The role of science fiction in Gogol's works is brief. The conventional character of fantasy in Gogol's realistic story "The Portrait". What is Science Fiction

"Portrait" is a story organized in a similar way to "Sorochinskaya Fair" and "May Night ...".
Almost the entire second half of the story - the story of the artist's son - plays the role of a fantastic prehistory. Some of the fantastic events are reported in it in the form of rumors. But part of the fantasy, and the most important one (about the transformation of the usurer into a portrait), is captured by the introspection of the narrator, who reports the miraculous events as taking place in reality: "He saw how the wonderful image of the deceased Petromichali went into the frame of the portrait ...".
Only this portrait passes into the current time plane, and the personified fantastic images are eliminated. All strange events are reported in a tone of uncertainty. After the appearance of the portrait in his room, Chertkov began to assure himself that the portrait had been sent by the owner, who recognized his address, but this version, in turn, was undermined by the narrator's remark: “In short, he began to give all those flat explanations that we use whenever we want, so that what happened without fail happened as we think "(but that it did not happen" the way "Chertkov thought, is definitely not reported).

Chertkov's vision of a wonderful old man is given in the form of a half-sleep-half-appear: “<…>he fell not into a dream, but into a kind of half-oblivion, into that painful state when with one eye we see the approaching dreams of dreams, and with the other - in an obscure cloud of the surrounding objects. " It would seem that the fact that it was a dream is finally confirmed by the phrase “Chertkov was convinced<…>that imagination is it<…>presented to him in a dream the creation of his own indignant thoughts. But here a tangible "remnant" of the dream is revealed - money (as in "May Night ..." - a letter from the lady), which, in turn, is given a real-everyday motivation ("there was a box in the frame, covered with a thin board"). Along with sleep, such forms of veiled fiction as coincidences, the hypnotizing effect of one character (here - a portrait) on another, etc. are generously introduced into the narrative.
Simultaneously with the introduction of veiled fiction, a real-psychological plan of Chertkov as an artist emerges. His fatigue, need, bad inclinations, thirst for quick success, etc. are noted. A parallelism is created between the fantastic and the real-psychological concepts of the image. Everything that happens can be interpreted both as the fateful influence of the portrait on the artist, and as his personal surrender to forces hostile to art.
For a more complete picture, it should be added that "Nevsky Prospect" reveals a further "displacement" of direct fantasy, since the fantastic plan is limited here by the form of verbal images: comparisons, metaphors and epithets.
In the "Portrait" the epithet "hellish" was applied several times to the actions and plans of Chertkov "<…>the most hellish intention that a man had ever nourished was revived in his soul ”; "A hellish thought flashed in the artist's head ...". Here this epithet was correlated with Petromichali, a personified image of an unreal evil force (“The victims of this hellish spirit will be innumerable”, - it is said about him in the second part). However, in "Nevsky Prospect" there is no such image, but its verbal stylistic correspondence remains. The beautiful prostitute “was by some terrible will of the hellish spirit ... thrown with laughter into its abyss”; at night on "Nevsky Prospekt" "the demon himself lights up the lamps in order to show everything not in its real form" and so on. So, in his quest in the field of science fiction, Gogol develops the principle of parallelism between the fantastic and the real. Apparently, this was the general law of the evolution of fantastic forms at the end of romanticism - and for the time being, Gogol's line developed in many ways parallel to Hoffmann's.
Gogol never has fantastic images (the devil, witches, etc., as well as people who have come into contact with them), that is, personified supernatural forces, do not enter in the modern time plane, but only in the past. This determines the existence of two types of fantastic works in his work. Gogol pushes the image of the bearer of fiction into the past, leaving in the subsequent time only his influence.
In The Portrait (edited by Arabesques), the religious painter says:<…>The Antichrist has long wanted to be born, but he cannot, because he must be born in a supernatural way; and in our world everything is arranged by the omnipotent in such a way that everything is done in a natural order ... ”. The divine in Gogol's concept is natural, it is a world that develops naturally. On the contrary, the demonic is the supernatural, the world coming out of the knees. By the mid-1930s, Gogol especially clearly perceives the demonic not as evil in general, but as alogism, as a "disorder of nature."
Gogol considers not the earthly principle (including the pagan, sensual in it) “devilish obsession”, but precisely its destruction - the destruction of the natural full-blooded course of life, its laws. From this point of view, the emergence of a strange portrait is closely related to the concept of the story. No lofty art is able to keep the original on the canvas. This could only happen "past the laws of nature." And Chertkov, contemplating the portrait, forms an alternative. "What is this ... art or what kind of supernatural magic that looked past the laws of nature?"
In the second edition of "The Portrait", in the poetics of fantasy, a number of changes were made. Strengthened the veiled fantasy of the first part; if I may say so, it is made more veiled (there is no mysterious appearance of the portrait in Chartkov's room - the artist simply takes it with him; the old man in Chartkov's dream does not address him with an exhortation speech, he only counts money, etc.). The real-psychological plan of Chartkov's evolution has been strengthened; so even before the disastrous effect of the portrait is discovered, the professor's warning to the artist is introduced: "Be careful that a fashionable painter does not come out of you."
The most characteristic change: the fantastic prehistory (in the second part) is transferred from the form of a straight line to the form of veiled fiction. Everything that concerns the miraculous deeds of the usurer is given strictly in the form of rumors, with an emphasized setting on the possibility of different interpretations, parallelism (“So, at least, the rumor said ... Was it a human opinion, ridiculous superstitious talk, or deliberately spread rumors - it remained unknown "). In a tone of uncertainty, the direct appearance of the devil in the form of a usurer is also reported. Gogol does not eliminate the personified bearer of fiction in The Portrait, but after what was done in The Nose, he still significantly infringes upon his rights.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol is a completely unique writer, unlike other masters of the word. In his work there is a lot of striking, admirable and surprising: the funny is intertwined with the tragic, the fantastic with the real. It has long been established that the basis of the comic in Gogol is carnival, that is, such a situation when the heroes seem to put on masks, display unusual properties, change places and everything seems confused, mixed. It is on this basis that a very peculiar Gogolian fantasy arises, rooted in the depths of folk culture.

