Kaverin is a famous novel by the captain. Who was the prototype of Captain Tatarinov? Facing injustice

In his article "Sketch of the work" VA Kaverin admitted how much in his writing style the concreteness of representation, the accuracy of knowledge and fact, and sharp object memory mean. Having once promised himself "not to let the imagination run wild," the writer recreates the artistic space of his works with the help of acquaintances, studied to the smallest detail, and most importantly loved and close realities. From such specific details, a generalized image of the old city is created in Kaverin's work. And although in his novels it is called differently - Ensk in "Two Captains", Lopakhin in "Open Book", just "this city" in the story "The End of the Khaza" - it is always recognizable both in its historical and geographical appearance, and in that lyrical outline that betrays the biographical connection with the author-narrator.
Telling how he based the novel "Two Captains" the story of a young man heard in 1936 in a sanatorium near Leningrad, the writer admitted that he transferred the hero's childhood to his "hometown, called it Enskom. It is not for nothing that my fellow countrymen easily guess the true the name of the city where Sanya Grigoriev was born and raised! " When the first chapters were written, it became clear to the writer that it was in this small town that something extraordinary was going to happen - an accident, an event, a meeting, "the light of the Arctic stars that accidentally fell into a small, abandoned city."

"Two captains". Volume 1. Part 1. Chapter 14. "Flight. I am not sleeping. I pretend to be asleep."

Of course, you could just leave home - and remember what your name was! But Petka decided that it was not interesting, and worked out a rather complicated plan, which struck me with its mystery.
First, we had to give each other a "bloody oath of friendship." There she is:
"Whoever betrays this honest word will not receive mercy until he counts how much sand is in the sea, how many trees are in the forest, how many raindrops are falling from the sky. If he wants to go forward, send back, wants to go left, send to the right. with a hat on the ground, so thunder will hit the one who breaks this word of honor. Fight and seek, find and not give up".
Taking turns pronouncing this oath, we had to shake hands and at once hit the ground with our caps. This was done in Cathedral Garden on the eve of departure. I said the oath by heart, Petka read it from a piece of paper. Then he pricked his finger with a pin and signed it in blood: "PS", that is, Pyotr Skovorodnikov. I scribbled with difficulty: "A.G.", that is, Alexander Grigoriev.

"Two captains". Volume 1. Part 3. Chapter 5. "Katya's father".

It was a lot of fun at the table, a lot of people, everyone was laughing and talking loudly. But then the father got up with a glass of wine, and immediately everyone was silent. Katka did not understand what he was saying, but she remembered that everyone clapped and shouted "Hurray" when he finished, and the grandmother muttered again: "Lord!" - and sighed. Then everyone said goodbye to their father and some other sailors, and he threw Katka high and caught her with his kind, big hands.
"Well, Masha," he said to his mother. And they kissed crosswise ...
It was a farewell supper and seeing off of Captain Tatarinov at the Ensk railway station. In May twelve, he came to Ensk to say goodbye to his family, and in mid-June he sailed on the schooner "St. Mary" from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok ...

"Two captains". Volume 1. Part 3. Chapter 12. "Home"

How good it is to return to your hometown after eight years of separation! Everything is familiar - and not familiar. Is this the governor's house? It once seemed huge to me. Is it Wall? Was it so narrow and crooked? Is this really Lopukhinsky Boulevard? But the boulevard consoled me: beautiful new buildings stretched behind the linden trees along the main alley. Black lindens were as if painted on a white background, and black shadows from them lay obliquely on the white snow - it was very beautiful.
I walked quickly and at every step I recognized the old, then I was amazed at the changes. Here is the orphanage where Aunt Dasha was going to give me and my sister; it turned green, and a large marble plaque with gold letters appeared on the wall. I read it and could not believe my eyes. "Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin stayed in this house in 1824". Damn it! In this house! The shelters would have turned their noses up if they knew it.
And here are the "public places" to which my mother and I once carried a petition! They had now become completely "unattended", the old low bars were removed from the windows, and a plaque hung at the gate: "House of Culture".
And here is the Rampart ...

"Two captains". Volume 1. Part 3. Chapter 14. "Appointment in the Cathedral Garden." Do not believe this man.

The day before we agreed to go to the city museum. Sanya wanted to show us this museum, which they were very proud of in Ensk. It was located in the Pogankin Chambers - an old merchant building, about which Petya Skovorodnikov once said that it was filled with gold, and the merchant Pogankin himself was walled up in the basement and whoever enters the basement, he will strangle. Indeed, the door to the basement was closed, and on it hung a huge lock, probably of the 12th century, but the windows were open, and through them the carters threw firewood into the basement.

Hamlet of Ensk district. The genesis of the plot in the novel "Two Captains" by Kaverin 

V.B. Smirensky

This poem is encrypted.

V. Kaverin. "Fulfillment of desires".

Analyzing the plot of V. Kaverin's novel "Two Captains", the authors of the critical essay "V. Kaverin" O. Novikov and V. Novikov 1 believe that the novel is marked by a special closeness to folk fantastic narration and therefore it is advisable to draw an analogy not with specific fairy-tale plots, but with the very structure of the genre described in V.Ya. Propp's "Morphology of a Tale" 2. According to the authors, almost all (thirty-one) of Propp's functions find some kind of correspondence in the plot of the novel, starting with the traditional plot "One of the family members is absent from home" - in the novel, this is the arrest of Sani's father on false charges of murder. Further, the authors cite Propp's clarification: "The intensified form of absence is the death of the parents." So it comes out with Kaverin: Sani's father died in prison, and some time later his mother died.

According to O. Novikova and V. Novikov, the second function "They turn to the hero with a ban" is transformed in the novel into the story of Sanina's muteness. When the "ban is violated", that is, Sanya finds speech and begins to recite the letters of Captain Tatarinov everywhere, the "antagonist" (that is, Nikolai Antonovich) is included in the action. Perhaps, the authors believe that it is absent, only the fourteenth function "A magic agent gets at the disposal of the hero", that is, a miracle in the literal sense. However, this is compensated by the fact that the hero achieves his goal and defeats opponents only when he gains willpower, knowledge, etc.

In this regard, O. Novikova and V. Novikov believe that although folklore elements in literature are qualitatively transformed, nevertheless, they find it legitimate for the attempts of modern writers to use the energy of a fairy tale, pairing it with a realistic narration. Propp's list of functions can serve as a kind of connecting link, a special language into which the plot is translated not only fabulous, but also literary. For example, "The hero leaves the house"; "The hero is tested, questioned, attacked ..."; "The hero arrives unrecognized home or to another country"; "The false hero makes unfounded claims"; "A difficult task is offered to the hero"; "False hero or antagonist, the wrecker is exposed"; "The enemy is punished" - all this is in "Two captains" - up to the final, up to the thirty-first move: "The hero marries and reigns." The whole plot of "Two Captains", O. Novikova and V. Novikov believe, is based on the test of the hero, "it is a framing novella, centralizing all the other plot lines."

In addition, researchers see in "The Two Captains" a reflection of a whole spectrum of varieties of the novel genre and, in particular, Dickens' plots. The history of the relationship between Sani and Katya resembles both a medieval knightly romance and a sentimental romance of the XYIII century. "Nikolai Antonovich resembles a villainous hero from a Gothic novel" 3.

At one time, A. Fadeev noted that the novel "Two Captains" was written "according to the traditions of not Russian classical literature, but Western European, in the manner of Dickens, Stevenson" 4 . It seems to us that the plot of "Two Captains" has a different basis, not directly related to folklore traditions. Recognizing the links with the traditions of the novel genre, our analysis shows a much more striking similarity and close connection between the plot of the Caverin novel and the plot of the greatest Shakespearean tragedy, Hamlet.

Let's compare the plots of these works. Prince Hamlet receives "news from the afterlife": the ghost of his father told him that he - the king of Denmark - was treacherously poisoned by his own brother, who seized his throne and married the queen - Hamlet's mother. "Goodbye and remember me," calls the Ghost. Hamlet is shocked by these three heinous crimes committed by Claudius: murder, seizure of the throne and incest. He was deeply hurt by the act of his mother, who so soon agreed to the marriage. Trying to make sure what the ghost of his father told, Hamlet with visiting actors plays in the presence of Claudius, Gertrude and all the courtiers a play about the murder of the king. Claudius, losing his composure, betrays himself (the so-called "mousetrap" scene). Hamlet reproaches his mother for betraying her husband's memory and denounces Claudius. During this conversation, Polonius, eavesdropping, hides behind a carpet, and Hamlet (not intentionally) kills him. This leads to Ophelia's suicide. Claudius sends Hamlet to England with a secret order to kill him on arrival. Hamlet escapes death and returns to Denmark. Laertes, furious at the death of his father and sister, agrees with the king's cunning plan and tries to kill Hamlet in a duel with a poisoned rapier. In the finale, all the main characters of the tragedy perish.

The basic construction of the plot of "Two Captains" overlaps with the plot of Shakespeare. At the very beginning of the novel, a boy from the city of Enska, Sanya Grigoriev, receives "news from the other world": Aunt Dasha every evening reads letters from the bag of a drowned postman. He memorizes some of them. They are about the fate of an expedition lost and, probably, lost in the Arctic. A few years later, fate brings him in Moscow with the addressees and characters of the letters found: the widow (Maria Vasilievna) and the daughter (Katya) of the missing captain Ivan Tatarinov and his cousin Nikolai Antonovich Tatarinov. But at first Sanya doesn't know about it. Maria Vasilievna is getting married to Nikolai Antonovich. She speaks of him as a man of rare kindness and nobility, who sacrificed everything to equip her brother's expedition. But Sanya by this time already feels a strong distrust of him. Arriving in his native Ensk, he again turns to the surviving letters. "As lightning in the forest illuminates the area, so I understood everything while reading these lines." The letters said that the expedition owed all the failures to Nikolai (that is, Nikolai Antonovich). He was not named by his last name and patronymic, but it was him, Sanya is sure.

So, like Claudius, Nikolai Antonovich committed a triple crime. He sent his brother to certain death, since the schooner had dangerous side cutouts, useless dogs and food, etc. In addition, he not only married Maria Vasilyevna, but also made every possible effort to appropriate his brother.

Sanya exposes these crimes, but his revelations lead to the suicide of Maria Vasilievna. Returning to Moscow, Sanya tells her about the letters and reads them by heart. By the signature "Montigomo Hawkclaw" (albeit mistakenly pronounced by Sanya - Mongotimo) Maria Vasilievna verified their authenticity. The next day she was poisoned. Compared to Shakespeare's Gertrude, her betrayal of her husband's memory is at first somewhat softened. At first, she "ruthlessly" refers to all attempts by Nikolai Antonovich to look after her and show concern. He reaches his goal only after many years.

It is important to motivate Sanya's behavior that relations in the Tatarinov family are strikingly reminiscent of Sanya's events that took place in his own family: after the death of her father, his beloved mother marries "fanfaron" Gayer Kulia. Stepfather, a man with a "fat face" and a very disgusting voice, causes great dislike in Sanya. However, his mother liked him. "How could she fall in love with such a man? Unwittingly, Maria Vasilievna also came to my mind, and I decided once and for all that I did not understand women at all." This Gaer Kuliy, who sat down at the place where his father sat and loved to lecture everyone with endless stupid reasoning, demanding that they also thank him for this, in the end, became the cause of the mother's premature death.

When Sanya met Nikolai Antonovich, it turned out that, like Gaer Kuliy, he is also a lover of boring teachings: “Do you know what“ thank you ”is? Keep in mind that depending on whether you know or not. .. "Sanya understands that he is" talking nonsense "specifically to annoy Katya. At the same time, like Gaer, he expects gratitude. So, there is a symmetry in the relationship of the characters: the deceased Sanin's father, mother, stepfather, Sanya, on the one hand, and the deceased captain Tatarinov, Maria Vasilievna, Nikolai Antonovich, Katya, on the other.

