Satirical devices in the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin. Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin: analysis of the fairy tale "The Selfless Hare" Fairy-tale elements in the fairy tale The Selfless Hare

Fairy tale "Selfless Hare". Fairy tale "Sane Hare"

The theme of denunciation of cowardice with the "Wise Minnow" is approached simultaneously with the written "Selfless Hare". These tales do not repeat, but complement each other in exposing the slave psychology, illuminating its different aspects.

The tale of the selfless hare is a vivid example of Shchedrin's crushing irony, exposing, on the one hand, the wolf habits of the enslavers, and, on the other, the blind obedience of their victims.

The tale begins with the fact that a hare was running not far from the wolf's lair, and the wolf saw him and shouted: “Hare! Stop, honey!" And the hare only added more pace. The wolf got angry, caught him, and said: “I sentence you to deprivation of the stomach by tearing it to pieces. And since now I am full, and my wolf is full ... then you sit here under this bush and wait in line. Or maybe ... ha ha ... I will have mercy on you! What is a hare? I wanted to run away, but as soon as he looked at the wolf's lair, "a hare's heart began to pound." The hare sat under a bush and lamented that he had so much left to live and his hare dreams would not come true: ! The bride's brother galloped up to him one night and began to persuade him to run away to the ill hare. More than ever, the hare began to lament about his life: “For what? How did he deserve his bitter fate? He lived openly; But no, the hare cannot even move from its place: “I can’t, the wolf didn’t order!”. And then a wolf and a she-wolf came out of the lair. The hares began to make excuses, convinced the wolf, moved the she-wolf to pity, and the predators allowed the hare to say goodbye to the bride, and leave her brother with the amanat.

A hare released on a visit “like an arrow from a bow” hurried to the bride, ran, went to the bathhouse, wrapped it, and ran back to the lair - to return by the specified date. The way back was hard for the hare: “He runs in the evening, runs in the middle of the night; his legs are cut with stones, his hair hangs in clumps from thorny branches on his sides, his eyes are clouded, bloody foam oozes from his mouth ... ". He after all "a word, you see, gave, and the hare to the word - the master". It seems that the hare is very noble, he only thinks about how not to let his friend down. But nobility towards the wolf stems from slavish obedience. Moreover, he realizes that the wolf can eat him, but at the same time he stubbornly harbors the illusion that "maybe the wolf will have mercy on me ... ha ha ... and have mercy!" This kind of slave psychology overpowers the instinct of self-preservation and is elevated to the level of nobility and virtue.

The title of the tale with surprising accuracy outlines its meaning, thanks to the oxymoron used by the satirist - the combination of opposite concepts. The word hare is always figuratively synonymous with cowardice. And the word selfless in combination with this synonym gives an unexpected effect. Selfless cowardice! This is the main conflict of the story. Saltykov-Shchedrin shows the reader the perversity of human properties in a society based on violence. The wolf praised the selfless hare, who remained true to his word, and issued a mocking resolution to him: “... sit, for the time being ..., and later I will have mercy on you!”.

The wolf and the hare not only symbolize the hunter and the victim with all their corresponding qualities (the wolf is bloodthirsty, strong, despotic, angry, and the hare is cowardly, cowardly and weak). These images are filled with topical social content. Behind the image of the wolf, the exploitative regime is "hidden", and the hare is a layman who believes that a peaceful agreement with the autocracy is possible. The wolf enjoys the position of the ruler, the despot, the whole wolf family lives according to the “wolf” laws: both the cubs play with the victim, and the wolf, ready to devour the hare, pities him in her own way ...

However, the hare also lives according to the laws of the wolf. The Shchedrin Hare is not just cowardly and helpless, but cowardly. He refuses to resist in advance, going to the wolf's mouth and making it easier for him to solve the "food problem". The hare believed that the wolf had the right to take his life. The hare justifies all his actions and behavior with the words: “I can’t, the wolf didn’t order!”. He is accustomed to obey, he is a slave to obedience. Here the author's irony turns into caustic sarcasm, into deep contempt for the psychology of a slave.

A hare from Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tale “The Sane Hare”, “although it was an ordinary hare, it was a clever one. And he reasoned so sensibly that it was just right for a donkey. Usually this hare sat under a bush and talked to himself, reasoned on various topics: “Everyone, he says, is given his own life to the beast. Wolf - wolf, lion - lion, hare - hare. Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your life, no one asks you: live, that's all, ”or“ They eat us, eat, and we, hares, that year, we breed more ”, or“ These vile people, these wolves - this must be told the truth . All they have is robbery on their minds!” But one day he decided to flaunt his common sense in front of the hare. “The hare spoke and spoke,” and at that time the fox crept up to him and let's play with him. The fox stretched out in the sun, ordered the hare to "sit closer and chat," and she "plays comedies in front of him."

Yes, the fox taunts the "sane" hare in order to eventually eat it. Both she and the hare understand this very well, but they cannot do anything. The fox is not even very hungry to eat a hare, but since "where is it seen that the foxes themselves let go of their dinner," then one has to obey the law willy-nilly. All the clever, justifying theories of the hare, the idea that he has completely mastered the regulation of wolf appetites, are shattered to smithereens on the cruel prose of life. It turns out that hares were created to be eaten, and not to create new laws. Convinced that wolves will not stop eating hares, the sensible "philosopher" developed a project for a more rational eating of hares - so that not all at once, but one by one. Saltykov-Shchedrin here ridicules attempts to theoretically justify slavish "hare" obedience and liberal ideas about adapting to a regime of violence.

The satirical sting of the tale of the "sane" hare is directed against petty reformism, cowardly and harmful populist liberalism, which was especially characteristic of the 80s.

The tale "The Sane Hare" and the tale "The Selfless Hare" preceding it, taken together, give an exhaustive satirical description of the "hare" psychology in both its practical and theoretical manifestations. In "The Selfless Hare" we are talking about the psychology of an irresponsible slave, and in "The Sane Hare" - about a perverted consciousness that has developed a servile tactic of adapting to a regime of violence. Therefore, the satirist reacted more severely to the "sensible hare".

These two works are one of the few in the cycle of Shchedrin's fairy tales that end in a bloody denouement (also "Karas the Idealist", "The Wise Gudgeon"). With the death of the main characters of the fairy tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin emphasizes the tragedy of ignorance of the true ways of fighting evil, with a clear understanding of the need for such a struggle. In addition, these tales were influenced by the political situation in the country at that time - the ferocious government terror, the defeat of populism, the police persecution of the intelligentsia.

Comparing the fairy tales "The Selfless Hare" and "The Sane Hare" in artistic rather than ideological terms, one can also draw many parallels between them.

The plots of both fairy tales are based on folklore, the conversational speech of the characters is consonant. Saltykov-Shchedrin uses elements of living, folk speech that have already become classic. The satirist emphasizes the connection of these fairy tales with folklore with the help of numerals with non-numerical meanings (“far away kingdom”, “because of distant lands”), typical sayings and sayings (“the trail is cold”, “runs, the earth trembles”, “not in a fairy tale to say, not to describe with a pen”, “soon the fairy tale is told ...”, “don’t put your finger in your mouth”, “neither a stake, nor a yard”) and numerous constant epithets and vernacular (“presytehonka”, “slandering fox”, “splurge” , “the other day”, “oh you, miserable, miserable!”, “hare life”, “make good”, “tasty morsel”, “bitter tears”, “great misfortunes”, etc.).

When reading the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, it is always necessary to remember that the satirist wrote not about animals and about the relationship between predator and prey, but about people, covering them with masks of animals. Similarly, in fairy tales about the "sensible" and "selfless" hares. The language favored by the author of the Aesops gives the tales saturation, richness of content and does not in the least make it difficult to understand all the meaning, ideas and morality that Saltykov-Shchedrin puts into them.

In both fairy tales, elements of reality are woven into fantastic, fairy-tale plots. The “sensible” hare daily studies “statistical tables published at the Ministry of Internal Affairs ...”, and they write about the “selfless” hare in the newspaper: “Here in the Moskovskie Vedomosti they write that hares do not have a soul, but steam - but out he's like ... flies away! The "sane" hare also tells the fox a little about real human life - about peasant labor, about market entertainment, about recruiting. The fairy tale about the “selfless” hare mentions events invented by the author, unreliable, but essentially real: “In one place it rained, so that the river, which the hare swam jokingly a day earlier, swelled and overflowed ten miles. In another place, King Andron declared war on King Nikita, and on the hare's very path the battle was in full swing. In the third place, cholera manifested itself - it was necessary to go around a whole quarantine chain of 100 miles ... ".

Saltykov-Shchedrin, in order to ridicule all the negative features of these hares, used the appropriate zoological masks. Since a coward, submissive and humble, then this is a hare. This mask the satirist puts on the cowardly inhabitants. And the formidable force that the hare is afraid of - the wolf or the fox - personifies the autocracy and the arbitrariness of royal power.

Evil, angry ridicule of slave psychology is one of the main tasks of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales. In the fairy tales "The Selfless Hare" and "The Sane Hare" the heroes are not noble idealists, but cowardly townsfolk, hoping for the kindness of predators. Hares do not doubt the right of a wolf and a fox to take their lives, they consider it quite natural that the strong eat the weak, but they hope to touch the wolf's heart with their honesty and humility, and to speak to the fox and convince them of the correctness of their views. Predators are still predators.

Fairy tales come to us from the depths of folk life. They were passed down from generation to generation, from father to son, slightly changing, but retaining their basic meaning. Fairy tales are the result of many years of observation. In them, the comic is intertwined with the tragic, the grotesque, hyperbole (an artistic device of exaggeration) and the amazing art of Aesopian language are widely used. Aesop's language is an allegorical, allegorical way of expressing artistic thought. This language is deliberately obscure, full of omissions. It is usually used by writers who are unable to speak directly.

The folk tale form has been used by many writers. Literary tales in verse or prose recreated the world of folk ideas, and sometimes contained satirical elements, for example, the tales of A. S. Pushkin. Ostrbsatirical tales are also created by Saltykov-Shchedrin in 1869, as well as 1880-1886s. Among the vast legacy of Shchedrin, they are perhaps the most popular. "

In fairy tales, we will meet heroes typical of Shchedrin: “here are the stupid, fierce, ignorant rulers of the people (“Bear in the Voivodeship”, “Eagle-Maecenas”), here is the people, powerful, hardworking, talented, but at the same time submissive to their exploiters (“The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals”, “Konyaga”).

Shchedrin's tales are distinguished by true nationality. Covering the most pressing issues of Russian life, the satire acts as a defender of the people's interests, eyrazite.L? popular ideals, advanced ideas of his time. He masterfully uses the people's language. Turning to oral folk art, the writer enriched the folk plots of folklore works with revolutionary content. He created his images based on folk tales about animals: a cowardly hare, a cunning "fox, a greedy wrecker, a stupid and evil bear.

A master of Aesopian speeches, in fairy tales written mainly during the years of cruel censorship, he makes extensive use of allegory. Under the guise of animals and birds, he depicts representatives of various social classes and groups. Allegory allows the satirist not only to encrypt, hide the true meaning of his satire, but also to exaggerate the most characteristic in his characters. The images of the forest Toptygins, committing “petty, shameful” atrocities or “major bloodshed” in the forest slum, most accurately reproduced the very essence of the despotic system. The activity of Toptygin, who smashed the printing house, dumped the works of the human mind into a waste pit, ends with the fact that he was “respected by the peasants”, “putting him on a horn”. His activities turned out to be meaningless, unnecessary. Even the Donkey says: “The main thing in our craft is: laissez passer, laissez-faire (allow, do not interfere). And Toptygin himself asks: “I don’t even understand why the governor is sent!”

The fairy tale "The Wild Landowner" is a work directed against the social system, which is not based on the exploitation of the peasant. At first glance, this is just a funny "" story of a stupid landowner who hated the peasants, but, left without Senka and his other breadwinners, completely ran wild, and his economy fell into decay. Even a mouse is not afraid of him.

Depicting the people, Saltykov-Shchedrin sympathizes with them and at the same time condemns them for their long-suffering and resignation. He likens it to a "swarm" of industrious bees living an unconscious herd life. "... They raised a chaff whirlwind, and a swarm of peasants swept away from the estate."

A somewhat different social group of the population of Russia is drawn by a satirist in the fairy tale "The Wise Piskar". Before us appears the image of a frightened inhabitant to death, "a dumbass who does not eat, does not drink, does not see anyone, does not lead bread and salt with anyone, but only protects his hateful life." Shchedrin explores in this tale the question of the meaning and purpose of human life.

The layman-"piskar" considers the main meaning of life the slogan: "Survive and the pike will not get into hailo." It always seemed to him that he lives correctly, according to the order of his father: "If you want to live life, then look at both." But then came death. His whole life flashed before him in an instant. What were his joys? who did he comfort? who gave good advice? to whom did he say a kind word? who sheltered, warmed, protected? who heard about it? who remembers its existence? He had to answer all these questions: no one, no one. "He lived and trembled - that's all." The meaning of Shchedrin's allegory, depicting, of course, not a fish, but a miserable, cowardly person, lies in the words: “Those who think that only those scribblers can be considered worthy citizens who, mad with fear, sit in holes and tremble, believe incorrectly. No, these are not citizens, but at least useless scribblers. Thus, "piskar" is a definition of a person, an artistic metaphor that aptly characterizes the townsfolk.

So, we can say that both the ideological content and the artistic features of the satirical tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin are aimed at fostering respect for the people and civic feelings in Russian people. They have not lost their bright vitality in our time. The Tales of Shchedrin still remain an extremely useful and fascinating book for millions of readers.

Aesopian language helps to reveal the vices of society. And now it is used not only in fairy tales and fables, but also in the press, in television programs. From TV screens you can hear phrases that have a double meaning, exposing evil and injustice. This happens when the evils of society cannot be spoken openly.

SOCIO-POLITICAL MOTIVES OF SATIRE by M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

Saltykov-Shchedrin is a world-renowned master of satire. His talent showed itself in a difficult time for Russia. Contradictions that corroded the country from within, discord in society became apparent. The appearance of satirical works was inevitable. But only a few were able to reveal their talent to the fullest. Merciless censorship did not leave the slightest opportunity to express one's opinion about the situation in Russia if it contradicted the government's. For Saltykov-Shchedrin, the problem of censorship was very acute, conflicts with it became more frequent. After the publication of some of the early stories, the writer was sent into exile in Vyatka. A seven-year stay in the provinces brought its benefits: Saltykov-Shchedrin got to know the peasants better, their way of life, the life of small towns. But from now on, he was forced to resort to allegory, to use comparisons, so that his works were printed and read.

