlimited, but represents a generalized possibility of movement from the starting point to the final one. Therefore, it receives a temporal sign, and the character moving in it - a feature of internal evolution. artistic chronotope Petrushevskaya

An essential property of the moral linear space in Tolstoy is the presence of a sign of "height" (in the absence of a sign of "width"); the movement of the hero along his moral trajectory is an ascent, or a descent, or a change of both. In any case, this feature has a structural markedness. It is necessary to distinguish the nature of the space characteristic of the hero from his real plot movement in this space. The hero of the "path" can stop, turn back, or stray to the side, coming into conflict with the laws of his own space. At the same time, the assessment of his actions will be different than for similar actions of a character with a different spatial and ethical field.

Unlike the hero of the path, the hero of the steppe does not have a ban on movement in any lateral direction. Moreover, instead of moving along a trajectory, the free unpredictability of the direction of movement is implied here.

At the same time, the movement of the hero in the moral space is not connected with the fact that he changes, but with the realization of the inner potential of his personality. So movement here is not evolution. It also has no temporal dimension. The functions of these heroes are to cross boundaries that are insurmountable for others, but do not exist in their space.

Artistic space, according to Lotman, is a continuum in which characters are placed and action takes place. Naive perception constantly pushes the reader to identify artistic and physical space.

There is some truth in such a perception, because even when its function of modeling extra-spatial relations is exposed, the artistic space necessarily retains, as the first plane of the metaphor, an idea of ​​its physical nature.

Therefore, a very significant indicator will be the question of the space into which the action cannot be transferred. The enumeration of where certain episodes cannot occur will outline the boundaries of the world of the modeled text, and the places to which they can be transferred will give variants of some invariant model.

However, artistic space is not a passive receptacle forOev and plot episodes. Correlating it with the actors and the general model of the world created by the literary text convinces us that the language of the artistic space is not a hollow vessel, but one of the components of the common language spoken by the work of art.

The behavior of the characters is largely related to the space in which they are located, and the space itself is perceived not only in the sense of real extent, but also in a different - usual in mathematics - understanding, as “a set of homogeneous objects (phenomena, states, etc.). ) in which there are space-like relations.

This allows for the possibility for one and the same hero to alternately fall into one or another space, and, moving from one to another, a person is deformed according to the laws of this space [Lotman 1988:252].

In order to become sublime, the space must not only be vast (or limitless), but also directed, being in it must move towards the goal. It must be expensive. "Road" is a certain type of artistic space, "path" is the movement of a literary character in this space. The "path" is the realization (full or incomplete) or non-realization of the "road".

With the advent of the image of the road as a form of space, the idea of ​​the path as the norm of life of a person, peoples and mankind is formed.

The language of spatial relations is not the only means of artistic modeling, but it is important because it belongs to the primary and main ones. Even temporal modeling is often a secondary superstructure on the spatial language.

Since for Lotman, as a structuralist, it was important to defineepour the structural features of the text, he interprets and artisticTvein space as a structural element of the text.

Structural bodyAndThe captivating nature of artistic space is due to the fact that the center of any space-time paradigm, according to Lotman, isIis the hero of the work. Lotman makes significant additions to the methOlogical potential of the category of artistic space and time, pointing to the possibilityandtypology of spatial features in the fabric of the work through a system of antinomies (top - bottom, own - alien, closed - open, everyday - sacred etc.), in terms of quality and characterToteru directionality (spot, linearnoe, planar, etc.).

1.3 Ways of studying artistic space and time in the literary experience of V. Toporov, D. Likhachev and others

Today, not one scientific literary forum can do without a report on a topic, wherever the categories of artistic space and time appear. This is due to the fact that these categories have a rich methodological potential and open up great opportunities for researchers in the study of both individual personalities and the literary era as a whole.

