Astafiev's final bow, chapter by chapter. Read the last bow online, Astafiev Viktor Petrovich

“Last bow” by Astafiev

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

Decency, reverent attitude towards bread, neat- to money - all this, with tangible poverty and modesty, combined with hard work, helps the family survive even in the most difficult moments.

With love V.P. In the story, Astafiev paints pictures of children's pranks and amusements, simple home conversations, everyday worries (among which the lion's share of time and effort is devoted to garden work, as well as simple peasant food). Even the first new pants become a great joy for a boy, since they are constantly altering them from old ones.

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, veiny working hands once again emphasize the heroine’s hard work. “In any matter, it’s not the word, but the hands that are the head of everything. There is no need to spare your hands. Hands, they bite and pretend to everything,” says the grandmother. The most ordinary tasks (cleaning the hut, cabbage pie) performed by grandmother give so much warmth and care to the people around them that they are perceived as a holiday. In difficult years, an old sewing machine helps the family survive and have a piece of bread, with which the grandmother manages to sheathe half the village.

The most heartfelt and poetic fragments of the story are dedicated to Russian nature. The author notices the finest details of the landscape: scraped off tree roots along which the plow tried to pass, flowers and berries, describes the picture of the confluence of two rivers (Manna and Yenisei), freeze-up on the Yenisei. The majestic Yenisei is one of the central images of the story. The whole life of people passes on its shore. Both the panorama of this majestic river and the taste of its icy water are imprinted in the memory of every village resident from childhood and for life. It was in this very Yenisei that the main character’s mother 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 images of the sounding world in landscape sketches (the rustle of shavings, the rumble of carts, the clatter of hooves, the song of a shepherd's pipe), and conveys characteristic smells (of forest, grass, rancid grain). Every now and then the element of lyricism intrudes into the unhurried narrative: “And fog spread across the meadow, and the grass was wet from it, the flowers of night blindness drooped down, the daisies wrinkled the white eyelashes on the yellow pupils.”

These landscape sketches contain such poetic finds that can serve as a basis for calling individual fragments of the story prose poems. These are personifications (“The mists were quietly dying over the river”), metaphors (“In the dewy grass the red lights of strawberries lit up from the sun”), similes (“We pierced the fog that had settled in the gulch with our heads and, floating upward, wandered along it, as if on a soft, pliable water, slowly and silently").

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

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes how deeply pagan and Christian traditions are rooted in the life of the ordinary Russian person. When the hero falls ill with malaria, his grandmother treats him with all available means: herbs, aspen spells, and prayers.

Through the boy's childhood memories, a difficult era emerges when schools had no desks, textbooks, or notebooks. Only one primer and one red pencil for the entire first grade. And in such difficult conditions the teacher manages to conduct lessons.

Like every country writer, V.P. Astafiev does not ignore the theme of confrontation between city and countryside. It is especially intensified in years of famine. The city was hospitable as long as it consumed agricultural products. And empty-handed, he greeted the men reluctantly. With pain V.P. Astafiev writes about how men and women with knapsacks carried things and gold to Torgsin. Gradually, the boy’s grandmother donated knitted festive tablecloths there, and clothes kept for the hour of death, and on the darkest day, the earrings of the boy’s deceased mother (the last memorable item).

V.P. Astafiev creates colorful images of rural residents in the story: Vasya the Pole, who plays the violin in the evenings, the folk craftsman Kesha, who makes sleighs and clamps, and others. It is in the village, where a person’s entire life passes in front of his fellow villagers, that every unsightly act, every wrong step is visible.

V.P. Astafiev emphasizes and glorifies the humane principle in man. For example, in the chapter “Geese in the Ice Hole,” the writer talks about how the guys, risking their lives, save the remaining geese in the ice hole during the freeze-up on the Yenisei. For the boys, this is not just another desperate childish prank, but a small feat, a test of humanity. And although the further fate of the geese was still sad (some were poisoned by dogs, others were eaten by fellow villagers in times of famine), the guys still passed the test of courage and a caring heart with honor.

By picking berries, children learn patience and accuracy. “My grandmother said: the main thing in berries is to close the bottom of the vessel,” notes V.P. Astafiev. In simple life with its simple joys (fishing, bast shoes, ordinary village food from the native 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 us to be philosophical about the change of generations on earth. However, the writer emphasizes that people need to carefully communicate with each other, because each person is unique and unrepeatable. 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, will be big and beautiful and will bring a lot of joy to the birds, the sun, people, and the river.

Astafiev Viktor Petrovich

Last bow

Victor Astafiev

Last bow

A story within stories

Sing, little bird,

Burn, my torch,

Shine, star, over the traveler in the steppe.

