Artistic features of M. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales (using the example of one fairy tale). “Fairy tales” M. Genre traditions and innovation Essay on a work on the topic: Fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

Traditions of folk tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

One of the most characteristic features of Shchedrin's fairy tales is that these tales are small in volume, accessible in content, charm with their humor and at the same time make you think about a lot.

The most common answer to the question “Why did the writer choose the form of a fairy tale for his satirical exposures?” is the opinion that fairy tales were created in the era of reaction, and Shchedrin turned to this genre in order to deceive censors.

There is undoubtedly some truth in this answer.

There is. But as an objection to such a solution to the issue, one can cite the conclusion of censor Lebedev: “Mr. Saltykov’s intention to publish some of his fairy tales in separate brochures costing no more than three kopecks, and therefore, for the common people, is more than strange. What Mr. Saltykov calls fairy tales. Doesn't live up to its name at all; his fairy tales are the same satire, and the satire is caustic, tendentious, more or less directed against our social and political structure...”

The conclusion of censor Lebedev suggests another answer to the question asked. Shchedrin chose the form of a fairy tale because the fairy tale is understandable and close to ordinary people. “For children of a fair age...” Who are these “children”? aren’t those adults who still need teaching, who need to be educated, who need to open their eyes to life?

The form of the fairy tale met the writer’s objectives both because it is accessible to the inexperienced reader and because fairy tales have always been characterized by didacticism and a satirical orientation. The very nature of this genre corresponded to the artistic goals of the satirist.

What are these literary traditions that Saltykov-Shchedrin followed? Of course, we all know A. S. Pushkin’s fairy tale “The Golden Cockerel.” The satirical denunciation of the “father of the people,” who reigns, “lying on his side,” who does not know what truth, justice, and humanity are, acquires a particularly acute character under Pushkin’s pen precisely because the role of the accuser is played by the folk storyteller, on whose behalf the story is told. fairy tale.

Satirical tendencies also found development in Krylov’s fables... it is also appropriate to recall them when talking about traditions. Which Shchedrin followed.

Having analyzed these traditions, it can be noted that the images of the landowner and generals in Shchedrin’s fairy tales are very close to similar images from folk tales. In folklore, the master (like other opponents of the peasant), first of all, is portrayed as infinitely stupid. Let's compare the images of Shchedrin's men with those in fairy tales. In the fairy tale, the man has intelligence, dexterity, and resourcefulness. With the help of these qualities, he defeats his master and the Shchedrin peasant, who fed two generals, is smart and dexterous in work. But, unlike the fairy-tale man, he himself remains the fool. He weaves a rope so that the generals will tie him to a tree!

The image of the man in the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” is even more different from the fairy tale. A collective image of workers, breadwinners of the country and at the same time martyrs-passion-bearers appears in it. Like an “endless groan,” the “orphan’s tearful prayer” sounds: “Lord! It’s easier for us to perish even with small children than to suffer like this all our lives!” It is no coincidence that the fairy tale speaks of a peasant as a faceless creature, as a collective concept: “...a swarm of peasants flew in and showered the entire market square. Now they took this grace, put me in a cell and sent me to the district.” The ending of the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” is just as happy for the master as the ending of the fairy tale about two generals: with the help of the same men, they “blowed his nose and washed him.” Nothing has changed in the man's life.

Why does the satirist depict the traditional folk tale relationship between a gentleman and a peasant differently? The people expressed their “expectations and aspirations” in fairy tales; folklore embodied the people’s primordial dreams of the victory of goodness, justice, and the triumph of the disadvantaged poor over their oppressors. And in some of Shchedrin’s fairy tales the dream of the people was reflected (“The Bear in the Voivodeship”, “The Petitioner Raven”).

Let us note a specific feature of Shchedrin's tales. In Nekrasov’s poems “Oh, dear one! What does your endless groan mean?..” is the poet’s appeal to the people, full of love and pain. In Shchedrin's fairy tales, the narrator has a different appearance. Here is a writer-storyteller, good-natured and simple-minded.

The writer surprisingly subtly managed to recreate the spiritual appearance of the folk storyteller, embodying in him that property of the Russian national character, which Pushkin defined as “a cheerful cunning of the mind and a picturesque way of expressing itself.” Both the vocabulary, phraseology, and intonation pattern of Shchedrin’s fairy tales reproduce the speech of a folk storyteller.

