The theme of orphanhood in Astafiev's prose is "the last bow". V.p. astafiev "last bow". analysis of the work - essays, abstracts, reports

Here we are talking about an orphan boy, Vitya, who is being raised by his grandmother. Dad left him, leaving for the city, and mom drowned in the river.

His grandmother has a character, but at the same time she worries about everyone, cherishes everyone, wants to help everyone. Because of this, she is constantly nervous, worried, and her emotions come out through tears or anger. But if she begins to speak for life, then everything is always fine with her, children are only happiness. Even during their illness, she knew how to treat with folk remedies.

A twist in fate.

The boy begins a black streak in life. There is no school in the village, and he is sent to study in the city with his father and stepmother. And then he begins hunger, exile, homelessness. But even in such a situation, Vitya never blamed anyone.

Only a little later did he realize that his grandmother's prayer helped him get out of hell, which, even at a distance, felt how bad and lonely he was. She also helped him to gain patience, to be generous.

School of survival

After the revolution, villages began to be dispossessed in Siberia. Many families found themselves without a roof over their heads, many were driven to hard labor. Having moved in with his parent and stepmother, who lived on odd jobs and drank a lot, he realizes his uselessness. There are disagreements at school. Vitya becomes coarse, his heart is filled with greed. He gets into Orphanage, studies in courses, and soon leaves for the war.

Return

When the war is over, Vitya immediately goes to his grandmother. He is waiting for this meeting, because for him she is the most beloved and dearest person in the world.

Near the house, he suddenly stopped abruptly. He was at a loss, but having gained courage, the young man carefully enters the house and sees how his beloved grandmother, as before, is sitting on a bench near the window and is engaged in threads.

Minutes of oblivion

Grandmother, seeing her long-awaited Vitya, was insanely delighted and asked to come up to her to let her kiss him. She was still calm and welcoming, as if nothing had changed in her life.

Long-awaited meeting

Grandma is very old. But she was glad to meet her, she looked at her Vityunka for hours and could not take her eyes off him. And then she said that she had been praying for him all this time, for days on end. And she lived for this meeting. She lived with the hope that she would see her grandson again. And now she can safely leave this life. After all, she is quite old, she is already 86 years old.

Oppressive melancholy

Soon Vitya leaves to work in the Urals. He receives a summons about the death of his grandmother. But he is not released from work, citing that it is not allowed. He did not dare to go to his grandmother's funeral and then regretted it all his life, although he understood that his grandmother did not hold a grudge against him, she forgave everything.

This is a rather difficult psychological story about relationships, about feelings, about the need to do everything in a timely manner, so as not to reproach yourself for the rest of your life.

Read the summary of Astafiev's last bow in the 2nd version of the story

The writer devoted a lot of works to the theme of war and the countryside. And "The Last Bow" also applies to them. This work is presented a little story, which consists of several stories that are biographical in nature. The writer describes his life and his childhood. His memories are not consistent, they are represented by episodes.

He dedicated this work to the Motherland in the sense he saw it. He described his village, with beautiful wildlife, harsh climate, beautiful mountains and dense and impenetrable taiga. Problems raised in the work ordinary people during difficult periods of life.

The war is over and people are returning to their native villages and cities to find their families, wives, children.

A man who survived heavy fighting wants to return home, where he hopes to see his grandmother. He loves and respects her very much. He goes backwards to the village, so that others would not tell her before that he is returning, he wants to arrange a surprise for her. He thought that now they would rejoice together and remember, perhaps they would cry about old days but still be happy.

But when he came to his native village, to the very street that was so recognizable, he realized that everything had changed and the gardens were no longer blooming like that, and the houses were lopsided, and some were completely destroyed.

The memories made him feel a little sad. But when he saw his grandmother's house, he was delighted, although its roof also slanted. The roof of the bathhouse, in which he so loved to bathe, also became full of holes in some places and even rotted. Mice gnawed holes, but it was all such trifles when he saw his grandmother, who was sitting in the same place as before.

He rushed to her and began to rejoice together. Grandmother began to examine her beloved grandson and was very happy when she saw the order on his chest. She began to tell him that she was tired of living, from problems, war and a long separation.

Soon the grandmother passed away. And they sent him a letter to the Urals with a summons to the funeral, but they didn’t let him go, because they let him go only if his parents died. All his life he regretted that he spent so little time with his beloved grandmother and did so little for her.

In the work, the author claims that a person has no right to feel like an orphan, on the land that is dear to him. His reflections on generational change are philosophical. And each person should treat his family and loved ones with trepidation, value and respect them.

Picture or drawing Last bow

The story of the famous novel is about a young man grazing a flock of sheep, Santiago. One day, Santiago decides to spend the night near a dilapidated church under a large tree.

Summary of The Adventures of the Prehistoric Boy Ervilya

At the beginning of the work, the reader meets a boy named Krek. This is the main character. At 9 years old, Krek is a full-fledged helper in the tribe. He earned his name by excellent bird hunting.

Great place in creative biography Astafiev took up work on two prose cycles "The Last Bow" and "Tsar-Fish". On the one hand, in these books the author searches for the foundations of the moral "independence of man", and leads in those directions that seemed very promising in the 70s: in "The Last Bow" - this is a "return to the roots of folk life", and in "Tsar-fish" is a "return to nature." However, unlike many authors who have turned these topics into literary fashion- with a clichéd set of popular prints from the legendary antiquity and hysterical lamentations about the onset of asphalt on mother earth, Astafyev, firstly, tries to create in his novelistic cycles the widest and most multi-colored panorama of the life of the people (from a variety of plots and a mass of characters), and secondly, even the narrative position proper. His hero, the alter ego of the author, occupies within this world. Such a construction of works resists the “givenness of the author's position and is “fraught” with novelistic dialectics and openness.