An example of vivid political satire is, first of all, the story "The History of a City". It describes the history of the fictional city of Glupov, the relationship between "the inhabitants and the bosses." Saltykov-Shchedrin set himself the task of showing the typicality of Glupov and his problems, common details inherent in almost all Russian cities of that time. But all the features are deliberately exaggerated, hyperbolized. The writer denounces the vices of officials with his inherent skill. Bribery, cruelty, self-interest flourish in Foolov. The complete inability to manage the city entrusted to them sometimes leads to the most sad consequences for the inhabitants. Already in the first chapter, the core of the future narrative is clearly outlined: “Dawn! I won't stand it!" Saltykov-Shchedrin shows the brainlessness of city governors in the most literal sense. Brodysty had "some special device" in his head, capable of reproducing two phrases, which turned out to be enough to appoint him to this post. The pimple did have a stuffed head. In general, the writer resorts to such an artistic means as the grotesque quite often. Glupov's pastures coexist with Byzantine ones, Benevolensky strikes up an intrigue with Napoleon. But especially the grotesque manifested itself later, in fairy tales, it is no coincidence that Saltykov-Shchedrin inserts into the story “Inventory of the Mayors”. It shows that it is not people with any state merits who are appointed to posts, but whoever they have to, which is confirmed by their administrative activities. One became famous for introducing the bay leaf into use, the other “placed the streets paved with its predecessors and ... set up monuments,” etc. But Saltykov-Shchedrin ridicules not only officials. With all his love for the people, the writer shows him incapable of decisive action, mute, accustomed to endure forever and wait for better times, to obey the wildest orders. In the mayor, he appreciates, first of all, the ability to speak beautifully, and any vigorous activity causes only fear, fear of being responsible for it. It is the helplessness of the townsfolk, their faith in the authorities that support despotism in the city. An example of this is Wartkin's attempt to introduce mustard into use. The inhabitants responded by "stubbornly kneeling", it seemed to them that this was the only correct decision that could appease both sides.

As if summing up, at the end of the story, the image of Gloomy-Burcheev appears - a kind of parody of Arakcheev (although not entirely obvious). An idiot who, in the name of implementing his crazy idea, destroys the city, thought out the entire structure of the future Nepriklonsk to the smallest detail. On paper, this plan, which strictly regulated people's lives, seems quite realistic (somewhat reminiscent of Arakcheev's "military settlements"). But discontent is growing, the revolt of the Russian people swept the tyrant off the face of the earth. And what? Political immaturity leads to a period of reaction ("abolition of the sciences"),

"Tales" are rightfully considered the final work of Saltykov-Shchedrin. The scope of the problems covered has become much broader. Satire takes the form of a fairy tale is not accidental. At the heart of satirical stories are folk ideas about the nature of animals. The fox is always cunning, the wolf is cruel, the hare is cowardly. Playing with these qualities, Saltykov-Shchedrin also uses folk speech. This contributed to greater accessibility and understanding among the peasants of the problems raised by the writer.

Conventionally, fairy tales can be divided into several groups: satire on officials and the government, on representatives of the intelligentsia, on urban residents and on ordinary people. The image of the bear as a stupid, self-satisfied, limited official, quick to be punished, appears more than once, personifying ruthless tyranny. A classic example of the grotesque is the tale "How one man fed two generals." The generals are not able to provide for themselves, they are helpless. The action is often absurd. At the same time, Saltykov-Shchedrin also ridicules the peasant who twisted the rope to be tied to a tree. The philistine scribbler "lived - trembled and died - trembled", not trying to do something or change. An idealistic crucian who knows nothing about nets or ears is doomed to death. The fairy tale "Bogatyr" is very significant. Autocracy has outlived its usefulness, only the appearance, the outer shell, remains. The writer does not call for an inevitable struggle. He simply depicts the existing situation, frightening in its accuracy and reliability. In his works, Saltykov-Shchedrin, with the help of hyperbole, metaphors, sometimes even fantastic elements, carefully selected epithets, showed age-old contradictions that have not become obsolete even in the writer's modern days. But, denouncing the people's shortcomings, he only wanted to help eliminate them. And everything that he wrote was dictated by only one thing - love for his homeland.

ACUTE POLITICAL SATIRE IN THE FAIRY TALES OF M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

Saltykov-Shchedrin is one of the world's greatest satirists. All his life he castigated autocracy, serfdom, and after the reform of 1861 - the remnants of serfdom that remained in everyday life, in the psychology of people. Shchedrin's satire is directed not only against the landlords, but also against the new oppressors of the people, whose hands were untied by the agrarian reform of tsarism - the capitalists. The great writer also exposes the liberals, who are diverting the people from the struggle.

The satirist criticized not only the despotism and selfishness of the oppressors of the working people, but also the obedience of the oppressed themselves, their long-suffering and slavish psychology.

Shchedrin's work is connected with the traditions of his brilliant predecessors: Pushkin, Gogol. But Shchedrin's satire is sharper and more merciless. In all its brilliance, Shchedrin's talent as an accuser was revealed in his fairy tales.

Sympathizing with the oppressed people, Shchedrin opposed the autocracy and its servants. The tsar, ministers and governors are ridiculed by the fairy tale "The Bear in the Voivodeship". It shows three Toptygins, successively replacing each other in the province, where they were sent by the lion to "pacify the internal adversaries." The first two Toptygins were engaged in various kinds of "evil acts": one - small, the other - large. Toptygin the third did not crave "bloodshed". Shchedrin shows that the cause of the disasters of the people is not only in the abuse of power, but also in the very nature of the autocratic system. And this means that the salvation of the people lies in the overthrow of tsarism. This is the main idea of ​​the story.

In the fairy tale "The Eagle-Patron", Shchedrin exposes the activities of the autocracy in the field of education. The eagle - the king of birds - decided to "bring" science and art at the court. However, the eagle soon got tired of playing the role of a philanthropist: he destroyed the nightingale-poet, put shackles on the learned woodpecker and imprisoned him in a hollow, ruined the raven. The writer showed in this tale the incompatibility of tsarism with science, education and art, and concluded that "eagles are harmful for education."

Shchedrin also ridicules the townsfolk. This topic is devoted to the tale "about the wise squeaker. Piskar all his life thought about how he would not be eaten by a pike, so he sat in a hole for a hundred years, away from danger. Piskar "lived - trembled and died - trembled." "Who about his existence remember?"

The writer is bitter that the Russian peasantry with their own hands
rope that the oppressors threw around his neck. Shchedrin calls on the people to think about their fate, to throw off oppression.

Every story has a subtext. Shchedrin often speaks in hints. In his fairy tales, there are both conditional comic characters (generals) and images - symbols of animals.

The originality of Shchedrin's fairy tales also lies in the fact that in them the real is intertwined with the fantastic. The writer introduces details from the life of people into the life of fabulous fish and animals: the scribbler does not receive a salary and does not keep servants, he dreams of winning two hundred thousand.

Satykov-Shchedrin's favorite devices are hyperbole and grotesque.

Characters of the characters are revealed not only in their actions, but also in words. The writer draws attention to the funny side of the depicted, there are many comical situations in fairy tales. Suffice it to recall that the generals were in nightgowns, and around their necks hung an order.

Shchedrin's tales are closely connected with folk art. This was manifested in the creation of traditional fairy-tale images of animals, and in the use of fairy-tale beginnings, sayings (“I drank honey-beer, it flowed down my mustache, but it didn’t get into my mouth”, “neither in a fairy tale to say, nor to describe with a pen”). The plot of the "Konyaga" is directly related to the proverb "A workhorse on straw, an idle dancer on oats." Along with such expressions, there are bookish words that are completely uncharacteristic of folk tales: "instigate life." By this, the writer emphasizes the allegorical meaning of the works. /

Shchedrin's "Tales" is a magnificent artistic monument of a bygone era, an example of the condemnation of all forms of social evil in the name of goodness, beauty, equality and justice.

THE PEOPLE AND GENTLEMEN IN THE TALES OF M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

Among the vast heritage of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, his fairy tales are the most popular. The folk tale form was used by many writers before Shchedrin. Literary tales in verse or prose recreated a whole world of folk ideas, and sometimes contained satirical motifs, as an example of this are the tales of A. S. Pushkin. Shchedrin also created sharply satirical tales in 1869, as well as in 1880-1886.

Fairy tales are the result of many years of observation, the result of the entire creative path of the writer. They intertwine the fantastic and the real, the comic and the tragic, the grotesque and hyperbole are widely used, and the amazing art of the Aesopian language is manifested.

There is an opinion that when the political content of a work comes to the fore in creativity, when attention is paid primarily to ideological content, compliance with a certain ideology, forgetting about artistry, art and literature begin to degenerate. Isn't that why "ideological" novels of the 20-30s, say, "Cement", "Hundred" and others, are little known today? Saltykov-Shchedrin believed that literature is an excellent tool in the political struggle. The writer is convinced that "literature and propaganda are one and the same." Saltykov-Shchedrin is the successor of Russian satire by D. I. Fonvizin, N. A. Radishchev, A. S. Griboyedov, N. V. Gogol and other great writers. But in his works he strengthened this artistic means, giving it the character of a political weapon. From this, his books were sharp and topical. However, today they are perhaps no less popular than in the 19th century.

It is difficult to imagine our classical literature without Saltykov-Shchedrin. This is, in many ways, a completely unique writer. "The diagnostician of our social evils and ailments" - this is how his contemporaries spoke of him. He knew life not from books. Exiled in his youth to Vyatka, Mikhail Evgrafovich studied social injustice and the arbitrariness of the authorities well. I was convinced that the Russian state primarily cares about the nobles, and not about the people, for whom Saltykov-Shchedrin himself was imbued with respect.

The writer perfectly depicted the life of a landowner's family in the Golovlevs, chiefs and officials in the History of a City and many other works. But he achieved the greatest expressiveness in works of small form, in fairy tales "for children of a fair age." These tales, as the censors rightly noted, are real satire.

There are many types of masters in Shchedrin's tales: landowners, officials, military leaders, and even autocrats. The writer often depicts them as completely helpless, stupid and arrogant. For example, "The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals." With caustic irony, Saltykov writes: “The generals served in some kind of registry ... therefore, they did not understand anything. They didn't even know the words. Of course, these generals did not know how to do anything, only to live at the expense of others, believing that buns grow on trees.

Chekhov was right when he wrote that inertia and stupidity are eradicated with great difficulty. In modern reality, we often meet the heroes of the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin.

And the Russian man is well done. He can do everything, he can do anything, even cook soup in a handful. But the satirist does not spare him either for 1 humility and servility. The generals are forcing this hefty man to twist a rope for himself so that he does not run away. And he obediently follows orders.

If the generals ended up on the island without a peasant not of their own free will, then the wild landowner, the hero of the fairy tale of the same name, all the time dreamed of getting rid of the unbearable peasants, from whom the bad servile spirit comes. Finally, the male world disappeared. And the landowner was left alone. And, of course, he went wild, lost his human appearance. “All of him ... overgrown with hair ... and his claws became like iron.” The author's hint is quite clear: the landowners live by the labor of the peasants. And therefore they have enough of everything: peasants, and bread, and livestock, and land. All this was taken away from the peasants, and most importantly, freedom was taken away.

Saltkov-Shchedrin cannot and will not reconcile himself to the fact that the people are too patient, downtrodden and obscure. And therefore displays the "gentlemen" in a caricature light, showing that they are not so scary.

The fairy tale "The Bear in the Voivodeship" depicts the Bear, who, with his endless pogroms ruining the peasants, brought the peasants out of patience, and they put him on a horn, "tore off his skin." The idea of ​​the tale is that autocracy in general, and not just cruel or bad officials, is to blame for the troubles of the people.

The main artistic device in the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin is allegory. And the fact that the Bear ended up on a horn is symbolic. This is a kind of call of the people to fight for their rights and freedoms.

A fairy tale-symbol, which in an allegorical form summarizes the accusatory pathos of the backward autocratic system in Russia, is “Bogatyr”. The “people” hope in the Bogatyr in vain: the Bogatyr is sleeping. He does not come to their aid when the fire burned the Russian land, and when the enemy attacked it, and when the famine happened. Only "little people" need to rely on their own strength. And the Bogatyr will not wake up in a hollow, since the vipers have eaten his whole body. Rise up, Ivan the Bogatyr, defend your native land, think with your head about its future.

Whatever the attitude towards the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin in our days, the satirist writer is still dear to us with his love for the people, honesty, desire to make life better, loyalty to ideals. Many of his images have become close and understandable to us today. Do not the words from the fairy tale “The Fool” about its hero still sound bitter truth today, that “he is not a fool at all, but only he has no vile thoughts, that’s why he cannot adapt to life”?

Half a century later, M. Gorky spoke about the significance of the work of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin: “It is necessary to know the history of the city of Glupov - this is our Russian history; and in general it is impossible to understand the history of Russia in the second half of the 19th century without the help of Shchedrin - the most truthful witness of our spiritual poverty and instability ... "

A. S. Pushkin

(I option)

“A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it! ..” But A. S. Pushkin was right. Yes, a fairy tale is a lie, a fiction, but it is she who teaches to recognize and hate the hostile features in the world, the fairy tale shows all the positive qualities of the people and stigmatizes, ridicules domination. With the help of a fairy tale, it is easier for the author to communicate with the people, because its language is understandable to everyone. In order to be convinced of this, I would like to analyze the work of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Fairy tales in the writer's work are the final stage, the result of the entire creative path of Mikhail Evgrafovich. In Shchedrin's fairy tales, we meet typical heroes: these are stupid, well-fed rulers, and hard-working, powerful, talented people. You can be convinced of this by reading any fairy tale by Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Here, for example, "The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals." With irony, the author writes: “The generals served all their lives in some kind of registry ... therefore, they did not understand anything. They didn't even know the words...

Of course, these generals could do nothing but live off others and think that buns grow on trees. That's why they almost died when they got to a desert island. But such as they were, are and will be.