Al. Domnin

Book one

A fairy tale far and near

Zorka's song

Trees grow for everyone

Geese in the wormwood

The smell of hay

Horse with a pink mane

Monk in new pants

Guardian angel

Boy in a white shirt

Autumn sadness and joy

A photo where I'm not in it

Grandmother's holiday

Book two

Burn, burn clearly

Stryapukhina's joy

The night is dark, dark

The legend of the glass jar

Motley

Uncle Philip - ship mechanic

Chipmunk on the cross

Karasinaya death

Without shelter

Book three

Premonition of ice drift

Zaberega

War is raging somewhere

Love potion

Soy candy

Feast after the Victory

Last bow

Damaged little head

Evening thoughts

Comments

* BOOK ONE *

A fairy tale far and near

In the outskirts of our village, in the middle of a grassy clearing, a long log building with a lining of boards stood on stilts. It was called a “mangazina”, which was also adjacent to the importation - here the peasants of our village brought artel equipment and seeds, it was called the “community fund”. If the house burns down. even if the whole village burns down, the seeds will be intact and, therefore, people will live, because as long as there are seeds, there is arable land in which you can throw them and grow bread, he is a peasant, a master, and not a beggar.

At a distance from the importation there is a guardhouse. She snuggled under the stone scree, in the wind and eternal shadow. Above the guardhouse, high on the ridge, larch and pine trees grew. Behind her, a key was smoking out of the stones with a blue haze. It spread out along the foot of the ridge, marking itself with thick sedge and meadowsweet flowers in the summer, in winter as a quiet park under the snow and a ridge over the bushes crawling from the ridges.

There were two windows in the guardhouse: one near the door and one on the side towards the village. The window leading to the village was filled with cherry blossoms, stingweed, hops and various other things that had proliferated from the spring. The guardhouse had no roof. Hops swaddled her so that she resembled a one-eyed, shaggy head. An overturned bucket stuck out like a pipe from the hop tree; the door opened immediately onto the street and shook off raindrops, hop cones, bird cherry berries, snow and icicles, depending on the time of year and weather.

Vasya the Pole lived in the guardhouse. He was short, had a limp on one leg, and had glasses. The only person in the village who had glasses. They evoked timid politeness not only among us children, but also among adults.

Vasya lived quietly and peacefully, did not harm anyone, but rarely did anyone come to see him. Only the most desperate children furtively looked into the window of the guardhouse and could not see anyone, but they were still afraid of something and ran away screaming.

At the importation point, the children jostled about from early spring until autumn: they played hide and seek, crawled on their bellies under the log entrance to the importation gate, or were buried under the high floor behind the stilts, and even hid in the bottom of the barrel; they were fighting for money, for chicks. The hem was beaten by punks - with bats filled with lead. When the blows echoed loudly under the arches of the importation, a sparrow commotion flared up inside her.

Here, near the importation station, I was introduced to work - I took turns spinning a winnowing machine with the children, and here for the first time in my life I heard music - a violin...

Rarely, very rarely indeed, Vasya the Pole played the violin, that mysterious, out-of-this-world person who inevitably comes into the life of every boy, every girl and remains in the memory forever. It seemed that such a mysterious person was supposed to live in a hut on chicken legs, in a rotten place, under a ridge, and so that the fire in it barely glimmered, and so that an owl laughed drunkenly over the chimney at night, and so that the key smoked behind the hut. and so that no one knows what is going on in the hut and what the owner is thinking about.

I remember Vasya once came to his grandmother and asked her something. Grandma sat Vasya down to drink tea, brought some dry herbs and began to brew it in a cast iron pot. She looked pitifully at Vasya and sighed protractedly.

Vasya didn’t drink tea our way, not with a bite and not from a saucer, he drank straight from a glass, put a teaspoon on the saucer and didn’t drop it on the floor. His glasses sparkled menacingly, his cropped head seemed small, the size of a trouser. His black beard was streaked with gray. And it was as if it was all salted, and the coarse salt had dried it out.

Vasya ate shyly, drank only one glass of tea and, no matter how much his grandmother tried to persuade him, he did not eat anything else, ceremoniously bowed out and carried away a clay pot with herbal infusion in one hand, and a bird cherry stick in the other.

Lord, Lord! - Grandmother sighed, closing the door behind Vasya. -Your fate is hard... A person goes blind.

In the evening I heard Vasya's violin.

