The role of the fairy tale in the work Two Captains. Two captains: the main characters of the novel by Veniamin Kaverin

A boy named Sanya Grigoriev lives in a small town called Ensk with his parents and sister. One day, not far from the river bank, a dead postman and a bag filled with letters are discovered, which the Grigorievs’ neighbor Daria eagerly reads aloud. At the same time, Sanya's father is wrongly charged with murder, and the boy knows the truth, but he is unable to reveal it to others due to his muteness.

Somewhat later, a certain kind-hearted doctor, who met Sanya on the way, helps him master his speech, but the elder Grigoriev dies in custody, without waiting for justice. The mother immediately remarries, the stepfather turns out to be an unscrupulous and heartless man who abuses the members of his new family.

Sanya's mother, unable to bear the terrible existence with her second husband, also soon passes away. The neighbors intend to send the boy and his sister Sasha to an orphanage, but Sanya and his closest friend Petka manage to escape to Moscow. There the guys are unsupervised for some time, but then Sanya is detained, and thus he ends up in a recently opened school intended for children who have lost their parents.

The boy enthusiastically takes up his studies and finds a common language with his classmates. One day, by coincidence, he ends up in the apartment where Nikolai Antonovich Tatarinov, who is the head of the school, lives. Sanya’s life includes his peer Katya, an active, emotional and well-read girl, and her mother Marya Vasilievna, who is almost constantly in a sad and depressed state.

The boy begins to constantly visit the Tatarinovs; he has long known that Nikolai Antonovich’s cousin was the husband of Marya Vasilievna and the father of young Catherine. Having sailed on an expedition to the distant northern lands, Captain Tatarinov disappeared forever, and the head of the school never tires of emphasizing how much he was able to do for his late brother, although there is no exact information about the fate of Katya’s father even now, his wife and daughter do not know whether he is alive or died long ago.

At the age of seventeen, Sanya meets Katya again; before that, he had not appeared at the Tatarinovs’ for several years; he was categorically forbidden to come to them by Nikolai Antonovich, who was angry with the teenager. The girl tells her childhood friend the story of her father; it turns out that in 1912 he said goodbye to his family living in Ensk and sailed to Vladivostok on the schooner “St. Maria”. Subsequently, his relatives never met with him again, and all Marya Vasilievna’s requests for help in searching for the captain addressed to the tsar remained unanswered.

One of Alexander’s comrades, the cunning and resourceful Romashov or Romashka, as he was called at school, who is also not indifferent to Katya, reports to her cousin that the girl often communicates with Grigoriev. Ekaterina is immediately sent to Ensk to her aunt, Sanya leaves for the same city, having previously brutally beaten Romashka.

Arriving at his homeland, after a long break, Grigoriev again sees his matured sister Sasha, from whom he learns that his long-time friend Petka is in Moscow and is going to study fine arts. The young man once again reads the old letters that made such a huge impression on him in his childhood, and suddenly realizes that they are talking about the expedition led by the missing Tatarinov.

Carefully reading every line, Sanya understands that it was Katya’s father who gave the Northern Land the name Maria in honor of his wife, and almost all the equipment for the expedition turned out to be completely unusable thanks to his cousin, who took responsibility for the economic part. The guy immediately tells Catherine about everything, and the girl believes his words without hesitation.

Sanya also tells the truth to Marya Vasilyevna, insisting that she accuse Nikolai Antonovich of actually killing his cousin and members of his crew. Only later does the young man realize that the truth literally killed Katya’s mother, because by this time she had already become Nikolai Antonovich’s wife. A woman who lacks the mental strength to make such a monstrous discovery commits suicide.

After the funeral, Nikolai Antonovich skillfully convinces people, including his niece, that the letters of his deceased relative were about a completely different person. The guy sees that everyone around him considers him to be the culprit in the tragic death of Marya Vasilievna, and he is going to definitely find the expedition and prove that he did not lie or slander the head of the school.

Grigoriev is studying at a flight school located in Leningrad, while his sister Sasha and her husband Petya are preparing to become artists. After completing his training, Sanya becomes a polar pilot, and when he meets his old comrade Valya Zhukov, he learns that Romashka now regularly visits the Tatarinovs and, apparently, plans to marry Ekaterina.

Sanya can't stop thinking about this girl and decides to go to Moscow. But first he manages to discover the remains of the schooner on which Captain Tatarinov sailed, and the young pilot is going to make a corresponding report and reveal the whole truth about the missing expedition.

However, Nikolai Antonovich manages to get ahead of Sanya; he himself publishes an article in the press dedicated to the late Tatarinov and his discovery, and at the same time publishes slander against Grigoriev everywhere, as a result of which the planned report is cancelled. Korablev, who teaches geography at the school where Sanya previously studied, comes to the aid of the young man, and it is thanks to him that the guy again achieves mutual understanding with Katya and trust on her part. The girl flatly refuses to marry Romashka, as her relatives wish, and leaves home, because she acquired the profession of a geologist and becomes the leader of the expedition.

Chamomile does not give up, he informs Sanya that he has some materials incriminating Nikolai Antonovich, but in return he must break off relations with Katya. But Grigoriev still manages to get permission to travel, dedicated to revealing the secret of Catherine’s father. Young people, experiencing reckless mutual love, feel happy, but at this time Grigoriev’s sister Sasha gives birth to a son, but soon dies due to complications that arise.

About five years pass. Alexander and Ekaterina, who became his wife, constantly move between the Far Eastern region, Moscow and Crimea. Then they decide to settle in Leningrad, but soon Sanya is forced to go to fight on Spanish territory, and then fight the enemy in the air after Germany attacked the USSR.

When meeting with Romashka, he tells Katya how he allegedly tried to save the wounded Alexander, but failed. The young woman absolutely does not believe him, and in reality he really abandoned the helpless Grigoriev to the mercy of fate, depriving him of his documents and the weapons he had with him. But Sanya still survives and, after treatment in the hospital, hurries to starving Leningrad, intending to find Katya.

Grigoriev’s wife is no longer in this city, and all searches for Alexander are in vain. But during one of the combat missions, his crew discovers traces of Tatarinov’s expedition in these places, the body of the captain himself, as well as all his letters to relatives and reports. Soon Sanya discovers his wife with his old friend Dr. Pavlov, who once taught him to speak.

In 1944, the Grigorievs returned to Moscow, where they met many dear friends whom they had already considered dead. Sanya reveals all the meanness and unscrupulousness of Romashka, who is on trial, and then makes a detailed report for geographers, where he exposes all the secrets concerning Tatarinov’s journey.

After Grigoriev’s words, no one has any doubts about whose fault the entire crew of the “St. Mary” died. Nikolai Antonovich is forced to leave the hall where the ceremonial meeting is taking place in disgrace, and it is clear to everyone that his career is forever over and he will never be able to restore his good name.

Sanya and Katya go to Ensk, and the elderly judge Skovorodnikov, the father of Peter, Alexander’s friend from childhood, in his speech draws an equal sign between the deceased Tatarinov and Grigoriev. He argues that it is precisely such captains who become the source of forward movement both for scientific thought and for all of humanity.

Introduction

mythological novel image

"Two captains" - adventure novel Soviet writer Veniamina Kaverina, which was written by him in 1938-1944. The novel went through more than a hundred reprints. For him Kaverin was awarded Stalin Prize second degree (1946). The book has been translated into many foreign languages. First published: the first volume in the magazine “Koster”, No. 8-12, 1938. The first separate publication is Kaverin V. Two captains. Drawings, binding, endpaper and title by Yu. Sirnev. Frontispiece by V. Konashevich. M.-L. Central Committee of the Komsomol, children's literature publishing house 1940, 464 p.

The book tells about the amazing fate of a mute from a provincial town Enska, who goes through the trials of war and homelessness with honor in order to win the heart of his beloved girl. After the unjust arrest of his father and the death of his mother, Alexander Grigoriev is sent to an orphanage. Having escaped to Moscow, he ends up first in a distribution center for street children, and then in a commune school. He is irresistibly attracted by the apartment of the school director Nikolai Antonovich, where the latter’s cousin, Katya Tatarinova, lives.

Several years ago, Katya’s father, Captain Ivan Tatarinov, who in 1912 led the expedition that discovered the Northern Land, went missing. Sanya suspects that Nikolai Antonovich, who is in love with Katya’s mother, Maria Vasilievna, contributed to this. Maria Vasilievna believes Sanya and commits suicide. Sanya is accused of slander and expelled from the Tatarinovs' house. And then he takes an oath to find the expedition and prove that he is right. He becomes a pilot and piece by piece collects information about the expedition.

After the start Great Patriotic War Sanya serves in Air Force. During one of the flights, he discovers a ship with reports from Captain Tatarinov. The finds become the final touch and allow him to shed light on the circumstances of the death of the expedition and justify himself in the eyes of Katya, who previously becomes his wife.