Gogol entered Russian literature as the author of the collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. The material of the stories is truly inexhaustible: these are oral stories, legends, tales on both modern and historical topics. “If only they listened and read,” says the beekeeper Rudy Panko in the preface to the first part of the collection, “but I’m probably just damn lazy to rummage around — there are ten such books.”

The past in "Evenings ..." appears in a halo of fabulous and wonderful. In it, the writer saw a spontaneous play of good and evil forces, morally healthy people, not touched by the spirit of profit, pragmatism and mental laziness. Here Gogol depicts Little Russian folk festive and fair life.

The holiday with its atmosphere of freedom and fun, beliefs and adventures associated with it take people out of the framework of their usual existence, making the impossible possible. Previously impossible marriages are concluded ("Sorochinskaya Fair", "May Night", "The Night before Christmas"), all evil spirits are activated: devils and witches tempt people, trying to prevent them.

A holiday in Gogol's tales is all sorts of transformations, disguises, hoaxes, exposing secrets. Gogol's laughter in "Evenings ..." is genuine fun based on juicy folk humor. It is possible for him to express in a word comic contradictions and incongruities, of which there are many in the atmosphere of a holiday and in ordinary everyday life.

The originality of the artistic world of stories is associated, first of all, with the widespread use of folklore traditions: it was in folk tales, semi-pagan legends and traditions that Gogol found themes and plots for his works. He used the belief about a fern blooming on the night before Ivan Kupala; the legend about mysterious treasures, the sale of the soul to the devil, about the flights and transformations of witches, and much, much more. In a number of his stories and stories, mythological characters act: sorcerers and witches, werewolves and mermaids and, of course, the devil, whose tricks popular superstition is ready to attribute any bad deed.

Evenings ... is a book of truly fantastic incidents. The fantastic for Gogol is one of the most important aspects of the people's world outlook. Reality and fantasy are intricately intertwined in people's ideas about the past and the present, about good and evil. The writer considered the penchant for legendary-fantastic thinking to be an indicator of people's spiritual health.

