Stories as a literary genre. What is a story? Genre uniqueness of the story Genre characteristics of the story

The short story genre is one of the most popular in literature. Many writers turned to him and continue to turn to him. After reading this article, you will learn what the features of the short story genre are, examples of the most famous works, as well as popular mistakes that authors make.

A short story is one of the small literary forms. It is a short narrative work with a small number of characters. In this case, short-term events are depicted.

A Brief History of the Short Story Genre

V. G. Belinsky (his portrait is presented above) back in the 1840s distinguished the essay and story as small prose genres from the story and novel as larger ones. Already at this time, the predominance of prose over poetry was fully evident in Russian literature.

A little later, in the 2nd half of the 19th century, the essay received the widest development in the democratic literature of our country. At this time, there was an opinion that it was documentary that distinguished this genre. The story, as it was believed then, is created using creative imagination. According to another opinion, the genre we are interested in differs from the essay in the conflicting nature of the plot. After all, an essay is characterized by the fact that it is mainly a descriptive work.

Unity of time

In order to more fully characterize the short story genre, it is necessary to highlight the patterns inherent in it. The first of them is the unity of time. In a story, the time of action is always limited. However, not necessarily only one day, as in the works of classicists. Although this rule is not always followed, it is rare to find stories in which the plot covers the entire life of the main character. Even less often are works created in this genre, the action of which lasts for centuries. Usually the author depicts some episode from the life of his hero. Among the stories in which the entire fate of the character is revealed, one can note “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (author Leo Tolstoy) and “Darling” by Chekhov. It also happens that not the whole life is represented, but a long period of it. For example, in Chekhov's "The Jumper" a number of significant events in the fate of the heroes, their environment, and the difficult development of relationships between them are depicted. However, this is given in an extremely condensed and condensed manner. It is the conciseness of the content, greater than in the story, that is the general feature of the story and, perhaps, the only one.

Unity of action and place

There are other features of the short story genre that need to be noted. The unity of time is closely connected and conditioned by another unity - action. A short story is a genre of literature that should be limited to describing a single event. Sometimes one or two events become the main, meaning-forming, culminating events in it. This is where the unity of the place comes from. Usually the action takes place in one place. There may be not one, but several, but their number is strictly limited. For example, there may be 2-3 places, but 5 are already rare (they can only be mentioned).

Character unity

Another feature of the story is the unity of the character. As a rule, in the space of a work of this genre there is one main character. Occasionally there may be two of them, and very rarely – several. As for the secondary characters, there can be quite a lot of them, but they are purely functional. A short story is a genre of literature in which the task of the secondary characters is limited to creating the background. They can hinder or help the main character, but nothing more. In the story "Chelkash" by Gorky, for example, there are only two characters. And in Chekhov’s “I Want to Sleep” there is only one, which is impossible neither in a story nor in a novel.

Unity of the center

The characteristics of a story as a genre, listed above, one way or another come down to the unity of the center. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine a story without some defining, central sign that “pulls together” all the others. It doesn’t matter at all whether this center will be some static descriptive image, a climactic event, the development of the action itself, or a significant gesture of the character. The main character must be in any story. It is due to him that the entire composition is held together. It sets the theme of the work and determines the meaning of the story being told.

The basic principle of constructing a story

The conclusion from thinking about “unities” is not difficult to draw. The thought naturally suggests itself that the main principle of constructing the composition of a story is the expediency and economy of motives. Tomashevsky called the smallest element of the text structure a motive. It could be an action, a character, or an event. This structure can no longer be decomposed into components. This means that the author’s greatest sin is excessive detail, oversaturation of the text, a pile-up of details that can be omitted when developing this genre of work. The story should not dwell on details.

You need to describe only the most significant things to avoid a common mistake. It is very typical, oddly enough, for people who are very conscientious about their works. They have a desire to express themselves to the maximum in each text. Young directors often do the same thing when they stage their graduation films and performances. This is especially true for films, since the author’s imagination in this case is not limited to the text of the play.

Imaginative authors love to fill the literary genre of the story with descriptive motifs. For example, they depict how the main character of the work is being chased by a pack of cannibal wolves. However, if dawn begins, they always stop at describing long shadows, dim stars, reddened clouds. The author seemed to admire nature and only then decided to continue the chase. The fantasy story genre gives maximum scope to the imagination, so avoiding this mistake is not at all easy.

The role of motives in the story

It must be emphasized that in the genre that interests us, all motives should reveal the theme and work towards meaning. For example, the gun described at the beginning of the work must certainly fire in the finale. Motives that lead astray should not be included in the story. Or you need to look for images that outline the situation, but do not overly detail it.

Features of the composition

It should be noted that it is not necessary to adhere to traditional methods of constructing a literary text. Breaking them can be spectacular. A story can be created almost on descriptions alone. But it’s still impossible to do without action. The hero simply must at least raise his hand, take a step (in other words, make a significant gesture). Otherwise, the result will not be a story, but a miniature, a sketch, a poem in prose. Another important feature of the genre that interests us is a meaningful ending. For example, a novel can last forever, but a story is constructed differently.

Very often its ending is paradoxical and unexpected. It was with this that Lev Vygotsky associated the emergence of catharsis in the reader. Modern researchers (in particular, Patrice Pavy) view catharsis as an emotional pulsation that appears as one reads. However, the significance of the ending remains the same. The ending can radically change the meaning of the story and prompt a rethinking of what is stated in it. This must be remembered.

The place of the story in world literature

The short story is an epic genre that occupies an important place in world literature. Gorky and Tolstoy turned to him both in their early and mature periods of creativity. Chekhov's short story is his main and favorite genre. Many stories have become classics and, along with major epic works (stories and novels), are included in the treasury of literature. Such are, for example, Tolstoy’s stories “Three Deaths” and “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, Turgenev’s “Notes of a Hunter”, Chekhov’s works “Darling” and “Man in a Case”, Gorky’s stories “Old Woman Izergil”, “Chelkash”, etc.

Advantages of the short story over other genres

The genre that interests us allows us to highlight particularly clearly this or that typical case, this or that aspect of our life. It makes it possible to depict them so that the reader's attention is completely focused on them. For example, Chekhov, describing Vanka Zhukov with a letter “to his grandfather in the village,” full of childish despair, dwells in detail on the contents of this letter. It will not reach its destination and because of this it becomes especially strong from the point of view of exposure. In the story “The Birth of Man” by M. Gorky, the episode with the birth of a child, which occurs on the road, helps the author in revealing the main idea - affirming the value of life.

The story is a small literary form; a narrative work of small volume with a small number of characters and the short duration of the events depicted. Or according to the “Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary” by V.M. Kozhevnikov and P.A. Nikolaev: “A small epic genre form of fiction is a prose work that is small in terms of the volume of depicted phenomena of life, and hence in terms of the volume of text. In the 1840s, when the unconditional predominance of prose over poetry in Russian literature was fully evident, V.G. Belinsky already distinguished the story and essay as small genres of prose from the novel and story as larger ones.In the second half of the 19th century, when essay works received the widest development in Russian democratic literature, there was an opinion that this genre is always documentary, while stories are created on the basis of creative imagination. In another opinion, a story differs from an essay in the conflicting nature of its plot, while an essay is a primarily descriptive work."

There is another type of short prose work - a short story. Unlike the story - a genre of new literature at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries, which highlights the visual and verbal texture of the narrative and gravitates towards detailed characteristics - the short story is the art of plot in its purest form, which developed in ancient times in close connection with ritual magic and myths, addressed primarily to the active, rather than contemplative, side of human existence. The novelistic plot, built on sharp antitheses and metamorphoses, on the sudden transformation of one situation into another, directly opposite, is common in many folklore genres (fairy tale, fable, medieval anecdote, fabliau, schwank).

The short story genre originated in America. Poe and Hawthorne became especially famous in this form, who had to mix their talents into the “Procrustean bed” of a newspaper story. But the result was successful: the short story genre acquired unprecedented depth and became a national American genre.

1. The emergence and main distinctive features of the short story as one of the prosaic genres of literature.

The problem of literary genres has traditionally attracted the attention of researchers and is actively being developed in literary studies and linguistics. Being not only a form of existence of literature, but also a form of existence of language, the genre focuses in itself all the most important aspects of works of art: the nature of reference in the text, the ambivalence of semantics, the multiplicity of interpretations of a word, absolute anthropocentrism.

The variety of life relationships gives rise to a variety of life forms in which we find different ways of depicting human characters in their most typical manifestations. One such form is the story.

Novella (Italian: novella - news) is a narrative prose genre characterized by brevity, a sharp plot, a neutral style of presentation, lack of psychologism, and an unexpected ending. Sometimes used as a synonym for story, sometimes called a type of story.

The novella is characterized by several important features: extreme brevity, a sharp, even paradoxical plot, a neutral style of presentation, lack of psychologism and descriptiveness, and an unexpected denouement. The plot structure of a novella is similar to a dramatic one, but usually simpler.

Goethe spoke about the action-packed nature of the novella, giving it the following definition: “an unheard-of event that has happened.”

The short story emphasizes the significance of the denouement, which contains an unexpected turn (pointe, “falcon turn”). According to the French researcher, “ultimately, one can even say that the entire novel is conceived as a denouement.”

Among Boccaccio's predecessors, the novella had a moralizing attitude. Boccaccio retained this motif, but for him the morality flowed from the story not logically, but psychologically, and was often only a pretext and device. The later novella convinces the reader of the relativity of moral criteria.

Often a short story is identified with a story and even a story. In the 19th century, these genres were difficult to distinguish: for example, “Belkin’s Tales” by A. S. Pushkin are, rather, five short stories.

The story is similar to the short story in volume, but differs in structure: highlighting the visual and verbal texture of the narrative and gravitating towards detailed psychological characteristics.

The story is different in that its plot focuses not on one central event, but on a whole series of events covering a significant part of the hero’s life, and often several heroes. The story is calmer and more leisurely.

When studying short stories, the idea of ​​M.M. is relevant. Bakhtin about the unconditional communicative determinism of the speech genre and the dependence of the linguistic structure and compositional structure on the genre specificity of the work. Such a research perspective assumes, when studying the genre from the perspective of linguistic stylistics, the integration of data on the specific features of the story.

The study of genres is one of the most complex and insufficiently developed issues in both literary studies and linguistic stylistics. The term “genre” itself is polysemantic. It denotes both a literary genre (epic, lyric poetry, drama), and a type of work of art (novel, story, short story), and a genre form (for example, a science fiction story). Therefore, they talk about the genre of the story, and the genre of science fiction, and the genre of the science fiction story.

In literary criticism, “genre” is defined as “a unity of compositional structure that is repeated in many works throughout the history of the development of literature, due to the originality of the reflected phenomena of reality and the nature of the artist’s attitude towards it.” From the point of view of linguistics, genre is a certain selection and combinatorics of linguistic means.

Genre is not a constant system. It is updated, modified along with the era, reflecting the contemporary picture of the world in the language of a certain era. The works that form the genre differ significantly in form in the works of writers belonging to different literary movements and historical eras. At the same time, the genre does not lose the definition and stability of its main structural features. The process of the birth of genres “never stops. A genre arises... and subsides, turning into rudiments of other systems.” Traditional genres can be mixed to form new ones. Modern genre theory does not limit their number.

The final development of the story into an independent genre in English prose dates back to the 19th and 20th centuries. By this time, the story takes on its characteristic shape, the first works on the theory of the small genre appear (E. Poe in the USA, B. Matthews in England), in which researchers try to determine the properties inherent in works of the short story genre.

The signs of a story reveal themselves in different genre forms in a variety of ways. The plot of a story can be driven by the force of individual psychological impulses, social contradictions, co- and contrasting pictures of the future of the present, etc. Hence the variety of types of stories: psychological, social, science fiction, etc. Despite the diversity of themes and issues that determine the existence of types of stories, it is possible to highlight some characteristic features of the story as a genre.

The story is characterized by the metonymic principle of embracing reality, according to which the artistic picture of the world, modeled in the story, is presented as a key fragment of the larger world. That's why they talk about the fragmentation of the story.

The metonymic principle of reflecting reality determines:

– one-event, one-problem story. The story usually explores the situation in which the hero shows himself most clearly (the borderline situation);

– small volume;

– limited number of characters;

– integrity: the narrative in the story is, as it were, pulled together into one node;

– laconicism, dynamism and tension. There is no redundant information. All elements of the text are informationally significant. The detail that allows you to create an image with a few strokes carries a greater artistic load.

A story, like any other type of text, has its own time system that most adequately satisfies the structural, compositional and stylistic features of texts of this type. The continuum of the story text is generally characterized by the continuity of events. Varieties of the story have their own spatiotemporal parameters. Thus, the spatio-temporal parameters of a science fiction story are defined as “alien” time and “alien” space. The chronotope of a psychological and social story is “ordinary” time and “ordinary” space:

– a certain one-dimensionality of the speech style of the story is noted (a property due to its single-problem nature). It may have elements of typification and cliché (for example, plotting, characterization in a science fiction story);

– a single aspect of the epic vision, the predominance of one point of view on the events described in the story (monomodality);

- Some researchers consider the “cinematic” nature of visual techniques to be one of the properties of a story.

This property is reflected in the changeability of compositional speech forms (CSF), in the ability to consider this phenomenon from different positions (spatial, temporal), and to establish cause-and-effect relationships.

Throughout the period of research into the short story, attempts have been made repeatedly to formulate a definition of the story, which would reflect the inherent properties of this genre. However, one cannot but agree with the opinion of R. West that “the final definition of a short story will hardly ever be found... to define a short story means to impose restrictions on it that would destroy much of its appeal.”

2. Development of the short story genre in American literature. Innovation and tradition...

Short story, original. American translation. short story, however, in Europe, due to the predominance of the short story, a special genre, a short epic prose intermediate form between the short story, essay and anecdote, characterized by a purposeful, linear, compressed and conscious composition, aimed at an inevitable resolution (calculated from the end), aiming to shock or bringing collapse of life, or opening a way out. The condensation of an event rounded within itself into one decisive moment with an unexpected pointe in a narrow space; results of human life, esp. no. an outsider, animated by the moment; realistic. communication of facts that provokes cognition; turn into the surreal or impressionistic. the image of the mood forms a scale of its possibilities, which must be comprehended in constant expansion.

Like all American literature, the short story is a relatively young genre: its origin dates back to the beginning of the 19th century. Bret Harte called the short story America's "national" genre. This is a special genre for American literature: it was born in the form of a story.

The origins of the American story are in the European romantic novel of the 18th -19th centuries, the oral history (tall-tale) of American trappers, Negro folklore, and Indian legends. Some researchers note the influence of educational essays and essays of the 18th century. on the formation of the genre of the story. The strengthening of the short story genre was facilitated by the spread of magazine periodicals in the country. All of the above factors, against the backdrop of national living conditions, the peculiarities of the historical and cultural development of the United States, determined the specifics of the American national story, which B. Hart saw in the presence of a sharp plot, humorous overtones, an unexpected ending, corresponding to the character and temperament of the American, and V.L. Parrington - in the desire to get rid of everything unnecessary and love for technology brought to perfection.

The origins of the national school in America were W. Irving, E. Poe, N. Hawthorne, G. Melville. The traditions of the story were continued in the works of B. Hart, M. Twain, O’Henry, J. London, who laid the foundation for the “fable” story (on the basis of which action-packed genres were formed: detective story, science fiction).

The problem of dividing a text and identifying the units that make it up attracts the attention of many researchers.

As is known, according to the contextual and variable division in the author’s speech, forms are distinguished that are traditionally called compositional speech - narration, description, reasoning. With this type of segmentation, the image of a fragment of artistic reality is carried out in a subjective author’s refraction: the author describes phenomena from temporal or spatial positions or establishes cause-and-effect relationships between them. Thus, the basis of each compositional speech form is a certain way of understanding reality: following in time, (narration), direct observation, (description), establishing cause-and-effect relationships (reasoning).

As is known, according to the contextual and variable division in the author’s speech, forms are distinguished that are traditionally called compositional speech - narration, description, reasoning. With this type of segmentation, the image of a fragment of artistic reality is carried out in a subjective – author’s refraction: the author describes phenomena from temporal or spatial positions or establishes cause-and-effect relationships between them. Thus, the basis of each compositional speech form is a certain way of understanding reality: following in time, (narration), direct observation, (description), establishing cause-and-effect relationships (reasoning).

Each of the compositional speech forms is different and has its own set of linguistic means. The sign of dynamism constitutes the content of the narrative form of speech, staticity is characteristic of the description, reasoning conveys information of an abstract, panchronic nature. Compositional speech forms imply organization and a certain closed structure, but they are rarely found in their “pure” form. When creating a speech work, the KRF is subject to all sorts of changes depending on the content of the work, the speech genre, and the individual stylistic manner of the author. The composition of the work presents a wide variety of forms in the form of concentrated and dispersed structures (classical, derivative, free and mixed) in a wide variety of combinations.

Differences in the formation of KRFs in a story can affect both the set and the nature of KRFs (their volume, boundaries, structure).

Works of classical prose are characterized by a clear contrast of narrative types, alternating plans of the narrator and the character, dynamic segments and static segments that suspend the flow of the narrative.

In the stories of writers of the first half of the 19th century. the author's speech dominates, static units predominate: description in its varieties (landscape, portrait, characterization), author's digressions in the form of reasoning, which determines the spaciousness and slowness of the narrative. Characterized and improperly direct speech are represented by occasional inclusions. Short prose works in US literature from the 20s to the 30s. The 19th century, for the most part, was characterized by “monstrously prolonged exposition, sketchy descriptiveness, poor development of characters, plot lethargy, open-ended structure”

Themes and problems of Edgar Po's stories and O. Henry's short story "The Gifts of the Magi".

Social orientation of the short stories.

O. Henry is not the first original master of the “short story”; he only developed this genre, which in its main features had already emerged in the work of T. B. Aldrich (Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1836–1907). O. Henry's originality was manifested in the brilliant use of jargon, sharp words and expressions, and in the general colorfulness of the dialogues.

Already during the writer’s lifetime, the “short story” in his style began to degenerate into a scheme, and by the 1920s it turned into a purely commercial phenomenon: the “methodology” of its production was taught in colleges and universities, numerous manuals were published, etc.

All of O. Henry’s work is imbued with attention to the invisible “little” people, whose troubles and joys he so vividly and vividly portrayed in his works. He wants to draw attention to those genuine human values ​​that can always serve as support and consolation in the most difficult life situations. And then something surprising happens: the most seemingly deplorable endings of his short stories begin to be perceived as happy or, in any case, optimistic.

In "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry, the husband sells his watch to buy his young wife a set of hair combs. However, she will not be able to use the gift, since she sold her hair in order, in turn, to buy her husband a watch chain. But, alas, the gift will not be useful to him either, since he no longer has a watch. A sad and ridiculous story. And yet, when O. Henry says in the finale that “of all the givers, these two were the wisest,” we cannot but agree with him, for the true wisdom of the heroes, according to the author, is not in the “gifts of the Magi,” but in their love and selfless devotion to each other.

The joy and warmth of human communication in the whole gamut of its manifestations - love and participation, self-denial, faithful, selfless friendship - these are the life guidelines that, according to O. Henry and Chekhov, can brighten up human existence and make it meaningful and happy.

O. Henry's sociality is primarily manifested in his demonstrative and emphasized democracy. The writer seeks to attract the attention of the privileged part of society to people deprived of benefits in this society. And that’s why he often makes the heroes of his short stories those who, in modern language, are “at the poverty line.”

Another prominent American writer who wrote in the short story genre is Edgar Allan Poe.

Numerous experiments undertaken by Edgar Allan Poe in the field of short stories led him over time to attempt to create a theory of the genre.

The theory of Poe's novella can best be presented in the form of a sum of requirements that every writer working in this genre must take into account. The first of these concerns the volume or length of the work. A novella, Poe argues, should be brief. A long short story is no longer a short story. However, striving for brevity, the writer must observe a certain measure. A work that is too short is unable to make a deep and strong impression, because, in his words, “without some prolongation, without repetitions of the main idea, the soul is rarely touched.” The measure of the length of a work is determined by the ability to read it at once, in its entirety, so to speak, “in one sitting.”

It should be noted that in many discussions about the art of prose, Poe does not operate with literary terminology, but rather with architectural and construction terminology. He will never say: “the writer wrote a story,” but he will certainly say, “the writer constructed a story.” An architectural structure, a building, is the most organic metaphor for Poe when it comes to a story.

Poe's understanding of the plot and its function is unconventional and has a certain breadth. He repeatedly insisted that the plot cannot be reduced to plot or intrigue. If we put together all of Poe’s considerations regarding the plot, we can conclude that by plot the writer understood the general formal structure of the work, the cohesion of actions, events, characters, and objects. The plot, as he interprets it, rests on the principles of necessity and interdependence. There should be nothing superfluous in it, and all its elements should be interconnected. The plot is like a building in which the removal of one brick can cause a collapse. the indestructible expediency of all elements of the plot is achieved by complete subordination to its general plan. Every episode, every event, every word in the story must serve to implement the plan and achieve a single effect.

It should be emphasized that Edgar Allan Poe assigned such an important role to the plot only in the story. He admitted the possibility of the existence of a “plotless” novel or poem. But he perceived the expression “plotless story” as a contradiction in terms.

In The Gold Bug, Edgar Poe takes the reader to Sullivan Island near Charleston, where his hero Legrand leads a mysterious and secluded life. In this novella, murder, kidnapping and similar crimes give way to a specific theme of treasure hunting, which would later run throughout American literature, appearing in the works of such masters as Twain and Faulkner.

As a result of a combination of accidents and coincidences, a secret paper about the buried treasures of the famous pirate falls into Legrand's hands. Next comes the technical question of deciphering the cryptogram, which Legrand accomplishes with convincing clarity.

