Description of the nature of the Don region in the works of M. Sholokhov
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF SAKHA (YAKUTIA)
SECONDARY SCHOOL No. 17, YAKUTSK
ON LITERATURE
TOPIC: “ORIGINALITY OF LANDSCAPE IN THE WORKS OF M. A. SHOLOKHOV”
(Examination paper)
Completed:
student 11 "A"
Rozhin Peter.
Checked:
teacher of Russian language
and literature
Vasilyeva M. I.
Yakutsk - 2004
PLAN
I. INTRODUCTION.
II. THE ORIGINALITY OF LANDSCAPE IN THE WORKS OF M. A. SHOLOKHOV.
1. LANDSCAPE DESCRIPTIONS IN THE NOVEL “QUIET FON”.
2. NATURE IN STORIES.
III. CONCLUSION.
I . INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this work is a summary review of the uniqueness of the landscape in the novel “ Quiet Don"Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov and stories of the mid-twenties.
Landscape is a view, an image of some area, a picture of nature. In a literary work, landscape is a description, where the main subject of the image is nature (2.38).
Abstract is summary document or work or parts thereof, including basic factual information and conclusions necessary to become familiar with them (2.711; 1.55). Therefore, the work sets out the content of the read works in line with the given topic.
According to experts, abstracts of any kind “should not reflect the subjective views of the referee on the issue being presented; the abstract does not provide an assessment of the document being reviewed” (1, 57).
Of course, the scope of the essay does not allow us to reveal all the diversity of the use of landscape descriptions in the writer’s works, but the selected episodes made it possible to create a holistic picture of Sholokhov’s landscape.
The abstract consists of an introduction, which sets out the purpose of the work and its structure, and provides definitions of the basic concepts necessary to develop the topic. The main part reports (reviews) the content of the novel “Quiet Don” and works of small forms in the context of the topic under consideration. The work ends with the final part, where conclusions are briefly drawn on the entire abstract.
This work uses editions of the novel “Quiet Don” by M. A. Sholokhov, stories, articles by I. I. Khavruk, V. A. Chalmaev, A. K. Demidova, a dictionary of the Russian language edited by A. P. Evgeniev.
II . THE ORIGINALITY OF LANDSCAPE IN THE WORKS OF M. A. SHOLOKHOV
1. LANDSCAPE DESCRIPTIONS IN THE NOVEL “QUIET FON”
The novel begins with a description of the Melekhovsky yard on the very edge of the farm (7, 29).
The author, in one small paragraph, seemed to put in the events that will happen to the Melekhovs. Here there is a “steep descent”, meaning turning points in the history of the people, and a “scattering of shells”, symbolizing the people, and “pebbles swept by the waves”, indicating difficult trials, and “blued ripples of the stirrups of the Don”, symbolizing the events that will happen in the life of the Cossacks . The writer used an allegory: thus, the east personifies the appearance new strength, which is approaching the Don with “horse hooves”, and “living roadside” (tenacious plantain) means Cossacks.
The landscape in the novel does not exist separately from the events described in it, but is closely connected with them.
Here is an excerpt from Chapter XIX of the third book: “The eastern wind blows across the native steppe. Log was covered in snow. The depressions and ravines were leveled. There are no roads or paths. All around, crosswise, slicked by the winds, is a bare white plain. It's like a dead steppe. Occasionally, a raven will fly high above, as ancient as this steppe, like a mound over a summer camp in a snow cap with a beaver princely edge of Chernobyl. A raven will fly by, cutting the air with its wings with a whistle, dropping a guttural moaning screech. His cry will carry far with the wind, and it will sound long and sadly over the steppe, like an accidentally touched bass string in the silence at night.
But the steppe still lives under the snow. Where, like frozen waves, the plowed land, silver with snow, bulges, where the land harrowed since autumn lies like a dead swell, there, clinging to the soil with greedy, tenacious roots, lies the winter crop, fallen by the frost. Silky green, all covered in tears of frozen dew, it chillily clings to the crumbly black soil, feeds on its life-giving black blood and waits for spring, the sun to rise, breaking the melted cobweb-thin diamond crust in order to turn violently green in May. And it will rise after waiting its time! Quails will fight in it, the April lark will ring above it. And the same sun will shine on him, and the same wind will lull him. Until the time when a ripe, full-grain ear, crushed by showers and fierce winds, droops its mustachioed head, lies under its owner’s scythe and obediently drops its cast, heavy grains on the threshing floor” (8, 116).
“The sky frowned. Lightning diagonally opened up the rumpled black-earth cloud, silence accumulated for a long time, and somewhere far away thunder rumbled warningly. The vigorous rain sowing began to crush the grass... Thunder struck with terrifying force, lightning rapidly moved towards the ground. After a new blow, rain burst from the depths of the cloud in streams, the steppe began to murmur indistinctly...” (8, 31).
Both passages imply a time that will bring many changes that will affect the destinies of people. These descriptions precede the tragic events with the arrival of the Reds.
Pictures of nature mean and symbolic images, and a description of the characters’ condition: “A warm wind blew from the south for two days. Got off last snow on the fields. The foamy spring streams died down and the steppe ravines and rivers receded. At the dawn of the third day, the wind died down, and thick fogs fell under the steppe, the bushes of last year's feather grass turned silver with moisture, the mounds, gullies, villages, spiers of bell towers, and the soaring tops of pyramidal poplars were drowned in an impenetrable whitish haze. Blue spring has begun over the wide Don steppe.
The world appeared before her differently, miraculously renewed and seductive. She looked around excitedly with sparkling eyes, childishly fingering the folds of her dress. The fog-shrouded distance, the apple trees in the garden flooded with melt water, the wet fence and the road behind it with deeply washed ruts from last year - everything seemed to her unprecedentedly beautiful, everything was blooming with thick and delicate colors, as if illuminated by the sun.
A piece of paper peeking through the fog clear skies blinded her with cold blue; the smell of rotten straw and thawed black soil was so familiar and pleasant that Aksinya took a deep breath and smiled from the corners of her lips; The simple song of a lark, coming from somewhere in the foggy steppe, awakened an unconscious sadness in her. It was she – a song heard in a foreign land – that made Aksinya’s heart beat faster and squeezed two meager tears from her eyes...
Mindlessly enjoying the life that had returned to her, Aksinya felt a great desire to touch everything with her hands, to look at everything. She wanted to touch the currant bush, blackened by dampness, to press her cheek against the branch of an apple tree covered with a bluish velvety coating, she wanted to step over the destroyed spindle and walk through the mud, off-road, to where behind a wide ravine the winter field was fabulously green, merging with the foggy distance...” (8, 571).
Landscape sketches speak of Great love artist to the nature of the Don region: “Dear steppe! A bitter wind settling on the manes of shoaling queens and stallions. The dry snoring of a horse is salty from the wind, and the horse, inhaling the bitter, salty smell, chews with silky lips and neighs, feeling the taste of wind and sun on them. Dear steppe under the low Don sky! Vilyuzheny beams of dry lands, red-clay ravines, expanses of feather grass with a haunted nesting trace of a horse’s hoof, mounds, in wise silence preserving the buried Cossack glory... I bow low and kiss your fresh land like a son, the Don, Cossack steppe, watered with unrusting blood!” (8, 49).
The landscape is animated, for example, “the wind is cossacking”, “the water was cooing”, “the hollow water stood as if spellbound”, “the water was bubbling like crazy”, “the steppe was dressed in silver” and helps to reveal the feelings and moods of the characters, to convey their attitude to the events taking place.
In the novel “Quiet Don”, at turning points in the destinies of the heroes, Sholokhov compares their inner life with natural processes (3, 27 - 31).
