A combination of naive fantasy with a truthful depiction of life in the fairy tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin. Fairy tale M.E

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

PLAN

Introduction……………………………………………………………..3

1. The originality of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales…………………….4

2. Elements of fantasy in “The Story of a City”…………..9

Conclusion……………………………………………………………19

References……………………………………………………………………...20

Introduction

Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin in his work chose the satirical principle of depicting reality using elements of fantasy as the right weapon. He became a successor to the traditions of D.I. Fonvizin, A.S. Griboedov, N.V. Gogol in that he made satire his political weapon, fighting with its help the pressing issues of his time.

M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote more than 30 fairy tales. Turning to this genre was natural for Saltykov-Shchedrin. Elements of fantasy permeate the entire work of the writer. In the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin, political problems are developed and current issues are resolved. Defending the progressive ideals of his time, the author acted in his works as a defender of people's interests. Having enriched folklore stories with new content, Saltykov-Shchedrin directed the fairy tale genre to instill civic feelings and special respect for the people.

The purpose of the essay is to study the role of fantasy elements in the works of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

1. The originality of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales

Saltykov-Shchedrin turns to the fairy tale genre several times in his work: first in 1869, and then after 1881, when historical conditions (the murder of the Tsar) led to stricter censorship.

Like many writers, Saltykov-Shchedrin uses the fairy tale genre to reveal the vices of man and society. Written for “children of a fair age,” the fairy tales are a sharp criticism of the existing system and, in essence, serve as a weapon denouncing the Russian autocracy.

The themes of the fairy tales are very diverse: the author not only opposes the vices of autocracy (“The Bear in the Voivodeship,” “The Bogatyr”), but also denounces noble despotism (“The Wild Landowner”). The satirist especially condemns the views of liberals (“Crucian carp is an idealist”), as well as the indifference of officials (“Idle Conversation”) and philistine cowardice (“The Wise Minnow”).

However, there is a theme that can be said to be present in many fairy tales - this is the theme of an oppressed people. In the fairy tales “How one man fed two generals” and “The Horse” it sounds especially vivid.

Themes and issues determine the variety of characters acting in these sharply satirical works. These are stupid rulers, striking with their ignorance and tyrant landowners, officials and ordinary people, merchants and peasants. Sometimes the characters are quite reliable, and we find in them the features of specific historical figures, and sometimes the images are allegorical and allegorical.

Using the folklore and fairy tale form, the satirist illuminates the most pressing issues of Russian life, acts as a defender of people's interests and progressive ideas.

The fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” stands out from all others due to its special dynamism and variability of plot. The writer uses a fantastic technique - the generals, as if “at the behest of a pike,” are transported to a desert island, and here the writer, with his characteristic irony, shows us the complete helplessness of officials and their inability to act.

“Generals served all their lives in some kind of registry; they were born there, raised and grew old, and therefore did not understand anything. They didn’t even know any words.” Because of their stupidity and narrow-mindedness, they almost died of hunger. But a man who is a jack of all trades comes to their aid: he can both hunt and cook. The image of a “hefty man” personifies both the strength and weakness of the Russian people in this fairy tale. Mastery and his extraordinary abilities are combined in this image with humility and class passivity (the man himself weaves a rope to be tied to a tree at night). Having collected ripe apples for the generals, he takes himself sour, unripe ones, and he was also glad that the generals “favored him, a parasite, and did not disdain his peasant labor.”

The tale of two generals suggests that the people, according to Saltykov-Shchedrin, are the support of the state, they are the creator of material and spiritual values.

The theme of the people is developed in another tale by Saltykov-Shchedrin - “The Horse,” which was created in 1885. In style, it differs from others in its lack of action.

This tale is called the strongest work in the series dedicated to the plight of the Russian peasantry. The image of a hard-working horse is a collective one. He personifies the entire forced working people, he reflects the tragedy of millions of men, this enormous force, enslaved and powerless.