The man is shown as a fine fellow, he can do everything, he can do anything, he even cooks soup in a handful.

But, for example, a wild landowner, the hero of a fairy tale of the same name, dreamed of getting rid of a peasant. Finally, the peasant world disappears, the landowner is left alone. And what: “He was covered with hair from head to toe ... and his nails became like iron. I stopped blowing my nose a long time ago ... "

Of course, everything is clear: the landowners live by the labor of the peasants, so they have a lot of everything.

A somewhat different group of the population of Russia is drawn by the writer in the fairy tale "The Wise Piskar". Here we see the image of a man in the street, frightened to death, who “lies all day long in a hole, lacks sleep at night, is malnourished”. Piskar considers the main slogan of his life: "Survive and the pike will not get into hailo." I think that Saltykov-Shchedrin, in the form of a scribbler, wanted to show a miserable, cowardly person, to accurately characterize the townsfolk.

Thus, we can say with confidence that the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and many other writers are aimed at educating a person in respect for the people and morality.

Images of fairy tales have come into use, have become common nouns and live for many decades. That's why I I think that it was not in vain that Pushkin said the words "A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it! ..". After all, thanks to the fairy tale, we, I mean our generation, have learned, are learning and will learn to live.

"THE TALE IS A LIE, YES IN IT A HINT!.."

A. S. Pushkin

(Based on Russian literary tales by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin) (II option)

In Shchedrin's tales, the artistic and ideological features of his satire were clearly manifested: special humor, genre originality, realism of his fiction, and political orientation. Shchedrin's tales included the problems and images of the entire work of the great satirist: exploiters, peasants, ordinary people, stupid, stupid and cruel autocrats of Russia and, of course, the image of the great Russian people.

Shchedrin's tales depict not just evil and kind people, the struggle between good and evil, like most folk tales, they reveal the class struggle in Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century, the era of the formation of the bourgeois system.

The main characters of Shchedrin's fairy tales are animals, and it was in animals that he embodied "all human qualities: good and evil, love and hate.

In the fairy tale “How one man fed two generals,” the author shows all the helplessness of the upper classes without a man. The generals, finding themselves without servants on a desert island, cannot catch grouse and fish themselves. They are looking for a man. The image of the peasant shows the image of the people, and in the image of the generals - representatives of the ruling classes.

In the fairy tale "The Wild Landowner" Shchedrin summarized his thoughts on reform - the "liberation" of the peasants, contained in all his works of the sixties. Here he poses an unusually acute problem of the post-reform relations between the feudal nobility and the peasantry completely devastated by the reform: “The cattle will go to the watering place - the landowner shouts: my water! a chicken will wander out of the village - the landowner shouts: my land! And earth, and water, and air - all of it became! There was no torch for the peasant to light in the light, there was no more rod than to sweep the hut. Here the peasants prayed with the whole world to the Lord God:

God! It’s easier for us to disappear even with small children than to suffer like this all our lives!”

This landowner, like the generals, had no idea about labor. When the peasants abandoned him, he immediately turned into a wild animal. The landowner acquires the external human appearance again only after his peasants return. Scolding the savage landowner for his stupidity, the police officer tells him that the state “cannot exist” without peasant “taxes and duties,” that without peasants everyone will starve to death, “you can’t buy a piece of meat or a pound of bread in the bazaar,” and even money from there will be no sir. The people create wealth, and the ruling classes are only consumers of this wealth.

Representatives of the people in Shchedrin's tales reflect bitterly on the very system of social relations in Russia. All of them clearly see that the existing system provides happiness only to the rich. That is why the plot of most fairy tales is built on a fierce class struggle. There can be no peace where one class lives at the expense of another. Even if the representative of the ruling class tries to be "kind", the youth is not able to alleviate the plight of the oppressed.

This is well stated in the fairy tale "Neighbours", where the peasant Ivan Bedny and the landowner Ivan the Rich act. Ivan Bogaty “did not produce valuables himself, but he thought very nobly about the distribution of wealth ... And Ivan Bedny did not think at all about the distribution of wealth (he was not busy), but instead he produced valuables.” Both neighbors are surprised to see that strange things are happening in the world: “this mechanics is so cunningly arranged”, that “whichever person is constantly at work, has empty cabbage soup on the table on holidays, and which, with useful leisure, is in weekdays cabbage soup with slaughter. "Why did it happen?" they ask. The Greatest, to whom both Ivans turned, could not resolve this contradiction either.

The real answer to this question comes from the Dupe. In his opinion, the contradiction lies in the most unfair social system - the "plant". “And no matter how much you scribble between yourself, no matter how much you scatter with your mind, you won’t invent anything, as long as it says so in this plant,” he says to his neighbors.

The intention of this tale, like other tales of Shchedrin, is precisely to call on the people to radically change the social order based on exploitation.

In his fairy tales, Shchedrin showed that, although the peasant is illiterate, the master cannot live without him, since he does not know how to do anything himself.

All fairy tales are fiction, but in Shchedrin's fairy tales there is also a hint that his characters really exist, and therefore his fairy tales will live forever.

FEATURES OF SATIRICAL FAIRY TALES BY M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin occupies one of the leading places among democratic writers. He was a student of Belinsky, a friend of Nekrasov. In his works, Saltykov-Shchedrin sharply criticized the autocratic-feudal system of Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Not a single writer of the West and Russia has painted such terrible pictures of serfdom in his works as Saltykov-Shchedrin did. Saltykov-Shchedrin himself believed that the constant subject of his "literary activity was a protest against the arbitrariness of double-mindedness, lies, predatory, betrayal, idle talk GU 1

The heyday of Saltykov-Shchedrin's creativity fell on the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth century, when favorable conditions were formed in Russia for the development of capitalism. The reform that the tsarist government was carrying out at that time did not improve the situation of the peasants. Saltykov-Shchedrin loved the peasants and the entire Russian people and sincerely wished to help him. Therefore, the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin have always been filled with deep political meaning. In world literature there are no works equal in political poignancy to the novel "The History of a City" and the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin. His favorite genre was the genre of political fairy tale invented by him. The main theme of such fairy tales is the relationship between the exploiters and the exploited. In fairy tales, a satire is given on tsarist Russia: on landowners, bureaucracy, bureaucracy. Altogether Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote thirty-two fairy tales.

Readers are presented with the images of the rulers of Russia (“The Bear in the Voivodeship”, “The Poor Wolf”), landowners, generals (“The Wild Landowner”, “The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals”), the townsfolk (“The Wise Piskar”).

Saltykov-Shchedrin's love for the people, confidence in their power, received a particularly vivid expression in fairy tales. The image of Konyaga (“Konyaga”) is a symbol of peasant Russia, eternally working, tortured by oppressors.

Konyaga is a source of life for everyone: thanks to him, bread grows, but he himself is always hungry. His lot is work.

In almost all fairy tales, the images of the oppressors are given in opposition to the oppressed people. Very bright in this respect is the tale "The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals." It shows the infirmity of the nobles, the industriousness and ability of the peasant to work. The man is honest, straightforward, confident in his abilities, quick-witted, smart. He can do everything: cook soup in a handful, swim across the ocean jokingly. The generals are pitiful and insignificant in comparison. They are cowardly, helpless, stupid.

Many fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin are devoted to exposing the philistine. In the fairy tale "The Wise Piskar" its main character Piskar was "moderate and liberal". Papa taught him the "wisdom of life": not to interfere in anything and take care of yourself more. Piskar sits all his life in his hole and trembles, as if not to hit his ear or fall into the mouth of a pike. He lived for more than a hundred years, and when the time came to die, it turned out that he did nothing good to people and no one remembers or knows him.

In many fairy tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin portrays the hard life of the people and calls for the destruction of the unjust, inhuman system. In the fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals,” Shchedrin blames such a system that defends the interests of the generals, forcing a strong, intelligent peasant to work for himself. In the tale, the generals are depicted as two parasites; these are former officials who have risen to the rank of general. All their lives they lived thoughtlessly, on state allowances, served in some kind of registry. There they were "born, brought up and grown old" and, therefore, knew nothing. Finding themselves on a desert island, the generals could not even determine which cardinal points were located, and for the first time they learned that "human food in its original form flies, floats and grows on trees." As a result, both generals almost starve to death and nearly become cannibals. But after a persistent and long search, the generals finally discovered a peasant who, with his fist under his head, was sleeping under a tree and, as it seemed to them, "evaded work in the most impudent way." The indignation of the generals knew no bounds. The man in the fairy tale personifies the entire laboring, long-suffering people of Russia. Shchedrin in his work notes its strengths and weaknesses. The weak side is the resignation and readiness of the people to obey with its enormous strength. The peasant responds to the injustice of the generals not with protest, not with indignation, but with patience and humility. The greedy and evil generals call the peasant "sluggard", but they themselves use his services and cannot live without him. Returning home, the generals raked in so much money from the treasury that "neither in a fairy tale to say, nor to describe with a pen," and the peasant was only sent "a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver: have fun, man!" Shchedrin's traditional fairy tale devices acquire a new application: they acquire a political coloring. It suddenly turns out in Shchedrin that the peasant who saved the generals from death and fed them “drank honey-beer”, but, unfortunately, “it flowed down his mustache, only it didn’t get into his mouth.” Thus, Shchedrin's satire is directed not only at representatives of the ruling circles. The man is also satirically depicted. He weaves the rope himself so that the generals tie him up, and is pleased with his work.

Creating vivid political fairy tales, Shchedrin does not clutter them up with an abundance of characters and problems, but usually builds her plot on one sharp episode. The action itself in Shchedrin's tales unfolds quickly and dynamically. Each fairy tale is a short story-narration using dialogue, replicas and stories of characters, author's digressions-characteristics, parodies, inserted episodes (for example, dreams), traditional folklore techniques and descriptions. Fairy tales are almost always narrated on behalf of the author. So, at the heart of the plot of the already considered fairy tale about two generals is the struggle of two generals with a peasant. From the introduction, the reader learns that the generals served in the registry. But now the generals "at the behest of the pike" ended up on a desert island. They have to look for a man. The first meeting of the generals with the peasant is the plot of the fairy tale. Further, the action develops rapidly and dynamically. The man in a short time provided the generals with everything they needed. The culmination of the tale is the order of the generals to the peasant: to twist a rope for himself. From this follows the idea of ​​a fairy tale: it is enough for working peasants, the creators of all material wealth on earth, to endure humiliation and slavery. The denouement of the tale comes when the peasant sends the generals to St. Petersburg, to Podyacheskaya Street. He received for his hard work a miserable handout - a penny.

In the tale there are sharply defined details of the appearance of the generals: cheerful, loose, well-fed, white, an ominous fire shone in their eyes, their teeth chattered, a dull growl flew out of their chests. This description shows humor, turning into satire. An important compositional device in the fairy tale is the dreams of the generals, as well as the description of nature.

Shchedrin also widely uses the method of artistic antithesis. So, the generals, once on a desert island, despite the abundance of food, are helpless and almost die of hunger. On the other hand, the peasant, although he eats chaff bread, has almost nothing but "sour sheepskin", creates on the island all the conditions necessary for life and even builds a "ship".

In fairy tales, the satirist often resorts to allegory: in the images of the Lion and the Eagle patron, he denounced the kings; in the images of hyenas, bears, wolves, pikes - representatives of the royal administration; in the images of hares, crucians and minnows - cowardly inhabitants; in the images of men, Konyagi are a destitute people.

A characteristic feature of Shchedrin's satire is the technique of satirical hyperbole - the exaggeration of some of the characters' actions, bringing them to a caricature, to the violation of external plausibility. Thus, in the tale of two generals, hyperbole more fully reveals the unsuitability of tsarist officials for life.

Thus, we can say that the author's skillful use of artistic techniques helped make his fairy tales one of the best satirical works of world literature.

FEATURES OF THE FAIRY TALE GENRE IN THE WORKS OF M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

Russian literature has always been more closely connected with the life of society than European literature. Any changes in the public mood, new ideas immediately found a response in the literature. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin was acutely aware of the ailments of his society and found an unusual art form to draw the attention of readers to the problems that worried him. Let's try to understand the features of this form created by the writer.

Traditionally, three types of fairy tales are distinguished in Russian folklore: fairy tales, social fairy tales, and fairy tales about animals. Saltykov-Shchedrin created a literary tale that combines all three types. But the genre of the fairy tale does not determine all the originality of these works. In Shchedrin's Tales we encounter the traditions of fable and chronicle, more precisely, parody of chronicle. The author uses such fables as allegory, allegory, comparison of human phenomena with the phenomena of the animal world, the use of emblems. An emblem is an allegorical image that traditionally carries one meaning. In Shchedrin's "Tales" the emblem is, for example, a bear. He personifies awkwardness, stupidity, but under the pen of Saltykov-Shchedrin, these properties acquire social significance. Thus, the traditional emblematic meaning of the image of a bear colors and characterizes a specific social image (voivode, for example).

The genre beginning of the chronicle is found in the fairy tale "The Bear in the Voivodeship". It is indicated by the presence of a chronological sequence in the presentation of events: Toptygin I, Toptygin II, and so on. Parody is achieved by transferring the properties and qualities of specific historical figures to the images of the inhabitants of the forest. Leo's illiteracy is reminiscent of the notorious illiteracy of Peter I.

However, the artistic originality of "Fairy Tales" is not limited to the genre nature characteristic of fairy tales. It should be said separately about satire. Satire, that is, a special laughter aimed at destroying an object, becomes the main creative technique.

It is quite natural that the object of satire for Saltykov-Shchedrin, a writer who continues Gogol's traditions, is serfdom.

Trying to depict relationships in contemporary society, he models situations that allow him to do this.

In the fairy tale "The Wild Landowner", with the disappearance of the peasants, the inability of the landowner to an independent existence is manifested. The unnaturalness of the relations that exist in society is also shown in the fairy tale "The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals." This is a very interesting tale based on a situation similar to that of Robinson Crusoe. A man and two generals found themselves on a desert island. Freeing his characters from the conventions of civilized life, the author preserves the existing relationship, showing their absurdity.

The following fact is also interesting. In the tale, only the social status is indicated, but the names of the characters are not given. It can be assumed that Saltykov-Shchedrin uses a technique similar to the technique of emblems. For the author, a peasant, a landowner, a general have the same constant meaning as a hare, a fox, a bear for readers of fables.