The idea of ​​the "Last bow" was born, as they say - in spite of the numerous writings that appeared in the 50-60s in connection with the Siberian new buildings. “Everyone, as if by agreement, wrote and talked about Siberia as if no one had been here before them, no one had lived. And if he lived, he did not deserve any attention, ”says. “And I didn’t just have a feeling of protest, I had a desire to talk about“ my ”Siberia, initially dictated by the mere desire to prove that both I and my fellow countrymen were by no means Ivans who did not remember kinship, moreover, we are kinship here somehow connected, maybe stronger than anywhere else.

The festive tone of the stories that were included in the first book of The Last Bow (1968) is given by the fact that these are not just “pages of childhood,” as the author called them, but that the main subject of speech and consciousness here is a child, Vitka Potylitsyn. Children's perception of the world - naive, spontaneous, trusting - gives a special, smiling and touching flavor to the whole story.

But in the character of Vitka there is a “special feature”. He is emotionally very sensitive, receptive to beauty to tears. This is especially evident in the amazing sensitivity with which his childish heart responds to music. Here is an example: “Grandma sang standing up, quietly, a little hoarsely, and waved her hand to herself. For some reason, my back immediately began to warp. And all over my body in a scattering of prickly cold ran from the enthusiasm that arose inside me. The closer the grandmother brought the singing to the general voice, the more tense her voice became and the paler her face, the thicker the needles pierced me, it seemed that the blood thickened and stopped in the veins.

This means that Vitka himself, the protagonist of the cycle, belongs to the very “song” breed that Astafiev singled out from the family of “ordinary people” in his previous stories.

Such a boy, "songful", wide open to the whole world, looks around him. And the world turns to him only with its good side. It is no coincidence that in the first book of The Last Bow a lot of space is occupied by descriptions of children's games, pranks, and fishing. Here are the pictures joint work, when the village aunts help grandmother Katerina to ferment cabbage ("Autumn sorrows and joys"), and the famous grandmother's pancakes on the "musical frying pan" ("Stryapukha's joy"), and generous feasts where the whole "kindred" gathers, "everyone kisses each other with friend, and exhausted, kind, affectionate, sing songs in unison" ("Grandma's Holiday")...

And how many songs are there! One can speak of a special song element as one of the essential stylistic layers in the overall emotional palette of The Last Bow. Here is the old folk “A river flows, a fast one flows ...”, and a lamentable “ Evil people, hateful people ... ”, and the comic“ Damned potatoes, why don’t you boil for a long time ... ”, and the frivolous“ Dunya loosened her braids ... ”,“ The monk fell in love with a beauty ... ”, and brought to the Siberian village from somewhere from the port taverns“ Do not love a sailor, the sailors will be ripped off…”, “A sailor sailed across the ocean from Africa…” and so on. This song rainbow creates a special emotional background in The Last Bow, where high and low, fun and sadness, pure earnestness and obscene mockery are mixed. Such a background is "consonant" with the mosaic of characters that pass before Vitka Potylitsyn's eyes.

All the other "coffin trucks", as the inhabitants of their native Vitka Ovsyanka call, no matter what figure, the most colorful. What is at least one uncle Levonty worth with his philosophical question: “What is life?”, which he asks at the highest degree of intoxication and after which everyone rushes in all directions, grabbing dishes and leftover food from the table. Or Aunt Tatyana, a “proletarian”, in the words of her grandmother, an activist and organizer of a collective farm, who “ended all her speeches with a broken exhalation: “Let's merge our enthusiasm with the agitated akiyan of the world proletariat!”

All the Ovsyankins, with the possible exception of Grandfather Ilya, from whom they heard no more than three or five words a day, are artists in one way or another. They love to show off, they know how to improvise a scene in front of all honest people, each of them is a public person, more precisely, a “spectacular”. He is inflamed by the presence of the public, he wants to walk around the fort in public, show his character, impress with some kind of trick. Here they do not spare colors and do not skimp on gestures. Therefore, many scenes from the life of Ovsyanka's "coffin carriers" acquire the character of performances in Astafiev's description.

Here, for example, is a fragment from the story "Grandma's Holiday". Another "foray" from the distant wanderings of the "eternal wanderer" Uncle Terenty - "in a hat, with a watch." How he “as a “suprise”” rolled a barrel of omul into the yard, and his tortured wife, Aunt Avdotya, “where did the power come from?”, this barrel turned back through the gateway. for hugs, silently tore off his hat from his head (...) and began to knead it with her bare feet, trampling it into the dust like a rattlesnake. "As "trampled to impotence, squealing to white saliva, (...) Aunt Avdotya silently picked up the reveler from the road slapped her hat on her husband’s muzzle once or twice, putting it on his head up to his ears, banged her fist with her fist and retired into the yard ".

Here, every gesture is fashioned by the performers, as in a well-rehearsed mise-en-scène, and fixed by the attentive eye of the observer. At the same time, Astafiev does not forget to mention a very significant detail: “The entire lower end of the village reveled in this picture,” in a word, all the spectators were in their places, performance is on with a full house.

Yes, and the hero-narrator himself can even play an ordinary episode in such a way that it turns out pure water dramatic scene. Here, for example, is an episode from the story “A Monk in New Pants”: how Vitka pesters his grandmother so that she quickly sews pants for him from a material that they call the outlandish word “treco”. He starts to whimper. “What about you, a belt? Grandma asks. - Pants-s-s ... ”, - pulls Vitka. And then comes his own direction, the turning point:

Uh-uh-uh…

Shout at me, shout at me! - my grandmother exploded, but I blocked it with my roar, and she gradually gave up and began to cajole me:

I'll sew, I'll sew soon! Father, don't cry. Here's some candy, think about it. Sweet little lamps. Soon, soon you will start walking in new trousers, smart, but handsome, and handsome.