The author dwells in detail on the details of real American reality, which help him create the impression of authenticity of the events taking place. So, at the beginning of the story, the writer, describing his hero, says that “he was previously rich, but the failures that followed one after another brought him to poverty.” Therefore, “to avoid the humiliation associated with the loss of wealth, he left New Orleans, the city of his ancestors, and settled on ... the island.” In this description, the author reveals a typically American view of life. A person who has lost capital suffers humiliation in American society; he is treated with contempt, not even considered a human being. The writer seems to emphasize that the master of American society is the dollar, which has captured the minds and souls of his compatriots. This is probably why the obsession with returning lost wealth completely absorbs Legrand.

The symbol of the desire to get rich again in the story is the gold beetle, which Legrand finds under very mysterious circumstances. Both Legrand and his Negro servant constantly say that this beetle is made of pure gold. Although, as the description of the beetle shows, it is simply a rather rare specimen of the exotic fauna of the places where the hero of the story lives. Jupiter, Legrand's servant, says that a golden beetle bit his master, causing him to become very ill. These words of the writer, which he puts into the mouth of a black man, contain a hint of American reality. Citizens of America are all trying to find the gold bug by hook or by crook, and when they find it, the bug bites so hard that most of them fall ill with a terrible disease that eats a person like a worm from the inside, setting him on the path of accumulation and profit. This is probably why the Negro servant does not want to pick up the gold bug, for fear of catching this disease, which in the future could lead him to a hardening of his soul. In the meantime, Yup manages not to become infected with a passion for wealth and remains a man who serves his master not for money, but at the behest of his heart (although he is a freed slave).

For Legrand, the meeting with the beetle reminded him of his lost wealth, and the beetle itself seemed to him like a god who would help him get rich again: “This beetle will bring me happiness<…>he will give me back my lost wealth. Is it any wonder that I value him so much? He was sent down by fate itself and will return my wealth, if only I understand his instructions correctly."

In the hero's burning desire to find buried wealth there is also a purely American "invincible premonition of great luck." It does not deceive the hero, and after a series of fascinating episodes, he, together with his companion, acting as a narrator, compiles a complete list of the treasures found and calculates their value. "That night we valued the contents of our chest at one and a half million dollars. Later, when we sold the precious stones and gold items<…>It turned out that our estimate of the treasure was too modest."

Thus, as you can see, the story ends on an optimistic note, in the spirit of the values ​​of American society. The hero did not just strive to get rich - he managed to do it.

Author-narrator in the structure of the narrative

In ideological clashes of characters, if not the bearer of the truth, then the one who comes closest to it more than others, it is always not the one whose logic is stricter and the idea is more convincingly substantiated, but the one whose purely human qualities evoke the author’s greater sympathy. And O. Henry is full of sympathy and sympathy for those of his heroes who most need help and protection.

Events in the works of Chekhov and O. Henry are not prepared compositionally, nor are they highlighted by other stylistic means. There is no sign along the reader's path: "Attention: event"!

In “House with a Mezzanine,” the artist’s unexpected and fleeting first meeting with the Volchaninov sisters takes place: “One day, returning home, I accidentally wandered into some unfamiliar estate<…>at the white stone gate that led from the courtyard into the field, at the old fortress gate with lions, stood two girls." But the next meeting, which served as the beginning of all further events, was prepared in the narrative no more carefully: "One day after lunch, in one of the holidays, we remembered the Volchaninovs and went to see them in Shelkovka." Meetings and the beginnings of all events occur as if unintentionally, by themselves, "somehow"; the decisive episodes are presented in a fundamentally unimportant manner.

O. Henry gives his touching story about the life of the poor (“The Gift of the Magi”) the character of a literary mystery, and the reader does not know what the outcome of events will be.

The writer enriched the art of creating an unexpected denouement by introducing “two denouements - a preliminary denouement and a real denouement, which complements, clarifies or, conversely, completely refutes the first.” And if the first can still be guessed during reading, then the second is not able to be foreseen by the most insightful writer. And this gives O. Henry’s short stories a truly irresistible charm. This naturalness of presentation was picked up by a writer from another literary era, I. A. Bunin: “The artist’s goal is not the justification of any task, but an in-depth and essential reflection of life.<…>The artist must proceed not from the depths of external life data, but from the soil of life, listening not to the noise of party positions and disputes, but to the inner voices of living life, speaking about the layers and layers in it, created against all desires, according to the immutable laws of life itself. Needless to say, intuitive artistic comprehension is more expensive and valuable than all the solemn broadcasts prompted by the journalism of one camp or another!

More than any other of his contemporaries, Edgar Allan Poe cared about the reader's trust in the author. Therefore, the principle of narrative authenticity, or, as he said, “the powerful magic of verisimilitude,” constitutes one of the cornerstones of the theory of the story. The peculiarity of Poe’s view is that he demanded the extension of this principle to the depiction of obviously incredible, fantastic events and phenomena. The author had to win the absolute trust of the reader, convince him of the reality of the fantastic and the possibility of the incredible. Without this, as Poe believed, an artistically convincing implementation of the original plan is impossible.

Most readers and many critics very often identified the narrator of short stories, including the short story “The Golden Bug,” with the author himself, equating him with his character. Their delusion is not difficult to understand. The narrator in logical stories is an almost abstract figure. He has no name, no biography, and even his appearance is not described. The reader can, however, infer something about his inclinations, interests, lifestyle, but this information is scanty, it comes across by chance, by the way, since he is not talking about himself, but about his hero. The little that we know about him - his wide education, love of scientific pursuits, attraction to a solitary lifestyle - fully allows us to identify him with the author. However, the similarity here is purely external and does not extend to the way of thinking. In this regard, the narrator is the complete opposite of the author.

It is characteristic that the tone of the narrative, where the narrator undertakes to talk about Legrand, often takes on a tone of condescension. And this happens not because he is smarter than the hero, but just the opposite - because he is not able to fully understand him. He vaguely feels that in the operations of Legrand's intellect there is something more than pure logic, unwinding the chains of induction and deduction, but he cannot grasp what exactly. The idea of ​​“miracles of intuition” seems dubious to him. He attributes Legrand's amazing success in solving the mystery to his “analytical abilities,” which manifest themselves through impeccably rigorous and subtle inductive-deductive constructions. Everything else, in his eyes, is nothing more than “the consequence of a sick mind.” When he accurately conveys the hero's reasoning, he often tells the reader more than what he himself understands. It is not for nothing that the “phenomenal” results of the investigation conducted by the hero invariably stun him.

But nevertheless, the role of the narrator in Poe’s short story is great, because it is the narrator who helps the reader reveal the character and psychology of the main character, who shares his innermost thoughts and feelings with his friend.

The humorous element of stories.

Humor in stories reveals the inferiority of life, emphasizing, exaggerating, hyperbolizing it, making it tangible and concrete in works. The humorous element of A.P. Chekhov and O. Henry is one of the most attractive aspects of their work. O. Henry's humor is rooted in the tradition of the comic story that existed among the first settlers of America. In O. Henry, humor is often associated with comic situations, which underlie many plots. They help the writer in debunking certain negative phenomena of reality. Resorting to parody and paradox, O. Henry reveals the unnatural essence of such phenomena and their incompatibility with the normal practice of human behavior. O. Henry's humor is unusually rich in shades, impetuous, whimsical, he keeps the author's speech as if under a current, and does not allow the narrative to go along the predicted course. It is impossible to separate irony and humor from O. Henry’s narrative - this is his “element, the natural environment of his talent. The situation of the short stories is not always humorous; and yet, no matter what emotional keys the author presses, the invariably ironic turn of his mind gives a very special shade to everything what's happening."

O. Henry is a wonderful master of humor in American literature.

The vast majority of O. Henry's stories are, in essence, devoted to the most ordinary phenomena of life. His heroes are driven by a feeling of love, friendship, the desire to do good, and the ability to self-sacrifice, while negative personalities act under the influence of hatred, anger, money-grubbing, and careerism. Behind the unusual in O. Henry, in the end, there is always the ordinary.

The writer has a mocking or ironic tone in most of his stories. The development of action and the behavior of the characters, and sometimes very serious phenomena in O. Henry's short stories always come down to a joke, to a funny ending.

O. Henry notices the funny in people, in their behavior, in those situations that develop during clashes between heroes. O. Henry's laughter is good-natured, there is no rudeness or cynicism in it. The writer does not laugh at the physical disabilities of his heroes, at their actual misfortunes. He is deeply alien to that cruel, dark humor that is sometimes inherent in Western writers.

O. Henry's laughter is noble, because the basis of the writer's humor is a deep faith in man, love for him, hatred of everything that disfigures life and people.

O. Henry has a story, “Kindred Souls,” in which a burglar breaks into the house of a wealthy man at night and finds him lying in bed. The bandit orders the man in the street to raise his hands up. The man in the street explains that he cannot do this due to an acute attack of rheumatism. The bandit immediately remembers that he also suffers from this disease. He asks the patient what means he uses. So they talk, and then go for a drink together: “Okay,” says the thief, “give it up, I’m inviting you. That’s enough for a drink.”

The comic idyll depicting a robber and his possible victim walking arm in arm into a tavern cannot but cause a smile. What's funny, of course, is not the fact that humanity is suddenly revealed in O. Henry's heroes. The funny thing is that humanity is revealed in such an unexpected, abnormal form. O. Henry's humor therefore contains a significant amount of irony in relation to the system of life that gives rise to such inconsistencies. Behind this irony lies the sadness so characteristic of the humor of humanist writers who depict the funny grimaces of life.

Here is an example of a humorous story where the same idea is presented in a different version - "The Novel of a Stock Broker." Having abandoned the atmosphere of the stock market for a short time, the broker invites his stenographer to marry him. The stenographer behaved very strangely. At first she seemed amazed, then tears flowed from her surprised eyes, and then she smiled sunnyly through her tears. “... I understand,” she said softly, “it’s the stock exchange that has crowded everything else out of your head.” And she tells Harry that she got married yesterday.

It is impossible to say more clearly: the stock exchange has supplanted all natural, normal feelings in a person.

So, before us are two stories that seem to cause only “light laughter.” Meanwhile, as we see, their humor is based on a deeply humane and democratic view of life. Thinking about the content of other stories, we will find the same view. That's why O. Henry's laugh is a noble laugh.

O. Henry's ingenuity in creating the endings of novels and short stories is simply amazing. Sometimes it seems that all the writer’s efforts are aimed only at surprising us with an unexpected ending. The ending of the stories, like a bright flash of lightning, illuminates everything that was previously hidden in the darkness, and the picture immediately becomes clear.

Although O. Henry constantly laughs in his stories, it happens that he laughs while his soul is shed in tears. But the writer believed in life, in people, and his stories are illuminated by the spark of true humanity.

Lyrical intonations

We celebrate the pathos of the short stories. In addition to the satirical and comic, a lyrical element and a sincere feeling persistently emerge in the prose under study. This is achieved by the personification of objects and their impact on the narrator and the author. In O. Henry, the lyrical feeling is expressed just as simply, but no less elegantly:

“... I told you below an unremarkable story about two stupid children from an eight-dollar apartment who, in the most unfortunate way, sacrificed their greatest treasures for each other.”

In O. Henry, along with the linguistic-stylistic parameters in short stories, the artistic originality of the description of intonation and its reproduction is very important. Intonation is set and determined by the syntactic structure of the sentence and is fixed by punctuation marks. This is certainly true. But this is far from the only thing. In addition to the syntactic structure of the sentence itself, lyrical intonation in a work of art is born and formed depending on many specific conditions, the main point of which is the poetic perception of reality. O. Henry poetically recreates such a situation of utterance, likening it to the situation of live, colloquial speech (dialogization of stories). If the situation of living, colloquial speech is most often spontaneous, unique, inimitable, if intonation lives and is perceived only at the very moment of utterance, then in a work of art “such an ability is organized by the writer.”

Speaking about lyrical motifs in Edgar Allan Poe's stories, it is necessary to emphasize their presence in almost all of his works. Let's turn to the stories The Mask of the Red Death and The Oval Portrait and examine them for lyrical intonations. In the examples given, we observe the author’s lyrical digressions and lyricism in the descriptions.

Edgar Allan Poe Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe – M.: Literature in Foreign Languages ​​2009

According to E. Collected works in three volumes. T. 2. – M.:Vekhi 1997.

Edgar Allan Poe Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe – M.: Literature in Foreign Languages ​​2009

The lyrical intonation sounds especially clearly in the images of the heroine of the short story “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry – Della. To identify lyrical feelings, we have compiled a table of examples where we encounter them.

Linguistic aspect in the analysis of literary texts.

A feature of Edgar Allan Poe's work is symbolism. In all his works he is heterogeneous and is expressed with varying degrees of abstraction. Thus, if in most fantastic works the symbols are general cultural and very abstract, in psychological short stories, without losing their general cultural character, they express the instability of an upset consciousness, then in detective stories the degree of abstraction is minimal, and the symbols acquire the status of the author’s and close to specifics.

The theme of the momentary, the perishability of life is obvious in the short story “The Red Mask of Death,” where the meaning of death is emphasized and further deepened as something incomprehensible and controlled not by a person, but by another, powerful force. The novella is literally filled with symbolism: these are the colors of the rooms (blue, red, green, orange, white, purple, black), and the orchestra, and the clock in the seventh, black room, and the very image of the Death Mask.

In many of his short stories, Edgar Allan Poe attaches great importance to color, which helps to further reveal the psychologism of his works. For example, in the story “The Masque of the Red Death,” which tells about an epidemic that has struck a country, Poe describes the palace of the prince of this country, who decided to escape death by locking himself in his castle. E. Poe takes one episode from the life of the castle as the basis for the story. On the evening described by the writer, the prince holds a masquerade ball in the castle, which is attended by many guests. The name "Red Death" is not accidental because red is the color of blood. Bloody death is identified with plague. "The "Red Death" had long devastated the country." The color of the rooms, in our opinion, symbolizes a person’s life itself, the periods of his growing up, formation and aging. That is why the white room is located next to the black one: “gray-haired” old age at the same time has chastity. Their lighting is also interesting, when the light falls from the lanterns outside the window: this echoes Plato’s concept of the world, where our world is just a shadow. Discarded by the ideal world.

And if the rooms are human existence in reality, then the author describes this existence as follows: “All this seemed to be the product of some kind of crazy hot delirium. Much here was beautiful, much was immoral, much was bizarre, others were terrifying, and often there were such that it caused involuntary disgust. Visions of our dreams walked in all seven rooms in multitudes. They - these visions - writhing and writhing, flashed here and there, changing their color in each new room, and it seemed as if the wild sounds of an orchestra - just only the echo of their steps." Let us pay attention to the meaning of the shadows - these are our delusions and judgments, and the sounds of the orchestra are likened to our wild and inept dance of life. This is how life goes by - at a wild pace, immersed in phantoms of mind and feeling. And only the striking of the black clock makes everyone freeze in fear before Eternity and inevitability.

The Mask of the Red Death also includes the semantics of Eternity and Inevitability, a fate from which one cannot escape. It is interesting that the news about the Mask finds Prince Prospero in the blue room, located at the opposite end from the black one. The author calls the room an oriental style room. Blue is the color of serenity and dreams.

In many of his short stories, Edgar Allan Poe attaches great importance to color, which helps to further reveal the psychologism of his works. For example, in the story “The Masque of the Red Death,” which tells about an epidemic that has struck a country, Poe describes the palace of the prince of this country, who decided to escape death by locking himself in his castle. Egar Poe takes one episode from the life of the castle as the basis for the story. On the evening described by the writer, the prince holds a masquerade ball in the castle, which is attended by many guests. The name "Red Death" is not accidental because red is the color of blood. Bloody death is identified with plague. "The Red Death had long devastated the country."

The high degree of abstraction of the symbol in Edgar Allan Poe’s science fiction short stories often coincides with the fact that the symbols themselves can be considered on a general cultural level. Thus, in the short story “In Death there is Life,” the writer uses the symbol of a portrait as a symbol of the transition from one world to another. The theme of reflection, the captured image of a person, is a long-standing one and gives rise to symbols close to this system: a mirror, reflection in water, etc. The semantic meaning of this symbol is suitable not only for the transition to another world, but also for the loss of the soul. It is worth remembering in this context that to this day in tribes that have remained untouched by civilization (at least in many of them), photographing oneself is considered the theft of the soul. In the literature, this topic is also not new and continues to develop. The most famous in this regard is “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde.

The composition of the short story - a story within a story - allows the author to introduce the reader to a romantic worldview. First, we learn that the character is addicted to opium and, in order to relieve the pain, takes an excessively large dose of the drug. This introduces both him and the readers into a transitional, foggy, strange world. And already in this state the character finds a portrait that stuns him with its liveliness.

Then, in the story about the portrait, we meet the artist and his wife. The artist is also a romantic hero. His strangeness and gloominess frighten many, but this strangeness is precisely a sign of being chosen.

The work ends with the fact that, having completed the portrait and looking at it, the artist exclaims: “But this is life itself!” And then, looking back at his dead wife, whose life seemed to have turned into a portrait, he says: “But is this really death?”

All modern detective genres originate from the classical form of detective storytelling, which developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was then that, on the basis of extensive literary material, certain laws of the genre arose. in the late 1920s. the first attempt was made to formulate them. This was done by the writer S. Van Dyne. The patterns of the genre that he outlined are the result of observations of the specific features of detective literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (they were derived from the works of Gaboriau and Conan Doyle). But nevertheless, despite the fact that the merits of Gaboriau and Conan Doyle in the development of detective literature are great, many researchers still consider Edgar Allan Poe to be the pioneer of the detective genre, who developed the basic aesthetic parameters of the genre.

Poe's fame as the founder of the detective genre rests on just four stories: "Murder in the Rue Morgue", "The Mystery of Marie Roger", "The Gold Bug" and "The Purloined Letter". Three of them are about solving a crime, the fourth is about deciphering an ancient manuscript, which contains information about the location of a treasure buried by pirates in ancient times.

He moved the action of his stories to Paris, and made the Frenchman Dupin the hero. And even in the case when the narrative was based on real events that took place in the United States (the murder of saleswoman Mary Rogers), he did not violate the principle, renaming the main character Marie Roget, and moving all the events to the banks of the Seine.

Edgar Poe called his stories about Dupin "logical." He did not use the term “detective genre” because, firstly, this term did not yet exist, and secondly, his stories were not detective stories in the sense that had developed by the end of the 19th century.

In some of E. Poe's stories ("The Purloined Letter." "The Gold Bug" there is no corpse and there is no talk of murder at all (which means, based on Van Dyne's rules, it is difficult to call them detectives). All of Poe's logical stories are replete with "long descriptions" , “subtle analysis,” “general reasoning, which, from Van Dyne’s point of view, is contraindicated in the detective genre.

The concept of a logical story is broader than the concept of a detective story. The main, and sometimes the only, plot motive has moved from a logical story to a detective story: solving a secret or crime. The type of narration has also been preserved: a story-task subject to a logical solution.

One of the most important features of Poe's logical stories is that the main subject on which the author's attention is focused is not the investigation, but the person leading it. At the center of the story is a character, but the character is rather romantic. His Dupin has a romantic character, and in this capacity he approaches the heroes of psychological stories. But Dupin's reclusiveness, his penchant for solitude, his urgent need for solitude have origins that are not directly related to psychological novels. They go back to some moral and philosophical ideas of a general nature. Characteristic of the American romantic consciousness of the mid-19th century.

When reading logical short stories, one notices the almost complete absence of external action. Their plot structure has two layers - superficial and deep. On the surface are the actions of Dupin, in the depths are the work of his thoughts. Edgar Allan Poe does not just talk about the intellectual activity of the hero, but shows it in detail and detail, revealing the thinking process. its principles and logic.

The deep psychologism of the narrative also refers to the main stylistic features of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. One of the classic examples of Edgar Poe's psychological story is considered to be "The Fall of the House of Usher" - a semi-fantastic story about the narrator's last visit to the old estate of his friend, about the strange illness of Lady Madeline, about the mysterious internal connection between brother and sister and the super-mysterious connection between the house and its inhabitants , about a premature funeral, about the death of a brother and sister, and, finally, about the fall of the House of Usher into the gloomy waters of the lake and about the flight of the narrator, who barely escaped at the moment of disaster.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a relatively short work, characterized by deceptive simplicity and clarity, which hides depth and complexity. The artistic world of this work does not coincide with the world of everyday life. This story is psychological and scary. On the one hand, the main subject of the image in it is the painful state of the human psyche, consciousness on the verge of madness, on the other hand, it shows a soul trembling with fear of the future and inevitable horror.

The House of Usher, taken in its symbolic meaning, is a unique world in a state of deep decay, fading, dying, on the verge of complete extinction. Once upon a time it was a beautiful world, where human life took place in an atmosphere of creativity, where painting, music, poetry flourished, where Reason was the law, and Thought was the ruler. Now this house is depopulated, fell into disrepair and has acquired the features of semi-reality. The life left him, leaving only materialized memories. The tragedy of the last inhabitants of this world stems from the insurmountable power that the House has over them, over their consciousness and actions. They are unable to leave him and are doomed to die, imprisoned in the memories of the ideal.

Stylistic devices in short stories

A stylistic device, being a generalization, typification, condensation of means that objectively exist in a language, is not a naturalistic reproduction of these means, but transforms them qualitatively. So, for example, improperly direct speech (see below) as a stylistic device is a generalization and typification of the characteristic features of inner speech. However, this technique qualitatively transforms inner speech. This latter, as is known, does not have a communicative function; improperly direct (depicted) speech has this function.

It is necessary to distinguish between the use of language facts (both neutral and expressive) for stylistic purposes and an already crystallized stylistic device. Not every stylistic use of linguistic means creates a stylistic device. So, for example, in the above examples from Norris’s novel, the author, in order to create the desired effect, repeats the words I and you. But this repetition, possible in the mouths of the novel’s heroes, only reproduces their emotional state.