At the same time, the teachings of the stepfathers in the novel are consonant with the speeches of the hypocrite Claudius. Let us compare, for example, such quotes: "Korol. The death of our beloved brother is still fresh, and it befits us to bear pain in our hearts ..." "Nikolai Antonovich not only talked to me about his cousin. This was his beloved theme." "He did a lot for him, it is clear why he loved to remember him so much." Thus, owing to the double reflection in the novel of the relationship of the main characters in Hamlet, the motive of "betrayal of her husband's memory" ultimately turns out to be reinforced in V. Kaverin. But the motive for "restoring justice" is also growing. Gradually, the orphan Sanya Grigoriev, looking for traces and recreating the history of the expedition of "St. Mary", as if finds his new, this time spiritual father in the image of Captain Tatarinov, "as if instructed to tell the story of his life, his death."

Having found the expedition and the body of Captain Tatarinov frozen into the ice, Sanya writes to Katya: "As if I am writing to you from the front - about a friend and about a friend who died in battle. Sorrow and pride for him excite me, and before the spectacle of immortality my soul passionately freezes ... "As a result, external parallels are reinforced by internal psychological motivations 5.

Continuing to compare the episodes of the novel and the tragedy, we note that although the revelations of Hamlet shocked the Queen, their consequences were completely unexpected. The unexpected murder of Polonius led to the madness and suicide of the innocent Ophelia. From the point of view of "normal" or life logic, the suicide of Maria Vasilievna is more justified than the suicide of Ophelia. But this example shows how far Shakespeare is from the usual logic of life and everyday ideas. Suicide of Maria Vasilievna– a natural event in the general plot structure of the novel. Ophelia's suicide is a tragedy in a high tragedy, which itself has the deepest philosophical and artistic meaning, an unpredictable plot twist, a kind of intermediate tragic ending, thanks to which the reader and viewer delves into the "unsearchable meaning of good and evil" (B. Pasternak).

Nevertheless, from a formal (plot, or event) point of view, one can state the coincidence of episodes: both in the tragedy and in the novel, one of the main characters is suicide. And one way or another, the hero is burdened with an involuntary feeling of guilt.

Nikolai Antonovich seeks to turn Sanin's evidence of guilt against himself. "This is the man who killed her. She is dying because of the vile, vile snake who says that I killed her husband, my brother." "I threw it out like a snake." Here you can already pay attention to the vocabulary and phraseology of the characters in the novel, to their similarity with the translation of "Hamlet" by M. Lozinsky, which was published in 1936 and with which V.A. Kaverin was probably familiar at the time of writing the novel: "The snake, who struck your father, put on his crown."

Sanya intends to find the missing expedition and prove his case. He makes these promises to himself, Katya and even Nikolai Antonovich: "I will find the expedition, I do not believe that it disappeared without a trace, and then we'll see which of us is right." The oath runs through the novel as a leitmotif: "Fight and seek, find and not give up!" This oath and promises echo Hamlet's oath and promises to avenge his father: "My cry from now on:" Goodbye, goodbye! And remember me. "I swore an oath," although, as you know, the role of Hamlet goes far beyond the usual revenge.

In addition to the most important plot coincidences in the tragedy and the novel, coincidences can be noted that relate to the details of the behavior of the characters.

Sanya comes to Korablev, but at this time Nina Kapitonovna also comes to Korablev. Korablev takes Sanya to the next room with a leaky green curtain in place of the door and says to him: "And listen - it's good for you." Sanya hears all this important conversation, in which they talk about him, Katya and Camomile, and looks through the hole in the curtain.

The circumstances of the episode resemble the scene of the meeting between Hamlet and the Queen, when Polonius hides behind a carpet. If in Shakespeare this detail is important from many sides (characterizes the spy zeal of Polonius and becomes the cause of his death, etc.), then Kaverin apparently uses this scene only so that Sanya quickly learns important news for him.

Claudius, frightened and angry at the revelations, sends Hamlet to Britain with a letter where there was an order "that immediately after reading it, without delay, without looking to see if the ax was sharpened, my head would be blown away", as Hamlet later tells Horatio.

In the novel, Sanya, organizing an expedition to search for Captain Tatarinov, learns from Nina Kapitonovna that Nikolai Antonovich and Romashka "... are writing about everything. Pilot G., pilot G. Donos, come on." And she turns out to be right. An article soon appears, which, indeed, contains a real denunciation and slander against Sanya. The article said that a certain pilot G. denigrates the respected scientist (Nikolai Antonovich) in every possible way, spreads slander, etc. If we consider that the case takes place in the fateful thirties (Kaverin wrote these episodes in 1936-1939), then the effectiveness of the denunciation article could be no less than the treacherous letter of Claudius to the British king that condemns Hamlet to execution. But, like Hamlet, Sanya avoids this danger with his energetic actions.

You can notice further overlaps in the character system. The lonely Hamlet has only one faithful friend - Horatio:

"Hamlet. But why aren't you at Wittenberg, student friend?" Marcellus calls Horatio "the scribe".

Sanya has more friends, but Valka Zhukov stands out among them, who is still interested in biology at school. Then he is a "senior scientist specialist" on an expedition to the North, then a professor. Here we see coincidences in the nature of the activities of the heroes' friends: their distinctive feature is learning.

But a much larger role is played in the novel by Romashov, or Daisy. Even at school, his deceit, hypocrisy, double-dealing, denunciations, greed, espionage, etc. are manifested, which he tries, at least sometimes, to hide under the guise of friendship. Early enough he becomes close to Nikolai Antonovich, later becoming his assistant and the closest person in the house. According to the position in the novel and its extremely negative properties, it combines all the main characteristics of the courtiers of Claudius: Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Katya believes that he is similar to Uriah Gipa, the character of Charles Dickens. Perhaps that is why both A. Fadeev and the authors of the essay "V. Kaverin" assumed that the novel reflected the plot of Dickens.

In fact, for the understanding of this image, it is essential that in the novel he also performs the function of Laertes, which is that he is. enters into mortal combat with the hero. If Laertes is driven by revenge, then Romashov is driven by envy and jealousy. At the same time, both the one and the other character act in the most treacherous way. So, Laertes uses a poisoned rapier, and Chamomile throws Sanya, seriously wounded during the war, stealing from him a bag of crackers, a flask of vodka and a pistol, that is, dooms him, it would seem, to certain death. He himself, in any case, is sure of this. "You will be a corpse," he said haughtily, "and no one will know that I am with you." Assuring Katya that Sanya died, Romashka, apparently, himself believes in it.

Thus, as in the case of Maria Vasilievna's suicide, we see that in the novel, in comparison with the tragedy, there is a redistribution of plot functions between the characters.

The vocabulary used by V. Kaverin to characterize Romashov is based on the keyword "scoundrel". Even in his school lesson, Sanya gives Chamomile to cut his finger on a bet. "Cut," I say, and this scoundrel coldly cuts my finger with a penknife. Further: "Chamomile rummaged in my trunk. This new meanness amazed me"; "I will say that Chamomile is a scoundrel and that only a scoundrel will apologize to him." If in the novel these expressions are "scattered" over the text, then in M. Lozinsky's translation they are collected "in a bouquet" in a monologue, where Hamlet, choking with anger, says about the king: "Scoundrel. Smiling scoundrel, damned scoundrel! - My tablets, - it is necessary to write down that you can live with a smile and be a scoundrel with a smile. "

In the final scene of the showdown, Sanya says to Romashov: "Sign it, you scoundrel!" – and gives him to sign "the testimony of MV Romashov", which says: "Vile deceiving the leadership of Glavsevmorput, etc." "O regal meanness!" - exclaims Hamlet, shocked by the treacherous letter of Claudius.

Hamlet's key scenes include the Ghost scene and the mousetrap scene, in which the antagonist is exposed. In Kaverin, similar scenes are combined into one and placed in the finale of the novel, where, finally, justice finally triumphs. It happens in the following way. Sanya managed to find the expedition's photographic film, which had lain in the ground for about 30 years, and to develop some frames that seemed to be lost forever. And so Sanya demonstrates them at his report to the Geographical Society, dedicated to the materials found. It is attended by Katya, Korablev, and Nikolai Antonovich himself, that is, as in the scene of the "mousetrap", all the main characters of the novel.

"The light went out, and a tall man in a fur hat appeared on the screen ... He seemed to walk into the hall - a strong, fearless soul. Everyone stood up when he appeared on the screen. (cf. Shakespeare's remark: Enter P and s r and k) And in this solemn silence I read the report and the captain's farewell letter: “We can safely say that we owe all our failures only to him.” And then Sanya reads out a document of commitment, where the culprit of the tragedy is directly indicated. Finally, at the end, he says about Nikolai Tatarinov: “Once in a conversation with me this man said that he recognizes only one witness: the captain himself. And now the captain calls him - full name, patronymic and surname! "

Shakespeare conveys the king's confusion at the climax that comes in the scene of the "mousetrap" through the exclamations and remarks of the characters:

About f e l and I. The King Rises!

HAMLET What? Frightened by a blank shot?

Queen. What's with your majesty?

P about l about n and th. Stop playing!

King. Give me some fire. ”“ Let's go!

In the village of Fire, fire, fire!

In the novel, the same problem is solved by descriptive means. We see Nikolai Antonovich "suddenly straightened up, looked around when I loudly called this name." "In my life, I have not heard such a devilish noise", "a terrible commotion arose in the hall." Comparing these episodes, we see that Kaverin seeks to solve the climax and denouement of his novel with a spectacular scene, in which he tries to merge the emotional tension that arises in the tragedy "Hamlet" in the scenes with the ghost and in the scene of the "mousetrap".

O. Novikova and V. Novikov, the authors of the essay "V. Kaverin", believe that in the work on "Two Captains" "the author of the novel seems to have" forgotten "about his philological erudition: no quotations, no reminiscences, no parody-stylized moments not in the novel. And this may be one of the main reasons for the success. " 6.

However, the cited material testifies rather to the opposite. We see a fairly consistent use of Shakespeare's plot and system of characters in the tragedy. Nikolai Antonovich, Captain Tatarinov, Valka Zhukov and the main character himself consistently reproduce the plot functions of their prototypes. Maria Vasilievna, repeating the fate of Gertrude, commits suicide, like Ophelia. One can quite clearly trace the correspondence to prototypes and their actions in the image of Romashov: espionage and denunciations (Polonius), feigned friendship (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), an insidious murder attempt (Laertes).

O. Novikova and V. Novikov, striving to bring the novel "Two Captains" closer to the structure of the genre described in "Morphology of a Tale" by V. Ya. Propp, turn out to be right in the sense that in Kaverin's novel, as in a fairy tale, there is a regularity, discovered by Propp: if a set of permanent characters changes in a fairy tale, then a redistribution or combination of plot functions occurs between them 7. Apparently, this pattern operates not only in folklore, but also in literary genres, when, for example, a particular plot is reused. O. Revzina and I. Revzin gave examples of combining or "gluing" functions - the roles of characters in A. Christie's novels 8. Differences associated with the redistribution of functions are of no less interest for plotology and comparative studies than close coincidences.

The revealed coincidences and consonances make one wonder how consciously Kaverin used the plot of the tragedy. It is known how much attention he paid to the plot and composition in his works. "I have always been and remain a plot writer", "the enormous importance of composition ... is underestimated in our prose",– he emphasized in the "Sketch of the work" 9. The author described here in some detail the work on "The Two Captains".