Other characters in dramaturgy do not lag behind Vitka himself. So, in the story "Burn, burn bright" there is such a scene. Grandmother tells how she bought a ball in the city with her last hard-earned money, brought it back, “play, dear little baby!”, And he: “... He looked like that, yes, he would slaughter the ball with a banner!. Banner, my mother, banner! In it, in the ball, something already zachufirkalo! He snorted, godfather, he snorted, exactly in a rattling bonbe! (...) The ball hisses, the pipka fell off ... And this, yaz-zvez, Arkharovets, leaned on the banner, what, they say, is it possible to break it? This heartbreaking monologue is accompanied by sympathetic remarks of grandmother's comrades, complaints "what are our wealth", complaints about school and clubs - in a word, everything, as it should. But you can't get rid of the impression of a performance by a superbly improvised performer - acting out a tragedy for the amusement of herself and her elderly listeners.

In essence, in The Last Bow, Astafiev worked out special form skaz - polyphonic in its composition, formed by interlacing different voices(Vitka - a small, world-wise author-narrator, individual story-telling heroes, collective village rumor), and carnival in aesthetic pathos, with an amplitude from unbridled laughter to tragic sobs. This narrative form has become a characteristic feature individual style Astafiev.

1) the problem of the role of music in human life.
Author's position: you can not just enjoy music, music is something that can make you act.
2) the problem of love for the Motherland
Author's position: The writer seems to want to assure us: the feeling that you are "not an orphan, .. if you have a homeland", that you are part of your land, your country, can arise suddenly, like a rush coming from the depths and lifting a person high .
3) the problem of readiness to sacrifice one's life for one's homeland.
4) The problem of the role of childhood in human life.
Argument. Grandmother Katerina Petrovna put deep human wisdom into her grandson Vitka, became for him a symbol of love, kindness, respect for a person. 5) The problem of our guilt before loved ones
6) The problem of repentance
Argument: A belated feeling of repentance visits the hero of V. Astafiev's autobiographical story "The Last Bow". Like prodigal son in a parable, his hero left his home a long time ago. And then his grandmother died, left in her native village. But they did not let him go from work to this funeral. And the grandmother, who raised and raised the boy, was everything for him, "everything that is dear in this world." “I did not yet realize then the enormity of the loss that befell me,” writes V. Astafiev. - If this happened now, I would crawl from the Urals to Siberia, to close my grandmother's eyes, to give her the last bow. And lives in the heart of wine. Oppressive, quiet, eternal.<...>I have no words that could convey all my love for my grandmother, would justify me before her.

7) The problem of orphanhood Argument: For V.P. Astafiev's orphanhood is not someone else's misfortune, but his own cross. His autobiographical hero Vitka Potylitsyn ("The Last Bow") lost his mother early and lives without a father, but does not feel destitute, because he grows up in a family where he is loved, protected, cared for so that he becomes a kind person.... ...................................................... 8) the problem of observing traditions in burial dead. Argument: The Russian people are religious, therefore they strive to observe funeral rite. V.P. Astafiev described in the novel “The Last Bow”, in the chapter “Death”, a funeral, where all the worries were carried out by “old girlfriends” as guardians of folk foundations: “Aunt Agafya is still lying without a domina on two benches. Tidy, calm, straightened, so her back was finally “let go”, in a black knitted scarf, covered with white tulle. Candles are burning by the side of the head, in the corner, under a large glazed icon, the lamp is lit” (750). The writer perceives the ceremony as mournful, therefore, he speaks with regret about the fashion that has appeared in the village to bury with an orchestra: “<…>The death of a village old woman, modestly, who has lived a century in the works, does not require any courage and noise.<…>And in general, this is a bad, courageous fashion to bury village baptized old people with an orchestra” (752). According to Orthodox customs, it is supposed to go behind the coffin, reading prayers for the salvation of the soul of the deceased. Not according to the rules "to bury the dead with music<…>should be buried with a priest.. 9) the problem of children's perception of the world

Content

Introduction

3-4

A tribute to the home world

1.1.

5-9

1.2.

"Life-giving light of childhood"

10-11

The path of perfection of the soul

2.1.

12-18

2.2.

At the "bottom" of Soviet origin

19-22

Conclusion

23-24

Introduction

Viktor Petrovich Astafiev (1924–2001) is one of those writers who, during their lifetime, entered the galaxy of classics of Russian literature of the second half of the 20th century. modern literature it is no longer possible to imagine without his books “The Last Bow”, “Tsar-Fish”, “Ode to the Russian Garden”, “Shepherd and Shepherdess” ... “He was a mighty man - and a mighty spirit and talent.<…>And I learned a lot from Astafiev,” V. Rasputin said in 2004 at a meeting with Krasnoyarsk students. In 2009, V. Astafiev was posthumously awarded literary prize Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In its decision, the jury noted: the prize is awarded to "a world-class writer, a fearless soldier of literature, who sought light and goodness in the mutilated destinies of nature and man."

The main and most "cherished" book by V.P. Astafiev "The Last Bow" was created by the writer for 34 years (1957-1991). Geroemstorieshe himself becomes Vitya Potylitsyn (Astafyev changes his surname to grandmother's).Written in the first person, the story turns into an honest and impartial story about a difficult, hungry, but such a wonderful village childhood, about the difficult development of a young inexperienced soul, about the people who helped this development, educating the boy's truthfulness, diligence, love for his native land . This book – reallybow to the far and memorable years childhood, youth, gratitude to the most different people with whom the harsh life brought Vitya together: strong and weak, good and evil, cheerful and gloomy, sincere and indifferent, honest and rogue ... A whole string of destinies and characters will pass before the eyes of the reader, and all of them are memorable, bright, even if these are uncomplicated fates , broken.« Children's perception of the world - naive, direct, trusting - gives a special, smiling and touching flavor to the whole story"

In the work of V.P. Astafiev, there are several reasons for addressing the topic of childhood. One of them - personal experience. Astafiev recalls his childhood and shares these memories with readers, trying to restore what he once lost. Another reason for turning to the theme of childhood is the spiritual purity of children, their purity. The third reason: through the world of a child, to awaken the best in people, to make them think about their actions, so as not to regret later.

