Moral problems in the works of Rasputin. Actual and eternal problems in V. Rasputin's story "Farewell to Matera"

Contemporaries often do not understand their writers or do not realize their true place in literature, leaving the future to evaluate, determine the contribution, place emphasis. There are enough examples of this. But in the current literature there are undoubted names, without which neither we nor our descendants will be able to imagine it. One of these names is Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin. The works of Valentin Rasputin consist of living thoughts. We must be able to extract them, if only because it is more important for us than for the writer himself: he has done his job.

And here, I think, the most appropriate thing is to read his books one by one. One of the main themes of all world literature: the theme of life and death. But with V. Rasputin, it becomes an independent plot: almost always an old person, who has lived a lot and has seen a lot in his lifetime, who has something to compare and with something to remember, almost always leaves his life. And almost always it is a woman: a mother who raised children, ensured the continuity of the family. The theme of death for him is not so much, perhaps, the theme of leaving, as a reflection on what remains, in comparison with what was. And the images of old women (Anna, Daria), which have become the moral, ethical center of his best stories, the old women, perceived by the author as the most important link in the chain of generations, are the aesthetic discovery of Valentin Rasputin, despite the fact that such images, of course, were before him in Russian literature. But it was Rasputin, like perhaps no one before him, who managed to comprehend them philosophically in the context of time and current social conditions. The fact that this is not an accidental find, but a constant thought, is evidenced not only by his first works, but also by subsequent, up to the present day, references to these images in journalism, conversations, and interviews. So, even answering the question “What do you understand by intelligence?”, the writer immediately, as if from the series that is constantly in the sphere of mental activity, gives an example: “Is an illiterate old woman intelligent or not intelligent? She had not read a single book, had never been to the theater. But she is naturally intelligent. This illiterate old woman partly absorbed the peacefulness of her soul together with nature, partly it was supported by folk traditions, a range of customs. She knows how to listen, to make the right oncoming movement, to behave with dignity, to say exactly. And Anna in "The Deadline" is the clearest example of an artistic study of the human soul, shown by the writer in all its majestic uniqueness, uniqueness and wisdom - the soul of a woman who comprehends and has even comprehended what each of us at least once in his life thought.

Yes, Anna is not afraid to die, moreover, she is ready for this last step, because she is already tired, she feels that “she has become exhausted to the very bottom, boiled away to the last drop” (“Eighty years, apparently, is still a lot for one person, if it has worn out to the point that now you can only take it and throw it away ...”). And no wonder that she was tired - her whole life was running, on her feet, in work, in worries: children, a house, a garden, a field, a collective farm ... And now the time has come when there was no strength left at all, except to say goodbye to the children. Anna could not imagine how she could leave forever without seeing them, without saying farewell words to them, without finally hearing their native voices. Ionins came to bury: Varvara, Ilya and Lusya. We tuned in just for this, temporarily dressing our thoughts in clothes appropriate for the occasion and covering the mirrors of the soul with the dark fabric of the upcoming parting. Each of them loved his mother in his own way, but they all equally weaned from her, separated long ago, and what connected them with her and with each other has already turned into something conventional, accepted by the mind, but not touching the soul. They were obliged to come to the funeral and fulfill this duty.

Having set a philosophical mood from the very beginning of the work, communicated by the mere presence of death next to a person, V. Rasputin, without lowering this level, when it comes to not about Anna, but, perhaps, drawing subtle psychologism from philosophical richness, creates portraits the old woman's children, with each new page bringing them to filigree. One gets the impression that with this meticulous work, with this recreation of the smallest details of their faces and characters, he delays the death of the old woman in itself: she cannot die until the reader sees with her own eyes, to the last wrinkle, those whom she gave birth to, whom she was proud of, who, finally, remains instead of her on earth and will continue her in time. So they coexist in the story, Anna's thoughts and the actions of her children, now - occasionally - approaching, almost to the point of contact, then - more often - diverging to invisible distances. The tragedy is not that they do not understand it, but that it does not occur to them that they really do not understand. Neither it, nor the moment itself, nor those deep-seated reasons that can control a person's state in addition to his will, desire.

So for whom did they gather here: for their mother or for themselves, so as not to look indifferent in the eyes of their fellow villagers? As in Money for Mary, Rasputin is concerned here with ethical categories: good and evil, justice and duty, happiness and moral culture person, but already for more high level because they coexist with such values ​​as death, the meaning of life. And this gives the writer the opportunity, using the example of the dying Anna, in whom there is more extract of life than in her living children, to deeply explore moral self-consciousness, its spheres: conscience, moral feelings, human dignity, love, shame, sympathy. In the same row - the memory of the past and responsibility to it. Anna was waiting for the children, feeling an urgent inner need to bless them on a further path in life; the children hurried to her, strove to fulfill their external duty as carefully as possible - invisible and, perhaps, even unconscious in its entirety. This conflict of worldviews in the story finds its expression, first of all, in the system of images. It is not given to children who have grown up to understand the tragedy of the fracture revealed by them and the impending break - so what can you do if it is not given? Rasputin will find out why it happened, why are they like that? And he will do this, leading us to an independent answer, surprising in the psychological authenticity of the depiction of the characters of Varvara, Ilya, Lucy, Mikhail, Tanchora.

We must see each of them, get to know them better in order to understand what is happening, why it is happening, who they are, what they are. Without this understanding, it will be difficult for us to grasp the reasons for the almost complete departure from the old woman of strength, to fully understand her deep philosophical monologues, often caused by a mental appeal to them, the children, with whom the main thing in Anna's life is connected.

They are difficult to understand. But it seems to them that they understand themselves, that they are right. What forces give confidence in such a correctness, is it not the moral stupidity that knocked off their former hearing - after all, he once was, was ?! The departure of Ilya and Lucy is a departure forever; now from the village to the city there will be not one day's journey, but an eternity; and this river itself will turn into Lethe, through which Charon transports the souls of the dead only from one bank to the other, and never back. But in order to understand this, it was necessary to understand Anna.

And her children were not ready to do it. And it’s not in vain that against the background of these three - Barbara, Ilya and Lucy - Mikhail, in whose house his mother lives out her life (although it would be more correct - he is in her house, but everything has changed in this world, the poles have shifted, deforming cause-and-effect relationships ), is perceived as the most merciful nature, despite its rudeness. Anna herself “did not consider Mikhail better than her other children - no, such was her fate: to live with him, and wait for them every summer, wait, wait ... If you do not take three years of the army, Mikhail was always near his mother, married with her, became a peasant, a father, like all peasants, matured, with her closer and closer now he was approaching old age. Perhaps that is why Anna is closer by fate to Michael, because he is closest to her with the structure of his thinking, the structure of his soul. The same conditions in which they live with their mother, long communication, uniting their joint work, one nature for two, suggesting similar comparisons and thoughts - all this allowed Anna and Mikhail to remain in the same sphere, without breaking the ties, and from only related , blood, turning them into a kind of pre-spiritual. Compositionally, the story is structured in such a way that we see Anna's farewell to the world in ascending order - farewell as a rigorous approach to the most significant, after meeting with which everything else seems already petty, vain, insulting this value located on the highest rung of the ladder of farewell. First, we see the old woman’s internal parting with the children (it’s no coincidence that Mikhail, as the highest in spiritual qualities among them, will be the last one she sees), then her parting with the hut, with nature follows (after all, through Lucy’s eyes we see the same nature as Anna, while she was healthy), after which comes the turn of separation from Mironikha, as with a part of the past; and the penultimate, tenth, chapter of the story is devoted to the main thing for Anna: this is the philosophical center of the work, passing through which, in the last chapter, we can only observe the death of the family, its moral collapse.

After what Anna experienced, in a special way is perceived final chapter, symbolizing the last, “extra”, day of her life, on which, in her own opinion, “she had no right to intervene”. What is happening on this day seems really vain and agony, whether it is the training of the inept Barbara to howl at a funeral or the untimely, causing the departure of children. Perhaps Varvara could mechanically memorize a beautiful, deep folk lamentation. But even if she had memorized these words, she still would not understand them and would not give them any sense. Yes, and I didn’t have to memorize: Varvara, citing the fact that the guys were left alone, was leaving. And Lucy and Ilya do not explain at all the reason for their flight. Before our eyes, not only the family is collapsing (it fell apart a long time ago) - the elementary, fundamental moral foundations of the individual are collapsing, turning the inner world of a person into ruins. The last request of the mother: “I will die, I will die. From you will see. Sedna. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I don't need anything more. Lucy! And you, Ivan! Wait. I tell you that I will die, and I will die ”- this last request went unheeded, and neither Barbara, nor Ilya, nor Lucy will be in vain. It was for them - not for the old woman - the last of the last terms. Alas... At night the old woman died.

But we've all stayed. What are our names - isn't it Lucy, Barbarians, Tanchors, Ilyas? However, it's not about the name. And the old woman at birth could be called Anna.