The motto of the novel is the words “Fight and seek, find and not give up” - this is the final line from the textbook poem Lord Tennyson « Ulysses" (in original: To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield). This line is also engraved on the cross in memory of the deceased expeditions R. Scott to the South Pole, on Observation Hill.

The novel was filmed twice (in 1955 and 1976), and in 2001, the musical “Nord-Ost” was created based on the novel. A monument was erected to the heroes of the film, namely the two captains, in the writer’s homeland, in Psokov, which in the novel is indicated as the city of Ensk. In 2001, a museum of the novel was created in the Psokov Children’s Library.

In 2003, the main square of the city of Polyarny, Murmansk region, was named the Square of Two Captains. It was from this place that the expeditions of seafarers Vladimir Rusanov and Georgy Brusilov set sail.

Relevance of the work. The topic “Mythological basis in V. Kaverin’s novel “Two Captains”” was chosen by me because of the high degree of its relevance and significance in modern conditions. This is due to the wide public response and active interest in this issue.

To begin with, it is worth saying that the topic of this work is of great educational and practical interest to me. The problematics of the issue are very relevant in modern reality. From year to year, scientists and experts are paying more and more attention to this topic. Here it is worth noting such names as Alekseev D.A., Begak B., Borisova V., who made a significant contribution to the research and development of conceptual issues of this topic.

The amazing story of Sanya Grigoriev - one of the two captains in Kaverin's novel - begins with an equally amazing find: a bag tightly stuffed with letters. However, it turns out that these “worthless” letters from others are still quite suitable for the role of a fascinating “epistolary novel”, the content of which soon becomes common property. The letter, telling about the dramatic history of the Arctic expedition of Captain Tatarinov and addressed to his wife, acquires fateful significance for Sanya Grigoriev: his entire further existence turns out to be subordinated to the search for the addressee, and subsequently to the search for the missing expedition. Guided by this high aspiration, Sanya literally bursts into other people's lives. Having turned into a polar pilot and a member of the Tatarinov family, Grigoriev essentially replaces and displaces the deceased hero-captain. Thus, from the appropriation of someone else's letter to the appropriation of someone else's fate, the logic of his life unfolds.

Theoretical basis of course work Monographic sources, materials from scientific and industrial periodicals directly related to the topic served as sources. Prototypes of the heroes of the work.

Object of study: plot and characters.

Subject of study: mythological motifs, plots, symbols in creativity in the novel “Two Captains”.

Purpose of the study: a comprehensive consideration of the issue of the influence of mythology on V. Kaverin’s novel.

To achieve this goal, the following were set: tasks:

To identify the attitude and frequency of Kaverin’s appeal to mythology;

Study the main features of mythological heroes in the images of the novel “Two Captains”;

Determine the forms of penetration of mythological motifs and plots into the novel “Two Captains”;

Consider the main stages of Kaverin’s appeal to mythological subjects.

To solve the problems, methods such as descriptive, historical and comparative are used.

1. The concept of mythological themes and motifs

Myth stands at the origins of verbal art; mythological ideas and plots occupy a significant place in the oral folklore traditions of various peoples. Mythological motifs played a large role in the genesis of literary plots; mythological themes, images, characters are used and reinterpreted in literature almost throughout its history.

In the history of the epic, military strength and courage, the “fierce” heroic character completely overshadow witchcraft and magic. Historical legend is gradually pushing aside myth, the mythical early time is being transformed into the glorious era of early powerful statehood. However, certain features of myth can be preserved even in the most developed epics.

Due to the fact that in modern literary criticism there is no term “mythological elements”, at the beginning of this work it is advisable to define this concept. To do this, it is necessary to turn to works on mythology, which present opinions about the essence of myth, its properties, and functions. It would be much easier to define mythological elements as components of a particular myth (plots, heroes, images of living and inanimate nature, etc.), but when giving such a definition, one should also take into account the subconscious appeal of the authors of works to archetypal structures (as V. N. Toporov, “some features in the work of great writers could be understood as sometimes an unconscious appeal to elementary semantic oppositions, well known in mythology,” B. Groys speaks of “archaism, regarding which we can say that it is also at the beginning of time , as well as in the depths of the human psyche as its unconscious beginning.”

So, what is myth, and after it, what can be called mythological elements?

The word “myth” (mxYuipzh) - “word”, “story”, “speech” - comes from ancient Greek. Initially, it was understood as a set of absolute (sacred) value-worldview truths, opposed to everyday empirical (profane) truths expressed by an ordinary “word” (eTrpzh), notes Prof. A.V. Semushkin. Since the 5th century. BC, writes J.-P. Vernant, in philosophy and history, “myth”, opposed to “logos”, with which they initially coincided in meaning (only later logos began to mean the ability of thinking, reason), acquired a pejorative connotation, denoting a sterile, unfounded statement, devoid of support for strict evidence or reliable evidence (however, even in this case, it, disqualified from the point of view of truth, did not apply to sacred texts about gods and heroes).

The predominance of mythological consciousness relates mainly to the archaic (primitive) era and is associated primarily with its cultural life, in the system of semantic organization of which myth played a dominant role. The English ethnographer B. Malinovsky assigned to myth primarily the practical functions of maintaining

However, the main thing in a myth is its content, and not at all its compliance with historical evidence. In myths, events are considered in a temporal sequence, but often the specific time of the event is not important and only the starting point for the beginning of the story is important.

In the 17th century The English philosopher Francis Bacon, in his essay “On the Wisdom of the Ancients,” argued that myths in poetic form preserve the most ancient philosophy: moral maxims or scientific truths, the meaning of which is hidden under the cover of symbols and allegories. Free fantasy, expressed in myth, according to the German philosopher Herder, is not something absurd, but is an expression of the childhood age of humanity, “the philosophical experience of the human soul, which dreams before it wakes up.”

1.1 Signs and characteristics of a myth

Mythology as the science of myths has a rich and long history. The first attempts to rethink mythological material were made in antiquity. But to date, no single generally accepted opinion about the myth has taken shape. Of course, there are points of agreement in the works of researchers. Starting from these points, it seems possible to us to identify the main properties and features of myth.

Representatives of various scientific schools focus on different aspects of the myth. So Raglan (Cambridge Ritual School) defines myths as ritual texts, Cassirer (a representative of symbolic theory) speaks of their symbolism, Losev (theory of mythopoeticism) - the coincidence of a general idea and a sensory image in a myth, Afanasyev calls myth the oldest poetry, Barth - a communicative system . Existing theories are briefly outlined in Meletinsky’s book “The Poetics of Myth.”

In the article by A.V. Gulygi lists the so-called “signs of myth”:

1. Merging of the real and the ideal (thoughts and actions).

2. Unconscious level of thinking (by mastering the meaning of the myth, we destroy the myth itself).

3. Syncretism of reflection (this includes: the inseparability of subject and object, the absence of differences between the natural and the supernatural).

Freudenberg notes the essential characteristics of myth, giving it a definition in his book “Myth and Literature of Antiquity”: “A figurative representation in the form of several metaphors, where there is no our logical, formal-logical causality and where thing, space, time are understood indivisibly and concretely, where man and the world are subject-objectively united, - this special constructive system of figurative ideas, when it is expressed in words, we call myth.” Based on this definition, it becomes clear that the main characteristics of myth arise from the characteristics of mythological thinking. Following the works of A.F. Loseva V.A. Markov argues that in mythological thinking there is no distinction between: object and subject, thing and its properties, name and subject, word and action, society and space, man and the universe, natural and supernatural, and the universal principle of mythological thinking is the principle of participation (“all there is everything,” the logic of werewolf). Meletinsky is sure that mythological thinking is expressed in an indistinct separation of subject and object, object and sign, thing and word, being and its name, thing and its attributes, singular and plural, spatial and temporal relations, origin and essence.

In their works, various researchers note the following characteristics of myth: sacralization of the mythical “time of first creation,” in which lies the reason for the established world order (Eliade); indivisibility of image and meaning (Potebnya); universal animation and personalization (Losev); close connection with ritual; cyclical time model; metaphorical nature; symbolic meaning (Meletinsky).