But carefully reading the text, behind the mask of a naive simpleton joker, we will see the sly and sometimes sarcastic smile of a person wise by bitter life experience. Just think about the beginning of the fairy tale: “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there lived a landowner, he lived and looked at the light and rejoiced... And that stupid landowner was reading the newspaper “Vest” and his body was soft, white, crumbly.” Storyteller's voice

Sounds clear from the very beginning. He is wise, ironic, and perfectly understands the comedy and tragedy of the relationship between a master and a peasant. But where did the newspaper “Vest” come from in the folk tale? Before us is either a storyteller who managed to rise to the level of the advanced worldview of the era, or a writer who was able to penetrate the thoughts, feelings, dreams of the people and stand up for their interests.

Shchedrin's ideological closeness to the people was manifested not only in protecting the interests of the people, but, in particular, in the abundance of oral and poetic folk art in his works.

In all Shchedrin's tales we encounter traditional fairy-tale images of animals, birds, and fish. In the spirit of folk tales, the writer resorted to allegories: he painted kings in the images of a lion and an eagle; bears, wolves, kites, hawks, pikes - representatives of the highest royal administration; hares and minnows are cowardly inhabitants; horse - disadvantaged people.

Often the writer used folk fairy tales: “in the old days, during the reign of Tsar Gorokh, this happened: smart parents gave birth to a son who was a fool,” etc.

There are many proverbs and sayings scattered throughout fairy tales: “grandmother said in two,” “shame cannot eat away the eyes,” “throw pearls before swine,” and so on.

Sometimes the writer characterized his heroes with just a selection of proverbs and sayings. Thus, in the fairy tale “Dried Roach,” a bourgeois liberal is depicted under the guise of a roach, who “has no extra feelings, no extra thoughts, no extra conscience—nothing.” The whole essence of the liberals, who were the true support of the reaction, is expressed in the intoxicating “scrawling” of the roach: “Ears do not grow higher than the forehead!” They don’t grow!”, “If you drive more quietly, you’ll keep going,” “don’t poke your nose in,” etc.

His style of writing allowed Shchedrin to paint aspects of Russian life that would have been impossible to illuminate in any other way. He could not directly say that the people in Tsarist Russia had no rights, that the policy of the autocrats was a policy of oppression and tyranny, and he wrote that the bear governor was sent to the slum so that he could bring the “forest men” to “a common denominator.”

These examples show how skillfully Shchedrin used the Aesopian style of writing, about which he said: “It does not in the least obscure my intentions, but, on the contrary, makes them only publicly accessible.”

Other works on this topic:

1. The great satirist M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin raised the fairy tale to the top of political journalism. There lived a landowner, he says, whose body was “soft, white and crumbly”; everything he had...
2. Prose The History of a City The history of the creation of the novel Text analysis Genre features of the novel “The History of a City” Collective image of the Foolovites The meaning of the ending of the novel “The History of a City” Features...
3. Preparation for the Unified State Exam: Essay Analysis of fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin analysis of the tale of Saltykov Shchedrin Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote his Fairy Tales in those years when censorship was rampant in literature....
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after the reform of 1861 - remnants of serfdom, ingrained in the psychology of people.

Shchedrin's work is connected with the traditions of his brilliant predecessors: Pushkin ("The History of the Village of Goryukhin") and Gogol ("Dead Souls"). But Shchedrin's satire is sharper and more merciless. Shchedrin's talent was revealed in all its brilliance - accuser in his tales. Fairy tales were a kind of hom, a synthesis of the ideological and creative quest of the satirist. With foil they are connected by clore not only by the presence of certain lips but poetic details and images, they express the people's worldview. In fairy tales, Shchedrin reveals the theme of exploitation atations, gives devastating criticism of nobles, officials - all those who live by people's labor.

The generals are not capable of anything, they do not know how to do anything,believe that “rolls will be born in the same form as... their in the morning they serve coffee." They almost eat each other, although There is a lot of fruit, fish, and game all around. They would have died of hunger if there had not been a man nearby. I have no doubt Confident in their right to exploit other people's labor, the generals They force a man to work for them. And now the generals are fed up again, their former self-confidence and complacency are returning to them. “That’s how good it is to be generals - you won’t get lost anywhere!” - they think. In St. Petersburg the generals of "money" raked in," and the peasant was sent "a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver: have fun, man!"

Sympathizing with the oppressed people, Shchedrin opposesautocracy and its servants. Tsar, ministers and governors youThe fairy tale "The Bear in the Voivodeship" makes me laugh. It shows threeToptygins, who successively replaced each other in battle leadership, where they were sent by the lion to “pacify the internal early adversaries." The first two Toptygins were engaged once different kinds of "atrocities": one - petty, "shameful" ("chiate Zhika"), the other - large, "shiny" (picked up from the cr-

The old man had a horse, a cow, a pig and a couple of sheep, but the men came running and killed him). The third Toptygin did not crave “bloodshed.” Taught by the experience of history, he acted cautiously and pursued a liberal policy. For many years he received piglets, chickens, and honey from the workers, but in the end the patience of the men ran out and they dealt with the “voivode.” This is already a spontaneous explosion of discontent of the peasants against the oppressors. Shchedrin shows that the cause of the people's disasters is the abuse of power, the very nature of the autocratic system. This means that the salvation of the people lies in the overthrow of tsarism. This is the main idea of ​​the fairy tale.

