Features of the creative manner of V. Garshin in the works included in children's reading. Lecture: Garshin's work and the traditions of Russian literature

The creations of Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin can be safely put on a par with the works of the greatest masters of Russian psychological prose - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov. Alas, the writer was not allowed to live a long life, the biography of V. M. Garshin ends at number 33. The writer was born in February 1855 and died in March 1888. His death turned out to be as fatal and tragic as the whole worldview, expressed in short and poignant stories. Acutely feeling the inescapability of evil in the world, the writer created works of amazing depth of psychological drawing, survived them with his heart and mind and could not protect himself from the monstrous disharmony that reigns in the social and moral life of people. Heredity, a special temperament, a drama experienced in childhood, a keen sense of personal guilt and responsibility for the injustices that are happening in reality - everything led to madness, the point at which, rushing down the flight of stairs, was put by V. M. Garshin himself.

Brief biography of the writer. Children's impressions

He was born in Ukraine, in the Ekaterinoslav province, on an estate with the lovely name Pleasant Valley. The father of the future writer was an officer, a participant. Mom was distinguished by progressive views, spoke several languages, read a lot and, undoubtedly, managed to inspire her son with the nihilistic moods characteristic of the sixties of the 19th century. The woman boldly broke with the family, passionately carried away by the revolutionary Zavadsky, who lived in the family as a teacher of older children. Of course, this event pierced the small heart of five-year-old Vsevolod with a “knife”. Partly because of this, the biography of V. M. Garshin is not without gloomy colors. The mother, who was in conflict with the father for the right to raise her son, took him to St. Petersburg and assigned him to the gymnasium. Ten years later, Garshin entered the Mining Institute, but did not receive a diploma, since his studies were interrupted by the Russian-Turkish war of 1877.

War experience

On the very first day, the student signed up as a volunteer and in one of the first battles fearlessly rushed to the attack, receiving a minor wound in the leg. Garshin received the rank of officer, but did not return to the battlefield. The impressionable young man was shocked by the pictures of the war, he could not come to terms with the fact that people blindly and ruthlessly exterminate each other. He did not return to the institute, where he began to study mining: the young man was imperiously attracted to literature. For some time he attended lectures as a volunteer at the philological faculty of St. Petersburg University, and then began to write stories. Anti-war sentiments and experienced shock resulted in works that instantly made the novice writer famous and desirable in many editions of that time.

Suicide

The mental illness of the writer developed in parallel with his work and social activities. He was treated in a psychiatric clinic. But soon after that (the biography of V. M. Garshin mentions this bright event), his life was illuminated by love. The writer regarded marriage with a novice physician Nadezhda Zolotilova as the best years of his life. By 1887, the writer's illness was aggravated by the fact that he was forced to leave the service. In March 1888, Garshin was going to the Caucasus. Things were already packed and the time was set. After a night tormented by insomnia, Vsevolod Mikhailovich suddenly went out onto the landing, went down one flight below and rushed down from a height of four floors. Literary images of suicide, which burned the soul in his short stories, were embodied terribly and irreparably. The writer was taken to the hospital with serious injuries, and six days later he died. The message about V. M. Garshin, about his tragic death, caused great public excitement.

To say goodbye to the writer at the "Literary bridges" of the Volkovskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg (now there is a museum-necropolis), people of various strata and estates gathered. The poet Pleshcheev wrote a lyrical obituary in which he expressed acute pain that Garshin - a man of a big pure soul - is no longer among the living. The literary heritage of the prose writer still disturbs the souls of readers and is the subject of research by philologists.

Creativity V. M. Garshin. Anti-militarist theme

The liveliest interest in the inner world of a person surrounded by merciless reality is the central theme in Garshin's writings. sincerity and empathy in the author's prose, undoubtedly, feeds on the source of great Russian literature, which since the time of the book "The Life of Archpriest Avvakum" has shown a deep interest in the "dialectics of the soul".

Garshin the narrator first appeared before the reading public with the work "Four Days". A soldier with broken legs lay on the battlefield for so long until his fellow soldiers found him. The story is told in the first person and resembles the stream of consciousness of a person exhausted by pain, hunger, fear and loneliness. He hears groans, but with horror he realizes that it is he who groans. Near him, the corpse of the enemy he killed is decomposing. Looking at this picture, the hero is horrified by the face on which the skin has burst, the grin of the skull is terribly bare - the face of war! Other stories breathe similar anti-war pathos: “Coward”, “Batman and Officer”, “From the Memoirs of Private Ivanov”.

Thirst for harmony

With the utmost frankness, the heroine of the story “The Incident” appears before the reader, earning a living with her body. The narrative is built in the same manner of confession, merciless introspection, characteristic of Garshin. A woman who has met her “support”, a man who unwittingly put her on the path of choosing between a “impudent, rouged cocotte” and “a lawful wife and ... a noble parent”, is trying to change her fate. Such an understanding of the theme of a harlot in Russian literature of the 19th century is perhaps the first time. In the story "Artists" Garshin embodied with renewed vigor the idea of ​​Gogol, who firmly believed that the emotional shock produced by art can change people for the better. In the short story "Meeting" the author shows how the cynical belief that all means are good to achieve well-being takes possession of the minds of the seemingly best representatives of the generation.

Happiness is in the sacrificial deed

The story "Red Flower" is a special event that marked the creative biography of V. M. Garshin. It tells the story of a madman who is sure that the "bloody" flower in the hospital garden contains all the lies and cruelty of the world, and the hero's mission is to destroy it. Having committed an act, the hero dies, and his deadly brightened face expresses "proud happiness." According to the writer, a person is not able to defeat the world's evil, but a high honor to those people who cannot put up with it and are ready to sacrifice their lives to overcome it.

All the works of Vsevolod Garshin - essays and short stories - were accumulated in just one volume, but the shock that his prose produced in the hearts of thoughtful readers is incredibly great.