This tale also contains the theme of the people’s submission, their dumbness and lack of desire to fight. A horse, “tortured, beaten, narrow-chested, with protruding ribs and burnt shoulders, with broken legs” - such a portrait is created by an author who mourns the unenviable lot of a powerless people. Thinking about the future and the fate of the people is painful, but filled with selfless love.

In the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, various themes are heard using Aesopian language, elements of fantasy, folklore traditions and satirical techniques.

What brings Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales closer to folk tales? Typical fairy tale beginnings (“Once upon a time there were two generals...”, “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there lived a landowner...”; sayings (“at the command of a pike,” “neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen.” ); turns of phrase characteristic of folk speech (“thought-thought”, “once said and done”); syntax, vocabulary, orthoepy close to the folk language. Exaggeration, grotesque, hyperbole: one of the generals eats the other; “wild landowner”, like a cat, in an instant, climbs a tree; a man cooks a handful of soup. As in folk tales, a miraculous incident sets the plot in motion: by the grace of God, “there was no man in the entire domain of the stupid landowner.” The folk tradition of Saltykov-Shchedrin is also followed in fairy tales about animals, when in an allegorical form it ridicules the shortcomings of society.

The difference: the interweaving of the fantastic with the real and even historically accurate. “A Bear in the Voivodeship”: among the characters - the animals - the image of Magnitsky, a well-known reactionary in Russian history, suddenly appears: even before Toptygin’s appearance in the forest, Magnitsky destroyed all the printing houses, students were sent to be soldiers, academicians were imprisoned. In the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner,” the hero gradually degrades, turning into an animal. The hero’s incredible story is largely explained by the fact that he read the newspaper “Vest” and followed its advice. Saltykov-Shchedrin simultaneously respects the form of a folk tale and destroys it. The magical in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales is explained by the real; the reader cannot escape reality, which is constantly felt behind the images of animals and fantastic events. Fairy-tale forms allowed Saltykov-Shchedrin to present ideas close to him in a new way, to show or ridicule social shortcomings.

“The Wise Minnow” is an image of a frightened man in the street, who “only saves his hateful life.” Can the slogan “survive and not get caught by the pike” be the meaning of life for a person?

The theme of the tale is connected with the defeat of the Narodnaya Volya, when many representatives of the intelligentsia, frightened, withdrew from public affairs. A type of coward, pathetic, and unhappy is being created. These people did no harm to anyone, but lived their lives aimlessly, without impulses. This tale is about a person’s civic position and the meaning of human life. In general, the author appears in a fairy tale in two faces at once: a folk storyteller, a simpleton joker and at the same time a person wise with life experience, a writer-thinker, a citizen. In the description of the life of the animal kingdom with its inherent details, details of the real life of people are interspersed. The language of the fairy tale combines fairy-tale words and phrases, the colloquial language of the third estate and the journalistic language of that time.

2. Elements of fiction in"HistoryAndone city"

“The History of a City” is the most significant fantastic and satirical work of Russian literature. This book is the only successful attempt in our country to give in one work a picture (parodic and grotesque, but surprisingly accurate) not only of the history of Russia, but also of its contemporary image to the writer. Moreover, while reading “The History of a City,” you constantly catch yourself thinking that this book is about our time, about “post-perestroika” Russia, its socio-political, psychological and artistic discoveries are so topical for us.

Saltykov-Shchedrin could write such a universal literary work for Russia only in the form of grotesque, fantasy and satire. Contemporary critics of Saltykov-Shchedrin, his fellow writers and ordinary readers held two different opinions about “The History of a City”: some saw in it only an unfair caricature of Russian history and the Russian people (Leo Tolstoy was among the supporters of this point of view), others saw in the satire of Saltykov-Shchedrin the dawn of a new, happy life (liberal democrats, social democrats). During the Soviet period, official science pretended that the work had nothing in common with Soviet reality. Only now is it becoming clear that “The History of a City” is a book “for all times” and not only about Russia at the end of the 20th century, but also about other countries.