In the article “On the interpretation of myth in the literature of Russian symbolism,” G. Shelogurova tries to draw preliminary conclusions regarding what is meant by myth in modern philological science:

1. Myth is unanimously recognized as a product of collective artistic creativity.

2. Myth is determined by the failure to distinguish between the plane of expression and the plane of content.

3. Myth is considered as a universal model for constructing symbols.

4. Myths are the most important source of plots and images at all times in the development of art.

1.2 Functions of myth in works

Now it seems to us possible to determine the functions of myth in symbolic works:

1. Myth is used by symbolists as a means to create symbols.

2. With the help of myth, it becomes possible to express some additional ideas in a work.

3. Myth is a means of generalizing literary material.

4. In some cases, symbolists resort to myth as an artistic device.

5. Myth serves as a clear example, rich in meaning.

6. Based on the above, myth cannot but perform a structuring function (Meletinsky: “Mythologism has become a tool for structuring the narrative (with the help of mythological symbolism)”). 1

In the next chapter we will consider how valid our conclusions are for Bryusov’s lyrical works. To do this, we examine cycles from different times of writing, entirely built on mythological and historical subjects: “Favorites of the Ages” (1897-1901), “The Eternal Truth of Idols” (1904-1905), “The Eternal Truth of Idols” (1906-1908), “Powerful shadows" (1911-1912), "In the Mask" (1913-1914).

2. Mythologism of the novel’s images

Veniamin Kaverin’s novel “Two Captains” is one of the most striking works of Russian adventure literature of the 20th century. This story about love and fidelity, courage and determination has not left either an adult or a young reader indifferent for many years.

The book was called an “educational novel”, an “adventurous novel”, an “idyllic-sentimental novel”, but was not accused of self-deception. And the writer himself said that “this is a novel about justice and about the fact that it is more interesting (that’s what he said!) to be honest and brave than to be a coward and a liar.” And he also said that this is “a novel about the inevitability of truth.”

The motto of the heroes of “Two Captains” is “Fight and search, find and not give up!” More than one generation of those who adequately responded to all sorts of challenges of the time has grown up.

Fight and search, find and not give up. From English: That strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. The primary source is the poem “Ulysses” by the English poet Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), whose 70 years of literary activity are dedicated to valiant and happy heroes. These lines were carved on the grave of polar explorer Robert Scott (1868-1912). Trying to reach the South Pole first, he nevertheless came second, three days after the Norwegian pioneer Roald Amundsen visited it. Robert Scott and his companions died on the way back.

In Russian, these words became popular after the publication of the novel “Two Captains” by Veniamin Kaverin (1902-1989). The main character of the novel, Sanya Grigoriev, who dreams of polar expeditions, makes these words the motto of his entire life. Quoted as a phrase-symbol of loyalty to one’s goal and one’s principles. “Fight” (including one’s own weaknesses) is the first task of a person. “To seek” means to have a humane goal in front of you. “To find” is to make a dream come true. And if there are new difficulties, then “don’t give up.”

The novel is filled with symbols, which is part of mythology. Every image, every action has a symbolic meaning.

This novel can be considered a hymn to friendship. Sanya Grigoriev carried this friendship throughout his life. The episode when Sanya and his friend Petka took a “blood oath of friendship.” The words that the boys uttered were: “Fight and search, find and not give up”; they turned into a symbol of their life for the heroes of the novel and determined their character.

Sanya could have died during the war; his profession itself was dangerous. But against all odds, he survived and fulfilled his promise to find the missing expedition. What helped him in life? A high sense of duty, perseverance, perseverance, determination, honesty - all these character traits helped Sanya Grigoriev survive to find traces of the expedition and Katya’s love. “You have such love that the most terrible grief will recede before it: it will meet, look into your eyes and retreat. No one else, it seems, knows how to love like that, only you and Sanya. So strong, so stubborn, all my life. Where can you die when you are loved so much? - says Pyotr Skovorodnikov.

In our time, the time of the Internet, technology, speed, such love may seem like a myth to many. And how I want it to touch everyone, to provoke them to accomplish feats and discoveries.

Once in Moscow, Sanya meets the Tatarinov family. Why is he drawn to this house, what attracts him? The Tatarinovs' apartment becomes for the boy something like Ali Baba's cave with its treasures, mysteries and dangers. Nina Kapitonovna, who feeds Sanya lunches, is a “treasure”, Maria Vasilyevna, “neither a widow nor a husband’s wife”, who always wears black and often plunges into melancholy is a “mystery”, Nikolai Antonovich is a “danger”. In this house he found many interesting books, which he “fell ill with” and the fate of Katya’s father, Captain Tatarinov, excited and interested him.

It is difficult to imagine how Sanya Grigoriev’s life would have turned out if he had not met an amazing person, Ivan Ivanovich Pavlov, on his way. One frosty winter evening, someone knocked on the window of the house where two small children lived. When the children opened the door, an exhausted, frostbitten man stumbled into the room. This was Doctor Ivan Ivanovich, who escaped from exile. He lived with the children for several days, showed the children magic tricks, taught them to bake potatoes on sticks, and most importantly, taught the mute boy to talk. Who could have known then that these two people, a little mute boy and an adult man hiding from all people, would be bound by a strong, loyal male friendship for the rest of their lives.

Several years will pass, and they will meet again, the doctor and the boy, in Moscow, in the hospital, and the doctor will fight for many months for the boy’s life. A new meeting will take place in the Arctic, where Sanya will work. Together they, the polar pilot Grigoriev and Doctor Pavlov, will fly to save a man, get caught in a terrible snowstorm, and only thanks to the resourcefulness and skill of the young pilot they will be able to land a faulty plane and spend several days in the tundra among the Nenets. It is here, in the harsh conditions of the North, that the true qualities of both Sanya Grigoriev and Doctor Pavlov will appear.

The three meetings between Sanya and the doctor also have symbolic meaning. First of all, three is a fabulous number. This is the first number in a number of traditions (including ancient Chinese), or the first of the odd numbers. Opens a number series and qualifies as a perfect number (an image of absolute perfection). The first number to which the word “all” is assigned. One of the most positive emblem numbers in symbolism, religious thought, mythology and folklore. Sacred, lucky number 3. Carries the meaning of high quality or high degree of expressiveness of action. Shows mainly positive qualities: the sacredness of the committed act, courage and enormous strength, both physical and spiritual, the importance of something. In addition, the number 3 symbolizes the completeness and completeness of a certain sequence that has a beginning, middle and end. The number 3 symbolizes integrity, the triple nature of the world, its versatility, the trinity of creating, destroying and preserving forces of nature - reconciling and balancing their beginning, happy harmony, creative perfection and good luck.

Secondly, these meetings changed the life of the main character.

As for the image of Nikolai Antonovich Tatarinov, he is very reminiscent of the mythological biblical image of Judas Iscariot, who betrayed his mentor, brother in Christ Jesus, for 30 pieces of silver. Nikolai Antonovich also betrayed his cousin, sending his expedition to certain death. Portrait and actions of N.A. Tatarinov is also very close to the image of Judas.

None of the disciples noticed when this red-haired and ugly Jew first appeared near Christ, but for a long time he had been relentlessly following their path, interfering in conversations, providing small services, bowing, smiling and ingratiating himself. And then it became completely familiar, deceiving tired vision, then suddenly it caught the eyes and ears, irritating them, like something unprecedentedly ugly, deceitful and disgusting.

A bright detail in Kaverin’s portrait is a kind of accent that helps demonstrate the essence of the person being portrayed. For example, the thick fingers of Nikolai Antonovich, reminiscent of “some kind of hairy caterpillars, it seems, cabbages” (64) - a detail that adds negative connotations to the image of this person, as well as the “golden tooth” constantly emphasized in the portrait, which previously somehow illuminated everything face” (64), and became dull in old age. The gold tooth will become a sign of the absolute falsity of the antagonist Sanya Grigoriev. The constantly “conspicuous” incurable acne on the face of Sanya’s stepfather is a sign of impurity of thoughts and dishonesty of behavior.

He was a good teacher, and the students respected him. They came to him with different proposals, and he listened to them carefully. Sanya Grigoriev also liked him at first. But when he was at their house, he noticed that everyone treated him unimportantly, although he was very attentive to everyone. With all the guests who came to them, he was kind and cheerful. He didn’t like Sanya and every time he visited them, he began to lecture him. Despite his pleasant appearance, Nikolai Antonovich was a vile, low person. His actions speak about this. Nikolai Antonovich - he made it so that most of the equipment on Tatarinov’s schooner turned out to be unusable. Almost the entire expedition died due to the fault of this man! He persuaded Romashov to eavesdrop on everything they say about him at school and report it to him. He made a whole conspiracy against Ivan Pavlovich Korablev, wanting to expel him from school, because the guys loved and respected him and because he asked for the hand of Marya Vasilievna, with whom he was deeply in love and whom he wanted to marry. It was Nikolai Antonovich who was to blame for the death of his brother Tatarinov: he was the one who equipped the expedition and did everything possible to prevent it from returning. He did his best to prevent Grigoriev from conducting an investigation into the case of the missing expedition. Moreover, he took advantage of the letters that Sanya Grigoriev found, defended himself, and became a professor. In an effort to avoid punishment and shame in case of exposure, he exposed another person, von Wyshimirsky, to attack when all the evidence proving his guilt was collected. These and other actions speak of him as a low, mean, dishonest, envious person. How much vileness he committed in his life, how many innocent people he killed, how many people he made unhappy. He is worthy only of contempt and condemnation.