Vivid examples of the scientific significance of the categories of artistic space and time can be found in works on mythopoetics, where the study of specific mythological schemes involves observing the spatiotemporal parameters of a phenomenon. For example, one of the representatives of the mythopoetic tradition V.N. Toporov in his works actively refers to the category of artistic space. One of the important installations of the scientist is the distinction between "individual" and common space. The scientist writes: “Each literary epoch, each major direction (school) builds its own space, but for those within this era or direction, “their own” is evaluated, first of all, from the point of view of the general, unifying, consolidating, and their “individuality” is “one’s own” reveals only on the periphery, at the junctions with something else that precedes it or threatens it as a replacement in the near future” [Toporov 1995:447]. "EtcOspace of childhood”, “space of love”, “new space” - prAndmeasures of spatial mythological models that we can meet in Toporov's works and the use of which can be useful in studyingeresearch institute of literature of any period.

According to V.N. Toporov, each writer builds his own space, voluntarily and involuntarily correlating it with general spatial models. At the same time, according to Toporov, is promising study of individual persOinfluences precisely through myth and the category of artistic space. It is no coincidence that in one of his works he makes the following reservation: “The author of this article has at his disposal several sketches devoted to individual images of space by a number of Russian writers (Radishchev, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Druzhinin, Konevskoy, Andrei Bely, Mandelstam, Vaginov, Platonov, Krzhizhanovsky, Poplavsky and others) [Toporov 1995:448].

Toporov's observations on the semantics of specific geographical images in literature are interesting. For example, analyzing the image of St. Petersburg as a mythological space, the scientist introduces the concept of "minus-space", i.e. a space that does not exist, or denies, is the opposite of a traditional, habitual space.

Artistic space, according to Toporov, is aesome frame in which the meanings of mythological, archetypal and symbolic nature are fixed. In addition, the art space isIis an important attribute of individual creativity and myth-making, allows the researcher to come to an understanding of the unique phenomena of lettersAtours, their structures and mythological fullness.

A review of modern research devoted to the study of artistic space and time in the perspective of studying various historical and literary phenomena allows us to draw some conclusions about the nature of these categories and their methodological significance Rhythm, space and time in literature and art. - L., 1974.; Gabrichevsky A.G. Space and Time // Questions of Philosophy. - 1990. - No. 3. - p. 10 -13.; Prokopova M.V. Semantics of space-time landmarks in L.N. Martynov’s poem “Ermak” // From text to context. - Ishim, 2006, pp. 189-192 - and more. etc. .

Literary works are permeated with temporal and spatial representations, infinitely diverse and deeply meaningful. Here there are images of biographical time (childhood, youth, maturity, old age), historical (characteristics of the change of eras and generations, major events in the life of society), cosmic (the idea of ​​eternity and universal history), calendar (change of seasons, everyday life and holidays) , daily (day and night, morning and evening), as well as ideas about movement and stillness, about the correlation of the past, present, and future.

According to D.S. Likhachev, from epoch to epoch, as ideas about the variability of the world become wider and deeper, the images of time are becoming increasingly important in literature: writers are becoming more and more aware, more and more fully capturing the “variety of forms of movement”, “mastering the world in its temporal dimensions” [Khalizev 2002: 247].

No less diverse are the spatial pictures present in the literature: images of space closed and open, earthly and cosmic, really visible and imaginary, ideas about objectivity near and far.

The location and correlation of spatio-temporal images in the work is internally motivated - there are also "life" motivations in their genre conditionality, there are also conceptual motivations. It is also important that the spatio-temporal organization is systemic, eventually forming the "inner world of a literary work" (D.S. Likhachev).

Moreover, in the arsenal of literature there are such artistic forms that are specially designed to create a spatio-temporal image: a plot, a system of characters, a landscape, a portrait, etc. When analyzing space and time in a work of art, one should take into account all the structural elements present in it andApay attention to the originality of each of them: in the system of characters (tonhardness, specularity, etc.), in the structure of the plot (linear, singleAstraightened or with returns, running ahead, spiral, etc.), withOto supply the proportion of individual elements of the plot, as well as to identify the nature of the landscape and portrait, to carry out a motivic analysis of the workeniya. It is equally important to look for motivations for the articulation of structural elements and, ultimately, to try to comprehend the ideological and aesthetic semantics of the spatio-temporal image that is presented in the work.

CHAPTER 2

This chapter analyzes the stories of L. Petrushevskaya from the point of view of their spatial and temporal organization, an attempt is made to understand the root causes of the tragedies of the heroes in the special artistic world of the writer.