Despite the fact that Saltykov-Shchedrin’s book is the first such significant grotesque-satirical work of Russian literature, the forms of grotesque, fantasy and satire in literature and art themselves are far from new. This, and also, to a certain extent, the essence of these methods is indicated by the very origin of the words: fantastich (fantasy) in Greek in the literal sense of the word - the art of imagining; satira (satura) in Latin - mixture, all sorts of things; grottesco in Italian - “cave”, “grotto” (to denote bizarre ornaments found in the 15-16th centuries during excavations of ancient Roman premises - “grottoes”). Thus, “fantastic grotesque” and satirical works go back to the ancient, so-called “mythological archaic” (“low version” of myth) and to the ancient satirical novel, to the folk fantastic grotesque of the Renaissance. Later, these terms became the subject of special studies in literary criticism and aesthetics. The first serious study of the grotesque as an artistic, aesthetic method was undertaken more than 200 years ago in 1788 in Germany by G. Schneegans, who first gave a generalized definition of the grotesque. Later, in 1827, the famous French writer Victor Hugo, in his “Preface to Cromwell,” first gave the term “grotesque” a broad aesthetic interpretation and attracted the attention of wide sections of the reading public to it.

Nowadays, “grotesque”, “fantasy”, “satire” are understood as approximately the following. Grotesque in literature is one of the types of typification, mainly satirical, in which real life relationships are deformed, verisimilitude gives way to caricature, fantasy, and a sharp combination of contrasts. (Another, similar definition: Grotesque is a type of artistic imagery that generalizes and sharpens life’s relationships through a bizarre and contrasting combination of real and fantastic, verisimilitude and caricature, tragic and comic, beautiful and ugly. Fiction is a specific method of artistic representation of life, using the artistic form - image (an object, a situation, a world in which elements of reality are combined in a way unusual for it - incredibly, “miraculously”, supernaturally). Satire is a specific form of artistic reflection of reality, through which negative, internally perverse phenomena are exposed and ridiculed; a type of comic, destructive ridicule of the depicted, revealing its internal inconsistency, its inconsistency with its nature or purpose, the “idea". It is noteworthy that these three definitions have something in common. Thus, in the definition of the grotesque, both the fantastic and the comic are mentioned as its elements ( the latter type is satire). It is advisable not to separate these three concepts, but to speak of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work as satirical, written in the form of a fantastic grotesque. Moreover, the unity of all three artistic methods is emphasized by many researchers of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work when they talk about his works as parts of an integral satirical, grotesque world. Analyzing this world (the most striking embodiment of which is “The History of a City”), literary scholars note the following features. The grotesque seems to “destroy” the real country of Russia and its people in “everyday” verisimilitude and creates new patterns and connections. A special grotesque world arises, which is essential, however, for revealing the real contradictions of reality. Therefore, Saltykov-Shchedrin’s grotesque consists of two planes, and its perception is dual. What at first glance seems random, arbitrary, in fact turns out to be deeply natural. The nature of the comic in “The Story of a City” does not at all consist in strengthening the farcical principle (in “comic”), but is associated with its two-dimensionality. The comic is released along with the comprehension of the essence of the grotesque, with the movement of the reader's thought from a superficial plane to a deeper one. Moreover, in Shchedrin’s “The History of a City” the grotesque beginning is not just an essential part. On the contrary, the grotesque principle lies at the very basis of the work. The grotesque is often characterized by a desire for extreme generalization, mainly satirical, to comprehend the essence of a phenomenon and extract from it a certain meaning, a concentrate of history. That is why the grotesque turned out to be the only possible form for Saltykov-Shchedrin and the basis of his work. The range of generalized phenomena in “The History of a City” expands to amazingly wide limits - to a generalization of the trend of all Russian history and modernity. The generality and concentration of historical content determine a particularly sharp combination of humor and sarcasm, comic and tragic elements in the grotesque. Reading “The History of a City,” one becomes convinced of the validity of another important conclusion made by philologists: the grotesque is aimed at a holistic and multifaceted expression of the basic, cardinal problems of human life.