What kind of person is Chamomile?

Sanya met Romashov at school 4 - a commune, where Ivan Pavlovich Korablev took him. Their beds were next to each other. The boys became friends. Sanya didn’t like the fact that Romashov always talked about money, saved it, and lent it at interest. Very soon Sanya became convinced of the meanness of this man. Sanya found out that at the request of Nikolai Antonovich, Romashka overheard everything that was said about the head of the school, wrote it down in a separate book, and then reported it to Nikolai Antonovich for a fee. He also told him that Sanya had heard the teachers’ council plot against Korablev and wanted to tell his teacher about everything. Another time, he dirty-talked to Nikolai Antonovich about Katya and Sanya, for which Katya was sent on vacation to Ensk, and Sanya was no longer allowed into the Tatarinovs’ house. The letter that Katya wrote to Sanya before her departure also did not reach Sanya, and this was also the work of Romashka. Romashka went so far as to rummage through Sanya’s suitcase, wanting to find some incriminating evidence on him. The older Romashka became, the greater his meanness became. He even went so far as to begin collecting documents for Nikolai Antonovich, his favorite teacher and patron, proving his guilt in the death of Captain Tatarinov’s expedition, and was ready to sell them to Sanya in exchange for Katya, with whom he was in love. Why sell important papers, he was ready to kill his childhood comrade in cold blood in order to fulfill his dirty goals. All of Romashka’s actions are low, vile, and dishonest.

*What brings Romashka and Nikolai Antonovich together, how are they similar?

These are low, mean, cowardly, envious people. To achieve their goals, they commit dishonest acts. They stop at nothing. They have neither honor nor conscience. Ivan Pavlovich Korablev calls Nikolai Antonovich a terrible person, and Romashov a person who has no morals at all. These two people deserve each other. Even love doesn't make them any more likable. In love, both are selfish. When achieving a goal, they put their interests and their feelings above all else! Disregarding the feelings and interests of the person they love, acting basely and meanly. Even the war did not change Romashka. Katya reflected: “He saw death, he became bored in this world of pretense and lies, which had previously been his world.” But she was deeply mistaken. Romashov was ready to kill Sanya, because no one would know about it and he would go unpunished. But Sanya was lucky; fate favored him again and again, giving him chance after chance.

Comparing “Two Captains” with canonical examples of the adventure genre, we easily discover that V. Kaverin masterfully uses a dynamically intense plot for a broad realistic narrative, during which the two main characters of the novel - Sanya Grigoriev and Katya Tatarinova - tell stories with great sincerity and excitement "O time and about yourself." All kinds of adventures here are by no means an end in themselves, for they do not determine the essence of the story of the two captains - these are only the circumstances of the real biography, which the author used as the basis of the novel, eloquently indicating that the life of Soviet people is full of rich events, that our heroic time is full of exciting romance.

"Two Captains" is, in essence, a novel about truth and happiness. In the fate of the main character of the novel, these concepts are inseparable. Of course, Sanya Grigoriev gains a lot in our eyes because he accomplished many feats in his life - he fought in Spain against the Nazis, flew over the Arctic, fought heroically on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, for which he was awarded several military orders. But it is curious that for all his exceptional persistence, rare diligence, composure and strong-willed determination, Captain Grigoriev does not perform exceptional feats, his chest is not adorned with the Star of the Hero, as many readers and sincere fans of Sanya would probably like. He accomplishes such feats as every Soviet person who passionately loves his socialist Motherland is capable of accomplishing. Does this make Sanya Grigoriev any loser in our eyes? Of course not!

We are captivated by the hero of the novel not only by his actions, but by his entire mental makeup, his heroic character in its very inner essence. Have you noticed that O The writer simply keeps silent about some of the exploits of his hero performed at the front. The point, of course, is not the number of feats. What we see before us is not so much a desperately brave man, a kind of captain “rip off his head”, but before us is, first of all, a principled, convinced, ideological defender of the truth, before us is the image of a Soviet youth, "shocked by the idea of justice" as the author himself points out. And this is the main thing in the appearance of Sanya Grigoriev, what captivated us from the very first meeting - even when we knew nothing about his participation in the Great Patriotic War.

We already knew that Sanya Grigoriev would grow up to be a courageous and courageous person when we heard the boy’s oath “Fight and search, find and not give up.” Of course, throughout the entire novel we are concerned with the question of whether the main character will find the traces of Captain Tatarinov, whether justice will prevail, but what really captivates us is himself process achieving the set goal. This process is difficult and complex, but that is why it is interesting and instructive for us.

For us, Sanya Grigoriev would not be a true hero if we knew only about his exploits and knew little about the development of his character. In the fate of the hero of the novel, his difficult childhood is important for us, and his bold clashes back in his school years with the scoundrel and selfish Romashka, with the cleverly disguised careerist Nikolai Antonovich, and his pure love for Katya Tatarinova, and loyalty to anything became a noble boyish oath. And how magnificently the determination and perseverance in the hero’s character is revealed when we follow step by step how he achieves his intended goal - to become a polar pilot in order to get the opportunity to fly in the skies of the Arctic! We cannot ignore his passion for aviation and polar travel, which absorbed Sanya while still in school. That is why Sanya Grigoriev becomes a courageous and brave person, because he does not lose sight of the main goal of his life for a single day.

Happiness is won by labor, truth is established in struggle - this conclusion can be drawn from all the life trials that befell Sanya Grigoriev. And, let’s face it, there were a lot of them. Homelessness had barely ended when clashes with strong and resourceful enemies began. Sometimes he suffered temporary setbacks, which he had to endure very painfully. But strong natures do not bend because of this - they are tempered in severe trials.

2.1 Mythology of the novel's polar discoveries

Any writer has the right to fiction. But where is it, the line, the invisible line between truth and myth? Sometimes they are so closely intertwined, as, for example, in Veniamin Kaverin’s novel “Two Captains” - a work of fiction that most reliably resembles the real events of 1912 in the development of the Arctic.

Three Russian polar expeditions entered the Northern Ocean in 1912, all three ended tragically: the expedition of V.A. Rusanov. died entirely, the expedition of Brusilov G.L. - almost entirely, and in the expedition of Sedov G. I three died, including the head of the expedition. In general, the 20s and 30s of the 20th century were interesting due to the through voyages along the Northern Sea Route, the Chelyuskin epic, and the Papanin heroes.

The young but already famous writer V. Kaverin became interested in all this, became interested in people, bright personalities, whose actions and characters aroused only respect. He reads literature, memoirs, collections of documents; listens to N.V.'s stories Pinegin, friend and expedition member of the brave polar explorer Sedov; sees finds made in the mid-thirties on nameless islands in the Kara Sea. Also, during the Great Patriotic War, he himself, being a correspondent for Izvestia, visited the North.

And in 1944, the novel “Two Captains” was published. The author was literally inundated with questions about the prototypes of the main characters - Captain Tatarinov and Captain Grigoriev. He took advantage of the history of two brave conquerors of the Far North. One took from him a courageous and clear character, purity of thought, clarity of purpose - everything that distinguishes a man of great soul. It was Sedov. The other has the actual story of his journey. It was Brusilov." These heroes became the prototypes of Captain Tatarinov.

Let's try to figure out what is true and what is a myth, how the writer Kaverin managed to combine the realities of the expeditions of Sedov and Brusilov in the history of Captain Tatarinov's expedition. And although the writer himself did not mention the name of Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rusanov among the prototypes of the hero Captain Tatarinov, some facts claim that the realities of Rusanov’s expedition were also reflected in the novel “Two Captains”.

Lieutenant Georgy Lvovich Brusilov, a hereditary sailor, in 1912 led an expedition on the sailing and steam schooner “St. Anna”. He intended to travel with one winter from St. Petersburg around Scandinavia and further along the Northern Sea Route to Vladivostok. But “Saint Anna” did not come to Vladivostok either a year later or in subsequent years. Off the western coast of the Yamal Peninsula, the schooner was covered in ice and began to drift north into high latitudes. The ship failed to escape from ice captivity in the summer of 1913. During the longest drift in the history of Russian Arctic research (1,575 kilometers over a year and a half), Brusilov’s expedition carried out meteorological observations, measured depths, studied currents and ice conditions in the northern part of the Kara Sea, which until that time was completely unknown to science. Almost two years of ice captivity have passed.