It was early autumn. The delivery gates are wide open. There was a draft in them, stirring the shavings in the bottoms repaired for grain. The smell of rancid, musty grain pulled into the gate. A flock of children, not taken to the arable land because they were too young, played robber detectives. The game was sluggish and soon died out completely. In the fall, let alone in the spring, it somehow plays poorly. One by one, the children scattered to their homes, and I stretched out on the warm log entrance and began to pull out the grains that had sprouted in the cracks. I waited for the carts to rumble on the ridge so that I could intercept our people from the arable land, ride home, and then, lo and behold, they would let me take my horse to water.

Beyond the Yenisei, beyond the Guard Bull, it became dark. In the creek of the Karaulka River, waking up, a large star blinked once and began to glow. It looked like a burdock cone. Behind the ridges, above the mountain tops, a streak of dawn smoldered stubbornly, not like autumn. But then darkness quickly came over her. The dawn was covered up like a luminous window with shutters. Until morning.

It became quiet and lonely. The guardhouse is not visible. She hid in the shadow of the mountain, merged with the darkness, and only the yellowed leaves shone faintly under the mountain, in a depression washed by a spring. From behind the shadows, bats began to circle, squeak above me, fly into the open gates of the importation, there to catch flies and moths, no less.

Victor Astafiev

FINAL BOW

(A story within stories)

BOOK ONE

A fairy tale far and near

In the outskirts of our village, in the middle of a grassy clearing, a long log building with a lining of boards stood on stilts. It was called a “mangazina”, which was also adjacent to the importation - here the peasants of our village brought artel equipment and seeds, it was called the “community fund”. If a house burns down, even if the whole village burns down, the seeds will be intact and, therefore, people will live, because as long as there are seeds, there is arable land in which you can throw them and grow bread, he is a peasant, a master, and not a beggar.

At a distance from the importation there is a guardhouse. She snuggled under the stone scree, in the wind and eternal shadow. Above the guardhouse, high on the ridge, larch and pine trees grew. Behind her, a key was smoking out of the stones with a blue haze. It spread out along the foot of the ridge, marking itself with thick sedge and meadowsweet flowers in the summer, in winter - as a quiet park under the snow and as a path through the bushes crawling from the ridges.

Here, near the importation station, I was introduced to work - I took turns spinning a winnowing machine with the kids, and here for the first time in my life I heard music - a violin...

Rarely, very rarely indeed, Vasya the Pole played the violin, that mysterious, out-of-this-world person who inevitably comes into the life of every boy, every girl and remains in the memory forever. It seemed that such a mysterious person was supposed to live in a hut on chicken legs, in a rotten place, under a ridge, and so that the fire in it barely glimmered, and so that an owl laughed drunkenly over the chimney at night, and so that the key smoked behind the hut, and so that no one... no one knew what was going on in the hut and what the owner was thinking about.

Lord, Lord! - Grandmother sighed, closing the door behind Vasya. - Your lot is hard... A person goes blind.

In the evening I heard Vasya's violin.

It was early autumn. The gates of importation are wide open. There was a draft in them, stirring the shavings in the bottoms repaired for grain. The smell of rancid, musty grain pulled into the gate. A flock of children, not taken to the arable land because they were too young, played robber detectives. The game was sluggish and soon died out completely. In the fall, let alone in the spring, it somehow plays poorly. One by one, the children scattered to their homes, and I stretched out on the warm log entrance and began to pull out the grains that had sprouted in the cracks. I waited for the carts to rumble on the ridge so that I could intercept our people from the arable land, ride home, and then, lo and behold, they would let me take my horse to water.

Beyond the Yenisei, beyond the Guard Bull, it became dark. In the creek of the Karaulka River, waking up, a large star blinked once or twice and began to glow. It looked like a burdock cone. Behind the ridges, above the mountain tops, a streak of dawn smoldered stubbornly, not like autumn. But then darkness quickly came over her. The dawn was covered up like a luminous window with shutters. Until morning.

I was afraid to breathe loudly, I squeezed myself into a corner of the importation. Along the ridge, above Vasya’s hut, carts rumbled, hooves clattered: people were returning from the fields, from farmsteads, from work, but I still did not dare to peel myself away from the rough logs, and I could not overcome the paralyzing fear that rolled over me. The windows in the village lit up. Smoke from the chimneys reached the Yenisei. In the thickets of the Fokinskaya River, someone was looking for a cow and either called it in a gentle voice, or scolded it with the last words.

In the sky, next to that star that was still shining lonely over the Karaulnaya River, someone threw a piece of the moon, and it, like a bitten half of an apple, did not roll anywhere, barren, orphaned, it became chilly, glassy, and everything around it was glassy. As he fumbled, a shadow fell across the entire clearing, and a shadow, narrow and big-nosed, also fell from me.