Science fiction in "Evenings ..." is ethnographically reliable. Heroes and storytellers of incredible stories believe that the entire area of ​​the unknown is inhabited by wickedness, and the "demonological" characters themselves are shown by Gogol in a reduced, everyday guise. They are also "Little Russians", only they live on their "territory", from time to time fooling ordinary people, interfering in their life, celebrating and playing with them.

For example, the witches in "The Missing Letter" play a fool, inviting the narrator's grandfather to play with them and return, if they're lucky, his hat. The devil in the story "The Night Before Christmas" looks like "a real provincial solicitor in uniform." He grabs a month and burns himself, blowing on his hand, like a man accidentally grabbing a hot frying pan. Explaining his love to the "incomparable Solokha", the devil "kissed her hand with such antics as the assessor at the priest's." Solokha herself is not only a witch, but also a villager, greedy and loving fans.

Popular fiction is intertwined with reality, clarifying the relationship between people, separating good and evil. As a rule, the heroes in Gogol's first collection defeat evil. The triumph of man over evil is a folk motif. The writer filled it with new content: he affirmed the power and strength of the human spirit, capable of curbing the dark, evil forces that rule in nature and interfere in people's lives.

The second period of Gogol's work opened with a kind of "prologue" - the "Petersburg" stories "Nevsky Prospect", "Notes of a Madman" and "Portrait", which were included in the collection "Arabesques". The author explained the title of this collection as follows: "Confusion, mixture, porridge." Indeed, it includes a variety of material: in addition to stories and stories, articles and essays on various topics are also placed here.

The first three of the "Petersburg" stories that appeared in this collection seem to link different periods of the writer's work: "Arabesques" were published in 1835, and the last story, which completes the cycle of "Petersburg" stories, "The Overcoat" was written in 1842.

All these stories, different in plot, theme, heroes, are united by the place of action - St. Petersburg. With him, the theme of the big city and the life of a person in it enters the writer's work. But for a writer, St. Petersburg is not just a geographic space. He created a vivid image-symbol of the city, both real and ghostly, fantastic. In the fates of the heroes, in the ordinary and incredible incidents of their lives, in the rumors, rumors and legends with which the very air of the city is saturated, Gogol finds a mirror image of the Petersburg “phantasmagoria”. In St. Petersburg, reality and fantasy easily change places. Everyday life and fates of the inhabitants of the city are on the verge of believable and miraculous. The incredible suddenly becomes so real that a person cannot stand it - he goes crazy, gets sick and even dies.

Gogol's Petersburg is a city of incredible incidents, a ghostly absurd life, fantastic events and ideals. Any metamorphosis is possible in it. The living turns into a thing, a puppet (such are the inhabitants of the aristocratic Nevsky Prospect). A thing, object or part of the body becomes a "person", an important person, sometimes even with a high rank (for example, a nose that disappeared from the collegiate assessor Kovalev has the rank of state councilor). The city depersonalizes people, distorts their good qualities, exaggerates the bad, changing their appearance beyond recognition.

The novellas "The Nose" and "The Overcoat" depict two poles of Petersburg life: the absurd phantasmagoria and everyday reality. These poles, however, are not as far apart as it might seem at first glance. The plot of The Nose is based on the most fantastic of all urban “stories”. Gogol's fiction in this work is fundamentally different from the folk-poetic fiction in "Evenings ...". There is no source of the fantastic here: the nose is a part of Petersburg mythology, which arose without the intervention of otherworldly forces. This is a special bureaucratic mythology, generated by the omnipotent invisibility - the "electricity" of the rank.

The nose behaves as befits a "significant person" with the rank of state councilor: prays in the Kazan Cathedral, walks along Nevsky Prospect, calls into the department, makes visits, and is going to go to Riga with someone else's passport. Where it came from, nobody, including the author, is interested. One can even assume that he "fell from the moon", because in the opinion of Poprishchyn of a madman from "Diary of a Madman", "the moon is usually done in Hamburg," and is inhabited by noses. Any, even the most delusional, assumption is not excluded. The main thing is different - in the "two-faced" nose. According to some indications, this is definitely the real nose of Major Kovalev, But the second "face" of the nose is social, which in rank is higher than its master, because the rank is seen, but the person is not. Science fiction in The Nose is a mystery that is not found anywhere else and is everywhere. This is a strange unreality of Petersburg life, in which any delusional vision is indistinguishable from reality.