On April 23 (10), 1914, when “St. Anna” was at latitude 830 north and longitude 600 east, with the consent of Brusilov, eleven crew members, led by navigator Valerian Ivanovich Albanov, left the schooner. The group hoped to reach the nearest shore, to Franz Josef Land, in order to deliver expedition materials that would allow scientists to characterize the underwater topography of the northern part of the Kara Sea and identify a meridional depression at the bottom about 500 kilometers long (the “St. Anna” trench). Only a few people reached the Franz Josef Archipelago, but only two of them, Albanov himself and the sailor A. Conrad, were lucky enough to escape. They were discovered quite by accident at Cape Flora by members of another Russian expedition under the command of G. Sedov (Sedov himself had already died by this time).

The schooner with G. Brusilov himself, sister of mercy E. Zhdanko, the first woman to participate in the high-latitude drift, and eleven crew members disappeared without a trace.

The geographical result of the campaign of the group of navigator Albanov, which cost the lives of nine sailors, was the statement that the Lands of King Oscar and Peterman, previously marked on the maps, do not actually exist.

We know in general terms the drama of the “St. Anne” and her crew thanks to Albanov’s diary, which was published in 1917 under the title “South to Franz Josef Land.” Why were only two saved? This is quite clear from the diary. The people in the group that left the schooner were very diverse: strong and weakened, reckless and weak in spirit, disciplined and dishonest. Those who had the best chances survived. Albanov received mail from the ship “St. Anna” to the mainland. Albanov arrived, but none of those to whom they were intended received the letter. Where did they go? This still remains a mystery.

Now let’s turn to Kaverin’s novel “Two Captains”. Of the members of Captain Tatarinov's expedition, only long-distance navigator I. Klimov returned. This is what he writes to Maria Vasilievna, the wife of Captain Tatarinov: “I hasten to inform you that Ivan Lvovich is alive and well. Four months ago, in accordance with his instructions, I left the schooner and thirteen members of the crew with me. I won’t talk about our difficult journey to Franz Josef Land on floating ice. I will only say that from our group I was the only one who safely (except for frostbitten feet) reached Cape Flora. “Saint Phocas” of Lieutenant Sedov’s expedition picked me up and took me to Arkhangelsk. “St. Mary” froze in the Kara Sea and since October 1913 has been constantly moving north along with the polar ice. When we left, the schooner was at latitude 820 55". She stands calmly among the ice field, or rather, she stood from the autumn of 1913 until I left."

Sanya Grigoriev’s senior friend, Doctor Ivan Ivanovich Pavlov, almost twenty years later, in 1932, explains to Sanya that the group photo of the members of Captain Tatarinov’s expedition “was given by the navigator of the “St. Mary” Ivan Dmitrievich Klimov. In 1914, he was brought to Arkhangelsk with frostbitten legs, and he died in the city hospital from blood poisoning.” After Klimov’s death, two notebooks and letters remained. The hospital sent these letters to the addresses, and the notebooks and photographs remained with Ivan Ivanovich. The persistent Sanya Grigoriev once told Nikolai Antonich Tatarinov, the cousin of the missing captain Tatarinov, that he would find the expedition: “I don’t believe that it disappeared without a trace.”

And so in 1935, Sanya Grigoriev, day after day, sorts out Klimov’s diaries, among which he finds an interesting map - a map of the drift of the “St. Mary” “from October 1912 to April 1914, and the drift was shown in those places where the so-called Earth lay Peterman. “But who knows that this fact was first established by Captain Tatarinov on the schooner “St. Mary”?” - exclaims Sanya Grigoriev.

Captain Tatarinov had to go from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok. From the captain’s letter to his wife: “About two years have passed since I sent you a letter through the telegraph expedition on Yugorsky Shar. We walked freely along the planned course, and since October 1913 we have been slowly moving north along with the polar ice. Thus, willy-nilly, we had to abandon our original intention of going to Vladivostok along the coast of Siberia. But every cloud has a silver lining. A completely different thought now occupies me. I hope she won’t seem childish or reckless to you, like some of my companions.”

What kind of thought is this? Sanya finds the answer to this in the notes of Captain Tatarinov: “The human mind was so absorbed in this task that its solution, despite the harsh grave that travelers for the most part found there, became a continuous national competition. Almost all civilized countries took part in this competition, and only the Russians were not present, and yet the ardent impulses of the Russian people to discover the North Pole manifested themselves even in the time of Lomonosov and have not faded to this day. Amundsen wants at all costs to leave behind Norway the honor of discovering the North Pole, and we will go this year and prove to the whole world that the Russians are capable of this feat.” (From a letter to the head of the Main Hydrographic Directorate, April 17, 1911). Therefore, this is where Captain Tatarinov was aiming! “He wanted, like Nansen, to go as far north as possible with drifting ice, and then get to the Pole on dogs.”

Tatarinov's expedition failed. Amundsen also said: “The success of any expedition depends entirely on its equipment.” Indeed, his brother Nikolai Antonich performed a “disservice” in preparing and equipping Tatarinov’s expedition. For reasons of failure, Tatarinov’s expedition was similar to the expedition of G.Ya. Sedov, who in 1912 tried to penetrate to the North Pole. After 352 days of ice captivity off the northwestern coast of Novaya Zemlya in August 1913, Sedov took the ship “Holy Great Martyr Foka” out of the bay and sent it to Franz Josef Land. The second wintering place for “Foki” was Tikhaya Bay on Hooker Island. On February 2, 1914, Sedov, despite complete exhaustion, accompanied by two sailors - volunteers A. Pustoshny and G. Linnik, headed to the Pole on three dog sleds. After a severe cold, he died on February 20 and was buried by his companions at Cape Auk (Rudolph Island). The expedition was poorly prepared. G. Sedov was poorly acquainted with the history of exploration of the Franz Josef Land archipelago, and did not know well the latest maps of the section of ocean along which he was going to reach the North Pole. He himself did not carefully check the equipment. His temperament and desire to quickly conquer the North Pole at any cost prevailed over the clear organization of the expedition. So these are important reasons for the outcome of the expedition and the tragic death of G. Sedov.

It was previously mentioned about Kaverin’s meetings with Pinegin. Nikolai Vasilyevich Pinegin is not only an artist and writer, but also an Arctic researcher. During Sedov's last expedition in 1912, Pinegin made the first documentary film about the Arctic, the footage of which, together with the artist's personal memories, helped Kaverin to present a clearer picture of the events of that time.

Let's return to Kaverin's novel. From a letter from Captain Tatarinov to his wife: “I am also writing to you about our discovery: there are no lands on the maps to the north of the Taimyr Peninsula. Meanwhile, being at latitude 790 35", east of Greenwich, we noticed a sharp silvery stripe, slightly convex, coming from the very horizon. I am convinced that this is land. For now, I called it by your name." Sanya Grigoriev finds out what it is there was Severnaya Zemlya, discovered in 1913 by Lieutenant B.A. Vilkitsky.

After defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, Russia needed to have its own way of guiding ships to the Great Ocean, so as not to depend on the Suez or other canals of warm countries. The authorities decided to create a Hydrographic Expedition and carefully examine the least difficult section from the Bering Strait to the mouth of the Lena, so that it would be possible to go from east to west, from Vladivostok to Arkhangelsk or St. Petersburg. The head of the expedition was initially A.I. Vilkitsky, and after his death, from 1913 - his son, Boris Andreevich Vilkitsky. It was he who, during the navigation of 1913, dispelled the legend about the existence of Sannikov Land, but discovered a new archipelago. On August 21 (September 3), 1913, a huge archipelago covered with eternal snow was spotted north of Cape Chelyuskin. Consequently, north of Cape Chelyuskin is not the open ocean, but a strait, later called the B. Vilkitsky Strait. The archipelago was originally named the Land of Emperor Nicholas II. It has been called Severnaya Zemlya since 1926.

In March 1935, pilot Alexander Grigoriev, having made an emergency landing on the Taimyr Peninsula, quite by accident discovered an old brass gaff, green with age, with the inscription “Schooner “St. Maria”. Nenets Ivan Vylko explains that a boat with a hook and a man was found by local residents on the shore of Taimyr, the coast closest to Severnaya Zemlya. By the way, there is reason to believe that it was no coincidence that the author of the novel gave the Nenets hero the surname Vylko. A close friend of the Arctic explorer Rusanov, a participant in his 1911 expedition, was the Nenets artist Ilya Konstantinovich Vylko, who later became the chairman of the council of Novaya Zemlya (“President of Novaya Zemlya”).

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Rusanov was a polar geologist and navigator. His last expedition on the motor-sailing vessel Hercules entered the Arctic Ocean in 1912. The expedition reached the Spitsbergen archipelago and discovered four new coal deposits there. Rusanov then attempted to take the North-East Passage. Having reached Cape Zhelaniya on Novaya Zemlya, the expedition went missing.