For example, let's focus on the main female images.
The author compares Aksinya’s life and her internal state after the break with Gregory with a field of wheat trampled by a herd and with the feeling of its owner: “Holly-leaved green wheat rises, grows; after a month and a half, the rook is buried in it with his head, and is not visible; sucks juices from the ground, shoots out; then it blooms, golden dust covers the ear; the grain will swell with fragrant and sweet milk. When the owner goes out into the steppe, he looks at it and is not overjoyed. Out of nowhere, a herd of cattle wandered into the grain: they were tested, heavy ears of corn were trampled into the plowed land. Where they were lying there were circles of crushed bread... it’s wild and bitter to look at.”
“In the golden bloom” of Aksinya’s feelings, Grishka stepped on, “incinerated, spoiled” him with his boot (7, 100). But the author shows that life goes on: “The bread that was eaten by the cattle rises. From the dew, from the sun, a stem pushed into the ground rises; At first he bends, like a man who has strained himself under an unbearable weight, then he straightens up, raises his head, and the day shines for him in the same way, and the wind sways in the same way...”
A special place in the novel is occupied by Natalya’s state of mind, which is compared to a thunderstorm in nature.
Nature is restless: “By blue sky White clouds, torn by the wind, floated and melted. The sun's rays scorched the hot earth. Rain came from the east." Natalya is feeling bad: having learned that Grigory has again reached out to Aksinya, she becomes withdrawn and gloomy. The thunderstorm is coming closer: “...a gray shadow was rapidly falling,” “the sun obliquely pierced the dazzling white border of a cloud floating to the west,” “the shadow accompanying the cloud still reigned and stained the earth along the blue spurs of the Obdon Mountains.”
Natalya is no longer able to cope with her feelings: “Suddenly she jumped up, pushed away Ilyinichna, who was holding out a cup of water to her, and, turning her face to the east, prayerfully folded her palms, wet from tears, and quickly shouted, choking:
God! He exhausted my entire soul! I have no more strength to live like this! Lord, punish him damned! Strike him to death there! So that he no longer lives, so that he does not torment me!”
Nature responds to her curses, the elements rage: “A black swirling cloud crawled from the east. Thunder rumbled dully. Piercing the round cloud tops, writhing, burning white lightning slid across the sky. The wind tilted the rumbling grasses to the west, carried bitter dust from the road, and bent the caps of sunflowers weighed down with seeds almost to the ground. Thunder struck with a dry crackling sound over the steppe.” Now Ilyinichna is also gripped by fear:
Get on your knees! Do you hear, Natasha!?”
The author compares natural processes with the feelings of the heroines. Nature lives by its own laws, people – by theirs. At some point, these worlds, coming closer, intersect, and then a symbol arises, which is based on poetic parallelism (3, 27 - 28).
Along with comparisons of natural processes with the spiritual life of Aksinya and Natalia, the author uses comparisons from the natural world (3, 28).
The writer compares Natalya’s feelings for Gregory with an “unaffordable star loan.” He writes that “from there, from the black-blue high wasteland, the cranes, late in their flight, clicked behind them like silver bells. The dead grass smelled sad and deathly.”
The metaphor “they clicked silver bells behind them,” the epithets “dreary,” “dead,” and the definition “obsolete” most accurately convey the heroine’s state of mind.
Sholokhov uses landscape description when revealing the characters of Aksinya and Natalya.
The feelings of Natalya and Aksinya after typhus are at first almost the same: Natalya “loved... the silence that settled after the roar of guns,” “she listened greedily to the ingenuous song of the larks,” “inhaled the wind saturated with wormwood bitterness,” “the heady smell of hot black soil”; Aksinya, before whom the world appeared “wonderful and seductive,” is intoxicated by the “marsh sweetness of fresh spring air,” “rotted straw,” “the song of the lark awakened an unconscious sadness in her.”
Sholokhov spring - love.
Aksinya, with all the strength of her sensitive soul, perceives and absorbs the beauty and life-giving forces of nature, merging in her with the forces of her love, tenderness and affection for Gregory. Perceives with vision (“swarthy wild bumblebees swayed on the corollas of meadow flowers”), hearing (“wild ducks tickled in the reeds,” “a drake hoarsely called to his friend,” “far, far away, indistinctly and sadly, a cuckoo was counting the unlived years of someone”), sight and hearing (“the lapwing flying over the lake persistently asked: “Whose are you? Whose are you?”; “velvety-dusty bumblebees were buzzing”), feels her physically (“the bare feet were pleasantly cooled by the wet greenery, the bare full calves and neck were kissed with searching lips dry winds” - this metaphor is extremely accurate and expressive: the inanimate (dry winds) is personified and perceived as living, human). Perceives odors (“from under the hawthorn bush oozed the tart and tart scent of last year’s rotting leaves”) (3, 28).
I can’t help but quote the author’s words: “Smiling and silently moving her lips, she carefully fingered the stems of serene blue, modest flowers, then leaned over with her plump figure to sniff, and suddenly caught the lingering and sweet aroma of lily of the valley. Feeling around with her hands, she found it. It grew right there, under an impenetrably shady bush. Wide, once green leaves still jealously protected from the sun a low, humpbacked stem topped with snow-white drooping cups of flowers. But the leaves, covered with dew and yellow rust, were dying, and the flower itself was already touched by mortal decay: the two lower cups wrinkled and turned black, only the top, in sparkling tears of dew, suddenly flared up under the sun with a blinding captivating whiteness” (8, 350).
Thus, the image of the lily of the valley, personifying the harmony and beauty of life, and at the same time the beginning of its withering, associated with Aksinya’s life, with her thoughts and feelings, acquires the meaning of a symbol.
Here we present several passages reflecting Sholokhov’s description of the landscape in the novel.
“The dried leaves rustled on the corn husks. Behind the hilly plain, the spurs of the mountains shimmered blue. Near the village, red cows were roaming around for their money. The wind swirled frosty dust behind the copse. The dim October day was sleepy and peaceful; blissful peace and silence wafted from the landscape splashed with the stingy sun. And not far from the road, people were trampling in stupid anger, preparing to poison the rain-fed, seeded, rich earth with their blood (8, 490).
Yellow-white clouds, busty as plows, quietly floated over Novocherkassk. In the sky-high blue sky, right above the shining dome of the cathedral, a gray-haired, curly-haired man hung motionless and turned silver somewhere above the village of Krivyanskaya.
The sun rose dimly, but the windows of the Ataman's palace, reflecting it, glowed hotly. The slopes of the iron roofs glittered on the houses, the dampness of yesterday's rain was preserved by the bronze Ermak, stretching the Siberian crown to the north (8, 505).
Half a mile from the farm, on the left side of the Don, there is a hole, hollow water rushes into it in springs. Near the breakthrough, springs gush out from the sandy shore - the ice there does not freeze all winter, it glows like a green, wide half-arc of the polynya, and the road along the Don cautiously runs around it, making a steep leap to the side. In the spring, when the escaping water flows back into the Don through the hole in a mighty stream, a whirlpool turns in this place, the water roars, interweaving various streams, washing out the bottom; and all summer long the carp stay at the deep depths, clinging to the debris piled up from the shore close to the breakthrough (8, 568).
It was as if his hops had been knocked out by a wedge. He ran to the hole. The freshly broken ice glistened sharply. The wind and stirrup drove pieces of ice around the wide black circle of the ice hole, the waves shook with green whirlwinds and rustled. In a distant village, lights yellowed the darkness. The grainy stars, like freshly winnowed ones, burned and trembled frantically in the plush sky. The breeze blew the drifting snow, it hissed and flew like powdery dust into the black halo of the wormwood. And the hole was slightly smoking with steam and turning black just as welcomingly and terribly.