In other words, in emotionally excited speech, the repetition of words, expressing a certain mental state of the speaker, is not intended to have any effect. The repetition of words in the author’s speech is not a consequence of such a mental state of the speaker and aims at a certain stylistic effect. This is a stylistic means of emotional impact on the reader. On the other hand, the use of repetition as a stylistic device must be distinguished from repetitions, which serve as one of the means of stylization.

Thus, it is known that oral folk poetry widely uses the repetition of words for various purposes: slowing down the narrative, giving a song-like character to the story, etc.

Such repetitions of folk poetry are expressive means of a living folk language. Stylization is the direct reproduction of the facts of folk art and its expressive capabilities. The stylistic device is only indirectly connected with the most characteristic features of colloquial speech or with the forms of oral creativity of the people.

It is interesting that A. A. Potebnya also distinguishes between the use of folklore traditions in the repetition of words and phrases, on the one hand, and repetition as a stylistic device, on the other. “As in a folk epic,” he writes, instead of references and indications of the above, there is a literal repetition of it (which is more figurative and poetic); so Gogol – within the period when speech becomes more animated, (then as a manner) ...” .

Here the contrast between “animate speech” and “manners” attracts attention. By “animate speech”, obviously, we must understand the emotional function of this linguistic expressive means; by “manner” is the individual use of this stylistic device.

Thus, many facts of language can underlie the formation of a stylistic device.

Unfortunately, not all means of language that have an expressive function have yet been subjected to scientific consideration. Therefore, a whole series of turns of living colloquial speech are not yet distinguished by grammarians as normalized forms of logical or emotional emphasis.

In this regard, let us return to the ellipse. It seems more appropriate to consider ellipsis as a stylistic category. In fact, we have already said that in dialogical speech we do not have the omission of any member of the sentence, but its natural absence. In other words, in living conversational dialogical speech there is no conscious literary processing of the facts of language. But, having been transferred to another environment, from the oral-conversational type of speech to the literary-bookish, written type of speech, such an absence of any member of the sentence is a conscious act, and therefore becomes a fact of stylistics. This is not an absence, but an omission. This technique was typified in written speech as a means of compressed, emotionally charged speech.

This stylistic device typifies and enhances the features of oral speech, applying them in another type of speech - written.

It is known that in a language some categories of words, especially qualitative adjectives and qualitative adverbs, can, in the process of use, lose their basic, subject-logical meaning and appear only in the emotional meaning of enhancing quality, for example: awfully nice, terribly sorry, dreadfully tired, etc. d. In such combinations, when restoring the internal form of the word, attention is drawn to the logically mutually exclusive concepts contained in the components of the combination. It was this feature in a typified form that gave rise to a stylistic device called an oxymoron.

Combinations such as:

a pleasantly ugly face (S. Maugham), etc. are already stylistic devices.

In the analysis of stylistic devices of the English language, where possible, we will try to show their relationship with expressive and neutral means of language, while simultaneously pointing out the linguistic nature of these devices and their stylistic functions.

Lexical means of expressive speech

American short stories widely use all kinds of expressive means. Let's dwell on the means of expression in the stories of O. Henry and Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Poe and O. Henry use antonyms in their stories. Antonyms are different words that belong to the same part of speech, but have opposite meanings. The contrast of antonyms in speech is a vivid source of speech expression, establishing the emotionality of speech.

In stories, hyperbole is also often used - a figurative expression that exaggerates any action, object, phenomenon. Hyperbole is used to enhance the artistic impression:

Short stories make extensive use of metaphor. Metaphor is a hidden comparison based on the similarity between distant phenomena and objects. The basis of any metaphor is an unnamed comparison of some objects with others that have a common feature.

In a metaphor, the author creates an image - an artistic representation of the objects, phenomena that he describes, and the reader understands on what similarity the semantic connection between the figurative and direct meaning of the word is based: There were, are and, I hope, there will always be more kind people in the world, than bad and evil, otherwise there would be disharmony in the world, it would warp... capsize and sink. Epithet, personification, oxymoron, antithesis can be considered as a type of metaphor.

An extended metaphor is an extensive transfer of the properties of one object, phenomenon or aspect of existence to another according to the principle of similarity or contrast. The metaphor is particularly expressive. Possessing unlimited possibilities in bringing together a wide variety of objects or phenomena, metaphor allows you to rethink the subject in a new way, to reveal and expose its inner nature. Sometimes it is an expression of the author’s individual vision of the world.

Thus, in Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the hero-narrator tells how he kills an old man and exposes himself in the presence of the police, using the metaphor of a clockwork mechanism. For seven nights in a row, the hero spies on the sleeping old man, silently pushing a secret lantern through the door. “On the eighth night I opened the door with even more caution than always. The minute hand on the clock moves faster than my hand sneaks.”

The old man wakes up, and the narrator watches him, sitting on the bed, listening to the fuss of the grinder beetle - “just like I used to do, night after night.” In the original there is a play on words: hearkening to the death watches in the wall; death watch means vigil of the dead; Moreover, it is a mechanical connection of the two key words of the story “death” and “clock”. “It was then that I heard some kind of quiet, unclear, hastily frequent sound, as if a clock wrapped in cotton wool was ticking... It was the old man’s heart beating... It was beating ever louder, I tell you, not a moment, ever louder! are you following?" The hero-narrator bursts into the room “with a deafening scream” and kills his victim: “The old man’s hour has struck!” The hero acts like a perfectly coordinated mechanism: the movement of the hand-arrow, the murder at the appointed hour.

Metonymy is the transfer of meanings (renaming) according to the contiguity of phenomena. The most common cases of transferring meaning from a person to any of his external signs:

Are you alive? - asked James looking at the portrait

You're alive, aren't you? – James asked, looking at the portrait

An oxymoron is a combination of words with contrasting meanings that create a new concept or idea. This is a combination of logically incompatible concepts that sharply contradict in meaning and are mutually exclusive. This technique prepares the reader to perceive contradictory, complex phenomena, often the struggle of opposites. Most often, an oxymoron conveys the author’s attitude towards an object or phenomenon: The sad fun continued...

In “Premature Funeral,” the state of catalepsy—a complete, profound loss of consciousness—is described through the metaphor of a mechanism. “It is known that in some diseases the appearance of a complete cessation of life activity is created, although this is not the end, but only a delay. Just a pause in the course of an incomprehensible mechanism. A certain period passes, and, obeying some mysterious hidden from us, law, the magic pinions and the wizard wheels start up again." If the body is a mechanism, then it is “incomprehensible,” “mysterious,” unwilling to submit to the control of the mind and treacherously betraying it.

Now let us note the global metaphorization in the work. This phenomenon is observed in the short story by Edgar Po. Another example is the “Red Death” (“Mask of the Red Death”), a disease that seems to have a specific name and very specific symptoms (although it does not exist in reality) and, nevertheless, is far from common. References to several real (identifiable by modern readers) ailments at once make it a mysterious super-illness, an absolute, metaphysical evil. In its symptoms, destructive power and metaphors, the Red Death is closest to the plague.

Personification is one of the types of metaphor when a characteristic is transferred from a living object to an inanimate one. When personified, the described object is externally used by a person: The trees, bending towards me, extended their thin arms. Even more often, actions that are permissible only to people are attributed to an inanimate object: The rain splashed bare feet along the garden paths.

In O. Henry's stories, the properties of living animate objects are often endowed with inanimate ones, for example:

In short stories, so-called evaluative vocabulary is often used. Evaluative vocabulary is the author’s direct assessment of events, phenomena, objects.

Comparison is one of the means of expressive language that helps the author express his point of view, create entire artistic pictures, and give a description of objects. In comparison, one phenomenon is shown and evaluated by comparing it with another phenomenon. Comparisons are usually added by conjunctions: as, as if, as if, exactly, etc. but serves to figuratively describe the most diverse characteristics of objects, qualities, and actions.

Phraseologisms are almost always vivid expressions. Therefore, they are an important expressive means of language, used by writers as ready-made figurative definitions, comparisons, as emotional and graphic characteristics of characters, the surrounding reality, etc.

An epithet is a word that highlights in an object or phenomenon any of its properties, qualities or characteristics. An epithet is an artistic definition, i.e. colorful, figurative, which emphasizes some of its distinctive properties in the word being defined. Any meaningful word can serve as an epithet if it acts as an artistic, figurative definition of another:

Edgar Allan Poe Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe – M.: Literature in Foreign Languages ​​2009

O. Henry Short stories – M.: Literature in foreign languages ​​2005

Edgar Allan Poe Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe – M.: Literature in Foreign Languages ​​2009

Aesthetics of works of art

In order to understand how it is possible to think about an artistic and aesthetic event in relation to a work of art, it is necessary to understand the question of what an event is in general and an artistic and aesthetic event in particular, and then to determine the constitutive aspects of a work of art. Let's start with the event.

Event and eventfulness in everyday language mean an incident, an incident. We learn about such events and incidents every day from television news or from the lips of our interlocutor. Sometimes we ourselves become participants or witnesses of an incident. Such events usually make our daily life dynamic or simply create the illusion of dynamics. One way or another, they do not affect us in our very essence and do not transform all our ordinary connections and relationships to the world and to ourselves.

The philosophical discourse of the twentieth century sharply contrasted such an event-incident, which sometimes has no ontological basis, with the event of being, that is, the accomplishment of being itself within our existence, returning us to ourselves. M. Heidegger and M. M. Bakhtin were the first to follow this path. And if for Heidegger the problem of the event became decisive in finding the meaning of being, then for Bakhtin it is the problem of the “responsible act” of an eternally “living life” that does not know its completion within this event. One way or another, both thinkers proceeded from the ontology of human existence, i.e. from the position that man is initially immersed in being, involved in being.

However, Bakhtin reveals the principle of eventfulness only within the framework of ethics as a philosophy of action and does not extend it to aesthetic issues. In his opinion, eventfulness, if we proceed from it itself, does not know its completion, cannot finally take shape or come true. The aesthetic, according to Bakhtin, cannot be eventful at all levels. In order for a work of art to become artistic, a “position of outsideness” is necessary in relation to the hero and the artistic world, with which only aesthetic vision is possible as the completion and design of the integrity of the work.

Later, working on the problematics and poetics of Dostoevsky’s novels, Bakhtin moves away from the traditional view of a work of art as necessarily complete and holistic. Having put forward the principle of dialogic relations between the author, hero and reader, Bakhtin substantiates the aesthetic (in the genre form of the novel) not as completed and become, but as striving for completion in the endless perspective of dialogue. It turns out to be important for us here to point out that Bakhtin, in fact, re-constitutes eventfulness in the infinity of dialogue. However, neither in Bakhtin himself, nor in the researchers of his concept, and especially in his Western interpreters (Yu. Kristeva and others), we find no further thinking through and development of the problem of eventfulness, which relates not to actions, not to dialogical relationships, but to the very artistic and aesthetic phenomenon.

And only M. Heidegger, at the late stage of his work, brought being, language and poetry closer together, shifting the ontological center from man to the sphere of aesthetics. Language, according to Heidegger, is the soil in which man is ontologically rooted. Language is the ability of being to testify to itself. The way in which being testifies to itself (reveals itself) is, according to Heidegger, art (poetry). The poet speaks, listening to the silence, to the call of existence. Genesis speaks through the poet about itself. The essence of poetry is to give a voice to existence, to create conditions for its self-disclosure. Following Heidegger’s thought, we can say that art (a work of art is the revelation of being in a complete, eventful way. “Truth as the enlightenment and closure of beings is accomplished by being composed poetically,” says Heidegger.

Based on the conceptual message of these two thinkers, as well as taking into account modern theories of the construction of ontological aesthetics, we continue to think through the event-based way of being of a work of art and propose further development of the ontology of the artistic and aesthetic phenomenon. For this, it seems necessary to introduce the concept of “artistic-aesthetic event”, with the help of which it is possible to overcome the shortcomings of the epistemological (subject-object) model of research. The concept of “artistic and aesthetic event” allows, on the one hand, to preserve the meaning of “event” as an “event of being,” as “participatory thinking” (Bakhtin), “meaningful being,” “event of self-revelation of being” (Heidegger), and on the other – specify it in the field of aesthetics and art.

In our understanding, an artistic and aesthetic event is based on the event of being, that is, the accomplishment of “my” existence as “mine.” An artistic-aesthetic event is a mode of the event of being, the way in which I am accomplished in my authenticity, being involved in the accomplishment of the discovery of aesthetic phenomena, “for creation is only valid when we ourselves tear ourselves away from all our everyday life, invading what is revealed by creation, and when we In this way we affirm our essence in the truth of existence."

The concept of an artistic and aesthetic event that we introduce allows us to embrace (cover) the process of the event as the co-presence of the author, the work of art and the recipient. A work of art (artifact) becomes a work of art only when it involves

into an artistic and aesthetic event. An artistic-aesthetic event is indecomposable into individual elements and represents a connection (but not a merger) of the author, work and recipient in an ongoing aesthetic phenomenon. An aesthetic phenomenon must be understood as self-disclosure, self-discovery of various aesthetic modifications (beautiful, sublime, terrible, tragic, etc.) in an event-based way.

An artistic and aesthetic event is characterized by spontaneity, probability, and suddenness. Within an artistic and aesthetic event there is no distinction between the subject and the object of perception, there is no reflection in the sense of clear self-awareness and opposition to the artistic world, the spatio-temporal coordinates of the artistic and real worlds are mixed, transformed into the pure duration of what is happening, the boundary between them is blurred, the external and internal distance between by the author, work and recipient dissipates and loses its existential and ontological meaning.

An artistic and aesthetic event is the realization of the energy of creation through the disclosure of its sources in an aesthetic phenomenon. An artistic and aesthetic event is not given as a phenomenon and cannot be reduced to artistic activity, since its source and driving force is the energy of being.

It is possible to “think” of a work of art as an event only on the basis of the eventfulness itself (capture, involvement in what is happening), soulfully filled with the energy of accomplishment, rediscovering and problematizing one’s authenticity and the authenticity of the world in the light of aesthetic phenomena.

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Introduction

Conclusion

Introduction

For a long time, text linguistics was limited to the study of individual units of language. However, with the increasing relevance of the issue of identifying linguistic means in a literary text and analyzing its organization, linguists are now paying great attention to the detailed study of speech. Researchers such as I.R. Galperin (2006), G.Ya. Solganik (2002), N.A. Nikolina (2003) created works related to the study of text and its analysis within the framework of speech stylistics.

It seems relevant to us to consider the stylistic features of the language in Francis S. Fitzgerald’s story “The Adjuster” due to insufficient knowledge of the specifics of this author’s texts.

The subject of this study is the language and style of Francis S. Fitzgerald's story "The Adjuster".

The subject of the study is the dependence of the stylistic specificity of the story under study on the author's intention.

The purpose of the study is to study the dependence of stylistic means and compositional features of the text on the artistic intention of the author.

Achieving this goal predetermined the solution of a number of tasks:

· studying the specifics of artistic style;

· study of the features of the story as a genre;

· designation of the main directions in the work of Francis S. Fitzgerald;

· description of the structure of the text and determination of the role of stylistic constituent elements in revealing the author's intention in the story.

The story chosen as the research material is “The Adjuster,” written in 1926 by the American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald.

The following methods were used during the study:

· observation method and method of stylistic analysis to identify the stylistic specifics of Francis Scott Fitzgerald's work "The Adjuster";

· descriptive method and comparative method to summarize the results of the study.

The theoretical basis of the study included concepts and theories presented in works on text linguistics by N.S. Valgina (2001), O.A. Krylova (2006), as well as in works on the stylistics of the text by G.Ya. Solganika (2002), I.R. Galperin (2006) and others.

The novelty of the presented work lies in the fact that this study is the first to identify and describe the style features of Francis Scott Fitzgerald's story "The Adjuster". The work reveals the influence of stylistic means of the English language on the disclosure of the author's intention. The work also describes the functional and semantic types of speech, types of organization of speech by the number of participants and methods of transmitting someone else's speech used in the story.

The theoretical significance of the work is that the study makes a certain contribution to the study of the work of Francis S. Fitzgerald. Practical significance lies in the possibility of using the results obtained in practical classes on text stylistics.

The total volume of the studied material is 25 pages.

The work consists of an introduction, two parts and a conclusion.

I. Theoretical background of the study

1.1 Artistic style and its features

Functional style is a type of literary language that performs a specific function in communication. That's why styles are called functional. If we consider that style is characterized by five functions (there is no consensus among scientists about the number of functions inherent in language), then five functional styles are distinguished: colloquial-everyday, scientific, official-business, newspaper-journalistic, artistic [Solganik 2002: 173].

Functional styles determine the stylistic flexibility of language, diverse possibilities of expression, and variation of thought. [Solganik 2002: 172]. “Essentially, linguistic or functional styles are nothing more than genre styles of certain spheres of human activity and communication” [Bakhtin 1996: 165].

G.Ya. Solganik notes three features of the functional style:

) each functional style reflects a certain aspect of social life, has a special scope of application, its own range of topics;

) each functional style is characterized by certain communication conditions - formal, informal, casual, etc.;

) each functional style has a common setting, the main task of speech [Solganik 2002: 176].

There is no consensus among scientists about the identification of artistic style among other functional styles. Researchers such as I.R. Galperin, A.I. Gorshkov, N.A. Meshchersky consider the language of fiction as a phenomenon of a special kind, which cannot be put on a par with functional styles. However, other researchers such as M.N. Kozhina, N.M. Shansky, D.N. Shmelev, L.Yu. Maksimov, A.K. Panfilov believe that taking artistic style beyond functional styles impoverishes our understanding of the functions of language.

ON THE. Nikolina in her work “Philological Analysis of Text” identifies the following series of features of a literary text:

In the artistic style, the intratextual reality is created by the author’s imagination and is conditional in nature. The world depicted in a literary text relates to reality only indirectly;

A literary text is a complex system in organization. On the one hand, this is a private system of means of a national language, on the other hand, a literary text has its own code system, which the addressee must “decipher” in order to understand the text;

3. In an artistic text, “everything strives to become motivated by meaning. Here everything is full of internal meaning and language means itself, regardless of what things it serves as a sign. On this basis, reflection on the word, so characteristic of the language of art, is explained. The poetic word is reflective word. The poet searches for and discovers in a word its “closest etymological meanings,” which are valuable to him not for their etymological content, but for the possibilities of figurative application contained in them. This poetic reflection revives the dead in the language, motivates the unmotivated" [Vinokur 1959: 248] ;

The units that form a literary text acquire additional “incrementations of meaning,” or “overtones of meaning.” This determines the special integrity of the literary text [Larin 1961: 79];

All elements of the text are interconnected, and its levels exhibit or may exhibit isomorphism. Thus, according to R. Jacobson, adjacent units of a literary text usually exhibit semantic similarity. Poetic speech “projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection to the axis of combination” [Yakobson 1975: 201]. Equivalence serves as one of the most important ways of constructing a literary text: it is found in repetitions that determine the coherence of the text, attracting the reader to its form, updating additional meanings in it and revealing the isomorphism of different levels;

A literary text, as we see, is the result of a complex struggle between various formative elements. This or that element has the significance of an organizing dominant, dominating over the others and subordinating them to itself. The dominant is understood as that component of the work that sets in motion and determines the relationships of all other components;

A literary text is connected with other texts, refers to them or absorbs their elements. These intertextual connections influence or even determine its meaning. Taking into account intertextual connections can serve as one of the “keys” to the interpretation of a literary work;

A literary text always contains not only direct, but also implicit information [Nikolina 2003: 181].

So, a literary text is a private aesthetic system of linguistic means, characterized by a high degree of integrity and structure. It is unique, inimitable and at the same time uses standardized construction techniques. This is an aesthetic object that is perceived in time and has a linear extension [Nikolina 2003: 185].

A literary text is always an addressed message: it is a form of communication between the author and the reader. The text functions taking into account “aesthetic communication”, during which the addressee must perceive the author’s intentions and demonstrate creative activity. This or that literary text that the reader turns to evokes certain “expectations” in him, which are usually determined by the ideas inherent in the addressee’s mind about the issues, composition and typical characteristics of the text, dictated primarily by its genre. Further “interpretation”, as a rule, is already associated with attention to the deployment of images, to repetitions, sequence and features of the compatibility of linguistic means of different levels. That is why philological analysis of a literary text usually starts from its content side, but then consistently includes in its scope consideration of the speech system of a literary work [Nikolina 2003: 187].

A literary text, as a part of culture, is always connected with other texts that are transformed or partially used in it and serve to express its meanings.

Thus, the main features of the artistic style include: the indirect correlation of the imaginary and real worlds; interdependence of text elements; a combination of different styles in a literary text; high degree of structure; aesthetic function.

1.2 Short story as a genre of artistic style

One of the important aspects of analyzing a literary work is identifying the genre.

Genre is a historically evolving and developing type of literary work. “Each individual utterance is individual, but each sphere of language use develops its own relatively stable types of such utterances, which we call speech genres” [Bakhtin 1996: 162].

To determine the genre of a literary work, it is necessary to take into account that genres are classified according to a number of principles:

1) according to belonging to different types of poetry: epic (heroic or comic poem), lyrical (ode, elegy, satire);

fitzgerald functional style story

2) according to the leading aesthetic quality, aesthetic “tonality” (comic, tragic, satirical);

) in terms of volume and the corresponding structure of the work: volume largely depends on two main aspects - on the type and aesthetic “tonality”. For example, lyrics are usually small in volume, tragedy requires expansion, and elegiac motifs can have a relatively small volume [Electronic source No. 3].

Many genres are divided into types based on a number of heterogeneous principles:

) the general nature of the subject (for example: a novel of everyday life, adventure, psychological, socio-utopian, historical, detective, scientific, science fiction, adventure, etc.);

) properties of imagery (this principle includes grotesque, allegorical, burlesque, fantastic satire, etc.);

) type of composition. (for example: a lyric poem can be built in the form of a sonnet, triolet, gazelle, haiku, tank, etc.) [Electronic source No. 1].