All the above situations are created with the help of fantastic elements, one of which is the grotesque, which serves as the main means of creating images (the image of the “wild landowner” from the fairy tale of the same name.) Exaggeration, shifting the boundaries of reality, allows you to create a game situation. It is based on a turnover introduced by Pushkin - "wild nobility", but with the help of the grotesque, "savagery" acquires a literal meaning. The image of a peasant is also built on the grotesque. In the fairy tales "The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals" and "The Wild Landowner" the passivity and subordination of the peasantry are exaggerated. I will not give classic examples from The Tale of That.... The second story is much more interesting. There, the men gather in a herd, a flock and fly away. A very lively, associative image of the collective principle.

Often used by the writer, the technique of bringing social phenomena and types closer to the animal world makes it possible to more clearly write out images that combine the properties of animals and people. This technique gives the author relative freedom of expression, allowing him to bypass censorship restrictions.

Shchedrin's comparison with animals is distinguished from the fable tradition by a pronounced social orientation.

The character system is also unique. All fairy tales can be divided into fairy tales about people and about animals. But, despite this formal difference, the whole system of characters in any fairy tale is built on the principle of social contrast: the oppressor and the oppressed, the victim and the predator.

For all its originality, Shchedrin's Tales are based on an obvious, albeit stylized, folklore tradition. This is connected with the theory of "skaz", which was put forward by the famous Russian literary critic Eikhenbaum. According to this theory, works focused on oral speech have a number of artistic features: puns, slips of the tongue, game situations. Classical examples of the use of "skaz" are the works of Gogol and Leskov's The Enchanted Wanderer.

"Tales" by Shchedrin are also "tales" works. This is even indicated by the presence of traditional fairy tale turns: “they lived and were”, “but at the behest of the pike, at my will”, “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state”, “live and live” and so on.

In conclusion, I would like to say that it is precisely the artistic form of "Tales" that is their main advantage. Of course, literature has always been a public platform, but very rarely a work that touches only on social problems remains in the history of literary development. Shchedrin's "Tales" due to the amazing and complex artistic world, truly artistic originality, are still included in the mandatory reading circle of all educated people.

M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN - SATIRIST

In Russia every writer is truly and sharply individual.

M. Gorky

Each of the great writers of national literature occupies a special place in it, which belongs only to him. The main originality of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in Russian literature lies in the fact that he was and remains in it the largest representative of social criticism and denunciation. Ostrovsky called Shchedrin a "prophet" and felt in him a "terrible poetic force."

Saltykov-Shchedrin chose, it seems to me, the most difficult genre of literature - satire. After all, satire is a kind of comic that most mercilessly ridicules reality and, unlike humor, does not give a chance for correction.

The writer had the gift of sensitively capturing the most acute conflicts brewing in Russia and parading them in front of the entire Russian society in his works.

Difficult and thorny was the creative path of the satirist. From an early age, life's contradictions entered his soul, from which the mighty tree of Shchedrin's satire subsequently grew. And I think that Pushkin's lines of "satire brave lord", said in "Eugene Onegin" about Fonvizin, can be safely redirected to Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Most closely Shchedrin studied the political life of Russia: the relationship between different classes, the oppression of the peasantry by the "higher" strata of society.

The lawlessness of the tsarist administration, its reprisals against the people, are perfectly reflected in the novel "The History of a City". In it, Saltykov-Shchedrin predicted the death of the Russian autocracy, tangibly conveyed the growth of popular anger: “The North has darkened and covered with clouds; from these clouds something rushed to the city: either a downpour, or a tornado.

The inevitable fall of the tsarist regime, the process of destruction of not only political, but also its moral foundations, is clearly depicted in the novel "Lord of the Heads of the Lion". Here we see the history of three generations of the Golovlyov nobles, as well as a vivid picture of the decay and degeneration of the whole nobility. In the image of Yudushka Golovlev, all the ulcers and vices of both the family and the entire class of owners are embodied. I am especially struck by the speech of Judas the misanthrope and fornication. All of it consists of sighs, hypocritical appeals to God, incessant repetitions: “An god, here he is. And there, and here, and here with us, as long as we are talking with you - he is everywhere! And he sees everything, hears everything, only pretends not to notice.

Empty talk and hypocrisy helped him hide the true essence of his nature - the desire to "torment, ruin, deprive, suck blood." The name Judas has become a household name for every exploiter, parasite. With the power of his talent, Saltykov-Shchedrin created a vivid, typical, unforgettable image, mercilessly exposing political betrayal, greed, hypocrisy. It seems to me that it is appropriate here to cite the words of Mikhailovsky, who said about The Golovlev Gentlemen that this is a "critical encyclopedia of Russian life."

The writer has distinguished himself in many genres of literature. From his pen came novels, chronicles, stories, short stories, essays, plays. But Saltykov-Shchedrin's artistic talent is most clearly expressed in his famous Tales. The writer himself defined them as follows: "Fairy tales for children of a fair age." They combine elements of folklore and author's literature: fairy tales and fables. They most fully reflect the life experience and wisdom of the satirist. Despite the topical political motives, fairy tales still retain all the charm of folk art: “In a certain kingdom, the Bogatyr was born. Baba Yaga gave birth to him, nurtured him, nursed him ... ”(“ Bogatyr ”).

Saltykov-Shchedrin created many fairy tales by using the technique of allegory. The author called this style of writing Aesopian language after the ancient Greek fabulist Aesop, who in ancient times used the same technique in his fables. Aesopian language was one of the means of protecting Shchedrin's works from the tsarist censorship that tormented them.

In some fairy tales of the satirist, the characters are animals. Their images are endowed with ready-made characters: the wolf is greedy and angry, the bear is rustic, the fox is insidious, the hare is cowardly and boastful, and the donkey is hopelessly stupid. For example, in the fairy tale “The Selfless Hare”, the wolf enjoys the position of the ruler, the despot: “... Here is my decision [hare] for you: I sentence you to be deprived of your stomach by tearing ... Or maybe ... ha ha ... I will have mercy on you." However, the author does not at all evoke sympathy for the hare - after all, he also lives according to the laws of the wolf, resignedly goes to the wolf's mouth! The Shchedrin Hare is not just cowardly and helpless, he is cowardly, he refuses to resist in advance, making it easier for the wolf to solve the “food problem”. And here the author's irony turns into caustic sarcasm, into deep contempt for the psychology of a slave.

In general, all the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin can be conditionally divided into three main groups: fairy tales that castigate the autocracy and the exploiting classes; fairy tales that expose the cowardice of the modern writer of the liberal intelligentsia and, of course, fairy tales about the people.

The writer ridicules the stupidity and worthlessness of the generals, putting into the mouth of one of them the following words: “Who could think, Your Excellency, that human food in its original form flies, swims and grows on trees?”

The generals are saved from death by a man whom they force to work for themselves. A man - "a huge man" - is much stronger and smarter than the generals. However, due to slavish obedience, habit, he unquestioningly obeys the generals and fulfills all their requirements. He only cares about "how to please his generals for the fact that they complained about him, a parasite, and did not disdain his muzhik labor." The peasant's humility reaches the point that he himself twisted the rope with which the generals tied him to a tree, "so as not to run away."

An unprecedented satire on the Russian liberal intelligentsia is developed by Saltykov-Shchedrin in fairy tales about fish and hares. Such is the tale "The wise scribbler." In the image of a "scribbler", the satirist showed a miserable inhabitant, the meaning of life of which was the idea of ​​self-preservation. Shchedrin showed how boring and useless the life of people who prefer their petty personal interests to the public struggle. The entire biography of such people comes down to one phrase: "He lived - trembled, and died - trembled."

"Konyaga" adjoins the fairy tales about the people. The title of the story speaks for itself. A driven peasant nag is a symbol of people's life. “There is no end to the work! The whole meaning of his existence is exhausted by work: for her he is conceived and born ... ".

The tale asks the question: "Where is the exit?" And a reply is given: "The exit is in Konyag itself."

In my opinion, in fairy tales about the people, Shchedrin's irony and sarcasm are replaced by pity and bitterness.

The writer's language is deeply folk, close to Russian folklore. In fairy tales, Shchedrin widely uses proverbs, sayings, sayings: “Two deaths cannot happen, one cannot be avoided”, “My hut is on the edge”, “Once upon a time ...”, “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state ...” .

The "Tales" of Saltykov-Shchedrin awakened the political consciousness of the people, called for struggle, for protest. Despite the fact that many years have passed since the satirist wrote his famous works, they are all relevant now. Unfortunately, society did not get rid of the vices that the writer denounced in his work. It is no coincidence that many playwrights of our time turn to his works to show the imperfection of modern society. After all, the bureaucratic system that Saltykov-Shchedrin castigated, in my opinion, not only has not outlived its usefulness, but is also flourishing. Are there not enough Jews today who are ready to sell even their own mother for their material well-being? Very topical for our time is the theme of ordinary intellectuals who sit in their apartments, as if in holes, and do not want to see anything further than their own door.

Shchedrin's satire is a special phenomenon in Russian literature. His individuality lies in the fact that he sets himself a fundamental creative task: to hunt down, expose and destroy.

If humor in the work of N. V. Gogol, as V. G. Belinsky wrote, “... is calm in its indignation, good-natured in its cunning”, then in Shchedrin’s work it is “... formidable and open, bilious, poisonous, merciless".

I. S. Turgenev wrote: “I saw how the audience writhed with laughter while reading some of Saltykov's essays. There was something terrible about that laugh. The audience, laughing at the same time, felt how the scourge was whipping itself.

The literary heritage of the writer belongs not only to the past, but also to the present and the future. Shchedrin must be known and read! It introduces an understanding of the social depths and patterns of life, highly elevates the spirituality of a person and morally cleanses him. I think that the work of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, with its relevance, is close to every modern person.

SKILL OF M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN - SATIRIST

Satirical are those works in which the negative features of public and private life are angrily ridiculed and sharply condemned, often in an emphasized, exaggeratedly comic, sometimes grotesque form, due to which their incongruity and impossibility in human life are more clearly expressed. Satire is one of the favorite techniques of Russian writers and is used when the author expresses his attitude to events, the main characters of the story, their actions, behavior. One of these artists can be called Saltykov-Shchedrin, whose works "Tales" and "The History of a City" are the clearest examples of satirical literature. The author sharply condemns, despises, completely denies the autocracy with its absolute power, the passivity and inactivity of the liberal intelligentsia, apathy, patience, inability to take a decisive action, the endless faith and love of the people in relation to the authorities, using a huge number of artistic means, one of which is is the choice of genre for writing works.

The literary genre of "Fairy Tales" implies the presence of a certain mysticism, magic, fantasy, based on real events, which gives the artist complete freedom in expressing his attitude to reality. “The History of a City” was written in the genre of a pamphlet, but it is also a parody of the chronicle, since the archivist expresses a subjective assessment, which is completely impossible in such works (“They did it cunningly,” says the chronicler, “they knew that their heads were on their shoulders grow strong - that's what they suggested"), and on history, because the reader is able to draw parallels between the mayors of the city of Glupov and the emperors of the Russian state. Thus, we can say that the city of Foolov is an allegory for the Russian autocracy with its socio-political, social activities. Another artistic means of expressing the author's position are allegorical images of animals, in the description of the life of which Saltykov-Shchedrin uses the details of people's life.

So, for example, in the fairy tale "The Wise Scribbler", the scribbler was "enlightened, moderately liberal", "did not receive a salary ... and did not keep servants." At the same time, the artist’s satire is aimed at exposing the vices and shortcomings inherent in the lifestyle of scribblers in general, in other words, the inhabitants, who consisted in winning, but not earning two hundred thousand rubles with their labor, drinking wine, playing cards, smoking tobacco. yes, “chasing red girls”, without fear of being eaten by a formidable pike. This is a utopia, the dream of a "useless scribbler" who, instead of trying to realize it, "lives - trembles, dies - trembles." The writer condemns the inactivity, the uselessness of the existence of the fish: “... useless squeakers. No one is warm or cold from them ... they live, they take up space for nothing and eat food.

The satirist also ridicules the inability of the liberal intelligentsia to take decisive action, the failure of their ideas, the ways of their implementation in the situation that prevailed in Russia by the middle of the nineteenth century, when the need for changes in the form of government, in the position of peasants in society became a necessity. A vivid example of this is the crucian carp with its ideal of social equality from the fairy tale "Karas-Idealist". Rybka believes in the possibility of creating a utopian society, where, through moral rebirth, re-education, pikes will live in peace with crucian carp. But the hopes of the main character of the story were not justified. The pike swallowed it, but something else is important, namely, how she did it - mechanically, unconsciously. And the point is not at all in the anger and bloodthirstiness of the pike, but in the fact that the very nature of predators is like that. In the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin there is not a single superfluous word, everything has a certain subtext, in the creation of which the artist uses the Aesopian language, that is, the encryption system. In the fairy tale "Faithful Trezor", Vorotilov decided to test his dog's vigilance by dressing up as a thief. The author notes: “It’s amazing how this suit went to him!” It becomes clear how all his fortune was mined.

One of the most striking, clear examples of the image of the authorities, absolute monarchy are the mayors of the city of Glupov, whose reign is narrated in the "History of a City". At the beginning of the book, the satirist gives a brief description of all the mayors from 1731 to 1826. The story begins with the arrival of a new chief in Foolov - Dementy Vardamovich Brudasty, in whose description the grotesque is mainly used. The head of the mayor is empty, and, apart from the organ, there is nothing in it. This mechanical device played only two pieces - “Dawn!” and "I will not stand it!". The author satirically, with a hint of sarcasm, writes about the mechanical nature of actions, denounces the main properties of autocracy - violence, arbitrariness: “They seize and catch, flog and flog, describe and sell ... this ... the ominous reigns: "I will not tolerate!"

In the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship”, absolute monarchy is characterized as follows: “... more bloody, bloody ... that's what you need!”

Saltykov-Shchedrin condemns, angrily ridicules the confident nature of autocratic power, the absurdity, clumsiness of its actions and deeds. For example, the first bear-voivode “ate a chizhik”, the second one “pulled up” peasant cows, ruined, destroyed a printing house, etc. The satirist also condemns the negative attitude of the autocracy towards enlightenment. In the fairy tale "The Eagle-Patron", the eagle - the king of birds, just like Perepyot-Zalikhvatsky, closes the gymnasiums, "abolishes the sciences."