The idea of ​​the novel was associated with an acquaintance with a young biologist. According to Kaverin, his biography captivated the writer so much and seemed so interesting that he "vowed not to let his imagination run wild." The hero himself, his father, mother, comrades are written exactly as they appeared in the story of a friend. "But imagination still came in handy," admits V. Kaverin. First, the author tried to "see the world through the eyes of a young man shocked by the idea of ​​justice." Secondly, "it became clear to me that something extraordinary was going to happen in this small town (Ensk). The extraordinary thing I was looking for was the light of the arctic stars that accidentally fell into a small abandoned town." 10.

So, as the author himself testifies, in the basis of the novel "Two Captains" and in the basis of its plot, in addition to the biography of the prototype hero, there were two most important lines. Here we can recall the technique that Kaverin first tried to use in his first story.

In the trilogy "Illuminated Windows" V. Kaverin recalls the beginning of his career as a writer. In 1920, preparing for an exam in logic, he first read a summary of Lobachevsky's non-Euclidean geometry and was struck by the courage of his mind, which imagined that parallel lines converge in space.

Returning home after the exam, Kaverin saw a poster announcing a competition for aspiring writers. In the next ten minutes, he decided to leave poetry forever and switch to prose.

"Finally - this was the most important thing - I managed to think over my first story and even call it:" The Eleventh Axiom. "Lobachevsky crossed parallel lines at infinity. All that is necessary is that, regardless of time and space, they ultimately merge, merge ... ".

Arriving home, Kaverin took a ruler and lined a sheet of paper lengthwise into two equal columns. In the left, he began to write the story of a monk who loses faith in God. On the right is the story of a student losing his wealth at cards. At the end of the third page, both parallel lines converged. The student and the monk met on the banks of the Neva. This short story was sent to the competition under the meaningful motto "Art should be based on the formulas of the exact sciences", received an award, but remained unpublished. However, "the idea of ​​the Eleventh Axiom" is a kind of epigraph to all Kaverin's creativity. And in the future he will look for a way of crossing parallel ... " 11

Indeed, in the novel "Two Captains" we see two main lines: in one storyline, the techniques of an adventure novel and a travel novel in the spirit of J. Verne are used. The bag of a drowned postman with soaked and partially damaged letters, which speak of the missing expedition, cannot but recall the letter found in the bottle in the novel "Children of Captain Grant", which, by the way, also describes the search for the missing father. But the use in the novel of authentic documents reflecting the real and dramatic history of the researchers of the Far North Sedov and Brusilov, and, most importantly, the search for evidence leading to the triumph of justice (this line turned out to be based on a Shakespearean plot), made the plot not only fascinating, but also literary more meaningful.

The novel also “works” in a peculiar way, the third storyline, on which Kaverin initially relied - the true biography of a biologist. Rather, here, from the point of view of comparative plotology, the combination of this line with the two above is of interest. In particular, the beginning of the novel, which describes the homelessness and hungry wanderings of Sanya. If in Shakespeare the main character, who is destined to take on the heavy burden of restoring the trampled justice, is prince Hamlet, then in the novel the main character is at first a street child, that is, "n and n and y." This well-known literary opposition turned out to be organic, for, as O. Novikova and V. Novikov rightly point out, the tradition of the novel of education was clearly manifested in the general structure of "Two Captains". "Traditional techniques have worked vigorously, applied to cutting edge material." 12.

In conclusion, let us return to the question, how conscious was Kaverin's use of the Shakespearean plot? A similar question was asked by M. Bakhtin, proving the genre affinity of F.M. Dostoevsky and the ancient menippea. And he answered it decisively: "Of course not! He was not at all a stylist of ancient genres ... Speaking somewhat paradoxically, we can say that not the subjective memory of Dostoevsky, but the objective memory of the genre itself, in which he worked, retained the features of the ancient menippea." 13

In the case of V. Kaverin's novel, we are inclined to attribute all the above-mentioned intertextual coincidences (in particular, lexical coincidences with the translation of "Hamlet" by M. Lozinsky) to the account of the "subjective memory" of the writer. Moreover, he probably left for the attentive reader a certain "key" to decipher this riddle.

As you know, the author himself dates the origin of his idea of ​​"Two Captains" in 1936 14. Work on the novel "Fulfillment of Desires" has just been completed. One of the indisputable successes in it was the fascinating description of the deciphering by the hero of the tenth chapter of the novel "Eugene Onegin". Perhaps, while working on "Two Captains", Kaverin tried to solve the opposite problem: to encrypt the plot of the greatest and well-known tragedy into the plot of a modern novel. I must admit that he succeeded, since until now no one seems to have noticed this, despite the fact, as V. Kaverin himself pointed out, the novel had "meticulous readers" who saw some deviations from the text of the documents used 15. Such an expert on plot-building as V. Shklovsky did not see this either, who noticed at one time that two novels were inserted into the novel "Fulfillment of Desires": a short story about the deciphering of Pushkin's manuscript and a short story about the seduction of Trubachevsky by Nevorozhin, which turned out to be connected only externally 16.

How did Kaverin manage to transform the tragic Shakespearean plot so skillfully? S. Balukhaty, analyzing the genre of melodrama, noted that one can “read” and “see” a tragedy in such a way that, omitting or weakening its thematic and psychological materials, turn the tragedy into a melodrama, which is characterized by “convex, bright forms, sharp-dramatic conflicts, in-depth plot " 17.

Nowadays, the time of close attention to the novel is gone. However, this should not affect the theoretical interest in its study. As for the "key" to unraveling the plot, which the author left, it is associated with the title of the novel, if one recalls one of the final solemn lines of Shakespeare's tragedy:

Let Hamlet be lifted to the platform,

As a warrior, you can do it.

Finally, the last "syllable" of the Caverin charade is associated with the name of the hometown of Sani. In general, such names as the city of N. or N, N-sk, etc., have a tradition in literature. But, melting the Shakespearean plot into the plot of his novel, Kaverin could not help but recall his predecessors and among them the famous story related to Shakespeare's theme - "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". If Leskova's heroine was from Mtsensk, then my hero, pilot G., let him just come from ... En s k a, Kaverin might have thought and left a rhymed trail for future clues: Ensk - Mtsensk - Lady Macbeth - Hamlet.

5 V. Borisov, V. Kaverin's novel "Two Captains" (See V. Kaverin. Collected works in 6 volumes, vol. 3, M., 1964, p. 627).

8 O. Revzina, I. Revzin, Towards a formal analysis of plot composition. - "Collection of articles on secondary modeling systems", Tartu, 1973, p. 117.

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// In the book: Smirensky V. Analysis of plots.
- M. - AIRO-XX. - with. 9-26.
Among Chekhov's literary connections, one of the most important and constant is Shakespeare. New material for the study of Chekhov's literary ties is provided by his play "The Three Sisters and Shakespeare's Tragedy" King Lear.

“Two Captains” is the most famous novel by the Russian Soviet writer Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin. The work was created in the period from 1938 to 1944. For this novel, the author was awarded the most prestigious Stalin Prize.

Despite the fact that the work was created in the Soviet era, it is, as it were, out of time, because it tells about the eternal - love, friendship, purposefulness, faith in a dream, devotion, betrayal, mercy. Two storylines - adventure and love - complement each other and make the novel more realistic, because, you see, a person's life cannot consist only of amorous experiences or only of work. Otherwise, it is defective, which cannot be said about Kaverin's work.

Part one "Childhood"

Sanya Grigoriev lives in the small river town of Ensk. He is not alone in the world he has a family - father, mother and sister Sasha (yes, that's such a coincidence!) Their house is small, with a low ceiling, walls with newspapers instead of wallpaper and a cold crack under the window. But Sana likes this little world, because this is his world.

However, everything in him changed abruptly when one day the boy secretly got out to the pier to fish for crayfish.

Little Sanya witnessed the murder of the postman. In a hurry, he lost his father's knife at the crime scene, which he took with him, and dad was sent to prison. Sanya was the only witness to the crime, but he could not speak in court in defense of his father - from birth Sanya was dumb.

The mother is seriously worried about the imprisonment of her husband, her chronic illness is aggravated and Sanya and Sasha are sent to the village, where they spend the winter in his father's dilapidated house under the supervision of the same dilapidated old woman Petrovna. Sanya has a new acquaintance - Doctor Ivan Ivanovich, who teaches him to speak. The boy begins to utter his first uncertain words - the doctor explains that his dumbness is psychological. The terrible news that his father died in prison becomes a heavy blow for Sanya, he falls into a fever and begins to speak ... however, it's too late - now there is no one to testify for in court.

The mother is getting married soon. The stepfather turns out to be a despotic and cruel person. He brings a frail mother to death. Sanya hates his stepfather and runs away from home with his friend Petka Skovorodnikov. The guys take an oath to each other "Fight and seek, find and not give up", which will become their motto for life, and go to warm Turkestan. Many months of wandering almost cost two street children their lives. By the will of fate, the friends part, and Sanya ends up in a Moscow school-commune with Nikolai Antonovich Tatarinov.

Part two "There is something to think about"

Sanya's life began to improve little by little - no more hunger strikes and overnight stays in the open air, in addition, it turned out to be quite interesting at school. The boy has new friends - Valka Zhukov and Mikhail Romashov, nicknamed Daisy. He also met an old woman, whom he helped carry bags home. Her name was Nina Kapitonovna, and it was she who introduced Sanya to the Tatarinov family.

The Tatarinovs' apartment seemed to the boy from run-down Ensk to be “Ali Baba's cave”, there were so many “treasures” there - books, paintings, crystal and various other unknown gizmos. And they lived in this "treasury" Nina Kapitonovna - grandmother, Marya Vasilievna - her daughter, Katya - granddaughter, the same age as Sanya, and ... Nikolai Antonovich. The latter was Katya's paternal cousin. He was passionately in love with Maria Vasilievna, but she did not reciprocate. She was generally weird. Despite her beauty, she always wore black, studied at the institute, spoke little, and sometimes sat in a chair with her legs for a long time and smoked. Then Katya said that “my mother is sad”. It was said about her husband and father Katya Ivan Lvovich that he either disappeared or died. And Nikolai Antonovich often recalled how he helped his cousin, how he brought him into the world, helped to enter a sailor, which provided him with a brilliant career as a sea captain.

In addition to Sanya, whom Nikolai Antonovich clearly disliked, there was another frequent guest in the Tatarinovs' apartment - the teacher of geography Ivan Pavlovich Korablev. When he stepped over the threshold, Maria Vasilievna seemed to come out of her dream, put on a dress with a collar, and smiled. Nikolai Antonovich hated Korablev and for too obvious signs of attention removed him from lessons.

Part Three "Old Letters"

Next time we meet with the matured seventeen-year-old Sanya. He participates in a school scene based on “Eugene Onegin, which was attended by Katya Tatarinova. She is no longer as badass as she was as a child, and she also became very beautiful. Little by little, a feeling flares up between the young people. Their first explanation came at a school ball. Romashka overheard him, secretly in love with Katya, and reported everything to Nikolai Antonovich. Sanya was no longer allowed into the Tatarinovs' house. In a fit of anger, he beat the vile Chamomile, whom he previously considered a friend.

However, this insignificant meanness could not separate the lovers. They spend time together in Ensk, the hometown of Sani and Katya. There Grigoriev finds old letters from the postman, which were once washed ashore. Aunt Dasha read them aloud every day, and some of them so often that Sanya memorized them. Then he understood little about the address of some navigator Klimov to some Marya Vasilyevna, but after rereading these letters many years later, he seemed to see the light - they were addressed to Katya's mother! They say that Ivan Lvovich's expedition was ruined on land, that the inventory and provisions were unusable and the whole team was sent to certain death. And he was organizing ... Nikolai Antonovich. True, the name of the culprit was washed out with water, like most of the text, but Sanya remembered the letter by heart.