MM. Bakhtin classifies genres into primary (simple) and secondary (complex). Secondary genres - novels, dramas, various kinds of scientific research, etc. - arise in conditions of more complex and relatively highly developed (mainly written) cultural communication: artistic, scientific, socio-political, etc. In the process of their formation, they absorb primary genres that have developed in conditions of direct speech communication. In his work “The Problem of Speech Genres,” he notes that most literary genres are secondary, complex genres, consisting of various transformed primary genres (replicas of dialogue, everyday stories, letters, diaries, protocols, etc.) [Bakhtin 1996: 161].

According to U. Labov, “a story is a specific genre in which the presentation is constructed in the same order in which the described events of past experience occurred.” He gives his own genre scheme for the story, which consists of six components: summary, orientation, increasingly complex action, evaluation, result/resolution, coda.

W. Chafe offers a simpler story scheme of five components: orientation, plot, climax, denouement, coda.

According to M.M. Bakhtin, the main characteristics of the story are:

1) unity of time. The duration of the story is limited. Works describing the entire life of a character are quite rare.

2) unity of action. There is only one action in the story.

4) unity of place. The number of places where the story takes place is limited. Most often, these are two or three places, the rest can only be mentioned.

5) character unity. There can only be one main character in a story. Sometimes - two. Less often - several. The number of secondary characters is not limited, but each of them performs a specific function and creates the background.

6) unity of the center. The central sign in the story should determine the meaning of the story. It does not matter whether the center is the main character or the climactic event [Bakhtin 1996: 202].

Thus, the genre features of the story are: unity of time, unity of events and place, unity of character, as well as unity of the center.

II. Stylistic characteristics of Francis Scott Fitzgerald's story "The Adjuster"

The research material is the story of the American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald "The Adjuster", written in 1926. However, before moving on to the analysis of the work, it is worth turning to the biography of its creator.

The writer was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota, into a family descended from an ancient Irish family. He received his name in honor of his distant relative on his father's side, Francis Scott Key, the author of the text of the US national anthem "The Star-Spangled Banner."

While studying at Princeton, Francis Scott Fitzgerald played on the university football team and wrote stories and plays, which often won university competitions. By this time, he had already formed a dream of becoming a writer and author of musical comedies. During his years at Princeton, Fitzgerald had to deal with class inequality. He felt differences between himself and children from richer families. He later wrote that it was there that he developed “a lasting distrust, hostility towards the class of idlers - not the convictions of a revolutionary, but the hidden hatred of a peasant.” This was very clearly reflected in his works [Electronic source No. 4].

Francis Fitzgerald is the largest representative of the generation of writers whose creative peak occurred between the First and Second World Wars. Fitzgerald is best known for his novel The Great Gatsby, published in 1925, as well as a number of novels and short stories about the American Jazz Age of the 1920s. The term "Jazz Age" was coined by Fitzgerald himself and referred to the period of American history from the end of World War I to the Great Depression of the 1930s. His best books, such as “The curious case of Benjamin Button” (1921), “This side of Paradise” (1920), “Tender is the Night” (1934), remained as confirmation of the failure of philistine ideals and the collapse of the “American Dream” and tragedies of people who followed imaginary moral guidelines [Electronic source No. 4].

The story "The Adjuster" tells the story of a young married couple, Charles and Luella Hample, living in New York. At first glance, it seems that they are happy, they have a child, but in reality the couple are experiencing a serious breakdown in their relationship, which is nearing completion. Charles is sick, but he doesn’t dare tell Luella about it. He invites an old acquaintance, Doctor Moon, to his house in the hope that he can help them improve their relationship. Luella does not see the need to accept help from an outsider. However, after Doctor Moon visits their home, she does not notice that she is beginning to change.

2.2 Text structure and stylistic constituent elements of Francis S. Fitzgerald's story "The Adjuster"

The quality of the text and its stylistic specificity depend on the structure of speech. This text is narrated in third person. The distinctive features of this type of narration are a greater degree of objectivity and relative completeness in conveying the inner world of other characters and in describing the life around them. In third-person narration, there is a moving relationship between “the narrator’s speech and the subject-speech plan of the characters.”

An example is the following excerpt from the story: Luella Hemple was tall, with the sort of flaxen hair that English country girls should have, but rarely do. Her skin was radiant, and there was no need of putting anything on it at all, but in deference to an antiquated fashion-this was the year 1920-she had powdered out its high roses and drawn on it a new mouth and new eyebrows- which were no more successful than such meddling deserves. This, of course, is said from the vantage-point of 1925. In those days the effect she gave was exactly right.

This passage describes the appearance of the main character, Louella Hample: her height, flaxen hair, radiant skin.

In addition, the text also contains a second-person narrative. The narrator, addressing the reader on a first-name basis, makes him feel like a character within the story. The reader seems to find himself in the center of events, looking at what is happening with his own eyes. Let's look at an example: Moving your eyes around the slightly raised horse-shoe balcony you might, one spring afternoon, have seen young Mrs. Alphonse Karr and young Mrs.

In the story, someone else's speech is conveyed through direct speech. Direct speech is a bright stylistic color, the most important means of creating a character’s character. It carries a communicative and aesthetic function. In other words, direct speech is a means of living, natural, expressive transmission of content, information, and disclosure of artistic intent. Direct speech allows you to diversify the author's monologue and avoid monotony [Solganik 2002: 175].

An example is Luella's conversation with her friend: " Ive been married three years,she was saying as she squashed out a cigarette in an exhausted lemon. "The baby will be two years old to-morrow. I must remember to get. She took a gold pencil from her case and wrote "Candles" and "Things you pull, with paper caps," on an ivory date-pad. Then, raising her eyes, she looked at Mrs. Karr and hesitated.

From the point of view of participation in speech of one, two or more people, monologue, dialogue and polylogue are distinguished. It is worth noting that in this text the dialogue form of speech prevails, and the narration is presented as a background. Dialogical speech is the primary, natural form of linguistic communication. If we keep in mind everyday dialogues, then this is, as a rule, spontaneous, unprepared speech, and to the least extent literary processed. Dialogue speech is characterized by a close meaningful connection between remarks, most often expressed in a question and an answer.

As noted by G.Ya. Solganik, abuse of direct speech and dialogues usually harms the artistry of the work. “You cannot write essays with continuous dialogues,” noted M. Gorky, “even if their material is full of drama. This manner of writing harms the picturesqueness of the presentation. To begin a story with dialogue means to create the impression of sketchiness, and the predominance of dialogue over description and image deprives a story of brightness, liveliness" [Solganik 2002: 182].

One of the main purposes of dialogue in fiction is the speech characteristics of characters. By introducing the characters’ direct statements into the verbal fabric, the author thereby uses their remarks, monologues, and dialogues to characterize the characters’ speech. For a deeper understanding, let's look at a few examples:

"Such a nice house, Mrs. Hemple," said Doctor Moon impersonally; "and let me congratulate you on your fine little boy.

"Thanks.coming from a doctor, thats a nice compliment." She hesitated.

"Do you specialize in children?

"Im not a specialist at all,he said. "Im about the last of my kind-a general practitioner,.

At the beginning of Luella's acquaintance with Doctor Moon, their dialogue characterized the girl as a modest person, but very interested in the Doctor's personality and profession, while Doctor Moon seems mysterious, but creates the impression of a very intelligent person, competent in his field.

The following dialogue reveals other character traits of Luella Hample:

"Dont be afraid, Mrs. Hemple," said Doctor Moon suddenly.This was forced upon me. I do not act as a free agent-"

"Im not afraid of you,she interrupted. But she knew that she was lying. She was a little afraid of him, if only for his dull insensitiveness to her distaste.

"Tell me about your trouble,he said very naturally, as though she were not a free agent either. He wasn'tt even looking at her, and except that they were alone in the room, he scarcely seemed to be addressing her at all.

"Didnt you see him rubbing his face at dinner?she said despairingly. "Are you blind?s become so irritating to me that I think II'll go mad.

This dialogue characterizes the heroine as an impatient, hot-tempered and irritable girl. When the doctor asks about the reason for the discord in her relationship with her husband, Luella interrupts him and ends the dialogue with an irritated answer.

There is also a polylogue in the text. Polylogue is a form of natural conversational speech in which several speakers participate, for example, a family conversation, a feast, a group discussion of a topic. The general features of dialogue - connectedness of remarks, meaningful and constructive, spontaneity, etc. - are clearly manifested in polylogue [Solganik 2002: 184].

Let's look at an example of a polylogue:

"This is Doctor Moon—this is my wife."A man a little older than her husband, with a round, pale, slightly lined face, came forward to meet her.

"Good evening, Mrs. Temple," he said. "I hope Im not interfering with any arrangements of yours.

"Oh, no," Luella cried quickly. "Im delighted that youre coming to dinner. Were quite alone.

In this example of a polylogue, we see that three characters participate in the conversation: Mrs. Hample, Mr. Hample and Dr. Moon. Polylogue is used to characterize characters and their relationships. In the example, Mr. and Mrs. Hample show politeness and hospitality, while Dr. Moon shows tact when first meeting Luella.

In the story one can notice the prevalence of such functional and semantic types of speech as narration and description. “Description consists of depicting a whole series of signs, phenomena, objects or events that must be imagined all at the same time” [Kogan 1915: 89]. The first example of description occurs at the beginning of the story. For example, a description of a room at the Ritz Hotel:

At five oclock the sombre egg-shaped room at the Ritz ripens to subtle melody-the light clat-clat of one lump, two lumps, into the cup, and the ding of the shining teapots and cream-pots as they kiss elegantly in transit upon a silver tray There are those who cherish that amber hour above all other hours, for now the pale, pleasant toil of the lilies who inhabit the Ritz is over-the singing decorative part of the day remains.

The author uses lexical language means, namely epithets: sombre egg-shaped room, subtle melody, kiss elegantly, the shining teapots, the pale, pleasant toil of the lilies, the singing decorative part of the day.

Narration is a depiction of events or phenomena that do not occur simultaneously, but follow each other or condition each other [Solganik, 2002: 142]. Sentences of narrative contexts do not describe actions, but narrate about them, i.e. the event itself, the action, is transmitted. Like other functional and semantic types of speech, narration is a reflection of real reality in which a story, novel, or novel takes place. Here's an example of a story:

Mrs. Karr and Mrs. Hemple were twenty-three years old, and their enemies said that they had done very well for themselves. Either might have had her limousine waiting at the hotel door, but both of them much preferred to walk home (up Park Avenue) through the April twilight.

The author uses lexical language means denoting the place of action ( up Park Avenue),faces ( Mrs. Karr and Mrs. Hemple)and designations of the actions themselves ( had done very well, preferred to walk home).

Integrity and coherence - these are essentially the main, constructive features of a text - reflect the content and structural essence of the text. In this case, researchers, in particular, distinguish between local connectivity and global connectivity. Both types of coherence can be seen in this text. Local coherence is the coherence of linear sequences (statements, interphrase unities). It is determined by lexical and grammatical means.

Let's look at examples of parallel communication. The stylistic resources of parallel communication are also very significant. They have a whole range of stylistic shades - from neutral to solemn, even pathetic [Solganik, 2002: 159]. For example:

The one in the dress was Mrs. Hemple-when I say "the dress" I refer to that black immaculate affair with the big buttons and the red ghost of a cape at the shoulders, a gown suggesting with faint and fashionable irreverence the garb of a French cardinal, as it was meant to do when it was invented in the Rue de la Paix.

In this example, the sentences are united by one topic - a description of Luella Hample's appearance.

Reflecting the nature of thinking, naming actions, events, phenomena located nearby, parallel connections by their very nature are intended for description and narration [Solganik, 2002: 159].

The next type of connection between sentences is adjunction. This is a principle of constructing a statement in which part of it in the form of separate, as if additional information, is attached to the main message. For example:

". a supper after the theater to meet some Russians singers or dancers or something, and Charles says he wont go. If he doesn'tt-then Im going alone.And that s the end .

Thus, in the text there are: parallel connection and connecting connection.

The artistic style differs from other functional styles by its special aesthetic function. Its implementation is due to the active use of various stylistic devices (tropes and figures of speech).

Epithets are distinguished by colorful definition, figurative characterization of objects and actions, and vivid evaluation [Derevianko 2015: 164].

as interesting to me as a-as a boiler-room; it wasn'tt so bad as it seemed; the same shape as hers.

egg-shaped room ripens to subtle melody.

It should be noted that at the lexical level there is a large number of verbs, with the help of which the author shows the dullness and ordinariness of the heroine’s life: hesitated, bored, get nervous, want to scream.

Comparisons and evaluative vocabulary are practically absent, but colloquial vocabulary is found, for example: vile(vile (colloquial) - mean, disgusting).

The syntactic level is quite simple: it has a direct word order, but the author uses exclamatory and interrogative sentences to increase the expressiveness of the narrative. For example:

"No, I invited you! I ve got the money right here! ;

"That s right! Here, wait a minute, Chuck! ;

"Didn t you see him rubbing his face at dinner? ;

"Are you blind?"

The title is one of the most important elements of the semantic and aesthetic organization of a literary text, therefore the choice of title is one of the most difficult tasks of the author. The title is the associative center of the work. It tunes the reader and focuses his attention on the topic, the essence of which will be revealed in the subsequent text. That is why it is important to consider the title of the text to identify the author’s assessment.

The story's title, "The Adjuster," refers to a minor character, Dr. Moon, who nevertheless plays an important role in the story. It is Doctor Moon who helps the Hample family find a common language with each other and understand the importance of their relationships. In the story, this character appears as unexpectedly and mysteriously as he disappears, symbolizing the inevitability of what is happening. However, his image makes it clear to the heroes that everything in this life depends on them, and no matter how difficult the situation may seem, there is always a way out.

Thus, this story is narrated from a third person, which is characterized by the completeness of the transmission of the inner world of the characters. In addition, the text emphasizes second-person narration, which allows the reader to see what is happening with their own eyes. Someone else's speech in the story is conveyed through direct speech. Its main function is to create the character's character.

In a story, one can distinguish such functional and semantic types of speech as narration (depiction of events following each other) and description (depiction of a number of signs, phenomena and events).

For a more colorful description of phenomena, objects and influence on the reader’s aesthetic perception, the author uses epithets, comparisons, etc. in the text.

Conclusion

In the first part of this study, we consider the main features of artistic style, which include linguistic means of various styles, intertextual connections, explicit and implicit information and aesthetic function. In addition, we consider the genre features of the story. The main features of the story as a genre include a small volume, limited time of action in the work, a single plot line, as well as the unity of place and character.

The second part of the study examined the main directions of the work of Francis Scott Fitzgerald, the creator of the term “Jazz Age,” which revealed to the whole world the failure of ideals and the “American Dream.”

In the course of analyzing Francis Scott Fitzgerald's work "The Adjuster", we also identify and describe stylistic constituent elements. Based on the analysis, we can conclude that in this story the narration is told from a third person, description and narration prevail. In addition to dialogue, which plays the main role in the narrative, there is also polylogue. Someone else's speech in the text is conveyed in the form of direct speech.

Thus, stylistic analysis of the text allows us to reveal the ideological content of the work, its artistic features, and also contributes to achieving the correct perception of the work as a whole.

List of sources used

1.Bakhtin M.M. Literary critical articles. - M., 1996. - P.159-206

2.Valgina N.S. Text theory. Tutorial. - M., 2003. - P. 173.

.Galperin I.R. Text as an object of linguistic research. 4th edition, stereotypical. M: KomKniga, 2006. - P.144.

.Derevianko A.A., Nechiporuk T.V., Chernaya T.N., Chekh N.V. Features of the interaction of the epithet with other tropes in the poetic texts of A.A. Akhmatova // Young scientist. - 2015. - No. 11. - P.1599-1602.

.Kogan P.S. Theory of literature. - M., 1915, P.89.

.Larin B.A. The spoken language of Muscovite Rus' // The initial stage of the formation of the Russian national language. L., 1961, pp. 22-34.

.Nikolina N.A. Philological analysis of text: textbook. aid for students higher ped. textbook establishments. - M., 2003. - P.256.

.Solganik G.Ya. Text stylistics: Textbook. - 4th edition. - M., 2002. - P.256.

.Jacobson R. Linguistics and poetics // Structuralism: pros and cons. - M., 1975. - P. 204.

10.W. Chafe. Discourse, Consciousness, and Time: The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; P.137.

11. Electronic resources

12.1. #"justify">13. 2. https://ru. wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B4 ,_%D0%A4%D1%80%D1%8D%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%81_%D0%A1%D0%BA%D0%BE%D1%82%D1%82 #. D0.91. D0. B8. D0. BE. D0. B3. D1.80. D0. B0. D1.84. D0. B8. D1.8F (accessed May 7, 2016)

.3. #"justify">. 4. http://www.prometod.ru/index. php? type_page&katalog&id=947&met6 (access date 05/10/2016)

Hello friends.
I'm starting a new series: "How to Write a Story."

Now my collection of short stories and journalism is in publishing. There is also a written story that was published in the collection “Proverbs of the 21st Century”. In total, I have written more than 30 different stories, and now I am working on publishing them.

To be honest, writing short stories is many times more difficult than writing a novel. Many people admit this. But it is not without reason that many writers admit that the art of the story is much more complex than the art of the novel.

If a major work has weak points, they are more than compensated by the strong points. The main thing is that there are not many of them. You know, it's like girls reading War and Peace? They skim through the war, but read the world. Because there are weak points even in such a great novel as War and Peace. In a novel you can carry water, but in a story - never.

But the beauty of the story is that if you manage to create a strong work, a strong story, then you immediately grow by several orders of magnitude.

And in your own eyes, and not in the eyes of others. Indeed, the best competition is with yourself. And the realization that today you are better than yesterday is the most beautiful thing in self-development.

And to be able to create a story, then write it, and then publish it is something that everyone who writes must be able to do.

And I also promise that I will not write nonsense - something that is not interesting to me. For example, the origin of the story, the history of the story, is not always interesting, even to literary critics, it seems to me.

Let's get started!

In this series I am definitely planning 10 parts with detailed examples:

1. Story Basics (here it is)
2. Three-act structure + composition
3. Conflict
4. Characters
5. Climax
6. Initiation
7. Style
8. Detail
9. Publication

The peculiarity of the previous episodes was that I not only told the theory, but also showed specific examples of strong texts. It will be so this time too.

Requirements for the story. Components

In fact, the difficulty of the story is that you need not only to know in theory what the story includes.

But it's important to practice it. Make it your daily practice.

The minimum that a story should include

• Thoughtfulness of construction
• Conciseness
• High plot tension
• Interesting heroes
• Acute conflict.
• Understatement. It's complicated.

This is exactly what I will talk about in each of the parts, only in more detail.

Common mistakes when creating a story

Beginners often make common mistakes

1. Lack of preparation.

I think this is the main mistake of writers. Especially beginners, but also experienced ones sometimes do not prepare enough.

To begin with, you should think about the plan of the story, what you want to say. And only then.

You need to think through all the details, the conflict, the portrait of each character. And only then begin the story itself.

1. Conceit

“I don’t need to study”, “I can handle it” - typical thoughts of a writer with self-importance

You need to work, work as much as it takes to make the text work, so that the thoughts in the text are exactly as needed.

1. No passion

An old rule of writers says: “What is written without passion will be read without passion.”

Many people write because they want to write. Pure graphomania. And everyone goes through this stage. But when you already realize that you shouldn’t do this, it means that inside you have the inner strength not to be graphomaniac anymore.

Learn to write strongly. Learn to write thoughtfully. Do not hurry,

Some define the story by place and time. Unity of place and time. THAT is what happens in a certain period of time and in a certain place. Then Joyce's Ulysses is a story, just drawn out.

But there are stories where this rule is not followed, and it is still a story.

A story is best defined as being up to 45 pages long. Why this particular number?

Prose that is longer than 45 pages is already a story. And if there are several plot lines, then it’s a novel.

Working on a story is like working in a carpentry workshop.

Before you start creating a story, you need to think about its structure.

I use 5 elements for each story. Today I will share them briefly, but in the future there will be a whole article devoted to this component of the story.

1. Idea

What idea do I want to put into the story? For example

• The rabbit wants to live, but he is sent to the kitchen as the main course of the evening.
• Taking care of a woman is an honor for every man.
• Having children is happiness

That is, an idea is a simple belief that you want to reveal. Moreover, there may be two stories in which there are directly opposite ideas.

For example, the first story will be written by a loving husband: “Taking care of a woman is an honor for every man.” And the second story will be written by a man who just got divorced, and his idea will be: “Women are the most vile creatures.” This is why we love different authors - each has their own values.

1. The main conflict. A highlight that will move.

Let's take the second idea. Let's imagine that our male hero loves his wife. And she had an accident.

His reflections, his desires, thoughts and most importantly, actions and help to his wife - this will be the body of the story. And the more difficult it is for his wife, the more acute the conflict.

1. Heroes. Features with which I sympathize and empathize.

Young people are always in a hurry, headphones in their ears.

Old people are grouchy.

Businessmen are rich, dissatisfied with life.

This is a very simple and primitive view of life, and such stories look flat and are read without interest.

Your characters should be interesting. Sit in a cafe for at least an hour. Will you meet at least two identical people there? One speaks loudly, the other is calm, the third has the habit of biting his nails. In the real world, we are all different.

So why do we make people monotonous and boring in the story.

1. Three-act structure + composition

All serious films and books usually have three main acts:

- the beginning. About 20% of the story.

- development of the conflict. Here we present the main development of the conflict and the entire situation. This usually averages out to 60% of the story.

- denouement. This is 20% of the total volume.

I will write more about this later, as promised, in one of the parts of the series.

1. Climax

This is the main thing in any work. You can perfectly think out and work out the entire structure of the book, and then blunt the ending and everything will blur.

It is after the climax and denouement that the aftertaste remains.

1. Strong syllable

Words that catch and are interesting to read. Each accomplished author has his own style that is felt.

You will see this in the examples of stories by Zoshchenko, Hemingway, Chekhov, which I have included as a bonus. And also in Zoshchenko’s story, which you can read right in this article.