Valentin Rasputin is one of famous writers of our time, in whose work the most important place is occupied by
the relationship between man and nature.
The image of a “single reality”, an ideal world-order, forcibly destroyed by man, is created by the author in
story "Farewell to Matyora",
written in the mid-seventies of the 20th century. The work appeared at the moment when the process
destruction of the connection between man and nature
Doy reached a critical point: as a result of the construction of artificial reservoirs,
fertile lands, projects were developed for the transfer of northern rivers, unpromising villages were destroyed.
Rasputin saw a deep connection between ecological and moral processes - the loss of the world's original
harmony, the destruction of the ties between the ethical world of the individual and the Russian spiritual tradition. In "Farewell to Matyora" this
harmony is personified by the villagers, old men and women, and above all, grandmother Daria. Rasputin showed
the ideal world of nature and a person living in harmony with it, fulfilling his labor duty - preserving
memory of their ancestors. Daria's father once left her a testament: “Live, move, to better hook us with
white light, to sting in it that we were ... ”These words largely determined her actions and relations with
people. The author develops the motif of the "deadline" in the story, the essence of which lies in the fact that every person
with its presence in the world establishes a connection between the past, present and future. There are two
of the world: the righteous one, which Grandma Daria calls “here!
", - this is Matera, where everything is "familiar, habitable and beaten", and the sinful world - "there" - arsonists and a new
settlement. Each of these worlds lives according to its own laws. Maternal old people cannot accept life "where"
“they forgot about the soul”, the conscience was “worn out”, the memory was “thinned”, but “the dead ... will ask”.
The most important problem of the story is the expediency of human intervention in the natural world. "Which
at a price?” Pavel, the son of grandmother Daria, is tormented by the question. It turns out that labor, which from the point of view of the Christian
psychology is a benefactor, can become a destructive force. This idea arises in Paul's reasoning about
that the new settlement was built somehow inhumanely, “absurdly”.
The construction of a hydroelectric power station, as a result of which the island of Matera will be flooded, the destruction of the cemetery, the burning of houses and
forests - all this is more like a war with the natural world, and not its transformation.
everything that happens is grandma Daria: “Today the light has broken in half.” Old Daria is sure that lightness,
with which people break all ties, the painlessness of parting with their native land, home, are integral
"easy life" of people who are forgetful, indifferent and even cruel. Daria calls such people "cutting".
V. Rasputin bitterly notes that the feeling of kinship has been lost, the tribal family has been lost in the minds of young people.
memory, and therefore they do not understand the pain of the old people, saying goodbye to Matera as a living being.
The episode of the destruction of the cemetery, which the villagers rush to save-
one of the highlights of the story. For them, a cemetery is a world in which
their ancestors must live. To wipe it off the face of the earth is a crime. Then an invisible thread will break,
linking the world together. That is why ancient old women stand in the way of the bulldozer.
Man in the artistic concept of Rasputin is inseparable from the outside world - animal, plant,
space. If even one link of this unity is broken, the whole chain breaks, the world loses harmony.
The imminent death of Matera is the first to foresee the Master of the island - a small animal that symbolizes, according to
the intention of the author, nature as a whole. This image gives the story a special deep meaning. It allows
to see and hear what is hidden from a person: the farewell groans of the huts, the “breath of growing grass”, hidden
the fuss of pichugs - in a word, to feel the doom and imminent death of the village.
“What to be, that cannot be avoided,” the Owner resigned himself. And in his words - evidence of the helplessness of nature
in front of a person. “At what cost?” - this question does not arise among the arsonists, the official Vorontsov, or the “commodity
Zhuk's grove from the department of the flood zone. This question torments Daria, Ekaterina, Pavel and the author himself.
The story "Farewell to Matyora" gives an answer to this question: at the cost of the loss of the "natural harmony", the death of the righteous
peace. It (the world) sinks, is swallowed up by mist, is lost.
The finale of the work is tragic: the old people who remained in Matyora hear a dreary howl - “a farewell voice
The owner.” Such a denouement is natural. It is determined by the idea of ​​Rasputin. And the idea is this: people without a soul and without
God ("in whom the soul is, in that is God," says grandmother Daria) thoughtlessly carry out the transformations of nature, the essence
which in violence over all living things. Destroying the harmonious world of nature, man is doomed to destroy himself.

In our time, the problem of morality has become especially relevant, as the disintegration of the individual is taking place. In our society, there is a need for relationships between people, finally, about the meaning of life, which the heroes and heroines of V. Rasputin's stories and stories comprehend so tirelessly and so painfully. Now at every step we meet the loss of true human qualities: conscience, duty, mercy, kindness. And in the works of V.G. Rasputin, we find situations close to modern life, and they help us understand the complexity of this problem.

The works of V. Rasputin consist of "living thoughts", and we must be able to understand them, if only because for us it is more important than for the writer himself, because the future of society and each person individually depends on us.

In the current literature there are undoubted names, without which neither we nor descendants can imagine it. One of these names is Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin. In 1974, Valentin Rasputin wrote in the Irkutsk newspaper "Soviet Youth": "I am sure that a person's childhood makes him a writer, the ability at an early age to see and feel everything that then gives him the right to take up a pen. Education, books, life experience they educate and strengthen this gift in the future, but it should be born in childhood. "And his own example best of all confirms the correctness of these words, because V. Rasputin, like no one else, carried through his whole life in his work its moral values.

V. Rasputin was born on March 15, 1937 in the Irkutsk region, in the village of Ust-Uda, located on the banks of the Angara, three hundred kilometers from Irkutsk. And he grew up in the same places, in the village, with the beautiful melodious estate of Atalanka. We will not see this name in the works of the writer, but it is she, Atalanka, who will appear to us both in "Farewell to Matera", and in "Deadline", and in the story "Live and Remember", where the consonance of Atamanovka is remotely but clearly guessed. Specific people will literary heroes. Truly, as V. Hugo said, "the beginnings laid down in a person's childhood are similar to those carved on the bark young tree letters growing, unfolding with him, constituting an integral part of him. "And these beginnings, in relation to Valentin Rasputin, are unthinkable without the influence of Siberia-taiga itself, the Angara ("I believe that she played an important role in my writing business: when - then at an integral moment I went out to the Angara and was stunned - and from the beauty that entered me I was stunned, as well as from the conscious and material feeling of the Motherland that emerged from it "); without a native village, of which he was a part and which for the first time made me think about the relationship between people; without a pure, uncomplicated folk language.

His conscious childhood, that very “preschool and school period”, which gives a person almost more for life than all the remaining years and decades, partially coincided with the war: the future writer came to the first grade of the Atalan elementary school in 1944. And although there were no battles here, life, as elsewhere in those years, was difficult. “The bread of childhood was very difficult for our generation,” the writer notes decades later. But about those same years, he will also say more important, generalizing: "It was a time of extreme manifestation of human community, when people held together against big and small troubles."

The first story written by V. Rasputin was called "I forgot to ask Leshka ...". It was published in 1961 in the anthology "Angara" and then reprinted several times. It began as an essay after one of V. Rasputin's regular trips to the timber industry. But, as we later learn from the writer himself, "the essay did not turn out - the story turned out. About what? About the sincerity of human feelings and the beauty of the soul." Otherwise, probably, it could not be - after all, it was a matter of life and death. At the logging site, a fallen pine accidentally hit the boy, Lyoshka. At first, the bruise seemed insignificant, but soon pain arose, the bruised place - the stomach - turned black. Two friends decided to accompany Lyosha to the hospital - fifty kilometers on foot. On the way, he became worse, he was delirious, and his friends saw that these were no longer jokes, they were no longer up to the abstract conversations about communism that they had before, because they realized, looking at the torment of a comrade, that "this is a game of hide-and-seek with death, when he is looking for death and there is not a single reliable place to hide in. Or rather, there is such a place - this is a hospital, but it is far, still very far."

Leshka died in the arms of friends. Shock. Blatant injustice. And in the story, albeit in its infancy, there is something that will later become integral in all the works of Rasputin: nature, sensitively reacting to what is happening in the hero’s soul (“A river sobbed nearby. The moon, staring its only eye, did not take its eyes off us The stars twinkled tearfully"); painful thoughts about justice, memory, fate (“I suddenly remembered that I forgot to ask Leshka if they would know under communism about those whose names are not inscribed on the buildings of factories and power plants, who have remained invisible forever. no matter what, I wanted to know if under communism they will remember Leshka, who lived in the world for a little more than seventeen years and built it for only two and a half months.

In the stories of Rasputin, more and more people appear with a mysterious, albeit simple in appearance, inner world- people who talk to the reader, not leaving him indifferent to their fate, dreams, life. Barely outlined, their portraits in the story "They come to the Sayans with backpacks" are complemented by picturesque strokes in the guise of an old hunter who does not know how and does not want to understand why there are wars on the land ("The song is to be continued"); the theme of the unity of man and nature ("From the sun to the sun"), the theme of mutually enriching communication between people becomes deeper. ("There are footprints in the snow"). It is here that the images of Rasputin's old women appear for the first time - tuning forks, key, pivotal images of his further works.

Such is the old Tofalar woman from the story "And ten graves in the taiga", who "had fourteen children, she gave birth fourteen times, paid fourteen times for torment with blood, she had fourteen children - her own, relatives, small, big, boys and girls, boys and girls. Where are your fourteen children?. Two of them are still alive... two of them lie in the village cemetery... ten of them are scattered across the Sayan taiga and the animals have stolen their bones." Everyone has already forgotten about them - how many years have passed; everything, but not her, not her mother; and now she remembers everyone, tries to evoke their voices and dissolve into eternity: after all, as long as someone keeps the deceased in their memory, the thin, ghostly thread that binds these different worlds together will not break.