And how does the man feel about all this, does he take any actions to confront the authorities? No, because it is the spiritual slave of the owner (landlord). In the tale of two generals and a peasant, Saltykov-Shchedrin, on the one hand, admires the dexterity and intelligence of the peasant who "cooked soup in a handful", on the other hand, he speaks satirically about apathy, spiritual slavery inherent in the people as a whole. The satirist ridicules the behavior of a peasant who himself wove a rope with which the generals would later tie him up. In the fairy tale “Konyaga”, the horse is an image of the patience of the Russian people, whose existence “is exhausted by work”, “he was born for her, and outside of her he ... no one needs ...”.

In The History of a City, the satire of Saltykov-Shchedrin is directed at such character traits of the people as veneration of rank, endless faith and love for mayors, indecision, passivity, humility, which subsequently lead to the “end of history” and, as we can understand, to possible future of Russia.

The artist ridicules the notions of the Foolovites about anarchy, which in their view is “anarchy”. The people do not know how, are not used to and do not know how to live without a boss, a person whose orders must be obeyed, on whom their fate depends.

But the pictures of folk life are described by the satirist in a different tone than the life of the powerful of this world. Laughter takes on a tinge of bitterness, regret, swearing is replaced by a secret co4VBPTBWM

According to M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, the role of the people is the main one in the course of history, but this moment will have to wait a very long time, so the artist does not spare the people, exposes all his vices and shortcomings.

The writer was a devoted citizen of the Jew of the Motherland and infinitely loved her, not imagining himself in any other country. That is why Saltykov-Shchedrin depicted reality with all severity and severity. All his talent as a satirist was aimed at exposing the numerous vices and shortcomings inherent in Russia.

FEATURES OF SATIRE M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

It turns out strange: a hundred years ago, Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote his works on the topic of the day, mercilessly criticizing the phenomena of contemporary reality; everyone read it, understood it, laughed, and... nothing has changed. And from year to year, from generation to generation, everyone reads the lines of his books, perfectly understanding what the author wanted to say. And with each new "coil" of history, the books of Saltykov-Shchedrin take on a new sound, become relevant again. What is the secret of such a miracle?

Perhaps in the fact that the satire of Saltykov-Shchedrin is diverse in subject matter, in genre (fairy tales, history in the form of a chronicle, a family novel), diverse in the use of “means of ridicule”, rich stylistically.

Gogol's satire is called "laughter through tears", Saltykov-Shchedrin's satire is called "laughter through contempt", its goal is not only to ridicule, but also not to leave a stone unturned from the hated phenomena. One of the most amazing books, The History of a City, published as a separate edition in 1870, won the hearts of all writers, and for many, its prophetic power and eternal relevance still remain a mystery. For Russian satire, the appeal to the image of the city was traditional. Gogol, through the life of a county, provincial city and even the capital, wanted to ridicule the dark sides of Russian life. Saltykov-Shchedrin creates his own unique "grotesque city", where the plausible is combined with the most ridiculous and impossible. The main problem that interested Saltykov-Shchedrin was the relationship between the authorities and the people. Therefore, for him there were two objects of ridicule: the despotism of the rulers and the qualities of the "popular crowd" that approved of unlimited power.

The chronicle form of the "History of a City" is a caustic irony; the publisher, as it were, hides behind the chronicler, sometimes correcting him, but this satire does not lose its power.

Saltykov-Shchedrin is interested in the origins, the essence of "stupidity". It turned out that Foolov went from a grotesque incongruity: from the people who were prone to ridiculous acts (“... They kneaded the Volga with oatmeal, then they dragged the calf to the bathhouse, then they boiled porridge in a purse ... then they caulked the jail with pancakes ... then they propped up the sky with stakes...”), who could not live according to his will, who renounced his own freedom and meekly accepted all the conditions of his new prince. (“And you will pay me many tributes ... When I go to war - and you go! And you don’t care about anything else! .. And those of you who don’t care about anything, I will have mercy; all the rest - to execute.")

The images of city governors are grotesque, highly generalized and reveal the essence of certain eras of Glupov's life. The city can be ruled by an empty head (Organchik) or a stuffed head (Pimp), but such reigns end with the appearance of impostors, troubled times and a large number of those killed. Under despotism, the Foolovites endure the most severe trials: famine, fires, wars for education, after which they are overgrown with hair and began to suck their paws. In the era of liberal rule, freedom turned into permissiveness, which became the basis for the emergence of a new ruler, who brought with him boundless despotism, militarization of life, and a system of barracks management (Ugryum-Burcheev).

The Foolovites demolished everything, they were not ashamed when they destroyed their houses, their city, even when they fought with the eternal (with the river), and when they built Nepreklonsk, they saw the work of their hands, they were afraid. Saltykov-Shchedrin leads the reader to the idea that any government is a struggle between power and nature, and an idiot on the throne, an idiot with power, is a threat to the very foundations of the natural existence of the people.

The behavior of the people, the actions of people, their actions are grotesque. Satire is directed at those aspects of folk life that cause the author's contempt. First of all, this is patience: the Foolovites can "endure everything." This is emphasized even with the help of hyperbole: "Here, lay down and sunk us from four sides - we will endure this too." It is this excessive patience that creates the Foolovian "world of miracles", where "senseless and merciless" popular riots turn into a "rebellion on their knees." But the most hated feature of the people for Saltykov-Shchedrin is the love of the authorities, because it was precisely the psychology of the Foolovites that gave rise to the possibility of such a terrible, despotic rule.

The grotesque also permeates the fairy tale. The tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin are diverse in the use of folklore traditions: substitutions (“There once lived two generals ... at the behest of a pike, at my will they found themselves on a desert island ...”), fantastic situations, fairy tale repetitions (“everyone was trembling, everyone was trembling ...”), fabulous roles (wolf, bear, eagle, fish). Traditional images receive a different direction, new properties and qualities. In Saltykov-Shchedrin, a raven is a “petitioner”, an eagle is a “philanthropist”, a hare is not oblique, but “selfless”; the use of such epithets is full of the author's irony. In fairy tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin uses Krylov's fable heritage, especially allegory. But Krylov is characterized by the situation of "predator and prey", on the side of which our sympathies and our pity. For Saltykov-Shchedrin, a predator is not only a “role” of the hero, but also a “state of mind” (it’s not for nothing that the “wild landowner” turns into a beast at the end), and the victims themselves are to blame for their problems and cause the author not pity, but contempt.

A characteristic device for fairy tales and for the "History of a City" is an allegory, we feel who the autono means by his mayors, or more simply - the Toptygins. A common device used in fairy tales is hyperbole, which acts as a "magnifying glass". The ruthlessness and unsuitability for life of the generals is emphasized by one phrase: they firmly believed that the rolls "will be born in the same form in which they are served with coffee in the morning." Also, the legacy of the fable in the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin is the Aesopian language, which helps readers take a fresh look at familiar phenomena and turns the fairy tale into a political satire fairy tale. The comic effect is achieved through a combination of fairy-tale and contemporary vocabulary (“he knew how to build lairs, that is, he knew engineering”), introducing facts into the fairy tale showing historical reality (“under Magnitsky, this machine was publicly burned”).

As was noted by Genis and Weil, the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin are easier to remember not in full text, but in fragments, quotations, many of which have become sayings. How often do we use “rebellion on our knees” without hesitation, we want “either stellate sturgeon with horseradish, or the constitution”, “in relation to meanness”! In order to more accurately, more clearly convey his idea to the reader, Saltykov-Shchedrin even allows himself to change the spelling: in all dictionaries, fish is a gudgeon, because it lives in the sand, Saltykov-Shchedrin has a squeaker, from the word squeak ("lived - trembled , died - trembled") -

The style, artistic techniques, images of Saltykov-Shchedrin's satire were approvingly received by contemporaries and are still of interest to readers. The traditions of Saltykov-Shchedrin did not die: they were continued by such great masters of Russian satire as Bulgakov, Zamyatin, Zoshchenko, Ilf and Petrov “The History of a City”, “Fairy Tales”, “Lord of the Heads of the Lion” remain eternally young, eternally relevant works. Probably, this is the fate of Russia - from year to year, from century to century, to make the same mistakes, each time to re-read the works written a hundred years ago, saying: "Wow, but we were warned ..."

SATIRICAL TECHNIQUES IN M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN’S FAIRY TALES

The work of the great Russian satirist M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is a significant phenomenon, generated by special historical conditions in Russia in the 50s-80s of the XIX century. A writer, a revolutionary democrat, Shchedrin is a vivid representative of the sociological trend in Russian realism and, at the same time, a deep psychologist, in the nature of his creative method, different from the great writers-psychologists of his day.

In the 80s, a book of fairy tales was created, since with the help of fairy tales it was easier to convey revolutionary ideas to the people, to reveal the class struggle in Russia in the second half of the 19th century, in the era of the formation of the bourgeois system. The Aesopian language helps the writer in this, with the help of which he disguises his true Intentions and feelings, as well as his heroes, so as not to attract the attention of censorship.

In the early work of Saltykov-Shchedrin, there are fabulous images of "zoological assimilation." In the "Provincial Essays", for example, there are officials - sturgeon and piskari; provincial aristocrats manifest the properties of either a kite or a toothy pike, and in the expression of their faces one can guess "that she will remain without objection." Therefore, the writer explores in fairy tales the types of social behavior shown by time. He ridicules all kinds of adaptations, hopes, unrealizable hopes dictated by the instinct of self-preservation or naivety. Neither the dedication of a hare sitting under a bush according to the "wolf's resolution", nor the wisdom of a squeaker, hiding in a hole, save from death. What better way, it seems, has adapted to the policy of "hedgehogs" dried vobla. “Now I have no extra thoughts, no extra feelings, no extra conscience - nothing like that will happen,” she rejoiced. But according to the logic of the time, “vague, unfaithful and cruel”, the vobla was also “gobbled up”, since “it turned from a triumphant into a suspect, from a well-intentioned one into a liberal”. Shchedrin ridiculed the liberals especially mercilessly. In letters of this time, the writer often likened the liberal to an animal. "... If only one liberal pig expressed sympathy!" he wrote about the closure of Otechestvennye Zapiski. "There is no animal more cowardly than the Russian liberal." And in the artistic world of fairy tales, indeed, there was no animal equal in meanness to a liberal. It was important for Shchedrin to name the social phenomenon he hated in his own language and to stigmatize him for all time (“liberal”). The writer treated his fairy-tale characters in different ways. His laughter, both angry and bitter, is inseparable from the understanding of the suffering of a person doomed to "stare his forehead at the wall and freeze in this position." But with all the sympathy, for example, for the idealist carp and his ideas, Shchedrin took a sober look at life. By the fate of his fairy tale characters, he showed that the refusal to fight for the right to life, any concession, reconciliation with the reaction is tantamount to the spiritual and physical death of the human race. Intelligibly and artistically convincing, he inspired the reader that the autocracy, like a hero born of Baba Yaga, was rotten from the inside and it was pointless to expect help or protection from him (“Bogatyr”). Moreover, the activities of the tsarist administrators are invariably reduced to "atrocities." "Atrocities" may be "shameful", "brilliant", "natural", but they remain "atrocities" and are due not to the personal qualities of the "Toptygins", but to the principle of autocratic power, hostile to the people, disastrous for the spiritual and moral development of the nation as a whole ( "Bear in the Voivodeship"). Let the wolf once let go of the lamb, let some lady donate “chunks of bread” to the victims of the fire, and the eagle “forgave the mouse”. But “why, however, did the eagle “forgive” the mouse? She ran across the road on her business, and he saw, swooped in, crumpled and ... forgave! Why did he "forgive" the mouse, and not the mouse "forgave" him? - the satirist directly puts the question. Such is the “anciently established” order, in which “wolves skin hares, and kites and owls pluck crows”, bears ruin the peasants, and “bribe-takers” rob them (“Toy business people”), idle talk, and horses sweat persons are working ("Konyaga"); Ivan the Rich even on weekdays eats cabbage soup “with slaughter”, and Ivan Poor and on holidays - “with empty” (“Neighbors”). It is impossible to correct or soften this order, just as it is impossible to change the predatory nature of a pike or a wolf. The pike, unwillingly, “swallowed the crucian”. And the wolf is not “so cruel” of his own free will, but because his complexion is tricky: he cannot eat anything but meat. And in order to get meat food, he cannot act otherwise than to deprive a living being of life. In a word, he undertakes to commit villainy, robbery. Predators are subject to destruction, Shchedrin's fairy tales simply do not suggest any other way out.

The personification of the wingless and vulgar philistine was Shchedrin's wise scribbler - the hero of the fairy tale of the same name. The meaning of the life of this "enlightened, moderately liberal" coward was self-preservation, avoiding the struggle. Therefore, the scribbler lived unharmed to a ripe old age. But what a miserable life it was! It all consisted of continuous trembling for its own skin. He lived and trembled - that's all. This fairy tale, written during the years of political reaction in Russia, hit the liberals, who kowtowed before the government because of their own skins, and the townsfolk who hid in their holes from the social struggle without a miss. For many years, the passionate words of the great democrat sunk into the souls of the thinking people of Russia: “Those who think that only those scribblers can be considered worthy believe incorrectly. my citizens, who, mad with fear, sit in holes and tremble. No, these are not citizens, but at least useless scribblers.

The fantasy of Shchedrin's fairy tales is real, carries a generalized political content. Eagles are "predatory, carnivorous...". They live “in alienation, in impregnable places, they are not engaged in hospitality, but they rob” - this is how it is said in the fairy tale about the eagle-philanthropist. And this immediately draws the typical circumstances of the life of the royal eagle and makes it clear that we are talking about birds. And further, by combining the atmosphere of the bird world with things that are by no means bird-like, Shchedrin achieves a comic effect and caustic irony.

ARTISTIC FEATURES OF M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN’S FAIRY TALES

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote more than 30 fairy tales. Appeal to this genre was natural for the writer. Fairy-tale elements (fantasy, hyperbole, conventionality, etc.) permeate all of his work.