In The Overcoat, the “little man”, “eternal titular adviser” Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin becomes a part of Petersburg mythology, a ghost, a fantastic avenger who terrifies “significant persons”. It would seem that a completely ordinary everyday story - about how a new overcoat was stolen - grows not only into a brightly social story about the relationship in the bureaucratic system of St. Petersburg life of a "little man" and a "significant person", but develops into a mystery work, posing the question: what is a person, how and why he lives, what he encounters in the world around him.

This question remains open, as does the fantastic ending of the story. Who is this ghost, who finally found "his" general and disappeared forever after tore off his greatcoat? This is a dead man taking revenge for the insult of a living person; a sick conscience of a general who creates in his brain the image of a person offended by him, who died as a result of this person? Or maybe this is just an artistic device, “a bizarre paradox,” as Vladimir Nabokov believed, arguing that “the person who was mistaken for the ghostless ghost of Akaki Akakievich is the person who stole his greatcoat”?

Be that as it may, together with the mustachioed ghost, all the fantastic grotesque goes into the darkness of the city, resolving itself in laughter. But a very real and very serious question remains: how in this absurd world, the world of alogism, bizarre interweaving, fantastic stories that claim to be quite real situations of ordinary life, how in this world can a person defend his true face, save a living soul? Gogol will seek the answer to this question until the end of his life, using completely different artistic means.

But Gogol's fiction has forever become the property of not only Russian, but also world literature, entered its golden fund. Contemporary art openly recognizes Gogol as its mentor. The capacity, the crushing power of laughter is paradoxically combined in his work with a tragic shock. Gogol, as it were, discovered the common root of the tragic and the comic. An echo of Gogol in art is heard in Bulgakov's novels, in Mayakovsky's plays, and in Kafka's phantasmagorias. A year will pass, but the mystery of Gogol's laughter will remain for new generations of his readers and followers.

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol is a completely unique writer, unlike other masters of the word. In his work there is a lot of striking, admirable and surprising: the funny is intertwined with the tragic, the fantastic with the real. It has long been established that the basis of the comic in Gogol is carnival, that is, such a situation when the heroes seem to put on masks, display unusual properties, change places and everything seems confused, mixed. It is on this basis that a very peculiar Gogolian fantasy arises, rooted in the depths of folk culture.

Gogol entered Russian literature as the author of the collection Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. The material of the stories is truly inexhaustible: these are oral stories, legends, tales on both modern and historical topics. "If only they listened and read," says the beekeeper Rudy Panko in the preface to the first part of the collection, "and I, perhaps, just damn lazy to rummage around," will have enough for ten such books. "

The past in "Evenings ..." appears in a halo of fabulous and wonderful. In it, the writer saw a spontaneous play of good and evil forces, morally healthy people, not touched by the spirit of profit, pragmatism and mental laziness. Here Gogol depicts Little Russian folk festive and fair life.

The holiday with its atmosphere of freedom and fun, beliefs and adventures associated with it take people out of the framework of their usual existence, making the impossible possible. Previously impossible marriages are concluded ("Sorochinskaya Fair", "May Night", "The Night before Christmas"), all evil spirits are activated: devils and witches tempt people, trying to prevent them.

A holiday in Gogol's stories is all sorts of transformations, disguises, hoaxes, exposing secrets. Gogol's laughter in "Evenings ..." is genuine fun based on juicy folk humor. It is possible for him to express in a word comic contradictions and incongruities, of which there are many in the atmosphere of a holiday and in ordinary everyday life.

The originality of the artistic world of stories is associated, first of all, with the wide use of folklore traditions: it was in folk tales, semi-pagan legends and traditions that Gogol found themes and plots for his works. He used the belief about a fern blooming on the night before Ivan Kupala; the legend about mysterious treasures, the sale of the soul to the devil, about the flights and transformations of witches, and much, much more. In a number of his stories and stories, mythological characters act: sorcerers and witches, werewolves and mermaids and, of course, the devil, whose tricks popular superstition is ready to attribute any bad deed.