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 "introduce" science and art into 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, and ruined the crows. “Searchs, investigations, trials” began, and “the darkness of ignorance” set in. In this tale, the writer showed the incompatibility of tsarism with science, education and art, and concluded that “eagles are harmful to education.”

Shchedrin also makes fun of ordinary people. The tale of the wise minnow is devoted to this topic. All his life the gudgeon thought about how the pike would not eat him, so he sat in his hole for a hundred years, away from danger. The gudgeon "lived - trembled and died - trembled." And dying, I thought: why did he tremble and hide all his life? What joys did he have? Who did he console? Who will remember its existence? “Those who think that only those minnows 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 minnows. No one is warm or cold from them ... live, taking up space for nothing,” the author addresses the reader.

In his fairy tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin shows that the people are talented. The man from the fairy tale about two generals is smart, he has golden hands: he made a snare “from his own hair” and built a “miracle ship”. The people were subjected to oppression, their life was endless hard work, and the writer was bitter that he was weaving the rope with his own hands, which

They threw it around his neck. Shchedrin calls on the people to think about their fate and unite in the struggle to restructure the unjust world.

Saltykov-Shchedrin called his creative style Aesopian, each fairy tale has a subtext, it contains comic characters and symbolic images.

The uniqueness of Shchedrin's fairy tales also lies in the fact that in them the real is intertwined with the fantastic, thereby creating a comic effect. On the fabulous island, the generals find the famous reactionary newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti. From the extraordinary island not far from St. Petersburg, to Bolshaya Podyacheskaya. The writer introduces details from the lives of people into the lives of fabulous fish and animals: the gudgeon “does not receive a salary and does not keep a servant,” dreams of winning two hundred thousand.

The author's favorite techniques are hyperbole and grotesque. Both the peasant's dexterity and the generals' ignorance are extremely exaggerated. A skilled man cooks a handful of soup. Stupid generals don’t know that buns are made from flour. A hungry general swallows his friend's order.

In Shchedrin's fairy tales there are no random details or unnecessary words, and the heroes are revealed in actions and words. The writer draws attention to the funny sides of the person depicted. Suffice it to remember that the generals were in nightgowns, and each had an order hanging around their necks. In Shchedrin's fairy tales, a connection is visible with folk art (“once upon a time there was a minnow,” “he drank honey and beer, it flowed down his mustache, but it didn’t get into his mouth,” “neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen”). However, along with fairy-tale expressions, we come across book words that are completely uncharacteristic of folk tales: “sacrifice one’s life,” “the gudgeon completes the life process.” One can feel the allegorical meaning of the works.

Shchedrin's tales reflected his hatred of those who live at the expense of the working people, and his belief in the triumph of reason and justice.

These tales are a magnificent artistic monument of a bygone era. Many images have become household names, denoting social phenomena of Russian and world reality.

Sections: Literature

Target: development of students' research competence using the example of satirical fairy tales by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, associative thinking, teaching work in groups and comparative analysis of works, enriching students’ speech with figurative and expressive means of language.

Epigraph:

Satire escorts everything that has become obsolete to the kingdom of shadows...

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

Fairy tales are powerful in their thought, funny and at the same time
tragic in their malice, captivating with their linguistic
perfection.

A.V.Lunacharsky

Equipment: a collection of tales by Saltykov-Shchedrin, illustrative material for a plan for analyzing the work.

During the classes

I. Teacher's opening speech.

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is a satirist writer. His work continues and deepens the satirical direction in Russian literature, begun by Griboyedov and Gogol. Shchedrin wrote novels, dramas, essays, short stories, reviews, and fairy tales.

The pinnacle of satirical skill and the embodiment of the ideological quest of the citizen writer were the famous “Tales,” which modern literary scholars called “a small encyclopedia of his satire.”

II. Updating knowledge.

What is a fairy tale?

When and for what reason did Saltykov-Shchedrin turn to the fairy tale genre?

What is satire?

Student answers:

The fairy tale is one of the most striking folklore genres.

IN AND. Dahl called it “a magical story, an unprecedented and even impossible story, a legend.” The tale is intricate, bizarre, and unusual. It tells about miraculous events, heroic deeds, and true love. Every fantasy story necessarily contains a serious moral lesson, because a fairy tale is the embodiment of folk wisdom, folk ideals of good and evil. This is probably why, unlike other genres of oral literature, she continued her life in literature.