What brings the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin closer to folk tales? Typical fairy-tale beginnings (“Once upon a time there were two generals ...”, “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there once lived a landowner ...”); proverbs (“at the command of a pike”, “neither in a fairy tale to say, nor to describe with a pen”); turns characteristic of folk speech (“thought and thought”, “said and done”); syntax, vocabulary close to the folk language; exaggeration, grotesque, hyperbole: one of the generals eats the other; The “wild landowner”, like a cat, climbs a tree in an instant, a peasant cooks soup in a handful. As in folk tales, a miraculous incident sets up the plot: two generals "suddenly found themselves on a desert island"; by the grace of God, "there was no peasant in the entire space of the possessions of the stupid landowner." Saltykov-Shchedrin also follows the folk tradition in fairy tales about animals, when he ridicules the shortcomings of society in allegorical form!

The difference between the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin and folk tales is that they intertwine the fantastic with the real and even historically reliable. Among the characters in the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship”, the image of Magnitsky, a well-known reactionary, suddenly appears: even before Toptygin appeared in the forest, all printing houses were destroyed by Magnitsky, students were given into soldiers, academicians were imprisoned. In the fairy tale "The Wild Landowner" the hero gradually degrades, turns into an animal. The incredible story of the hero is largely due to the fact that he read the Vesti newspaper and followed the advice. Saltykov-Shchedrin simultaneously respects the form of a folk tale and destroys it. The magic in the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin is explained by the real, the reader cannot escape reality, which is constantly felt behind the images of animals, fantastic events. Fairy-tale forms allowed Saltykov-Shchedrin to present ideas close to him in a new way, to show or ridicule social shortcomings.

In the center of the fairy tale "The Wise Scribbler" is the image of a frightened man in the street to death, who "only saves his hateful life." Can the slogan “survive and the pike not get into hailo” be the meaning of life for a person?

The theme of the tale "is connected with the defeat of the Narodnaya Volya, when many members of the intelligentsia, frightened, withdrew from public affairs. A type of coward is created, pitiful, unhappy. These people did no harm to anyone, but lived their lives aimlessly, without impulses. This is a fairy tale about the civil position of a person and about the meaning of human life.

Details of the real life of people are interspersed in the description of the life of the animal kingdom (he won 20,000 rubles, “does not play cards, does not drink wine, does not chase red girls”). The fairy tale uses satirical devices, for example, hyperbole: the life of the scribbler is "lengthened" to improbability in order to enhance the impression of its aimlessness.

The language of the fairy tale combines fabulous words and phrases, the spoken language of the third estate and the journalistic language of that time.

AESOP LANGUAGE AS A ARTISTIC DEVICE (On the example of the works of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin)

Aesopian language as a method of artistic expression of thought was popular at all times. Its ancestor, as the name suggests, was the wandering ancient Greek fabulist Aesop. For the first time in the history of world literature, he used allegory and innuendo to hide the direct meaning of his fables. In particular, Aesop portrayed people in the form of animals. His works denounced human vices, but since the author used the language of allegory, those debunked by him had no direct reason for indignation and dissatisfaction with the disenfranchised slave, which was Aesop. Thus, the Aesopian language served as a defense against the attacks of numerous ill-wishers.

In Russia, the Aesopian language was widely used by satirists. The explanation for this can be found" in the famous dictionary of Vladimir Dahl. He wrote: "Censorship strictness caused an unprecedented flourishing of the Aesopian language. Russian writers, due to the oppression of censorship, were forced to write in the Aesopian language" (Dal V. Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language. In 4 volumes, Moscow, 1994, v. 4, p. a satire designed to "send everything obsolete to the realm of shadows."

The tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in the history of Russian literature marked the beginning of a new and extremely important stage, which determined the entire future fate of the satirical direction in this genre. The writer identified and used the main artistic, linguistic, intonational, visual techniques that make up the essence of the accusatory tale. In the satires written by different authors in the following decades? Up to M. Gorky's Russian Fairy Tales, his influence is felt.

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin published the first three tales back in 1869, among them was one of the most famous - "The Tale of How One Man Feeded Two Generals." The writer turned to this genre, being an experienced, determined writer: “Provincial essays” had already been written. A certain regularity in the appearance of fairy tales in the writer's work is clearly seen in the way the author developed and matured such artistic techniques inherent in the fairy tale genre as fantasy, exaggeration, allegory, Aesopian language, and so on. At the same time, for M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, fairy tales were an experience of a qualitatively new artistic language, an experience brilliantly applied later when writing the History of a City in 1869-1870. Thus, these works are created using the same artistic techniques, such as, for example, hyperbole, grotesque and Aesopian language. The latter includes "speaking" names and images of animals taken by the author from Russian folklore, but filled with a different meaning. The fairy-tale form of Saltykov-Shchedrin is conditional and allows the writer to express a far from fabulous, bitter truth and open the reader's eyes to the complex issues of the socio-political life of the country. For example, in the fairy tale “The Wise Scribbler”, Saltykov-Shchedrin draws the image of a frightened layman to death, who “does not eat, does not drink, does not see anyone, does not lead bread and salt with anyone, but only protects his hateful life.”

The moral problems raised in this tale excite us to this day. In the works of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, the reader will inevitably come across a comparison of the social groups of contemporary Russia and various animals, birds and even fish: the peasantry, seeking truth and help from the powers that be, is depicted as a raven-petitioner (“Raven-petitioner” ); the governmental tops of the autocracy are shown by the author in the form of an eagle-philanthropist (“Eagle-philanthropist”); and the governor-bear looks like cruel warriors, taking the last thing from the people subject to them for the sake of high-profile deeds (“Bear in the Voivodeship”),

In the "History of a City" each name parodies specific vices and negative aspects of Russian reality. For example, Brodysty, or "Organchik", is the personification of government stupidity and narrow-mindedness; Ferdyshchenko - the arrogance and hypocrisy of the ruling circles, and the stubborn idiot Ugryum-Burcheev, who made a crazy attempt to fight the elements, with nature (remember his desire to turn the river back), which personifies the very endless and uninterrupted history of man, embodies the autocracy that has pretty much rotted by the middle of the nineteenth century making a pitiful attempt at survival.

In my opinion, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin uses the Aesopian language for the same purposes as Aesop himself, that is, firstly, to protect himself, and secondly, to protect his works from being withdrawn by the ubiquitous censorship, which , despite the amazing skill of the satirist in the use of allegorical speech, constantly pursued him: "... they cut it out, and cut it down ... and completely forbade it."

So, Aesopian language as an artistic device is the most valuable invention in the field of literature, allowing writers, firstly, not to change their principles, and secondly, not to give a clear reason for anger to the powerful of this world.

“I AM AESOP AND A STUDENT OF THE CENSORSHIP OFFICE”

M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

In ancient Greece in the 6th century BC, the legendary Aesop lived, who was considered the founder of fables. His works were processed by well-known fabulists: from Febr and Babrius to La Fontaine and Krylov. Since then, the expression “Aesopian language” has appeared in literature, which means allegorical, obscured, the language of allegories and metaphors.

It was used by many writers of the 19th century. It can be found in the famous fables of Krylov, and in the works of Gogol, Fonvizin.

But, in my opinion, it was used most of all as an artistic device in the work of Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin.

The years of activity of this remarkable satirist are the era of the most severe government reaction. .The assassination attempt by Dmitry Karakozov on Alexander II served as a pretext for curtailing the liberalization of Russian life. The newspapers Nedelya, the magazines Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski were closed. For his satirical works, Saltykov-Shchedrin was subjected to severe censorship persecution. He spent seven and a half years in disgrace, exiled to a distant and deaf corner of Russia in those days - Vyatka.

“Now there is no more hated writer than me,” said Saltykov-Shchedrin.

To circumvent censorship obstacles, the satirist creates a special language, a special manner of writing. He calls this language "Aesopian", the manner of writing - "slave", emphasizing the lack of freedom of speech in Russia.

Most of Shchedrin's works are written in this language and in this manner. Among them are “Provincial Essays”, “Pompadours and Pompadours”, “Poshekhonskaya Antiquity”, “Gentlemen Golovlevs”, a book of essays “Abroad”, as well as the most striking, in my opinion, his works - “The History of a City” and the cycle "Tales for children of a fair age." -

I would like to consider the originality of Saltykov-Shchedrin's work in several fairy tales. .

This cycle, with a few exceptions, was created over four years (1883-1886), at the final stage of the writer's creative activity. Simultaneously with Saltykov-Shchedrin in the 80s, his outstanding contemporaries, L. Tolstoy, Garshin, Leskov, Korolenko, performed fairy tales and literary adaptations of folk legends.

All these writers of Saltykov-Shchedrin are distinguished by the methods of artistic exaggeration, fantasy, allegory, the convergence of the exposed social phenomena with the phenomena of the animal world. In the form of fairy tales, the most accessible to the masses and loved by them, he, as it were, pours all the ideological and thematic richness of his satire and thus creates a kind of small satirical encyclopedia for the people.

Much attention in the cycle is paid to the three social "pillars" on which the country stood - the rulers of Russia, "the soil of the people" and "variegated people".

The tale "The Bear in the Voivodeship" is distinguished by the sharpness of satire on government circles. In it, the royal dignitaries are transformed into fabulous bears raging in the "forest slums" - in three Toptygins. The first two marked their activities with all sorts of atrocities: one - petty, "shameful"; the other - large, "brilliant". Toptygin III differed from his predecessors in his good-natured disposition. He limited his activities only to the observance of the "anciently established order", was content with villainies "natural". However, even under his leadership, nothing changes in life.

By this, Saltykov-Shchedrin shows that salvation is not in replacing the evil Toptygins with good ones, but in eliminating them altogether, that is, in overthrowing the autocracy.

In the 1980s, a wave of government reaction swept through all sections of society. Saltykov-Shchedrin ridicules the psychology of the intimidated "average man", who finds his satirical embodiment in the images of a selfless hare, a wise scribbler, a dried roach and others.

For all these "variegated people" the question of integrity - personal selfish interest - becomes the only important one; it is to him that they subordinate their existence.

The wise scribbler from the fairy tale of the same name is a cowardly little fish that has immured itself in a dark hole for life; this is "a mutt who does not eat, does not drink, does not see anyone, does not lead bread and salt with anyone, but only protects his hateful life."

Winged words from a fairy tale: “He lived - trembled, died - trembled” - characterize a petty cowardly inhabitant. Here the satirist exposed to public disgrace the cowardice of that part of the intelligentsia, which, during the years of the defeat of the Narodnaya Volya, succumbed to the mood of shameful panic.

With this tale, Shchedrin expressed his warning and contempt for all those who, obeying the instinct of self-preservation, moved away from active struggle into the narrow world of personal interests.

Saltykov-Shchedrin considered the main reason for the long-suffering of the oppressed masses to be their lack of understanding of the ongoing political phenomena.

The exhausted horse is the image of the oppressed people; it is a symbol of his strength and at the same time a symbol of his oppression.

"Konyaga" is an outstanding work by Saltykov-Shchedrin about the plight of the peasantry in Russia. The writer's unceasing pain for the Russian peasant, all the bitterness of the author's thoughts about the fate of the people, was expressed in burning words, exciting images.

It is noteworthy that in the fairy tale "Konyaga" the peasantry is represented directly in the guise of a peasant, as well as his counterpart - a horse. The human image seemed to Saltykov-Shchedrin not bright enough to reproduce the picture of people's suffering and hard labor.

The horse, like the peasant in the tale of two generals, is a hulk who has not yet realized his power, this is a captive fairy-tale hero who has yet to show off his strength. “Who will release this force from captivity? Who will bring her into the world?" Shchedrin asks.

His tales are a magnificent satirical monument of a bygone era. Not only the types created by Saltykov-Shchedrin, but also the winged words and expressions of the master of Aesopian speeches are still found in our everyday life. The word-images of his works, such as "pompadour", "idealist crucian", "bungler", "foam skimmer", firmly entered the life of his contemporaries.

“I love Russia to the point of pain,” said Saltykov-Shchedrin. He distinguished the dark phenomena of her life, because he believed that moments of insight were not only possible, but constituted an inevitable page in the history of the Russian people. And he was waiting for these moments and with all his creative activity he tried to bring them closer, in particular, with the help of such an artistic means as Aesopian language.

GROTESQUE, ITS FUNCTIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE IN THE IMAGE OF THE CITY OF FLUPOV AND ITS MAYORS

The work of Saltykov-Shchedrin, a democrat for whom the autocratic-feudal system prevailing in Russia was absolutely unacceptable, had a satirical orientation. The writer was outraged by the Russian society of "slaves and masters", the excesses of the landowners, the humility of the people, and in all his works he denounced the "ulcers" of society, cruelly ridiculed its vices and imperfections.

So, starting to write the "History of a City", Saltykov-Shchedrin set himself the goal of exposing the ugliness, the impossibility of the existence of autocracy with its social vices, laws, mores, and ridiculing all its realities.

Thus, the “History of a City” is a satirical work, the dominant artistic means in depicting the history of the city of Glupov, its inhabitants and mayors is the grotesque, the technique of combining the fantastic and the real, creating absurd situations, comic inconsistencies. In fact, all the events taking place in the city are grotesque. Its inhabitants, the Foolovites, "descended from an ancient tribe of bunglers", who did not know how to live in self-government and decided to find a master for themselves, are unusually "boss-loving". “Experiencing unaccountable fear”, unable to live independently, they “feel like orphans” without city governors and consider the excesses of the Organchik, who had a mechanism in his head and knew only two words - “I will not tolerate” and “I will ruin” as “saving severity”. Quite "usual" in Foolovo are such city governors as Pimple with a stuffed head or the Frenchman Du Mario, "on closer examination, he turned out to be a girl." However, the absurdity reaches its climax with the appearance of Ugryum-Burcheev, "a scoundrel who planned to embrace the entire universe." In an effort to realize his "systematic nonsense", Ugryum-Burcheev is trying to equalize everything in nature, to arrange society in such a way that everyone in Foolov lives according to a plan invented by himself, so that the entire structure of the city is created anew according to his project, which leads to the destruction of Glupov by his own residents who unquestioningly carry out the orders of the "scoundrel", and further - to the death of Ugryum-Burcheev and all the stupid people, therefore, the disappearance of the orders established by him, as an unnatural phenomenon, unacceptable by nature itself.