Examples of strong stories. Zoshchenko's story

Mikhail Zoshchenko - master of short prose and short stories

In the app you can download 3 short stories that I think are very powerful.

And here I want to talk about one story. It has everything - an idea, a structure, a strong style.

This is Mikhail Zoshchenko, a master of short stories that will make you roll on the floor laughing.

DEATH OF A HUMAN

It's over. That's it! There is no pity for people left in my heart.
Yesterday, before six o’clock in the evening, I sympathized with and respected people, but now I can’t,
kids. Human ingratitude has reached its final point.
Yesterday, if you please, I suffered desperately for my pity for my neighbor and,
maybe even stand before the people's court in the near future.
Basta. My heart has become hardened. Let my neighbors no longer count on me.
And yesterday I was walking down the street. Yesterday I was walking down the street and I saw people standing crowded near the gate. And someone groans desperately. And someone is shaking their hands, and in general I see an incident. I'm approaching. I ask what the noise is about.
- Yes, they say that one citizen broke his leg here. Can't walk now...
“Yeah, I’m saying, there’s no time for walking here.”
I pushed the audience aside and moved closer to the scene of action. And I see that some little man is really lying on the stove. His muzzle is desperately white and his trouser leg is broken. And he lies there, dear friend, with his head resting against the very cabinet and mutters:
- Like, it’s quite slimy, citizens, I apologize. He walked and fell, of course. The leg is a thing
fragile.
My heart is warm, I have a lot of pity for people, and I generally cannot see death
person on the street.
. - Brothers, I say, yes, maybe he is a member of the union. We must do it nonetheless.
And, of course, I rush into the phone booth. I'm calling an ambulance. I say: a man’s leg is broken, hurry up to the address.
The carriage arrives. Four doctors come out in white overalls. They disperse the crowd and place the injured person on a stretcher.
By the way, I see that this man does not want to be put on a stretcher at all. He pushes all four doctors with his good leg and doesn’t let them get to him.
“Fuck you,” he says, “all four doctors back and forth.” Maybe I’m in a hurry to get home, he says.
And you know, he almost cries.
“What,” I think, “is this confusion in a person’s mind?”
And suddenly there was some confusion. And suddenly I hear someone calling me.
- They say, uncle, you called an ambulance?
- I speak.
- Well, so, they say, you will have to answer to the fullest extent for this.
revolutionary laws. Because it was in vain to call the carriage - the citizen has an artificial
the leg broke off.
They wrote down my name and left.
And that after this fact I would still upset my noble heart—not in my life! Let them kill a person before my eyes - I won’t believe it for anything. Because maybe they kill him for filming.
And in general I don’t believe anything now - the time is so incredible.

Without many words.

Idea There is.

Conflict- There is.

Style- gorgeous. It must be said that in the 20s of the twentieth century there was a heyday of the story, Zoshchenko, Babel, Green appeared. And at the intersection of jargon, prison vocabulary, military and colloquial vocabulary, Zoshchenko’s style appeared. In my opinion, it’s brilliant.

Structure- There is. It doesn't matter if it's short or not.

Heroes- simple and clear.

Climax- unexpected

How to write a story. First conclusions

Creating a story is work. I like how Yuri Olesha, a writer of the 20-30s of the twentieth century, compared writing to miner’s work. Indeed, you get tired as hell from thought processes. Sometimes I just want to breathe out, then I take a book, sit on the balcony and read the hellish work of another. I am touched, especially when I see the serious efforts of other writers.

And by finishing this series, you will have all the necessary minimum arsenal to create a strong story.

And the promised gift: some of the best stories by Zoshchenko, Hemingway and Chekhov.

Briefly about me: Author of two blogs (and Word of Encouragement), head of the Slovo text studio. I have been writing since 1999, I have been earning money through texts since 2013. Let's be friends on social networks.

The specifics of the short story genre in the works of M. Gorky and A.P. Chekhov

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. PLACE OF THE SHORT STORY GENRE IN THE SYSTEM OF PROSE FORMS

1.1 Genre characteristics of a short story

2 The emergence and specificity of the short story genre

CHAPTER 2. FEATURES OF THE SHORT STORY GENRE IN THE WORK OF A.P. CHEKHOV

2.1 The problem of periodization of Chekhov’s work

2 “Notebooks” - a reflection of objective reality

2.3 Genre specificity of short stories by A.P. Chekhov (using the example of early stories: “Daddy”, “Fat and Thin”, “Chameleon”, “Volodya”, “Ariadne”)

CHAPTER 3. FEATURES OF THE SHORT STORY GENRE IN THE WORK OF M. GORKY

3.1 Social and philosophical position of the writer

3.2 Architectonics and artistic conflict of Gorky’s short stories

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

The short story originates in folklore - it arises on the basis of genres of oral creativity. As an independent genre, the story stood out in written literature in the 17th - 18th centuries; its development dates back to the 19th and 20th centuries. - the short story replaces the novel, and at this time writers appear who work primarily in this genre form. Researchers have repeatedly made attempts to formulate a definition of a story that would reflect the inherent properties of this genre. In literary criticism, there are various definitions of a story:

“Dictionary of Literary Terms” by L. I. Timofeev and S. V. Turaev: “The story is a small form of epic prose literature (although, as a kind of exception to the rule, there are also stories in verse). The term "R." does not have a strictly defined meaning and, in particular, is in a complex, unestablished relationship with the terms “short story” and “essay.” YES. Belyaev defines the story as a small form of epic prose, correlated with the story as a more expanded form of narration [Belyaev 2010:81].

There are many such definitions, but they are all general in nature and do not reveal the specifics of the genre. Also, some literary scholars classify the short story as a short story, while others classify it as a genre variety of short prose. Obvious

“laxness”, approximateness of these definitions. They are more an attempt to convey an inner sense of what is defining than an attempt to find strict criteria. In this study, we are interested in the story from the point of view of a holistic phenomenon.

The search for answers to these questions has been going on for a long time: the problem of the genre specificity of the story was posed in the works of V.B. Shklovsky, I.A. Vinogradova; The problems of this genre were dealt with by such researchers as B.V. Tomashevsky, V.P. Vompersky, T.M. Kolyadich; the problem of various aspects of artistic style is raised in the works of L.A. Trubina, P.V. Basinsky, Yu.I and I.G. Mineral.

RelevanceThe theme we have chosen is that nowadays literature tends to laconicize its content, clip-based thinking is becoming fashionable, and there is a tendency towards the “minimum”, towards the aesthetics of the small. One of these manifestations is the flourishing of the short story genre, i.e. short prose. Therefore, studying the theory and main characteristics of the short story genre is currently relevant - it can help current and future writers.

NoveltyThe work is determined by its practical orientation in the application and analysis of the story in the implementation of educational programs and new literary theories.

Object of study- short story genre.

Subjectresearch is the genre features of the short story by A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky.

TargetThe work consists of analyzing the short story genre in the works of A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky. Taking into account the specialized literature and based on the data obtained, we can complement our understanding of the specifics of the short story genre in fiction.

Taskswork is determined by its target setting:

· determine the main features of a short story as a genre of fiction;

· identify the features of short stories in the works of A.P. Chekhov and A.M. Gorky;

· note the author’s position and outline the literary and aesthetic views of A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky.

To solve the problems, the following were used research methods: analysis and synthesis, biographical and cultural-historical methods.

The textual basis of the study is the texts of A.P.’s stories. Chekhov and A.M. Gorky, since “the text, being an artificially organized structure, a materialized fragment of the specific epistemological and national culture of an ethnos, conveys a certain picture of the world and has a high power of social influence. The text as an idiostyle realizes, on the one hand, the immanent features of a certain language system, on the other hand, it is the result of an individual selection of linguistic resources that correspond to the aesthetic or pragmatic goals of the writer" [Bazalina, 2000: 75-76].

Practical significanceThe work is that its content and results can be used in the study of the literary heritage of M. Gorky and A.P. Chekhov, and the short story genre in philological research, in general educational institutions and university education.

The work consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

CHAPTER 1. PLACE OF THE SHORT STORY GENRE IN THE SYSTEM OF PROSE FORMS

When studying short stories, it is necessary to build on the idea of ​​M.M. Bakhtin about the dependence of compositional structure on the genre specificity of the work.

The problem of genre is significant in literary criticism, because this is one of the fundamental categories. The modern literary period is characterized by a significant complication of the genre structure of works. Genre is a universal category - it reflects a variety of artistic methods, but at the same time it is extremely specific - direct expression. The term “genre” is polysemantic: it denotes a literary genus, type, and genre form. Having emerged at a certain time and being conditioned by its aesthetic guidelines, the genre is adjusted by the attitudes of the current cultural and historical era, and a shift in the genre occurs. Genres do not function separately from each other and are considered systematically - for this it is important to know the specifics of each genre.

Thinking about genre from the point of view of a literary concept, one can see that the literature of the last two centuries encourages us to talk about the presence of works that lack genre definition. This is confirmed by the work of V.D. Skvoznikov, who noted that since the time of Lermontov, a tendency towards synthetic expression has appeared in the genre system [Skvoznikov, 1975: 208]. The most significant problem is the classification of genres - the traditional system is conditional. So, for example, L.I. Timofeev divides all genres into three forms (large, medium and small) [Timofeev 1966: 342]. A distinctive feature is the vision of a person in a certain episode, i.e. division by volume is inherent, but forms of different volumes can embody the same type of artistic content - a mixture of genres is possible. Genres can also transform into each other, and new genres may appear, for example, tragicomedy. It is also not always possible to see the difference between a story and a novella or a story and a novella. Genres are transformed, changed, mixed, and therefore it is important to study them holistically and systematically. Experiments with invariant contribute to the demand for genre education. And, conversely, if one variant of a genre is not replaced by another, the genre disappears. Most researchers agree that genre is a system that is constantly in interaction with each other.

Genre - from the French genre - means genus, species. For example, M.M. Bakhtin defined genre as “creative memory in the process of literary development,” which allows us to consider the category continuously [Bakhtin 1997: 159].

V. Zhirmunsky understood “genre” as a system of interconnected compositional and thematic elements [Zhirmunsky 1924: 200].

Yu. Tynyanov understood the genre as a moving phenomenon [Tynyanov 1929: 7].

In modern literary criticism, “genre” is defined as “a historically established type of stable structure of a work, organizing all its components into a system that generates an integral figurative and artistic world that expresses a certain aesthetic concept of reality” [Leiderman, Lipovetsky, 2003: 180].

There is no single term denoting the genre yet. The point of view of M.M. is closest to us. Bakhtin, M.N. Lipovetsky and N.L. Leiderman. Based on their presentation, genre is a differentiated category and includes such ways of expressing genre content as: extra-textual signals, leitmotifs, chronotope. It should also be remembered that the genre is the embodiment of the author's concept.

1.1 Genre characteristics of a short story

In our research, we are interested in the story as a holistic phenomenon. To do this, you need to highlight the characteristic features of a short story that will help distinguish this genre from invariant forms. It is worth noting that researchers have been studying the problem of “borderline” genres for a long time: the problem of genre specificity was posed in the works of V.B. Shklovsky, I.A. Vinogradova; The problems of the genre were dealt with by such researchers as B.V. Tomashevsky, V.P. Vompersky, T.M. Kolyadich; the problem of various aspects of style is raised in the works of L.A. Trubina, P.V. Basinsky, Yu.I and I.G. Mineral.

The story is one of the young small epic genres. As an independent genre, the story became isolated in written literature in the 17th - 18th centuries, and the period of its development falls on the 19th - 20th centuries. The debate surrounding the definition of a short story as a genre category continues. The boundaries between a novel and a story, a story and a story, a story and a short story, so well understood on an intuitive level, are almost impossible to clearly define on a verbal level. In conditions of uncertainty, the volume criterion becomes especially popular, as the only one that has a specific (countable) expression.

According to Yu.B. Orlitsky, “...almost every author who has written at least several works of short prose creates his own genre and structural model of this form...” [Orlitsky 1998: 275]. Among short stories, a special place is occupied by works that recreate the personal experiences of writers and capture their memories. Lyrical tone and humor, conveying the warm attitude of the author, determine the tone of this type of story. The distinctive feature of a short story is its individuality. A short story is a highly reflection of a subjective vision of the world: the works of each author represent a special artistic phenomenon.

The narrative of the story is focused on revealing ordinary, private things, but of great importance for comprehending the high meaning, the main idea. Researchers see the genre difference in the features of the depiction of the psychologism of the hero’s character. The story tells about one episode, which allows you to understand the worldview of the characters and their environment.

The chronotope factor plays an important role - the time of action in the story is limited, stories that cover the entire life of a character are extremely rare, but even if the story covers a long period of time, it is devoted to one action, one conflict. The story takes place in a confined space. All the motives of the story work on the theme and meaning; there are no phrases or details that do not carry any subtext.

It is noteworthy that each writer has his own style - the artistic organization is extremely individual, since the author, who has written several similar stories, creates his own genre model.

Researcher V. E. Khalizev identifies two types of genre structures: completed canonical genres, to which he includes the sonnet and non-canonical forms - open to the manifestation of the author's individuality, for example, elegy. These genre structures interact and transform into each other. Taking into account the fact that there are no strict norms in the short story genre and there is a variety of individual models, it can be assumed that the short story genre belongs to non-canonical formations.

Exploring the story as a holistic phenomenon, we will highlight the characteristic features of a short story that will help distinguish this genre from invariant forms.

According to most literary scholars, it is possible to identify the main characteristic genre features of a short story that distinguish it from other short forms:

ü Small volume;

ü Capacity and conciseness;

ü A special compositional structure - the beginning is almost always absent, the ending remains open, the action is sudden;

ü A special case is taken as a basis;

ü The author's position is most often hidden - the narration is told from the first or third person;

ü There are no evaluative categories - the reader himself evaluates the events;

ü Objective reality;

ü The main characters are ordinary people;

ü Most often, a short-lived event is described;

ü Small number of characters;

ü Time is linear;

ü Unity of construction.

Based on all of the above:

A short story is a small form of epic prose of fiction, consistently and succinctly telling about a limited number of events that are arranged linearly and most often chronologically, with constant temporal and spatial plans, with a special compositional structure that creates the impression of integrity.

Such a detailed and somewhat contradictory definition of the short story genre is due to the fact that the story provides great opportunities for expressing the author’s individuality. When studying a short story as a genre, all of the above characteristics should be considered not individually, but together - this leads to an understanding of the typological and innovative, traditional and individual in any work. For a more complete picture of the short story genre, let us turn to the history of its origin.

1.2 The emergence and specificity of the short story genre

Understanding the features of a short story is impossible without studying the history of the origin of the genre and its transformation over the centuries.

YES. Belyaev defines the story as a small form of epic prose, correlated with the story as a more developed form of storytelling [Belyaev 2010:81].

According to L.I. Timofeev, a story as “a small work of art, usually dedicated to a separate event in a person’s life, without a detailed depiction of what happened to him before and after this event. A story differs from a story, which usually depicts not one, but a series of events that cover an entire period in a person’s life, and not one, but several characters take part in these events” [Timofeev 1963: 123].

There are many such definitions, but they are all of a general nature or mark only individual features and do not reveal the specifics of the genre; the “laxness” and approximate nature of these definitions are also obvious. They are more an attempt to convey an inner sense of what is defining than an attempt to find strict criteria. And the statement that there is always only one event in a story is not indisputable.

Thus, researcher N.P. Utekhin claims that the story “can depict not only one episode from a person’s life, but his entire life (as, for example, in A.P. Chekhov’s story “Ionych”) or several episodes of it, but it will only be taken under at some certain angle, in some certain ratio” [Utekhin 1982:45].

A.V. Luzhanovsky, on the contrary, speaks of the obligatory presence of two events in a story - the initial and the interpretive (denouement).

“The denouement is essentially a leap in the development of action, when a separate event receives its interpretation through another. Thus, the story must contain at least two events organically connected with each other” [Luzhanovsky 1988:8].

V. G. Belinsky makes one more addition to the definition - the story is not capable of including a person’s private life in the broad historical flow. The story begins with a conflict, not with a root cause. The source is the analysis of life collisions that have happened.

It is obvious that the above definitions, although they indicate some essential elements of the story, still do not provide a formally complete description of its essential elements.

One of the trends in the development of the story is the study of a single event, a phenomenon of reality. Unlike a story, a short story strives for brevity and plot capacity. The difficulty in identifying a short story is due to the influence of tradition and the tendency to interpenetrate genres and styles - there is a problem of invariant, “borderline” genres, which are the essay and the short story. This, in turn, leads to variability of opinions: some literary scholars classify the short story as a short story, while others classify it as a genre variety of short prose. The difference between a short story and a short story and an essay is that the short story is documentary and in modern literature it is usually classified as journalism, while a short story does not always tell about the realities of life and may be unrealistic; it also lacks psychologism.

Increasingly, researchers are talking about the mobility and intensity of interaction between genres, and the problem of semantic crossing of the border of genres is moving forward. Thanks to its lability and relationship with many genres, such genre modifications as story-sketch, story-parable, story-tale, story-feuilleton, story-anecdote, etc. became possible. Such a detailed definition is explained by the fact that the story provides great opportunities for the author’s individuality, is an artistic laboratory and a unique, individual “creative workshop”. A story can raise the same problems as a novel, and therefore its genre boundaries are expanded.

Literary science knows several classifications of stories. Traditional typology is based on the subject of research; by the 60-70s, such a typology is no longer sufficient and is not applicable to works of a new direction - lyrical prose. The emergence of lyrical prose is due to significant historical events, a rethinking of human individuality, and the personal in prose is strengthened.

In the second half of the twentieth century, lyricism covered almost all genres of prose: confessions, diaries, travel essays. Since the mid-1970s, the leading place among narrative prose belongs to the novel, which has a great influence on the story and story; romanticization of small genres, in particular the short story, occurs.

A characteristic feature is the volume of the text, brevity and “a heightened sense of modernity, often polemically sharpened, appealing to the moral consciousness of society” [Gorbunova, 1989: 399]. There is an in-depth knowledge of individual psychology, partly due to historical changes that took place in social life - a new understanding of personality, uniqueness, individuality.

A distinctive feature is the psychologism of the stories, subtext, attention is paid to the role of the subject, as well as the emphasis on details or words. The subject of the narrative is the compositional center of the work; the special significance of the leitmotif and the brevity of the narrative stand out. This creates a picture of creative freedom, polyphony, diversity and depth of artistic expression.

The given definitions of a short story are not exhaustive, but they define the main meaning given to them in this work, which is necessary for the perception of further discussions.

Thus, a short story should be understood as a text that belongs to a small form of epic prose, has a small number of characters, narrates about one or more events from a person’s life, suggests the correlation of actions with a chronotope, and has the attribute of eventfulness.

CHAPTER 2. FEATURES OF THE SHORT STORY GENRE IN THE WORK OF A.P. CHEKHOV

“You can be in awe of Tolstoy’s mind. Admire the grace of Pushkin. Appreciate Dostoevsky's moral quest. Gogol's humor. And so on. However, I only want to be like Chekhov,” - such a description in his notebook “Solo on Underwood” » Dovlatov left about Chekhov's work.

Chekhov was not only the breadwinner of his family, he also became its moral liberator. As Gorky notes, Anton Pavlovich was free both in body and soul. He constantly improved his language and if his early works are guilty of various southern bourgeois phrases (his face nodded with his lips), then after several years of daily work he becomes the master of Russian speech and a teacher for aspiring writers, Bunin and Gorky try to emulate him, he was not afraid to confront external elements. Despite this, he was often accused of buffoonery, frivolity, weak character, immorality and lack of spirituality, and then the writer was even dubbed a tearful, pure mourner. So what is Chekhov really like?

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on January 17, 157 years ago, in Taganrog. Pavel Egorovich, Anton Pavlovich's father, was a salesman in a store, but over time, having saved money, he opened his own shop. Evgenia Yakovlevna, Chekhov's mother, raised six children. Undoubtedly, their childhood was difficult and differs significantly from the childhood of modern children, but precisely because of what the Chekhovs had to experience and see, we know Anton Pavlovich exactly like that. Little Chekhov often helped his father in the shop; in winter it was so cold there that the ink froze, which affected homework and the children were often punished. The father was very strict with the children. Although the father’s severity towards children is relative, as the writer himself sometimes notes, for example, Pavel Yegorovich treated Maria Pavlovna, the writer’s sister, with tenderness and care. In 1876, trade became unprofitable and the Chekhov family moved to Moscow. Anton stayed in Taganrog until he graduated from high school and earned money by giving private lessons. The first three years in Moscow were very difficult. In 1879, Anton came to Moscow and immediately entered the medical faculty, and a year later his first story, a parody of the pseudoscientific article “Letter to a learned neighbor,” was published in the Dragonfly magazine. He collaborates with such magazines as Alarm Clock, Spectator, Oskolki, writes mainly in the genre of short stories, and humoresques and feuilletons are published from his pen. After graduating from university, he began practicing as a district doctor, at one time even temporarily managing a hospital. In 1885, the Chekhov family moved to the Babkino estate, which had a positive effect on the writer’s work. In 1887, first in the Moscow and then in the St. Petersburg theater, the play “Ivanov” was staged, which had a “variegated” success. After this, many newspapers wrote about Chekhov as a recognized and talented master. The writer asked not to be singled out; he believed that the best advertising is modesty. Chukovsky notes that the writer’s character always surprised him with his great cordiality towards guests; he received everyone he knew and did not know, and this despite the fact that often, the very next day after a big reception, there was no money left in the family. Even in the last years of his life, when the illness was already close to the writer, he still received guests: there was always a piano playing in the house, friends and acquaintances came, many stayed for weeks, several people slept on one sofa, some even spent the night in barn. In 1892, Chekhov bought an estate in Melikhovo. The house was in terrible condition, but the whole family moved there and over time the estate acquired a noble appearance. The writer always wanted not only to describe life, but to change it: in the village of Melikhovo, Chekhov opens a zemstvo hospital, works as a district doctor for 25 villages, organizes the planting of cherry trees, decides to create a public library and for this purpose buys about two hundred volumes of French classics, in total complexity sends about 2000 books from his collection and then, throughout his life, compiles lists of books that must be in the Taganrog library. All this happens thanks to the great will of the writer, his irrepressible energy. In 1897 he was hospitalized due to illness, in 1898 he bought an estate in Yalta and moved there. In October 1898, his father dies. After the death of his father, life in Melikhovo can no longer be the same and the estate is sold. In 1900, he was elected an honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, but two years later the writer abandoned this title due to the exclusion of M. Gorky. In the spring of 1900, the Moscow theater came to Crimea and Chekhov went to Sevastopol, where the theater staged “Uncle Vanya” especially for him. After a while, the theater goes to Yalta and almost the entire theater troupe often stays in Chekhov’s house, at the same time he meets his future wife, actress O. K nipper. The writer's illness progresses - in January 1990 he goes to Nice for treatment. In May, the wedding with Knipper takes place. Chekhov really wanted to leave behind a legacy, but long separations from his wife, partly because of doctors who advise the writer to live in Yalta, partly because of Knipper’s great love for art, do not allow Chekhov’s dream to come true. In 1904, the writer's last play, The Cherry Orchard, was staged. On July 15, at a famous resort in Germany, the great writer of everyday life dies, having managed to call a doctor and drink a glass of champagne.