He immediately told Katya about everything and they went to Moscow to Marya Vasilievna to reveal to her the truth about Nikolai Antonovich. She believed ... and committed suicide. Nikolai Antonovich managed to convince everyone that the letters were not about him and that Sanya was to blame for the death of Marya Vasilievna, who at that time had already become his wife. Everyone turned away from Grigoriev, even Katya.

To drown out the pain of losing his beloved and unfair slander, Sanya is intensively preparing to enter the flight school. Now he has a big goal - to find the expedition of Captain Tatarinov.

Part four "North"

Having successfully studied at the flight school, Sanya achieves an appointment to the North. There he finds and deciphers the diaries of the navigator Ivan Klimov, as well as the boat hook from the vessel “Saint Mary”. Thanks to these invaluable finds, now he knows how to find the forgotten expedition and, upon his return to Moscow, is going to give a short report.

Meanwhile, on the "mainland" sister Sasha is getting married to Petka. They live in St. Petersburg and study to be artists. Chamomile became the closest person in the Tatarinov family and is going to marry Katya. Sanya is going crazy, what will be their meeting with Katya, and suddenly they are not destined to see each other again, and suddenly she has stopped loving him. After all, the search for the lost expedition primarily stimulates his love for her. Sanya ends his painful mental dialogue on the way to Moscow with the words: "I would not forget you, even if you stopped loving me."

Part five "For the heart"

The first meeting between Sani and Katya was strained, but it was clear that their mutual feeling was still alive, that Camomile was simply being imposed on her as her husband, that it was still possible to save her. An important role in their reunification was played by Korablev, whose pedagogical anniversary was attended by both Sanya and Romashov. Sanya also learned that Nikolai Antonovich was also preparing a report on the expedition of Captain Tatarinov's brother and was going to present his truth about the events of the past. It will be difficult for Grigoriev to cope with such an authoritative opponent, but he is not a timid tenth, especially since the truth is on his side.

In the end, Katya and Sanya are reunited, the girl firmly decides to leave home and start working as a geologist. On the last day before Sanin's departure for the Arctic, Romashov appears in his hotel room. He offers Grigoriev documents confirming the guilt of Nikolai Antonovich in exchange for Sanya breaking up with Katya, because he, Romashka, loves her so sincerely! Sanya pretends that he needs to think, and he immediately calls Nikolai Antonovich by phone. Seeing his teacher and mentor, Chamomile turns pale and hesitantly begins to deny what has just been said. However, Nikolai Antonovich doesn't care. Only now Sanya noticed how old this man is, it is difficult for him to speak, he can barely keep his feet - the death of Marya Vasilyevna completely deprived him of his strength. “Why did you invite me here? Nikolai Antonovich asked. - I am sick ... You wanted to assure me that he is a scoundrel. This is not news to me. You wanted to destroy me again, but you cannot do more than you have already done for me - and irreparably. "

Sanya does not manage to quarrel with Romashka and Nikolai Antonovich, because the latter no longer has the strength to resist, except for the scoundrel Romashov, he has no one else.

Sanina's article with minor amendments is published in Pravda, she and Katya read it in the train carriage, leaving for a new life.

Volume two: parts six through ten (some are told from the perspective of Katya Tatarinova)

Sanya and Katya are happily spending time in St. Petersburg with Sasha and Petya, who have just become young parents, they have a son. The first terrible omen of future misfortunes is Sasha's sudden death from illness.

Sanya has to postpone dreams of a polar expedition, because the war begins. Ahead is the front and a long separation from his beloved, at that time already his wife. During the war, Katya is in besieged Petersburg, she is starving. She is literally saved by the sudden appearance of Romashov. He talks about the horrors of the war, how he met Sanya, how he pulled him out of the battlefield in his arms and how he went missing. This is practically true, except that Romashov did not save Sanya, but, on the contrary, abandoned the wounded Grigoriev to his fate, taking away weapons and documents.

Chamomile is convinced that his rival died and sooner or later he will be able to take possession of Katya, as his mentor Nikolai Antonovich once did in relation to Katya's mother. However, Katya continues to believe that her husband is alive. Fortunately, this is true - Sanya miraculously managed to escape. After resting in the hospital, he goes in search of his beloved, but they are always warming up.

Sanya is summoned to the North, where the service continues. After one of Sanin's air battles, the plane makes an emergency landing at the place where the route of Tatarinov's expedition supposedly ended. Having overcome kilometers of snowy desert, Grigoriev finds a tent with the captain's body, his letters and diaries - the main evidence of Grigoriev's correctness and Nikolai Antonovich's guilt. Inspired, he goes to Polyarny to his old friend Doctor Ivan Ivanovich and, lo and behold (!) Katya is waiting for him there, the lovers will not part anymore.

The novel "Two Captains": a summary

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Introduction

mythological novel image

"Two captains" - adventure novel Sovietthe writer Veniamin Kaverin, which was written by him in the years 1938-1944. The novel has gone through more than a hundred reprints. Kaverin was awarded for him Stalin Prizesecond degree (1946). The book has been translated into many foreign languages. First published: the first volume in the magazine "Koster", №8-12, 1938. The first separate edition - V. Kaverin. Two captains. Drawings, binding, flyleaf and title of Yu. Syrnev. Frontispiece by V. Konashevich. M.-L. Central Committee of the Komsomol, publishing house of children's literature 1940 464 p.

The book tells about the amazing fate of a mute from a provincial town Enska, who honorably goes through the trials of war and homelessness in order to win the heart of his beloved girl. After the unfair arrest of his father and the death of his mother, Alexander Grigoriev was sent to an orphanage. Having escaped to Moscow, he finds himself first in a distribution center for street children, and then in a commune school. He is irresistibly attracted by the apartment of the school director Nikolai Antonovich, where the latter's cousin, Katya Tatarinova, lives.

Katya's father, Captain Ivan Tatarinov, who in 1912 led an expedition that discovered the Northern Land, went missing a few years ago. Sanya suspects that Nikolai Antonovich, in love with Katya's mother, Maria Vasilievna, contributed to this. Maria Vasilievna believes Sanya and commits suicide. Sanya is accused of slander and kicked out of the Tatarinovs' house. And then he takes an oath to find an expedition and prove his case. He becomes a pilot and collects information about the expedition bit by bit.

After the start Great Patriotic WarSanya serves in Air force... During one of the sorties, he discovers a ship with Captain Tatarinov's reports. The finds become the final touch and allow him to shed light on the circumstances of the death of the expedition and to justify himself in the eyes of Katya, who had previously become his wife.

The motto of the novel - the words "Fight and seek, find and not give up" - this is the final line from the textbook poem Lord Tennyson « Ulysses" (in original: To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield). This line is also engraved on the cross in memory of the deceased. expeditions R. Scottto the South Pole, on Observation Hill.

The novel was screened twice (in 1955 and in 1976), and in 2001 the musical "Nord-Ost" was created based on the novel. The heroes of the film, namely the two captains, were given a memorial yatnik in the homeland of the scribe-in Psokov, which in the novel is indicated as the city of Ensk. In 2001, a museum of the novel was created in the Psokov children's library.

In 2003, the main square of the city of Polyarny in the Murmansk region was named the Square of Two Captains. It was from this place that the expeditions of the navigators Vladimir Rusanov and Georgy Brusilov set out on a voyage.

The relevance of the work.The theme “Mythological basis in V. Kaverin's novel“ Two Captains ”” was chosen by me because of its high degree of relevance and significance in modern conditions. This is due to the wide public response and active interest in this issue.

To begin with, it should be said that the topic of this work is of great educational and practical interest to me. The problematic of the issue is very relevant in modern reality. From year to year, scientists and experts are paying more and more attention to this topic. Here it is worth noting such names as Alekseev D.A., Begak B., Borisova V., who made a significant contribution to the study and development of conceptual issues of this topic.

The amazing story of Sani Grigoriev, one of the two captains in Kaverin's novel, begins with an equally amazing find: a bag full of letters. However, it turns out that these "worthless" foreign letters are still quite suitable for the role of a fascinating "epistolary novel", the content of which soon becomes a common achievement. The letter, which tells about the dramatic history of the Arctic expedition of Captain Tatarinov and addressed to his wife, acquires fateful significance for Sani Grigoriev: his whole further existence turns out to be subordinated to the search for the addressee, and subsequently to the search for the missing expedition. Guided by this high aspiration, Sanya literally bursts into someone else's life. Having turned into a polar pilot and a member of the Tatarinov family, Grigoriev essentially replaces and displaces the deceased hero-captain. So, from the appropriation of someone else's letter to the appropriation of someone else's fate, the logic of his life unfolds.

The theoretical basis of the course workserved as monographic sources, materials of scientific and industry periodicals directly related to the topic. The prototypes of the heroes of the work.

Object of study:plot and images of heroes.

Subject of study:mythological motives, plots, symbols in creativity in the novel "Two Captains".

Purpose of the study:complex consideration of the question of the influence of mythology on the novel by V. Kaverin.

To achieve this goal, the following were set tasks:

to reveal the attitude and frequency of Kaverin's appeal to mythology;

to study the main features of mythological heroes in the images of the novel "Two Captains";

to determine the forms of penetration of mythological motives and plots into the novel "Two Captains";

consider the main stages of Kaverin's appeal to mythological subjects.

To solve the set tasks, methods are used such as: descriptive, historical-comparative.

1. The concept of mythological themes and motives

The myth stands at the origins of verbal art, mythological representations and plots occupy a significant place in the oral folklore tradition of various peoples. Mythological motives played a big role in the genesis of literary plots, mythological themes, images, characters are used and reinterpreted in literature almost throughout its history.

In the history of the epic, military strength and courage, the "fierce" heroic character completely overshadow witchcraft and magic. Historical tradition is gradually pushing back the myth, the mythical early time is transformed into the glorious era of the early mighty statehood. However, some features of the myth can be preserved in the most developed epics.

Due to the fact that in modern literary criticism there is no term "mythological elements", at the beginning of this work it is advisable to define this concept. To do this, it is necessary to turn to works on mythology, which present opinions about the essence of the myth, its properties, functions. It would be much easier to define mythological elements as constituent parts of one or another myth (plots, heroes, images of animate and inanimate nature, etc.), but when giving such a definition, one should also take into account the subconscious appeal of the authors of works to archetypal constructions (as V. N. Toporov, “some features in the work of great writers could be understood as sometimes an unconscious appeal to elementary semantic oppositions, well known in mythology”, B. Groys speaks about “archaic, about which we can say that it is also at the beginning of time , as well as in the depths of the human psyche as its unconscious beginning. "

So, what is the myth, and after it - what can be called mythological elements?

The word "myth" ( μυ ̃ θοζ) - "word", "story", "speech" - comes from ancient Greek. Initially, it was understood as a set of absolute (sacred) value-worldview truths opposed to everyday empirical (profane) truths expressed by an ordinary "word" ( ε ̉ ποζ), notes prof. A.V. Semushkin. Since the V century. BC, writes J.-P. Vernan, in philosophy and history, the "myth" opposed to the "logos" with which they initially coincided in meaning (only later did logos begin to mean the ability to think, reason), acquired a derogatory connotation, denoting a fruitless, unfounded statement, devoid of support on strict evidence or reliable evidence (however, even in this case, he, disqualified from the point of view of truth, did not apply to the sacred texts about gods and heroes).

The predominance of mythological consciousness refers mainly to the archaic (primitive) era and is associated primarily with its cultural life, in the system of semantic organization of which myth played a dominant role. The English ethnographer B. Malinovsky gave the myth primarily the practical functions of maintaining

However, the main thing in the myth is the content, and not at all the correspondence with the historical evidence. In myths, events are considered in time sequence, but often the specific time of the event does not matter and only the starting point for the beginning of the narrative is important.