The hollow water has just started to come true. In the meadow, near the garden hedges, brown, muddy soil was exposed, with a border of floating debris: fragments of dry reeds left from the spill, branches, bushes, last year's leaves, washed down by the wave. The willows of the flooded Obdon forest were barely noticeably green, and catkins hung from the branches like tassels. The buds on the poplars were just about ready to open; right in the very courtyards of the farmstead, the shoots of redwood, surrounded by a flood, were bending towards the water. Yellow fluffy, like unfeathered ducklings, its kidneys dived in the waves, swayed by the wind.
At dawn, wild geese, geese, and flocks of ducks swam to the gardens in search of food. Copper-voiced loons cavorted in the dawn tube. And even at noon one could see how a wave of white-bellied teal was nurturing and nursing across the wind-tousled expanse of the Don (8, 600).
Clouds were thickening in the west. It was getting dark. Somewhere far, far away, in the Obdonya strip, lightning curled, an orange lightning fluttered like the wing of a half-dead bird. In that direction there was a faint glow, covered by a black hollow cloud. The steppe, like a bowl, filled to the brim with silence, hid sad reflections of the day in the folds of the beams. Something reminded me of this evening autumn time. Even the herbs that had not yet given color emitted an indescribable smell of decay” (8, 634).
In the above passages it is easy to trace Sholokhov’s favorite Don expanses.
The landscape in "Quiet Don" performs different functions: reveals the characters and internal states of the heroes, poeticizes events.
2. NATURE IN STORIES
In the stories I read by Sholokhov, the landscape takes up little space. But also in brief descriptions nature, a rather capacious meaning emerges that permeates these works. They have one thing in common: the landscape is associated with the mood of the characters, with their perception of the world around them and themselves.
"Man's Fate" begins with landscape paintings spring (6, 5-8), which for Sholokhov always means even “in this bad time of no roads” “assertiveness, warm winds and the first truly warm day after winter.” Friendly spring in the story means a person’s steadfastness in front of hard fate. The writer asserts through a description of nature that spring is coming in the fate of these two people (6, 47).
The writer sees the same steppe in different stories in different ways, as if personifying the Cossack in the image of the steppe. The life of the Cossacks is different.
For example, in “Alyoshka’s Heart” (1925) the landscape “smells of earthy dampness, nettle color and the intoxicating smell of dog fury,” confirming Alyoshka’s difficult fate (5, 236 - 350).
In “Crooked Stitch” (1925), despite the autumn season, the emergence of Vaska’s feelings for Nyurka is described in colors more similar to spring. The landscape is full of spring and youth, as the author himself writes, “green and elastic.” Then, gradually, the pictures of nature begin to be perceived bleakly: “The fog, bending low, curled over the mown grass, pawed the prickly stems with plump gray tentacles, and, like a woman, wrapped the hay in steam. Behind the three poplars, where the sun had set at night, the sky was filled with wild roses and the steep, rearing clouds seemed like withered petals” (5, 349). Several lines of such a picture foreshadow the tragic end of Nyurka.
In the story “The Shepherd” (1925), the steppe is “scorched by the sun, charred, the grasses are warped with yellowness; and the ear of grain... the kvelo faded, withered, bent down to the ground, hunched over like an old man” (5, 211). Grisha's fate repeats this description. Grisha was killed. But Dunyatka’s road will be different: “The steppe is wide and not measured by anyone. There are many roads and trails along it” (5, 221). One of them may be Dunyatkina.
Another landscape with “discolored gardens” blooming “in a milky pink, drunken color” and with “fine days”, with “sunny joy” in the story “Two Husband” (1925). The description of the July downpour is similar to the fate of Anna, who, like “a shutter torn off by a whirlwind” (5, 363), will toil between her unloved husband and Arseny.
The landscape in Sholokhov's stories allegorically introduces the reader into the plot of the story.
A distinctive feature of the landscape in Sholokhov’s works is self-repetition, which he was not at all afraid of (4, 14): his landscapes often “cossack”, the “blued ripples of the stirrup of the Don” “wander” from one work to another, the east wind in many works brings steep changes in the destinies of the Cossacks, and the steppe landscape is always main image in the description of nature.
III . CONCLUSION
The abstract examines the landscape originality in M. A. Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don” and the stories “The Fate of a Man”, “Alyoshka’s Heart”, “Crooked Stitch”, “Shepherd” and “Two-Married”.
After reading the works and studying the articles of some authors, we can draw the following conclusions:
The originality of the landscape in Sholokhov’s works lies in the use of poetic parallelism in the description and revelation of characters, internal states heroes;
The writer uses self-repetition when describing landscapes in various works;
In describing the landscape, Sholokhov uses various figurative and expressive means of language: epithets, metaphors, personifications, comparisons, anaphors.
In conclusion, we can say that M.A. Sholokhov is a singer of the steppe, who captivates his reader with a living description of the nature of the Don, a reader who has never seen it.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Demidova A.K. A manual on the Russian language. M.: Rus. language 1991.
2. Dictionary of the Russian language: In four volumes. T. III. ETC. M.: Russian language. 1983.
3. Khavruk I. I. Revealing the characters of Aksinya and Natalia in “Quiet Don” by Mikhail Sholokhov.” / Literature at school, 2003, No. 6.
4. Chalmaev V. A. Novels by Mikhail Sholokhov. "Internal Stories" moral problems, poetics. / Literature at school, 2003, No. 6.
5. Sholokhov M. A. Collected Works. T. 7. M.: Khudozh. Lit. 1986.
6. Sholokhov M.A. The fate of a person: M.: Det. Lit. 1981.
7. Sholokhov M. A. Quiet Don. Book 1-2. M.: Artist. lit. 1980.
8. Sholokhov M. A. Quiet Don. Book 3-4. M.: Artist. lit. 1980.
In terms of worldview, M.A. Sholokhov was an extremely reserved person and was in no hurry to open up to people. He preferred to express himself not in naked journalistic words, but in artistic words, which was his element. In response to the request of literary critic E. F. Nikitina to write his autobiography, Sholokhov replied: “My autobiography is in my books.” With all the more justification could Sholokhov say: “My confession of faith is in my books,” which he, in fact, proved with the epic “Quiet Don.”
Everyday life is reproduced in detail, a loving description of Don nature, which is perceived as full-fledged actor The novel's apt figurative speech, sparkling with humor, allows the reader to feel the peculiar charm of the Cossack way of life, to understand the essence of those traditions that have determined the life of a Cossack since ancient times. This is loyalty to the military duty of protecting the fatherland from the enemy and peaceful peasant labor to the seventh sweat, giving the farmer the opportunity to strengthen his farm, get married, raise children, who will have to go through the same clearly defined circle of life.
"Quiet Don" entered the history of Russian literature as a bright, significant work, revealing the tragedy of the Don Cossacks during the years of the revolution and civil war. The epic covers an entire decade - from 1912 to 1922. The beginning of the novel does not yet foreshadow the coming storms and upheavals.
The majestic, quiet Don calmly carries its waters, shimmering multi-colored paints azure steppe. The life of the Cossack farm of Tatarsky flows peacefully and calmly, interrupted only by rumors about the daring affair of the married soldier Aksinya Astakhova with Grishka Melekhov. A passionate, all-consuming feeling comes into conflict with the moral principles of Cossack antiquity. That is, already at the beginning of the novel we see a request for original, bright characters, complex and subtle relationships between the heroes, and their difficult destinies. It was in Gregory and Aksinya that the characteristic, typical features of the Cossacks, who had gone through a long and painful path of quest and mistakes, insights and losses, were most fully and deeply expressed.