Viktor Petrovich loved to depict childhood, showing it the way he saw and felt. Astafiev tried to protect children and help them survive in this cruel world. Astafiev's attitude to the world of childhood is varied. In his works, childhood is shown from different angles. And all because of the fact that Astafyev had it. The same good and bright at first, the same gloomy and dark later. Memories don't give V.P. Astafiev to part forever with the world of his childhood, they return him to a happy time when the boy Vitya was happy.

1. A tribute to the home world

1.1. Autobiographical beginning in the story "The Last Bow"

The writer recalled: “Everyone, as if by agreement, wrote and talked about Siberia as if no one had been here before them, no one had lived. And if he lived, he did not deserve any attention. And I had not just a feeling of protest, I had a desire to talk about “my” Siberia, initially dictated by the mere desire to prove that both I and my fellow countrymen were by no means Ivans who did not remember kinship, moreover, we are kinship here. connected, maybe stronger than anywhere else.

The history of the creation of the "Last Bow" was reflected in its artistic structure. "The Last Bow" began in 1957 as lyrical stories about childhood: "Zorka's Song" (1960), "Geese in the Polynya" (1962); "Horse with a pink mane" and "Far and close fairy tale"(1964); “The Smell of Hay” and “A Monk in New Pants” 1967, etc. The story in the short stories “The Last Bow” was formed in 1968 from lyrical stories.

The proximity of "The Last Bow" to lyrical prose was noted by E. Balburov. N. Molchanova, on the contrary, emphasized the “epic sound” of “The Last Bow”. N. Yanovsky defined the genre autobiographical work as a "lyrical epic".

In the 1970s, Astafiev again turned to a book about childhood, then the chapters “A Feast after the Victory”, “Burn Clearly”, “Magpie”, “Love Potion” were written. The writer shows the death of the traditional village way of life in the 1930s. By 1978 common name has already united two books, the two-part composition captures two eras in the development of Russian folk life on the example of the Siberian peasantry and two stages in the formation of the character of the lyrical hero, representing modern type personality, torn from the national traditions of life.

In 1989, The Last Bow was already divided into three books, which remained not only unexplored, but also almost unnoticed by critics. In 1992, the last chapters appeared - "The Hammered Head" and "Evening Thoughts", but the third book is distinguished not so much by the appearance of these new stories, but by their place in the new, three-part composition of the whole.

The autobiographical basis of "The Last Bow" connects it with the classical tradition of Russian literature ("Childhood of Bagrov-grandson" by S.T. Aksakov, L.N. Tolstoy's trilogy "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth", the trilogy by M.A. Gorky "Childhood", "Adolescence", "My Universities", a trilogy by N.G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, etc.). "Last bow" in this context can be represented as autobiographical narrative. But the epic principle (the depiction of national existence, with which the fate of the author-character is connected) expands in the three-part text due to the fact that national existence is comprehended not only in social, but also in historical, philosophical and existential aspects. Scales of geographical space - small homeland(village Ovsyanka), Siberia, national world - established by three books.

In the 1989 edition, "The Last Bow" is called "narration in stories", in the last collected works - "a story in stories". The designation "tale" instead of "narrative" indicates an increase central role autobiographical character. In The Last Bow, two centers of narration remain: the world of folk life, represented by the “small world” of the Siberian village of Ovsyanka, which disappeared in the stream of historical time, and the fate of the individual who lost the small world and was forced to self-determine in big world social and natural life. Therefore, the author-narrator is not only the subject of the narration, but also acting hero, character.

The fate of the author becomes the center of the story, and the chronicle of folk life is connected with the story of the fate of the hero. The first book tells about the childhood of a boy who became an orphan early. Vitya Potylitsyna brings up people's peace. In the adolescence depicted in the second book, Vitya finds himself drawn into a social “failure” (1930s) and faces a world of conflicting values. The third book depicts youth (1940s), growing up and becoming a defender of an inharmonious world. And finally, in the last chapters, depicting the 1980s, there is a modern face of the author-character, trying to keep the national world in memory. The last chapter of the third book - "Evening Reflections", filled with journalistic author's denunciations of modern reality, is preceded by an epigraph: "But chaos, once chosen, frozen chaos, is already a system." Astafiev wrote about the disappearance of wildlife around the village, the dominance of summer residents, the degeneration of the village and the villagers. "Chaos" is lawlessness that has become a law, a system of violation moral standards. The origins of modern "chaos" lie in the chaos of the 1930s: in collectivization, in the ruin of the village, in the eviction and extermination of peasants, which the author-narrator tells about in almost every book.

The story combines the lyrical and epic principles of narration: a story about the fate of the world in which the author appeared and grew up, and a story about the fate of one's own spiritual values, about one's own changing worldview. The subject of the narrative plays the most important, organizing, structuring role. The narrator is the same person as the hero (Vitya), only in a different time. The character is the main character, the only eyewitness is Vitya Potylitsyn or an already adult character - Viktor Petrovich - in the last chapters.

The narration unfolds at the speech level of the author-narrator (narration in the first person - from "I" or "we" about specific events of the past). “Indeed, in the evening, when I was sledding with the guys, alarming cries were heard from the other side of the river ...”

At the end of the chapter, the author-narrator returns to his present, that is, to the future (in relation to the described, narrated event): “No matter how the Levontievsky eagles guarded the geese, they hatched. Some of the dogs were poisoned, while the Levontievskys themselves had eaten others into hunger. It no longer brings birds from the upper reaches - now there is a dam of the most powerful, the most advanced, the most indicative, the most ... in general, the most ... hydroelectric station, above the village.