The main stages of the life and work of Garshin. Russian writer, critic. Born on February 2 (14), 1855 in the estate of Pleasant Valley, Bakhmut district, Yekaterinoslav province. in a family of nobles, leading their ancestry from the Golden Horde Murza Gorshi. Father was an officer, participated in the Crimean War of 1853-1856. Mother, the daughter of a naval officer, took part in the revolutionary democratic movement of the 1860s. As a five-year-old child, Garshin experienced a family drama that influenced the character of the future writer. The mother fell in love with the teacher of older children P.V. Zavadsky, the organizer of a secret political society, and left the family. The father complained to the police, after which Zavadsky was arrested and exiled to Petrozavodsk on political charges. Mother moved to Petersburg to visit the exile. Until 1864, Garshin lived with his father on an estate near the city of Starobelsk, Kharkov Province, then his mother took him to St. Petersburg and sent him to a gymnasium. In 1874 Garshin entered the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. Two years later, he made his literary debut. His first satirical essay, The True History of the Ensky Zemstvo Assembly (1876), was based on memories of provincial life. In his student years, Garshin appeared in print with articles about the Wanderers. On the day Russia declared war on Turkey, April 12, 1877, Garshin volunteered to join the army. In August, he was wounded in a battle near the Bulgarian village of Ayaslar. Personal impressions served as material for the first story about the war, Four Days (1877), which Garshin wrote in the hospital. After its publication in the October issue of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine, Garshin's name became known throughout Russia. Having received a year's leave for injury, Garshin returned to St. Petersburg, where he was warmly received by the writers of the circle of "Notes of the Fatherland" - M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, G.I. Uspensky and others. retired and continued his studies as a volunteer at St. Petersburg University. The war left a deep imprint on the receptive psyche of the writer and his work. Simple in terms of plot and composition, Garshin's stories amazed readers with the extreme nakedness of the hero's feelings. Narration in the first person, using diary entries, attention to the most painful emotional experiences created the effect of the absolute identity of the author and the hero. In the literary criticism of those years, the phrase was often found: "Garshin writes with blood." The writer connected the extremes of the manifestation of human feelings: a heroic, sacrificial impulse and awareness of the abomination of war (Four days); a sense of duty, attempts to evade it and the realization of the impossibility of this (Coward, 1879). The helplessness of man in the face of the elements of evil, emphasized by tragic endings, became the main theme not only of the military, but also of Garshin's later stories. For example, the story Incident (1878) is a street scene in which the writer shows the hypocrisy of society and the wildness of the crowd in condemning a prostitute. Even portraying people of art, artists, Garshin did not find a solution to his painful spiritual searches. The story The Artists (1879) is imbued with pessimistic reflections on the uselessness of real art. His hero, the talented artist Ryabinin, gives up painting and leaves for the countryside to teach peasant children. In the story Attalea princeps (1880), Garshin symbolically expressed his worldview. The freedom-loving palm tree, in an effort to escape from the glass greenhouse, breaks through the roof and dies. Romantically referring to reality, Garshin tried to break the vicious circle of life's questions, but the painful psyche and complex character returned the writer to a state of despair and hopelessness. This condition was aggravated by the events taking place in Russia. In February 1880, the revolutionary terrorist I.O. Mlodetsky made an attempt on the life of the head of the Supreme Administrative Commission, Count M.T. Loris-Melikov. Garshin, as a well-known writer, obtained an audience with the count to ask for pardon for the criminal in the name of mercy and civil peace. The writer convinced the high dignitary that the execution of a terrorist would only lengthen the chain of useless deaths in the struggle between the government and the revolutionaries. After the execution of Mlodetsky, Garshin's manic-depressive psychosis worsened. The trip to the Tula and Oryol provinces did not help. The writer was placed in Oryol, and then in Kharkov and St. Petersburg psychiatric hospitals. After a relative recovery, Garshin did not return to creativity for a long time. In 1882, his collection Stories was published, which caused heated debate in the critics. Garshin was condemned for pessimism, the gloomy tone of his works. The Narodniks used the writer's work to show by his example how the modern intellectual is tormented and tormented by remorse. In August-September 1882, at the invitation of I.S. Turgenev, Garshin lived and worked on the story From the Memoirs of Private Ivanov (1883) in Spasskoye-Lutovinovo. In the winter of 1883, Garshin married N.M. Zolotilova, a student of medical courses, and entered the service as secretary of the office of the Congress of Railway Representatives. The writer spent a lot of mental strength on the story The Red Flower (1883), in which the hero, at the cost of his own life, destroys all evil, concentrated, as his inflamed imagination draws, in three poppy flowers growing in the hospital yard. In subsequent years, Garshin strove to simplify his narrative style. There were stories written in the spirit of Tolstoy's folk stories - The Tale of the Proud Haggai (1886), Signal (1887). The children's fairy tale The Traveling Frog (1887) was the writer's last work. Garshin died in St. Petersburg on March 24 (April 5), 1888.

Garshin "Red Flower" and "Artists". His allegorical stories "The Red Flower" became a textbook. a mentally ill person in a psychiatric hospital fights the world's evil in the form of dazzling red poppy flowers in a hospital flower bed. Characteristic for Garshin (and this is by no means only an autobiographical moment) is the image of the hero on the verge of insanity. It's not so much about illness, but about the fact that the writer's man is unable to cope with the inescapability of evil in the world. Contemporaries appreciated the heroism of Garshin's characters: they are trying to resist evil, despite their own weakness. It is madness that turns out to be the beginning of rebellion, since, according to Garshin, it is impossible to rationally comprehend evil: the person himself is involved in it - and not only by social forces, but also, which is no less, and perhaps more important, internal forces. He himself is partly the bearer of evil - sometimes contrary to his own ideas about himself. The irrational in the soul of a person makes him unpredictable, the splash of this uncontrollable element is not only a rebellion against evil, but evil itself. Garshin loved painting, wrote articles about it, supporting the Wanderers. He gravitated toward painting and in prose - not only making artists his heroes ("Artists", "Nadezhda Nikolaevna"), but he himself masterfully mastered verbal plasticity. Pure art, which Garshin almost identified with handicrafts, he contrasted with the closer realistic art, rooting for the people. Art that can touch the soul, disturb it. From art, he, a romantic at heart, requires a shock effect in order to hit the "clean, sleek, hated crowd" (Ryabinin's words from the story "Artists").

Garshin "Coward" and "Four days". In the writings of Garshin, a person is in a state of mental confusion. In the first story "Four Days", written in a hospital and reflecting the writer's own impressions, the hero is wounded in battle and is waiting for death, next to him the corpse of the Turk he killed is decomposing. This scene has often been compared to the scene from War and Peace, where Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, wounded in the battle of Austerlitz, looks at the sky. The hero of Garshin also looks at the sky, but his questions are not abstractly philosophical, but quite earthly: why the war? why was he forced to kill this man, to whom he had no hostile feelings and, in fact, was not guilty of anything? This work clearly expresses the protest against the war, against the extermination of man by man. A number of stories are dedicated to the same motif: “The orderly and the officer”, “Ayaslyar case”, “From the memoirs of private Ivanov” and “Coward”; the hero of the latter is tormented by heavy reflection and hesitation between the desire to "sacrifice himself for the people" and the fear of an unnecessary and meaningless death. Garshin's military theme is passed through the crucible of conscience, through the soul, bewildered by the incomprehensibility of this premeditated and unnecessary massacre by no one knows. Meanwhile, the Russian-Turkish war of 1877 was started with the noble goal of helping the Slavic brothers get rid of the Turkish yoke. Garshin is concerned not with political motives, but with existential questions. The character does not want to kill other people, does not want to go to war (story "Coward"). Nevertheless, obeying the general impulse and considering it his duty, he signs up as a volunteer and dies. The senselessness of this death haunts the author. But what is essential is that this absurdity is not unique in the general structure of being. In the same story, "Coward" dies of gangrene that began with a toothache, a medical student. These two events are parallel, and it is in their artistic conjugation that one of the main Garshin questions is highlighted - about the nature of evil. This question tormented the writer all his life. It is no coincidence that his hero, a reflective intellectual, protests against world injustice, embodied in some faceless forces that lead a person to death and destruction, including self-destruction. It's a specific person. Personality. Face. the realism of the Garshin style. His work is characterized by the accuracy of observation and the certainty of expressions of thought. He has few metaphors, comparisons, instead - a simple designation of objects and facts. A short, polished phrase, with no subordinate clauses in the descriptions. "Hot. The sun burns. The wounded man opens his eyes, sees - bushes, a high sky ”(“ Four Days ”).