In the work of the great satirist one can see, on the one hand, the elements of folk artistic creativity and folk comedy, on the other, an expression of the inconsistency and complexity of life. Images of folk grotesque, built on the unity of polar, contrasting (and in their contrasting fusion, comical) elements, capture the essence of a sharply contradictory life, its dialectics. The reduction of laughter, the bringing together of contrasts, seems to abolish all unambiguity, exclusivity and inviolability. The grotesque world realizes a kind of folk laughter utopia. The entire content of “The History of One City” is condensed into the “Inventory for City Governors”, therefore “Inventory for City Governors” best illustrates the techniques with which Saltykov-Shchedrin created his work.

It is here, in the most concentrated form, that we encounter “bizarre and contrasting combinations of the real and the fantastic, verisimilitude and caricature, the tragic and the comic,” characteristic of the grotesque. Probably never before in Russian literature has such a compact description of entire eras, layers of Russian history and life been encountered. In “Inventory” the reader is bombarded with a stream of absurdity, which, oddly enough, is more understandable than the real contradictory and phantasmagorical Russian life. Let's take the first mayor, Amadeus Manuilovich Clementy. Only seven lines are dedicated to him (about the same amount of text is devoted to each of the 22 mayors), but every word here is more valuable than many pages and volumes written by Saltykov-Shchedrin’s contemporary official historians and social scientists. A comic effect is created already in the first words: the absurd combination of the foreign, beautiful and high-sounding name for the Russian ear Amadeus Klementy with the provincial Russian patronymic Manuilovich speaks volumes: about the fleeting “Westernization” of Russia “from above”, about how the country was flooded with foreign adventurers, about how alien the morals imposed from above were to ordinary people and about much more. From the same sentence, the reader learns that Amadeus Manuilovich became a mayor “for skillfully cooking pasta” - a grotesque, of course, and at first it seems funny, but after a moment the modern Russian reader realizes with horror that in the one hundred and thirty years that have passed since writing “The History of a City”, and in the 270 years that have passed since the time of Biron, little has changed: and before our eyes, numerous “advisers”, “experts”, “creators of monetary systems” and the “systems” themselves were signed up from the West, signed up for chattering foreign chatter, for a beautiful, exotic surname for the Russian ear... And they believed, they believed, like Foolovites, just as stupidly and just as naively. Nothing has changed since then. Further, the descriptions of the “city governors” almost instantly follow one another, pile up and get confused in their absurdity, together making up, oddly enough, an almost scientific picture of Russian life. From this description it is clearly visible how Saltykov-Shchedrin “constructs” his grotesque world. To do this, he really first “destroys” the verisimilitude: Dementy Vaolamovich Brudasty had “some special device” in his head, Anton Protasyevich de Sanglot flew through the air, Ivan Panteleevich Pyshch ended up with a stuffed head. In the “Inventory” there is also something not so fantastic, but still very unlikely: the mayor Lamvrokakis died, eaten by bedbugs in bed; Brigadier Ivan Matveevich Baklan was broken in half during a storm; Nikodim Osipovich Ivanov died from strain, “striving to comprehend some Senate decree,” and so on. So, the grotesque world of Saltykov-Shchedrin is constructed, and the reader has a good laugh at it. However, soon our contemporary begins to understand that the absurd, fantastic world of Saltykov is not as absurd as it seems at first glance. More precisely, it is absurd, it is absurd, but the real world, the real country is no less absurd. In this “high reality” of Shchedrin’s world, in the modern reader’s awareness of the absurdity of the structure of our life, lies the justification and purpose of Shchedrin’s grotesque as an artistic method. Organchik The detailed description of the “acts” of the mayors and the description of the behavior of the Foolovites that follows the “Inventory” more than once makes the modern reader involuntarily exclaim: “How could Saltykov-Shchedrin 130 years ago know what was happening to us at the end of the twentieth century?” The answer to this question, as Kozintsev puts it, must be looked for in the dictionary for the word “genius.” In places the text of this chapter is so stunning and so testifies to the exceptional visionary gift of Saltykov-Shchedrin, supported by the methods of hyperbole, grotesque and satire he used, that it is necessary to provide several quotes here. “The residents rejoiced... They congratulated each other with joy, kissed, shed tears... In a fit of delight, the old Foolovian liberties were remembered. The best citizens..., having formed a national assembly, shook the air with exclamations: our father! Even dangerous dreamers appeared. Guided not so much by reason as by the movements of a noble heart, they argued that under the new mayor trade would flourish and that, under the supervision of quarterly overseers, sciences and arts would emerge. We couldn't resist making comparisons. They remembered the old mayor who had just left the city, and it turned out that although he, too, was handsome and smart, but that, for all that, the new ruler should be given priority for this alone, because he was new. In a word, in this case, as in other similar ones, both the usual Foolovian enthusiasm and the usual Foolovian frivolity were fully expressed... Soon, however, the townsfolk became convinced that their rejoicings and hopes were, at least, premature and exaggerated. .. The new mayor locked himself in his office... From time to time he ran out into the hall... saying “I will not tolerate it!” - and again disappeared into the office. The Foolovites were horrified... suddenly the thought dawned on everyone: well, how can he flog an entire people in this manner!... they became agitated, made noise and, inviting the caretaker of the public school, asked him a question: have there been examples in history of people giving orders and waging wars? and concluded treatises with an empty vessel on their shoulders? “A lot has already been said about the “organ”, the mayor Brudast, from this amazing chapter. No less interesting, however, is the description of the Foolovites in this chapter.