In the XVII century. English philosopher Francis Bacon in his work "On the Wisdom of the Ancients" argued that myths in poetic form preserve the most ancient philosophy: moral maxims or scientific truths, the meaning of which is hidden under the cover of symbols and allegories. Free fantasy, expressed in myth, according to the German philosopher Herder, is not something absurd, but is an expression of the childhood age of mankind, "the philosophical experience of the human soul, which dreams before waking up."

1.1 Signs and characteristics of the myth

Mythology as a science of myths has a rich and long history. The first attempts to rethink the mythological material were undertaken in antiquity. But to date, no consensus has been formed about the myth. Of course, there are also points of contact in the works of researchers. Starting from these points, it seems to us possible to single out the main properties and features of the myth.

Representatives of various scientific schools focus on different aspects of the myth. So Raglan (Cambridge Ritual School) defines myths as ritual texts, Cassirer (a representative of the symbolic theory) speaks of their symbolism, Losev (the theory of mythopoetism) - on the coincidence in the myth of a common idea and a sensual image, Afanasyev calls myth the most ancient poetry, Barthes - a communicative system ... The existing theories are summarized in Meletinsky's book The Poetics of Myth.

The article by A.V. The Guligs list the so-called "signs of a myth":

The fusion of the real and the ideal (thought and action).

Unconscious level of thinking (mastering the meaning of the myth, we destroy the myth itself).

Syncretism of reflection (this includes: the inseparability of the subject and the object, the absence of differences between the natural and the supernatural).

Freudenberg notes the essential characteristics of myth, giving it a definition in his book "Myth and Literature of Antiquity": "Figurative representation in the form of several metaphors, where there is no our logical, formal logical causality and where a thing, space, time are understood indivisibly and concretely, where a person and the world are subject-objectively united, - this special constructive system of figurative representations, when it is expressed in words, we call a myth. " Based on this definition, it becomes clear that the main characteristics of the myth follow from the peculiarities of mythological thinking. Following the works of A.F. Loseva V.A. Markov argues that in mythological thinking they do not differ: object and subject, thing and its properties, name and object, word and action, society and space, man and the universe, natural and supernatural, and the universal principle of mythological thinking is the principle of participation (“everything there is everything ”, the logic of shapeshifting). Meletinsky is sure that mythological thinking is expressed in an indistinct separation of a subject and an object, an object and a sign, a thing and a word, a creature and its name, a thing and its attributes, single and multiple, spatial and temporal relations, origin and essence.

In their works, various researchers note the following characteristics of the myth: sacralization of the mythical "time of the first creation", which is the reason for the established world order (Eliade); indivisibility of image and meaning (Potebnya); general animation and personalization (Losev); close connection with the ritual; cyclical time model; metaphorical nature; symbolic meaning (Meletinsky).

In the article "On the interpretation of myth in the literature of Russian symbolism" G. Shelogurova tries to draw preliminary conclusions about what is meant by myth in modern philological science:

The myth is unanimously recognized as a product of collective artistic creation.

The myth is determined by the lack of distinction between the plane of expression and the plane of content.

The myth is seen as a universal model for constructing symbols.

Myths are the most important source of plots and images at all times of the development of art.

1.2 Functions of myth in works

Now it seems to us possible to define the functions of myth in symbolic works:

The myth is used by symbolists as a means to create symbols.

With the help of myth, it becomes possible to express some additional ideas in the work.

A myth is a means of generalizing literary material.

In some cases, the Symbolists resort to myth as an artistic device.

The myth serves as a visual, meaningful example.

Based on the above, the myth cannot but fulfill a structuring function (Meletinsky: “Mythologism has become a tool for structuring a narrative (using mythological symbolism)”). 1

In the next chapter, we will consider how fair our conclusions are for the lyric works of Bryusov. To do this, we explore the cycles of different times of writing, entirely built on mythological and historical plots: "Lovers of the Ages" (1897-1901), "Eternal Truth of Idols" (1904-1905), "Eternal Truth of Idols" (1906-1908), "Powerful shadows "(1911-1912)," In the mask "(1913-1914).

2. The mythology of the images of the novel

The novel by Veniamin Kaverin "Two Captains" is one of the brightest works of Russian adventure literature of the 20th century. This story of love and loyalty, courage and determination has not left indifferent either an adult or a young reader for many years.

The book was called "a novel of education", "an adventure novel", "an idyllic-sentimental novel", but it was not accused of self-deception. And the writer himself said that "this is a novel about justice and that it is more interesting (and said so!) To be honest and brave than a coward and a liar." And he also said that it was "a novel about the inevitability of the truth."

On the motto of the heroes of the "Two Captains" "Fight and seek, find and not give up!" more than one generation of those has grown up who adequately responded to all sorts of challenges of the time.

Fight and seek, find and not give up. From English: That strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. The primary source is the poem "Ulysses" by the English poet Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), whose 70 years of literary activity are dedicated to the valiant and happy heroes. These lines were carved on the grave of the polar explorer Robert Scott (1868-1912). Eager to reach the South Pole first, he nevertheless came second, three days after the Norwegian pioneer Roald Amundsen visited it. Robert Scott and his companions died on the way back.

In Russian, these words became popular after the publication of the novel "Two Captains" by Veniamin Kaverin (1902-1989). The main character of the novel, Sanya Grigoriev, who dreams of polar expeditions, makes these words the motto of his whole life. Quoted as a phrase-symbol of loyalty to their goal and their principles. "Fighting" (including with one's own weaknesses) is the first task of a person. To "seek" means to have a humane goal in front of you. "Find" is to make a dream come true. And if there are new difficulties, then "do not give up."

The novel is filled with symbols that are part of mythology. Every image, every action has a symbolic meaning.

This novel can be considered a hymn to friendship. Sanya Grigoriev carried this friendship throughout his life. An episode when Sanya and his friend Petka made a "bloody oath of friendship." The words the boys uttered were: "Fight and seek, find and not give up"; they turned into a symbol of their lives as the heroes of the novel, determined their character.

Sanya could have died during the war, his profession itself was dangerous. But in spite of everything, he survived and fulfilled his promise to find the missing expedition. What helped him in life? A high sense of duty, perseverance, perseverance, dedication, honesty - all these character traits helped Sanya Grigoriev survive in order to find traces of the expedition and Katya's love. “You have such love that the most terrible grief will recede in front of it: it will meet, look into the eyes and retreat. No one else seems to know how to love like that, only you and Sanya. So strong, so stubborn, all my life. Where is there to die when you are so loved? - says Pyotr Skovorodnikov.

In our time, the time of the Internet, technologies, speeds, such love may seem like a myth to many. And how you want it to touch everyone, provoke them to accomplish feats and discoveries.

Once in Moscow, Sanya meets the Tatarinov family. Why is he drawn to this house, what attracts him? The Tatarinovs' apartment becomes for the boy something like Ali-Baba's cave with its treasures, mysteries and dangers. Nina Kapitonovna, who feeds Sanya with lunches, is a "treasure", Maria Vasilievna, "neither a widow, nor a husband's wife," who always wears black and often sinks into melancholy - "a mystery", Nikolai Antonovich - "danger." In this house he found many interesting books with which he "fell ill" and the fate of Katya's father, Captain Tatarinov, excited and interested him.

It is difficult to imagine how the life of Sani Grigoriev would have turned out if the amazing person Ivan Ivanovich Pavlov had not met on his way. One frosty winter evening, someone knocked on the window of the house where two small children lived. When the children opened the door, an exhausted frostbitten man burst into the room. This was Doctor Ivan Ivanovich, who had escaped from exile. He lived with the children for several days, showed the children tricks, taught them to bake potatoes on sticks, and most importantly, taught the dumb boy to talk. Who could have known then that these two people, a little dumb boy and an adult who was hiding from all people, would be bound by a strong faithful male friendship for life.

Several years will pass, and they will meet again, the doctor and the boy, in Moscow, in the hospital, and the doctor will fight for the boy's life for many months. The new meeting will take place in the Arctic, where Sanya will work. Together they, the polar pilot Grigoriev and Dr. Pavlov, will fly to save a man, fall into a terrible blizzard, and only thanks to the resourcefulness and skill of the young pilot will they be able to land a faulty plane and spend several days in the tundra among the Nenets. Here, in the harsh conditions of the North, the true qualities of both Sani Grigoriev and Doctor Pavlov will manifest themselves.

The three meetings between Sanya and the doctor also have a symbolic meaning. First, three is a fabulous number. This is the first number in a number of traditions (including ancient Chinese), or the first of the odd numbers. Opens a number series and qualifies as a perfect number (an image of absolute perfection). The first number to which the word "everything" is assigned. One of the most positive numbers-emblems in symbolism, religious thought, mythology and folklore. Sacred, lucky number 3. It bears the meaning of high quality or high degree of expressiveness of the action. It shows mainly positive qualities: the sacredness of a perfect deed, courage and tremendous strength, both physical and spiritual, the importance of something. In addition, the number 3 symbolizes the completeness and completeness of a certain sequence that has a beginning, middle and end. The number 3 symbolizes the integrity, the triple nature of the world, its versatility, the trinity of the creative, destructive and preserving forces of nature - reconciling and balancing their beginning, happy harmony, creative perfection and good luck.

Secondly, these meetings changed the life of the protagonist.

None of the disciples noticed when this red-haired and ugly Jew first appeared near Christ, but for a long time he relentlessly walked along their path, intervened in conversations, provided small services, bowed, smiled and cursed. And then he became completely accustomed, deceiving the weary vision, then suddenly he caught the eye and in the ears, irritating them, like something unprecedentedly ugly, deceitful and disgusting.

A bright detail in Kaverin's portrait is a kind of accent that helps to demonstrate the essence of the person being portrayed. For example, Nikolai Antonovich's thick fingers resembling "some hairy caterpillars, it seems, cabbage mats" (64) - a detail that adds negative connotations to the image of this person, as well as the constantly emphasized in the portrait "a golden tooth, which previously somehow illuminated everything face ”(64), but faded towards old age. The golden tooth will become a sign of the absolute falsity of the antagonist Sani Grigoriev. Constantly "striking" incurable acne on the face of Sanya's stepfather is a sign of impurity of thoughts and dishonesty of behavior.

He was a good manager, and the pupils respected him. They came to him with different proposals, and he listened to them attentively. Sana Grigoriev also liked it at first. But when he was at their home, he noticed that everyone did not treat him well, although he was very attentive to everyone. With all the guests who came to them, he was kind and cheerful. He did not like Sanya, and every time he visited them, he began to teach him. Despite his pleasant appearance, Nikolai Antonovich was a mean, low man. This is evidenced by his actions. Nikolai Antonovich - he made it so that most of the equipment on the schooner Tatarinov was unusable. Almost the entire expedition died due to the fault of this man! He persuaded Romashov to eavesdrop on everything that was said about him at school and to inform him. He arranged a whole conspiracy against Ivan Pavlovich Korablev, wanting to expel him from school, because the guys loved and respected him and because he asked for the hand of Marya Vasilyevna, whom he himself was deeply in love with and whom he wanted to marry. It was Nikolai Antonovich who was to blame for the death of his brother Tatarinov: it was he who was engaged in equipping the expedition and did everything possible so that it did not come back. He in every possible way prevented Grigoriev from conducting an investigation into the case of the missing expedition. Moreover, he took advantage of the letters that Sanya Grigoriev found, and defended himself, became a professor. In an effort to escape punishment and shame in the event of exposure, he exposed another person, von Vyshimirsky, under attack, when all the evidence proving his guilt was collected. These and other actions speak of him as a low, mean, dishonorable, envious person. How much villainy he committed in his life, how many innocent people he killed, how many people he made unhappy. He is worthy only of contempt and condemnation.

What kind of person is Chamomile?