.1 The problem of periodization of Chekhov’s work

“Light and Shadows”, “Sputnik” [Byaly 1977: 555]. In Chekhov's early period, humorous stories predominated, however, over time, the problems became more complex, and the drama of everyday life came first.

In Czech studies there is still no consensus on the issue of periodization of the writer’s work. Thus, G. A. Byaly distinguishes three stages: early, middle and last years [Byaly 1977: 556]. E. Polotskaya, analyzing changes in Chekhov’s artistic method, divides his creative path into two periods: early and mature [Polotskaya 2001]. In some works there is no periodization at all [Kataev 2002]. Chekhov himself treated attempts to divide his work into stages not without irony. Having once read a critical article, he noticed that now, thanks to the critic, he knew that he was at the third stage.

As already mentioned, Chekhov initially published in humorous magazines. I wrote quickly and mainly to earn money. Undoubtedly, at that time his talent could not fully develop. The most striking feature of the poetics of the early period is, of course, humor and irony, which are born not only from the needs of readers and publishers, but also from the very character of the writer. Since childhood, he loved to joke and portray funny stories in his faces, for which he received the pseudonym Antonsha Chekhonte from his teacher. But not only the public’s need for an entertainment genre, not only natural gaiety determined the humorous tone of the early stories, but also another feature of Chekhov’s character - emotional restraint. Humor and irony made it possible not to reveal one’s immediate feelings and experiences to the reader.

Analyzing the features of irony at different stages of the writer’s work, E. Polotskaya comes to the conclusion that the irony of early Chekhov is “frank, direct, unambiguous” [Polotskaya 2001:22]. Such irony confuses a serious plan with a frivolous one, produces a contradiction between the significance of the tone and the insignificance of the subject, and is created by means of language. The mature period is characterized by “internal” irony, which evokes not ridicule, but pity and sympathy from the reader; we can say that it comes “from life itself” [Polotskaya 2001:18]. The “inner” hidden irony of the mature Chekhov is embedded in the very structure of the work and is revealed only after reading it and understanding it as a single artistic whole.

Already in Chekhov’s early works one can feel the insight of the young writer, “able to notice many by no means harmless grimaces of bourgeois life, many ugliness and disgrace of society” [Zhegalov 1975:22]. And although in his youth, according to Gorky, “the great dramas and tragedies of her (life) were hidden for him under a thick layer of the everyday,” in many humorous stories of the 80s, Chekhov was able to reveal to us the ugly essence of everyday relationships. It is not surprising, therefore, that in 1886 Chekhov received from D.V. Grigorovich a letter in which he speaks enthusiastically about his stories. This review pleasantly struck Chekhov, he replied: “Until now I have treated my literary work extremely frivolously, carelessly... I don’t remember a single story of mine on which I worked for more than a day...” [Chekhov 1983:218].

The line of depicting “the ugliness and disgrace of society” continues into the mature period of creativity. But this image has its own specificity, characteristic of Chekhov’s creative thinking. Researchers note that in Chekhov's stories what is scary is not what happened, but that “nothing happened”; A life that does not change at all, in which nothing happens, in which a person is always equal to himself is terrible [Byaly 1977:551]. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the depiction of everyday life occupies a significant place in the writer’s work. It is through everyday life that Chekhov shows the tragedy of everyday life; from his point of view, the immutability of life inevitably changes people: in a motionless life, people gradually submit to the force of the external course of events and lose their internal - spiritual and moral - guidelines. The stories “Ionych” (1898), “Gooseberry” (1898) show how the heroes lose their “soul” over time, their life turns into an unconscious existence.

Everyday vulgarity is contrasted with the child’s worldview.

“Illuminating the world with the light of a child’s consciousness, Chekhov transforms it, making it sweet, cheerful, funny and pure... Sometimes in Chekhov’s children’s stories the familiar world becomes strange, incomprehensible, unnatural” [Byaly 1977:568]. Reality for children is a great mystery; they observe everything around them with pure eyes. The child's inner world is depicted in contrast to reality.

A special group in Chekhov’s work consists of works in which the characters come to an awareness of the tragedy of life. In stories like

“The Lady with the Dog” (1899), “The Literature Teacher” (1889), the characters feel the vulgarity of the reality around them, they understand that it is impossible to endure anymore, but it is impossible and there is nowhere to run. This theme arises and develops in the works of Chekhov of his mature period.

“In general, the fate of a person with high concepts and high culture, as a rule, is colored by Chekhov in tragic tones” [Zhegalov 1975:387]. But at the same time, not only the positive heroes, but also most of Chekhov’s works in general are colored with tragic tones; this can be felt even in some comic stories. By the way, Chekhov prefers not to divide people into positive and negative, because no one in this world is perfect. He sympathizes with all people who suffer under the painful pressure of society.

In the 90s, Russia was intensively searching for a common idea, the path for the future of Russia. At that time, Chekhov also “sought to find out how the idea of ​​truth and untruth arises in people, how the first impulse to reassess life arises,... how a person... emerges from a state of mental and spiritual passivity” [Zhegalov 1975:567]. Moreover, for Chekhov it is more important to show the process of revaluation than its result. “His goal is not to completely expose good and evil from everyday veils and to put a person before an inevitable choice between one and the other, as L. Tolstoy does” [Kotelnikov 1987:458].

In Chekhov's story, the main thing is the individual's attitude to truth and untruth, to beauty and ugliness, to morality and immorality. It's interesting that all this is mixed together, just like in everyday life. Chekhov never becomes a judge of his heroes, and this is the writer’s principled position. So, in one of his letters he wrote:

“You are confusing two concepts: solving a problem and correctly posing the question. Only the second is obligatory for the artist” [Chekhov 1983:58], i.e. Chekhov does not set himself the task of giving a specific answer to the question that he raises in the work.

One of the highest values ​​of existence for Chekhov was nature. This is evidenced by many letters in which he expresses his joy at moving to Melikhovo. In 1892, he wrote to L.A. Avilova: “... I reason like this: it is not the one who has a lot of money who is rich, but the one who now has the means to live in luxurious surroundings, which early spring provides” [Chekhov 1983:58]. Therefore, Chekhov’s landscape performs an important semantic function. Often it is a kind of expression of the philosophy of life.

“The movements of the human soul awaken a distant echo in nature, and the more alive the soul, the stronger the impulse towards will, the louder this symphonic echo responds” [Gromov 1993:338].

In the process of reviving the soul, truth and beauty often go hand in hand with Chekhov. Nature appears eternal and beautiful in the story “The Lady with the Dog.” The sea awakens in Gusev’s soul unusual “existential” thoughts about the beauty and ugliness of life; in The Fit (1889), pure snow falls on the ugly world of people. The image of snow creates a sharp contrast between the beautiful nature and the ugliness of human morals.

In addition, Chekhov’s nature can reflect the psychological state of the characters. Thus, in the story “In the Native Corner” (1897), through the details of the landscape - an old ugly garden, an endless, monotonous plain - we learn that disappointment and boredom reign in the heroine’s soul. The role of landscape in Chekhov was very accurately noted by his younger contemporary, the writer L. Andreev: Chekhov’s landscape “is no less psychological than people, his people are no more psychological than clouds... He paints his hero with a landscape, tells his past with clouds, depicts him with rain tears..." [Gromov 1993:338].

Bialy notes that in his mature period, Chekhov often writes about “close happiness.” The expectation of happiness is especially characteristic of those heroes who feel the abnormality of life, without being able to escape. K. S. Stanislavsky said about Chekhov at that time: “As the atmosphere thickened and things approached revolution, he became more and more decisive,” meaning that Chekhov said more and more insistently: “You can’t live like this anymore.” The intention to change life becomes more definite [Byaly 1977:586]. But how to do that? What will it be like and when will it arrive? The writer does not give us a specific answer.

For Sonya in Uncle Van, happiness is possible only “after death.” It seems to her as deliverance from long, monotonous work, difficult, soul-weary relationships between people: “We will rest, we will rest...”. The hero of the story “Case from Practice” believes that life will be bright and joyful, like this “Sunday morning”, and this, perhaps, is already close.” In the painful search for a way out, Gurov in “The Lady with the Dog” thinks that a little more and “a solution will be found, and then a new, wonderful life will begin.” But, as a rule, in Chekhov the distance between reality and happiness is great, so it seems appropriate to replace Byaly’s concept of “immediate happiness” with “future happiness.”

Perhaps, only in one - the last - work, “The Bride” (1903), do we find the possibility of “close happiness.” The heroine Nadya runs away from home, from the fate of a provincial wife, to start a different life. Even the tone of the story is no longer so tragic; on the contrary, at the end of “The Bride” one can clearly feel farewell to the old one and the expectation of a new life. With all this, it cannot be said that the older Chekhov is, the closer this happiness is in his understanding, because

“The Bride” is his only and last work in which there is such an optimistic and very definite image of the future life.

Thus, in the writer’s work of the 90s, the search for ideas, thoughts about nature and man, the feeling of future happiness become the main motives, “even when they are not expressed directly” [Byalyi 1977:572].

Tracing Chekhov's path from his early stories to his last - "The Bride", we see the development of the writer's creative individuality. As Zhegalov notes, over time, in the writer’s works, “psychological analysis deepens, criticism in relation to petty-bourgeois psychology, in relation to all the dark forces that suppress the human personality, intensifies. The poetic, lyrical beginning is strengthened,” which strongly contrasts with the pictures from early stories such as

"Chameleon" (1884), "Death of an Official" (1883). And, finally, “the tragedy of the ordinary, ... everyday life, intensifies” [Zhegalov 1975:384].

The fundamental principles of Chekhov's poetics, which he repeatedly declared, are objectivity, brevity, and simplicity. In the creative process, you need to be as objective as possible. As already mentioned, in his youth Chekhov wrote stories for humorous magazines, and therefore had to be limited to a certain volume. In mature years, brevity became a conscious artistic principle, recorded in the famous Chekhov aphorism: “Brevity is the sister of talent” [Chekhov 1983:188]. If you can convey information in one sentence, then you don’t need to spend a whole paragraph. He often advises aspiring writers to remove everything unnecessary from their work. So, in a letter from 1895, he writes: “The bookcase against the wall was full of books.” Why not just say: “shelf with books”?” [Chekhov 1983:58] In another letter: “Write a novel for a whole year, then shorten it for six months, and then publish it. You do little finishing, but a writer should not write, but embroider on paper, so that the work is painstaking and slow” [Chekhov 1983:25].

Another fundamental principle of Chekhov's poetics is simplicity. He once said this about the literary landscape: colorfulness and expressiveness in descriptions of nature are achieved only by simplicity. He does not like such images of M. Gorky as “the sea breathes”, “the sky looks”, “the steppe basks”, he considers them unclear, monochromatic, even sugary. Simplicity is always better than pretentiousness, why not say about sunset: “the sun went down”, “it became dark”; about the weather: “it started to rain”, etc. [Chekhov 1983:11] According to the memoirs of I. A. Bunin, Chekhov once read the following description of the sea in a student’s notebook: “the sea was big” - and was delighted” [Bunin 1996:188].

At the same time, in Chekhov’s works there are not only “life-like” but also “conventional” forms of description [Esin 2003:33]. Conventionality does not copy reality, but artistically recreates it; it manifests itself “in the introduction of allegorical or symbolic characters, events” [Esin 2003:35], in the transfer of action to a conventional time or place. For example, in “The Death of an Official,” the very fact of death caused by an insignificant cause represents a plot hyperbole and produces an ironic effect; in “The Black Monk” (1894), the hallucination image of the “black monk” is a reflection of the disturbed psyche of the hero, obsessed with “delusions of grandeur.”

Chekhov's unique creative biography has long attracted the attention of scientists. Already Chekhov's contemporaries, and later researchers of his early work, noted the compositional thoughtfulness of his humorous stories. It can be said that in his best early texts, Chekhov combined features of different genres of short prose to create an artistically complete text. The story acquired a new meaning in Chekhov’s work and established itself in “big” literature.

2.2 “Notebooks” - a reflection of objective reality

The short story genre in the works of A.P. Chekhov occupies a special place. In order to better understand the creativity and intention of the writer, you need to look into his sacred place, into his creative laboratory, i.e. refer to the "Notebooks".

Notebooks give us a broader overview and understanding of how a writer approaches life; they are a book about books, which is filled with the most intimate, personal. These are notes to remember.

Notebooks are not accepted by science as an independent genre. Most likely this is due to the fact that notebooks are based on the impressions of writers and in many cases resemble a diary, which is kept without any specific prerequisites. “In the existing scientific literature, notebooks are classified as autobiographical writing, pure documentary genres, ego-text, or even short prose of writers” [Efimova, 2012: 45]. According to Anna Zaliznyak, everything that a writer writes in one way or another is part of his professional activity and thus the notebook becomes a “pretext,” the material from which the “text” is then made [Zaliznyak, 2010: 25].

In notebooks, the narrator becomes the chronicler, the one who tells. It's like an artist's workshop, where visitors can enter; it's a kind of creative laboratory, a workshop - imaginative thinking in action. Reading notebooks, we can reconstruct the author’s thought, we can see how it changed, how various options, epithets, witticisms were switched, how one phrase or word turned into a whole plot.

Chekhov's notebooks cover the last 14 years of his life. The academic collected works of Chekhov are housed in thirty volumes, but only one volume, the 17th, is dedicated to the writer’s creative workshop. This volume includes notebooks, letters, diary entries, notes on the back of manuscripts and notes on loose sheets.

The surviving notebooks date from 1891 to 1904. A. B. Derman believes that “it is more likely that Chekhov began using notebooks in 1891, from the time of his first trip to Western Europe, and also relied on memory.” It is impossible to confirm for sure whether Chekhov entered the records earlier. Some researchers claim that Chekhov began keeping notebooks only in 1891, while others insist that Chekhov used notebooks earlier. Here you can refer to the memoirs of the artist K.A. Korovin, who mentioned that the writer used a small book during their trip to Sokolniki in the spring of 1883. and to the memoirs of Gilyarovsky, who talked about how he often saw Anton Pavlovich writing something down and that the writer advised everyone to do so. Remembering Chekhov's special love for destroying unfinished work, notebooks remain the only observation that allows us to understand the writer's train of thought.

In his first book, which researchers call “creative,” the writer wrote jokes, witticisms, aphorisms, observations - everything that could be useful for future works. This book covers the entire last 14 years of the writer's life. Anton Pavlovich began writing this book in March 1891 before leaving for Italy. Merezhkovsky says:

“During a trip to Italy, Chekhov’s companions enthusiastically admired the old buildings, disappeared into museums, and Chekhov was busy with little things that seemed completely uninteresting to his companions. His attention was attracted by a guide with a special bald head, the voice of a violet seller on St. Mark, the gentleman who trimmed his beard in the barber shop for an hour, continuous calls on Italian stations.” However, the writer did not treat his notebook as a sanctuary - business records and monetary calculations appear in the book almost from the first pages.

The second notebook covers the period from 1892 to 1897. Like the third book (1897-1904), it was created more for business records, but here, too, everyday records coexist with creative notes.

The fourth book appeared the very last; in it the writer selected all the material that remained unrealized. It is something like a list of future works.

Chekhov also has an address book, a book with records of prescriptions for patients; a book entitled “Garden”, where the names of plants for the Yalta Garden were written down; business book, book called

“Trustee” with notes on cash payments. He also compiled bibliographic lists for sending books to the Taganrog city library; There are also diary entries.

In connection with such an abundance of notebooks, a reasonable question may arise - why were creative notes mixed with business ones in the books? It is assumed that Chekhov constantly carried books 1, 2 and 3 with him at different times, and he kept all the other books (gardening, medical) at home and, upon arriving home, carefully and in an even handwriting transferred non-creative notes from the books to their places. The same thing happens with creative entries in books 2 and 3. For example, in May 1901, Chekhov wrote in his third book:

“The gentleman owns a villa near Menton, which he bought with money received from the sale of an estate in Tula province. I saw him in Kharkov, where he came on business, lose this villa at cards, then serve on the railway, then die.”

From the third book, Chekhov transferred the note to the first, but since this note was not realized in his work, Chekhov rewrote it into the 4th book.

Chekhov looks at life like an artist - studies and correlates. The perception of events is characterized by the peculiarities of the worldview and psyche - records make it possible to see a person or an incident as the writer saw them. The study of life material begins with the individual - with a random remark, with a characteristic of speech or behavior. The center is the realities of the world, any particular case, any noticed little thing. His main requirement was the requirement of simplicity, so that the case was natural, and not fictitious, so that what was written could actually happen. In his notes, the writer talks about modern life, which has reached a dead end and lost its true meaning, but despite this, he also talks about the value of life, about its possibilities:

“A person only needs 3 arsh. land.

Not a person, but a corpse. Man needs the whole globe.” He writes about the need for a person to be just a person:

“If you want to become an optimist and understand life, then stop believing what they say and write, but observe and delve into it yourself.”

The notebooks contain many potential subjects from various areas of life: they included notes about life on Sakhalin and in the center of Russia, about public and personal life, the life of the intelligentsia and the life of peasants and workers. “The writer took these notes, created by the eye, ear and brain, and expanded them into the confines of a small story, in which, however, the exposition, the setting of the theme, its development and cadence are clearly indicated,” notes Krzhizhanovsky, classifying notebooks as an archetype of humoresques, brings out the paradigm of Chekhov's genres: notebooks - humoresques - stories - novellas. Along with the genre, the hero grows, and laughter turns into a smile.

Paperny Z.S. wrote that Chekhov’s notebooks are not frozen, but alive because are constantly in motion [Paperny, 1976: 210]. And this is true, notebooks are a laboratory for a writer’s creativity - notes are constantly reviewed, corrected, corrected and rewritten. Chekhov included in his books his observations and reflections on life, any particular case. With their help, you can see how the author’s thought has changed.

2.3 Genre specificity of short stories by A.P. Chekhov (using the example of early stories: “Daddy”, “Fat and Thin”, “Chameleon”, “Volodya”, “Ariadne”)

Anton Pavlovich became the creator of a new type of literature - a short story, incorporating, from the point of view of the depth and completeness of ideological and artistic content, a story and a novel. In this, the writer was helped not only by his ability to notice details, but also by his work at the Moscow Observer - twice a month Anton Pavlovich was obliged to write notes of no more than a hundred lines. The topics were varied:

1.Life and customs of Moscow - Chekhov describes the funeral procession bureau, their unceremoniousness, rudeness and greed, describes the seasonal demand for grooms, quirks of nature, cases of poisoning with spoiled provisions, curious, obscene signs:

“Seeing a dead person in your home is easier than dying yourself. In Moscow, it’s the other way around: it’s easier to die yourself than to see a dead person in your house”;

“Speaking of conscience, the suitors should not wobble and break. Where there are no marriages, science says, there is no population. This must be remembered. Our Siberia is not yet populated”;

2.Theatre, art and entertainment - this includes reports on outstanding performances, characteristics of individual theaters and actors, notes about theatrical life:

“The end has come for our Pushkin Theater... and what an end! It was rented out as a café-chantant to some St. Petersburg Frenchmen.”

3.The topic of the trial - this includes curious and sensational cases, for example, the “trial of a fig shown to a police bailiff” or the court case of an employee of a St. Petersburg magazine who borrowed bills from a monk and refused to pay them back due to the fact that monks do not have the right to take and give bills .

4.The theme of literature - here Chekhov writes about cases of plagiarism or fist violence between authors and reviewers.

The subject matter of Chekhov's feuilletons and humorous jokes is extensive - from his first endeavors, short anecdotes and humorous jokes, he sought to enrich comic situations and psychologically reveal the characters. From the writer’s correspondence it is known that he published works until 1880 (stories

“Fatherless”, “Found a scythe on a stone”, “No wonder the hen sang”), but the stories were not preserved and therefore the countdown is carried out from the magazine “Dragonfly”, where, under the pseudonym “Young Elder”, a parody “Letter to a learned neighbor” was published on pseudoscientific article.

Although V.I. Kuleshov and notes that A.P. Chekhov managed to achieve high professionalism in revealing the serious in a small form; it is also worth noting that at first Chekhov faced serious difficulties on his way - they were afraid to read Anton Pavlovich, or rather, they were even “ashamed” to read because of its brevity, because the work could not be read in one night or several evenings. A new time has come - the time of “phrases in a few words,” as Mayakovsky wrote. This is Chekhov's innovation.

As A.B. notes Esin, “the need of modern man to find stable guidelines in a complex and changing world” [Esin, 2003: 38]. Anton Pavlovich looks at life like an artist. This was his goal - to define the life “that is” and the life “that should be.”