Works from the list:

1. Garshin "Red Flower", "Artists", "Coward".
2. Korolenko "Son of Makar", "Paradox" (one to choose from)

Ticket plan:

1. General characteristics.
2. Garshin.
3. Korolenko.
4. Garshin "Red Flower", "Artists".
5. Genres.

1. The motley, apparently chaotically developing literature of the 80s - early 90s was born on the basis of reality, marked by the fragility of social and ideological processes. The ambiguity in the field of socio-economics, on the one hand, and the acute sense of the catastrophic nature of the political moment (the end of the revolutionary populist movement, the beginning of a cruel government reaction), which lasted until the first half of the 1990s, on the other, deprived the spiritual life of society of integrity and certainty. The feeling of timelessness, of an ideological dead end, became especially acute in the second half of the 1980s: time passed, but there was no light. Literature developed under conditions of severe censorship and psychological oppression, but still looked for new ways.

Among the writers who began their career in these years are V. Garshin (1855-1888), V. Korolenko (1853-1921), A. Chekhov (1860-1904), the younger A. Kuprin (1870-1938), L Andreev (1871-1919), I. Bunin (1870-1953), M. Gorky (1868-1936).

Such masterpieces appeared in the literature of this period as - in prose - "The Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoevsky, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" by Tolstoy, stories and novels by Leskov, Garshin, Chekhov; in dramaturgy - "Talents and Admirers", "Guilty Without Guilt" by Ostrovsky, Tolstoy's "Power of Darkness"; in poetry - "Evening Lights" by Fet; in journalism and the scientific documentary genre - Dostoevsky's speech about Pushkin, Chekhov's "Sakhalin Island", articles about the famine of Tolstoy and Korolenko.

This era is characterized by the combination of literary tradition with the search for new ways. Garshin and Korolenko did a lot to enrich realistic art with romantic elements, the late Tolstoy and Chekhov solved the problem of updating realism by deepening its internal properties. The echoes of Dostoevsky's work were especially clear in the prose of the 1980s and 1990s. Burning questions of reality, a scrupulous analysis of human suffering in a society torn apart by contradictions, the gloomy color of landscapes, especially urban ones, all this in various forms resonated in the stories and essays of G. Uspensky and Garshin, the beginning Kuprin.

Criticism of the 80s - early 90s noted the Turgenev and Tolstoy beginnings in the stories of Garshin, Korolenko, Chekhov; in works written under the influence of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, she found similarities with the military descriptions of the author of Sevastopol Tales; in Chekhov's humorous stories - dependence on Shchedrin's satire.

The "ordinary" hero and his everyday life, consisting of everyday trifles, is an artistic discovery of realism of the late 19th century, associated most of all with Chekhov's creative experience, prepared by the collective efforts of writers of various directions. The work of writers who tried to combine realistic methods of depiction with romantic ones (Garshin, Korolenko) also played a role in this process.

2. The personality and literary fate of Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin (1855-1888) are characteristic of the era under consideration. Born into an old noble family, he early learned the life and customs of the military environment (his father was an officer). He recalled these childhood impressions when he wrote about the events of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, in which he participated as a volunteer.

From the war, Garshin carried not so much the joy of victory as a feeling of bitterness and pity for the tens of thousands of dead people. He gave this feeling in full to his heroes, who survived the bloody events of the war. The whole point of Garshin's military stories ("Four days", « Coward" , 1879, “Batman and Officer, 1880, “From the Memoirs of Private Ivanov”, 1883) - in the spiritual shock of a person: in the horrors of wartime, he begins to see signs of trouble in peaceful life, which he had not noticed before. The characters in these stories seem to open their eyes. This happened to ordinary Ivanov, a typical Garshin intellectual: the war made him feel hatred for the senseless cruelty with which the military leaders committed lawlessness in the name of "patriotism", aroused compassion in him for weak and disenfranchised soldiers. Burning pity for the unfairly offended, a passionate desire to find a path to "world happiness" pervaded all of Garshin's work.

One of the most humane writers in Russia, Garshin experienced as a personal misfortune the arrests of Russian writers, the closure of the Notes of the Fatherland, the defeat of the populist movement, the execution of S. Perovskaya, A. Zhelyabov. When it became known that student I. Mlodetsky (1880) was sentenced to death for the attempt on the life of the head of the Supreme Administrative Commission M. Loris-Melikov, Garshin hurried to the “velvet dictator” with a plea to spare young life and even received a promise to postpone the execution. But the execution took place - and it had such an effect on Garshin that he had a severe attack of mental illness. He ended his life tragically: he threw himself into a flight of stairs at a moment of unbearable anguish and died in agony.

On the scale of the history of Russian literature, the short life of Garshin, a man and an artist, was like a flash of lightning. She illuminated the pain and aspirations of a whole generation, suffocating in the leaden air of the 80s.

Makeev's lecture:

A man of very interesting and tragic fate. Was mentally ill. Severe attacks. Tough family history. Early signs of talent and early signs of special sensitivity. He volunteered for the Balkan wars, where he was wounded. Reference Russian intellectual. The meeting with Loris-Melikov is the most famous act. There was an attempt on Loris-Melikov. Vloditsky was sentenced to death. Garshin made his way to Loris-Melikov and asked to pardon Vloditsky. He came to Yasnaya Polyana to talk to Tolstoy. He took care of the sick Natsin. Iconic image of the victim. Garshin acted as an art critic (review of "Boyar Morozova"). He committed suicide. Lived 33 years. This is the case when the figure of the author is more important than his works. If Garshin had not been such a person, he would not have taken such an important place in Russian literature. There is a sense of secondary character in his work. The influence of Tolstoy is noticeable. Intentional secondary. Conscious installation on it. Priority of ethics over aesthetics. As long as phenomena exist, we must talk about them. Great literature is immoral. Controversy with social Darwinism. An interesting intellectual look (the story "Coward"). A person is faced with a dilemma - he cannot go to war and cannot not go to it. He goes to war and dies without firing a single shot, sharing the fate of the victims.

The Story of the Artists. Alternating monologues of artists. Ryabinin gives up painting and becomes a rural teacher.

3. Penetration into corners of Russian reality hitherto unexplored by literature, coverage of new social strata, psychological types, etc., is a characteristic feature of the work of almost all writers of this period.

This is reflected in the works of Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko. He was born in Zhitomir, graduated from the gymnasium in Rovno and continued his studies in St. Petersburg, but in 1876 he was sentenced to exile for participating in a collective protest of students of the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy. And his wanderings began: Vologda province, Kronstadt, Vyatka province, Siberia, Perm, Yakutia ... In 1885, the writer settled in Nizhny Novgorod, in 1895 he moved to St. Petersburg. Korolenko's literary and social activities lasted over 40 years. He died in Poltava.

Korolenko’s collections of works were reprinted many times: “Essays and Stories” (book 1 in 1887 and book 2 in 1893), his “Pavlovian essays” (1890) and “In the hungry year” were published in separate editions ( 1893-1894). The best Siberian essays and short stories by Korolenko - "Wonderful"(1880), "Killer" (1882), "Makar's Dream""Falconer" (1885), "The River Plays" (1892), "At-Davan" (1892) and others - took an outstanding place among the works that explore the social life and psychology of the population of an immense country.

In the stories of Korolenko, who created vivid images of freedom-loving people from the people capable of genuine heroism (“Falconer”, i.e. “Sakhalin”, in the story of the same name, a dissolute carrier from Vetluga - “The River Plays”), the author’s attitude towards synthesis clearly shines through romanticism with realism.