2.1 Apartment as the main topos of domestic space

Even Bulgakov's Woland said that "the housing problem has spoiled the Muscovites." Both during the years of Soviet power and in the post-Soviet period, housing problems were among the main everyday problems of our fellow citizens (and not only Muscovites). It is no coincidence that the apartment becomes the main topos in the everyday space of the heroes of L. Petrushevskaya.

The heroes of Petrushevskaya are inconspicuous people, tortured by life, suffering quietly or scandalously in their communal apartments in unsightly courtyards. The author invites us to office offices and stairwells, acquaints us with various misfortunes, with immorality and lack of meaning of existence. There are few happy people (heroes) in the world of Petrushevskaya, but happiness is not the goal of their life.

At the same time, everyday everyday problems narrow their dreams, and can significantly limit the space of their life. It is in the apartments (with varying degrees of comfort) that events take place in the stories "Your Circle", "Cinderella's Way", "Happy End", "Country", "To the Beautiful City", "Children's Party", "Dark Fate", " Life is a theater”, “Oh happiness”, “Three faces” and others. Of the many options for apartments and apartments, communal apartments, etc. a certain generalized topos of the “apartment from Petrushevskaya” is being formed, in which the sophisticated reader can discern the features of other apartments well known in literature and culture (from Dostoevsky to Makanin).

Let's dwell on the most typical examples: the stories "To the Beautiful City", "Country" and "Cinderella's Way" are surprisingly consonant with each other at the level of spatial organization (as if the events take place in the neighborhood), although the content of these two stories is different.

In the story "Country", the apartment is a kind of shelter in which an alcoholic mother lives with her daughter. Here, as such, there is no description of the world of things, objects, furniture, thereby creating a feeling of the emptiness of the space in which its inhabitants live. We read at the beginning of the story: “The daughter usually plays quietly on the floor while the mother drinks at the table or lying on the couch.” We see the same at the end of the story: “The girl really doesn’t care, she quietly plays on the floor with her old toys ...” The story of L. Petrushevskaya "Country" and all other works are quoted from an electronic document with the address: http://www.belousenko.com/wr_Petrushevskaya.htm . The double repetition speaks of the hopelessness of the situation, and the repeated emphasis on the fact that the apartment is quiet further enhances the feeling of emptiness, gloom and even lifelessness. The heroine, being in the closed space of the apartment, does not seek to change her life. The only thing she still cares about is to add up from the evening “Your daughter’s little things for kindergarten, so that everything is at hand in the morning.” She revives only when she goes to visit with her daughter, i.e. leaves the space of his home and finds himself in another space, alien, completely opposite, where there are people, communication, and hence life. She feels like she belongs here, and she seems to be accepted, but when she “carefully calls and congratulatessomeonehappy birthday, pulls, mumbles, asks how life is going ...waiting", until she is invited, then in the end “Hangs up the phone and runs to the grocery store for another bottle, and then to kindergarten for her daughter.”

The heroine of the story "Country" finds herself in a situation of lifelong loneliness, loss of hope. This is a person thrown out of life because of his inability to realize himself, who is outside of society, outside of society, therefore, outside of human ties and communication. This woman has lost confidence in life, she has no friends or acquaintances. The consequence of all this is her loneliness, isolation in space.

Similar events could happen to anyone, anywhere. However, as one Roman philosopher Seneca said, "as long as a man is alive, he must never lose hope." Everyone has his own "country", in which he can plunge "in moments of spiritual adversity."

Very consonant with this story is the story "To the beautiful city." After reading it, one gets the feeling that this is the beginning of the story that is described in the "Country". The image of the mother-alcoholic from the "Country" is correlated with the image of Anastasia Gerbertovna, and the daughter of an alcoholic is reminiscent of Anastasia's daughter, Vika, also Gerbertovna. Petrushevskaya does not skimp on the details in the description of Vika's appearance: “a scarecrow of seven years, everything is crooked, the coat is on the wrong button, the tights have moved out, the boots have been worn down by more than one generation of flat-footed children, inside with socks. Light hair hangs. A mother is not much different from a daughter: “Wow girl, her hair hangs separately like that of a drowned woman, the skull shines, her eyes are sunken.” These two portrait descriptions characterize not only the heroines, but also the space in which they live. It becomes clear that the mother and her daughter live in poverty, they have nothing to wear, nothing even to eat. The story begins with the fact that Alexei Petrovich (a graduate student, a devoted student of Larisa Sigismundovna, Nastya's mother), once again takes Nastya and Vika to the buffet, where the child eats greedily ("as for the last time in his life").