By theme, fairy tales can be magical, everyday, or about animals, and by the nature of the attitude towards the depicted - humorous and satirical.

Saltykov-Shchedrin turned to the fairy tale genre in his work twice: 1st time - in 1869, 2nd time - in the 80s. Fairy tales have different recipients and problems. In total, Saltykov-Shchedrin has 32 fairy tales. In 1869 On the pages of the magazine “Otechestvennye zapiski,” Shchedrin began publishing the series “For Children.” The fairy tale cycle began

1. “The story of how one man fed two generals.”
2. “Conscience is gone.”
3. “Wild landowner.”

The writer accompanied these three works with the statement: “The author of these stories intends to publish a book for children’s reading...”. However, they went beyond the boundaries of children's themes, and Shchedrin decided that the satirical fairy tale genre offered great opportunities for artistic solutions to social issues.

In the last decade of his life (1882-1886), Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote 29 fairy tales, combining them into the book “Fairy Tales for Children of a Fair Age.” It is no coincidence that Shchedrin’s fairy tale genre flourished in the 1980s. It was during this period of political reaction in Russia that the satirist had to look for a form that was most convenient for circumventing censorship and at the same time the closest and most understandable to the common reader. The recipient of fairy tales, according to the author's definition, are children of a fair age, that is, those who have retained naive illusions and a carefree childish view of unpleasant reality.

Censor Lebedev, having read Shchedrin’s “Fairy Tales,” wrote: “Mr. Saltykov’s intention to publish his fairy tales in separate brochures costing no more than 3 kopecks, and therefore, for the common people, is more than strange. What Mr. Saltykov calls fairy tales does not at all correspond to its name; his fairy tales are the same satire, and the satire is caustic, tendentious, more or less directed against our social and political structure...”

Censorship prohibited the publication of fairy tales, the purpose of which was to awaken the people, but they reached the reader.

III. Creating a problematic situation.

Another book was read, new characters became acquainted, an interesting page of Russian classics opened - the world of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales.

This is both a look at our history and an attempt to comprehend what happened to people in the 2nd half of the 19th century. And for you and me - another opportunity to think, reflect on the problems that worried the author and his heroes and which make us, modern readers, think too.

IV. Work in groups (research).

The satirical fantasy of Shchedrin's final book is based on folk tales about animals. Borrowing ready-made fairy-tale plots and images from the people, the writer develops satirical content in them, and the fantastic form is a reliable way of “Aesopian” language, understandable and accessible to the widest strata of Russian society.

Conventionally, all of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales can be divided into 4 groups:

1) satire on government circles and the ruling class;

2) satire on the liberal intelligentsia;

3) folk tales;

4) fairy tales that expose selfish morality and affirm Christian socialist ideals.

General task: select one from the independently read fairy tales that corresponds to the named groups, and research it.

Students suggested for research:

Group 1 – “Bear in the Voivodeship”.

Group 2 – “Selfless hare.”

Group 3 – “Crucian carp is an idealist.”

Group 4 – “Christ’s Night”.

Fairy tale analysis plan.

1. Time to create a fairy tale.

2. The main theme of the fairy tale.

3. The artistic originality of the fairy tale.

4. Features of the language.

5. The meaning of the fairy tale.

6. Creating an illustration for this fairy tale.

7. Selection of an epigraph for a satirical work.

V. The result of the study is the performance of the groups.

VI. Work with the epigraph for the lesson and illustrative material for the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin.

VII. Lesson summary.

Fairy tales are the result of the writer’s forty years of activity, the result of his entire creative path. They intertwine the comic and the tragic, combine fantasy with reality, and widely use hyperbole, grotesque, and Aesopian language. In fairy tales, as in all the works of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, two social forces are opposed: the working people, who act under the masks of defenseless animals and birds, and the exploiters - in the form of predators. The author introduces topical political motives into the world of fairy tales and reveals complex problems of our time. It can be said that both the ideological content and the artistic features of satirical tales are aimed at instilling respect for the people and civic feelings in Russian people.

The satirical tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin are a special genre that incorporates

folklore tradition (beginnings, sayings, sayings, constant epithets) and the author’s techniques of satirical writing (pamphleteering, “eternity” of the topic, modern analogies, mixing the real and the fantastic, irony, absurdity, “talking” symbolism, allegoricality). A satirical fairy tale, close to a fable, anecdote, parable, legend, was for Shchedrin a “flexible” genre, aimed at the widest readership and rooted in Russian verbal culture.