Across the Fokino River - just a stone's throw away - the crosses in the cemetery began to turn white, something creaked in the imported goods - the cold crept under the shirt, along the back, under the skin, to the heart. I had already leaned my hands on the logs in order to push off at once, fly all the way to the gate and rattle the latch so that all the dogs in the village would wake up.

But from under the ridge, from the tangles of hops and bird cherry trees, from the deep interior of the earth, music arose and pinned me to the wall.

It became even more terrible: on the left there was a cemetery, in front there was a ridge with a hut, on the right there was a terrible place behind the village, where there were a lot of white bones lying around and where a long time ago, the grandmother said, a man was strangled, behind there was a dark imported plant, behind it there was a village, vegetable gardens covered with thistles, from a distance similar to black clouds of smoke.

I’m alone, alone, there’s such horror all around, and there’s also music - a violin. A very, very lonely violin. And she doesn’t threaten at all. Complains. And there's nothing creepy at all. And there is nothing to be afraid of. Fool, fool! Is it possible to be afraid of music? Fool, fool, I never listened alone, so...

The music flows quieter, more transparent, I hear, and my heart lets go. And this is not music, but a spring flowing from under the mountain. Someone put his lips to the water, drinks, drinks and cannot get drunk - his mouth and inside are so dry.

For some reason I see the Yenisei, quiet in the night, with a raft with a light on it. An unknown man shouts from the raft: “Which village?” - For what? Where is he going? And you can see the convoy on the Yenisei, long and creaking. He also goes somewhere. Dogs are running along the side of the convoy. The horses walk slowly, drowsily. And you can still see a crowd on the bank of the Yenisei, something wet, washed away with mud, village people all along the bank, a grandmother tearing out the hair on her head.

This music speaks about sad things, about illness, it speaks about mine, how I was sick with malaria the whole summer, how scared I was when I stopped hearing and thought that I would forever be deaf, like Alyosha, my cousin, and how she appeared to me in In a feverish dream, my mother put a cold hand with blue nails to her forehead. I screamed and did not hear myself scream.

A screwed-up lamp burned in the hut all night, my grandmother showed me corners, shone a lamp under the stove, under the bed, saying that there was no one there.

I also remember a girl, white, funny, her hand was drying up. Transport workers took her to the city to treat her.

And again the convoy appeared.

He keeps going somewhere, walking, hiding in the icy hummocks, in the frosty fog. There are fewer and fewer horses, and the last one was stolen away by the fog. Lonely, somehow empty, ice, cold and motionless dark rocks with motionless forests.

But the Yenisei, neither winter nor summer, was gone; the living vein of the spring began to beat again behind Vasya’s hut. The spring began to grow fat, and not just one spring, two, three, a menacing stream was already gushing out of the rock, rolling stones, breaking trees, uprooting them, carrying them, twisting them. He is about to sweep away the hut under the mountain, wash away the imported goods and bring everything down from the mountains. Thunder will strike in the sky, lightning will flash, and mysterious fern flowers will flash from them. The forest will light up from the flowers, the earth will light up, and even the Yenisei will not be able to drown this fire - nothing will stop such a terrible storm!

Victor Astafiev

FINAL BOW

(A story within stories)

BOOK ONE

A fairy tale far and near

In the outskirts of our village, in the middle of a grassy clearing, a long log building with a lining of boards stood on stilts. It was called a “mangazina”, which was also adjacent to the importation - here the peasants of our village brought artel equipment and seeds, it was called the “community fund”. If a house burns down, even if the whole village burns down, the seeds will be intact and, therefore, people will live, because as long as there are seeds, there is arable land in which you can throw them and grow bread, he is a peasant, a master, and not a beggar.

At a distance from the importation there is a guardhouse. She snuggled under the stone scree, in the wind and eternal shadow. Above the guardhouse, high on the ridge, larch and pine trees grew. Behind her, a key was smoking out of the stones with a blue haze. It spread out along the foot of the ridge, marking itself with thick sedge and meadowsweet flowers in the summer, in winter - as a quiet park under the snow and as a path through the bushes crawling from the ridges.

Here, near the importation station, I was introduced to work - I took turns spinning a winnowing machine with the kids, and here for the first time in my life I heard music - a violin...

Rarely, very rarely indeed, Vasya the Pole played the violin, that mysterious, out-of-this-world person who inevitably comes into the life of every boy, every girl and remains in the memory forever. It seemed that such a mysterious person was supposed to live in a hut on chicken legs, in a rotten place, under a ridge, and so that the fire in it barely glimmered, and so that an owl laughed drunkenly over the chimney at night, and so that the key smoked behind the hut, and so that no one... no one knew what was going on in the hut and what the owner was thinking about.