"Last bow" - light and good book, born of talent, memory and imagination of the artist. Let's not forget - a man who relatively recently returned from the war ("Pages of Childhood" have been written since the mid-1950s). He, this man, still perceives the life he has inherited as an unexpected gift of fate, more often than ever he remembers his unreturned front-line friends, experiencing in front of them inexplicable feeling guilt, and enjoy life as it is. Twenty years later, already in the second book of The Last Bow, Astafyev will tell about the mood with which he met the spring of the 45th: “And in my heart, and in mine, too, I thought at that moment, faith will turn into the main mark: beyond the line of the victorious spring, all evil remains, and we are waiting for meetings with only good people, with only glorious deeds. May this holy naivety be forgiven to me and all my brothers - we have exterminated so much evil that we had the right to believe: it is no longer left on earth ”(chapter“ A Feast after the Victory ”).

1.2. "The life-giving light of childhood"

In the work of V. Astafiev, childhood is depicted as spiritual world, to which the heroes of his works strive to return in order to touch the soul to the original feeling of light, joy and purity. The image of a child, drawn by the writer, harmoniously fits into this difficult earthly world.

“The Last Bow” is an epoch-making canvas about the life of the village in the difficult 30s and 40s and the confession of a generation whose childhood passed during the years of the “great turning point”, and youth - “into the fiery forties”. Written in the first person, stories about a difficult, hungry, but wonderful village childhood are united by a feeling of deep gratitude to fate for the opportunity of living, direct communication with nature, with people who knew how to live “in peace”, saving children from hunger, educating them industriousness and truthfulness. Main character- a village orphan born in 1924, a teenager of the hungry war years, who ended his adolescence on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. The writer called "The Last Bow" his most frank book. “On none of my books, but written in almost fifty years of creativity, believe me, a lot, I have not worked with such delightful joy, with such clearly tangible pleasure, as on The Last Bow, a book about my childhood. Once, a long time ago, I wrote the story "The Horse with the Pink Mane" and then the story "The Monk in New Pants" and I realized that a book could come out of all this. So I "fell ill" with the theme of childhood and returned to my Treasured book for more than thirty years. He wrote new stories about childhood, and The Last Bow finally came out as a separate book, then in two, and later in three books. The "life-giving light of childhood" warmed me."

The book of childhood was written, however, by V. Astafiev not for children. Not specifically for children. There are no usual, specific "children's" plots here. There are no soothing endings, where all contradictions are reconciled and all misunderstandings are successfully completed. This is not about a quarrel in the classroom and not about adventures on a camping trip, but a struggle is shown not for life, but for death, even if a person is only twelve or fourteen years old.

2. The way of perfecting the soul

2.1. Family is the basis for the formation of personality

The theme of family and childhood runs through all the work of the wonderful contemporary writer Viktor Petrovich Astafiev.In the story "The Last Bow" the clear image of childhood appears most fully.

"The Last Bow" is among the works of artistic and biographical, or lyrical and biographical prose. The whole structure of the narrative is organized by the theme of the formation and formation of an autobiographical hero. Two neutral images, moving from story to story, make up its structural core - the autobiographical hero Vitka Potylitsyn and his grandmother Katerina Petrovna. The story begins with a recollection of the first glimpses of the child's consciousness, beginning to perceive the world, and ends with the return of the hero from the war. In this way, central theme The story is the history of personality formation. This story is revealed through the inner life of a young maturing soul. The author reflects on love, on goodness, on the spiritual ties of a person with his homeland and land. “Loving and suffering love is a human purpose,” the author comes to this conclusion.

The festive tone of the stories that were included in the first book of The Last Bow (1968) is given by the fact that these are not just “pages of childhood,” as the author called them, but that the main subject of speech and consciousness here is a child, Vitka Potylitsyn. Children's perception of the world becomes the main one in the story.

The hero's memories, as a rule, are vivid, but do not line up in a single line, but describe individual cases from life.The story is told in the first person. The mother of Vitya Potylitsyn, an orphan living with his grandmother, tragically died - she drowned in the Yenisei. The father is a reveler and a drunkard, he left his family. The boy's life proceeded like all other village boys - helping the elders with the housework, picking berries, mushrooms, fishing and games. It is no coincidence that inThe first book of The Last Bow takes up a lot of space with descriptions of children's games, pranks, and fishing trips. Here are pictures of joint work, when the village aunts help grandmother Katerina to ferment cabbage ("Autumn sorrows and joys"), and the famous grandmother's pancakes on the "musical frying pan" ("Cook's Joy"), and generous feasts where the whole "birth" gathers, “everyone kisses each other, and exhausted, kind, affectionate, they sing songs in unison” (“Grandmother’s holiday”) ...

With love, V.P. Astafiev draws in the story pictures of children's pranks and fun, simple household conversations, everyday worries (among which the lion's share of time and effort is devoted to gardening, as well as simple peasant food). Even the first new trousers become a great joy for the boy, as they constantly alter them from junk.One of key scenes The story is a scene in which the boy Vitya plants a larch with his grandmother. The hero thinks that the tree will soon grow, be big and beautiful, and bring a lot of joy to the birds, the sun, people, and the river.

In a simple life with its childish joys (fishing, bast shoes, ordinary village food from the native garden, walks in the forest) V.P. Astafiev sees the ideal of human existence on earth.

The protagonist is emotionally very sensitive, receptive to beauty to tears. This is especially evident in the amazing sensitivity with which his childish heart responds to music. Here is an example: “Grandma sang standing up, quietly, a little hoarsely, and waved her hand to herself. For some reason, my back immediately began to warp. And all over my body in a scattering of prickly cold ran from the enthusiasm that arose inside me. The closer the grandmother brought the singing to the general voice, the more tense her voice became and the paler her face, the thicker the needles pierced me, it seemed that the blood thickened and stopped in the veins.