Nature is constantly present in the action of the novel as an equal participant in events. The quiet Don becomes gloomy and stormy, the reeds can be a place for children to play or a refuge for warriors, the steppe is not always calm, it is terrible during a fire, which easily spreads to the blissful peace of wealthy farmsteads.
The central place in Sholokhov's epic is occupied by life path Gregory, the evolution of his character. Before our eyes, this restive, self-willed guy, cheerful and simple, is developing as a person. During the First World War, he fought bravely at the front, even receiving the St. George Cross. In this war, he honestly fulfilled his duty, because he was absolutely sure who his enemy was. But October Revolution and the civil war destroyed all his usual ideas about Cossack honor. He, like all the people of that turbulent and difficult era, had to make his choice - with whom should he go along the way? With the whites, who defend the old established legal order, seeking to restore the monarchy, or with the reds, who, on the contrary, want to destroy the old way of life to the ground in order to build a new life on its ruins.
Gregory serves either the Whites or the Reds. Like a real Cossack, who with his mother’s milk absorbed the traditions of this class, the hero stands up to defend the country, since, in his opinion, the Bolsheviks are not only encroaching on the shrine, but also tearing him off the ground. These thoughts worried not only Grigory, but also other Cossacks, who looked with pain at the unharvested wheat, unmown bread, empty threshing floors, thinking about how the women were straining themselves at back-breaking work while they were carrying out the senseless slaughter started by the Bolsheviks. But then Grigory has to witness the brutal reprisal of the whites against the Podtelkovo detachment, which causes him bitterness.
However, Grigory also remembers something else - how the same Podtelkov coldly destroyed white officers. Both there and here hatred, atrocities, cruelty, violence are disgusting, disgusting for the soul of a normal, good, honest man who wants to work on his land, raise children, love a woman. But in that perverted, vague world, such simple humanity is unattainable. And the hero is forced to live in a camp of hatred and death. He becomes embittered and falls into despair, realizing that, against his will, he is sowing death around himself. He is forcibly torn away from everything that is dear to his heart: home, family, loving people.
Instead of solid working life in the arable land and in the field he must kill people for ideas that he cannot understand and accept. Gregory rushes between warring camps, feeling the narrowness and limitations of the opposing ideas. He is acutely aware that “life is going wrong,” but he is unable to change it. Grigory understands that it is naive to cling to the old, tirelessly, like an ant, dragging everything into the house, taking advantage of the general devastation, as his father does. But at the same time, he cannot agree with the point of view of the proletarian, who invites him to give up everything and run to the Reds, because he has nothing, which means he has nothing to lose.
Gregory cannot so easily leave what he has earned through hard work, but he also does not want to isolate himself from the whole world and improve his life in small ways. He wants to get to the bottom of things, to understand what the forces are that have begun to control life. His tenacious, observant peasant gaze immediately notes the contrast between lofty communist slogans and real deeds: chrome boots of the red commander and the windings of the private "Vanka". If the only thing that catches your eye is the property stratification of the Red Army, then after Soviet authority takes root, equality will finally disappear. These ironic arguments of Melekhov amaze with the accuracy of his foresight, when a new ruling class was formed from Soviet officials - the party nomenklatura. But on the other hand, while serving in the White Army, it was painful and humiliating for Melekhov to hear the colonel’s contemptuous words about the people
Flipping through the pages of the epic novel, reading it, growing into the unusual way of Cossack life, you begin to understand that the descriptions of nature are still secondary and only once again emphasize the stylistic skill of the author. The main thing is the person. A man who strives to work on his land, raise children, love a woman in his “native steppe under the low Don sky.”
In "Virgin Soil Upturned" there is a lot picturesque paintings folk life, poetic descriptions of Don nature, unique humor. But despite this, the general flavor of the era depicted in the novel does not evoke an optimistic feeling. And not only because the pages of the novel, figuratively speaking, are drenched in blood: over the 8 months during which the action takes place, 11 people die, but because Sholokhov’s great artistic talent constantly came into conflict with the narrowness of the ideological scheme. The author even avoids talking about the specific results of the collective farm's activities.
For example, there is not a word about the harvest, that is, the author seems ashamed to loudly trumpet the “victory” of the collective farm system. Therefore, the idea of the triumph of the party’s policy in the countryside was created largely thanks to the title The Life of the Peasant was compared to raw, unplowed virgin soil, fraught with powerful forces and opportunities. Such forces certainly existed in society. And now they are making their way out to understand and rethink the tragedy of a turning point, which radically changed the existing way of life.
I would like to finish the essay by turning to a story, which would be more correctly called an epic, for what is “The Fate of a Man” if not an image of the fate of a people at a turning point? Andrei Sokolov represents the entire people. His confession forms the plot center of the work.
On the pages of the story two collide life positions. The first can be expressed in the words of Sokolov" "One is sick of smoking and dying." The second can be expressed in the words of Kryzhnev: "Your shirt is closer to your body." There is a clash between the idea of national unity and the idea that destroys this unity
An unconscious sense of self-worth forces the hero to do this and exactly that - “... although I was dying of hunger, I’m not going to choke on their handout, I have my own, Russian dignity and pride, and they did not turn me into a beast, no matter how hard they tried.”
The image of the steppe in M.A. Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don”
Our glorious little land is not plowed with plows... Our little land is plowed with horse hooves, But our glorious little land is sown with Cossack heads, Our quiet Don is decorated with young widows, Our quiet father is blooming with orphans, The wave in the quiet Don is filled with paternal and maternal tears. ..
Name M.A. Sholokhov is known to all mankind. Even opponents of socialism cannot deny his outstanding role in world literature of the 20th century. Sholokhov's works are likened to epochal frescoes. Penetration - this is the definition of Sholokhov's talent - skills. During the Great Patriotic War, the writer was faced with the task: to strike the enemy with his word full of burning hatred, to strengthen the love of the Motherland among Soviet people. In the early spring of 1946, i.e. in the first post-war spring, I met Sholokhov by chance on the road unknown person and heard his confession story. For ten years the writer nurtured the idea of the work, events became a thing of the past, and the need to speak out increased.
In terms of worldview, Sholokhov was an extremely reserved person and was in no hurry to open up to people. He preferred to express himself not in the journalistic word, but in the artistic word, which was his element.
A detailed depiction of everyday life, a loving description of Don nature, which is perceived as a full-fledged protagonist of the novel, apt figurative speech sparkling with humor, allow readers to feel the peculiar charm of the Cossack way of life, to understand the essence of those traditions that determined the life of a Cossack. This is loyalty to the military duty of protecting the fatherland from the enemy and peaceful peasant labor, which makes it possible to strengthen one’s farm, get married, and raise children who will have to go the same way.
“Quiet Don” entered the history of literature as a bright, significant work that reveals the tragedy of the Don Cossacks during the years of the revolution and civil war.
The heroes of "Quiet Don" are driven by great passions, lofty feelings and thoughts. They stand at the crossroads of the great roads of history, and hence the severity of the social conflicts into the abyss of which fate plunged them. But Sholokhov's heroes are not sandstones in this boiling whirlpool of Sholokhov modern world. / Ed. Ershova L.F., Kovaleva V.A. - L.: Leningrad University Publishing House, 1989. - p.-15.. This novel shocks readers with a storm of rebellious feelings, and in the finale - with catharsis that cleanses the soul. In this context, the image of the steppe helps to enhance precisely these feelings.
Recreation of personality harmoniously developed person Writers succeed when they portray a person who devotes himself to his work with all the passion of his nature, maintaining the liveliness and spontaneity of his personality and sensitively responding to the needs of society. In this Sholokhov has no equal. He knows how to depict the smallest overflows of love.