So, using the grotesque, Saltykov-Shchedrin creates a logical, on the one hand, and on the other hand, a comically absurd picture, but for all its absurdity and fantasticness, The History of a City is a realistic work that touches on many topical problems. The images of the city of Glupov and its mayors are allegorical, they symbolize autocratic-feudal Russia, the power that reigns in it, Russian society. Therefore, the grotesque used by Saltykov-Shchedrin in the narrative is also a way to expose the disgusting for the writer, ugly realities of contemporary life, as well as a means of identifying the author's position, Saltykov-Shchedrin's attitude to what is happening in Russia.

Describing the fantastically comic life of the Foolovites, their constant fear, all-forgiving love for their bosses, Saltykov-Shchedrin expresses his contempt for the people, apathetic and obedient-slavish, as the writer believes, by nature. Only once in the work were the Foolovites free - under the mayor with a stuffed head. By creating this grotesque situation, Saltykov-Shchedrin shows that under the existing socio-political system, the people cannot be free. The absurdity of the behavior of the “strong” (symbolizing real power) of this world in the work embodies the lawlessness and arbitrariness perpetrated in Russia by high-ranking officials. The grotesque image of Grim-Burcheev, his “systematic nonsense” (a kind of dystopia), which the mayor decided to bring to life at all costs, EG the fantastic end of the reign - the realization of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s idea of ​​​​inhumanity, the unnaturalness of absolute power, bordering on tyranny, O the impossibility of its existence. The writer embodies the idea that autocratic-feudal Russia with its ugly way of life will sooner or later come to an end.

Thus, denouncing vices and revealing the absurdity and absurdity of real life, the grotesque conveys a special “evil irony”, “bitter laughter”, characteristic of Saltykov-Shchedrin, “laughter through contempt and indignation”. The writer sometimes seems absolutely ruthless to his characters, overly critical and demanding of the world around him. But, as Lermontov said, "the cure for the disease can be bitter." The cruel denunciation of the vices of society, according to Saltykov-Shchedrin, is the only effective means in the fight against the "disease" of Russia. Ridicule of imperfections makes them obvious, understandable to everyone. It would be wrong to say that Saltykov-Shchedrin did not love Russia, he despised the shortcomings, vices of her life and devoted all his creative activity to the fight against them.

TRAGIC IN THE SATIRE OF M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

Saltykov-Shchedrin enriched Russian satire with a variety of genres and forms. Unexpected courage in choosing a genre allowed me to look at the world in a new way. Shchedrin was easily given both large and. small genres: parodies, fairy tales, satirical stories, stories and, finally, a novel. The author's favorite and constant genre was the cycle, as it allowed him to dynamically develop the image, introduce everyday sketches, and expose life.

"History of one city" and is a kind of cycle of chapters devoted to the biographies of Foolov's mayors. Shchedrin emphasizes that the tragedy of the situation of the inhabitants of the city of Glupov is due to their slavish obedience and long-suffering. The author pointed out that "The History of a City" is not a parody of Russian reality and history, but a dystopia, that is, a warning to posterity about how not to live.

Saltykov-Shchedrin ridicules the fussy struggle for power between Amalka and Iraidka, implying the time of troubles after the death of Peter I and the struggle for the throne of Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth. Shchedrin uses the grotesque, reaching the point of absurdity: the power is changed every day, and the people do not care about this, since the rulers coax him with alcohol.

In the chapter “Organchik,” Shchedrin bitterly emphasizes that the people are ruled by soulless automatons like Brodasty, who can only say: “I will ruin!” and "I will not stand it!".

The mayors do not care about the disasters of the people, they are absorbed only in their own interests. This is clearly shown in the chapters "Straw City" and "Hungry City": there are fires in the city, the people swell from hunger, and the chief has fun with archers Alenka and Domashka. The militaristic nature of Russia's foreign policy Shchedrin displayed in the chapter "The War for Enlightenment". Borodavkin wanted to conquer Byzantium itself, traveled from end to end along Glupov and fired cannons.

Under the conditions of autocratic Russia, it was impossible to work out a constitution that would meet the interests of the people, and Shchedrin ridicules Speransky's useless attempts, portraying him under the name of Benevolensky.

But the peak in the depiction of the insignificance and lack of spirituality of the mayors is the image of Grim-Burcheev, in which many contemporaries of Shchedrin recognized the cruel Minister of War

Alexander I Arakcheev. With bitter sarcasm, the author writes about the quirks of this geek: after his death, some feral creatures were found in the basement - these were his wife and children, whom he starved. He sought to make machines out of people, working to the beat of drums and marching instead of resting. He encroached on nature itself, which is why at the end of the "History of a City" Something appears, a huge thundercloud. What it conceals for the Foolovites: liberation from tyrannical city governors or the onset of a more severe reaction - Shchedrin does not explain. Life itself, the very behavior of people must give an answer to this question.

The novel occupies a peculiar and important place in the genre system of Saltykov-Shchedrin. In the 1970s, Shchedrin repeatedly declared that the "family romance" had become obsolete. Therefore, he expands the scope of the novel and writes a satire on the degrading landlord class, showing the disintegration of family relations. In The Golovlevs, this side of Saltykov-Shchedrin's talent is clearly manifested, as the ability not only to show the funny, vulgar side of life, but also to discover amazing tragedy in this vulgar side.

Golovlevs - "a small noble fry", "scattered over the face of the Russian land." They are initially captured by the idea of ​​acquisition, material well-being and prosperity of the family. Property for them is the cornerstone of the universe. Property is even an object of self-sacrifice: “... they used to assemble a peasant cart, tie some kind of kibitchonka on it, harness a couple of horses - I trudge ... It used to be a pity for a cab driver, it used to be a pity for a dime - for two of us from Rogozhskaya to Solyanka Prue!”

Saving unites the warring forces in the family. Even the outcast Styopka the dunce takes part in it, although he knows in advance that nothing will fall to him.

Money relations are the only real thread connecting fathers and children. “Iudushka knew that there was a person who was listed as his son according to the documents, to whom he was obliged to send the agreed salary within a certain period of time, and from whom, in return, he had the right to demand respect and obedience.”

Only twice in the novel do true human relationships appear. In the first case - between strangers, in the second - between feral relatives. I remember the good attitude towards Styopka the booby of the serf "compassionate innkeeper Ivan Mikhailych", who disinterestedly, out of compassion, leads the beggar Styopka home. After that, spiritual intimacy between people arises when Porfiry Vladimirych pities the orphan Anninka.

On the whole, the measure of a person's value in a novel is his ability to provide for "his family not only" necessary, but also superfluous ". Otherwise, the person is an "extra mouth".

Arina Petrovna created the power of the Golovlev family. But along with this, she has some kind of feeling of deceived hopes caused by the children, their "disrespect", inability to "please" their parents. The whole rich life of Arina Petrovna is poor in joys.

And in the end, it is not shortcomings that oppress her in Pogorelka, but "a feeling of emptiness."

Porfiry Golovlev takes the common features of the family to the extreme, to the limit. As an owner and acquirer, he is close in some ways to the heroes of Dead Souls, Moliere's Tartuffe, Pushkin's Miserly Knight. His image is organized by the motif of hypocritical idle talk. The word loses its meaning in the mouth of Judas, his “exciting rants”, falsely blissful and endearing, are striking.

The whole process, which Arina Petrovna slowly experienced, convinced of the emptiness of her life results, is extremely compressed in Judas. At the end of the novel, Saltykov-Shchedrin subjects him to the most terrible test - the awakening of conscience.

The awakening of the "wild" conscience of Porfiry Vladimirovich proved that the death of the family did not come from one villain. For Shchedrin, the tragedy of the Golovlev family is that it is cut off from labor and true human relations. The hero realized in himself the guilt of his kind, absorbed the burden of responsibility for all misdeeds and pronounced a death sentence on himself.

After reading this novel, I was left with a strange ambivalent feeling. On the one hand, it was disgusting to read about Judas, who, like a spider, weaves a string of intrigues against his relatives. But, on the other hand, in the finale of the novel, a feeling of pity arose for him as for the only one who realized the guilt of the Golovlev family and atoned for it.

Saltykov-Shchedrin believed that evil carries within itself moral retribution. At the end of the novel, he creates a bitter picture of the awakening of conscience, too late, when the vitality of a person has already been exhausted. All the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin seems to echo many years later with the anxiety of Gogol's appeal to the reader: “Anything can happen to a person. Take with you on the road ... take with you all human movements, do not leave them on the road, do not raise them later!

PARODY AS AN ARTISTIC DEVICE IN "HISTORY OF ONE CITY" by M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN

So let's start this story...
M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

Explaining the "History of a City", Saltykov-Shchedrin argued that this is a book about modernity. In modern times, he saw his place and never believed that the texts he created would excite his distant descendants. However, a sufficient number of reasons are revealed due to which his book remains the subject and reason for explaining the events of contemporary reality to the reader.

One of these reasons, undoubtedly, is the method of literary parody, which is actively used by the author. This is especially noticeable in his "Appeal to the reader", which is written on behalf of the last archivist-chronicler, as well as in the "Inventory of the mayors".

The object of parody here is the texts of ancient Russian literature, and in particular "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", "The Tale of Bygone Years" and "The Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land". All three texts were canonical for the modern writer of literary criticism, and it was necessary to show special aesthetic courage and artistic tact in order to avoid their vulgar distortion. Parody is a special literary genre, and Shchedrin shows himself to be a true artist in it. What he does, he does subtly, cleverly, elegantly and funny.

“I don’t want, like Kostomarov, to scour the earth like a gray wolf, nor, like Solovyov, to wiggle under the clouds like a eagle, nor, like Pypin, to spread my thoughts along the tree, but I want to hurt the Foolovites, dear to me, by showing the world their glorious deeds and reverend that root, from which this famous tree came and covered the whole earth with its branches. Thus begins the Glu-Povskaya chronicle. The majestic text of "Words ..." the writer organizes in a completely different way, changing the rhythmic and semantic pattern. Saltykov-Shchedrin, using contemporary clericalisms (which undoubtedly affected the fact that he corrected the position of governor of the provincial office in Vyatka), introduces the names of the historians Kostomarov and Solovyov into the text, without forgetting his friend - literary critic Pypin. Thus, the parodied text gives the entire Foolovian chronicle a certain authentic pseudo-historical sound, an almost feuilleton interpretation of history.

And in order to finally “tickle” the reader, just below Shchedrin creates a thick and complex passage based on The Tale of Bygone Years. Let us recall Shchedrin's bunglers who "throw their heads on everything", thick-eaters, dolbezhniks, rukosuevs, kurales-owls and compare with glades, "living on their own", with Radimichi, Dulebs, Drevlyans, "living like cattle", animal custom, and krivichi.

The historical seriousness and drama of the decision to call on the princes: “Our land is great and plentiful, but there is no order in it. Come reign and rule over us,” Shchedrin becomes historical frivolity. For the world of the Foolovites is an inverted world, a looking-glass world. And their history behind the looking-glass, and its laws behind the looking-glass operate according to the method “by contradiction”. The princes do not go to own the Foolovites. And the one who finally agrees puts his own stupid “innovator thief” over them.

And the “prenaturally decorated” city of Foolov is being built in a swamp in a landscape that is dull to tears. “Oh, light-bright and beautifully decorated, the Russian land!” - loftily exclaims the romantic author of "Words about the destruction of the Russian land."

The history of the city of Glupov is a counter-history. It is a mixed, grotesque and parodic opposition to real life, indirectly through the annals, ridiculing history itself. And here the sense of proportion never betrays the author. After all, parody, as a literary device, allows, by distorting and turning reality, to see its funny and humorous sides. But Shchedrin never forgets that the subject of his parodies is the serious. It is not surprising that in our time the "History of a City" itself becomes the object of parody, both literary and cinematic. In the cinema, Vladimir Ovcharov shot a long and rather dull tape "It". In modern literature, V. Pie-tsukh carries out a stylistic experiment called "The History of a City in Modern Times", trying to show the ideas of city government in Soviet times. However, these attempts to translate Shchedrin into another language ended in nothing and were safely forgotten, which indicates that the unique semantic and stylistic fabric of "History ..." can be parodied by satirical talent, if not greater, then equal to the talent of Saltykov-Shchedrin.

COMPOSITION OF THE NOVEL BY M. E. SALTYKOV-SHCHEDRIN "LORD GOLOVLEVA"

The theme of serfdom in Russia has always been the subject of close attention of the great writer Saltykov-Shchedrin.

At the end of the 1970s, the writer approached in his work the solution of a topic that he could take on only by accumulating the necessary life material, having vast ideological experience, and standing on firm revolutionary democratic positions. The hero of the work conceived by him was supposed to personify all the vices and ulcers of serf society. This is a man "filled with ashes" of self-destruction. The author has already addressed this topic in the satirical chronicle "Well-meaning Speeches", but it has received a deeper development in the novel "Golovlevs".

The story of the death of the Golovlyov family of feudal lords was at first part of the chronicle "Well-intentioned speeches", which is mainly devoted to describing the reality of the bourgeois predator Derunov. The writer decided to single out stories about the Golovlev family from the chronicle and based them on the novel-chronicle The Golovlevs. His composition was subject to one theme - the collapse of serfdom. The novel begins with a premonition of the death of one of the characters (Stepan), then throughout the story we see a whole gallery of dying people leaving the stage of life. “The Golovlevs are death itself, vicious, hollow; it is death, always waiting for a new victim, ”wrote the satirist.

All components of the novel: the landscape, the speech of the characters, the author's characteristics and retreats - everything in the novel serves one purpose - to reveal the reasons for the death of the feudal lords. Particularly striking is the speech of Judas - a misanthrope and fornication, woven from aphorisms, diminutive and caressing words, sighs, hypocritical appeals to God, and incessant repetitions.

I also want to note another very important compositional moment in the novel: the author deliberately excluded the details of serf life, the upbringing of a new generation of serf-owners and their relationship with the peasants. It seems to me that the writer did this in order to create an even more hopeless background, not in harmony with the living world, against which the feudal lords are becoming obsolete. Living, bright reality, as it were, does not release them from a limited space, like a terrible contagious disease.

Present and felt by the reader in the novel is the spirit of the author himself, who with all his heart loved the oppressed people of Russia and fought for their freedom.

Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin is one of the most famous Russian writers of the mid-19th century. His works are written in the form of fairy tales, but their essence is far from being so simple, and the meaning does not lie on the surface, as in ordinary children's counterparts.

About the author's work

Studying the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin, one can hardly find at least one children's fairy tale in it. In his writings, the author often uses such a literary device as the grotesque. The essence of the technique lies in a strong exaggeration, bringing to the point of absurdity both the images of the characters and the events that happen to them. Therefore, the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin may seem creepy and too cruel even to an adult, not to mention children.

One of the most famous works of Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin is the fairy tale "The Selfless Hare". It, like all his creations, has a deep meaning. But before you start analyzing the fairy tale by Saltykov-Shchedrin "The Selfless Hare", you need to remember its plot.

Plot

The tale begins with the fact that the main character, a hare, runs past the wolf's house. The wolf calls out to the hare, calls him to him, but he does not stop, but adds even more speed. Then the wolf catches up with him and accuses him of the fact that the hare did not obey the first time. The forest predator leaves it near the bush and says that it will eat it in 5 days.

And the hare ran to his bride. Here he sits, counts the time to death and sees - the brother of the bride hurries to him. The brother tells how bad the bride is, and this conversation is heard by the wolf and the she-wolf. They go out into the street and report that they will release the hare to the betrothed to say goodbye. But with the condition that he will return to be eaten in a day. And the future relative will remain with them for the time being and, in case of non-return, will be eaten. If the hare returns, then perhaps they will both be pardoned.

The hare runs to the bride and runs quickly enough. He tells her and all his family his story. I don’t want to return, but the word is given, and the hare never breaks the word. Therefore, after saying goodbye to the bride, the hare runs back.

He runs, and on the way he meets various obstacles, and he feels that he does not have time on time. From this thought fights off with all his might and only adds speed. He did give his word. In the end, the hare barely manages to save the bride's brother. And the wolf tells them that until they eat them, let them sit under the bush. Maybe when he will have mercy.

Analysis

In order to give a complete picture of the work, you need to analyze the fairy tale "The Selfless Hare" according to the plan:

• characteristics of the era.
• Features of the author's creativity.
• Characters.
• Symbolism and imagery.

The structure is not universal, but it allows you to build the necessary logic. Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin, whose analysis of the fairy tale "The Selfless Hare" needs to be carried out, often wrote works on topical topics. So, in the 19th century, the topic of dissatisfaction with the royal power and oppression by the government was very relevant. This should be taken into account when analyzing Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tale "The Selfless Hare".

Different strata of society reacted to the authorities in different ways. Someone supported and tried to join, someone, on the contrary, tried with all his might to change the current situation. However, most of the people were blinded by fear and could do nothing but obey. This is what Saltykov-Shchedrin wanted to convey. An analysis of the fairy tale "The Selfless Hare" should begin with showing that the hare symbolizes precisely the last type of people.

People are different: smart, stupid, brave, cowardly. However, all this is of no importance if they do not have the strength to repulse the oppressor. In the image of a hare, the wolf ridicules the noble intelligentsia, which shows its honesty and devotion towards the one who oppresses them.

Speaking about the image of the hare, which was described by Saltykov-Shchedrin, the analysis of the fairy tale "The Selfless Hare" should explain the motivation of the protagonist. The hare's word is an honest word. He couldn't break it. However, this leads to the fact that the life of the hare collapses, because he shows his best qualities in relation to the wolf, who initially treated him cruelly.

The hare is not guilty of anything. He simply ran to the bride, and the wolf arbitrarily decided to leave him under a bush. Nevertheless, the hare steps over himself in order to keep his word. This leads to the fact that the whole family of hares remains unhappy: the brother failed to show courage and escape from the wolf, the hare could not help but return so as not to break his word, and the bride is left alone.

Conclusion

Saltykov-Shchedrin, whose analysis of the fairy tale "The Selfless Hare" turned out to be not so simple, described the reality of his time in his usual grotesque manner. After all, there were quite a lot of such people-hares in the 19th century, and this problem of unrequited obedience greatly hindered the development of Russia as a state.

Finally

So, this was an analysis of the fairy tale "The Selfless Hare" (Saltykov-Shchedrin), according to a plan that can also be used to analyze other works. As you can see, a seemingly simple fairy tale turned out to be a vivid caricature of the people of that time, and its meaning lies deep inside. In order to understand the work of the author, you need to remember that he never writes anything just like that. Every detail in the plot is necessary for the reader to understand the deep meaning that lies in the work. This is what makes the tales of Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin interesting.

("Selfless Bunny")

"The Selfless Hare" was written in 1883 and is organically included in the most famous collection of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "Tales". The collection is provided with an explanation of the author: "Tales for children of a fair age." “The Selfless Hare”, as well as the fairy tales “Poor Wolf” and “The Sane Hare”, within the framework of the entire collection, constitute a kind of trilogy, which belongs to the group of fairy tales that are sharp political satire on the liberal intelligentsia and bureaucracy.

It turns out that the selflessness of the hare lies in the fact that he does not want to deceive the wolf who sentenced him to death, and, hastily getting married, overcoming terrible obstacles (the flood of the river, the war of King Andron with King Nikita, the cholera epidemic), rushed to the lair with his last strength wolf by the appointed time. The hare, identifying the liberal-minded bureaucracy, does not even think that the wolf has no right to pass a sentence: "... I sentence you to deprivation of the stomach by tearing to pieces." The writer angrily exposes the slavish obedience of enlightened people to those in power, even Aesopian language does not prevent the reader from understanding that the hare, with its far-fetched selflessness, looks like a nonentity. All the newly-appeared relatives of the hare, to whom the wolf gave two days to marry, approves the decision of the hare: “You, oblique, said the truth: without giving a word, be strong, but after giving it, hold on! It has never happened in all our hare family that hares cheated! The satirist writer leads the reader to the conclusion that verbal husks can justify inaction. All the energy of the hare is directed not to resisting evil, but to fulfilling the order of the wolf.

“-I, your honor, will come running ... I will turn around in an instant ... that's how holy God will come running! - the convict hurried and, so that the wolf would not doubt ... he suddenly pretended to be such a good fellow that the wolf himself admired him and thought: “If only my soldiers were like that!” Animals and birds marveled at the agility of the hare: “Here in the Moskovskie Vedomosti they write that the hares do not have a soul, but steam, and how he flies away!” On the one hand, the hare, of course, is a coward, but, on the other hand, the bride's brother remained hostage to the wolf. However, this is not, according to the writer, a reason for meekly fulfilling the wolf's ultimatum. After all, the gray robber was full, lazy, he did not keep hares in captivity. One wolf cry was enough for the hare to voluntarily agree to accept his evil fate.

The writer needed the form of a fairy tale so that its meaning was accessible and understandable to everyone. In the fairy tale “The Selfless Hare” there is no fairy-tale beginning, but there are fairy-tale sayings (“neither in a fairy tale to say, nor to describe with a pen”, “soon the fairy tale is told ...”) and the expression (“It runs, the earth trembles”, “far away kingdom”) . Fairy tale characters, as in folk tales, are endowed with the properties of people: the hare got married, went to the bathhouse before the wedding, etc. ”,“ fell in love with another ”,“ the wolf ate ”,“ the bride is dying ”), proverbs and sayings (“caught in three jumps”, “grabbed by the scruff”, “tea-sugar to drink”, “I fell in love with all my heart”, “ rubs with fear”, “don’t put your finger in your mouth”, “shot like an arrow from a bow”, “it spills with bitter tears”). All this brings the tale "The Selfless Hare" closer to folk tales. In addition, the use of the magical fairy-tale number "three" (three obstacles on the way back to the wolf's lair, three enemies - wolves, foxes, owls, three hours should have remained with the hare in reserve, the hare drove himself three times with the words: "Now it's not up to grief , not to tears ... if only to snatch a friend out of the wolf's mouth! ”,“ Surely I can’t help out a friend ”,“ I ruined my friend, ruined it! he will take her “to Uru”; the river - he doesn’t even look for a ford, it scratches right into the swim; a swamp - he jumps from the fifth bump to the tenth, “neither mountains, nor valleys, nor forests, nor swamps - he doesn’t care about anything ”, “shouted like a hundred thousand hares together”) enhance the resemblance to a folk tale.

“Self-sacrificing hare” there are specific everyday details and signs of real historical time, which does not happen in folk tales (the hare dreamed that under the wolf he became an “official for special assignments”, the wolf, “as long as he runs on revisions, visit his hare walks”, “he lived openly, did not let revolutions, did not go out with a weapon in his hands”, “conspiracy of sentries to escape”, hares called the wolf “your honor”). Thirdly, the writer uses the words and expressions of book vocabulary, and the more insignificant the occasion, the higher the vocabulary is used (“luminous wolf’s eye”, “condemned for a moment seemed to be transformed”, “praises the hare for nobility”, “his legs are excised with stones ”,“ bloody foam oozes at the mouth”, “the east turned red”, “splashed with fire”, “the heart of a tortured beast”). The originality of the fairy tale by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin lies precisely in the features of the difference from the folk tale. The folk tale strengthened the belief of ordinary people that evil would someday be defeated, thereby, according to the writer, accustomed people to the passive expectation of a miracle. The folk tale taught the simplest things, its task was to amuse, amuse. The satirist writer, preserving many features of the folk tale, wanted to ignite the hearts of people with anger, to awaken their self-awareness. Open calls for revolution, of course, would never be allowed to be published by censors. Using the technique of irony, resorting to the Aesopian language, the writer in the fairy tale “The Selfless Hare” showed that the power of wolves rests on the slavish habit of hares to obedience. A particularly bitter irony sounds at the end of the tale:

"- Here am I! Here! - Shouted oblique, like a hundred thousand hares together.

"Poor wolf". Here is its beginning: “Another beast, probably, would have been touched by the dedication of a hare, would not have limited himself to a promise, but now would have had mercy. But of all the predators found in temperate and northern climates, the wolf is the least capable of generosity. However, it is not by his own will that he is so cruel, but because his complexion is tricky: he cannot eat anything but meat. And in order to get meat food, he cannot act otherwise than to deprive a living being of life. The compositional unity of the first two tales of this peculiar trilogy helps to understand the politically active position of the satirist writer. Saltykov-Shchedrin believes that social injustice is inherent in the very nature of man. It is necessary to change the thinking not of one person, but of the whole nation.

The storyline of the work reveals the relationship between a predator and its prey, presented in the form of a cowardly hare and a cruel wolf.

The conflict of the fairy tale described by the writer is the fault of the hare, which did not stop at the call of a stronger animal, for which the wolf is sentenced to death, but at the same time the wolf does not seek to destroy the prey at the same second, but enjoys his fear for several days, forcing hare expect death under a bush.

The narration of the tale is aimed at describing the feelings of a hare, who is frightened not only by the disastrous moment, but also worries about the abandoned hare. The writer depicts the whole gamut of suffering of an animal, unable to resist fate, timidly, submissively accepting its own dependence and lack of rights in front of a stronger beast.

The main feature of the psychological portrait of the main character, the writer calls the manifestation of slavish obedience by the hare, expressed in complete obedience to the wolf, overpowering the instincts of self-preservation and elevated to an exaggerated degree of vain nobility. Thus, in a fabulously satirical manner, the writer reflects the qualities typical of the Russian people in the form of an illusory hope for a merciful attitude on the part of a predator, which have been brought up since ancient times by class oppression and elevated to the status of virtue. At the same time, the hero does not even dare to think about any manifestations of disobedience to his tormentor, believing his every word and hoping for his false pardon.

The hare rejects not only his own life, being paralyzed by fears, but also the fate of his hare and future offspring, justifying his actions before his conscience with the cowardice inherent in the hare family and inability to resist. The wolf, watching the torment of his victim, enjoys his apparent dedication.

The writer, using the techniques of irony and a humorous form, shows, using the example of the image of a hare, the need to reform his own self-consciousness, driven into a dead end by fears, obsequiousness, admiration for the almighty and superior, blind obedience to any manifestations of injustice and oppression. Thus, the writer creates a socio-political type of a person who embodies unprincipled cowardice, spiritual narrow-mindedness, submissive poverty, expressed in the perverted consciousness of the people, who have developed harmful servile tactics of adapting to a violent regime.

Option 2

The work "Selfless Hare" M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin tells about the relationship between the strong and weak side of the character.

The main characters of the story are a wolf and a hare. The wolf is a domineering tyrant who boosts his self-esteem at the expense of the weakness of others. The hare is, by nature, a cowardly character, following the lead of the wolf.

The story begins with the bunny hurrying home. The wolf noticed him and called out. Oblique stepped up even more. For the fact that the hare did not obey the wolf, he sentences him to death. But, wanting to mock the weak and helpless bunny, the wolf puts him under a bush in anticipation of death. The wolf scares the hare. If he disobeys him and tries to escape, the wolf will eat his entire family.

The hare is no longer scared for himself, but for his hare. He calmly submits to the wolf. And he just mocks the victim. He lets the poor fellow go to the hare for just one night. The hare must make offspring - the future dinner for the wolf. The cowardly hare must return by morning, otherwise the wolf will eat his whole family. The hare submits to the tyrant, and does everything as ordered.

The hare is the slave of the wolf, fulfilling all his whims. But the author makes it clear to the reader that such behavior does not lead to good. The outcome was still disastrous for the hare. But he did not even try to fight the wolf and show the courage of his character. Fear clouded his brain and swallowed everything without a trace. The hare justified himself before his conscience. After all, cowardice and oppression are inherent in his whole family.

The author describes in the face of a hare a large part of humanity. In modern life, we are afraid to make decisions, to bear responsibility, to go against the foundations and prevailing circumstances. This is the most common type of people who are spiritually limited and do not believe in their own strength. It's easier to adapt to bad conditions. And the outcome remains deplorable. It will be good only for a tyrant. Struggle is the key to success.

We, together with the hare, must fight against violence and injustice. After all, for every action there is a reaction. That's the only way to win.

Some interesting essays

• Composition based on the work of Yushka Platonov (reasoning)

  The story "Yushka" is the story of the life of a man who knew how to love those around him selflessly and disinterestedly. He gave this love all of himself, completely dissolving in it. But it is also a story about the imperfection of this world.

  Probably, there is no such person who would not be offended at least once, and maybe more than once by his relatives or close people, and maybe even strangers. And each person reacts to it differently.