Saltykov-Shchedrin can hardly be called a storyteller: he drew too bitter conclusions when reflecting on the life of Russia in the second half of the 19th century. But the more closely the writer peered into the reality around him, the more clearly he discerned the networks of “unprecedentedness” that entangled it. The unheard-of cruelty of the political regime, the monstrous lack of rights of the people really bordered on fantasy. All this contributed to Saltykov-Shchedrin’s turn to the fairy tale genre. Perhaps there is no verisimilitude in the writer’s small masterpieces, but there is truth. Each of the fairy tales is a complete and perfect work.

- What literary traditions did Saltykov-Shchedrin follow when creating fairy tales?

(Pushkin traditions: “The Tale of the Golden Cockerel”, “The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda”, “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”; Krylov’s fables are “Aesopian” language; can be compared with the works of Nekrasov “Reflections at the Main Entrance”, “Iron road”: both authors sought to awaken the people’s self-awareness and spoke with bitterness about the long-suffering of the people).

- Name the specific features of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales.

(The writer surprisingly subtly managed to recreate the spiritual image of the folk storyteller, embodying in him that property of the Russian national character, which Pushkin defined as “a cheerful slyness of the mind and a picturesque way of expressing himself.” Both the vocabulary, the phraseology, and the intonation pattern of Shchedrin’s fairy tales reproduce the speech of the folk storyteller) .

- What is common and distinctive in folk and Shchedrin fairy tales, fairy tales of modern times?

Fairy tales of modern times, like folk tales, talk about eternal problems that concern people in any era: about life and death, love and hate, nobility and meanness, good and evil. True, in the fairy tales of the 19th and 20th centuries there is more sadness than joyfulness.

People have had to endure too much suffering. Their faith in “fairy tales come true” was shaken. However, turning to everyone’s favorite genre testifies to the writers’ desire to cure the “diseases of society,” to save human souls, and to restore to them hope for justice and happiness. This position is also close to the great Russian satirist M. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

A special place in the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin is occupied by fairy tales with their allegorical images, in which the author was able to say more about Russian society of the 60-80s of the 19th century than the historians of those years. Saltykov-Shchedrin writes these fairy tales “for children of a fair age,” that is, for an adult reader whose mind is in the state of a child who needs to open his eyes to life. The fairy tale, due to the simplicity of its form, is accessible to anyone, even an inexperienced reader, and therefore is especially dangerous for those who are ridiculed in it.

The main problem of Shchedrin's fairy tales is the relationship between the exploiters and the exploited. The writer created a satire on Tsarist Russia. The reader is presented with images of rulers (“Bear in the Voivodeship”, “Eagle Patron”), exploiters and exploited (“Wild Landowner”, “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”), ordinary people (“The Wise Minnow”, “ Dried roach").

Saltykov-Shchedrin turned to fairy tales not only because it was necessary to bypass censorship, which forced the writer to turn to Aesopian language, but also in order to educate the people in a form familiar and accessible to them.

a) In their literary form and style, Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales are associated with folklore traditions. In them we meet traditional fairy-tale characters: talking animals, fish, Ivan the Fool and many others. The writer uses the beginnings, sayings, proverbs, linguistic and compositional triple repetitions characteristic of a folk tale, vernacular and everyday peasant vocabulary, constant epithets, words with diminutive suffixes. As in a folk tale, Saltykov-Shchedrin does not have a clear time and spatial framework.

b) But using traditional techniques, the author quite deliberately deviates from tradition. He introduces socio-political vocabulary, clerical phrases, and French words into the narrative. Episodes of modern social life appear on the pages of his fairy tales. This is how styles are mixed, creating a comic effect, and the plot is connected with problems.

modernity.

Thus, having enriched the fairy tale with new satirical techniques, Saltykov-Shchedrin turned it into a tool of socio-political satire.

The fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” (1869) begins as an ordinary fairy tale: “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there lived a landowner...” But then an element of modern life enters the fairy tale: “And that stupid landowner was reading the newspaper Vest " is a reactionary-serf newspaper, and the stupidity of the landowner is determined by his worldview. The abolition of serfdom aroused anger among the landowners towards the peasants. According to the plot of the fairy tale, the landowner turned to God to take the peasants from him:

“He reduced them so that there is nowhere to stick your nose out: no matter where you look, everything is prohibited, not allowed, and not yours!” Using Aesopian language, the writer depicts the stupidity of the landowners who oppress their own peasants, at the expense of whom they lived, having a “loose, white, crumbly body.”

There were no more peasants throughout the entire domain of the stupid landowner: “Where the peasant went, no one noticed.” Shchedrin hints at where the man might be, but the reader must guess this for himself.