In Sholokhov, the powerful force of world life is manifested in every blade of grass; his heroes gain enormous vitality as a result of the fact that at every moment they feel and reveal this power, this charm of the world around them.
Sholokhov's powerful artistic spectrum is not without stylistic colors. The historical features in filling the metaphors of “The Quiet Don” are completely clear. Any element of figurative perception acquires a complex poetic sound in Sholokhov’s prose and is accentuated by the certainty of the poetic situation. Paths with a folklore origin resonate in a context that is staged higher than folklore, artistic form, generating a variety of metaphorical similarities.
Sholokhov’s main defining method of creating landscapes is the writer’s deepest understanding of the inextricable connection between Cossack grain growers and the nature around them, for whom it is fate, giving harvests and the joys of life or bringing grief, hunger and lack of food. Organic addiction agricultural labor by nature caused the appearance huge amount various signs, expressed by the author in truly poetic forms. Sholokhov's descriptions of nature are often given through the prism of folk poetic traditions and indicate the deepest connection of his style with folklore.
Nature is constantly present in the action of the novel. The quiet Don becomes gloomy and stormy, the reeds can be a place for children to play or a refuge for warriors, the steppe is not always calm. It is terrible during a fire, which easily spreads to the peace of wealthy farmsteads.
Many heartfelt words have been said by writers, critics, and literary historians about the captivating beauty of Sholokhov’s landscapes. However, no one has given a complete and comprehensive study of the language and style of landscapes and, in particular, the steppe.
The specificity of the language and style of Sholokhov’s landscapes depends on their purpose in his works. The ideological, aesthetic and stylistic functions of landscapes are extremely diverse. Depending on the role of landscapes in the system of the work, the composition of the vocabulary, grammatical (syntactic) design and their general tonality change. Taking into account the various functions of the steppe in Sholokhov’s work, several types can be distinguished: exposition, evaluation, leitmotif and symbolic.
The exposition characterizes the scene in the broadest sense of the word. In addition, such descriptions of the steppe often contain quite definite hints of historical time during which the action of the novel develops. As a rule, these types of descriptions appear at the very beginning of a novel or a new chapter: “...A steep eight-fathom descent between mossy green chalk blocks, and here is the shore: a mother-of-pearl scattering of shells, a gray broken border of pebbles kissed by the waves, and beyond - a blued water boiling under the wind ripples in the stirrup of the Don" Sholokhov M.A. Collected works: In 7 volumes - M.: Education, 1985..
We can see a similar landscape in chapter 10 of the 2nd part of “Quiet Don”: “Veshenskaya - all covered in yellow sand. A gloomy, bald village with no gardens.”
The landscape that opens the 4th part indicates not only the place, but also the time of action: “One thousand nine hundred and sixteen. October. Night. Rain. Wind. Polesie. Trenches over a swamp overgrown with alder."
A characteristic feature of the language of the above landscapes is extreme laconicism, verbless construction of sentences, and almost continuous nominative constructions. In the depths of their structure, as a result of extreme lexical-semantic and syntactic conciseness, there seems to be a lot of hidden intense energy, which should set the reader up to perceive the thought - the feeling that the work is about something significant, about people whose destinies took shape here, were formed under the influence of this time.
Evaluativeness is inherent in many landscapes in a more or less expressed form, but there are examples in which this particular goal predominates - to express the author’s assessment of the event, to convey the feelings of the lyrical hero and to instill these feelings in the reader. As a rule, we can see these landscapes from Sholokhov in cases where life situation is such that it is impossible, without violating the truth, to convey the horror of what is happening with a simple nomination or even an indirect description. In these cases, the author follows the tradition of folk poetic tales and songs, where instead of describing a feeling, a picture of nature is given by Privalov M.I. Stylistics of M.A. Sholokhov’s works. - L.: Leningrad State University, 1983..
The selection of vocabulary and syntactic organization of phrases in these descriptions differ sharply from expositional ones. Here there is an abundance of adjectives and adverbs of an evaluative nature: starless night, wolfish; purple steppe, drunken smell, short moaning cry, hoarse and hysterical, etc. Words are often used figuratively - metaphorically, and metaphors seem to permeate the entire fabric of the landscape: the night did not come, but fell, epithets often also appear as part of metaphors. The phrase is amazing in its semantic and emotional capacity: “Beyond the Don the purple steppe has faded.” Night falls in folk poetry always symbolizes something sorrowful, sad, alarming, but here the steppe has not just darkened, it has faded, and besides, it is “purple.” The unusual color scheme of the steppe twilight intensifies anxiety and grief. Syntactically, all sentences are organized as complete sentences with a verbal predicate, with a special, often strongly inverted word order, which creates a peculiar rhythmicity and melody of the entire text. It is also necessary to note a detail characteristic of folk poetry: the repetition of prepositions, which creates additional colors of rhythm and melody.
Landscape - a cross-cutting detail most often accompanies the main character and people close to him at turning points in their lives. This is clearly visible in “Quiet Don”, where images of a dark, black sky, black wormwood, black scorched steppe with the final “black disk of the sun” accompany the fate of Grigory Melekhov, sometimes Natalya and Aksinya throughout the novel.
“Towards the evening a thunderstorm gathered. A brown cloud appeared over the farm. The Don, tousled by the wind, threw ridged frequent waves onto the shore. Behind the levadas, dry lightning scorched the sky, thunder crushed the earth with rare peals. Under a cloud, a kite wheeled open, and was chased by crows, screaming. The cloud, breathing a chill, moved along the Don, from the west. Behind the loan, the sky turned black menacingly, the steppe was silent expectantly.” Sholokhov M.A. Collected works: In 7 volumes - M.: Enlightenment, 1985. As you can see, this description is permeated with the expectation of something terrible and inevitable.
“In the evening (Grigory) sat under the windmill, smoking in his sleeve... Aksinya did not walk. In the west, in the lilac dull gilding, lay the sunset; from the east, the wind was strong and fast, and the darkness was approaching, driving away the moon stuck in the willows. Ore, in blue smudges, the sky darkened corpse-like above the windmill...”
In the second and third books of Quiet Don, such landscapes are much shorter, but are even more closely intertwined with the fate of the main character. Next, as a result, there is a lyrical digression, in which Sholokhov with amazing skill used the technique of improperly direct speech, merging traditionally poetic and folklore symbols in a single stream.
"Frightening silence, short days under the outcome seemed large, as in time of suffering. The farmsteads became deserted virgin steppes. It was as if the entire Obdon region had died out, as if a pestilence had devastated the village yurts. And it became as if a cloud had covered the Obdon River with a thick, impenetrable black wing, spread out silently and fearfully, and was about to crush the poplars to the ground with a whirlwind, a crackling clap of thunder, and would begin to destroy and mutilate the white forest beyond the Don, shower white stone from the chalk spurs, roar with the deadly voices of the storm.
In the morning, fog covered the ground in Tatarskoye. The mountain was humming towards the frost. By noon, the sun was emerging from the flimsy darkness, but this did not make it any brighter. And the fog wandered lostly through the heights of the Obdon mountains, fell into the ravines, into the spurs and died there, settling as wet dust on the mossy flagstones of the chalk, on the snow-covered bare ridges.
In the evenings, from behind the spears of the bare forest, the night raised the red-hot huge shield of the month. It shone dimly over the quiet villages with the bloody reflections of war and fires. And from its merciless, unfading light, inarticulate anxiety was born in people, cattle were tired...”
This symbolic landscape precedes the retreat of the Upper Don Cossacks after the defeat of the Veshensky uprising.