As soon as her heart withstood those deaths! She remembers everyone: this, four-year-old, fell off a cliff in front of her eyes - how she screamed then! This one, twelve years old, died near the shaman's yurt because there was no bread and salt; the girl froze on ice; another one was crushed during a thunderstorm by a cedar ...

All this was a long time ago, at the beginning of the century, "when all Tofalaria lay in the arms of death." The old woman sees that now everything is different, she lived, maybe that’s why she lived because she “remained their mother, eternal mother, mother, mother”, and no one except her remembers them, and kept her on the ground this is the memory and the need to leave it behind, to extend in time; that is why she calls her grandchildren the names of dead children, as if resurrecting them to a new life - to another, brighter one. After all, she is Mother.

Such is the dying shaman from the story "Oh, the old woman ...". She hasn't been a shaman for a long time; they love her because she knew how to work well together with everyone, she hunted sable, herded deer. What torments her before death? After all, she is not afraid to die, because "she fulfilled her human duty ... her family continued and will continue; she was a reliable link in this chain to which other links were attached." But only such a biological continuation is not enough for it; she considers shamanism no longer an occupation, but part of the culture, customs of the people, and therefore she is afraid that it will be forgotten, lost if she does not pass on to anyone at least its external signs. In her opinion, "a person who ends his family is unhappy. But a person who stole his ancient property from his people and took it with him to the ground without telling anyone anything - what to call this person ?."

I think that V. Rasputin correctly poses the question: "What is the name of such a person?" (A person who could take a piece of culture with him to the grave without passing it into the hands of other people).

In this story, Rasputin raises a moral problem expressed in relation to this old woman to a person and to the whole society. I think that before her death, she had to pass on her gift to people so that it would continue to live, like other cultural heritage.

The best work of the sixties is the story "Vasily and Vasilisa", from which a strong and obvious thread stretched to future stories. This story first appeared in the Literaturnaya Rossiya diary at the very beginning of 1967 and has since been reprinted in books.

In him, like in a drop of water, there was collected something that will not be repeated exactly later, but with which we nevertheless will meet more than once in the books of V. Rasputin: an old woman with a strong character, but with a big, merciful soul; nature, sensitively listening to changes in man.

V. Rasputin poses moral problems not only in stories, but also in his stories. Tale " Deadline", which V. Rasputin himself called the main of his books, affected many moral issues exposed the evils of society. In the work, the author showed the relationship within the family, raised the problem of respect for parents, which is very relevant in our time, revealed and showed the main wound of our time - alcoholism, raised the question of conscience and honor, which affected each hero of the story.

Main actor story - the old woman Anna, who lived with her son Michael, was at the age of eighty years. The only goal left in her life is to see all her children before her death and go to the next world with a clear conscience. Anna had many children, and they all parted, but fate was pleased to bring them all together at a time when her mother was dying. Anna's children are typical representatives modern society, busy people, having a family, a job, but remembering their mother, for some reason, very rarely. Their mother suffered a lot and missed them, and when the time came to die, only for the sake of them she remained for a few more days in this world and would have lived as long as she wanted, if only they were near, if only she had someone to live for. And she, already with one foot in the other world, managed to find the strength in herself to be reborn, to flourish, and all for the sake of her children. "By a miracle it happened or not by a miracle, no one will say, only when she saw her guys, the old woman began to come to life." But what are they? And they solve their problems, and it seems that their mother does not really care, and if they are interested in her, it's only for decency. And they all live only for decency. Do not offend anyone, do not scold, do not say too much - all for decency, so as not worse than others. Each of them goes about his own business in difficult days for the mother, and the state of the mother worries them little. Mikhail and Ilya fell into drunkenness, Lusya walks, Varvara solves her problems, and none of them came up with the idea of ​​giving their mother more time, talking to her, just sitting next to them. All their concern for their mother began and ended with "semolina porridge", which they all rushed to cook. Everyone gave advice, criticized others, but no one did anything himself. From the very first meeting of these people, disputes and abuse begin between them. Lusya, as if nothing had happened, sat down to sew a dress, the men got drunk, and Varvara was even afraid to stay with her mother. And so passed day after day: constant arguments and swearing, resentment against each other and drunkenness. This is how the children saw off their mother in last way so they took care of her, so they cherished and loved her. They made only one formality out of their mother's illness. They didn't penetrate state of mind mothers, did not understand her, they only saw that she was getting better, that they had a family and a job, and that they needed to return home as soon as possible. They could not even say goodbye to their mother properly. Her children missed the "deadline" to fix something, ask for forgiveness, just be together, because now they are unlikely to get together again.

In the story, V. Rasputin very well showed the relationship of the modern family and its shortcomings, which are clearly manifested at critical moments, revealed the moral problems of society, showed the callousness and selfishness of people, their loss of all respect and ordinary feelings of love for each other. They, native people, are mired in anger and envy.

They care only about their own interests, problems, only their own affairs. They do not even find time for close and dear people. They did not find time for the mother - the dearest person.

V.G. Rasputin showed the impoverishment of morality modern people and its consequences. The story "The Deadline", on which V. Rasputin began working in 1969, was first published in the magazine "Our Contemporary", in numbers 7, 8 for 1970. She not only continued and developed the best traditions of Russian literature - primarily the traditions of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky - but also imparted a new powerful impetus to the development of modern literature, setting her a high artistic and philosophical level. The story immediately came out as a book in several publishing houses, was translated into other languages, published abroad - in Prague, Bucharest, Milan and other countries.

One of the best works seventies was the story "Live and remember." "Live and Remember" - an innovative, bold story - not only about the fate of the hero and heroine, but also about their correlation with the fate of the people at one of the dramatic moments in history. In this story, both moral problems and problems of the relationship between man and society are touched upon.

So much has been written about this story by V. Rasputin both in our country and abroad, as, probably, about no other of his works; it was published about forty times, including in the languages ​​of the peoples of the USSR and in foreign languages. And in 1977 she was awarded the State Prize of the USSR. The strength of this work is in the intrigue of the plot, and in the unusualness of the theme.

Yes, the story was highly appreciated, but not everyone understood it correctly right away, they saw in it those accents that were put by the writer. Some domestic and foreign researchers have defined it as a work about a deserter, a man who escaped from the front and betrayed his comrades. But this is the result of a superficial reading. The author of the story himself emphasized more than once: "I wrote not only and least of all about the deserter, about whom, for some reason, everyone is talking about without stopping, but about a woman ..."

The starting point from which Rasputin's heroes begin to live on the pages of the story is a simple one. natural life. They were ready to repeat and continue the movement begun before them, to complete the circle of immediate life.

“Nastya and Andrei lived like everyone else, they didn’t think about anything in particular,” work, family, they really wanted children. But there was also a significant difference in the characters of the characters, associated with life circumstances. If Andrey Guskov grew up in a wealthy family: “The Guskovs kept two cows, sheep, pigs, a bird, the three of us lived in a big house,” he didn’t know any grief from childhood, he was used to thinking and taking care only of himself, then Nastya experienced a lot: the death of her parents, hungry thirty-third year, life in working women with an aunt.

That is why she "rushed into marriage, like into the water - without much thought ...". Diligence: "Nastya endured everything, managed to go to the collective farm and almost alone carried the household", "Nastya endured: in the customs of a Russian woman, arrange her life once and endure everything that falls to her" - the main character traits of the heroine. Nastya and Andrey Guskov are the main characters in the story. Having understood them, one can understand the moral problems posed by V. Rasputin. They manifest themselves in the tragedy of a woman, and in the unjustified act of her husband. When reading the story, it is important to trace how in the "natural" Nastya, who finds herself in a tragic situation, a person is born with a heightened sense of guilt towards people, and in Guskov, the animal instinct of self-preservation suppresses everything human.

The story "Live and Remember" begins with the loss of an ax in a bathhouse. This detail immediately sets an emotional tone for the narrative, anticipates its dramatic intensity, carries a distant reflection of the tragic finale. The ax is the weapon used to kill the calf. Unlike Guskov's mother, who was angry at people and lacked even a maternal instinct, Nastya immediately guessed who took the ax: "... suddenly Nastya's heart skipped a beat: who would it occur to someone else to look under the floorboard." From this "suddenly" everything changed in her life.

It is very important that her instinct, instinct, animal nature prompted her to guess about the return of her husband: “Nastya sat on a bench by the window and sensitively, like an animal, began to smell the bath air ... She was like in a dream, moving almost gropingly and not feeling neither tension nor fatigue during the day, but she did everything exactly as she planned ... Nastya sat in complete darkness, barely distinguishing the window, and felt like a small, unfortunate animal in a daze.