Lord, Lord! - Grandmother sighed, closing the door behind Vasya. - Your lot is hard... A person goes blind.

In the evening I heard Vasya's violin.

But from under the ridge, from the tangles of hops and bird cherry trees, from the deep interior of the earth, music arose and pinned me to the wall.

A screwed-up lamp burned in the hut all night, my grandmother showed me corners, shone a lamp under the stove, under the bed, saying that there was no one there.

I also remember a girl, white, funny, her hand was drying up. Transport workers took her to the city to treat her.

And again the convoy appeared.

“What is this?!” Where are the people? What are they looking at?! They should tie up Vasya!”

But the violin itself extinguished everything. Again one person is sad, again he feels sorry for something, again someone is traveling somewhere, maybe on a convoy, maybe on a raft, maybe on foot to distant places.

The world didn't burn, nothing collapsed. Everything is in place. The moon and star are in place. The village, already without lights, is in place, the cemetery is in eternal silence and peace, the guardhouse under the ridge, surrounded by burning bird cherry trees and the quiet string of a violin.

Everything is in place. Only my heart, filled with grief and delight, trembled, jumped, and beats at my throat, wounded for life by the music.

One of the works related to Russian classical literature was the story by V. P. Astafiev “The Last Bow”. The summary of this work of art is very short. However, it will be presented in this article as fully as possible.

Brief summary of Astafiev’s “Last Bow”

Despite the fact that even in the original the work can be read in just a few minutes, the plot can still be described in a nutshell.

The main character of the summary of Astafiev’s “Last Bow” is a young guy who spent several years in the war. The text is narrated on his behalf.

In order for everyone to understand what and how, we will divide this work into several separate parts, which will be described below.

Homecoming

The first thing he decides to do is visit his grandmother, with whom he spent a lot of time as a child. He doesn't want her to notice him, so he walked around the back of the house to enter through the other door. While the main character walks around the house, he sees how much it needs repairs, how everything around is neglected and requires attention. The roof of the bathhouse had completely caved in, the garden was completely overgrown with weeds, and the house itself was leaning to one side. Grandma didn’t even keep a cat, because of this all the corners in the small house were chewed by mice. He is surprised that during his absence everything fell apart so much.

Meeting with grandma

Entering the house, the main character sees that everything in it remains the same. For several years the whole world was shrouded in war, some states were wiped off the face of the Earth, others appeared, but in this small house everything was the same as the young military man remembered. Still the same tablecloth, still the same curtains. Even the smell - and it was the same as the main character remembered it as a child.

As soon as the main character steps outside the threshold, he sees his grandmother, who, just like many years ago, sits by the window and winds yarn. The old woman immediately recognizes her beloved grandson. Seeing his grandmother's face, the main character immediately notices that the years have left their mark on her - she has aged very much during this time. For a long time, the grandmother does not take her eyes off the guy who has a Red Star shining on his chest. She sees how grown up he has become, how he matured during the war. Soon she says that she is very tired, that she feels death is approaching. She asks the protagonist to bury her when she passes away.

Death of a beloved grandmother

Very soon the grandmother dies. At this time, the main character found a job at a factory in the Urals. He asks to be released for just a few days, but he is told that he is only released from work if it is necessary to bury his parents. The main character has no choice but to continue working.

The main character's feelings of guilt

He learns from the neighbors of the deceased grandmother that the old woman had not been able to carry water home for a long time - her legs hurt badly. She washed the potatoes in the dew. In addition, he learns that she went to pray for him at the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, so that he would return from the war alive and healthy, so that he would create his own family and live happily, without knowing any trouble.

Many such little things are told to the main character in the village. But all this cannot satisfy the young guy, because life, even if it consists of little things, includes something more. The only thing that the main character understands well is that the grandmother was very lonely. She lived alone, her health was fragile, her whole body ached, and there was no one to help. So the old woman managed somehow on her own, until on the eve of her death she saw her grown and matured grandson.

Awareness of the loss of a loved one

The main character wants to know as much as possible about the time when he was at war. How did the old grandmother cope here alone? But there was no one to tell, and what he heard from his fellow villagers could not really tell about all the difficulties that the old woman had.

The main character is trying to convey to every reader the importance of the love of grandparents, all their love and affection for the young people whom they raised from an early age. The main character is unable to express his love for the deceased in words; he is left with only bitterness and a feeling of guilt that she waited for him for so long, and he could not even bury her, as she asked.

The main character catches himself thinking that his grandmother - she would forgive him anything. But the grandmother is no more, which means there is no one to forgive.