The peasants themselves were the first to call the landowner stupid: “...even though their landowner is stupid, he has been given great intelligence.” There is irony in these words. Next, representatives of other classes call the landowner stupid three times (triple repetition technique): actor Sadovsky with his “actors” invited to the estate: “However, brother, you are a stupid landowner! Who gives you a wash, stupid one?”; the generals, whom instead of “beef” he treated to printed gingerbread and candy: “However, brother, you are a stupid landowner!”; and, finally, the police captain: “You are stupid, Mr. Landowner!” The stupidity of the landowner is visible to everyone, since “you can’t buy a piece of meat or a pound of bread at the market,” the treasury is empty, since there is no one to pay taxes, “robbery, robbery and murder have spread in the district.” But the stupid landowner stands his ground, shows firmness, proves his inflexibility to the liberal gentlemen, as his favorite newspaper Vest advises.

He indulges in unrealistic dreams that without the help of the peasants he will achieve prosperity in the economy. “He’s thinking about what kind of cars he’ll order from England,” so that there won’t be any servile spirit. “He’s thinking about what kind of cows he’ll breed.” His dreams are absurd, because he cannot do anything on his own. And only one day the landowner thought: “Is he really a fool? Could it be that the inflexibility that he so cherished in his soul, when translated into ordinary language, means only stupidity and madness?..” In the further development of the plot, showing the gradual savagery and bestiality of the landowner, Saltykov-Shchedrin resorts to the grotesque. At first, “he was overgrown with hair... his nails became like iron... he walked more and more on all fours... He even lost the ability to pronounce articulate sounds... But he had not yet acquired a tail.” His predatory nature was manifested in the way he hunted: “like an arrow, he will jump from a tree, grab onto his prey, tear it apart with his nails and so on with all the insides, even the skin, and eat it.” The other day I almost killed the police captain. But then the final verdict on the wild landowner was pronounced by his new friend the bear: “... only, brother, you destroyed this man in vain!

And why?

But because this man was far more capable than your nobleman brother. And therefore I’ll tell you straight: you’re a stupid landowner, even though you’re my friend!”

Thus, the fairy tale uses the technique of allegory, where human types appear in their inhuman relationships under the guise of animals. This element is also used in the depiction of peasants. When the authorities decided to “catch” and “install” the peasant, “as if on purpose, at that time a swarm of peasants flew through the provincial town and showered the entire market square.” The author compares peasants to bees, showing the hard work of peasants.

When the peasants were returned to the landowner, “at the same time, flour, meat, and all kinds of livestock appeared at the market, and so many taxes arrived in one day that the treasurer, seeing such a pile of money, just clasped his hands in surprise and cried out:

And where do you scoundrels get it from!!!” How much bitter irony there is in this exclamation! And they caught the landowner, washed him, cut his nails, but he never understood anything and learned nothing, like all the rulers who ruin the peasantry, rob the workers and do not understand that this could result in ruin for themselves.

The significance of satirical tales is that in a small work, the writer was able to combine the lyrical, epic and satirical principles and extremely acutely express his point of view on the vices of the class of those in power and on the most important problem of the era - the problem of the fate of the Russian people.

In 1883, the famous “The Wise Minnow” appeared, which over the past hundred-plus years has become Shchedrin’s textbook fairy tale. The plot of this fairy tale is known to everyone: once upon a time there was a gudgeon, which at first was no different from its own kind. But, a coward by nature, he decided to live his whole life without sticking out, in his hole, flinching from every rustle, from every shadow that flashed next to his hole. So life passed me by - no family, no children. And so he disappeared - either on his own or some pike swallowed him. Only before death does the minnow think about his life: “Who did he help? Who did you regret, what good did he do in life? “He lived - he trembled and he died - he trembled.” Only before death does the average person realize that no one needs him, no one knows him and no one will remember him. But this is the plot, the external side of the fairy tale, what is on the surface. And the subtext of Shchedrin’s caricature in this tale of the morals of modern bourgeois Russia was well explained by the artist A. Kanevsky, who made illustrations for the fairy tale “The Wise Minnow”: “...everyone understands that Shchedrin is not talking about fish. The gudgeon is a cowardly man in the street, trembling for his own skin. He is a man, but also a minnow, the writer put him in this form, and I, the artist, must preserve it. My task is to combine the image of a frightened man in the street and a minnow, to combine fish and human properties. It is very difficult to “comprehend” a fish, to give it a pose, a movement, a gesture. How to display forever frozen fear on a fish’s “face”? The figurine of the minnow-official gave me a lot of trouble....”

3. I.A. Bunin about the fate of the Russian peasantry. “Village”, “Merry Yard”, “Zakhar Vorobyov”. Features of the writer's realism (using the example of one of the works).

The writer did not accept the destructive way of life. He found moral values ​​in the depths of the soul, which preserved the aspirations given to man by nature. This bright motif is the essence of many stories: “The Cheerful Yard” (1911), “Zakhar Vorobyov” (1912), “The Thin Grass” (1913), “Lyrnik Rodion” (1913). The inner appearance of the hero is revealed here in a local temporary situation - the fire of spiritual beauty burns briefly, but brightly. And the external, corrupting environment is given sparingly and distanced from the individual.