One of his main principles was the requirement to study the whole of Russian life, and not individual narrow areas of it. The center is the realities of the world, any particular case, any noticed little thing, but it should be noted that in all the stories and feuilletons the writer does not have socio-political themes, with the only exception being “The Death of an Official.”

Chekhov was not associated with any parties or ideologies; he believed that all despotism was criminal. He was not interested in Marxist teaching, he did not see the labor movement, and he was ironic about the peasant community. All his stories - funny and bitter - are true.

“Involuntarily, when making a story, you worry first of all about its framework: from the mass of heroes and half-heroes you take only one face - a wife or husband - you put this face on the background and draw only him, you emphasize it, and scatter the rest across the background like small coin; it turns out something like a firmament: one big moon and around it a mass of small stars. The moon fails, because it can only be understood if the other stars are also understood, and the stars are not finished. And what comes out of me is not literature, but something like the sewing of Trishka’s caftan. What to do? I don't know and I don't know. I’ll rely on healing time.”

Maxim Gorky said that Chekhov kills realism - elevated to spiritual meaning. Vladimir Danchenko noted that Chekhov’s realism was honed to the point of symbolism, and Grigory Byaly called it realism of the simplest case [Byaly, 1981: 130]. In our opinion, Anton Pavlovich’s realism represents the quintessence of real life. The mosaic of his works represents all layers of society at the turn of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, his stories transformed Russian humor, and dozens of other writers later followed his path.

“When I write, I fully count on the reader, believing that he himself will add the subjective elements missing in the story.” Chekhov characterized the contemporary reader as sluggish and dispassionate, so he taught the reader to make all the allusions himself, to see all the literary associations. Every sentence, every phrase, and especially every word of the writer stands in its place. Chekhov is called the master of the short story, his stories are “shorter than a sparrow’s nose.” Parody, short story, miniature, sketch, essay, anecdote, humoresque, sketch, and finally “little things” and “mosquitoes and flies” are genres invented by Chekhov himself. The writer repeated more than once that he tried everything except novels and denunciations.

Anton Pavlovich's prose contains about 500 stories and novellas and more than 8,000 characters. Not a single character is repeated, not a single one is parodied. It is always different, without repetition. Only brevity remains unchanged. Even the titles of his works contain the content in a condensed form (“Chameleon” - unprincipledness, “Death of an Official” - emphasizes that it is an official, not a person).

Despite the fact that the writer uses conventional forms: exaggeration, hyperbolization, they do not violate the impression of verisimilitude, but rather increase the understanding of real human feelings and relationships.

The writer depicted an ordinary person for the first time. Chekhov more than once told young authors that when writing a story, it is necessary to throw out the beginning and the end from it, because that is where novelists lie the most. Once, one young author asked the writer for advice and Chekhov told him to describe the class of people that he knew well, but the young author was offended and complained that it was not interesting to describe workers, there was no interest in it, princesses and princes needed to be described. The young author left with nothing and Anton Pavlovich never heard anything more about him.

In 1899, Chekhov advised Gorky to cross out the definitions of nouns and verbs: “It’s clear when I write “a man sat down on the grass.” On the contrary, it is incomprehensible and difficult for the brain if I write:

“a tall, narrow-chested, medium-sized man with a red beard sat down on the green grass, already crushed by pedestrians, sat down, silently, timidly and fearfully looking around.” It doesn’t immediately fit into the brain, but fiction must fit right away, in a second.” Perhaps that is why we believe the classics so much.

Chekhov lived at the turn of time, at the turn of the centuries. In his small sketch stories, he left a significant and impressive legacy that shows and reveals the whole life of this time. The hero of Chekhov's stories is an ordinary man in the street, with ordinary, daily worries, and the plot is an internal conflict. Beginning his career with humoresques, Chekhov put something more into them; he exposed philistine vulgarity, “quests.” His main principles were truth and objectivity.

So, for example, in “Gooseberry” the obsession of Nikolai Ivanovich is described. All his life he lived for this idea and even married the hero only for the sake of profit, but when he achieved his goal, it turned out that there was nothing more to live for, and he “grew old, plump, flabby.” However, at the same time you can see not only an obsession, but also a great desire for your goal, for your idea. Instincts mixed with feelings.

Unlike Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Saltykov-Shchedrin, the writer did not consider himself to have the right to act as an accuser or moralist. It is impossible to find straightforward characteristics in Chekhov. L.N. Tolstoy compared Chekhov's style to the impressionists - as if he were waving paints indiscriminately, but the result was solid. Such details play an important role in the writer’s artistic workshop - the world is presented in its entirety, in all its diversity. The action unfolds against the backdrop of details - smells, sounds, colors - all this is compared with the characters, with their quests and dreams.

Chekhov considered the ideal to be a moral, thinking, integral, multifaceted, seeking, developed person. And he showed how far man is from this ideal.

Chekhov shows a comedy of manners in a society where a person is completely enslaved by fetishes: capital, rank, position. Chekhov embodied his authorial position in the organization of artistic space. Readers are presented with a picture of life where it is difficult to draw the line between slavery and despotism, where there is no friendship, love, family ties, there are only relationships that correspond to hierarchy. The writer appears before us not as a teacher, but as a craftsman, a worker who knows his job well, he becomes a writer of everyday life, a witness of life, he teaches us to think, to pay attention to minor details. Simple sentences are preferred. Many entries are presented in the form of aphorisms, replacing extensive reasoning. The perception of events is characterized by the peculiarities of the worldview and psyche - stories make it possible to see a person or incident as the writer saw them - objectively.

In order to show the features of the short story genre by Chekhov, you can turn to such stories as: “Daddy”, “Fat and Thin”, “Chameleon”, “Volodya”, “Ariadne”.

One of the first stories is the story "Daddy", published in 1880 in the magazine "Dragonfly". Chekhov shows the image of a teacher - weak-willed, weak-willed, unprincipled. The teacher knows that the boy is not studying and has many bad grades, but still agrees to change the grade on the condition that other teachers also change the grades. The teacher thinks this is a brilliant solution. This is how the theme of education appears in Chekhov’s stories. The writer focuses on the contradiction - knowledge of education and the real state of affairs.

The contradiction between the role of the teacher and his embodiment. Along with this theme comes the cross-cutting theme of indifference. Anton Pavlovich was not happy with the fact that the school fostered fear, enmity, disunity, and indifference.

The story “Fat and Thin” was written in 1883 and published in the humorous magazine “Oskolki.” Signed "A. Chekhonte." The story takes up only one printed page. What can you tell in such a small volume? No not like this. What can you tell on one page so that it leaves a mark and so that not only contemporaries, but also subsequent generations return to it? How to implement this?

“Two friends met at the Nikolaevskaya railway station: one fat, the other thin” -This is the beginning of the story. The very first sentence, which already says a lot.

The story begins immediately with action, without unnecessary lyricism. And this sentence says everything that could be conveyed: place, situation, characters. In this story we will not find descriptions of the appearance of the heroes, but we recognize the portraits of the heroes and their character very well. So, for example, Tolstoy is a fairly wealthy citizen, important and happy with life.

“The fat man had just had lunch at the station, and his lips, coated with oil, were shiny like ripe cherries. He smelled of sherry and orange.

The fourth sentence introduces us to another main character - Thin. Events are unfolding very quickly and escalating. We already know not only about the character of the characters, but also how their lives turned out, although this is only the sixth sentence of the story. This is how we learn that Thin has a wife and child, that they are not very rich - they carry their things themselves, there is no money even for a porter.

“Peeking out from behind him was a thin woman with a long chin - his wife, and a tall high school student with a squinted eye - his son.”story prose writer fiction

The further narration of the story is constructed in the form of dialogue. It would seem that here you need to pay attention to the conversation of the characters itself, but it is also worth paying attention to the artistic construction of the text. Thus, the sentences that refer to Tolstoy are short, there are many diminutive suffixes, and the speech itself is colloquial; sentences that relate to Subtle are simple, not loaded with anything, there are no epithets, frequent use of verbs, they are mostly short exclamatory sentences. The denouement occurs almost simultaneously with the climax, when the action is brought to the point of absurdity. A fateful phrase is uttered that puts everything in its place. Tolstoy says that he “has risen to the rank of secret” and it is this phrase that changes the friendly atmosphere, changes the vector of relations. Thin can no longer call his friend, as he called him just a couple of seconds ago, now he is not just a friend, but “Your Excellency.” And it is so noticeable, so cloying, that “the Privy Councilor vomited.”

The tragicomic meaning of this story is that Thin considers the first part of their meeting a reprehensible misunderstanding, and the conclusion of the meeting, unnatural from a human point of view, normal and natural.

This story is interesting, vital, poignant, topical. It turns out this way not only because of the theme (vices, veneration for rank, exposure of sycophancy are ridiculed), but also because of the construction. Each sentence is verified and is strictly in its place. Everything plays a role here: the construction of sentences, the depiction of the image of the characters, details, surnames - all this together shows us a picture of the whole world. The text works for itself. The author's position is hidden and not emphasized.

“For Chekhov, everything is the same - that a person, that his shadow, that a bell, that a suicide... they strangled a man, they drink champagne,” wrote N.K. Mikhailovsky about Chekhov’s authorial position [Mikhailovsky, 1900: 122]. But the fact is that Chekhov is a writer of everyday life and this disinterest is only an illusion. Anton Pavlovich writes only about what could actually happen, he writes objectively and this makes it powerful and impressive. He is not a judge, he is an impartial and objective witness, and the reader adds everything subjective himself. The characters are revealed in the action itself, without unnecessary preamble. Maybe that's why S.N. Bulgakov comes up with a Latin term to define Chekhov's worldview - optimopessimism - a call for an active fight against evil, and a firm belief in the future victory of good [Bulgakov, 1991].

The story “Chameleon” was written in 1884 and published in the humorous magazine “Oskolki”. Signed "A. Chekhonte." Just like the story “Thick and Thin”, it is short, concise and succinct. Written based on real events. The story shows ordinary, simple people. The title is telling. It is based on the idea of ​​chameleonism, which unfolds in a metaphorical sense. Those. like a lizard that changes its color, a person who changes his views depending on the situation. Ochumelov, like Khryakin and the crowd, changes so quickly that the reader can barely keep up with the train of thought. The essence of Ochumelov’s transformations is from slave to despot and vice versa. There is no positive hero, the author's position is hidden. Opportunism is ridiculed, the desire to judge not according to the law, but according to rank. Symbol of double-mindedness. It is important for the writer to show the relativity of opinion, its relationship and dependence on the situation.

The story “Volodya” was first published in 1887 in the Petersburg Newspaper. The story describes the suicide of a high school student, molested by a mature, idle woman. Anton Pavlovich resorts to a comparison of two realities: the real, dirty, vulgar and imaginary Volodya. The author's position is hidden, revealed gradually. The researcher's task is to find, understand and reveal it.

The theme of love is also revealed in the story “Ariadne,” written in 1895. The story is written in the form of a confession and discussions about the education of women, marriage, love, beauty. A story-monologue by Shamokhin about the love of a beautiful and young girl, about her world of feelings, thoughts, and actions. The heroine of a story within a story. The heroine's name is Greek and means thread of life. The name is given contrary to the character of the heroine and contrasts with the inner essence of the image. Love can create and create, and it can destroy. Chekhov penetrates deeply into the psychology of love. Shamokhin, a romantic and idealist, the son of a poor landowner, perceived life in rosy tones, considered love

a great good, a high state of soul. Shamokhin's story is the result of a great life shock, a story about love ruined by vulgarity. Love was conquered by humanity in the process of its historical development. Shamokhin argues that over the course of thousands of years, the human genius, which fought against nature, also fought against physiology, carnal love as an enemy. An aversion to animal instinct has been cultivated for centuries, and the fact that we now wax poetic about love is also natural that we are not covered with fur. Complete equality between men and women.

The comic in Chekhov's works lies not in comic scenes or remarks, but in the fact that his characters do not know where the truth is, what it is. Lev Shestov notes that for almost twenty-five years Chekhov did nothing but kill hopes, V.B. Kataev says that “not hopes, but illusions.” Chekhov's heroes seem to be acting out a circus reprise, each of whom has their own truth, but the reader sees that none of the heroes knows the truth, the heroes do not listen or hear each other - this is Chekhov's comedy. Psychological deafness. The stories are small, but they add up like novels.

Chekhov uses a special form of composition: there are no extensive introductions, no backstory of the characters, the reader immediately finds himself in the thick of things, in the middle of the plot, and there is no motivation for the actions of the characters. What the author leaves outside the text is felt by the reader as implied. A.P. Chudakov called this approach “mimic”: it is not important to describe the mental state of the characters, it is important to indicate the detail, describe the action. Things are not in contrast to the world, but in contrast to the hero.

Gorky wrote about Chekhov’s stories: “Hating everything vulgar and dirty, he described the abominations of life in the noble language of a poet, with the soft smile of a humorist, and behind the beautiful appearance of his stories, their inner meaning, full of bitter reproach, is little noticeable.”

Although Chekhov did not say a word about God, leaving his book in your soul takes away beauty and tenderness. Perhaps this is where the tragedy of Chekhov’s heroes lies - no one ever came to spiritual harmony. However, Chekhov himself was accused of this. Merezhkovsky believed that the writer “forgave Christ.” Anton Pavlovich was not a religious writer because in Christianity he accepted only morality and ethics, and rejected everything else as superstition. Chekhov called “religion” the religion of death, and in this Merezhkovsky finds similarities with A.M. Gorky - in their attitude to religion. “They wanted to show that man without God is God, but they showed that he is a beast, worse than a beast is cattle, worse than cattle is a corpse, worse than a corpse is nothing.”

However, there are researchers who do not agree with this opinion; Alexander Izmailov notes that Chekhov was never tormented by the idea of ​​God, but was not indifferent to it: “The non-believer Chekhov dreamed of a miracle, as sometimes other believers do not dream.” Chekhov believes in his own way, and his heroes also believe in their own way. All of the writer’s work is imbued with love and compassion for man, the reader is introduced to morality and his soul is purified.

According to Bicilli, Chekhov’s works emanate the warm and even light of everyday Russian Orthodoxy. The most important questions in Anton Pavlovich’s work are questions about death, the meaning of life, norms, morality and value guidelines, power and veneration of rank, fear, the absurdity of existence... and how this must be overcome. All this can be characterized more succinctly - the meaning of existence. Usually, next to the serious event, the writer has the small and accidental, which enhances the effect of curiosity and helps to see the hero’s tragedy more clearly.

From the stories reviewed, we can conclude that the existence of Chekhov’s heroes is materialistic. The chosen genre of short stories allows Chekhov to create a large canvas of his time - he describes small stories in which the entire private life is shown. Chekhov's hero is an ordinary person, an “average” person, involved in everyday life and perceiving it as the norm and a given, who does not strive to stand out from the majority. A person who avoids the reputation of a chosen person, the only exception being those heroes who are mentally ill (Kovrin - “The Black Monk” - a man with delusions of grandeur).

To summarize, we can highlight the distinctive features of the short story genre in Chekhov:

· Laconism - there is no need to describe the poverty of the petitioner, it is enough to simply say that she was wearing a red shawl;

· Container - the end must be open;

· Brevity and accuracy - works are most often based on anecdotes;

· Features of the composition - the story must begin from the middle, throw out the beginning and end;

· Fast plot development;

· Objectivity in relation to the characters;

· Psychologism - you need to write only about what you know well.

The large-scale plan is the principle of hidden Chekhovian psychologism, the implementation of the ideas of the “undercurrent”, the disclosure of the most complex world problems. It was not mythology, but ordinary life with its philistine dramas that was so accurately described by the writer. It was always not enough for Chekhov to simply describe life, he wanted to remake it, the writer in his stories showed the awakening of truth over lies and its triumph. Naturally, the emergence of truth sometimes destroys a person.

The extraordinary friendship of Gorky and Chekhov is widely known. No connoisseur of books by masters of Russian literature can do without getting to know these writers. Bright visual talent allowed M. Gorky to create significant works not only in large, but also in small form, and therefore, within the framework of our study, it is impossible to ignore the features of the short story genre in the work of M. Gorky.

CHAPTER 3. FEATURES OF THE SHORT STORY GENRE IN THE WORK OF M. GORKY

“Bitter is like a forest,” writes Yuri Trifonov, there are animals, birds, berries, and mushrooms. And we bring only mushrooms from the forest” [Trifonov, 1968: 16]. The bitter image is versatile, not yet fully explored and not yet truly read. Gleb Struve believes that international bitter studies should take the gloss off the writer’s face. It’s possible to do this because The writer’s entire work has not been published. This confirms that in repositories (both in Russia and in the West) there are many letters that have not yet become the property of researchers, and we also do not yet have a complete and scientific biography of the writer. There is a serious and urgent task ahead to discover a new Gorky, to rethink his attitude to all phenomena of life: social, educational, literary and humanistic (it is known that the writer raised the international community to fight the natural disaster that broke out in 1921). There were many humanists in Russian literature: Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, Tolstoy.

So what is Gorky really like? The creative path begins with the publication of the story “Makar Chudra” in 1892 under the pseudonym M. Gorky (Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov). In 1895, “The Old Woman Izergil” was published. Critics immediately noticed the new name. The pseudonym reflects the writer's childhood experience. Born in 1868, he lost his father early, was raised by his maternal grandfather, became an orphan at the age of 11 and began working. In 1886, the Kazan period begins; he gets a job in a bakery and gets acquainted with Marxist ideas. In 1888 he went on his first trip around his homeland, then stopped in Nizhny Novgorod, where he worked as a clerk, and in 1891 he went on a second trip. The experience of wandering is reflected in the cycle “Across Rus'”. At the beginning of the century, the first plays “Bourgeois”, “At the Depth”, “Children of the Sun” were created. In 1905, he met Lenin. In 1906, the first emigration was to the USA, and then to Capri. In exile he meets A.A. Bogdanov, A.V. Lunacharsky - together they open a school in Capri, where Gorky conducts readings on the history of Russian literature. The main task was to combine god-building with revolutionary ideas, which is reflected in the story “Confession”. Materials for creativity have always been drawn from pre-revolutionary reality. Gorky does not write about life after the revolution or about foreign countries. The revolution of 1917 was accepted by the writer ambiguously - he was afraid of distortion of the ideals of the revolution, believing that the peasantry was a frozen mass. Afterwards he comes to the conclusion that the revolution represents destruction. In 1921 the second emigration.

According to the memoirs of V. Khodasevich, he was a very kind and open person, in whose house there were always many friends, but there were even more unfamiliar people or even strangers - everyone came to him with requests. Gorky helped as much as he could. This was before emigration, so it is difficult to combine the words of the 30s with this idea: “if the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed” - how can this be explained? Gorky is contradictory. Such contradictions exist in the work of a writer and artist. One of the main contradictions is the inability to combine ideas and real life. Also, Gorky’s contradiction is the irreducibility to any one idea; Dostoevsky drew attention to this Russian peculiarity, a certain resonance, an imposition of impressions. However, this turn of personal biography had almost no effect on his creative biography (speeches or journalistic articles are not considered here). In his artistic work, Gorky practically did not refer to this time. Political views should not leave an imprint on creativity, for example, in the prose of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov there is no socio-political theme. The task of discovering a new Gorky is becoming increasingly urgent.

3.1 Social and philosophical position of the writer

Working with Gorky's texts suggests a perspective on the study of literary facts of the 20th century. Starting with the development of history as a subject of study, he moved towards the comprehension of history in himself, so it is no coincidence that in the last years of his life the writer acted not only as an author, but also as a historian, and it is also no coincidence that the first book he loved was “The Legend of How the Soldier Saved Peter.”

Gorky always felt himself in the service of humanity, and already in 1880 the writer was faced with a question that he would address for the rest of his life: history is made up of the actions of an individual, how does the “struggle for happiness” relate to love for humanity. “Walking among the people” and numerous wanderings around Rus' convince the writer that the people are not exactly the same as they are portrayed. He sees dark people into whom slavery was driven, but he also sees a few who are drawn to enlightenment.

In the first years of the 20th century, the writer moved away from populism and moved closer to Marxism, but this does not mean that Gorky’s historical consciousness became politicized. “I am not a Marxist and will not be one,” writes writer A.M. Skabichevsky.

In 1910, Gorky refers to the term “nation”, which occurs due to the rethinking of values ​​after the first Russian revolution. The writer still believes in a new man as the creator of a new history.

The writer's program in the magazine "Literary Studies" is of great interest - the magazine was a platform on which this canon was tested even before the advent of "socialist realism". Gorky’s article “On Sociological Realism” first appeared here [Gorky, 1933: 11]. The magazine encouraged aspiring writers to study seriously in the field of writing. Ideal literature is “pure” literature, without any impurities, philosophical views or beliefs. In such literature, the writer should write only about what he is well versed in. Literature must be clear and true.

Gorky starts from examples of realism of the 19th century. - clarity and simplicity are the main criteria of true art. The story requires clarity, liveliness, and not artificiality of the characters, but if the writer writes simply enough, it means that he himself is poorly versed in this. Simplicity is a taboo on a specific configuration of words and the uncertainty of meaning hidden behind it, which is unacceptable for socialist realism. Young authors need to be taught perseverance; love for art should not be taught, it must be achieved.

In the article “Destruction of Personality,” Gorky criticizes writers for whom art is “above the fate of the homeland”: “It is difficult to imagine that such art is possible.” Gorky thinks so because he does not believe that somewhere there is a person who would not gravitate towards any social group.

The formation of Gorky's social position is a complex and contradictory process. The concept of a populist heroic personality was replaced by the recognition of the masses, and then completely replaced by the idea of ​​a “god of the people” [Lunacharsky, 1908: 58]. The attitude towards the intelligentsia also changed: sometimes it was considered a “draft horse” of progress, sometimes it was crushed into an “enemy of the people”. The writer also paid attention to the problem of faith, reason, individual and collective. Taken together, all this is the basis of the writer’s social consciousness.