Evenings ... is a book of truly fantastic incidents. The fantastic for Gogol is one of the most important aspects of the people's world outlook. Reality and fantasy are intricately intertwined in people's ideas about the past and the present, about good and evil. The writer considered the penchant for legendary and fantastic thinking to be an indicator of people's spiritual health.

Science fiction in "Evenings ..." is ethnographically reliable. Heroes and storytellers of incredible stories believe that the entire area of ​​the unknown is inhabited by wickedness, and the "demonological" characters themselves are shown by Gogol in a reduced, everyday guise. They are also "Little Russians", only they live on their "territory", from time to time fooling ordinary people, interfering in their life, celebrating and playing with them.

For example, the witches in "The Missing Letter" play a fool, inviting the narrator's grandfather to play with them and return, if they're lucky, his hat. The devil in the story "The Night Before Christmas" looks like "a real provincial solicitor in uniform." He grabs a month and burns himself, blowing on his hand, like a man accidentally grabbing a hot frying pan. Explaining his love to the "incomparable Solokha", the devil "kissed her hand with such antics as the assessor at the priest's." Solokha herself is not only a witch, but also a villager, greedy and loving fans.

Popular fiction is intertwined with reality, clarifying the relationship between people, separating good and evil. As a rule, the heroes in Gogol's first collection defeat evil. The triumph of man over evil is a folk motif. The writer filled it with new content: he affirmed the power and strength of the human spirit, capable of curbing the dark, evil forces that rule in nature and interfere in people's lives.

The second period of Gogol's work opened with a kind of "prologue" - the "Petersburg" stories "Nevsky Prospect", "Notes of a Madman" and "Portrait", which were included in the collection "Arabesques". The author explained the title of this collection as follows: "Confusion, mixture, porridge." Indeed, it includes a variety of material: in addition to stories and stories, articles and essays on various topics are also placed here.

The first three of the "Petersburg" stories that appeared in this collection seem to link different periods of the writer's work: "Arabesques" were published in 1835, and the last story, which completes the cycle of "Petersburg" stories, "The Overcoat" was written in 1842.

All these stories, different in plot, theme, heroes, are united by the place of action - St. Petersburg. With him, the theme of the big city and the life of a person in it enters the writer's work. But for a writer, Petersburg is not just a geographic space. He created a vivid image-symbol of the city, both real and ghostly, fantastic. In the fates of the heroes, in the ordinary and incredible incidents of their lives, in the rumors, rumors and legends with which the very air of the city is saturated, Gogol finds a mirror image of the Petersburg “phantasmagoria”. In St. Petersburg, reality and fantasy easily change places. Everyday life and fates of the inhabitants of the city are on the verge of believable and miraculous. The incredible suddenly becomes so real that a person cannot stand it - he goes crazy, gets sick and even dies.

Gogol's Petersburg is a city of incredible incidents, a ghostly absurd life, fantastic events and ideals. Any metamorphosis is possible in it. The living turns into a thing, a puppet (such are the inhabitants of the aristocratic Nevsky Prospect). A thing, object or part of the body becomes a "person", an important person, sometimes even with a high rank (for example, a nose that disappeared from the collegiate assessor Kovalev has the rank of state councilor). The city depersonalizes people, distorts their good qualities, exaggerates the bad, changing their appearance beyond recognition.

The novellas "The Nose" and "The Overcoat" depict two poles of Petersburg life: the absurd phantasmagoria and everyday reality. These poles, however, are not as far apart as it might seem at first glance. The plot of The Nose is based on the most fantastic of all urban “stories”. Gogol's fiction in this work is fundamentally different from the folk-poetic fiction in "Evenings ...". There is no source of the fantastic here: the nose is a part of Petersburg mythology, which arose without the intervention of otherworldly forces. This is a special mythology - bureaucratic, generated by the omnipotent invisibility - the "electricity" of the rank.