Sanya met Romashov at school 4 - a commune, where Ivan Pavlovich Korablev took him. Their beds were side by side. The boys became friends. Sanya didn’t like in Romashov that he was talking about money all the time, saving it up, lending it at interest. Very soon Sanya became convinced of the meanness of this man. Sanya learned that, at the request of Nikolai Antonovich, Romashka overheard everything that was said about the head of the school, wrote it down in a separate book, and then reported it to Nikolai Antonovich for a fee. He also told him that Sanya had heard the plot of the teachers' council against Korablev and wanted to tell his teacher about everything. On another occasion, he dirty gossip to Nikolai Antonovich about Katya and Sanya, for which Katya was sent on vacation to Ensk, and Sanya was no longer allowed into the Tatarinovs' house. The letter that Katya wrote to Sanya before her departure did not reach Sanya either, and this was also the work of Chamomile. Chamomile sank to the point that he rummaged in Sani's suitcase, wanting to find some dirt on him. The older Daisy got, the more his meanness became. He even went so far that he began to collect documents for Nikolai Antonovich, his beloved teacher and patron, proving his guilt in the death of Captain Tatarinov's expedition, and was ready to sell them to Sanya in exchange for Katya, with whom he was in love. But what to sell important papers, he was ready to kill a childhood friend in cold blood for the sake of fulfilling his dirty goals. All of Chamomile's actions are low, mean, dishonorable.

What brings Romashka and Nikolai Antonovich closer, how are they similar?

These are low, mean, cowardly, envious people. To achieve their goals, they commit dishonorable acts. They stop at nothing. They have neither honor nor conscience. Ivan Pavlovich Korablev calls Nikolai Antonovich a terrible person, and Romashov a person who has absolutely no morality. These two people are standing against each other. Even love doesn't make them prettier. In love, both are selfish. In achieving their goals, they put their interests, their feelings above all else! Disregarding the feelings and interests of the person they love, acting low and mean. Even the war did not change Chamomile. Katya reflected: "He saw death, he became bored in this world of pretense and lies, which was his world before." But she was deeply mistaken. Romashov was ready to kill Sanya, because no one would have known about this and he would have remained unpunished. But Sanya was lucky, fate favored him again and again, giving chance after chance.

Comparing "The Two Captains" with the canonical examples of the adventure genre, we easily discover that V. Kaverin masterfully uses a dynamically intense plot for a broad realistic narration, during which the two main characters of the novel - Sanya Grigoriev and Katya Tatarinova - with great sincerity and excitement tell "O time and about yourself. "All sorts of adventures here are by no means an end in themselves, for they do not determine the essence of the story of the two captains - these are only the circumstances of the real biography, put by the author as the basis of the novel, eloquently testifying to the fact that the life of Soviet people is full of rich events, that our heroic time is full of exciting romance.

"Two Captains" is, in essence, a novel about truth and happiness. In the fate of the protagonist of the novel, these concepts are inseparable. Of course, Sanya Grigoriev wins a lot in our eyes because he accomplished many feats during his life - he fought against the Nazis in Spain, flew over the Arctic, fought heroically on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, for which he was awarded several military orders. But it is curious that for all his exceptional perseverance, rare diligence, composure and strong-willed dedication, Captain Grigoriev does not perform exceptional feats, his chest is not decorated with the Hero's Star, as many readers and sincere fans of Sanya would probably like. He accomplishes such feats as can be accomplished by every Soviet person who dearly loves his socialist homeland. Does Sanya Grigoriev lose from this in any way? Of course not!

In the hero of the novel we are conquered not only by his actions, but by his entire spiritual makeup, his character, heroic in its very inner essence. Have you noticed that Osome of the exploits of his hero, accomplished by him at the front, the writer is simply silent. The point, of course, is not the number of feats. Before us is not so much a desperately brave man, a sort of captain "rip his head" - before us, first of all, a principled, convinced, ideological defender of the truth, before us is the image of a Soviet youth, "Shaken by the idea of ​​justice"as the author himself points out. And this is the main thing in the appearance of Sani Grigoriev, which captivated us in him from the very first meeting - even when we knew nothing about his participation in the Great Patriotic War.

We already knew that Sanya Grigoriev would grow up to be a courageous and brave person when we heard the boy's oath "Fight and seek, find and not give up." We, of course, throughout the entire novel are concerned about the question of whether the main character will find traces of Captain Tatarinov, whether justice will prevail, but we are really captured by himself processachieving the set goal. This process is difficult and complicated, but that is why it is interesting and instructive for us.

For us, Sanya Grigoriev would not be a true hero if we knew only about his exploits and knew little about the formation of his character. In the fate of the hero of the novel, his difficult childhood is also important for us, and his courageous clashes during his school years with the scoundrel and self-lover Romashka, with the cleverly disguised careerist Nikolai Antonovich, and his pure love for Katya Tatarinova, and loyalty to no matter what. became a noble boyish oath. And how magnificently the dedication and perseverance in the character of the hero is revealed when we follow step by step how he achieves the implementation of his intended goal - to become a polar pilot in order to be able to fly in the skies of the Arctic! We cannot ignore his passion for aviation and polar travel, which absorbed Sanya while still at school. Therefore, Sanya Grigoriev becomes a courageous and brave man, that he does not lose sight of the main goal of his life for a single day.

Happiness is won by work, truth is affirmed in the struggle - such a conclusion can be drawn from all the trials of life that fell to the lot of Sani Grigoriev. And, frankly, there were quite a few of them. As soon as the homelessness ended, clashes with strong and dodgy enemies began. Sometimes he suffered temporary setbacks, which he had to endure very painfully. But strong natures do not bend from this - they are tempered in severe trials.

2.1 The mythology of the novel's polar discoveries

Any writer has the right to fiction. But where does it go, the line, the invisible line between truth and myth? Sometimes they are so closely intertwined, as, for example, in the novel "Two Captains" by Veniamin Kaverin, a work of fiction that most reliably resembles the real events of 1912 in the development of the Arctic.

Three Russian polar expeditions entered the Northern Ocean in 1912, all three ended tragically: the expedition of V.A. Rusanov. perished entirely, the expedition of Brusilov G.L. - almost entirely, and in the expedition of G. Sedov. I killed three, including the head of the expedition. In general, the 20s and 30s of the twentieth century were interesting for through voyages along the Northern Sea Route, the Chelyuskin epic, the heroes of the Papanin people.

The young, but already well-known writer V. Kaverin became interested in all this, became interested in people, bright personalities, whose deeds and characters aroused only respect. He reads literature, memoirs, collections of documents; listens to the stories of N.V. Pinegin, friend and member of the expedition of the brave polar explorer Sedov; sees finds made in the mid-thirties on unnamed islands in the Kara Sea. Also during the Great Patriotic War, he himself, being a correspondent for Izvestia, visited the North.

And in 1944 the novel "Two Captains" was published. The author was literally inundated with questions about the prototypes of the main characters - Captain Tatarinov and Captain Grigoriev. He took advantage of the story of two brave conquerors of the Far North. From one he took on a courageous and clear character, purity of thought, clarity of purpose - everything that distinguishes a person of a great soul. It was Sedov. The other has the actual history of his journey. It was Brusilov. " These heroes became the prototypes of Captain Tatarinov.

Let's try to figure out what is true, what is a myth, how the writer Kaverin managed to combine the realities of the expeditions of Sedov and Brusilov in the history of the expedition of Captain Tatarinov. And although the writer himself did not mention the name of Vladimir Alexandrovich Rusanov among the prototypes of the hero of Captain Tatarinov, some facts claim that the realities of Rusanov's expedition were also reflected in the novel "Two Captains".

Lieutenant Georgy Lvovich Brusilov, a hereditary sailor, in 1912 led an expedition on the sailing-steam schooner "Saint Anna". He intended to pass with one wintering from St. Petersburg around Scandinavia and further along the Northern Sea Route to Vladivostok. But "Saint Anna" did not come to Vladivostok either a year later or in subsequent years. On the western coast of the Yamal Peninsula, the ice covered the schooner, she began to drift northward, to high latitudes. The ship failed to escape from the ice captivity in the summer of 1913. During the longest drift in the history of Russian Arctic research (1,575 kilometers in a year and a half), Brusilov's expedition conducted meteorological observations, depth measurements, studied currents and ice conditions in the northern part of the Kara Sea, which until that time was completely unknown to science. Almost two years of ice captivity have passed.

(10) April 1914, when the "Saint Anna" was at 830 north latitude and 60 0 east longitude, with Brusilov's consent, eleven crew members left the schooner, led by navigator Valerian Ivanovich Albanov. The group hoped to reach the nearest coast, to Franz Josef Land, to deliver materials from the expedition, which allowed scientists to characterize the underwater relief of the northern Kara Sea and identify a meridional depression at the bottom about 500 kilometers long (St. Anna Trough). Only a few people reached the Franz Josef archipelago, but only two of them, Albanov himself and the sailor A. Konrad, were lucky to escape. They were accidentally discovered at Cape Flora by members of another Russian expedition under the command of G. Sedov (Sedov himself had already died by this time).

The schooner with G. Brusilov himself, the sister of mercy E. Zhdanko, the first woman to participate in the high-latitude drift, and eleven crew members disappeared without a trace.

The geographical result of the campaign of the navigator Albanov's group, which cost the lives of nine sailors, was the assertion that King Oscar and Peterman, previously marked on the maps of the Land, do not actually exist.

We know in general terms the drama of St. Anne and her crew thanks to Albanov's diary, which was published in 1917 under the title South to Franz Josef Land. Why were only two saved? This is quite clear from the diary. The people in the group that left the schooner were very motley: strong and weak, reckless and weak in spirit, disciplined and dishonest. Those who had the most chance survived. Albanov from the ship "St. Anna" was transferred mail to the mainland. Albanov reached, but none of those to whom they were intended received the letters. Where did they go? This still remains a mystery.

And now let's turn to Kaverin's novel "Two Captains". From the members of the expedition of Captain Tatarinov, only the navigator of the long voyage I. Klimov returned. This is what he writes to Maria Vasilievna, the wife of Captain Tatarinov: “I hasten to inform you that Ivan Lvovich is alive and well. Four months ago, in accordance with his instructions, I left the schooner and thirteen crew members with me. I will not talk about our difficult journey to Franz Josef Land on floating ice. I will only say that from our group I alone safely (except for the frostbitten feet) reached Cape Flora. The "Saint Foka" of Lieutenant Sedov's expedition picked me up and took me to Arkhangelsk. "Holy Mary" froze in the Kara Sea and since October 1913 has been constantly moving northward along with the polar ice. When we left, the schooner was at latitude 820 55 ... She stands calmly in the middle of the ice field, or rather, stood from the autumn of 1913 until I left. "

Sanya Grigoriev's senior friend, Doctor Ivan Ivanovich Pavlov, after almost twenty years, in 1932, explains to Sanya that the group photo of the members of the expedition of Captain Tatarinov “was presented by the navigator of the“ St. Mary ”Ivan Dmitrievich Klimov. In 1914 he was brought to Arkhangelsk with frostbitten feet, and he died in a city hospital from blood poisoning. " After Klimov's death, two notebooks and letters remained. The hospital sent these letters to the addresses, but the notebooks and photographs remained with Ivan Ivanovich. Persistent Sanya Grigoriev once said to Nikolai Antonich Tatarinov, a cousin of the missing captain Tatarinov, that he would find the expedition: "I do not believe that it disappeared without a trace."

And so in 1935, Sanya Grigoriev, day after day, parses Klimov's diaries, among which he finds an interesting map - a map of the drift of "St. Mary" "from October 1912 to April 1914, and the drift was shown in those places where the so-called Earth lay. Peterman. “But who knows that this fact was first established by Captain Tatarinov on the schooner“ Saint Mary ”?” - exclaims Sanya Grigoriev.