Nastya's family, already at the time when Nastya was still a child, never lived in abundance, but there was always enough for food. After the death of Larisa Sigismundovna, Nastya's life deteriorated significantly. And these deteriorations were primarily reflected at the level of space. Exactly the topos of the apartment becomes an indicator of a person's well-being in the world of Petrushevskaya.

While Nastya's mother was alive, she tried to do everything possible for her daughter and granddaughter: she “She changed her St. Petersburg apartment for a room closer to her father, when she moved in with her child, she also made plans, apparently, to buy one or the other, to make repairs, but no. There was no money, no strength.” Larisa Sigismundovna struggled until the last day, trying to find at least some place where she would be paid. She was a very good teacher, gave lectures, devoted herself to her work, sparing no effort to feed her family. Already knowing about your illness, "Larisa<…>took on more and more new work, wrote a doctoral thesis on her last legs, simultaneously teaching her useless science of cultural studies in three places. Even when she was in the hospital, after the radiation sessions, Larisa ran away to finish her lectures, because. " paid precisely for the allotted hours, and not for the absence of an employee due to illness» . Everything that we learn in the story about Nastya's mother speaks of her active life position, which cannot be said about Nastya herself.

The time had come when the Herbertovnas were left alone. With the departure of Larisa Sigismundovna, life in the apartment stops, to some extent it even dies. This is clear from the following passage: “When there was a commemoration, Lara’s friends set a table in the house of the deceased, and genuine poverty reigned there, no one even suspected that this could be, broken furniture, cracked wallpaper.” There is an image of a space where objects, furniture not only lost their purpose, became unclaimed by man, they changed their quality (“ broken furniture, cracked wallpaper”). This suggests that the heroine's world is in decline. The outer world of things is a reflection of her inner world. The image of the space in which Nastya lives with her daughter explains the behavior of the heroine. Nastya does not strive for an active life, she has no desire to correct the situation in which she and Vika find themselves. This “natural habitat” has so depressed Nastya that she doesn’t even have the strength to get up on time: “The poor have few opportunities and often do not have enough strength to even get up on time, it turned out that because the young mother Nastya went to bed late and got up when she got up, she already had a natural habitat in the company of the same poor people who cannot lie down all night, stay awake, they roam, smoke and drink, and during the day they sleep five by five on the couch.

It is noteworthy that the apartment near Petrushevskaya is a space of a special type of people: as a rule, the unfortunate owner of the apartment receives guests as unfortunate as himself. The space of Nastya's apartment attracts the same "poor and unfortunate" as Nastya herself. She is a “kind soul,” as Valentina said, so she can’t refuse anyone, kick anyone out of the house. From here, the apartment turned into an "ugly nest" full of "lounging guys in shorts and girls in underwear because of the heat." L. Petrushevskaya writes in her story that “This rookery vividly resembled either a dugout in the taiga, where it was heated hot, or the last day of Pompeii, only without any tragedy, without these masks of suffering, without heroic attempts to take someone out and save. On the contrary, everyone tried not to be taken out of here. They indirectly glanced in the direction of Valentina fussing around the child, waiting for this aunt to disappear.

All mother's friends and acquaintances are trying to help Nastya: they are trying to find at least some work for her, they bring food home (but “you won’t get enough for a whole abyss”), they help with housing, etc. In return, they receive sidelong glances not only from her "friends", but also from Nastya herself. She is embarrassed to let people into her space who want to do good for her and Vika, but she freely lets in those who eat the last stocks in the house, that there is even nothing to feed the child with. Those. the space in which the heroine of the story lives is more open to "strangers" who have already become "their own" for Nastya.

...

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This work is a kind of diary. In it, the main character describes her whole life. Mostly, she meditates and writes at night. The heroine is a mother of two children. Judging by the entries in this diary, the heroine does not know what love is. In her family, the situation is the same, no one feels love. Three generations of the family live in a small apartment. The heroine is tactless and heartless. She does not understand how hard it is for her daughter to experience first love.