The nose behaves as befits a "significant person" with the rank of state councilor: prays in the Kazan Cathedral, walks along Nevsky Prospect, calls into the department, makes visits, and is going to go to Riga with someone else's passport. Where it came from, nobody, including the author, is interested. One can even assume that he “fell from the moon”, because according to Poprishchyn of a madman from “Diary of a Madman,” “the moon is usually done in Hamburg,” but is inhabited by noses. Any, even the most delusional, assumption is not excluded. The main thing is different - in the "two-faced" nose. According to some indications, this is definitely the real nose of Major Kovalev, But the second "face" of the nose is social, which in rank is higher than its master, because the rank is seen, but the person is not. Science fiction in The Nose is a mystery that is not found anywhere else and is everywhere. This is a strange unreality of Petersburg life, in which any delusional vision is indistinguishable from reality.

In The Overcoat, the “little man”, “eternal titular adviser” Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin becomes a part of Petersburg mythology, a ghost, a fantastic avenger who terrifies “significant persons”. It would seem that it is a completely ordinary, everyday story - about how a new greatcoat was stolen - grows not only into a brightly social story about the relationship in the bureaucratic system of St. Petersburg life of a "little man" and a "significant person", but develops into a mystery work, posing the question: what is a person, how and why he lives, what he encounters in the world around him.

This question remains open, as does the fantastic ending of the story. Who is this ghost, who finally found "his" general and disappeared forever after tore off his greatcoat? This is a dead man taking revenge for the insult of a living person; a sick conscience of a general who creates in his brain the image of a person offended by him, who died as a result of this person? Or maybe this is just an artistic device, “a bizarre paradox,” as Vladimir Nabokov believed, arguing that “the person who was mistaken for the ghostless ghost of Akaki Akakievich is the person who stole his greatcoat”?

Be that as it may, together with the mustachioed ghost, all the fantastic grotesque goes into the darkness of the city, resolving itself in laughter. But a very real and very serious question remains: how in this absurd world, the world of alogism, bizarre interweaving, fantastic stories that claim to be quite real situations of ordinary life, how in this world can a person defend his true face, save a living soul? Gogol will seek the answer to this question until the end of his life, using completely different artistic means.

But Gogol's fiction has forever become the property of not only Russian, but also world literature, entered its golden fund. Contemporary art openly recognizes Gogol as its mentor. The capacity, the crushing power of laughter is paradoxically combined in his work with a tragic shock. Gogol, as it were, discovered the common root of the tragic and the comic. An echo of Gogol in art is heard in Bulgakov's novels, in Mayakovsky's plays, and in Kafka's phantasmagorias. A year will pass, but the mystery of Gogol's laughter will remain for new generations of his readers and followers.

• Expansion of students' ideas about Gogol's work, help to see the real and fantastic world in the story "Portrait".
• Formation of research skills, comparative analysis.
• To strengthen faith in the high purpose of art.

Equipment: portrait of Nikolai Gogol, two versions of the story, illustrations for the story.

Preparation for the lesson. In advance, students are given an assignment to read the story "Portrait": the first group - the option "Arabesque", the second group - the second option. Prepare answers to questions:

1. What is the ideological content of the story?
2. How did the hero get the portrait?
3. Who is depicted in the portrait?
4. How did the artist try to get rid of the scary portrait?
5. How does the artist's spiritual fall take place?
6. What is the further fate of the portrait?

During the classes

Organizational part. Communication of the topic and purpose of the lesson.

Introductory speech of the teacher.

One of the features of N.V. Gogol's vision of the world through fantasy. As a romance, he was carried away by fantastic plots, strong characters of people from the people. The novels, beloved by many readers, "The Night before Christmas", "May Night, or the Drowned Woman", "Viy", "Terrible Revenge", "The Enchanted Place" look like a fairy tale, because in them the world is divided into ordinary, real and unusual, "otherworldly ". In his works, reality is intricately intertwined with fantastic fiction.

We see this connection between reality and fantasy in the story "Portrait". It is considered one of the most controversial and complex stories of the St. Petersburg cycle; interesting not only as a kind of expression of the aesthetic views of the writer, but also as a work in which the contradictions of Gogol's worldview were expressed. The world of St. Petersburg for Gogol is real, recognizable and at the same time - fantastic, eluding understanding. In the 1930s, stories about people of art, musicians, and artists were especially popular. Against the background of these works, Gogol's "Portrait" stood out for the significance of the ideological concept, the maturity of the writer's generalizations.