Makeev's lecture:

Korolenko.

Very secondary creativity, little original. But a very good person. A figure famous for his public position. Acted as a public defender in the Beilis case. Won the case. Firm humanistic position. Not an easy position.

4. The literature of the 80s is characterized not only by the expansion of the geographical coverage of the depicted, social and professional range of characters, but also by the appeal to psychological types and situations new to literature. In the grotesque forms, born of the imagination of a person suffering from mental illness, the essential features of the era are reflected in their own way and a passionate protest against arbitrariness over a person sounds. So, the hero of Garshin's story "Red flower"(1883) takes on the mission to overcome all the evils of the world, concentrated, as he dreams, in a beautiful plant.

Another way to enrich the picture of the depicted reality lay through the hero involved in art. If the choice of the writer fell on a subtle, impressionable nature, possessing, in addition to artistic vision, a high sense of justice and intolerance for evil, then this imparted social sharpness and special expressiveness to the whole plot (“The Blind Musician” Korolenko, 1886; "Artists" Garshina, 1879).

5. The most numerous of the genres of "reliable" literature in the 80s was the everyday scene, imbued with humor. Although this genre became widespread in the works of the writers of the "natural school" and was then adopted by the democratic prose of the 60s (V. Sleptsov, G. Uspensky), it has only now become a mass phenomenon, although it has somewhat lost its former significance and seriousness. Only in Chekhov's sketch was this genre revived on a new artistic basis.

The form of a confession, a diary, notes, memoirs, reflecting the interest in the psychology of a modern person who has experienced a life and ideological drama, corresponds to the disturbing ideological atmosphere of the era. Publications of original documents, personal diaries aroused keen interest (for example, the diary of a young Russian artist M. Bashkirtseva, who died in Paris; notes of the great anatomist and surgeon N. I. Pirogov, etc.). L. Tolstoy ("Confession", 1879) and Shchedrin ("Imyarek", 1884 - the final essay in "Trifles of Life") turn to the form of a diary, confession, notes, etc. Although these works are very different in style, they are brought together by the fact that in both cases the great writers sincerely, truthfully tell about themselves, about their experiences. The form of confession is used in Leo Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata and in Chekhov's Boring History (with a characteristic subtitle: "From the Notes of an Old Man"); both Garshin (Nadezhda Nikolaevna, 1885) and Leskov (Notes of an Unknown Man, 1884) referred to the "notes". This form responded to two artistic tasks at once: to testify to the “authenticity” of the material and to recreate the experiences of the character.

(*38) Among the outstanding Russian writers of the last quarter of the 19th century, connected in their ideological development with the general democratic movement, Vsevolod Garshin occupies a special place. His creative activity lasted only ten years. It began in 1877 with the creation of the story "Four Days" - and was abruptly interrupted at the beginning of 1888 by the tragic death of the writer.

Unlike the older democratic writers of his generation - Mamin-Sibiryak, Korolenko - who already had certain social convictions by the beginning of their artistic work, Garshin experienced intense ideological searches and deep moral dissatisfaction associated with them throughout his short creative life. In this respect he had some resemblance to his younger contemporary, Chekhov.

The ideological and moral quest of the writer for the first time manifested itself with particular force in connection with the beginning of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877 and was reflected in a small cycle of his military stories. They are based on personal impressions (*39) of Garshin. Leaving student studies, he voluntarily went to the front as a simple soldier to take part in the war for the liberation of the fraternal Bulgarian people from centuries of Turkish enslavement.

The decision to go to war was not easy for the future writer. It led him to deep emotional and mental unrest. Garshin was fundamentally against the war, considering it an immoral affair. But he resented the atrocities of the Turks against the defenseless Bulgarian and Serbian population. And most importantly, he sought to share all the hardships of the war with ordinary soldiers, with Russian peasants dressed in overcoats. At the same time, he had to defend his intention before other-minded representatives of democratic youth. They considered such an intention to be immoral; in their opinion, people who voluntarily participate in the war contribute to the military victory and the strengthening of the Russian autocracy, which cruelly oppressed the peasantry and its defenders in their own country. “You, therefore, find it immoral that I will live the life of a Russian soldier and help him in the struggle ... Is it really more moral to sit back, while this soldier will die for us! ..” Garshin said indignantly.

In battle, he was soon wounded. Then he wrote the first military story "Four Days", in which he depicted the long torment of a seriously wounded soldier who was left without help on the battlefield. The story immediately brought the young writer literary fame. In the second military story "Coward" Garshin reproduced his deep doubts and hesitations before the decision to go to war. And then followed a short story "From the Memoirs of Private Ivanov", describing the hardships of long military transitions, the relationship between soldiers and officers, and unsuccessful bloody clashes with a strong enemy.

But the difficult search for a path in life was associated with Garshin not only with military events. He was tormented by the deep ideological discord that wide circles of the Russian democratic intelligentsia experienced during the years of the collapse of the populist movement and intensified government repressions. Although, even before the war, Garshin wrote a journalistic essay against Zemstvo liberals who despise the people, he, unlike Gleb Uspensky and Korolenko, did not know village life well and, as an artist, was not deeply affected by its contradictions. Nor did he have that (*40) spontaneous hostility to the tsarist bureaucracy, to the philistine life of officials, which early Chekhov expressed in his best satirical stories. Garshin was mainly occupied with the life of the urban raznochintsy intelligentsia, the contradictions of its moral and domestic interests. This is reflected in his best works.

A significant place among them is occupied by the image of ideological searches among painters and critics who evaluate their work. In this environment, the clash of two views on art continued, and at the end of the 70s even intensified. Some recognized in it only the task of reproducing the beautiful in life, serving beauty, far from any public interests. Others - and among them was a large group of "Wanderers" painters, headed by I. E. Repin and critic V. V. Stasov - argued that art cannot have a self-contained value and must serve life, which it can reflect in its works the strongest social contradictions, ideals and aspirations of the dispossessed popular masses and their defenders.

Garshin, while still a student, was keenly interested in both contemporary painting and the struggle of opinions about its content and tasks. During this time and later, he published a number of articles on art exhibitions. In them, calling himself a "man of the crowd", he supported the main direction of the art of the "Wanderers", highly appreciated the paintings of V.I. Surikov and V.D. according to the template, "without an academic corset and lacing".

Much deeper and stronger, the writer expressed his attitude to the main trends of contemporary Russian painting in one of his best stories - "Artists" (1879). The story is built on a sharp antithesis of the characters of two fictional characters: Dedov and Ryabinin. Both of them are "students" of the Academy of Arts, both paint from nature in the same "class", both are talented and can dream of a medal and of continuing their creative work abroad for four years "at public expense". But their understanding of the meaning of their art and art is generally the opposite. And through this contrast, the writer reveals something more important with great accuracy and psychological depth.

(* 41) A year before Garshin fought for the liberation of Bulgaria, the dying Nekrasov, in the last chapter of the poem "Who Lives Well in Rus'", in one of Grisha Dobrosklonov's songs, posed a question - fatal for all then thinking raznochintsy who were beginning their lives. This is a question about which of the "two ways", possible "Among the world below / For a free heart", one should choose for oneself. "One is spacious / Road is torn", along which is "huge, / Greedy for temptation / The crowd is walking..." For the bypassed, / for the oppressed ... "

Grisha Nekrasov was clear about his path. The heroes of Garshin's story were just choosing him. But in the sphere of art the antithesis of their choice was immediately revealed by the writer quite distinctly. Dedov is looking for only beautiful "nature" for his paintings; in his "vocation" he is a landscape painter. When he rode a boat along the seaside and wanted to paint with paints his hired rower, a simple "lad", he became interested not in his working life, but only in the "beautiful, hot tones of the kumach lit by the setting sun" of his shirt.