For Sholokhov, artistic perfection, plasticity of images and lively expressiveness of language are the decisive motive for evaluation, no matter who or what we are talking about. Proficient in various instruments, last book Sholokhov’s “Quiet Don” creates a tragic landscape with a note of bitter irony: “...wind-caressed grass rustled, larks sang in the flowing haze, and, affirming human greatness in nature, somewhere far, far away along the dry land persistently, angrily and the machine gun was making a dull thud" Sholokhov M.A. Collected works: In 7 volumes - M.: Education, 1985..
Throughout the entire novel, about twenty times the fate of the main character is accompanied by variations in the image of the dark, black sky over the steppe; dark, black cloud, black wing of death, black sun. For Sholokhov, this is not an accident, but a way to express through nature the state of either the main character, or events that should happen in the near future. It has great importance in creating a complex, contradictory image of Grigory Melekhov, the emotional atmosphere around him, in revealing the author’s attitude towards him.
Outwardly, it seems obvious to use the national symbolism of black (dark) color as an expression of sadness and mourning. Therefore, it is not surprising that these tones in the description of both the steppe and natural phenomena accompany Gregory throughout the novel, as if foreshadowing the tragedy of his fate. The role of these stable images in their artistic and stylistic function can be compared with the role of a move in a classical tragedy, since their deep layer contains the author’s, fundamentally popular, assessment of the hero’s fate.
The linguistic structure of these descriptions is quite complex and varied, but they can also highlight common features, characteristic of different periods creativity, and features reflecting the general evolution of the novel's style.
Descriptions of the “through detail” type are dynamic and rich in verbal vocabulary; a significant number of words are marked by features of bookish and folk poetic styles of speech; vocabulary of extremely intense semantics often appears, completing the circle evaluative vocabulary, quite abundantly represented in these contexts. In the descriptions of pictures of nature, figurative and expressive means of Russian literary language and folklore symbols.
The evolution of styles of describing nature of this type concerns, first of all, the ways of connecting the description with the actions and behavior of the main character. At first, the landscapes are more independent, they seem to be detached from the hero, they are only the objective background of the action, sometimes the reason, the circumstances. Starting from the third book, descriptions of nature are given in the direct perception of Gregory, often as his memories, they are colored by the subjective feelings of the hero and, finally, turn into a symbolic landscape.
Such a symbol is a comparison and completes the hero’s fate: “In early spring, when the snow melts and the grass that has fallen over the winter dries up, fires begin in the steppe. The fire, driven by the wind, flows in streams, it greedily devours the dry Arzhan, takes off along the high ridges of the tartar forest, slides along the brown tops of the Chernobyl, spreads along the lowlands... And where the fires passed, the dead, charred earth turns ominously black. Birds do not nest on it, animals avoid it, only the wind, winged and fast, flies over it and carries the bluish and acrid dark dust far away. Like a steppe scorched by fires, Gregory’s life became black...”
The choice of vocabulary in this passage and its syntactic organization borders on high poetry, reminiscent of poetic speech, in no way inferior to the subtlest, piercing lyricism of the best examples of Russian classical poetry. In full accordance with the aesthetic laws of oral folk poetry, Sholokhov depicts the fate of his heroes.
The landscape - leitmotif is reminiscent of a musical introduction, since it seems to contain voices, parts of the main characters opposing in the work. Such a landscape, as a rule, combines an extremely accurate description of the surroundings and an extreme generalization. This generalization in the descriptions of nature in “Quiet Don” is especially pronounced in symbolic landscapes.
Sholokhov’s landscapes and descriptions of the steppe remain multifunctional, and if you analyze “Quiet Don”, you can see an in-depth depiction of the psychology of the heroes, which is given with the help of descriptions of nature.
The novel under review shows that the style of landscapes depends on the functions that a particular landscape performs in the system of the work, and “Sholokhov’s synthesized verbal landscape also corresponds to generalized images of psychological exposures. He writes about the dramatic experiences not of an individual, but of an entire people: deeply personal experiences are refracted into eternally human ones. He creates specific psychological symbols of the era” Mikhail Sholokhov. Sat. articles and materials. / Ed. Larina B.A. - L.: Leningrad State University Publishing House, 1986. .
– 2015 –
I see a white wind over the river.
It turned into clouds.
He is so swift and bright.
His road is high.
Here is the shore. The wind there is green.
There are traces of him in all the meadows.
He joined the joyful crowns,
Burst into ripe gardens.
And I go out into the field - the wind is red
It is firmly fused with the sunrise.
It will drown out any colors,
The whole thing is just turned towards the sky.
The blue is trembling with tension,
Raised towards the sun.
And the winds - eternal movement -
It contains all the colors.
The nature of the Don is a quiet and distant steppe. Its open spaces act as individual characters in the works of Mikhail Sholokhov. The writer with trepidation and love describes the Cossack lands, full of freedom, radiant sun, fields, ripe gardens... It is here that one feels the complete unity of man with nature - the ideal of the writer himself.
Mikhail Alexandrovich's landscapes are multifaceted. They create a holistic picture of the world, complement the sense of reality of what is happening, and enliven the pages of Sholokhov’s works. Even when describing military operations in his works, the classic draws the reader's attention to the piercing wind and drizzling rain, frosty blue fog and something rumbling in the distance... It would seem that at first glance such a trifle, but it is precisely this that helps the author anticipate upcoming events and prepare the reader for the perception of subsequent ones stories.
Sholokhov's landscapes help not only to convey the movement of time. Often they are one of the means of describing inner world heroes. The landscape seems to be in tune with their mood and experiences.
« A piece of clear sky peeking through the fog blinded her with cold blue; the smell of rotten straw and thawed black soil was so familiar and pleasant that Aksinya took a deep breath and smiled from the corners of her lips; the simple song of a lark, coming from somewhere in the foggy steppe, awakened an unconscious sadness in her».
Sholokhov's landscapes of the Don are colorful and multicolored: peeking through the bare branches"green-covered horn of the month" snow drifts “they shine with a blinding, unbearable shine”, “the amber streak of frozen glue glows dimly on the cherry tree trunk”, winter night “Thick blue shadows are spilled across the weeds,”sometimes dissipate in spring"pink mists" in the summer heat “the brown hairs of the tartar tree gloomily droop to the ground,” “tufts of yellow fluffy feather grass spread,”charred under the sun, frightening"the dead blackness of the arable land."
But Sholokhov is not limited to visual perception external beauty the surrounding world. He always conveys the life of nature, hears its multi-voiced sounds: from the severe February frosts“at night the earth bursts loudly”, “the spring stream rings and murmurs magically, flowing into the river”;can be heard in the spring“the sound of an early lark and the alluring click of a crane station”;in the summer, before the rain,“the gophers whistled anxiously, the quail fight sounded more clearly,” “the steppe was filled with the dry murmur of last year’s weeds,” “the stubble bristled and rustled,” “thunder struck with a deafening, dry crack.”
The writer keenly feels and subtly conveys the various smells of the nature of his Don, capturing“the faintly distinct smell of cherry bark,” the subtlest breath of frost-scorched wormwood,”sickly sweet,“the honeyed aroma of swelling poplar buds,” “the fresh smell of drying earth and the unfermented grape spirit of young herbs.”
Sholokhov's Don landscapes are lyrical, emotional, imbued with the feeling of the patriotic writer's excited love for his Motherland. Descriptions of nature often develop into lyrical author’s appeals to the reader:“Listen to the imaginary silence of the night, and you will hear, friend, how a feeding hare gnaws and scrapes a branch with its teeth yellow from tree sap.”
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov humanizes nature, conveys every change in its mood. In every lyrical digression one can feel the classic's love for open spaces, for native land, to every blade of grass, to every leaf. “Man is nature itself, and we are inseparable from it,” the author believed.The writer in his works about the Don regions shows that if a person is merged with native nature, he draws his mental strength, otherwise: he dies.