Conversation about the history of the creation of the story.

Teacher. Pay attention to the date of publication of the story.

The original version of the story was published in the collection "Arabesques" in 1835. The second, revised version was published in 1942 in the Sovremennik magazine. They are both similar and different.

It turns out that the original version of the story caused a number of negative reviews from critics. The great critic V.G. Belinsky. In his article "On the Russian Story and the Stories of Mr. Gogol," he writes: "Portrait" is an unsuccessful attempt by Gogol in a fantastic way. Here his talent falls, but in the very fall he remains a talent. It is impossible to read the first part of this story without enthusiasm; even, in fact, there is something terrible, fatal, fantastic in this mysterious portrait, there is some invincible charm that makes you look at it forcibly, even though it’s scary for you. Add to this the multitude of humorous pictures and essays in Mr. Gogol's taste: But its second part is absolutely worthless; Mr. Gogol is completely invisible in it. This is an obvious addition, in which the mind worked, and fantasy did not take any part: In general, I must say that the fantastic is somehow not quite given to Mr. Gogol. "

Under the influence of Belinsky's criticism, Gogol revised the story in 1841-1842 during his stay in Rome and sent it to Pletneva for publication, accompanied by the words: “It was published in Arabesques, but don’t be alarmed. Read it: you will see that you are left alone only the outline of the old story, that everything was embroidered on it again. In Rome, I altered it altogether, or, better, wrote it again, as a result of remarks made back in Petersburg, "he wrote to Pletnev.

Comparative analysis of the work.

Teacher. What is this story about?

The writer's attention is focused on the tragic fate of the artist in modern society, where everything is sold, right down to beauty, talent and inspiration. The clash of the ideals of art, beauty with reality, forms the basis of the content of both the first and second editions.

A talented but poor young artist bought an old portrait with his last money. The strangeness of the portrait is in the eyes, the piercing gaze of the mysterious person depicted in it. "The portrait, it seemed, was not finished; but the power of the brush was striking. The eyes were extraordinary of all: it seemed that the artist used all the power of the brush and all his diligent diligence in them. They just looked, looked even from the portrait itself, as if destroying its harmony with its strange liveliness ... They were alive, these were human eyes! They were motionless, but surely they would not have been so terrible if they had moved. " The young artist spent a night full of nightmares. He saw, either in a dream, or in reality, how the terrible old man depicted in the portrait jumped out of the frames: So he began to approach the artist, began to unfold the parcels, and there - gold coins: "My God, if only some of this money!" - the artist dreamed, and his dream came true. But from that day on, strange changes began to occur in the soul of the young man. Having been flattered by wealth, not without the intervention of a portrait, he gradually turned from a promising talented artist into a greedy, envious artisan. "Soon it was impossible to recognize a modest artist in him: His fame grew, his works and orders increased: But even the most ordinary virtues were no longer visible in his works, and yet they still enjoyed fame, although true experts and artists only shrugged their shoulders, looking at his last works. Gold became his passion and ideal, fear and pleasure, a goal. Bunches of banknotes grew in his chests. " Chartkov sank lower and lower, went so far that he began to destroy the talented creations of other masters, went mad and finally died. After his death, his paintings were put up for auction, among them was that portrait. Recognized by one of the visitors, the mysterious portrait disappeared to continue its destructive influence on people.

Teacher. Let's compare the two versions of the story. What difference can you find between the stories of the two editions?

How did the hero get the portrait?

Who is depicted in the portrait?

How did the artist try to get rid of the scary portrait?

How does the artist's spiritual fall take place?

What is the further fate of the portrait?

Teacher. What is the ideological content of the story?

If in the first edition "Portrait" is a story about the invasion of mysterious demonic forces into the work and life of an artist, then in the second edition it is a story about an artist who betrayed art, who suffered retaliation for the fact that he began to treat creativity as a profitable craft. In the second story, Gogol significantly weakened the fantastic element and deepened the psychological content of the story. The moral fall of the artist was not at all accidental, it was explained not by the magical power of the portrait, but by the inclinations of the artist himself, who revealed "impatience", "excessive glibness of colors", love of money. Thus, the finale in the second edition acquired a realistic meaning.