Decency, reverent attitude to bread, careful - to money - all thiswith tangible poverty and modesty, combined with diligence, helps the family to survive even in the most difficult moments. In gthe main heroine of "The Last Bow" grandmother Katerina Petrovnathe writer did not embellish anything, leaving both the thunderstorm of character, and her grouchiness, and the indispensable desire to find out everything first and to dispose of everything - everything in the village. And she fights and suffers for her children and grandchildren, and breaks into anger and tears, but she begins to talk about life, and now, it turns out, there are no hardships for her grandmother: “Children were born - joy. Children got sick, she saved them with herbs and roots, and not a single one died - also a joy ... Once she put her hand on arable land, she herself set it right, there was just suffering, they harvested bread, she stinged with one hand and did not become a kosoruchka - is it not joy?

The character of the grandmother is closely related to folklore tradition. Her speech is full of poetically accurate aphorisms - wise folk sayings, jokes, riddles. The wise adviser Katerina Petrovna in the village was respectfully called the "general". Often the writer depicts a grandmother spinning or praying, connecting her with higher powers, pagan and Christian in their complex interpenetration.

About the last meeting with V.P. Astafiev writes in the story "The Last Bow". After the war, he returns with the Order of the Red Star, and she, already quite old, meets him: “What small hands have become of my grandmother! Their skin is yellow and shiny, like onion skins. Every bone is visible through the worked skin. And bruises.

Layers of bruises, like caked leaves from late autumn. The body, the powerful grandmother's body, no longer coped with its work, it lacked the strength to drown out and dissolve the bruises, even the lungs, with blood. Grandma's cheeks sunk deep...

- What are you looking at? Has it become good? Grandmother tried to smile with worn, sunken lips.

I... raked my grandmother in the belly.

- I stayed alive, baby, alive!

- I prayed, I prayed for you, - grandmother hastily whispered and poked me in the chest like a bird. She kissed where the heart was, and kept repeating: - She prayed, she prayed ... "

Epithets, comparisons reveal the feelings of the hero. This is a huge love and pity for the one who once gave all her love and affection to him. And one more trait is revealed in the character of the grandmother. The mainstay in her life has always been the Orthodox faith.

“Soon after, my grandmother died. They sent me a telegram to the Urals with a summons to the funeral. But I was not released from production. Head of Human Resources... said:

- Not allowed. Mother or father is another matter, but grandmothers, grandfathers and godfathers ...

How could he know that my grandmother was my father and mother - everything that is dear to me in this world ...

I had not yet realized the enormity of the loss that had befallen me. If this happened now, I would crawl to the Urals, to Siberia, to pay my last bow to her.

The writer wants readers to see their grandparents in his grandmother and give all their love to them now, before it's too late, while they are alive.

It should be noted that such an image of a grandmother is not the only one in Russian literature. For example, he is found in Maxim Gorky in Childhood. Gorkovskaya Akulina Ivanovna and grandmother Katerina Petrovna Viktor Petrovich Astafiev have in common such traits as selfless love to children and grandchildren, spirituality, a subtle understanding of beauty, Orthodoxy, which gives strength even in the most difficult moments of life.

The image of grandmother Katerina Petrovna, who invested deep human wisdom in her grandson, the life of the soul and her home in Siberia acquire a symbolic character. In the world whirlwind of various events, they - grandmother and home - become a symbol of the inviolability of the fundamental foundations of existence - love, kindness, respect for a person.

Vitya Potylitsyn has special feelings for the image of Lydia Ilyinichna's mother. He is unusual in his "incorporeality", appears in the dreams, dreams, memories of the boy and Katerina Petrovna. After the death of her daughter, the grandmother tells her grandson about her, each time introducing new features into her portrait. The narrator talks about how, thanks to his grandmother, faith in the ideal arises in him:<...>my mother was and now will remain for me the most beautiful, the purest person, not even a person, but a deified image. Distinct external portrait characteristics Lydia Ilyinichna cannot be found in the text, but her appearance is always associated with the emergence of a special tone - nostalgic and sad. Key features this image - diligence, care for children, both for their own and for strangers, compassion.

The image of Lydia Ilyinichna Potylitsyna reminds bright image mother, preserved in the childhood memoirs of the hero of L.N. Tolstoy's story "Childhood". The work does not give her exact portrait, Nikolenka remembers “constant kindness and love in her eyes”, a mole on her neck, a soft curl of hair, a gentle dry hand that caressed him so often. The hero emphasizes that his mother was a very bright person: “When mother smiled, no matter how good her face was, it became incomparably better, and everything around seemed to be cheerful.” These words contain not only a description of Natalia Nikolaevna. Tolstoy subtly noticed the close connection between the mother and the child: when the mother was well, Nikolenka also became happier in her soul. The hero says that in his soul, love in his mother merged and was like love for God.

It's not hard to see common features maternal images in the works of L.N. Tolstoy and V.P. Astafiev: the indissoluble bond between mother and child, love and warmth that warm the soul.

Love, special atmosphere native home - moral basis personality formation. The book by V.P. Astafiev “The Last Bow” once again convinces the reader of this.

2.2. At the "bottom" of Soviet origin

IN early stories V. Astafieva more pictures family harmony, portraits of people who value family. The warmth of a family feast (chapter "Grandma's Holiday"), the unquenchable guilt of a grandson who failed to bury his grandmother (chapter "Last bow").But in Vitka's life comes crucial moment. He is sent to his father and stepmother in the city to study at school, since there was no school in the village. Then the grandmother leaves the story, new everyday life begins, everything gets dark, and in childhood such a cruel, terrible side appears that the writer for a long time avoided writing the second part of The Last Bow.

In the second book of The Last Bow» countless are the collisions of Astafiev's characters and the narrator himself with many-sided inhumanity, indifference and cruelty.