- Nesterova E. Colored winds of the Don / E. Nesterova // Dewy morning. Rostov-on-Don: Book Publishing House, 1966. – p.179.
- M.A. Sholokhov. Quiet Don. In two volumes. Volume 1. – M.: Bustard, Veche, 2003. – p.688.
- http://mysoch.ru/sochineniya/sholohov/_self/sholohovskie_peizazhi/ − Sholokhov landscapes.
- Sholokhov M. M. About his father. Essays and memoirs different years. − M.: Soviet writer, 2004. − p. 118.
The problem of artistic understanding of the landscape in Mikhail Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Don"
Chapter 1. Landscape and historical events in the "Quiet Don"
Mikhail Sholokhov is an active participant in the revolution and civil war. I myself went through its crucible and saw all the horror of revolutionary achievements. Although he was on the side of the revolutionary masses, in his novel he truthfully, without embellishment, captured the tragedy of the events of this time. According to M. Sholokhov, war is a “great destruction of morality,” a tragedy of the people, a blasphemy against morality, reason, it is inhumane, entails the destruction of families, war, according to Sholokhov, “is in mud, in suffering, in death.” In turn, L.N. Tolstoy expressed own opinion in the words of his hero: “War is not a courtesy, but the most disgusting thing in life, and we must understand this and not play at war. We must take this terrible necessity strictly and seriously. That’s all there is to it: throw away the lies, and war is war, not toy. The purpose of the war is murder, the weapons of war are espionage, treason and its encouragement, the ruin of the inhabitants, robbing them or stealing for food for the army, the morals of the military class are the lack of freedom. They will come together, like tomorrow, to kill each other, kill, maim tens of thousands people, and then they will serve thanksgiving prayers for the fact that they beat many people, and proclaim victory, believing that the more people are beaten, the greater the merit. How God looks and listens to them from there."
The nature of the quiet Don, the distant steppe and open spaces appear as separate characters in Sholokhov's novel "Quiet Don". The writer lovingly describes those Cossack lands, full of freedom, radiant sun, fields, where one feels the complete unity of man with nature - the ideal of the writer himself.
Sholokhov's landscape creates a picture of the world and complements the sense of reality of what is happening. During military operations, the writer focuses on the drizzling rain, the piercing wind, something rumbling nearby, and a frosty bluish fog. The description of nature anticipates the approaching events of the novel and prepares the reader to perceive the grandiose subsequent changes. For example, a description of the borderline state of nature, frozen in “waiting” for the Upper Don uprising. But in the last part of the novel, “the world appeared different, wonderfully renewed and seductive; a piece of clear sky, glimpsed through the fog, blinded with cold blue...” Sholokhov more than once compares the “majestically outstretched” dove sky, full of boundless expanses, with the seething life on earth, hinting at thought about eternal life, eternal confrontation.
The title of the novel itself is symbolic and ambiguous. Quiet - “majestic”, the Don is only outwardly calm and quiet, in fact the river is full of whirlpools and pitfalls. The life of the heroes is like the flow of a river, which Sholokhov proves in his epic. But at the same time, no matter how life changes, there is something eternal, immortal in it. The events of history and the fates of the heroes change, but every year the steppe blooms, the cold comes and goes, the quiet Don flows into eternity. In this, Sholokhov philosophizes that nature and man are closely connected with each other, and this connection is shown especially clearly in Sholokhov’s novel “Quiet Don”.
Sholokhov reflected all his experiences during the war, the severity of wartime, in the landscape. For example, “Where the battles were going on, shells tore up the gloomy face of the earth with smallpox: fragments of cast iron and steel rusted in it, yearning for human blood. At night, behind the horizon, handy scarlet glows stretched to the sky, villages, towns, and towns blazed with lightning. In August - when the fruit ripens and the bread is ripe - the sky turned unsmilingly grey, the rare fine days were tormented by steamy heat... In the gardens the leaf turned richly yellow, from the cuttings it was filled with a dying crimson, and from a distance it seemed that the trees were in lacerated wounds and bleeding with ore tree blood."
Thanks to metaphors and vivid personifications, one gets the feeling that nature itself is participating in the war.
Another example of mutual influence is how military events affect the natural world (5 hours): “A thin yellow-brown goat jumped out of a gulley overgrown with tartar and thorns, looked from the hillock at the choppers for several seconds, tensely moved her thin, chiseled legs<…>- What is this thing? - Matvey Kashulin asked, dropping the ax. With inexplicable delight, Christonya barked at the entire enchanted and silent forest: “A goat, then!” Wild goat, grow her mercy! We saw them in the Carpathians! - So the war drove her, the unfortunate thing, to our steppes? Christone had no choice but to agree.” And, in general, the war in “TD” violates the harmony that, according to Shlokhov, should exist between man and nature.
Sholokhov repeatedly contrasts the world of war and death with the natural world of nature (end of book 2, after describing the funeral): “And yet - in May they fought near the little bustard chapel, knocked out a point in the blue wormwood, crushed a green spill of ripening wheatgrass near it: they fought for the female, for the right to life, to love, to reproduce. And a little later, right next to the chapel, under a hummock, under the shaggy cover of old wormwood, the female little bustard laid nine smoky blue spotted eggs and sat on them, warming them with the warmth of her body, protecting the glossy feathered wing."
After the funeral of Sashka’s grandfather - a fragment that shows the “boil of life” + the image of the sky (roll call with “V. and M.”): “Dejected by memories, Grigory lay down on the grass not far from this small cemetery dear to his heart and looked for a long time at the majestically outstretched above him there is a blue sky. Somewhere there, in the highest boundless expanses, the winds were blowing, cold clouds illuminated by the sun were floating, and on the earth, which had just received the cheerful horseman and drunkard Grandfather Sashka, life was still boiling furiously: in the steppe, in a green flood approaching the garden itself, in the thickets of wild hemp near the spinning of the old threshing floor, the rattling shot of a quail fight incessantly sounded, gophers whistled, bumblebees buzzed, wind-caressed grass rustled, larks sang in the flowing haze, and, affirming human greatness in nature, somewhere far away - Far along the dry land the machine gun was hammering persistently, angrily and dully."
The beginning of the First World War is foreshadowed in the novel by an alarming summer landscape, making you remember “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” Autumn is the time of the bloody harvest in the novel: “August was drawing to a close. In the gardens, the leaves were turning richly yellow, from the cuttings they were filled with a dying crimson, and from a distance it looked like the trees had lacerations and were bleeding with ore-like tree blood.” It seems that not only Russians and Germans, red and white, but nature itself is in a state of war.
The inseparability of the Cossack way of life and nature is manifested in the following. Cossacks largely depend on the state of nature. Crop failures, droughts, frosts, fires - all this affects the life of the Cossacks. Therefore, they appreciate nature, its beauty, and subtly feel it with all their souls. An example of this is how Grigory Melekhov treated the dead duckling he killed. “Gregory looked with a sudden feeling of acute pity at the dead lump lying in his palm.” Nature anticipated any change in people's lives. And it is by describing the landscape that Sholokhov warns of danger. Through the state of nature, he foresees those events that must inevitably come to the life of the Cossacks. The environment surrounding the Cossacks anticipates the onset of war. Nature is changing dramatically. “The Don was shallow in front of the farm, and where previously a crazy stirrup had rushed, a forest formed... At night, clouds thickened behind the Don, thunderclaps burst dryly and loudly, but the rain did not fall to the ground, bursting with hot heat, lightning burned in vain, breaking the sky in sharp-angled blue edges."