3.2 Architectonics and artistic conflict of Gorky’s short stories

The study of the ideological, philosophical, aesthetic basis of the means of poetic expressiveness of short stories seems relevant due to the fact that through these stories a vision of the spiritual drama of M. Gorky, and an understanding of the evolutionary logic of creativity, and the general cultural and historical context of the development of civilization are revealed.

Gorky's inconsistency is due to the fact that in the writer there lived, as it were, two people: one was an artist, and the other was simply a private person, with his doubts, joys and mistakes. The artist, unlike the man, was not mistaken. Unlike Tolstoy, who portrayed the plasticity of character, Gorky portrayed the ambiguity of a person, whose paradox is that while capable of the highest actions, he is also capable of the lowest. The inconsistency of human character, the complexity of man, “human diversity” is a principle inherent in Gorky’s work.

Most often, the characters come into conflict with the writer, as if they come to life and act on their own, or even dictate their own, perhaps opposite will to the author, and speak the truth. Gorky said more than once that a writer must pay attention to every event, even if it seems small and insignificant - this phenomenon can be a fragment of the old world or the sprout of a new one. You need to write in such a way, according to Gorky, that the writer sees what the author is writing about, and this, again, can only be achieved when the writer himself knows what he is depicting. A.P. spoke about this more than once. Chekhov.

The “skill” of a writer becomes on the same level as the act of cognition. Clearly and clearly, according to Gorky, means devoid of semantic interpretations. For example, one aspiring writer sent Gorky the manuscript of his story, which contained the line:

“It was drizzling in the morning. In the sky it’s autumn, in Grishka’s face it’s spring.”

The anger and sarcasm with which the writer responded to the young author can be fully understood and explained; the young author was trying to “make” the text, and as a result, complete confusion occurs. For this reason, socialist realism requires psychologism - descriptions of a person’s character must go along with a story about the motives of his behavior. A person should be visible and tangible to the reader, characters should act in accordance with their experience and character, not contrived, there is no need to “pull out the facts.”

Style is a contrasting structure of a phrase that is not similar to the generally accepted one. Style is about the order of words, the repetition of words, the repetition of thoughts. The writer must convey clear impressions.

Realism arose along with photography and is attractive not because it accurately describes life, but because it is difficult to write in this genre. The plot in realism is overcoming the event of enslavement by some difficulty. Heroes undergo such tests that fiction writers of the 19th century could not even imagine. Realism is an attempt to deceive people with the truthfulness of the image, but all this art and fantasy cannot be excluded, however, romanticism generally passed everything off as fantasy.

In the early 20s, M. Gorky wrote a number of stories (“The Hermit”,

“Conductor”, “Karamora” and others), creates a series of literary portraits. Gorky's life was very rich in meetings with various interesting people, and the writer decided to capture their features in short essays. His literary portraits form an entire art gallery. The reader meets in it outstanding figures of the revolution: V.I. Lenin, L.B. Krasin, I.I. Skvortsov-Stepanov; science: I. P. Pavlov; art: L.A. Sulerzhitsky - and many others. Most of all in this gallery of portraits of writers: V. G. Korolenko, N. E. Karonin-Petropavlovsky, N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, L. N. Andreev.

The canon of the short story genre in Gorky consists of such concepts as: the requirement of real motivations, psychologism, the presence of a general thought. The story should be true, not believable, for example, it is difficult to imagine workers who will ridicule a comrade for a dirty uniform or if the worker suddenly turns out to be too sentimental. Socialist realism cannot do without character. A historical event must be described from the correct sources, there is no need to interview eyewitnesses, specifics must be replaced by abstract judgments, from which it will not be possible to accurately understand whether it is fiction or truth. Gorky allows vernacular speech in literature only when the author has a phrase that, with its unusualness, can immediately chain the reader to the story, but there is also a caveat - it is better to start stories with a description; you should not start stories with unusual speech. So it’s better for the worker to say “rat.” Total understanding of the text.

In Gorky’s “romantic” stories, descriptions of nature and weather require the reader’s close attention. The sun is equated to the heart. Clear weather and sun are the desired ideal in everyday life. Gorky's minimalism in relation to nature worried artists who tried to interpret the writer using other forms of art.

Gorky refuses a detailed description. Early Soviet literature was sympathetic to symbolist literature. Such texts made it possible to include mythopoetics and religious topics. With the establishment of the new system, the need for a complex symbolist cover disappeared and the symbol began to work like a reflex, in which “storm” means “revolution.”

Gorky says that Russian literature is the most pessimistic in the world. The writer studies life and sees everyday life, which is not existence, it is petty, gloomy and scary. Do you need to “elevate everyday life”? But then it turns out that you are teaching life, and this contradicts Gorky, life must be understood, not taught. Also, many blame Gorky for fragmentation. But fragmentation is an external impression. The author must be able to convey fragments of the purely external history of the era, to draw a direct connection with the course of the general spiritual development of the people and his own development as an artist and citizen. Fragmentation is a state when the continuity of presentation is disrupted and it is difficult for the reader to make connections between episodes. Realism becomes the hero's connection with the outside world.

In the second half of the 19th century, Chekhov said that “you can’t live like this,” but he thought that any changes would take place only after 200 or 300 years. In the 20th century, Gorky aggravated the Chekhov problem and created the image of a tramp hero. The reader discovers new heroes, new characters, and the reader is amazed that a man from the people turns out to be a bearer of morality, he has a strong thirst for freedom and lack of fear. Critics' opinions on this matter were divided: some believed that the writer was wasting his talent, while others believed that the subject of the image was being distorted. This is why Merezhkovsky speaks about the anti-Christian position of Gorky and Chekhov:

“They wanted to show that man without God is God, but they showed that he is a beast, worse than a beast is cattle, worse than cattle is a corpse, worse than a corpse is nothing.” But both can be disputed. The writer shows the extraordinary in an ordinary person. Gorky, like Chekhov, has a wide scope of life; he describes a large panorama, a mosaic. His work is characterized by a cinematic vision of life. “I probably saw and experienced more than I should have, hence the haste and carelessness of my work,” the writer himself notes. It’s as if his heroes are not running away from need, but on the contrary, they themselves are getting into trouble, although they are looking for freedom. The author's idea does not merge with observations, but is prepared by the hero.

In Gorky's early works, historical subjects are projected onto modernity, which is a stage in the process of development of the world. There is a confrontation between the hero and reality. This is the old gypsy Makar Chudra. In the story of the same name, the infinity of the steppe and the sea is revealed to us from the very beginning, followed by a logical question about human freedom: “Does he know his will?” It was in such a landscape - mysterious and nocturnal - that such a question could arise. The hero is at the center of the story and receives the maximum opportunity for development. Heroes have the right to express their opinions; the hero carries within himself the desire for freedom. There is also an insoluble contradiction that can only be resolved by death, which seems completely natural to Chudra. The hero is sure that love and pride cannot be reconciled and compromise is not possible. A romantic cannot sacrifice either one or the other. By telling the legends of his people, Chudra expresses an idea of ​​his value system. Throughout the entire story, the author persistently used the word “will,” replacing it with “freedom” only once. In Dahl's dictionary will - is an arbitrariness of action, and Liberty means the ability to act in your own way. Thus, ordinary people turn out to be the arbiters of destinies. The connection of times is interpreted through the problem of freedom and happiness, from the point of view of morality and relationships in the team. Gorky wrote that a person remains a person “in order” and not “because”. This problem tormented the writer throughout his work. Having come to literature with the conviction that man is great, that his creativity and happiness are the highest values ​​on earth, the writer was faced with the fact that he could not prove it. In the 1893 fairy tale “About the Chizh, who lied, and about the Woodpecker, the lover of truth,” the Chizh, inspiring birds with the ghost of a beautiful land, calls for an ideal. But facts and logic refute Chizh’s ideas, and Woodpecker’s position is logically justified. Chizh is forced to admit that he lied and does not know what is behind the grove, but it is so wonderful to believe, and the woodpecker may be right, why do we need such a truth that “falls like a stone on the wings?” This contradiction can be traced throughout the writer’s entire career. Thus, Gorky, on the one hand, admits his intention to embellish the lives of both people and their characters, and on the other hand, he admits that the characters of Russian people are incredibly complex and fabulously rich, that he lacks color, not only to embellish, and even capture it. That is why at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. in the writer’s work, the language of a new logic of humanism was just beginning to take shape, where Man would take the starting place. Gorky had not yet written openly and therefore creates a fictional world of legends, where heroes live and act from themselves, determined by their own will, and not by the will of circumstances. But gradually the new worldview comes into conflict with the logic of things.

The big step is to define plot as a character's story shown through a system of events. The focus is on the characters of strong people who are able to control not only their own destiny, but also that of others. A bridge is being built between the concepts of “truth” and “person”. For example, the story “On the Rafts”. The story was written in 1895, published in the Samara Newspaper. The entangled relationships of the main characters reflect a love triangle, but at the same time also the systems of everyday connections in a peasant family - the measure of values ​​was not the category “morally - not morally”, but participation in hard and common work. The main characters are Silan, strong as an anvil, Marya with a blush all over her cheek, in contrast to them Mitri is shown, stunted and frail. The owner Sergei, as well as Silan, treat Mitri as a worker who is useless on the farm. There is no social conflict in the story; the problem of “sin” is at the center. For Mitrius the law is in the soul, and for Silanus it is in the flesh. However, Silan is subject to both remorse and doubts; he asserts the right to happiness and comes to the conclusion: “Man is the truth!” Behind this statement is that the truth does not have an independent existence, it relies on something and therefore the truth turns out to be on the side of Silan. “Only man exists, everything else is the work of his hands and his brain” (Satin). The support of truth, according to Gorky, is man. It turns out that a person must define himself. In this story, Gorky debunks the sentimental image of a humble man and reveals the problem of self-awareness among the people. There is a need for a new type of being.

By telling about the times of “strong” people, Gorky is trying to understand his time. The historical motifs of early works served as a form for expressing the romantic ideal, the dream of a free and strong personality. He identified moral and ethical problems in this material; the heroes of these stories live according to the laws of individuality. They think about the right of the strong, about selfishness and the ability to sacrifice oneself. Such stories include « The Tale of Count Ethelwood de Comignes and the Monk Tom Esher" and "The Return of the Normans from England" - the stories serve as a reason for thinking about the rights of the strong, about cruelty, about the morality of the weak. These stories served the purpose of finding a new hero, defining his character and life position.

In Gorky's works of the 1900s, the figure of the hero, who is closely connected with reality, already comes to the fore. It is worth noting the story “Konovalov”. The story begins with a note in the newspaper about the suicide due to melancholy of Alexander Ivanovich Konovalov. “Why do I live on earth”? The author of the story is trying to understand the origins of this melancholy of this tramp, because he is well built and knows how to work, but he feels unneeded, for all his troubles and failures he blames only himself: “Who is to blame for the fact that I drink? Pavelka, my brother, doesn’t drink - he has his own bakery in Perm. But I work better than him - but I’m a tramp and a drunkard, and I no longer have any rank or importance... But we are the children of the same mother! He's even younger than me. It turns out that something is wrong with me.” [Gorky 1950:21]. He embodies the features of the Russian people, and his portrait emphasizes the resemblance to a hero: large, with light brown hair, a powerful figure, with large blue eyes. This is almost the first realistic image of a working man. “He is a sad victim of conditions, a being, by nature, equal to everyone and a long series of historical injustices reduced to the level of social zero” [Gorky 1950:20]. The historical figure of Stepan Razin becomes a “fulcrum” for the hero and is a key detail of the narrative. Stepan Razin is not so much a historical figure as the personification of freedom, the people's dream of freedom. What was important to Gorky was not the historical accuracy of the details, but the very idea of ​​the “freedom of the falcon” and the “thoughtful tramp” Konovalov. As we have already said, M. Gorky endows his hero with the ability of introspection. Analyzing his life, the hero “separated himself from life into the category of people who are not needed for it and therefore subject to eradication” [Gorky 1950: 21]. Konovalov agrees that every tramp and tramp is prone to deception, exaggeration and inventing various unprecedented stories and explains this by the fact that it is easier to live this way. If a person has not had anything good in his life, and he comes up with some interesting, entertaining story and tells it as if it were true, then he will not harm anyone.

The climax is the description of the Kazan bakery, where Peshkov worked in a deep, damp basement as a baker’s assistant. Reading the monograph prompts the tramp baker to be reborn. “Every man is his own master,” says Konovalov, refuting the Marxist thesis about man’s dependence on the environment. Under Gorky's influence, the workers soon went on strike. Appealing to a historical figure allowed Gorky to pose the problem of destruction and creation in the reconstruction of life.

Summing up the results of the first Russian revolution, Gorky returns to the problems that destroy personality, the problems of nihilism and anarchism, to the question of the man of the future. These questions are raised in “Russian Fairy Tales” of 1912-1917. One of the main characters is Ivanovich, a Russian liberal intellectual. Gorky recreates public life, talks about Stolypin’s “pacification”, and about military courts. In this situation, the “wisest residents” are trying to create a new person: “they spit on the ground and stir, they immediately got dirty up to their ears in mud, but the results

Thin." The new person becomes either a seasoned merchant who sells the fatherland piece by piece, or a bureaucrat. Gorky sneers at attempts to fashion a new person: “No matter how much you spit, nothing will come of it.” In "Russian Fairy Tales" the image of History appears repeatedly - a book from which you can pull evidence for any lie. In the sixth tale, the footman Egorka, on the orders of the master, obediently brings facts to prove that the people want freedom. But when the men suggest that the master get off the land, the master calls in the troops to pacify him.

The theme of popular retribution is also raised in the story “Town”. The calm tone of the narrative contrasts with the reality depicted. The Bald Hills are actually the graves of the Razin people. While pacifying the rebels, Dolgoruky dealt savagely with the people. The equipment with which people were tormented is still kept in the city, it was left for memory so that the people would no longer rebel. The narrative in the story is multifaceted. Gorky's memories of life in exile in 1902 create the background against which the picture of calm county life unfolds. In the town, mothers maim their children out of boredom and anger. “Why is this city needed?” the writer argues. The first plan of the story is real life impressions about the meaning of existence. The second plan is created using a historical perspective - the connection of times connects Razin's men with Pugachev's. Gorky discusses the nature of the protest and is indignant at seeing how the people fall to their knees.

The theme of marginality is one of the main ones in the literature of the twenties. In this literature there were many heroes whose fates were tragically cut short or broken, thanks to people belonging to the highest echelons of power of the same totalitarian type: strong-willed, cruel, pragmatic, vain, “who built a new social system in an extremely short time, feverishly sought to imprint their names on its facade" [Chudakova 1988:252].

It is not surprising that the heroes of the works of the 20s are people with marginal consciousness. Let us turn to one of these heroes in M. Gorky’s story “Karamora”. One of the most “painful points” of the thoughts of the late M. Gorky is the consciousness and freedom of yesterday’s slaves. He wanted to understand how a mass person realizes himself in the force field of irreligious ideas of the century - Nietzschean, Marxist - and how he acts, either guided by them, or subordinate to them, or indifferently turning into their instrument. M. Gorky thought about how new ideas influenced the “psyche of Russian primitive man,” whose sense of social justice is not supported by spirituality and rationality.

There were quite a few of these among the “social work masters.” Being diligent students of revolutionary theorists, they seriously believed that the truth was in their hands, and recklessly, without understanding the means, rushed to spread it. Among them, the marginal person turned out to be especially interesting for M. Gorky, because he always liked those who were adapted for rebellion and mischief, and crime.

Gradually, he distinguishes between those who become criminals out of a desire to be a hero and those who commit a crime, testing an idea. It is hardly possible to separate these motives, since they arise in the subconscious, feed on instincts and mature in labyrinths of the spiritual wasteland where logical tools do not work. But M. Gorky could not retreat from difficult material. This is how the story “Karamora” appeared, marked by the overcoming of previous illusions: revolutionary romanticism, idealization of primitive consciousness, admiration for a strong personality.

Gorky was tormented all his life by the thought of the price of historical progress. An alienated and not alienated hero from historical time are two magnets created by Gorky. On the one hand, there are heroes who could not accept their time, and on the other hand, they are capable of internal development and interaction with the era. The humanistic concept that underlay his work in the 1930s is undergoing changes.

In 1932, critic M. Holguin writes that Gorky is one of the most humane writers, despite the fact that the harsh era of wars deprived him of social romanticism. The world was changing painfully. The fact is that all his life he had been calling for revolution, he saw it only in a romantic halo and did not recognize it when faced with violence and was afraid that this could lead to a war with his own people. He sincerely believed in the achievements of socialist realism that he spoke about.

Summarizing the consideration of the genre of short stories in the works of M. Gorky, we can draw the following conclusions.

The contradictions of Russian reality left an imprint on M. Gorky’s worldview and worldview; the formation of his views continued under the influence of Russian and European philosophical thought of the era, which were transformed in the writer’s mind into his own ideas about the essence of man and historical time, which left an imprint on the manner of narration of prose texts. M. Gorky, continuing the traditions of his predecessors, not only consolidated the principle of romanticization of the short story genre, but sought to expand the options and mechanisms of this process, achieving a significant effect by complicating the structure of the story - enhancing the dramatic principle in it through the objectified image of the narrator, reserving the right of subjective authorship narratives.

CONCLUSION

Thus, the study allowed us to draw the following conclusions:

The genre of the story has its roots in folklore; it began with oral retellings of stories in the form of parables. In written literature it became an independent genre in the 17th - 18th centuries, and the period of its development falls on the 19th - 20th centuries. - the short story replaces the novel, and writers appear who work primarily in the short story genre. The modern literary period is characterized by a significant complication of the genre structure of works. Having emerged at a certain time and being conditioned by its aesthetic guidelines, the genre is adjusted by the attitudes of the current cultural and historical era, and a re-emphasis of the genre occurs.

A short story is a text that belongs to the small form of epic prose, has a small number of characters, tells about one or more events from a person’s life, suggests the correlation of actions with a chronotope, and has the characteristic of eventfulness.

In our study, the short story genre was examined in the works of Russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky.

Chekhov's unique creative biography has long attracted the attention of scientists. Already Chekhov's contemporaries, and later researchers of his early work, noted the compositional thoughtfulness of his humorous stories. The most striking feature of the poetics of Chekhov's early period was humor and irony, which were born not only from the needs of readers and publishers, but also from the very character of the writer. It was found that the fundamental principles of Chekhov’s poetics, which he repeatedly declared, were objectivity, brevity, and simplicity.

In the stories about the little man: “Fat and Thin”, “Death of an Official”, “Chameleon”, etc. - Chekhov portrays his heroes as people who do not inspire any sympathy. They are distinguished by a slave psychology: cowardice, passivity, lack of protest. Their most important property is respect for rank. The stories are very skillfully constructed. The story “Thick and Thin” is based on the contrast of two recognitions. “Chameleon” is based on the dynamic change of behavior and intonation by the quarterly warden Ochumelov, depending on who owns the little dog that bit Khryukin: an ordinary person or General Zhigalov. It is based on the idea of ​​chameleonism, which unfolds in a metaphorical sense. Techniques of zoomorphism and anthropomorphism: endowing people with “animal” qualities and “humanizing” animals.

It can be said that in his early texts, Chekhov combined features of different genres of short prose to create an artistically complete text. The story acquired a new meaning in Chekhov’s work and established itself in “big” literature.

The model of Gorky's world in the story capaciously covers the multidimensionality of life. In it, one single episode is capable of capturing the emerging contradictions of reality and depicting an episode of epoch-making significance. And therefore, the story of M. Gorky, gaining strength during the period of rupture of eras, when ideological and artistic stereotypes are rejected or destroyed, is able to show the complex, dynamic connections of a person with the outside world or their rupture. The writer, when recreating a specific human character, his state of mind, manages to present a holistic picture of the world, society and, conversely, through a mosaic image of the phenomena of life, it is paradoxical to know a person, his inner world.

The canon of the short story genre in Gorky consists of such concepts as: the requirement of real motivations, psychologism, the presence of a general thought. In Gorky's early works, historical subjects are projected onto modernity, which is a stage in the process of development of the world. There is a confrontation between the hero and reality. This is the old gypsy Makar Chudra.

The connection of times is interpreted through the problem of freedom and happiness, from the point of view of morality and relationships. a team. The focus is on the characters of strong people who are able to control not only their own destiny, but also that of others. For example, the story “On the Rafts”.

The model of Gorky's world in the story capaciously covers the multidimensionality of life. In it, one single episode is capable of capturing the emerging contradictions of reality and depicting an episode of epoch-making significance. And therefore, the story of M. Gorky, gaining strength during the period of rupture of eras, when ideological and artistic stereotypes are rejected and destroyed, is able to show the complex, dynamic connections of a person with the outside world or their rupture. The writer, when recreating a specific human character, his state of mind, manages to present a holistic picture of the world, society and, conversely, through a mosaic image of the phenomena of life, it is paradoxical to know a person, his inner world.

The technique of contrasts, parallels, comparisons, associative connections of heroes, fragments of thoughts and judgments used by M. Gorky not only deepened and expanded the genre boundaries of prose, but allowed us to penetrate deeper into the meaning of human life. M. Gorky's discovery was the interpenetration within small forms of new, largely incomprehensible to contemporaries, phenomena of reality, a new worldview. And, accordingly, a person of this era does not have a familiar, established view of the era. He, a Gorky man, is uncomfortable in a world where there is no logic.

Various forms of storytelling allowed the writer to objectify the vision of the past and present, to see life from several angles. Personal searches in the prose of M. Gorky as a biographical author were reflected in his relationship with the era. The introduction of objective details into a subjective story or the synthesis of both in the narrative has become a stable technique in M. Gorky’s prose and is perceived as an organic feature of the writer’s artistic method in understanding a person and an era.

Thus, the study of genre and ideological and artistic features of short prose of the turn of the century is still relevant today. It was the writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. clearly demonstrated that the story in Russian literature, in the words of M.M. Bakhtin about the novel is “a genre that is becoming and not yet ready,” that it is a developing form, striving for renewal.

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