Imagining the picture "May Morning" ("The water in the pond is slightly swaying, the willows bowed their branches to it ... the clouds turned pink ..."), Dedov thinks: "This is art, it tunes a person to a quiet, meek thoughtfulness softens the soul." He believes that "art ... does not tolerate being reduced to the service of some low and vague ideas," that all this masculine streak in art is pure ugliness. Who needs these notorious Repin "Barge Haulers"?

But this recognition of beautiful, "pure art" does not in the least prevent Dedov from thinking about his career as an artist and about the profitable sale of paintings. (“Yesterday I put up a picture, and today they already asked about the price. I won’t give it back for less than 300.”) And in general, he thinks: “You just need to be more direct about the matter; while you are painting a picture - you are an artist, a creator; it is written - you are a merchant, and The more skillful you are in dealing, the better." And Dedov has no discord with the rich and well-fed "public" who buys his beautiful landscapes.

Ryabinin understands the relation of art to life in a completely different way. He has empathy for the lives of ordinary people. (*42) He loves the "hustle and noise" of the embankment, looks with interest at "day laborers carrying coolies, turning gates and winches", and he "learned to draw a working man." He works with pleasure, for him the picture is "the world in which you live and before which you answer", and he does not think about money either before or after its creation. But he doubts the significance of his artistic activity and does not want to "serve exclusively to the stupid curiosity of the crowd ... and the vanity of some rich stomach on his feet" who can buy his picture, "written not with a brush and colors, but with nerves and blood .. .".

Already with all this, Ryabinin sharply opposes Dedov. But before us are only expositions of their characters, and from them follows Garshin's antithesis of the paths that his heroes went on in their lives. For Dedov, these are delightful successes, for Ryabinin, a tragic breakdown. His interest in the "working man" soon shifted from the work of "day labourers, turning gates and winches" on the embankment, to such work that dooms a person to a quick and certain death. The same Dedov - he, at the behest of the author, had previously worked at the plant as an engineer - told Ryabinin about the "grouse workers", riveters, and then showed him one of them holding the bolt from the inside of the "boiler". "He sat curled up in a corner of the cauldron and exposed his chest to the blows of the hammer."

Ryabinin was so amazed and excited by what he saw that he "stopped going to the academy" and quickly painted a picture depicting a "grouse" during his work. It was not for nothing that the artist thought about his "responsibility" before the "world" that he undertook to portray. For him, his new picture is "ripe pain", after which he "will have nothing to write". “I summoned you... from a dark cauldron,” he thinks, mentally addressing his creation, “so that you terrify this clean, sleek, hated crowd with your appearance ... Look at these tailcoats and trains ... Hit them in the heart. .. Kill their peace, as you killed mine..."

And then Garshin creates in his plot an episode full of even deeper and more terrible psychologism. Ryabinin's new painting was sold, and he received money for it, for which, "at the request of his comrades," he arranged a "feast" for them. After it, he fell ill with a serious nervous illness, and in a delusional nightmare the plot of his painting acquired for him (*43) a broad, symbolic meaning. He hears hammer blows on the cast iron of a "huge cauldron", then he finds himself "in a huge, gloomy factory", hears "a frantic cry and frantic blows", sees a "strange, ugly creature" that is "writhing on the ground" under the blows of "a whole crowd ", and among her his "acquaintances with frenzied faces" ... And then he has a split personality: in the "pale, distorted, terrible face" of the beaten Ryabinin recognizes his "own face" and at the same time he "swings a hammer" to inflict a "violent blow" on himself... After many days of unconsciousness, the artist woke up in the hospital and realized that "there is still a whole life ahead", which he now wants to "turn in his own way ...".

And so the story quickly comes to a head. Dedov "received a big gold medal" for his "May morning" and goes abroad. Ryabinin about him: "Satisfied and happy inexpressibly; his face shines like an oil pancake." And Ryabinin left the academy and "passed the exam for a teacher's seminary." Dedov about him: "Yes, he will disappear, die in the village. Well, isn't this a crazy person?" And the author from himself: “This time Dedov was right: Ryabinin really did not succeed.

It is clear which of the two life "paths" outlined in Grisha Dobrosklonov's song went each of Garshin's heroes. Dedov will continue, perhaps, with great talent to paint beautiful landscapes and "trade" them, "cleverly conducting this" business. "And Ryabinin? to work - to the hard and thankless work of a village teacher? Why did he "not succeed" in it? And why did the author, postponing the answer to this question for an indefinite time, never return to it?

Because, of course, Garshin, like so many Russian raznochintsy with spontaneous democratic aspirations, in the 1880s, during the period of the defeat of populism, was at an ideological "crossroads", could not reach any definite understanding of the prospects for Russian national life .

But at the same time, Garshin's denial of Dedov's "spacious" and "thorny" road and his full recognition of Ryabinin's "close, honest" road is easily felt by every thoughtful reader of "Artists". And the painful nightmare experienced by Ryabinin, which is the culmination (*44) of the inner conflict of the story, is not a depiction of madness, it is a symbol of the deepest tragic split of the Russian democratic intelligentsia in its attitude towards the people.

She sees with horror his suffering and is ready to experience them with him. But at the same time she is aware that, by her position in society, she herself belongs to those privileged strata of it that oppress the people. That is why, in delirium, Ryabinin inflicts a "violent blow" on his face. And just as, leaving for the war, Garshin sought to help ordinary soldiers, distracting himself from the fact that this war could help the Russian autocracy, so now in his story Ryabinin goes to the village to educate the people, to share with them the hardships of "labor", being distracted from " battle" - from the political struggle of his time.

That is why Garshin's best story is so short, and there are so few events and characters in it, and there are no portraits of them and their past. But there are so many images of psychological experiences in it, especially the main character, Ryabinin, experiences that reveal his doubts and hesitations.

To reveal the experiences of the heroes, Garshin found a successful composition of the story: its entire text consists of separate notes by each hero about himself and his fellow artist. There are only 11 of them, Dedov has 6 short ones, Ryabinin has 5 much longer ones.

Korolenko wrongly considered this "parallel change of two diaries" a "primitive device." Korolenko himself, who depicted life in stories with a much broader scope, did not, of course, use this technique. For Garshin, this technique was quite consistent with the content of his story, which was focused not on external incidents, but on emotional impressions, thoughts, experiences of the characters, especially Ryabinin. With the brevity of the story, this makes its content full of "lyricism", although the story remains, in its essence, quite epic. In this regard, Garshin, of course, walked in a completely different way, along the same inner path as Chekhov did in the stories of the 1890s and early 1900s.

But in the future, the writer was no longer satisfied with short stories (he had others: "Meeting", "Incident", "Night" ...). “For me,” he wrote, “the time has passed ... some kind of prose poetry, which I have been doing until now (* 45) ... you need to depict not your own, but the big outside world.” Such aspirations led him to create the story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna" (1885). Among the main characters in it, artists are again in the foreground, but nevertheless it captures the "big outside world" - Russian life in the 1880s - more strongly.