Unlike the Potylitsyn family, grandmother Katerina and grandfather Ilya - eternal workers, people generous in soul, in the family of paternal grandfather Pavel "they lived by the proverb: there would be no need for a plow in the house, there would be a balalaika." The author designated their way of existence with a biting word - "on the click", specifying - "it means, only for show and fit." And then there is a series of portraits of characters living "on the click." Dad, a reveler and a drunkard who, with a drink, caused an accident at a mill. "Dad's bosom friend and drinking buddy", Shimka Vershkov, who considers himself "in power", on the grounds that he has a red-coloured revolver. Or grandfather Pavel himself, a dandy and a “fierce gambler”, who, in excitement, is able to squander the last lapotin. Finally, even a whole collective farm, cobbled together in the village during collectivization, is also, in essence, a concentration of ostentatious idle talk: “We sat a lot, but didn’t work much, and that’s why everything went to the rastatour. The arable lands were overgrown, the mill had been standing since the winter, hay was put up with gulkin's nose.

The bottom of life opens before the reader, and not the old "bottom" that is shown in Gorky's play, but the contemporary bottom of the people of Soviet origin to the hero-narrator. And this bottom is seen from below, from within, through the eyes of a child mastering the universities of life. And those torments are described that fall on the boy who left new family father, because there, even without him, they were dying of hunger, restlessly hanging out, sleeping God knows where, eating up in canteens, ready to “steal” a piece of bread in the store. Everyday, everyday chaos here acquires the features of social chaos.

The most terrible scene in the second part is the episode when the boy meets the insensitivity and cruelty of an official (the story "Without Shelter"). From humiliation and resentment, he completely loses control over himself, turning into a frenzied young animal. The soul of a child could not stand not just the callousness and cruelty of some dimwitted teacher, it could not stand the soullessness and injustice that exists in this world. And yet, Astafiev does not judge "indiscriminately." In the people, according to Astafiev, there is everything and everyone - both good, and cruel, and beautiful, and disgusting, and wise, and stupid. So all beginnings and ends - the sources of misfortunes that fall on the head of an individual, and the forces that come to his aid - are in this people, in the person himself.

And Vitka Potylitsyn is saved in this apocalyptic world not by revolutions and not by the next resolutions of the party and government, but by district inspector Raisa Vasilyevna, who protected the boy from stupid teachers, and with the head of the railway station, Vitka the fazeushnik will be lucky - he, due to inexperience, caused an accident, actually from - he saved him for trial, and then Vitka the recruit will meet the “commander of the erkek” Sergeant Fedya Rassokhin, a normal guy, and his sister Ksenia, a sensitive soul, about which Victor will gratefully say - “the girl who lit up my life ...”

In the story "The Last Bow" V.P. Astafiev raises one of the most serious problems even modern society- the problem of orphanhood. The writer does not hide all the most serious consequences of this social phenomenon: cruelty and humiliation to which orphans are doomed, the risk of stumbling or being drawn into criminal activity, disbelief in goodness and justice, anger or passivity, social isolation and risk to life. But, like the hero of M. Gorky's story "Childhood" Alyosha Peshkov, Vitka Potylitsyn manages to survive in difficult life trials thanks to the support of caring people, and the moral stamina inherent in the family.

“The last bow” is a bow to the native world, this tenderness for all the good things that were in this world, and this mourning for that evil, bad, cruel thing that exists in this world, because it is still dear, and for everything bad in home world his son is even more sick."

Conclusion

The book of V.P. Astafiev is wise, unusually deep and instructive, her moral lessons very useful in anyone's life.

Everyone has one way in life: to work, fill themselves with knowledge, be responsible for their actions and love their neighbors. It seems that everything is simple, but it is not so easy to walk this path with dignity, a person has to overcome many trials, but they must be endured without losing a human face. A hero drank a lot in his lifetimestories by V.P.Astafiev, but did not get angry at people, did not become an egoist, who carelessly burns life. He passionately loves his grandfather, grandmother, who raised him as a morally healthy, whole person, but in his own way he loves both the unlucky father and the unkind Pavel Yakovlevich, because thanks to these people, far from tenderness and sentimentality, he, a teenager, learned life, learned to fight for himself gained work experience. You need to be able to be grateful, you should not harden your soul, in everyone with whom life has brought you, you need to find the good.

The events and scenes of "The Last Bow" are interconnected by the poetry of being, just as we remember ourselves, our childhood. Pages of the past rise before us one after another, however, they do not obey logic, temporal psychology, but are metaphorical and associative. You can call the story of V.P. Astafiev with a poem in prose. Here, impressions of a difficult and bright childhood are closely intertwined with care and concern for the homeland. We are convinced that the writer's childhood is filled with the blows of fate as well as its gifts. From afar, it sends him a star shower of feelings, fills the rivers of emotions with a clear stream, endows him with eloquence and a chaste attitude towards what happened once.

It is difficult to agree that V.P. Astafiev wrote his story for children. The reader will not find children's stories here, will not see peaceful endings with a general reconciliation of paradoxes. In "The Last Bow" expressive image era of the formation of the human soul of the writer and the decisive, sincere, sometimes dramatic tone of storytelling, typical for this author, converged incredibly accurately into a literary work.

Undoubtedly, each reader will perceive "The Last Bow" in his own way - with an eye to his own age, life experience, ideas about household preferences. Someone will draw parallels here between the pages of the book and their own lives, while others will be imbued with the lyrical mood of Siberian nature. For a generation early XXI century, an opportunity opens up to look back a hundred years, learn the basics way of life ancestors.

List of used literature

Astafiev V.P. How the book began / / Everything has its time. - M., 1986.

Astafiev V.P. Tales. Stories. - Bustard - M., 2002.

Astafiev V.P. Last Bow: A Tale. - M .: Mol. guard, 1989.

Lanshchikov A.P. Viktor Astafiev. The right to sincerity M. 1972.

Leiderman N.L., Lipovetsky M.N. Modern Russian Literature 1950-1990s. In 2 volumes. Volume 2. - Publishing House"Academy", 2003.

Meshalkin A.N. “The treasured book of V.P. Astafieva: the world of childhood, goodness and beauty in the story of the last bow ” // Literature at school, 2007 No. 3. – p.18.