Social dissonances are by no means obscured. But the author looks at the transitory from the standpoint of the highest purpose of people - their birth in the name of cultivating new life on earth. Those who, in contempt for selfish, mercantile inclinations, radiate warmth and love along this path are dear to the writer. These, in his opinion, are the prospects for peace, salvation from the terrible inertia of collapse. Bunin does not idealize his heroes. The familiar Bunin thought is heard again: you can touch the Beautiful only by overcoming your habitually limited interests. In “The Thin Grass” and other stories of the 1910s. refined states of mind are characteristic of those who live an ordinary life. The writer emphasizes this point through various means. The narration reinforces the impression of the authenticity of what is happening by reference to the “real” scene of action, often to the opinion of “old-timers.” These are the beginnings of “The Merry Yard” and “Zakhar Vorobyov”. The transitions from an event to the hero’s understanding of it, from thoughts about a person’s destiny to everyday scenes are subtly motivated. Complex psychological processes are freely included during everyday existence. And these processes themselves, for all their depth and significance, originate from the simplest experiences. That is why the artistic collision of stories becomes so expressive - the character’s summing up of his life’s results. The specificity of the recreated world can divert attention from the writer’s true quest. This often happens. Bunin believed that “Zakhar Vorobyov” would protect him from the attacks of critics who attributed to the author of “The Village” a lordly attitude towards the people. And in this story they find only Zakhar’s unfulfilled dream of a feat and his humiliating death from drinking too much vodka. The content of the work is incomparably richer and more tragic.

Zakhar Vorobyov is constantly looking for warm, trusting contacts with people. First he tries to find an interlocutor who will listen and understand him. But conversations with random people they meet are crowned with complete and stupid indifference to him. He goes to the people in the village of Zhiloye (ironic name), and there “it was deathly quiet. Not a single soul anywhere." Zakhar wants to shake “the little people hidden in the huts.” In the short story “The Cheerful Yard” there is a story of two lives and two deaths: the old peasant woman Anisya and her son Yegor. Anisya is literally dying of hunger: there wasn’t even a crust of bread for her (her yard was called “cheerful” by her neighbors in mockery of her miserable, unlucky existence). Egor, an “empty talker” who left his parents’ home long ago and “does not recognize either family, property, or homeland,” commits suicide in his senseless wanderings. The mother’s meek endurance rises to selflessness in the name of the lost Yegor. At the moment of her starvation death (a stray, semi-feral dog recognizes the unfortunate woman as “an equal”!) Anisya, “to the point of trembling in her arms and legs,” longs for “sweet happiness” - to begin a “new streak” of “existence in this world.” There is no trace of complacency or detachment in the dying woman’s feelings. Everything is given over to the passionate desire to “see the morning, love your son, go to him.” Yegor’s condition is contradictory, he is still characterized by stupid conceit, and next to him there is growing painful bewilderment, “dumb irritation” against everyone and everything. Yegor experiences “two series of feelings and thoughts: one is ordinary, simple, and the other is alarming, painful,” forcing “to think something that did not lend itself to the work of the mind.” The insurmountable duality, which makes the unthinking birds envy, is acutely and dramatically resolved with the death of Anisya. Yegor is now losing all connections with the world: “And the earth - the whole earth - seemed to be empty.”

The author uses an “X-ray”, highlighting the deep course of inner life. The composition of stories, the change and detail of episodes - everything expresses the chosen approach. Perhaps most clearly it appears in the speech element of the narrator and characters. Expressions derived from certain supporting concepts, persistently repeating themselves, immediately determine the leading melody of the work. In “The Thin Grass,” for example, there is a whole scattering of words-“signs” of difficult thoughts: “knowledge”, “mental abilities”, “thinking something of your own”, “poor memories”, “I don’t know anything”, “I don’t know why lived”, etc. This stream, of course, is not the only one; another flows towards it, conveying sensations of beauty and love. The semantic condensation of the text is achieved by these means.

A number of Bunin’s works are dedicated to a ruined village, ruled by hunger and death. The writer looks for an ideal in the patriarchal past with its old-world prosperity. The desolation and degeneration of noble nests, the moral and spiritual impoverishment of their owners evoke in Bunin a feeling of sadness and regret about the lost harmony of the patriarchal world, about the disappearance of entire classes (“Antonov Apples”). In many stories of 1890-1900, images of “new” people appear. These stories are imbued with a premonition of imminent alarming changes,

In the early 1900s, the lyrical style of Bunin's early prose changed. The story “The Village” (1911) reflects the writer’s dramatic thoughts about Russia, about its future, about the fate of the people, about the Russian character. Bunin reveals a pessimistic view of the prospects for people's life...