It is not known exactly where Hercules died. But it is known that the expedition not only sailed, but also part of it walked, because the “Hercules” almost certainly perished, as evidenced by objects found in the mid-30s on the islands near the Taimyr coast. In 1934, on one of the islands, hydrographers discovered a wooden pillar on which was written “Hercules” - 1913.” Traces of the expedition were discovered in the Minin skerries off the western coast of the Taimyr Peninsula and on Bolshevik Island (Severnaya Zemlya). And in the seventies, the search for Rusanov’s expedition was carried out by the expedition of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. In the same area, two hooks were found, as if to confirm the intuitive guess of the writer Kaverin. According to experts, they belonged to the Rusanovites.

Captain Alexander Grigoriev, following his motto “Fight and search, find and not give up,” in 1942 nevertheless found the expedition of Captain Tatarinov, or rather, what was left of it. He calculated the path that Captain Tatarinov had to take, if we consider it indisputable that he returned to Severnaya Zemlya, which he called “Mary’s Land”: from latitude 790 35, between the 86th and 87th meridians, to the Russian Islands and to the Nordenskiöld Archipelago. Then, probably, after many wanderings from Cape Sterlegov to the mouth of the Pyasina, where the old Nenets Vylko found a boat on a sled. Then to the Yenisei, because the Yenisei was for Tatarinov the only hope of meeting people and help. He walked along the seaward side of the coastal islands, if possible straight ahead. Sanya found the last camp of Captain Tatarinov, found his farewell letters, photographs, and found his remains. Captain Grigoriev conveyed to the people the farewell words of Captain Tatarinov: “It’s bitter for me to think about all the things that I could have done if I had not only been helped, but at least not interfered with. What to do? One consolation is that through my labors new vast lands were discovered and annexed to Russia.”

At the end of the novel we read: “Ships entering the Yenisei Bay see from afar the grave of Captain Tatarinov. They pass by it with flags at half-mast, and the funeral salute roars from the cannons, and the long echo rolls on without ceasing.

The grave is built of white stone, and it sparkles dazzlingly under the rays of the never-setting polar sun.

The following words are carved at the height of human growth:

“Here lies the body of Captain I.L. Tatarinov, who made one of the most courageous journeys and died on the way back from the Severnaya Zemlya he discovered in June 1915. Fight and search, find and don’t give up!”

Reading these lines of Kaverin’s novel, you involuntarily recall the obelisk erected in 1912 in the eternal snows of Antarctica in honor of Robert Scott and his four comrades. There is a gravestone inscription on it. And the final words of the poem “Ulysses” by the classic of British poetry of the 19th century Alfred Tennyson: “To strive, to seek, to find and not yield” (which translated from English means: “Struggle and seek, find and not give up!”). Much later, with the publication of Veniamin Kaverin’s novel “Two Captains,” these very words became the life motto of millions of readers, a loud call for Soviet polar explorers of different generations.

Probably, the literary critic N. Likhacheva was wrong, who attacked “Two Captains” when the novel had not yet been completely published. After all, the image of Captain Tatarinov is generalized, collective, fictitious. The right to fiction is given to the author by the artistic style, not the scientific one. The best character traits of Arctic explorers, as well as mistakes, miscalculations, historical realities of the expeditions of Brusilov, Sedov, Rusanov - all this is connected with the hero Kaverin.

And Sanya Grigoriev, like Captain Tatarinov, is the writer’s fiction. But this hero also has his prototypes. One of them is professor-geneticist M.I. Lobashov.

In 1936, in a sanatorium near Leningrad, Kaverin met the silent, always internally focused young scientist Lobashov. “He was a man in whom ardor was combined with straightforwardness, and perseverance with an amazing definiteness of purpose. He knew how to achieve success in any business. A clear mind and capacity for deep feeling were visible in his every judgment.” The character traits of Sanya Grigoriev are visible in everything. And many specific circumstances of Sanya’s life were directly borrowed by the author from Lobashov’s biography. These are, for example, Sanya's muteness, the death of his father, homelessness, the commune school of the 20s, the types of teachers and students, falling in love with the daughter of a school teacher. Talking about the history of the creation of “Two Captains,” Kaverin noted that, unlike the parents, sister, and comrades of the hero, whom the prototype Sanya told about, only individual touches were outlined in the teacher Korablev, so that the image of the teacher was completely created by the writer.

Lobashov, who became the prototype of Sanya Grigoriev, told the writer about his life, immediately aroused the active interest of Kaverin, who decided not to give free rein to his imagination, but to follow the story he heard. But in order for the hero’s life to be perceived naturally and vividly, he must be in conditions personally known to the writer. And unlike the prototype, who was born on the Volga and graduated from school in Tashkent, Sanya was born in Ensk (Pskov), and graduated from school in Moscow, and it absorbed much of what happened at the school where Kaverin studied. And the condition of the young Sanya also turned out to be close to the writer. He was not an orphanage resident, but during the Moscow period of his life he was left completely alone in a huge, hungry and deserted Moscow. And, of course, I had to spend a lot of energy and will so as not to get confused.

And the love for Katya that Sanya carries throughout her life is not invented or embellished by the author; Kaverin is here next to his hero: having married Lidochka Tynyanova as a twenty-year-old boy, he remained faithful to his love forever. And how much there is in common in the mood of Veniamin Aleksandrovich and Sanya Grigoriev when they write to their wives from the front, when they are looking for them, taken from besieged Leningrad. And Sanya is fighting in the North, too, because Kaverin was a military correspondent for TASS, and then for Izvestia in the Northern Fleet, and knew first-hand Murmansk, Polyarnoye, and the specifics of the war in the Far North, and its people.

Sanya was helped to “fit in” with the life and everyday life of polar pilots by another person who was well acquainted with aviation and knew the North very well - the talented pilot S.L. Klebanov, a wonderful, honest man, whose advice in the author’s study of flying was invaluable. From the biography of Klebanov, the life of Sanya Grigoriev included the story of a flight to the remote camp of Vanokan, when a disaster broke out en route.

In general, according to Kaverin, both prototypes of Sanya Grigoriev resembled each other not only in their tenacity of character and extraordinary determination. Klebanov even resembled Lobashov in appearance - short, dense, stocky.

The great skill of the artist lies in creating a portrait in which everything that is his and everything that is not his becomes his own, deeply original, individual.

Kaverin has a remarkable property: he gives the heroes not only his own impressions, but also his habits, and those of his family and friends. And this nice touch makes the characters closer to the reader. The writer endowed Valya Zhukov in the novel with the desire of his older brother Sasha to cultivate the power of his gaze by looking for a long time at the black circle painted on the ceiling. During a conversation, Doctor Ivan Ivanovich suddenly throws a chair to his interlocutor, which he definitely needs to catch - this was not invented by Veniamin Aleksandrovich: this is how K.I. liked to talk. Chukovsky.

The hero of the novel “Two Captains” Sanya Grigoriev lived his own unique life. Readers seriously believed in him. And for more than sixty years, readers of several generations have understood and are close to this image. Readers admire his personal qualities of character: willpower, thirst for knowledge and search, loyalty to his word, dedication, perseverance in achieving goals, love for his homeland and love for his work - all that helped Sanya solve the mystery of Tatarinov’s expedition.

Adventure novel and documentary investigation

Cover of the book "Two Captains". Moscow, 1940 "Children's Publishing House of the Komsomol Central Committee"

At first glance, the novel looks simply like a socialist realist opus, albeit with a carefully worked out plot and the use of some modernist techniques that are not too common for socialist realist literature, for example, such as a change of narrator (two of the ten parts of the novel are written dignity on behalf of Katya). This is wrong.--

By the time he began working on “Two Captains,” Kaverin was already a fairly experienced writer, and in the novel he managed to combine several genres: an adventure travel novel, a novel of education, a Soviet historical novel about the recent past (the so-called novel with a key) and, finally, a military melodrama. Each of these genres has its own logic and its own mechanisms for holding the reader’s attention. Kaverin is an attentive reader of the works of the formalists Formalists- scientists who represented the so-called formal school in literary studies, which arose around the Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOYAZ) in 1916 and existed until the end of the 1920s. The formal school united theoreticians and literary historians, poetry scholars, and linguists. Its most famous representatives were Yuri Tynyanov, Boris Eichen-baum and Viktor Shklovsky.— thought a lot about whether genre innovation is possible in the history of literature. The novel “Two Captains” can be considered the result of these thoughts.