Captain Tatarinov had to go from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. From the captain's letter to his wife: “About two years have passed since I sent you a letter through a telegraphic expedition to the Yugorsky Shara. We walked freely on the planned course, and since October 1913 we have been slowly moving north along with the polar ice. Thus, willy-nilly, we had to abandon the original intention to go to Vladivostok along the coast of Siberia. But every cloud has a silver lining. A completely different thought now occupies me. I hope she does not seem to you - as some of my companions - childish or reckless. "

What is this thought? Sanya finds the answer to this in the notes of Captain Tatarinov: “The human mind was so absorbed in this task that its solution, despite the harsh grave that travelers mostly found there, became a continuous national competition. Almost all civilized countries took part in this competition, and only there were no Russians, but meanwhile the ardent impulses of the Russian people for the opening of the North Pole manifested themselves in the time of Lomonosov and have not faded away to this day. Amundsen wants to leave Norway the honor of discovering the North Pole at all costs, and we will go this year and prove to the whole world that the Russians are capable of this feat. " (From a letter to the head of the Main Hydrographic Directorate, April 17, 1911). So that's where Captain Tatarinov was aiming !. "He wanted, like Nansen, to go as far north as possible with drifting ice, and then get to the pole on dogs."

Tatarinov's expedition failed. Even Amundsen said: "The success of any expedition depends entirely on its equipment." Indeed, his brother Nikolai Antonich rendered a "disservice" in preparing and equipping Tatarinov's expedition. For reasons of failure, Tatarinov's expedition was similar to the expedition of G.Ya. Sedov, who in 1912 tried to penetrate the North Pole. After 352 days of ice captivity off the north-western coast of Novaya Zemlya in August 1913, Sedov took the ship “Holy Great Martyr Fock” out of the bay and sent it to Franz Josef Land. The Foka's second wintering site was Tikhaya Bay on Hooker Island. On February 2, 1914, despite complete exhaustion, Sedov, accompanied by two sailors - volunteers A. Pustoshny and G. Linnik, went to the Pole on three dog sleds. After a severe cold, he died on February 20 and was buried by his companions at Cape Auk (Rudolf Island). The expedition was poorly prepared. G. Sedov was not familiar with the history of the exploration of the Franz Josef Land archipelago, he did not know the latest maps of the ocean section along which he was going to reach the North Pole. He himself did not check the equipment thoroughly. His temperament, desire to conquer the North Pole faster at all costs prevailed over the clear organization of the expedition. So these are important reasons for the outcome of the expedition and the tragic death of G. Sedov.

Earlier it was already mentioned about the meetings of Kaverin with Pinegin. Nikolai Vasilievich Pinegin is not only an artist and writer, but also a researcher of the Arctic. During the last expedition of Sedov in 1912, Pinegin shot the first documentary about the Arctic, the footage of which, together with the artist's personal memories, helped Kaverin to brighten up the picture of the events of that time.

Let's go back to Kaverin's novel. From a letter from Captain Tatarinov to his wife: “I am writing to you about our discovery: there are no lands to the north of the Taimyr Peninsula on the maps. Meanwhile, being at latitude 790 35 , east of Greenwich, we noticed a sharp silvery stripe, slightly convex, extending from the very horizon. I am convinced that this is land. Until I called her by your name. " Sanya Grigoriev finds out that it was Severnaya Zemlya, discovered in 1913 by Lieutenant B.A. Vilkitsky.

After the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, Russia needed to have its own way of escorting ships to the Great Ocean, so as not to depend on Suez or other channels of warm countries. The authorities decided to create a Hydrographic Expedition and carefully survey the least difficult section from the Bering Strait to the mouth of the Lena, so that it could pass from east to west, from Vladivostok to Arkhangelsk or St. Petersburg. The head of the expedition was A.I. Vilkitsky, and after his death, since 1913 - his son, Boris Andreevich Vilkitsky. It was he who, during the navigation of 1913, dispelled the legend about the existence of Sannikov Land, but discovered a new archipelago. On August 21 (September 3), 1913, a huge archipelago covered with eternal snow was seen north of Cape Chelyuskin. Consequently, from Cape Chelyuskin to the north is not an open ocean, but a strait, later called the B. Vilkitsky Strait. The archipelago was originally named the Land of Emperor Nicholas II. It has been called the Northern Land since 1926.

In March 1935, pilot Alexander Grigoriev, having made an emergency landing on the Taimyr Peninsula, accidentally discovered an old brass hook, which had turned green with time, with the inscription “Schooner“ Holy Mary ”. Nenets Ivan Vylko explains that a boat with a hook and a man was found by local residents on the coast of Taimyr, the coast closest to Severnaya Zemlya. By the way, there is reason to believe that it was no coincidence that the author of the novel gave the Nenets hero the surname Vylko. A close friend of the Arctic explorer Rusanov, a participant in his 1911 expedition was the Nenets artist Vylko Ilya Konstantinovich, who later became the chairman of the council of Novaya Zemlya ("President of Novaya Zemlya").

Vladimir Alexandrovich Rusanov was a polar geologist and navigator. His last expedition on the motor-sailing ship "Hercules" sailed to the Arctic Ocean in 1912. The expedition reached the Spitsbergen archipelago and discovered four new coal deposits there. Rusanov then made an attempt to go through the Northeast Passage. Having reached Cape Desire on Novaya Zemlya, the expedition went missing.

It is not known exactly where the Hercules died. But it is known that the expedition not only sailed, but also some part of it went on foot, for the Hercules almost certainly died, as evidenced by the objects found in the mid-30s on the islands near the Taimyr coast. In 1934, on one of the islands, hydrographers discovered a wooden post on which is written "Hercules - 1913". Traces of the expedition were found in the Minin skerries off the western coast of the Taimyr Peninsula and on Bolshevik Island (Severnaya Zemlya). And in the seventies the search for Rusanov's expedition was conducted by the expedition of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. In the same area, two hooks were found, as if in confirmation of the intuitive guess of the writer Kaverin. According to experts, they belonged to the "Rusanovites".

Captain Alexander Grigoriev, following his motto "Fight and seek, find and not give up", in 1942 nevertheless found the expedition of Captain Tatarinov, or rather, what was left of it. He calculated the path that the captain Tatarinov had to take, if it is considered indisputable that he returned to the Severnaya Zemlya, which he called the "Land of Mary": from 790 35 latitude, between the 86th and 87th meridians, to the Russian Islands and to the Nordenskjold archipelago. Then, probably after many wanderings from Cape Sterlegov to the mouth of the Pyasina, where the old Nenets Vylko found a boat on sledges. Then to the Yenisei, because the Yenisei was for Tatarinov the only hope to meet people and help. He walked along the seaward side of the coastal islands, if possible - straight. Sanya found the last camp of Captain Tatarinov, found his farewell letters, photographic films, found his remains. Captain Grigoriev conveyed to the people the farewell words of Captain Tatarinov: “It’s bitter for me to think about all the deeds that I could have done if they didn’t just help me, but at least not hinder me. What to do? One consolation is that by my labors, vast new lands have been discovered and annexed to Russia. "

In the novel's finale we read: “Ships entering the Yenisei Gulf from afar see the grave of Captain Tatarinov. They walk past her, flags at half-mast, and a mourning salute thunders from the cannons, and a long echo rolls on incessantly.

The tomb was built of white stone, and it sparkles dazzlingly under the rays of the unsetting polar sun.

At the height of human growth, the following words are carved:

“The body of Captain I.L. Tatarinov, who made one of the most courageous journeys and died on the way back from the Severnaya Zemlya discovered by him in June 1915. Fight and seek, find and not give up! "

Reading these lines of Kaverin's novel, one involuntarily recalls the obelisk erected in 1912 in the eternal snows of Antarctica in honor of Robert Scott and four of his comrades. There is a gravestone inscription on it. And the final words of the poem "Ulysses" by the classic of British poetry of the 19th century Alfred Tennyson: "To strive, to seek, to find and not yield" (which in English means: "Fight and seek, find and not give up!"). Much later, with the publication of the novel "Two Captains" by Veniamin Kaverin, these very words became the life motto of millions of readers, a loud appeal for Soviet polar explorers of different generations.

Probably, the literary critic N. Likhachev was wrong, who attacked The Two Captains when the novel was not yet fully published. After all, the image of Captain Tatarinov is generalized, collective, fictional. The right to fiction gives the author an artistic style, not a scientific one. The best traits of the characters of the Arctic explorers, as well as mistakes, miscalculations, historical realities of the expeditions of Brusilov, Sedov, Rusanov - all this is associated with the hero of Kaverin.

And Sanya Grigoriev, like Captain Tatarinov, is an artistic invention of the writer. But this hero also has his own prototypes. One of them is professor-geneticist M.I. Lobashov.

In 1936, in a sanatorium near Leningrad, Kaverin met the silent, always internally focused young scientist Lobashov. “This was a man in whom ardor was combined with straightforwardness, and perseverance with an amazing determination of purpose. He knew how to succeed in any business. A clear mind and the ability to deeply feel were visible in every judgment. " In everything, the character traits of Sani Grigoriev are guessed. And many of the specific circumstances of Sanya's life were directly borrowed by the author from Lobashov's biography. These are, for example, the silence of Sanya, the death of his father, homelessness, the commune school of the 1920s, the types of teachers and students, falling in love with the daughter of a school teacher. Talking about the history of the creation of "Two Captains", Kaverin noticed that, unlike the parents, sisters, and comrades of the hero, about whom the prototype of Sanya told, only individual touches were outlined in the teacher Korablev, so that the image of the teacher was completely created by the writer.

Lobashov, who became the prototype of Sani Grigoriev, told the writer about his life, immediately aroused an active interest in Kaverin, who decided not to let his imagination run wild, but to follow the story he had heard. But for the hero's life to be perceived naturally and vividly, he must be in conditions that are personally known to the writer. And unlike the prototype, who was born on the Volga, and graduated from school in Tashkent, Sanya was born in Ensk (Pskov), and graduated from school in Moscow, and she absorbed much of what happened at the school where Kaverin studied. And the state of Sanya the youth also turned out to be close to the writer. He was not a member of an orphanage, but in the Moscow period of his life he was left completely alone in a huge, hungry and deserted Moscow. And, of course, I had to spend a lot of energy and will so as not to get lost.

And the love for Katya, which Sanya carries through her whole life, is not invented and embellished by the author; Kaverin is here next to his hero: having married a twenty-year-old boy to Lidochka Tynyanova, he remained faithful to his love forever. And how much in common is the mood of Veniamin Alexandrovich and Sani Grigoriev when they write to their wives from the front, when they are looking for them, taken from besieged Leningrad. And Sanya fights in the North, too, because Kaverin was a military commander of TASS, and then Izvestia was in the Northern Fleet and knew firsthand both Murmansk and Polyarnoye, and the specifics of the war in the Far North, and its people.

Another person who was well acquainted with aviation and who knew the North perfectly — the talented pilot S.L. Klebanov, a wonderful, honest man, whose consultations in the study by the author of flying business were invaluable. From the biography of Klebanov, the story of a flight to the remote camp of Vanokan entered the life of Sani Grigoriev, when a disaster broke out on the way.

In general, according to Kaverin, both prototypes of Sani Grigoriev resembled each other not only by their stubbornness of character and extraordinary determination. Klebanov even outwardly resembled Lobashov - short, dense, stocky.

The great skill of the artist lies in creating such a portrait in which everything that is own and everything that is not his becomes his own, deeply original, individual.

Kaverin has a wonderful property: he gives the heroes not only his own impressions, but also his habits, and relatives and friends. And this cute touch brings the characters closer to the reader. In the novel, the writer endowed Valya Zhukov with the desire of his older brother Sasha to cultivate the power of his gaze, looking at the black circle drawn on the ceiling for a long time. During a conversation, Doctor Ivan Ivanovich suddenly throws a chair to his interlocutor, which must be caught by all means - this was not invented by Veniamin Alexandrovich: K.I. loved to talk so much. Chukovsky.