Teacher. In the story, Gogol condemned the commercialization of creativity, when the author and his talent are bought. How does the author prevent the death of the artist's talent?

The death of the painter Chartkov is predetermined at the very beginning of the story in the words of the professor: "Look, brother, you have a talent; it will be a sin if you ruin it: Beware: the light is already beginning to pull you: It is tempting, you can start painting fashionable pictures, portraits for money But talent is ruined and not unfolded on this: ". However, the young man did not pay much attention to the mentor's warning.

Teacher. Art is called upon to reveal to a person holiness, the mystery of life, its justification. The artist who painted the mysterious portrait speaks of the reconciling mission of art in The Portrait. Through years of solitude and humility, he atones for the evil he has done unwittingly. He passes on his new understanding of art to his son, also an artist. These ideas are especially close and dear to Gogol. He tries to comprehend the most complex nature of creativity; therefore, in the story the destinies of three artists are correlated. Name them.

First, Chartkov, endowed with a spark of God and having lost his talent; secondly, the artist who created a picture in Italy that amazes everyone with harmony and silence; thirdly, the author of the ill-fated portrait.

Summing up the lesson.

Teacher. In the story, Gogol gradually unfolds the cause of the death of not only the talent, but also the artist himself. In pursuit of wealth, Gogol's character loses the integrity of his spirit, he can no longer create by inspiration. The soul destroyed by the "light" seeks salvation in material wealth and worldly fashionable fame. The reader believes that there is also a participation of mystical forces in this. The result of such a deal, and Gogol considers it a deal with the devil, is the death of a talent, the death of an artist. This is the fusion of the fantastic and the realistic in the story.

> Compositions based on Portrait

The role of fiction

One of the main features of Nikolai Gogol's works is his vision of the world through fantasy. For the first time, elements of fantasy appeared in his notorious "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", written around 1829-1830. The story "The Portrait" was written several years later with the same elements of inexplicable mysticism. Gogol loved to portray the characters of people from the people and to confront his heroes with fantastic phenomena. In his works, reality was intertwined with fiction in some interesting way.

The original version of the story "The Portrait" was published in 1835, but after copyright correction it was published again in 1842. The protagonist is a young, up-and-coming artist named Chartkov, who lives in poverty and tries his best to achieve perfection in his work. Everything changes after the purchase of an unusual portrait, which he met in one of the St. Petersburg art shops. The portrait looked so vivid that it seemed that the sitter was about to come to life and start talking. It was this liveliness that attracted the young Chartkov, as well as the high skill of the artist.

According to the plot, the portrait possessed supernatural power and brought troubles and misfortunes into the lives of its owners. It depicted an old man of Asian appearance with piercing, almost "alive" eyes. The next day after the purchase, Chartkov found in the frame of the portrait a bag of chervonets, with which he was able to pay the rent and rent a luxurious apartment for himself. It should be noted here that a strange dream preceded the happy find. The night before, it seemed to him that the portrait had come to life, and the old man, coming out of the frame, was holding in his hands just this bag with the inscription “1000 ducats”.

In the second part, the author reveals to us the secret of these mystical phenomena and the picture itself. As it turned out, she was drawn by a talented Kolomna master who once painted churches. Having started work on this portrait, the master did not know that the moneylender neighbor was a real personification of evil, but when he found out, he left the painting unfinished and went to the monastery to atone for his sins. The fact is that the evil usurer indirectly brought misfortune to everyone to whom he lent money. These people either went crazy, or became terrible envious and jealous, or committed suicide, or lost loved ones.

Foreseeing his imminent death, the usurer wished to remain alive in the portrait, so he turned to the self-taught artist living in the neighborhood. According to the author, the now unfinished painting traveled from hand to hand, bringing first wealth and then misfortune to its new owners. In the first edition at the end of the story, the image of the usurer disappeared from the portrait, leaving those around him in bewilderment. In the second edition, the author decided to make the portrait completely disappear from the field of view and continue to wander around the world.