Perevalova S.V. Creativity V.P. Astafyeva: problems, genre, style: (“Last bow”, “Tsar-fish”, “ Sad detective"): textbook. Manual for a special course / Volgograd. State. Ped. un-t. - Volgograd: Change, 1997.

Prantsova G.V. "Pages of childhood" V.P. Astafieva at literature lessons in grades 5-8// Russian literature. - 1998. - No. 5.

Slobozhaninova L.M. Russian Prose of the Urals: XX Century: Literary Critical Articles 2002–2011. - Yekaterinburg, 2015.

Tolmacheva V.O. Meeting with Astafiev / V.O. Tolmacheva // Literature at school. - 1986. No. 2. - p. 16-20

Yanovsky N. N. Astafiev: Essay on creativity. – M.: Sov. Writer, 1982.

"Last bow"

“The Last Bow” is a landmark work in the work of V.P. Astafiev. It combines two main themes for the writer: rural and military. In the center of the autobiographical story is the fate of a boy who was left without a mother early and is raised by his grandmother.

Decency, reverent attitude to bread, neat

To money - all this, with tangible poverty and modesty, combined with diligence, helps the family survive even in the most difficult moments.

With love, V.P. Astafiev draws in the story pictures of children's pranks and fun, simple household conversations, everyday worries (among which the lion's share of time and effort is devoted to gardening, as well as simple peasant food). Even the first new trousers become a great joy for the boy, as they constantly alter them from junk.

In the figurative structure of the story, the image of the hero's grandmother is central. She is a respected person in the village. Her large working hands in the veins once again emphasize the hard work of the heroine. “In any case, not a word, but hands are the head of everything. You don't have to feel sorry for your hands. Hands, they look and look at everything, ”says the grandmother. The most ordinary things (cleaning the hut, a pie with cabbage) performed by a grandmother give people around them so much warmth and care that they are perceived as a holiday. In difficult years, an old sewing machine helps the family survive and have a piece of bread, on which the grandmother manages to sheathe half the village.

The most heartfelt and poetic fragments of the story are devoted to Russian nature. The author notices the finest details of the landscape: the scraped roots of a tree, along which the plow tried to pass, flowers and berries, describes a picture of the confluence of two rivers (Manna and Yenisei), freezing on the Yenisei. The majestic Yenisei is one of central images story. The whole life of people passes on its shore. And the panorama of this majestic river, and the taste of its icy water from childhood and for life is imprinted in the memory of every villager. In this very Yenisei, the mother of the protagonist once drowned. And many years later, on the pages of his autobiographical story, the writer courageously told the world about the last tragic minutes of her life.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes the breadth of his native expanses. The writer often uses landscape sketches images of the sounding world (the rustle of shavings, the rumble of carts, the sound of hooves, the song of a shepherd's duda), conveys characteristic smells (forests, grass, rancid grain). The element of lyricism now and then invades the unhurried narrative: “And the fog spread across the meadow, and the grass was wet from it, the flowers of night blindness drooped down, daisies wrinkled their white eyelashes on yellow pupils.”

In these landscape sketches there are such poetic finds that can serve as a basis for naming individual fragments of the story as poems in prose. These are personifications (“The fogs were dying quietly over the river”), metaphors (“In the dewy grass, red strawberry lights lit up from the sun”), comparisons (“We broke through the fog that had settled in the decay with our heads and, floating up, wandered through it, as if along a soft, malleable water, slowly and silently").

In selfless admiration of beauty native nature the hero of the work sees, first of all, a moral support.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes how deeply pagan and Christian traditions. When the hero falls ill with malaria, the grandmother treats him with all the means available for that: these are herbs, and conspiracies for aspen, and prayers.

Through the childhood memories of the boy, a difficult era emerges, when there were no desks, no textbooks, no notebooks in schools. Only one primer and one red pencil for the whole first class. And in such difficult conditions, the teacher manages to conduct lessons.

Like every village writer, V.P. Astafiev does not ignore the topic of confrontation between the city and the countryside. It is especially intensified in famine years. The city was hospitable as long as it consumed rural produce. And with empty hands he met the peasants reluctantly. With pain V.P. Astafiev writes about how men and women with knapsacks carried things and gold to "Torgsina". Gradually, the boy's grandmother handed over there both knitted festive tablecloths, and clothes stored for the hour of death, and on the blackest day - the earrings of the boy's deceased mother (the last memento).

V.P. Astafiev creates colorful images of villagers in the story: Vasya the Pole, who plays the violin in the evenings, craftsman Keshi, who makes sleds and collars, and others. It is in the village, where the whole life of a person passes before the eyes of fellow villagers, that every unsightly act, every wrong step is visible.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes and sings of the humane principle in a person. For example, in the chapter “Geese in the polynya”, the writer tells how the guys, risking their lives, save the geese left during the freeze-up on the Yenisei in the polynya. For the boys, this is not just another childish desperate trick, but a small feat, a test of humanity. And although further fate the geese still turned out sadly (some were poisoned by dogs, others were eaten by fellow villagers in times of famine), the guys nevertheless passed the test for courage and a caring heart with honor.

Picking berries, children learn patience and accuracy. “Grandma said: the main thing in berries is to close the bottom of the vessel,” notes V.P. Astafiev. In a simple life with its simple joys (fishing, bast shoes, ordinary village food from his own garden, walks in the forest) V.P. Astafiev sees the happiest and most organic ideal of human existence on earth.

V.P. Astafiev argues that a person should not feel like an orphan in his homeland. He also teaches a philosophical attitude to the change of generations on earth. However, the writer emphasizes that people need to carefully communicate with each other, because each person is inimitable and unique. The work "The Last Bow" thus carries a life-affirming pathos. One of the key scenes of the story is the scene in which the boy Vitya plants a larch tree with his grandmother. The hero thinks that the tree will soon grow, be big and beautiful, and bring a lot of joy to the birds, the sun, people, and the river.