The meeting, which the heroine had been waiting for three and a half years, every day imagining what she would be, turned out to be "thieves' and creepy from the very first minutes and from the very first words." Psychologically, the author very accurately describes the state of the woman during the first meeting with Andrey: “Nastya could hardly remember herself. feelings, and when a person exists as if not his own, as if connected from the outside, emergency life. She continued to sit, as in a dream, when you see yourself only from the outside and you can’t dispose of yourself, but only wait for what will happen next. All this the meeting turned out to be too false, powerless, dreaming in a bad oblivion, which will sink away with the first light. Nastya, not yet understanding, not realizing this with her mind, felt like a criminal in front of people. She came on a date with her husband like a crime. The beginning inner struggle, which is not yet realized by her, is due to the confrontation of two principles in her - the animal instinct ("little animal") and the moral one. In the future, the struggle of these two principles in each of Rasputin's heroes takes them to different poles: Nastya approaches the highest group of Tolstoy's heroes with a spiritual and moral beginning, Andrei Guskov - to the lowest.

Still not realizing everything that happened, not yet knowing what way she and Andrey would find a way out, Nastya, quite unexpectedly for herself, subscribes to a loan for two thousand: “Maybe she wanted to pay off her man with bonds ... It seems that she didn’t think about him at that time, But after all, someone could think for her." If Guskov’s animal nature breaks out of his subconscious in the war (“a bestial, insatiable appetite” in the infirmary), then in Nastya unconsciously, the voice of conscience speaks, the moral instinct.

Nastya lives so far only with a feeling, pitying Andrei, close, dear, and at the same time feeling that he is a stranger, incomprehensible, not the one whom she escorted to the front. She lives in the hope that over time everything will definitely end well, you just have to wait, be patient. She understands that Andrei alone cannot bear his guilt. "She's too much for him. So what now - give up on him?"

Now let's turn to Guskov. When the war began, "Andrey was taken in the very first days," and "during the three years of the war, Guskov managed to fight in a ski battalion, and in a reconnaissance company, and in a howitzer battery." He "adapted to the war - he had nothing else to do. He did not climb ahead of others, but he also did not hide behind other people's backs. Among the scouts, Guskov was considered a reliable comrade. He fought like everyone else - no better and no worse."

The animal nature in Guskovo during the war openly revealed itself only once: "... in the infirmary, he, deaf, had a bestial, insatiable appetite." After Guskov was wounded in the summer of 1944 and spent three months in a Novosibirsk hospital, he deserted without receiving the leave he had hoped for. The author openly speaks about the causes of the crime: "He was afraid to go to the front, but more than this fear was resentment and anger at everything that brought him back to the war, not allowing him to go home."

Involuntary resentment at everything that remained in place, from which he was torn off and for which he had to fight, did not pass for a long time. And the more he looked, the more clearly and irremediably he noticed how calmly and indifferently the Angara flows towards him, how indifferently, not noticing him, they glide past the shore on which he spent all his years - they glide, leaving for another life and for others. people, to what will come to replace him. He was offended: why so soon?

Thus, the author himself identifies four feelings in Guskov: resentment, anger, loneliness and fear, and fear is far from the main reason for desertion. All this lies on the surface of the text, but in its depths there is something else that is revealed later, in the "mutual", "prophetic" dream of Andrei and Nastya.

The heroes of Rasputin had a dream about how Nastya repeatedly came to Andrey at the front line during the night and called him home: “Why are you stuck here? I'm tossing and turning, but you don't understand in any way: no and no. I want to give a hint, but I can't. You're angry with me, you're chasing me. But I don't remember how it was the last time. one night, I suppose, and dreamed of both. Maybe my soul visited you. That's why everything fits together.

"Natural man" Guskov for two years did not respond to the call of nature itself in the person of Nasten and honestly fought, obeying the moral laws - duty and conscience. And now, overwhelmed with resentment and anger at the "hospital authorities", who unfairly refused him leave ("Is it right, fair? He would only have one - the only day to go home, calm his soul - then he is again ready for anything"), Guskov turns out to be in the power of natural instincts - self-preservation and procreation. Suppressing the voice of conscience and a sense of duty to people, to the Motherland, he arbitrarily goes home. Guskov cannot resist this call of nature, which is also reminiscent of the sanctity of a person’s natural duty: “Let anything now, even tomorrow into the ground, but if it’s true, if it remains after me ... Well, my blood went on, it didn’t end, didn’t dry up, didn’t wither, but I thought, I thought: the end is on me, everything, the last one, ruined the family. And he will begin to live, he will pull the thread further. then Nastya! You are my Mother of God!"

In the mutual dream of the heroes of Rasputin, two plans can be distinguished: the first is the call of nature. The complexity, not the obviousness of this is due to the fact that the instinct of self-preservation (fear) declares itself in full voice and is realized by Guskov himself (by the end of the war, "the hope of surviving grew more and more, and fear approached more and more often"), and the instinct of procreation acts subconsciously, as a decree of fate. The second plan is prophetic, as a harbinger of the tragic ending of the story (“Still hoping for something, Nastya continued to inquire: “And not once, not once have you seen me with a child after that? Remember it well.” - “No, not once ").

"Sharp eyes and ears every minute," secretly, on wolf paths, returning home, he declares to Nastya at the very first meeting: "I'll tell you right away, Nastya. Not a single soul should know that I'm here. Tell someone - If I kill you, I have nothing to lose." He repeats the same during the last meeting: “But remember again: if you tell someone that I was, I’ll get it.

rasputin lesson french moral

The moral principle in Guskov (conscience, guilt, repentance) is completely replaced by the bestial desire to survive at any cost, the main thing is to exist, even as a wolf, but to live. And now he has already learned to howl like a wolf

("Come in handy good people frighten," Guskov thought with malicious, vindictive pride.

The internal struggle in Guskovo - the struggle between the "wolf" and the "man" - is painful, but its outcome is predetermined. "Do you think it's easy for me to hide like a beast here? Eh? Easy? When they fight there, when I also have to be there, and not here! I learned to howl like a wolf here!"

War leads to a tragic conflict between the social and the natural in man himself. War often cripples the souls of people who are weak in spirit, kills the human in them, awakening base instincts. The war turns Guskov, good worker and a soldier, who "among the scouts was considered a reliable comrade," into a "wolf", into a forest beast? This transformation is painful. "All this is war, all of it - he again began to make excuses and conjure. - It was not enough for her to be killed, crippled, she still needed people like me. Where did she fall from? - all at once? - a terrible, terrible punishment. And me, beckoning there too , in this hell, - not for a month, not for two - for years. Where was the urine to take to endure it longer? As much as I could, I grew strong, and not immediately, I brought my benefit. Why should I be equated with others, with cursed, who started with harm and ended with harm? Why are we destined for the same punishment? Why are we destined for the same punishment? It is even easier for them, at least their soul does not toil, but then, when it is still curled up, it will become insensible ...

Guskov clearly understands that "fate has turned him into a dead end, from which there is no way out." Anger at people and resentment for themselves demanded a way out, there was a desire to annoy those who live openly, without fear and without hiding, and Guskov steals fish without extreme necessity, after sitting on a block of wood, rolls it out onto the road ("someone will have to clean "), hardly copes with the "fierce desire" to set fire to the mill ("I so wanted to leave a hot memory for myself"). Finally, on the first of May, he brutally kills the calf, kills it with a butt on the head. Involuntarily, you begin to feel a sense of pity for the bull, which “roared from resentment and fear ... exhausted and overworked, overstrained by memory, understanding, instinct for everything that was in it. In this scene, in the form of a calf, nature itself opposes criminals, murderers and threatens them retribution.

If in Guskov the struggle between the “wolf” and the “soul”, in which “everything burned to the ground”, ends with the victory of the animal nature, then in Nastya, the “soul” declares itself in full voice. For the first time, a feeling of guilt before people, alienation from them, the realization that "he has no right to speak, cry, or sing along with everyone" came to Nastya when the first front-line soldier, Maxim Vologzhin, returned to Atomanovka. From that moment on, painful torments of conscience, a conscious sense of guilt in front of people do not let Nastya go day or night. And the day when the whole village rejoiced, marking the end of the war, seemed to Nastya the last, "when she can be with people." Then she is left alone "in a hopeless, deaf void", "and from that moment Nastya seemed to be touched by her soul."

The heroine of Rasputin, accustomed to living with simple, understandable feelings, comes to the realization of the infinite complexity of man. Nastya now constantly thinks about how to live, for what to live. She fully realizes "how embarrassing it is to live after everything that happened. But Nastya, despite her willingness to go to hard labor with her husband, turns out to be powerless to save him, unable to convince him to come out and obey people. Guskov knows too well: while the war is going on, according to the harsh laws of the time, he will not be forgiven, they will be shot.

Hiding her husband, a deserter, Nastya realizes this as a crime against people: “The court is close, close - is it human, the Lord’s, is it your own? - but close.

Nothing in this world is given for free. " Nastya is ashamed to live, it hurts to live.

"Whatever I see, whatever I hear, it only hurts my heart."

Nastya says: “It’s a shame ... does anyone understand how shameful it is to live when another in your place could live better? How can you look people in the eye after that? Even the child that Nastya is waiting for cannot keep her in this life, because and "a child will be born to shame, from which he will not be separated all his life. And the parental sin will go to him, a severe, heart-rending sin - where to go with him? And he will not forgive, he will curse them - on business.

It is conscience that determines the moral core of the Russian national character. For the unbelieving Nastya, as shown above, everything is determined by the voice of conscience, she no longer has the strength to further fight for the salvation of her husband, but her child, and she succumbs to the temptation to end everything at once and, thus, commits a crime against an unborn child .