Film studio "Mosfilm"

The plot outline of the investigative journey following the letters of Captain Tatarinov, about the fate of whose expedition no one knows anything for many years, Kaverin borrowed from Jules Verne’s famous novel “The Children of Captain Grant.” Like the French writer, the text of the captain’s letters has not been fully preserved and the last stop of his expedition becomes a mystery that the heroes have been guessing for a long time. Kaverin, however, strengthens this documentary line. Now we are talking not about one letter, the traces of which are being searched, but about a whole series of documents that are gradually falling into the hands of Sana Grigoriev In early childhood, he reads the letters of the captain and navigator of the “St. Mary” washed ashore in 1913 many times and literally learns them by heart, not yet knowing that the letters found on the shore in the bag of a drowned postman tell about the same expedition. Then Sanya meets the family of Captain Tatarinov, gets access to his books and sorts out notes in the margins about the prospects for polar research in Russia and the world. While studying in Leningrad, Grigoriev carefully studied the press of 1912 to find out what was written at that time about the expedition of “St. Mary”. The next stage is the discovery and painstaking deciphering of the diary of the same stormtrooper who owned one of the En letters. Finally, in the very last chapters, the main character becomes the owner of the captain’s suicide letters and the ship’s logbook..

“The Children of Captain Grant” is a novel about the search for the crew of a sea vessel, the story of a rescue expedition. In “Two Captains,” Sanya and Tatarinov’s daughter, Katya, are looking for evidence of Tatarinov’s death in order to restore the good memory of this man, once not appreciated by his contemporaries, and then completely forgotten. Having taken on the task of reconstructing the history of Tatarinov’s expedition, Grigoriev takes upon himself the obligation to publicly expose Nikolai Antonovich, the captain’s cousin, and subsequently Katya’s stepfather. Sanya manages to prove his detrimental role in equipping the expedition. So Grigoriev becomes, as it were, a living deputy of the deceased Tatarinov (not without allusions to the story of Prince Hamlet). Another unexpected conclusion follows from Alexander Grigoriev’s investigation: letters and diaries need to be written and kept, since this is a way not only to collect and save information, but also to tell later people what your contemporaries are not yet ready to hear from you . It is characteristic that in the last stages of the search Grigoriev himself begins to keep a diary - or, more precisely, to create and store a series of unsent letters to Katya Tatarinova.

This is where the deep “subversive” meaning of “Two Captains” lies. The novel asserted the importance of old personal documents in an era when personal archives were either confiscated during searches or were destroyed by the owners themselves, fearing that their diaries and letters would fall into the hands of the NKVD.

American Slavic scholar Katherine Clark titled her book about the socialist realist novel “History as Ritual.” At a time when history appeared on the pages of countless novels as ritual and myth, Kaverin portrayed in his book a romantic hero who restores history as an ever-elusive secret that needs to be deciphered and endowed with personal meaning. Probably, this double perspective was another reason why Kaverin’s novel maintained its popularity throughout the twentieth century.

Novel of education

A still from the serial film “Two Captains”, directed by Evgeny Karelov. 1976 Film studio "Mosfilm"

The second genre model used in The Two Captains is the educational novel, a genre that emerged in the second half of the 18th century and developed rapidly in the 19th and 20th centuries. The focus of an educational novel is always the story of the hero's growing up, the formation of his character and worldview. “The Two Captains” belongs to that type of genre that tells about the biography of an orphan hero: the examples were clearly “The History of Tom Jones, Foundling” by Henry Fielding and, of course, the novels of Charles Dickens, especially “The Adventures of Oli-ve-ra Twist" and "The Life of David Copperfield".

Apparently, the last novel was of decisive importance for “The Two Captains”: seeing Sanya’s classmate Mikhail Romashov for the first time, Katya Tatarinova, as if anticipating his ominous role in her and Sanya’s fate, says that he is terrible and looks like Uriah Heep, the main villain from The Life of David Copperfield. Other plot parallels lead to Dickens's novel: a despotic stepfather; an independent long journey to another city, towards a better life; exposing the “paper” machinations of the villain.

A still from the serial film “Two Captains”, directed by Evgeny Karelov. 1976 Film studio "Mosfilm"

However, in the story of Grigoriev’s growing up, motifs appear that are not characteristic of the literature of the 18th and 19th centuries. Sanya’s personal development is a process of gradual accumulation and concentration of will. It all starts with overcoming muteness Due to an illness suffered in early childhood, Sanya lost the ability to speak. Silence actually becomes the cause of the death of Sanya’s father: the boy cannot tell who actually killed the watchman and why his father’s knife ended up at the crime scene. Sanya gains speech thanks to the wonderful doctor - escaped convict Ivan Ivanovich: in just a few sessions, he shows his patient the first and most important exercises for training the pronunciation of vowels and short words. Then Ivan Ivanovich disappears, and Sanya makes the further journey to gaining speech himself., and after this first impressive act of will, Grigoriev undertakes others. While still at school, he decides to become a pilot and begins to systematically harden himself and play sports, as well as read books that are directly or indirectly related to aviation and aircraft construction. At the same time, he trains his abilities for self-control, since he is too impulsive and impressionable, and this is very difficult in public speaking and when communicating with officials and bosses.

Grigoriev’s aviation biography demonstrates even greater determination and concentration of will. First, training at a flight school - in the early 1930s, with a shortage of equipment, instructors, flight hours and simply money for living and food. Then a long and patient wait for an appointment to the North. Then work in civil aviation in the Arctic Circle. Finally, in the final parts of the novel, the young captain struggles with external enemies (fascists), and with the traitor Romashov, and with illness and death, and with the anguish of separation. In the end, he emerges victorious from all the trials: he returns to his profession, finds the last resting place of Captain Tatarinov, and then Katya, lost in the evacuation upheavals. Romashov is exposed and arrested, and his best friends - Doctor Ivan Ivanovich, teacher Korab-Lev, friend Petka - are close again.

A still from the serial film “Two Captains”, directed by Evgeny Karelov. 1976 Film studio "Mosfilm"

Behind this entire epic of the formation of human will one can read the serious influence of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, assimilated by Kaverin from the original and from indirect sources - the works of authors who had previously experienced the influence of Nietzsche, for example Jack London and Maxim Gorky. In the same strong-willed Nietzschean vein, the main motto of the novel, borrowed from the poem “Ulysses” by the English poet Alfred Tennyson, is reinterpreted. If Tennyson has the lines “struggle and seek, find and not give up” In the original - “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” describe an eternal wanderer, a romantic traveler, then in Kaverin they turn into the credo of an unbending warrior who constantly educates himself.

A still from the serial film “Two Captains”, directed by Evgeny Karelov. 1976 Film studio "Mosfilm"

The action of “Two Captains” begins on the eve of the 1917 revolution, and ends in the same days and months when the last chapters of the novel are written (1944). Thus, before us is not only the life story of Sanya Grigoryev, but also the history of a country going through the same stages of formation as the hero. Kaverin is trying to show how, after the downtrodden and “mute” chaos of the early 1920s and the heroic labor impulses of the early 1930s, by the end of the war, she begins to confidently move towards a bright future, which Grigoryev, Katya, to their close friends and other nameless heroes with the same reserve of will and patience.

There was nothing surprising or particularly innovative in Kaverin’s experiment: the revolution and the Civil War quite early became the subject of historicizing descriptions in complex synthetic genres that combined, on the one hand, the features of a historical chronicle, and on the other, a family saga or even quasi-folklore epic. The process of including events of the late 1910s and early 1920s into historical fiction began already in the second half of the 1920s For example, “Russia, washed in blood” by Artem Vesely (1927-1928), “Walking through the torments” by Alexei Tolstoy (1921-1941) or “Quiet Don” by Sholokhov (1926-1932).. From the genre of historical family saga of the late 1920s, Kaverin borrows, for example, the motif of family separation for ideological (or ethical) reasons.

But the most interesting historical layer in “Two Captains” is perhaps not connected with the description of revolutionary Ensk (under this name Kaverin depicted his native Pskov) or Moscow during the Civil War. Of interest here are the later fragments describing Moscow and Leningrad in the late 1920s and 1930s. And in these fragments the features of another prose genre appear - the so-called novel with a key.

Romance with the key

A still from the serial film “Two Captains”, directed by Evgeny Karelov. 1976 Film studio "Mosfilm"

This ancient genre, which arose in France in the 16th century to ridicule court clans and factions, suddenly found itself in demand in Soviet literature of the 1920s and 30s. Main principle roman a clef consists in the fact that real persons and events are encoded in it and displayed under other (but often recognizable) names, which makes it possible to make the prose both chronicle and pamphlet, but at the same time attract the reader’s attention to what transformations he is experiencing “real life” in the writer’s imagination. As a rule, very few people can unravel the prototypes of a novel with a key - those who are familiar with these real persons in person or in absentia.

“The Goat Song” by Konstantin Vaginov (1928), “The Crazy Ship” by Olga Forsh (1930), “Theatrical Romance” by Mikhail Bulgakov (1936), and finally, Kaverin’s own early novel “The Scandalist, or Evenings on Vasilyevsky Island” (1928) - all these works presented modern events and real persons acting in fictional literary worlds. It is no coincidence that most of these novels are dedicated to people of art and their collegiate and friendly communication. In “Two Captains,” the basic principles of a novel with a key are not consistently followed—however, when depicting the life of writers, artists, or actors, Kaverin boldly uses techniques from the arsenal of a genre familiar to him.