This life was very difficult and complicated. In the moral consciousness of society, which was then languishing under the sharply intensified oppression of autocratic power, two directly opposite hobbies affected, but they led, each in its own way, to the idea of ​​self-denial. Some supporters of the revolutionary movement - "People's Volunteers" - disappointed by the failures to incite mass uprisings among the peasantry, turned to terror - to armed attempts on the life of representatives of the ruling circles (the tsar, ministers, governors). This path of struggle was false and fruitless, but the people who followed it believed in the possibility of success, selflessly devoted all their strength to this struggle and perished on the gallows. The experiences of such people are beautifully conveyed in the novel "Andrey Kozhukhov", written by the former terrorist S. M. Stepnyak-Kravchinsky.

And other circles of the Russian intelligentsia fell under the influence of the anti-church moralistic-religious ideas of Leo Tolstoy, reflecting the mood of the patriarchal sections of the peasantry - preaching moral self-improvement and selfless non-resistance to evil by force. At the same time, intense ideological and theoretical work was going on among the most mentally active part of the Russian intelligentsia - the question was discussed whether it was necessary and desirable for Russia, like the advanced countries of the West, to embark on the path of bourgeois development and whether it had already embarked on this path.

Garshin was not a revolutionary and was not fond of theoretical problems, but he was not alien to the influence of Tolstoy's moral propaganda. With the plot of the story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna" he, with great artistic tact, imperceptibly for censorship, responded in his own way to all these ideological demands of the "big world" of our time.

The two heroes of this story, the artists Lopatin and Gelfreich, respond to such requests with the ideas of their large paintings, which they hatch with great enthusiasm (* 46). Lopatin decided to portray Charlotte Corday, the girl who killed one of the leaders of the French Revolution, Marat, and then laid her head on the guillotine. She, too, took the wrong path of terror in her time. But Lopatin does not think about this, but about the moral tragedy of this girl, who, in her fate, is similar to Sofya Perovskaya, who participated in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.

For Lopatin, Charlotte Corday is a "French heroine", "a girl - a fanatic of good." In the already painted picture, she stands "in full growth" and "looks" at him "with her sad eyes, as if smelling execution"; "a lace cape ... sets off her tender neck, along which tomorrow a bloody line will pass ..." Such a character was quite understandable to a thoughtful reader of the 80s, and in such an awareness of him this reader could not help but see the moral recognition of people, albeit tactically lost their way, but heroically gave their lives for the liberation of the people.

Lopatin's friend, the artist Gelfreich, had a completely different idea for the painting. Like Dedov in the story "Artists", he paints pictures for money - depicts cats of different colors and in different poses, but, unlike Dedov, he has no career and profit interests. And most importantly, he cherishes the idea of ​​​​a big picture: the epic Russian hero Ilya Muromets, unjustly punished by the Kyiv prince Vladimir, sits in a deep cellar and reads the Gospel that "Princess Evprakseyushka" sent him.

In Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Ilya finds such a terrible moral teaching: "If you are struck on your right cheek, turn your left" (in other words, endure evil patiently and do not resist evil with violence!). And the hero, who all his life courageously defended his native country from enemies, is perplexed: “How is it so, Lord? It’s good if they hit me, but if they offend a woman or a child... "Leave me to rob and kill? No, Lord, I can't obey you! I'll mount a horse, take a spear and go to fight in your name, for I don't understand your wisdom..." Garshin's hero doesn't say a word about L Tolstoy, but thoughtful readers understood that the idea of ​​his painting was a protest against passive moral reconciliation with social evil.

Both of these heroes of the story pose the most difficult moral (*47) questions of their time, but they pose them not theoretically, not in reasoning, but in the plots of their paintings, artistically. And both of them are simple people, morally uncorrupted, sincere, who from the heart are carried away by their creative ideas and do not impose anything on anyone.

In the story, Garshin contrasted the character of the publicist Bessonov with the character of the artists, who was able to read "entire lectures on foreign and domestic policy" to acquaintances and argue about "whether capitalism is developing in Russia or not developing ...".

What Bessonov's views on all such questions are of no interest to either his artist friends or the author himself. He is interested in something else - the rationality and selfishness of Bessonov's character. Semyon Gelfreikh expresses himself clearly and sharply about both. “This man,” he says to Andrey Lopatin, “has all the boxes and compartments in his head; he will put forward one, get a ticket, read what is written there, and act like that.” Or: "Oh, what a callous, selfish ... and envious heart this man has." In both of these respects, Bessonov is a direct antithesis to artists, in particular Lopatin, the protagonist of the story, who seeks to portray Charlotte Corday.

But in order to reveal the antithesis of characters in an epic work, the writer needs to create a conflict between the characters embodying these characters. Garshin did just that. He boldly and originally developed in the story such a difficult social and moral conflict that could interest only a person with deep democratic convictions. This conflict - for the first time in Russian literature - was outlined many years before by N. A. Nekrasov in an early poem:

A similar conflict was portrayed by Dostoevsky in the relationship between Raskolnikov and Sonya Marmeladova ("Crime and Punishment").

But Nekrasov, in order to bring the female (*48) "fallen soul" "out of the darkness of delusion", needed "ardent words of persuasion" from the person who fell in love with her. In Dostoevsky, Sonya herself helps Raskolnikov's "fallen soul" to get out of "the darkness of delusion" and, out of love for him, goes with him to hard labor. For Garshin, the experiences of a woman "entangled in vice" are also of decisive importance. Before meeting Lopatin, the heroine of the story, Nadezhda Nikolaevna, led a dissolute life and was a victim of Bessonov's base passion, sometimes descending "from his selfish activities and arrogant life to revelry."

The artist's acquaintance with this woman occurs because before that he had searched in vain for a model for the image of Charlotte Corday, and at the first meeting he saw in the face of Nadia what he had in mind. She agreed to pose for him, and the next morning, when, having changed into a prepared costume, she stood in her place, “everything that Lopatin dreamed about for his picture was reflected on her face”, “here were determination and longing, pride and fear, love and hate".

Lopatin did not seek to address the heroine with a "hot word of conviction", but communication with him led to a decisive moral turning point in Nadezhda Nikolaevna's whole life. Feeling in Lopatin a noble and pure person, passionate about his artistic design, she immediately abandoned her former way of life - she settled in a small poor room, sold attractive outfits and began to live modestly on a small salary of a model, earning money by sewing. When meeting with her, Bessonov sees that she has "surprisingly changed," that her "pale face has acquired some kind of imprint of dignity."

This means that the action in the story develops in such a way that Lopatin will have to lead Nadya "out of the darkness of delusion." He is asked about this by his friend Gelfreich ("Get her out, Andrei!"), and Andrei himself finds the strength in himself for this. And what might those forces be? Only love is strong, cordial, pure love, not dark passion.

Although Andrei, by the will of his parents, was engaged from childhood to his second cousin, Sonya, he did not yet know love. Now he first felt "tenderness" for Nadia, "that unfortunate creature", and then a letter from Sonya, to whom he wrote about everything, opened his eyes to (* 49) his own soul, and he realized that he loved Nadia "for life that she should be his wife.