Semyonovna was the first to suspect her, and, having learned that Nastya was expecting a child, her mother-in-law kicked her out of the house. But Nastya "did not take offense at Semyonovna - what is there, really, to be offended? This was to be expected. And she was not looking for justice, but at least a little bit of sympathy from her mother-in-law, her silent and things guess that the child against whom she took up arms , is not a stranger to her. What then can you count on people for?

And the people themselves, tired and exhausted by the war, did not regret Nastya.

“Now, when there was no need to hide the stomach, when everyone, who was not lazy, poked his eyes at him and drank, as if with sweetness, his revealed secret.

No one, not a single person, not even Liza Vologzhina, who was on the board, cheered:

they say, hold on, spit on the talk, the child you give birth to is yours, not someone else's child, you should take care of it, and people, give it time, will calm down. Why should she complain about people? “She left them herself.” And when people began to follow Nastya at night and “didn’t let her see Andrei, she was completely lost; fatigue passed into a welcome, vengeful despair. She didn’t want anything anymore, she didn’t hope for anything, an empty, disgusting heaviness settled in her soul.

In the story of V.G. Rasputin's "Live and Remember", as in no other work, moral problems are reflected: this is the problem of the relationship between husband and wife, man and society, and the ability of a person to behave in critical situation. The stories of V. Rasputin really help people to understand and realize their problems, to see their shortcomings, since the situations analyzed in his books are very close to life.

Moral problems are also devoted to one of the last works of V. Rasputin - this is the story "Women's Conversation", published in 1995 in the magazine "Moscow". In it, the writer showed the meeting of two generations - "granddaughters and grandmothers."

Vika's granddaughter is a tall, full-bodied girl of sixteen years old, but with a childish mind: "the head lags behind," as the grandmother says, "asks questions where it would be time to live with the answer," "if you say, you will do it, if you don't say, you won't guess."

"Hidden some kind of girl, quiet"; in the city "contacted with the company, and with the company at least to the devil on the horns." Dropped out of school, started disappearing from home.

And something happened that should have happened: Vika became pregnant and had an abortion. Now she was sent to her grandmother for "re-education", "until she came to her senses." To better understand the heroine, you need to give her a speech characteristic. Vika - "some kind of secret", - says the author himself, this is noticeable in her speech. She speaks little, her sentences are short and resolute. Often speaks reluctantly. There are many in her speech. modern words: leader - a person who is not dependent on anyone; chastity - strict morality, purity, virginity; rhyme - consonance of poetic lines; purposefulness - having a clear goal. But they understand these words with their grandmother in different ways.

Grandmother says this about modern life: "A man is driven out into some cold, ventilated expanse, and an unknown force drives him, drives him, not letting him stop." And this one modern girl finds himself in a new environment, in a remote village. The village appears to be small. The houses have stove heating, my grandmother does not have a TV, you have to go to the well for water.

Electricity is not always in the house, although nearby is the Bratsk hydroelectric power station. People go to bed early. Vika was sent here because they wanted to "tear" her away from the company. Maybe they hoped that the grandmother would be able to make Vika look at life in a new way. So far, no one has been able to pick up the keys to Vicki's soul. Yes, and there was no time to do it to others in the general race.

We learn about grandmother Natalya that she lived a long, difficult, but happy life. At the age of eighteen, she "changed the old dress into a new one" and in a hungry year she got married unmarried. Grandmother Natalya believes that she was lucky with her husband: Nikolai is a hard man, it was easy for her to live behind him: "You know that there will be on the table, and in the yard, and support for the children." Nicholas loved his wife. He dies in the war, having ordered his front-line friend Semyon to patronize Natalya. For a long time Natalya did not agree to marry Semyon, but then she realized that he needed her, that without her "he would not last long." "Humbled up and called him." "He came and became the master." It seems that Natalia was happy. After all, she speaks so well about her second husband Semyon: “When he touched me ... he fingered string after string, petal after petal.

In the speech of grandmother Natalya there are many such words that she pronounces in her own way, putting into them deep meaning. There are many expressions in her speech, filled with knowledge of life, human relationships. "Only - only scratching at the door, where people live, and already tired!" Spending - to spend, to give away part of oneself. Chastity is wisdom, wisdom. Purposeful - this is the most unfortunate woman, like a hound dog, who drives through life, noticing anyone and nothing.

“Smiling,” says Natalya about herself. “The sun loved to play in me, I already knew this about myself and gained more sun.”

And these women of different ages, living under the same roof, blood relatives start a conversation about life. The initiative is in the hands of grandmother Natalia. And throughout their conversation, we understand Vicki's condition. She says: "Everything is tired ...". In her own way, Vika worries about herself, she understands, apparently, that she did not do the right thing. And he doesn't know how to. Vika speaks of purposefulness, but she herself has no goals and interest in life. Something is clearly broken in her, and she does not know how to live on.

It is important for grandmother to hear from Vika the answer to her question: "... did you have a property or a sin? How do you look at yourself?"

Grandma would never forgive a conscious sin. With every sin, a person loses a part of himself. No wonder the grandmother says: "I took on such an expense!"

Natalya wants her granddaughter to gather herself, save herself bit by bit, prepare herself for marriage. Natalia has her own idea of ​​a bride. "Affectionate, but clean, but sonorous, without a single crack, what a white, but looking, but sweet." We also learn about what it means to love in the view of Natalia and what was their love with Semyon. “Love was like not to be, but different, early, she didn’t collect pieces like a beggar. I thought: he’s no match for me. Why should I poison myself, fool him, why make people laugh, if we are not a couple? I didn’t want to take a visit to my place, it’s not for me, but for a stable life you need an equal. There was respect for each other, attention, care, a common goal, pity, sympathy - this was the basis of life, it was "early" love.

This conversation is important for both: the grandmother, talking about herself, conveys her life experience, views on life, supports her granddaughter, instills confidence in her, creates the basis for later life- I will stand, as she says, herself.

And for Vika, this conversation is the beginning of a new life, the realization of her "I", her purpose on earth. The conversation touched on Vika, "the girl was restlessly falling asleep - her shoulders were twitching, at the same time trembling, left hand, the face of the nest, stroked her stomach, her breath then began to part, then turned into smooth, inaudible strokes.

Reading this story, together with the characters, you experience a difficult life situation and you understand that you need to prepare yourself for a “sustainable” life, as Natalya says, because without “sustainability it will wear you down so much that you won’t find the ends.”

The last work of V. Rasputin is the story "To the same land". It, like other stories, is devoted to the moral problems of modern society. And throughout the work there is a problem dedicated to the relationship of children to their mothers. V. Rasputin reveals to us the destinies of the people on the example of Pashuta's mother. The general background of life is a village that personifies antiquity, the Lena and Angora expanses, where THEY exercise their will, finally destroying all age-old foundations, Rasputin tells with bitter humor about the gigantic deeds of the authorities who crushed everything under them.

"The village still stood under the sky" (it no longer stood under the state). There was no collective farm, no state farm, no shop. "They let the village go to full heavenly freedom." In winter everything was covered with snow. The men worked. And they drank, they drank.

"Nothing was needed." And the village? Abandoned, she is waiting for someone to give herself to, who would bring bread. The complete absence of human rights is noteworthy. Either one or the other rules, but in the name of what? The authorities have brought life to the point of absurdity. The village has become a poor consumer, waiting for someone to bring bread.

This is a village. A village that has lost its essence. The authorities, trumpeting the greatness of the communist construction projects, brought the village to such a state. And the city? His characterization is given in the form of a newspaper article. Aluminum plant, timber industry complex. All of the above creates the appearance of a sprawling monster that has no boundaries. The author uses the metaphor "pit" taken from Platonov.

The main character of the story is Pashuta. She goes to Stas Nikolaevich, who was supposed to make the coffin of her mother (the village is located thirty kilometers from the city, but it is within the city limits. Sweep in all directions. Chaos and lawlessness. And not only on Earth). They built the city of the future, but built a "slow-acting chamber" under open sky. This metaphor enhances the sound of the work. All living things die. The gas chamber has no boundaries, just like the city. This is genocide against the whole nation.

So, great country Communism creates an environment where a conflict arose between the people and the government. In the story, the conflict is local, but its central power is felt everywhere. The author does not give them either a name, or a surname, or a position. They are a multiple faceless mass, irresponsible in relation to the fate of the people. They crave dachas, cars, deficits, and they stay in the Angora region until they receive seniority, and then they go south, where houses are built for them in advance. When the construction was over, there were none of the "temporaries" left. Their image brings misfortune to the people.

Pashuta devoted her whole life to working in the canteen, she is far from politics and power. She is tormented in search of an answer and does not find it. She herself wants to bury her mother, but does not want to go to THEM. She has no one. She tells Stas Nikolaevich about this. Pashuta is firmly convinced that she is in the arms of fate, but she has not lost the thread of common sense, her soul is working. She is a romantic, uprooted from the earth. She allowed herself to be introduced into the ranks of the builders of communism. At the age of seventeen, she ran away to a construction site to cook cabbage soup and fry flounder for the voracious builders of communism "towards the morning dawn along the Angara ..." Pashuta was left without a husband early, lost the opportunity to be a mother, lost contact with her mother. Left alone - alone.