Sholokhov's landscape in the novel is always connected with a number of events in the novel: events in the lives of people and in the life of nature are presented in unity, the world of people and the world of nature are interpreted by the author as a single stream of life. A finely outlined picture of nature - “And spring that year shone with unprecedented colors” - evokes thoughts of the monstrous absurdity of bloodshed, conceals a condemnation of the inhumanity of war.
landscape quiet Don Sholokhov
Through the landscape, Sholokhov reflects the image of the main character - Grigory Melekhov. Land and labor on it, military duty, farmstead, kuren - these are the components spiritual world Cossack, these are the conditions that shaped the character of Gregory. The author reveals love for all living things, an acute sense of other people’s pain, and the ability for compassion throughout the novel. Speaking about the character of the main character, it is worth noting his characteristic feeling of an inextricable connection with the world around him: “Gregory stood by the water for a long time. The shore breathed so damp and fresh. Fractional drops fell from the horse’s lips. There was a sweet emptiness in Gregory’s heart.” A subtle sense of nature is also heard in Gregory’s direct speech: “Your hair smells like a bad drunk. You know, like such a white flower...”
In most cases, landscape inserts are found at the beginning of the chapters, i.e. the description of nature, as a rule, precedes the description of human actions. Quite often, changes in nature anticipate future changes in people's lives. So, for example, we see an omen of the First World War in the following fragment: “At night, clouds thickened over the Don, thunderclaps burst dryly and loudly, but rain did not fall to the ground, bursting with feverish heat; lightning burned idle, breaking the sky into sharp-angled blue edges ". At night, an owl roared over the bell tower. Unsteady and terrible cries hung over the farmstead, and the owl flew from the bell tower to the cemetery, fossilized by calves, moaning over the brown, grassy graves. “It will be bad,” the old people prophesied, hearing owl voices from the cemetery. “War.” will catch you."
With similar fragments of the novel in mind, L.P. Egorova and P.K. Chekalov write that “in Sholokhov, the historical, social is combined with the natural - the “steppe cosmos.” Sholokhov scholars, following Bakhtin, define epic time and epic space in the first book of “Quiet Don” as an “idyllic chronotope”, when the life of the Cossacks is presented in its natural, manifestations close to nature, and the everyday way of life is inextricably linked with the natural cycle."
The echo between the events of the natural world and the events of the human world is often expressed in the novel in the form of direct parallelism or comparison: “It smelled of melted black soil, it smelled of the blood of close battles,” “like a steppe scorched by black fires, Gregory’s life became black.”
The writer notices the moments when the perception of nature becomes especially acute and impressionable, as if seen for the first time. It is enough to recall the most tragic episodes of the novel: the brutal murder of the Red commander Likhachev by the Cossacks. Going to his death, he sees the beauty of the spring forest. Passing by a birch tree, he plucked a branch: “The brown buds, sweet with the March juice, were already swelling on it; their subtle, barely intelligible aroma promised spring blossoming, life repeating itself under the circle of the sun... Likhachev put the plump buds into his mouth, chewed them, looked with misty eyes at the departing from the frost, the trees became lighter and he smiled with the corner of his unshaven lips." Is it possible to imagine a situation more tragic than this, when a person with such attachment to the natural beauty of life must leave it forever? Pictures of reprisals against communists and Red Army soldiers who fell to the whites were in many books. But it usually depicted the act of violence itself. Sholokhov approached this as a psychologist. Pictures of nature free the writer from the need to give direct authorial characteristics of the characters.
In the story about historical events landscape plays a multifunctional role: it is one of the main means of depicting, analyzing and generalizing reality, the most important means of embodying the author’s concept of history. Consideration of the meaning and role of nature paintings in the historical plot allows us to assert that Sholokhov was not a dispassionate chronicler. The main meaning of the epic novel "Quiet Don" is true portrayal tragic destinies people and Motherland during the revolution and fratricidal civil war. The catastrophic nature of the depicted era is embodied in extremely expressive forms landscape painting, to which we include landscapes-omens, landscapes containing epic parallels and contrasts, saturated with color, light and Christian symbolism.
"Russian revolt, senseless and merciless" in Russian literature XIX-XX centuries based on the works of A.S. Pushkin" Captain's daughter" and M.A. Sholokhov "Quiet Don"
“The Captain's Daughter” is a historical story written in the form of memoirs. In this story, the author painted a picture of a spontaneous peasant revolt. Why does Pushkin turn to the history of the Pugachev uprising? The thing is...
“Karamzin was not the first to discover for Russia the sentimentalism that was associated with his name. He achieved, however, the greatest crystallization of this style, made it a common property, achieved its victory. He associated an entire movement with his name...
Seasons. Analysis of the works of N.M. Karamzin
A dull landscape is a true child of sentimentalism. Otherwise, this landscape can be called elegiac - it is closely related to the complex of those sad-dreamy motifs that make up genre feature elegies...
Seasons. Analysis of the works of N.M. Karamzin
Depicts pictures of nature in winter. In contrast to the ideal landscape, the components of a formidable, or stormy, poetic landscape are shifted from their usual place. Rivers, clouds, trees - everything is rushing beyond its limit with an obsessively violent...
Seasons. Analysis of the works of N.M. Karamzin
Man is a part of Nature; they cannot be separated. In the poem "Recovery" lyrical hero glorifies his tender mother Nature for the restored life...
Genre originality Shakespearean plays
Mine creative path writer, Shakespeare began by creating historical plots. Of everything creative heritage Shakespeare has 37 plays, 10 of them are dedicated to the history of his country. "Shakespearean Chronicles - artistic genre, characteristic of the era...
Historical songs of the 17th century, their place in folklore
Historical songs are folk epic, lyric-epic and lyrical songs, the content of which is dedicated to specific events and real persons of Russian history and expresses the national interests and ideals of the people...
Komi-Permyak epic. Tales of Pere-Bogatyr
The Komi were considered state peasants; they did not know the horrors of serfdom. However, like other peoples of Russia, they experienced social and national oppression. The North, including the Komi region, has been for many centuries a place...
Lyceum years of Pushkin
A unique school of education, the formation of patriotic feelings and ardent love for the Motherland among lyceum students was Patriotic War 1812. When the regiments going to war passed through Tsarskoye Selo...
Memoirs of Marshal G.K. Zhukova as historical source
Stalin appointed Zhukov commander of the Kyiv Military District (from June 1940). A separate chapter is devoted to this page in Marshal’s life in his memoirs. We were talking about the then largest military district in the USSR, located on the western borders...
Images of the Russian nobility in the novel by A.S. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter"
Of course, all nobles swore allegiance to the empress. This means that they are obliged to protect her and her throne from all kinds of attacks. Grinev does just that. Following his father’s behest: “Take care of your honor from a young age”...
Semiotics of Udmurt ditties of the Soviet period
The twenties in the history of Udmurtia are rich in significant and dramatic events. The main one is the legal and actual registration of statehood of the Udmurt people on November 4, 1920. Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V.I. Lenin and Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR M.I...
Folklore motives and landscape in the story by I.S. Turgenev "Bezhin Meadow"
As mentioned above, the landscape occupies important place both in the entire “Notes of a Hunter” cycle, and in the story “Bezhin Meadow” in particular. In the story “Bezhin Meadow” there are several sketches describing nature...
Functions of landscape in the prose of Yu. Kazakov
Landscape is one of the components of the world literary work, an image of an open space (Sebina, 2000. P.228). Traditionally, landscape is understood as an image of nature, for example, landscape is an image of pictures of nature...
Characteristic properties of the landscape
Landscape (French paysage from pays - country, area) is one of the content and compositional elements of a literary work, performing many functions depending on the style of the author, literary direction(current) with which he is connected...