But Bessonov became an obstacle to this. Having recognized Nadia much earlier than Lopatin, he was somewhat carried away by her - "her not quite ordinary appearance" and "remarkable inner content" - and could have saved her. But he did not do this, as he was rationally sure that "they will never return." And now, when he saw the possibility of rapprochement between Andrei and Nadia, he is tormented by "insane jealousy." His rationality and selfishness are manifested here as well. He is ready to call the newly flared feeling love, but he corrects himself: "No, this is not love, this is a crazy passion, this is a fire in which I am all burning. How can I put it out?"

This is how the conflict of the story arises, typically Garshin's - both heroes and the heroine experience it independently of each other - in the depths of their souls. How was the author himself able to resolve this conflict? He quickly brings the conflict to a conclusion - unexpected, abrupt and dramatic. He depicts how Bessonov, trying to "put out the fire" of his "passion", suddenly comes to Andrei, at the moment when he and Nadia confessed their love to each other and were happy, and kills Nadia with shots from a revolver, seriously injures Andrei, and he, defending himself, kills Bessonov.

Such a denouement must, of course, be recognized as an artistic exaggeration - a hyperbole. No matter how strong Bessonov's passion was, rationality should have kept him from crime. But writers have the right to plot hyperbole (such is the death of Bazarov from an accidental blood poisoning in Turgenev or the sudden suicide of Anna Karenina in Leo Tolstoy). Writers use such resolutions when it is difficult for them to tell about the further development of the conflict.

Same with Garshin. If his Bessonov, a rational and strong-willed person, could, without meeting anymore with Andrei and Nadia, overcome his passion (this would elevate him somewhat in the eyes of readers!), Then what would the author have left to tell. He would have to portray the family idyll of Nadia and Andrei with the support of Semochka Gelfreich. And if the family idyll did not work out and each of the spouses would be tormented by memories of Nadia's past? Then the story would have dragged on, and the character (*50) of Lopatin would have morally declined in our, the reader's, perception. And the sharp dramatic denouement created by Garshin greatly reduces the character of the egoist Bessonov before us and elevates the emotional and sympathetic character of Lopatin.

On the other hand, the fact that Bessonov and Nadia died, and Lopatin, shot through the chest, while still alive, makes it possible for the author to strengthen the psychologism of the story - to give an image of the hero's hidden experiences and emotional thoughts about his life.

The story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna" in general has much in common with the stories "Artists" in its composition. The whole story is made up of Lopatin's "notes" depicting the events of his life in their deeply emotional perception by the hero himself, and in these "notes" the author sometimes inserts episodes taken from Bessonov's "diary" and consisting mainly of his emotional introspection. But Lopatin begins to write his "notes" only in the hospital. He got there after the death of Nadia and Bessonov, where he is being treated for a serious wound, but does not hope to survive (he begins to develop consumption). He is cared for by his sister, Sonya. The plot of the story, depicted in the "notes" and "diaries" of the heroes, also receives a "frame", consisting of the heavy thoughts of the sick Lopatin.

In the story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna" Garshin did not quite manage to make the "big outside world" the subject of the image. The deeply emotional worldview of the writer, who is looking for, but has not yet found a clear path in life for himself, here again prevented him from doing this.

Garshin has one more story, "Meeting" (1870), also based on a sharp opposition of different life paths, along which the raznochintsy intelligentsia of his difficult time could go.

It depicts how two former university buddies unexpectedly meet again in a southern seaside town. One of them, Vasily Petrovich, who had just arrived there to take a position as a teacher at a local gymnasium, regrets that his dreams of "professorship" and "journalism" did not come true, and he is thinking about how he could save up for six months. a thousand rubles from the salary and fees for possible private lessons, in order to acquire everything necessary for the upcoming marriage. Another (*51) hero, Kudryashov, in the past a poor student, has long served here as an engineer on the construction of a huge pier (dam) to create an artificial harbor. He invites the future teacher to his “modest” hut, takes him there on black horses, in a “smart carriage” with a “fat coachman”, and his “hut” turns out to be a luxuriously furnished mansion, where they are served foreign wine and “excellent roast beef” at dinner. ", where a footman waits for them.

Vasily Petrovich is amazed by such a rich life of Kudryashov, and a conversation takes place between them, clarifying to the reader the deepest difference in the moral positions of the heroes. The host immediately and frankly explains to his guest where he gets so much money to lead this luxurious life. It turns out that Kudryashov, together with a whole group of clever and arrogant businessmen, from year to year deceives the state institution, with whose funds the pier is being built. Every spring they report to the capital that autumn and winter storms at sea have partially washed away the huge stone foundation for the future pier (which actually does not happen!), And to continue the work they are again sent large sums of money, which they appropriate and on which they live rich and carefree.

The future teacher, who is going to divine the "spark of God" in his students, support natures "strive to throw off the yoke of darkness", develop young fresh forces, "alien to worldly dirt", is embarrassed and shocked by the engineer's confessions. He calls his income "dishonest means", says that it is "painful to look" at Kudryashov, that he is "ruining himself", that he will be "caught doing this" and he will "go along Vladimirka" (that is, to Siberia, to hard labor) that he was formerly an "honest youth" who could become an "honest citizen." Putting a piece of "excellent roast beef" in his mouth, Vasily Petrovich thinks to himself that this is a "stolen piece", that it was "stolen" from someone, that someone was "offended" by this.

But all these arguments do not make any impression on Kudryashov. He says that we must first find out "what is honest and what is dishonest", that "it's all about the look, the point of view", that "one must respect the freedom of judgment ...". And then he raises his dishonest deeds into a general law, into the law of predatory "mutual responsibility." "Am I the only one ... - he says, - I gain? Everything around, (* 52) the very air - and it seems to be dragging." And any striving for honesty is easy to cover: "And we will always cover it. All for one, one for all."

Finally, Kudryashov claims that if he himself is a robber, then Vasily Petrovich is also a robber, but "under the guise of virtue." "Well, what kind of occupation is your teaching?" he asks. “Will you prepare at least one decent person? Three-quarters of your pupils will come out the same as me, and one quarter will be like you, that is, a well-intentioned slacker. Well, don’t you take money for nothing, tell me frankly?” And he expresses the hope that his guest "with his own mind" will come to the same "philosophy".

And in order to better explain this "philosophy" to the guest, Kudryashov shows him in his house a huge aquarium, illuminated by electricity, filled with fish, among which large ones devour small ones before the eyes of observers. “I,” says Kudryashov, “love this whole creature because it is frank, not like our brother is a man. He eats each other and is not embarrassed.” "They eat - and do not think about immorality, and we?" "Bite, don't bite, and if a piece gets in... Well, I abolished them, these remorse, and I'm trying to imitate this beast." "To the free will," the future teacher could only say "with a sigh" to this analogy of robbery.

As you can see, Vasily Petrovich, at Garshin's, could not express a clear and decisive condemnation of the base "philosophy" of Kudryashov - the "philosophy" of a predator, who justifies his theft of state funds by referring to the behavior of predators in the animal world. But even in the story "Artists" the writer failed to explain to the reader why Ryabinin "did not succeed" in his teaching activities in the countryside. And in the story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna" he did not show how the rationality of the publicist Bessonov deprived him of heartfelt feelings and doomed him to the "fire" of passion, which led him to murder. All these ambiguities in the writer's work stemmed from the vagueness of his social ideals.