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When the son was released, the mother wanted to find support and support in him. The woman insulted and humiliated her daughter's husband. At the end of her story, the heroine explains why she does this to her family. She wonders why her works are not published. The woman was abandoned by her husband. She suffers from loneliness.

This work teaches not to be selfish, to love and take care of your family and friends. You can’t think only about yourself, there are still many people around who need our support and support.

Picture or drawing Time is night

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Lyudmila Petrushevskaya has long been an integral part of Russian literature, standing on a par with other Russian classics of the 20th century. Her early texts were banned from publication in the Soviet Union, but, fortunately, Petrushevskaya's talent was appreciated by Roman Viktyuk and Yuri Lyubimov, then still very young, and they began to put on performances based on her plays with pleasure. The key to friendly relations with another star of Russian culture, s, was the work on the cartoon "Tale of Tales", for which she wrote the script. The long period of silence for the writer ended only in the 1990s, when they began to publish her truly freely (and a lot): literary fame caught up with Petrushevskaya instantly.

"Time is night"

If you still think that "", then we hasten to disappoint you: there are worse stories, and many of them were written by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. There are few major works in her bibliography, so the story “Time is Night” stands apart: it contains all the topics that the writer touches on in her other texts. The conflict between mother and daughter, poverty, domestic disorder, love-hate between close people - Lyudmila Stefanovna is a master of "shock prose", as critics often write about her, and this is true.

She is never shy about details, naturalistic details, obscene language, if required by the text and her vision of the literary world being created. In this sense, the story "Time is Night" is the purest example of Petrushevskaya's classic prose, and if you want to get acquainted with her work, but do not know where to start, you should choose it: after ten pages of text, you will know for sure whether you should continue reading or not.

Retelling the plot, as is often the case with her works, does not make any sense: the canvas in this case is far from the most important. Before us are the scattered diary entries of the poetess Anna Andriyanova, who talks about her life ups and downs, and from these entries grows an epic - and terrible - canvas of an unfulfilled, destroyed human life. Reading her memoirs, we learn how she endlessly quarreled with her mother, who did not understand her, and how then she herself oppressed her children, and then, unexpectedly, got attached to her grandson, calling him an "orphan." The gallery of terrible images causes shock and rejection among many readers, but the main thing is to be able to overcome oneself, and not turn away from them, but regret: the ability to sympathize in spite of, as you know, is a key skill for reading Russian literature.

From print only:

Guzel Yakhina, "My Children"

It seems that even people who are far from the world of modern literature have heard: her first novel, Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes, became a sensation in Russian culture, and a rare example of a talented intellectual bestseller. Naturally, everyone was waiting with special trepidation for the release of her second book, the novel My Children, which appeared on store shelves recently.

The story about the life of Jacob Bach, a Russian German living in the Volga region and raising his only daughter, would be best attributed to magical realism: on the one hand, it contains many real details of the life of the Volga Germans, on the other hand, mysticism and "otherworldliness" are everywhere present. So, for example, Jacob writes bizarre tales that come true every now and then, and do not always lead to good consequences.

Unlike the first novel, the book is written in a much more ornate and complex language, which was not at all in Zuleikha .... The opinions of critics were divided into two camps: some are sure that the book is in no way inferior to the debut, while others reproach Guzel Yakhina for excessive attention to form at the expense of content: we will not take sides in the dispute, but rather we advise you to read the novel yourself - the coming months only it will be discussed by all fans of domestic writers.

If you haven't read it yet:

Alexey Salnikov, "Petrovs in the flu and around it"

It is unlikely that Alexei Salnikov could have imagined that his novel would cause such a major resonance in the world of Russian literature, and that critics of the first magnitude would argue about it, and they would decide to put on a performance based on the sensational work. An amazing text, the plot of which is almost impossible to retell - the protagonist of the work falls ill with the flu, which begins a series of his absurd adventures - fascinates with the language in which it is written. An original and vivid style, where each word seems to regain its meaning, carries you deep into history, and does not let you go back: only Andrei Platonov and Nikolai Gogol could boast of such a colorful language.