Remember the scene of the wedding of Petya and Sasha (Grigoriev’s sister) in Leningrad, where the artist Filippov is mentioned, who “drew [the cow] into small squares and writes each square separately”? In Filippov we can easily recognize his “analytical method”. Sasha takes orders from the Leningrad branch of Detgiz - this means that she collaborates with the legendary Marshakov editorial office, which was tragically destroyed in 1937 Kaverin clearly took a risk: he began writing his novel in 1938, after the editorial office was dissolved and some of its employees were arrested.. The subtexts of the theatrical scenes are also interesting - with visits to various (real and semi-fictional) performances.

One can speak very conditionally about the novel with a key in relation to “Two Captains”: this is not a full-scale use of the genre model, but a re-translation of only some techniques; Most of the characters in "Two Captains" are not encrypted historical figures. Nevertheless, answering the question of why such heroes and fragments were needed in “Two Captains” is very important. The genre of a novel with a key presupposes the division of the readership into those who are capable and those who are not able to pick up the necessary key, that is, into those initiated and perceiving the narrative as such, without restoring the real background . In the "artistic" episodes of "Two Captains" we can observe something similar.

Industrial romance

A still from the serial film “Two Captains”, directed by Evgeny Karelov. 1976 Film studio "Mosfilm"

In “Two Captains” there is a hero whose last name is encrypted only with an initial, but any Soviet reader could easily unravel it, and no key was required for this. The pilot Ch., whose successes Grigoriev watches with bated breath, and then with some timidity turns to him for help, is, of course, Valery Chkalov. Other “aviation” initials were easily deciphered: L. - Sigismund Levanevsky, A. - Alexander Anisimov, S. - Mavriky Slepnev. Begun in 1938, the novel was intended to provide a preliminary summary of the turbulent Soviet Arctic epic of the 1930s, which featured polar explorers (land and sea) and pilots alike.

Let's briefly restore the chronology:

1932 - icebreaker "Alexander Sibiryakov", the first voyage along the Northern Sea Route from the White Sea to the Bering Sea in one navigation.

1933-1934 - the famous Chelyuskin epic, an attempt to sail from Murmansk to Vladivostok in one navigation, with the death of the ship, landing on an ice floe, and then the rescue of the entire crew and passengers with the help of the best pilots of the country: many years later I could list the names of these pilots by heart any Soviet schoolchild.

1937 - Ivan Papanin's first drifting polar station and Valery Chkalov's first non-stop flight to the North American continent.

Polar explorers and pilots were the main heroes of our time in the 1930s, and the fact that Sanya Grigoriev not only chose an aviation profession, but wanted to connect his fate with the Arctic, immediately gave his image a romantic aura and great attractiveness.

Meanwhile, if we separately consider the professional biography of Grigoriev and his steady attempts to achieve the sending of an expedition to search for the crew of Captain Tatarinov, it will become clear that “Two Captains” contains the features of another type of novel - a production novel, which has received wide recognition. - some spread of socialist realism in literature at the end of the 1920s, with the beginning of industrialization. In one of the varieties of such a novel, the center was a young enthusiastic hero who loved his work and country more than himself, was ready for self-sacrifice and obsessed with the idea of a “breakthrough.” In his quest to make a “breakthrough” (to introduce some kind of technical innovation or simply work tirelessly), he will definitely be hindered by a sabotaging hero The role of such a pest can be played by a bureaucratic leader (of course, a conservative by nature) or several such leaders.. There comes a moment when the main character is defeated and his cause, it seems, is almost lost, but still the forces of reason and goodness win, the state, represented by its most reasonable representatives, intervenes in the conflict, encourages the innovator and punishes the conservative.

“Two Captains” is close to this model of the production novel, most memorable to Soviet readers from Dudintsev’s famous book “Not by Bread Alone” (1956). Romashov, an antagonist and envious of Grigoriev, sends letters to all authorities and spreads false rumors - the result of his activities is the sudden cancellation of the search operation in 1935 and the expulsion of Grigoriev from his beloved North.

A still from the serial film “Two Captains”, directed by Evgeny Karelov. 1976 Film studio "Mosfilm"

Perhaps the most interesting line in the novel today is the transformation of the civilian pilot Grigoriev into a military pilot, and peaceful research interests in the Arctic into military and strategic interests. For the first time, such a development of events was predicted by an unnamed sailor who visited Sanya in a Leningrad hotel in 1935. Then, after a long “exile” to the Volga reclamation aviation, Grigoriev decides to change his destiny on his own and volunteers to fight in the Spanish War. From there he returns as a military pilot, and then his entire biography, like the history of the development of the North, is shown as military, closely connected with the security and strategic interests of the country. It is no coincidence that Romashov turns out to be not just a saboteur and a traitor, but also a war criminal: the events of the Patriotic War become the last and ultimate test for both heroes and antiheroes.

War melodrama

A still from the serial film “Two Captains”, directed by Evgeny Karelov. 1976 Film studio "Mosfilm"

The last genre that was embodied in “Two Captains” is the genre of military melodrama, which during the war years could be realized both on the theater stage and in cinema. Perhaps the closest analogue of the novel is Konstantin Simonov’s play “Wait for Me” and the film of the same name based on it (1943). The action of the last parts of the novel unfolds as if following the plot outline of this melodrama.

In the very first days of the war, the plane of an experienced pilot is shot down, he ends up in occupied territory, and then, under unclear circumstances, disappears for a long time. His wife does not want to believe that he is dead. She exchanges her old civilian profession associated with intellectual activity for a simple rear one and refuses to evacuate. Bombings, digging trenches on the outskirts of the city - she endures all these trials with dignity, never ceasing to hope that her husband is alive, and in the end waits for him. This description is quite applicable to both the film “Wait for Me” and the novel “Two Captains” Of course, there are differences: Katya Tatarinova in June 1941 lives not in Moscow, like Simonov’s Liza, but in Leningrad; she has to go through all the trials of the blockade, and after her evacuation to the mainland, Grigoriev cannot get on her trail..

The last parts of Kaverin’s novel, written alternately from the perspective of Katya and then from the perspective of Sanya, successfully use all the techniques of military melodrama. And since this genre continued to be exploited in post-war literature, theater and cinema, “Two Captains” for a long time fell precisely within the horizon of reader and spectator expectations Expectation horizon(German: Erwartungs-horizont) - a term by the German historian and literary theorist Hans-Robert Jauss, a complex of aesthetic, socio-political, psychological and other ideas that determine the author’s attitude to society, and also the reader’s attitude towards the production.. Youthful love, born in the trials and conflicts of the 1920s and 30s, passed the last and most serious test of the war.

The film "Two Captains", which was based on the novel of the same name by Veniamin Kaverin, raises issues of honor, conscience, devotion to home, and patriotism.

Two captains: Ivan Tatarinov and Sanya Grigoriev (one of the main characters, has a purposeful character, grew up to be a brave man) are real people, they go to the end in the name of their goal, do not lose heart in difficult circumstances, remaining honest and sincere. The motto of Sanya Grigoriev and the entire Raman were the words: “Fight and search, find and not give up.” And what Tatarinov could not do, Grigoriev brings to the end, having found out the true reasons for the death of the expedition.

They are opposed by Nikolai Antonovich and Mikhail Romashov. Betrayal, lies, selfishness, cowardice, the desire to destroy an opponent - these are the traits that unite these heroes. And love for women cannot justify the vileness of their actions. Therefore, neither Maria Vasilievna Tatarinova nor Katya forgive scoundrels.

Updated: 2017-09-06

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Introduction

mythological novel image

Theoretical basis of course work Monographic sources, materials from scientific and industrial periodicals directly related to the topic served as sources. Prototypes of the heroes of the work.

Object of study: plot and characters.

Subject of study: mythological motifs, plots, symbols in creativity in the novel “Two Captains”.

Purpose of the study: a comprehensive consideration of the issue of the influence of mythology on V. Kaverin’s novel.

To achieve this goal, the following were set: tasks:

To identify the attitude and frequency of Kaverin’s appeal to mythology;

Study the main features of mythological heroes in the images of the novel “Two Captains”;

Determine the forms of penetration of mythological motifs and plots into the novel “Two Captains”;

Consider the main stages of Kaverin’s appeal to mythological subjects.

To solve the problems, methods such as descriptive, historical and comparative are used.

1. Concept nro mythological themes and motifs

So, what is myth, and after it, what can be called mythological elements?

1.1 Features and characteristicsmyth