She got old early. And then in the story there is a description of the whirlwind, the rhythm of her life. Therefore, naturally, the reader does not have a portrait of Pashenka, Pasha, but immediately of Pashut, as if there was no one to look at her, peer into her. She peers into herself, into an uncurtained mirror after the death of her mother, finds "traces of some kind of slovenliness - a woman's mustache." Further, the author writes that she was kind, disposed towards people, pretty ... with a sensual protruding lip ... In her youth, her body was not an object of beauty, it was filled with spiritual beauty. And now she could be mistaken for a heavy drinker woman.

Her physical weakness is emphasized - not walking, swollen legs, she hobbled to the house, walked with a heavy tread. Pashuta did not smoke, but her voice was rough. Became overweight figure changed character. Goodness was somewhere in the depths, but it cannot break out. The life of Pashuta was illuminated by the granddaughter of Tanka from her adopted daughter. The author is convinced how important it was for Pashuta to care and love. She did not manage to comprehend this secret in her whole life. “She didn’t want to give her ice cream, but her soul ...” (about Tanka). She rejoices, and Pashuta kicks her out to her friend. Pashuta is smart and understands her inferiority. Their long-term relationship with Stas Nikolaevich is breaking up. She was ashamed to show her figure. What happened to this woman? We see her torn from her roots, found herself in a "pit", homeless, rootless. Femininity, softness, charm disappear. Her life path is very simple: from the head of the dining room to dishwashers, from satiety to handouts from someone else's table. There is a process of loss by a woman of the properties that nature endowed her with. The loner is plowed already in the second generation. She shows firmness and conscience, which helps her to survive, fulfills her daughter's duty to the limit of her strength and capabilities.

If Pashuta has an aversion to power at the household level, then he has it on a state scale "They took us with meanness, shamelessness, rudeness." Against this weapon there is no: "I built an aluminum plant with these hands." His appearance also changed. Pashuta noticed on his face "a smile that looked like a scar. A person of another world, another circle goes the same way as she." They both reached the chaos in which they remain.

The author hints at the power of money, at its mercy, giving a piece of bread, at the depreciation of human life. At the behest of the author, Stas Nikolaevich says: "They took us with the 'meanness, shamelessness, swagger' of the authorities."

In the late 70s - early 80s, Rasputin turned to journalism ("Kulikovo Field", "Abstract Voice", "Irkutsk", etc.) and stories. The magazine "Our Contemporary" (1982 - No. 7) published the stories "Live for a century - love a century", "What can I tell a crow?", "I can't - at ...", "Natasha", opening new page V creative biography writer. Unlike the early stories, which focused on the fate or a separate episode of the hero's biography, the new ones are distinguished by confession, attention to the subtlest and most mysterious movements of the soul, which rushes about in search of harmony with itself, the world, the Universe.

In these works, as in early stories and stories, the reader sees artistic features inherent in all the work of V.G. Rasputin: journalistic intensity of the narration; internal monologues of the hero, inseparable from the voice of the author; appeal to the reader; conclusions-generalizations and conclusions-assessments; rhetorical questions, comments.

Lesson Objectives:

Lesson equipment: portrait of V.G. Rasputin

Methodical methods:

During the classes

I. Teacher's word

Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin (1937) - one of the recognized masters of " village prose”one of those who continue the traditions of Russian classical prose, primarily from the point of view of moral and philosophical problems. Rasputin explores the conflict between a wise world order, a wise attitude to the world and an unwise, fussy, thoughtless existence. In his stories “Money for Mary” (1967), “Deadline” (1970), “Live and Remember” (1975), “Farewell to Matera” (1976), “Fire” (1985), anxiety for the fate of the motherland is heard. The writer is looking for ways to solve problems in best features Russian national character, in patriarchy. Poetizing the past, the writer sharply poses the problems of the present, asserting eternal values, calling for their preservation. In his works, there is pain for his country, for what is happening to it.

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“Lesson 4. Actual and eternal problems in the story of V.G. Rasputin "Farewell to Matera"

Lesson 4

in the story of V.G. Rasputin "Farewell to Matera"

Lesson Objectives: give a brief overview of V.G. Rasputin, pay attention to the variety of problems that the writer poses; to form an indifferent attitude to the problems of their country, a sense of responsibility for its fate.

Lesson equipment: portrait of V.G. Rasputin

Methodical methods: teacher's lecture; analytical conversation.

During the classes

I. Teacher's word

Valentin Grigoryevich Rasputin (1937) is one of the recognized masters of "village prose", one of those who continue the traditions of Russian classical prose, primarily from the point of view of moral and philosophical problems. Rasputin explores the conflict between a wise world order, a wise attitude to the world and an unwise, fussy, thoughtless existence. In his stories “Money for Mary” (1967), “Deadline” (1970), “Live and Remember” (1975), “Farewell to Matera” (1976), “Fire” (1985), anxiety for the fate of the motherland is heard. The writer is looking for ways to solve problems in the best features of the Russian national character, in patriarchy. Poetizing the past, the writer sharply poses the problems of the present, asserting eternal values, calling for their preservation. In his works, there is pain for his country, for what is happening to it.

In the story “Farewell to Matera”, Rasputin starts from an autobiographical fact: the village of Ust-Uda in the Irkutsk region, where he was born, subsequently fell into the flood zone and disappeared. In the story, the writer reflected the general trends that are dangerous primarily from the point of view of the moral health of the nation.

II. Analytical conversation

What problems does Rasputin pose in the story "Farewell to Matera"?

(These are both eternal and modern problems. Environmental problems are especially relevant now. This applies not only to our country. All of humanity is concerned about the question: what are the consequences of scientific and technological progress, of civilization as a whole? Will progress lead to the physical death of the planet, to the disappearance life? Global problems, raised by writers (not only V. Rasputin), are studied by scientists, are taken into account by practitioners. It is now clear to everyone that the main task of mankind is to preserve life on earth. Problems of protection of nature, protection environment are inextricably linked with the problems of the "ecology of the soul". It is important who each of us feels like: a temporary worker who wants a fatter piece of life, or a person who recognizes himself as a link in an endless chain of generations, who does not have the right to break this chain, who feels gratitude for what past generations have done and responsibility for the future. Therefore, the problems of relations between generations, the problems of preserving traditions, the search for the meaning of human existence are so important. In the story of Rasputin, the problems of contradictions between the urban and rural ways, the problems of the relationship between the people and the authorities are also posed. The writer initially puts spiritual problems in the foreground, inevitably entailing material problems.)

What is the meaning of the conflict in Rasputin's story?

(The conflict in the story "Farewell to Matera" belongs to the category of eternal: it is a conflict of the old and the new. The laws of life are such that the new inevitably wins. Another question: how and at what cost? Sweeping and destroying the old, at the cost moral degradation or taking the best of the old and transforming it?

“The new in the story set the goal of breaking the old age-old foundations of life in half. The beginning of this turning point was laid back in the years of the revolution. The revolution gave rights to people who, because of their striving for a new life, did not want and could not appreciate what was created before them. The heirs of the revolution, first of all, destroy, create injustice, show their short-sightedness and narrow-mindedness. According to a special decree, people are deprived of houses built by their ancestors, goods acquired by labor, and the very opportunity to work on the land is taken away. Here, the age-old Russian question of land is solved simply. It does not consist in who should own the land, but in the fact that this land is simply withdrawn from economic circulation, destroyed. Thus, the conflict acquires a socio-historical meaning.)

How does the conflict develop in the story? What images are opposed?

(main character story - the old Daria Pinigina, the patriarch of the village, who has a "strict and fair" character. "Weak and suffering" are drawn to her, she personifies the people's truth, she is the bearer of folk traditions, memory of ancestors. Her house is last stronghold of the "inhabited" world as opposed to the "non-thinking, undead" that the peasants carry with them from the outside. The peasants were sent to burn the houses from which people had already been evicted, to destroy the trees, to clean up the cemetery. They, strangers, do not feel sorry for what is dear to Daria. These people are just a blunt instrument, cutting through the living without pity. Such is the chairman of the former "village council, and now the council in the new village" Vorontsov. He is a representative of the authorities, which means he is responsible for what is happening. However, responsibility is shifted to higher authorities that operate throughout the country. A good goal - the industrial development of the region, the construction of a power plant - is achieved at a price that is immoral to pay. The destruction of the village is hypocritically covered up by words about the welfare of the people.)

What is the drama of the conflict?

(The drama of the conflict is that Daria, her loving, caring attitude towards Matera, is opposed by her own son and grandson - Pavel and Andrey. They move to the city, move away from peasant image life, are indirectly involved in the destruction of his native village: Andrey is going to work at a power plant.)

What does Daria see as the reasons for what is happening?

(The reasons for what is happening, according to Daria, who is watching the destruction of Matera with pain, lie in the soul of a person: a person is “confused, completely overplayed”, imagines himself the king of nature, thinks that he has ceased to be “small”, “Christian”, he has too much self-conceit Daria's reasoning is only seemingly naive. in simple words, but, in fact, very deep. She believes that God is silent, "tired of asking people," and reigned on earth devilry". People, Daria reflects, have lost their conscience, but main covenant great-grandfathers - “to have a conscience and not to endure from conscience.”)

How is the moral ideal of a person embodied in the image of Daria?