This forced Garshin to immerse himself in the experiences of his heroes, to draw up his works as their "notes", "diaries" or random meetings and disputes, and with difficulty go out with his plans to the "big outside world".

From this followed Garshin's tendency to (* 53) allegorical figurativeness - to symbols and allegories. Of course, Kudryashov's aquarium in the "Meeting" is a symbolic image, evoking the idea of ​​the similarity of predation in the animal world and human predation in the era of the development of bourgeois relations (Kudryashov's confessions clarify it). And the nightmare of the sick Ryabinin, and Lopatin's painting "Charlotte Corday" - too. But Garshin also has such works that are entirely symbolic or allegorical.

Such, for example, is the short story "Attalea prinseps" 1, which shows the futile attempts of a tall and proud southern palm tree to break free from a greenhouse made of iron and glass, and which has an allegorical meaning. Such is the famous symbolic story "The Red Flower" (1883), called by Korolenko the "pearl" of Garshin's work. It symbolizes those episodes of the plot in which a person who has ended up in a lunatic asylum imagines that the beautiful flowers growing in the garden of this house are the embodiment of "world evil", and decides to destroy them. At night, when the watchman is sleeping, the patient wriggles out of the straitjacket with difficulty, then bends the iron bar in the window bars; with bloody hands and knees, he climbs over the wall of the garden, plucks a beautiful flower and, returning to the ward, dies. Readers in the 1880s understood the meaning of the story perfectly well.

As you can see, in some allegorical works, Garshin touched upon the motives of the political struggle of the time, in which he himself was not a participant. Like Lopatin with his painting "Charlotte Corday", the writer clearly sympathized with the people who took part in civil clashes, paid tribute to their moral greatness, but at the same time was aware of the doom of their efforts.

Garshin entered the history of Russian fiction as a writer who subtly reflected in his psychological and allegorical stories and stories the atmosphere of timelessness of the reactionary 1880s, through which Russian society was destined to go before it was ripe for decisive political clashes and revolutionary upheavals.

1 Royal palm (lat.).

The war left a deep imprint on the receptive psyche of the writer and his work. Simple in terms of plot and composition, Garshin's stories amazed readers with the extreme nakedness of the hero's feelings. Narration in the first person, using diary entries, attention to the most painful emotional experiences created the effect of the absolute identity of the author and the hero. In the literary criticism of those years, the phrase was often found: "Garshin writes with blood." The writer combined the extremes of the manifestation of human feelings: a heroic, sacrificial impulse and awareness of the abomination of war; a sense of duty, attempts to evade it and the realization of the impossibility of this. The helplessness of man in the face of the elements of evil, emphasized by tragic endings, became the main theme not only of the military, but also of Garshin's later stories. For example, the story "The Incident" (1878) is a street scene in which the writer shows the hypocrisy of society and the wildness of the crowd in condemning a prostitute. Coming from an intelligent family, by the will of circumstances she found herself on the panel, the heroine of the story, her nature is complex and contradictory, as if she herself is striving for death. And she rejects Ivan Nikitin's love for her, fearing moral enslavement, which leads him to suicide. Without any sentimentality, Garshin managed to find the human soul at the extreme stage of moral decline.
The story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna" also touches on the theme of the "fallen" woman. This image becomes for Garshin a symbol of social trouble and more - world disorder. And the salvation of a fallen woman for the Garshin hero is tantamount to a victory over world evil, at least in this particular case. But this victory, ultimately, turns into the death of the participants in the conflict. Evil still finds a loophole. One of the characters, the writer Bessonov, also once thought about saving Nadezhda Nikolaevna, but did not dare, and now he suddenly realized what she really meant to him. Analyzing the motives of his own actions, he suddenly discovers that he was deceiving himself, that he was drawn into a certain game of his pride, ambition, jealousy. And, unable to come to terms with the loss of his beloved, he kills her and himself.
Even portraying people of art, Garshin did not find a solution to his painful spiritual searches. The story "Artists" (1879) is imbued with pessimistic reflections on the uselessness of real art. His hero, a morally sensitive person and a talented artist, Ryabinin, cannot calmly indulge in the aesthetic delight of creativity when there is so much suffering around. He gives up painting and leaves for the countryside to teach peasant children. In the story "Attalea Princeps" (1880), Garshin symbolically expressed his worldview. The freedom-loving palm tree, in an effort to escape from the glass greenhouse, breaks through the roof, and having reached the goal and having escaped to "freedom", asks with mournful surprise: "And that's all?", after which it dies under the cold sky. Romantically referring to reality, Garshin tried to break the vicious circle of life's questions, but the painful psyche and complex character returned the writer to a state of despair and hopelessness.

The writer spent a lot of mental strength on the best of his stories - "The Red Flower" (1883). His hero, mentally ill, fights against the world's evil, which, as his inflamed imagination sees, is concentrated in three dazzling red poppy flowers growing in the hospital yard: it is enough to pluck them and all the evil of the world will be destroyed. And at the cost of his own life, the hero destroys evil. This story can be called semi-biographical, because Garshin, in fits of madness, dreamed of immediately destroying all the evil that exists on earth.

Most of Garshin's stories are full of hopelessness and tragedy, for which he was repeatedly reproached by critics who saw in his prose the philosophy of despair and the denial of struggle. Garshin did not know how to solve social problems, did not see a way out of them. And therefore, all his work is permeated with deep pessimism. The significance of Garshin is that he was able to keenly feel and artistically embody social evil. But a hopeless melancholy throughout the warehouse of his spiritual and physical being, Garshin did not believe either in the triumph of good, or in the fact that victory over evil could bring peace of mind, and even more happiness.

In 1882, his collection "Stories" was published, which caused heated debate in the critics. Garshin was condemned for pessimism, the gloomy tone of his works. The Narodniks used the writer's work to show by his example how the modern intellectual is tormented and tormented by remorse. In subsequent years, Garshin strove to simplify his narrative style. There were stories written in the spirit of Tolstoy's folk stories - "The Tale of the Proud Haggai" (1886), "Signal" (1887). The children's fairy tale “The Traveling Frog” (1887), where the same Garshin theme of evil and injustice is developed in the form of a fairy tale full of sad humor, became the last work of the writer.

Garshin wrote quite a bit - only a few dozen short stories, short stories and short tales. But this little brought into literature that note, which was not in it before, or it did not sound as strong as it did with him. “The voice of conscience and its martyr” called Garshin critic Y. Aikhenvald. That is how he was perceived by his contemporaries. The composition of his stories, surprisingly complete, reaches an almost geometric certainty. Garshin is characterized by the absence of action, complex collisions, metaphors, a limited number of actors, the accuracy of observation and the certainty of expressions of thought. Garshin's stories, published by the author himself in 1882-1885 in 2 volumes, went through 12 editions. But in these two little books, Garshin survived all the evil around us - war, suicide, hard labor, involuntary debauchery, involuntary murder of his neighbor, he survived all this to the last detail, and, given the size of this experience and the excessive impressionability of Garshin's nerves, the reader cannot not to see that living and experiencing the same thing, and writing on the same topics, describing the same horrors of life that have already been experienced to the ground, was not by nature, not by Garshin's nerves. Everything that Garshin wrote was, as it were, excerpts from his own diary; and it is not surprising that experiencing these horrors again and again, the writer fell into despair and severe depression. Garshin wrote a little, but nevertheless, he rightfully occupies a place among the masters of Russian prose.