The hero of the novel "Two Captains" Sanya Grigoriev lived his own unique life. Readers believed in him seriously. And for more than sixty years now, readers of several generations have understood and loved this image. Readers admire his personal qualities of character: by willpower, thirst for knowledge and search, loyalty to the given word, dedication, perseverance in achieving the goal, love for the homeland and love for his work - all those that helped Sanya to reveal the mystery of Tatarinov's expedition.

conclusions

In every literary work written after the Nativity of Christ, one way or another traced religious, biblical, and at the same time mythological motives.

Why is this happening? After all, the writer does not always write about the relationship of our light with the "mountain", which we cannot see. Such a penetration of religious motives into secular literature occurs because our whole life is subconsciously saturated with Christian culture, from the first centuries of the adoption of Christianity by Byzantium, it became an indivisible part of our existence, regardless of what worldly positions a person stands on. In literature we see the same desires, it seems in the most, at first glance, non-Christian writings.

Soviet literary criticism deliberately concealed, and most of the readers did not want to think about these ideas. They really need to be seen, they do not become understandable at first sight.

In my opinion, Veniamin Kaverin managed to create a work that skillfully intertwined the realities of the real expeditions of Brusilov, Sedov, Rusanov and the fictional expedition of Captain Tatarinov. He also managed to create the images of people seeking, decisive, courageous, such as Captain Tatarinov and Captain Grigoriev.

The novel "Two Captains" is a complex modernist structure based on cultural archetypes reflecting the traditions of world literature and folklore. The play paradigm as an internal regularity of the novel space is represented by a wide range of artistic techniques.

V.A. Kaverin modifies the initiation rite, but there is no generational change, which was the condition of the heroic myth. In the syncretic Kaverin consciousness, two renewed destinies, like two epochs, converge in a single temporal space.

Several aspects testify to the mythological basis of the novel "The Two Captains".

The novel is full of symbolic objects. Each of them emphasizes the greatness of positive human images, or the baseness of negative ones. Each of them plays a decisive role in the fate of the heroes.

The letters of the deceased captain Tatarinov, found by the guys in the river, had symbolic significance. They determined the further fate of Sani Grigoriev.

The airplane soaring in the sky over Ensk was also of no small importance. These are the guys' dreams about their future. This is a sign for the reader, a hint of who the hero will become, in what field of activity he will find himself.

Each hero goes through his own circles of hell on the way to paradise. Sanya, like Hercules, overcomes one obstacle after another to his dream. He performs feats, grows and gets stronger as a person. He does not betray his ideas, he sacrifices himself in the name of this idea.

Bibliography

1.Ivanov V.V. Metamorphoses // Myths of the peoples of the world. - M .: Soviet encyclopedia, 1988. - Vol. 2. - S. 148-149.

2.Levinton G.A. Initiation and myths // Myths of the peoples of the world. - M .: Soviet encyclopedia, 1988. - Vol. 1. - S. 543-544.

3.V.A. Kaverin Two captains: Novel in 2 books. - K .: I'm glad. school, 1981. - p. 528

.Medinska Y. Mythology and mythological discourse // Psychology and suspension. - 2006 .-- 32 .-- S. 115-122.

5.Meletinsky, M. Epic and myths // Myths of the peoples of the world. - M .: Soviet encyclopedia, 1988. - Vol. 2. - S. 664-666.

Famous novel by Benjamin Kaverin deservedly loved by more than one generation of readers. In addition to almost a decade (from the mid-1930s to 1944) of painstaking work and writing talent, a special spirit was put into this novel - the spirit of the era of turbulent and often tragic exploration of the Far North.

The author has never hidden that many of his characters have very real prototypes, and their words sometimes contain the true words of some researchers of the Arctic. Kaverin himself has repeatedly confirmed that, for example, the image of Captain Tatarinov was inspired by reading books about the expeditions of Georgy Brusilov, Vladimir Rusanov, Georgy Sedov and Robert Scott.

Indeed, it is enough to look a little more closely at the plot of the novel, as behind the literary character Ivan Lvovich Tatarinov, the figure of a polar explorer lieutenant appears Georgy Lvovocha Brusilov , whose expedition to schooner "Saint Anna" (in the novel "Holy Mary") went in 1912 from St. Petersburg by the Northern Sea Route to Vladivostok.

Lieutenant G. L. Brusilov (1884 - 1914?)

The schooner was not destined to arrive at its destination - the ship frozen into the ice drifted far to the north.

Schooner "Saint Anna" on the Neva before the start of the expedition
Lieutenant Brusilov (1912)

You can learn about the rehearsals of this tragic voyage, about the failures that followed the expedition, about strife and conflicts between its participants from the navigator's diary Valerian Ivanovich Albanova , who in April 1914, together with ten crew members, with the permission of the captain, left the "Saint Anne" in the hope of reaching Franz Josef Land on foot.

Polar navigator V. I. Albanov (1882 - 1919)

In this expedition on the ice, only Albanov himself and one of the sailors survived.

The diary of navigator Albanov, who was the prototype of the character in the novel by Kaverin, navigator Klimov, was published as a book in Petrograd in 1917 under the title "South to Franz Josef Land!"

Map of the area of ​​the expedition of Lieutenant Brusilov
from the book of navigator Albanov

There is no one to confirm or deny the version of the history of this expedition set forth by the navigator - "Saint Anna" disappeared without a trace.
The letters of the members of the expedition, entrusted to Albanov, could have brought some clarity, but they also disappeared.

In the novel by Veniamin Kaverin, the "polar" mail from "St. Mary", which played a decisive role in the fate of not only Sani Grigoriev, but also other heroes of the book, ended up in the bag of a drowned letter carrier and helped shed light on a lot. In real life, the letters could not be found, and in the history of the voyage of the "Saint Anne" many unsolvable questions remained.

By the way, it is also interesting that the motto of the novel is "Fight and seek, find and not give up" - this is not a boyish oath invented by V. Kaverin, but the final line from the textbook poem of the beloved poet of the British Queen Victoria Lord Alfred Tennyson "Ulysses" (original: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" ).

This line is also engraved on the cross in memory of the lost expedition of Robert Scott to the South Pole, at Observer Hill in Antarctica.

It is possible that English polar explorer Robert Scott also served as one of the prototypes for Captain Tatarinov. So, for example, a farewell letter to the wife of this character in Kaverin's novel begins in the same way as a similar letter from Scott: "To my widow ...".

Robert Scott (1868 - 1912)

But the appearance, character, some episodes of the biography and views of Captain Ivan Tatarinov were borrowed by Veniamin Kaverin from the fate of the Russian polar explorer Georgy Yakovlevich Sedov , whose expedition to schooner "Saint Phoca" to the North Pole, which also began in 1912, ended in complete failure, primarily due to the fact that it was completely ugly prepared.

Senior Lieutenant G. Ya.Sedov (1877 - 1914)

So, the ship itself - the old Norwegian fishing barque "Geyser" built in 1870 - was clearly not adapted for long voyages in high polar latitudes, so most of the most essential members of Sedov's crew (captain, captain's mate, navigator, mechanic and his assistant, boatswain) , resigned on the eve of the expedition - more precisely, three days before its start (August 27, 1912 according to the present).

Schooner of the expedition G. Ya. Sedov "Saint Phoca"
wintering at Novaya Zemlya (1913?)

The leader of the expedition hardly managed to recruit a new team, and the radio operator could not be found. It is especially worth remembering the story of sled dogs, which were caught for Sedov right on the streets of Arkhangelsk and sold at an overpriced price (ordinary mongrels, of course), with poor-quality food delivered to St. Foka in a hurry, which local merchants did not accept to use.

Isn't it true that all this has direct parallels with the plot of Kaverin's novel, in which one of the main reasons for the failure of the expedition "St. Mary" in the letters of Captain Tatarinov is called a catastrophe with supplies (as far as I remember, dogs were also discussed there)?

Scheme of Sedov's expedition in 1912 - 1914.

And finally, another possible prototype of Captain Tatarinov - Russian Arctic explorer Vladimir Alexandrovich Rusanov.

V. A. Rusanov (1875 - 1913?)

The fate of the expedition of V.A.Rusanov, which also began in 1912 on a sail-motor bot "Hercules" , still remains completely unclear. Both the leader and all its participants disappeared in 1913 in the Kara Sea.

Bot "Hercules" expedition V. A. Rusanov.

Searches for Rusanov's expedition, undertaken in 1914 - 1915. naval ministry of the Russian Empire, did not bring any result. It was not possible to find out exactly where and under what circumstances "Gekrules" and his team died. And then, in connection with the world and civil wars, the devastation that followed them, it was simply not up to this.

Only in 1934, on an unnamed island (now it bears the name Hercules) off the western coast of Taimyr, a pillar was found dug into the ground with the inscription "HERCULES. 1913"), and on another nearby island - the remains of clothing, cartridges, a compass, a camera, a hunting knife and some other things, apparently, belonged to the members of Rusanov's expedition.

It was at this time that Veniamin Kaverin began work on his novel "Two Captains". Most likely, it was the find of 1934 that served as a real basis for the final chapters of the book, in which Sanya Grigoriev, who became a polar pilot, accidentally (although, of course, not by accident) discovered the remains of Captain Tatarinov's expedition.

It is possible that Vladimir Rusanov became one of the prototypes of Tatarinov also because a real polar explorer had a long (since 1894) revolutionary past, and he connected himself not with some Socialist-Revolutionaries, but being a convinced Marxist, with Social Democrats. Still, one must also take into account the time at which Kaverin wrote his novel (1938 - 1944).

At the same time, supporters accuse Soviet writers of constant glorification of Stalin, contributing to the formation of a "personality cult", I will note that in the entire rather voluminous novel of Kaverin, the name of the secretary general is mentioned only once, which did not prevent the writer from receiving the Stalin Prize in 1946 precisely for "Two captain ", being Jewish by birth, in the midst of the struggle with the" cosmopolitans. "

Veniamin Kaverin (Veniamin Abelevich Zilber)
(1902 - 1989)

By the way, if you carefully read the science fiction novel by V. A. Obruchev "The Land of Sannikov", written by him in 1924, then in it you can find prototypes of V. Kaverin's book (only not real, but literary ones). It is worth recalling that Kaverin began his literary career in the 1920s precisely as the author of science fiction stories, and hardly did not experience a certain influence from Obruchev.

So, despite the name of the novel by Veniamin Kaverin, not two captains appear in it, but at least six: Ivan Tatarinov and Sanya Grigoriev (as fictional literary characters), as well as prototypes of Captain Tatarinov - polar explorers - Lieutenant Brusilov, Senior Lieutenant Sedov , English officer Scott and enthusiast Rusanov. And that's not counting the navigator Klimov, whose prototype was the navigator Albanov.
However, Sani Grigoriev also had a prototype. But it is better to talk about this separately.

In my opinion, the collective image of Captain Tatarinov in Kaverin's novel "Two Captains" is a wonderful literary monument to everyone who, at the beginning of the 20th century, believing in the bright future of mankind, sought to bring it closer, setting off on often hopeless expeditions on fragile ships to explore the Far North ( or the Far South, in the case of Robert Scott).

The main thing is that we all do not forget these, albeit somewhat naive, but completely sincere heroes.

Perhaps the conclusion of my post will seem overly pretentious to you.
As you wish. You can even consider me a "scoop"!
But I really think so, because, fortunately, the romantic impulse has not died in my soul yet. And the novel by Benjamin Kaverin "Two Captains" is still one of my favorite books among those that were read in childhood.

Thank you for attention.
Sergey Vorobyov.