(Daria is the embodiment of conscience, folk morality, its keeper. For Daria, the value of the past is undoubted: she refuses to move from her native village, at least until the “graves” are transferred. She wants to take away the “graves ... native "to a new place, she wants to save from blasphemous destruction not only the graves, but also the very conscience. For her, the memory of her ancestors is sacred. Wise aphorism her words sound: “The truth is in memory. He who has no memory has no life.")

How is the moral beauty of Daria shown?

(Rasputin shows the moral beauty of Daria through the attitude of people towards her. They go to her for advice, they are drawn to her for understanding, warmth. This is the image of a righteous woman, without whom “the village cannot stand” (recall the heroine of Solzhenitsyn from the story “Matryona Dvor”).)

Through what is the image of Daria revealed?

(The depth of the image of Daria is also revealed in communication with nature. At the heart of the worldview of the heroine lies the pantheism characteristic of the Russian person, the awareness of the inextricable, organic connection between man and nature.)

What is the role of Daria's speech?

(The speech characteristic of the heroine occupies a large place in the story. These are Daria's reflections, and her monologues, and dialogues, which gradually develop into a simple but harmonious system of people's views on life, ideas about life and a person's place in it.)

We read and comment on the key scenes that reveal the image of Daria: the scene in the cemetery, the argument with Andrei (Chapter 14), the scene of farewell to the hut, with the House.

Teacher's word.

“I have always been fascinated by images. ordinary women, distinguished by selflessness, kindness, the ability to understand another, ”- this is how Rasputin wrote about his heroines. The strength of the characters of the writer's favorite heroes is in wisdom, in the people's world outlook, and people's morality. Such people set the tone, the intensity of the spiritual life of the people.

How does the philosophical plan of the conflict manifest itself in the story?

(A private conflict - the destruction of the village and an attempt to defend, save the native, rises to the philosophical - the opposition of life and death, good and evil. This gives special tension to the action. Life desperately resists attempts to kill it: fields and meadows bring a bountiful harvest, they are full of living sounds - laughter, songs, the chirping of mowers. Smells, sounds, colors become brighter, reflect the inner uplift of the heroes. People who have long left their native village feel at home again, in this life.")

(Rasputin uses one of the traditional symbols of life - a tree. Old larch - "royal foliage" - is a symbol of the power of nature. Neither fire, nor an ax, nor a modern tool - a chainsaw - can cope with it.

There are many traditional characters in the story. However, sometimes they take on a new sound. The image of spring does not mark the beginning of flowering, not awakening (“greenery blazed again on the ground and trees, the first rains fell, swifts and swallows flew in”), but the last flash of life, the end of “an endless series of days of Matera - after all, very soon the Angara at the behest of the builders of the power plant flood the earth with water.

The image of the House is symbolic. He is depicted as spiritual, alive, feeling. Before the inevitable fire, Daria cleans the House, as a dead person is cleaned before a funeral: she bleaches, washes, hangs clean curtains, heats the stove, cleans the corners with fir branches, prays all night, “guilty and humbly saying goodbye to the hut.” With this image is connected the image of the Master - the spirit, brownie Matera. On the eve of the flood, his farewell voice is heard. tragic ending storytelling is a feeling of the end of the world: the characters who are the last on the island feel "lifeless", abandoned in the open void. The feeling of otherworldliness reinforces the image of the fog in which the island is hidden: All around was only water and fog and nothing but water and fog.

The main character appears to the reader already in the title. "Matera" is both the name of the village and the island on which it stands (this image is also associated with Deluge, and with Atlantis), and the image of mother earth, but the metaphorical name of Russia, the native country, where “from edge to edge ... there was enough ... and expanse, and wealth, and beauty, and wildness, and every creature in pairs ".)

III. We listen to messages on individual tasks(given in advance): the image of fire (fire) - chapters 8, 18, 22; the image of "leaf" - chapter 19; the image of the "Master" - chapter 6; the image of water.

IV. Lesson summary

Rasputin is worried not only for the fate of the Siberian village, but also for the fate of the whole country, of the whole people, worries about the loss moral values, traditions, memory. Heroes sometimes feel the meaninglessness of existence: “Why look for some special, higher truth and service, when the whole truth is that there is no use from you now and there will be no later ...” But hope still prevails: “Life is for that she and life, in order to continue, she will endure everything and be accepted everywhere, albeit on a bare stone and in a shaky quagmire ... ”It seems life-affirming symbolic image grain growing through the chaff, "blackened straw". A person, Rasputin believes, "cannot be angry", he is "on the edge of a centuries-old wedge" to which "there is no end." The people, as the writer shows, demand "more and more impatient and furious" from each new generation, so that it does not "leave without hope and future" the entire "tribe" of people. Despite the tragic ending of the story (the ending is open), the moral victory remains with responsible people, who bring good, keep the memory and maintain the fire of life in any conditions, under any trials.

Additional questions:

1. After the release of the story “Farewell to Matera”, the critic O. Salynsky wrote: “It is difficult to understand Rasputin when he also elevates the far from great breadth of views of his heroes to dignity. After all, it is difficult for them to see a person in a person who lives not even far away, but only on the other side of the Angara ... And Daria, although she has children and grandchildren, thinks only of the dead and considers with an unexpected for the heroes of V. Rasputin selfishness, that life ends on it ... Those who accept moving to a new place are portrayed as empty, immoral people by nature ... the truths that were revealed to Daria before the "end of the world" are quite trivial and are not folk wisdom, but its imitation.

Do you agree with the critic's opinion? What do you think he is right about, and what are you willing to argue with? Justify your answer.

2. What role do semantic antitheses play in the story: Matera - a new village on the right bank of the Angara; old men and women - people-"skinning". Continue with a series of contrasts.

3. What is the role of the landscape in the story?

4. By what means is the image of the House created in the story? In what works of Russian literature is this image found?

5. What do you see in common in the titles of Rasputin's works? What is the significance of the titles of his stories?

In the work of Valentin Rasputin moral quest occupy significant place. His works present this problem in all its breadth and versatility. The author himself is deeply moral person, as evidenced by his active social life. The name of this writer can be found not only among the fighters for the moral transformation of the fatherland, but also among the fighters for the environment. The work of Valentin Rasputin is quite often contrasted with "urban prose". And his action almost always takes place in the village, and the main characters (more precisely, the heroines) in most cases are “old old women”, and his sympathies are given not to the new, but to that ancient, primordial one that irrevocably passes away. All this is so and not so. Critic A. Bocharov rightly noted that between the "urban" Yu. Trifonov and the "village" V. Rasputin, for all their differences, there is much in common. Both seek the high morality of man, both are interested in the place of the individual in history. Both talk about the influence of a past life on the present and future, both do not accept individualists, "iron" supermen and spineless conformists who have forgotten about the highest purpose of man. In a word, both writers develop philosophical problems although they do it differently. The plot of each story by V. Rasputin is connected with trial, choice, death. The "Deadline" speaks of the dying days of the old woman Anna and her children gathered at the bedside of her dying mother. Death highlights the characters of all the characters, and especially the old woman herself. In "Live and Remember" the action is transferred to 1945, when the hero of the story Andrei Guskov did not want to die at the front, and he deserted. The writer focuses on moral and philosophical problems, who stood up both in front of Andrei himself, and - to an even greater extent - in front of his wife Nastena. "Farewell to Matera" describes the flooding for the needs of the hydroelectric power station of the island on which the old Siberian village is located, and last days old men and women left on it. Under these conditions, the question of the meaning of life, the relationship between morality and progress, death and immortality becomes more acute. In all three stories, V. Rasputin creates images of Russian women, bearers of the moral values ​​of the people, their philosophical worldview, literary successors of Sholokhov's Ilyinichna and Solzhenitsyn's Matryona, developing and enriching the image of a rural righteous woman. All of them have an inherent sense of great responsibility for what is happening, a sense of guilt without guilt, an awareness of their merging with the world, both human and natural. In all the stories of the writer, the old men and old women, the bearers of the people's memory, are opposed by those who, using the expression from "Farewell to Matera", can be called "skimming". Looking closely at contradictions modern world, Rasputin, like other "village" writers, sees the origins of lack of spirituality in social reality (a person was deprived of the feeling of a master, made a cog, an executor of other people's decisions). At the same time, the writer makes high demands on the personality itself. For him, individualism, neglect of such folk national values , as the House, labor, graves of ancestors, procreation. All these concepts acquire a material embodiment in the writer's prose and are described in a lyrical and poetic manner. From story to story, the tragedy of the author's worldview intensifies in Rasputin's work. The story "The Deadline", which V. Rasputin himself called the main of his books, touched on many moral problems, exposed the vices of society. In the work, V. Rasputin showed relationships within the family, raised the problem of respect for parents, which is very relevant in our time, revealed and showed the main wound of our time - alcoholism, raised the question of conscience and honor, which affected each hero of the story. The main character of the story is the old woman Anna, who lived with her son Mikhail. She was eighty years old. The only goal left in her life is to see all her children before her death and go to the next world with a clear conscience. Anna had many children. They all dispersed, but fate was pleased to bring them all together at a time when the mother was dying. Anna's children are typical representatives of modern society, people who are busy, have a family, a job, but for some reason very rarely remember their mother. Their mother suffered greatly and missed them, and when the time came to die, only for their sake she remained for a few more days in this world and she would have lived as long as she wanted, if only they were near. And she, already with one foot in the other world, managed to find the strength in herself to be reborn, to flourish, and all for the sake of her children. But what are they? And they solve their problems, and it seems that their mother does not really care, and if they are interested in her, it's only for decency. And they all live only for decency. Do not offend anyone, do not scold, do not say too much - all for decency, so as not worse than others. Each of them goes about his own business in difficult days for the mother, and the state of the mother worries them little. Mikhail and Ilya fell into drunkenness, Lusya walks, Varvara solves her problems, and none of them came up with the idea of ​​giving their mother more time, talking to her, just sitting next to them. All their concern for their mother began and ended with "semolina porridge", which they all rushed to cook. Everyone gave advice, criticized others, but no one did anything himself. From the very first meeting of these people, disputes and abuse begin between them. Lusya, as if nothing had happened, sat down to sew a dress, the men got drunk, and Varvara was even afraid to stay with her mother. And so the days passed: constant arguments and swearing, resentment against each other and drunkenness. This is how the children saw off their mother on her last journey, this is how they took care of her, this is how they cherished and loved her. They did not imbue the mother's state of mind, did not understand her, they only saw that she was getting better, that they had a family and a job, and that they needed to return home as soon as possible. They could not even say goodbye to their mother properly. Her children missed the "deadline" to fix something, ask for forgiveness, just be together, because now they are unlikely to get together again. In this story, Rasputin very well showed the relationship of the modern family and their shortcomings, which are clearly manifested at critical moments, revealed the moral problems of society, showed the callousness and selfishness of people, their loss of all respect and the usual feeling of love for each other. They, native people, are mired in anger and envy. They care only about their own interests, problems, only their own affairs. They do not even find time for close and dear people. They did not find time for the mother - the dearest person. For them, “I” comes first, and then everything else. Rasputin showed the impoverishment of the morality of modern people and its consequences. The very first story by Rasputin "Money for Mary". The plot of the first story is simple. So to say everyday life. An emergency occurred in a small Siberian village: the auditor discovered a big shortage in the seller of Maria's store. It is clear to the auditor and fellow villagers that Maria did not take a penny for herself, most likely becoming a victim of the accounting launched by her predecessors. But, fortunately for the saleswoman, the auditor turned out to be a sincere person and gave five days to pay off the shortage. Apparently, he took into account the illiteracy of the woman, and her disinterestedness, and most importantly, he took pity on the children. In this dramatic situation, human characters are especially clearly manifested. Maria's fellow villagers are holding a kind of mercy test. They are faced with a difficult choice: either help out their conscientious and always hardworking countrywoman by lending her money, or turn away, not notice the human misfortune, keeping their own savings. Money here becomes a kind of measure of human conscience. Rasputin's misfortune is not just a disaster. It is also a test of a person, a test that exposes the core of the soul. Here everything is highlighted to the bottom: both good and bad - everything is revealed without concealment. Such crisis psychological situations organize the dramaturgy of the conflict in this story and in other works of the writer. The alternation of light and shadows, good and evil creates the atmosphere of the work.