Critics noted the merits of Bunin’s language, his art of “raising everyday phenomena of life into the world of poetry.” There were no “low” topics for the writer. A reviewer for the magazine “Bulletin of Europe” wrote: “In terms of pictorial accuracy, Mr. Bunin has no rivals among Russian poets.” His sense of the Motherland, language, and history was enormous. One of the sources of his creativity was folk speech. Many critics compared Bunin's prose with the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, noting that he introduced new features and new colors into the realism of the last century, enriching it with the features of impressionism.

Features of fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin
Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin

Features of Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are a fable beginning, a certain fantastic illusoryness of what is happening, allegories, allegories, unexpected transitions from reality to unreality, grotesque sharpness, as well as political acuity, purposefulness and realism of fantasy.

Possessing powerful folk “roots”, going back to the traditions of folk tales, Shchedrin’s tale, at the same time, is not an imitation of examples of folk art. It does not obey any strict rules of the genre at all and, like other works of the satirist, boldly violates them. Refusing external verisimilitude, the author achieves a special comic effect at the intersection of traditional fairy-tale techniques and completely realistic, even everyday details of people’s contemporary lives. Thus, having told in the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship” how Toptygin the 1st accidentally ate a siskin, the author says: “It’s the same as if someone drove a poor tiny high school student to suicide through pedagogical measures.”

When creating his fairy tales, Shchedrin relied not only on the experience of folk art, but also on Krylov’s satirical fables and on the traditions of Western European fables. He created a new, original genre of political fairy tale, which combines fantasy and reality, topical political reality and fiction.

In its form and style Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin associated with the traditions of Russian folklore. The author uses traditional formulas often found in folk tales - “once upon a time they lived”, “at the command of a pike, according to my desire”, “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state”. The form of a fairy tale is used by the author for satirical denunciation. All Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin allegorical, that is, through the relationships between representatives of the animal world, the class relationships of people are reflected. The author uses the technique of allegory as a means of creating images.

Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, as in all of his work, two social forces are opposed: the working people and their exploiters. The people in fairy tales are presented in the images of defenseless and kind animals and birds (and often simply under the name “man”), and the exploiters are represented in the images of predators.

The fantasy of Shchedrin's fairy tales is real, it carries a generalized political content and has a satirical orientation. In “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” it serves as the main means of expressing the author’s satirical indignation towards the landowners. The writer uses the technique of hyperbole to show the stupidity and ignorance of representatives of the ruling class, who all their lives were firmly convinced that “rolls will be born in the same form as they are served with coffee in the morning.” The author uses the same technique to show that a representative of the oppressed class is necessary for the generals, without him they would be completely lost; he can find a way out of the most desperate situation: “He got so clever that he even began to cook soup in a handful.”

Satire Saltykova-Shchedrin is full of journalistic content, the author strives to present reality in extremely contrasting lighting. The main method of depiction in his work becomes realistic grotesque, that is, contrasting exaggeration, giving the images a conventional, implausible, often fantastic quality.
Sky character. When using this technique, the image is often taken beyond the limits of acceptable plausibility.

But Saltykova-Shchedrin Any exaggeration seems realistically motivated; its fiction is a means of revealing the hidden, potential capabilities of a character in unexpected situations. An important feature of satirical typification in Saltykova-Shchedrin is the ability to create generalized, collective images that reflect the social psychology of certain groups of people. For example, the “wise squirrel,” the hero of the fairy tale of the same name, personifies wingless and vulgar philistinism. The meaning of his life, the life of an “enlightened, moderately liberal” coward, was self-preservation, avoidance of clashes and struggle, which is why he lived to a ripe old age. But this life consisted of continuous trembling for his own skin: “He lived and trembled - that’s all.”

The language of Shchedrin's tales is deeply folk, close to Russian folklore. The satirist uses not only traditional fairy-tale techniques and images, but also proverbs, sayings, and sayings. For example, “it’s awkward for a lamb without a lamb” (“The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”), “living life is not like licking a whorl” (“The Wise Minnow”), “the major will come, then we’ll find out how Kuzka’s mother-in-law’s name” (“Bear in the Voivodeship”).

The tales absorbed Shchedrin's many years of observations and reflections, expressing them in the most refined, concise and accessible form. On several pages, he skillfully revealed the essence of social relations (“How one man fed two generals”), talked about many events that were repeated with cruel regularity in the history of Russia (about the misadventures of culture and education in the fairy tale “The Eagle Patron”), characterized ideological currents of the era (“Crucian idealist”, “Liberal”).