In Maria's family, money has always been treated simply. Husband Kuzma thought: "Yes - good - no - well, okay." For Kuzma, "money was patches that are put on the holes necessary for living." He could think about stocks of bread and meat - one cannot do without this, but thoughts about stocks of money seemed to him amusing, buffoonish, and he brushed them aside. He was content with what he had. That is why when trouble knocked on his house, Kuzma does not regret the accumulated wealth. He thinks about how to save his wife, the mother of his children. Kuzma promises his sons: “We will turn the whole earth upside down, but we will not give up our mother. We are five men, we can do it.” Mother here is a symbol of the bright and sublime, incapable of any meanness. Mother is life. Protecting her honor and her dignity is what matters to Kuzma, not money. But Stepanida has a completely different attitude to money. She is unbearable to part with a penny for a while. With difficulty gives money to help Maria and the director of the school Yevgeny Nikolaevich. Not a feeling of compassion for a fellow villager guides his act. He wants to strengthen his reputation with this gesture. He advertises his every step to the whole village. But mercy cannot coexist with rough calculation. Having begged fifteen rubles from his son, Grandfather Gordey is most afraid that Kuzma might not take such an insignificant amount. And he does not dare to offend the old man with a refusal. So grandmother Natalya readily takes out the money saved for her funeral. She didn't need to be persuaded or persuaded. "Maria is crying a lot?" she only asked. And in this question everything was expressed both compassion and understanding. I note here that it was from grandmother Natalya, who alone raised three children, who in her life never knew a moment of peace - everything is in business and everything is running, and the gallery of portraits of old Russian peasant women begins in Rasputin's stories: Anna Stepanovna and Mironikha from " Deadline”, Daria Pinigina and Katerina from “Farewell to Matera”. Understandably, the fear of judgment oppresses Maria and her loved ones. But Kuzma consoles himself with the fact that the court will sort it out fairly: “Now they are watching, so that it is not in vain. We didn't use the money, we don't need it." And in the word "NOW" is also a sign of change. The village has not forgotten how, after the war, because of a barrel of gasoline bought on the side, which was necessary for plowing, the chairman of the collective farm was sent to prison. The now banal metaphor “time is money” is realized by Rasputin, both literally and figuratively. Time is money - it's about trying to raise a thousand rubles. Time and money are already emerging social problems in the story. Yes, money has changed a lot both in the economy and in the psychology of the countryside. They evoked new needs, new habits. Grandfather Gordey, not without boasting, laments: “In my entire life, how many times I have held money in my hands - you can count it on your fingers, from an early age I got used to doing everything myself, to live on my labors. When necessary, I’ll put together a table and roll up wire rods. In the famine, in the thirty-third year, he also collected salt for brew on salt licks. Now it's all a shop and a shop, but before that we used to go to the shop twice a year. Everything was mine. And they lived, did not disappear. And now you can't take a step without money. Around money. Entangled in them. They forgot how to make things - how could everything be in the store if there was money. Well, the fact that “one cannot take a step” is a clear exaggeration. Money in rural life did not occupy such a strong position in her life as in the city. But about the loss of the universality of domestic peasant labor - right. It is also true that the current rural dweller can no longer rely only on his own, on his own hands. His well-being depends not only on the plot of land, but also on how things are going on the collective farm, on the service sector, on the store, on the same money. The connections of the peasant with the outside world, with society have become wider, branching. And Kuzma wants people to understand this invisible connection between themselves, so that they feel it in a good way, with their hearts. He expects that the village will treat his wife with the same concern that Maria showed to her fellow villagers. After all, it was not of her own free will that she stood behind the counter, refused, as if foreseeing trouble. How many sellers had been in the store before her, and rarely anyone escaped the court. And she agreed only because she took pity on the people: “People even had to travel twenty miles to Aleksandrovskoye for salt and matches.” Having accepted her restless household, the heroine of the story led him not in a state-owned way, but in a homely way. So that not for yourself, it would be convenient for others. And the buyers were not a faceless mass for her: they were all acquaintances, knew everyone by name. To whom she sold on credit, but she did not let drunkards with money on the threshold. “She liked to feel like a person without whom the village could not do,” - this feeling outweighed the fear of responsibility. The episodes showing Maria at work are unusually significant in the story: they reveal to us not self-satisfied, not ostentatious, but natural, true kindness and responsiveness. And when Kuzma listens on the train to the arguments of a certain local figure about form, about strictness, about directives, he mentally imagines his Maria or the innocently injured chairman of the collective farm, and his whole being rebels against this formal logic. And if Kuzma is not strong in a dispute, then only because he attaches the main importance not to the word, but to the deed. Perhaps that is why the hero's reaction to any false phrase, to pretense, to falsehood is so unmistakable. The conflict between true humanity and indifference gives rise to a constant dramatic tension in Money for Mary. It transforms into clashes of unselfishness and greed, moral frequency and cynicism, civic conscience and bureaucratic blindness. We understand how painful it is for Kuzma - a modest, shy person, accustomed to independence, who prefers to give rather than take - to be in the role of a petitioner. Rasputin conveys this psychological confusion to us with convincing authenticity: shame and pain, awkwardness and defenselessness. However, not only suffering accompanies the hero in his wanderings through the village. His soul not only cries, but is warmed by the warmth of living participation. The feeling of the "higher" as a moral law, which should unite everyone, hovers in Kuzma's "utopian" dreams. There, in touching night visions, Mary is saved from trouble by all the fabulously friendly rural "world", and only there money loses its power over all souls, retreating before deep human kinship and union. Kindness in "Money for Mary" is not an object of affection and admiration. This is a force that has an internal attraction, awakening in a person a thirst for beauty and perfection. The moral laws of our reality are such that indifference to people, to their fate is perceived as something shameful, unworthy. And although the selfish, acquisitive morality that has come out of the past has not yet completely disappeared and is capable of causing considerable damage, it is already forced to disguise itself, to hide its face. We do not know exactly how Maria's future will turn out, but one thing is clear, people like Kuzma, the chairman of the collective farm, the agronomist, grandfather Gordey will do everything possible to prevent trouble. Through the prism of dramatic circumstances, the writer was able to distinguish much of the new, bright that enters our modernity, determining the trends of its development.