During the time of Saltykov-Shchedrin, and even now, the grotesque image of the Russian people he created seemed and still seems to many to be strained, and even slanderous. Monarchists, liberals, and social democrats tended to idealize the people in many ways and attribute to them certain sublime, abstract qualities. Both liberals and socialists considered it incredible that the broad masses of the population could endure for centuries a long line of “organs” and “former scoundrels,” sometimes bursting into outbursts of unfounded enthusiasm or anger. This situation was considered a “historical error” or “a contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production” and seemed correctable by introducing representative democracy or putting into practice the theories of Marxism. Only later did it gradually become clear that the seemingly paradoxical, absurd and grotesque features of the national Russian character were confirmed by serious scientific analysis. Thus, we see that Saltykov-Shchedrin’s grotesque and satire were not only expressive means with which he solved artistic problems, but also a tool for analyzing Russian life - contradictory, paradoxical and seemingly fantastic, but internally holistic and containing only negative features, but also elements of sustainability and a guarantee of future development. In turn, the very foundations of the contradictory Russian life dictated to Saltykov-Shchedrin the need to use precisely the forms of the fantastic grotesque.

The story about Ugryum-Burcheev is probably the most widely quoted chapter of “The History of a City” during perestroika. As is known, the immediate prototypes of the image of Gloomy-Burcheev were Arakcheev and Nicholas I, and the prototype of the barracks city of Nepreklonsk was the military settlements of the Nicholas era, and literary scholars of the Soviet period paid attention to this. However, reading this chapter, you clearly see the striking similarities between Nepreklonsk and barracks socialism of the Stalinist type. Moreover, Saltykov-Shchedrin managed to point out the main features of the society built by the “levellers”, and even such details of this society that, it seems, were absolutely impossible to predict 60 years before. The accuracy of Saltykov-Shchedrin's foresight is amazing. In his book, he foresaw both the “barracks” look of the society to which the “idea of universal happiness” would lead, elevated into “a rather complex administrative theory that is not free of ideological tricks,” and the enormous sacrifices of the Stalin era (“the resolved issue of general extermination,” “ a fantastic failure in which “everyone and everyone disappeared without a trace”), and the wretched straightforwardness of the ideology and “theory” of barracks socialism (“Having drawn a straight line, he planned to squeeze the entire visible and invisible world into it” - how can one not recall here the primitive theories gradual “erasing of edges” and “improving” everything), and annoying collectivism (“Everyone lives together every minute...”), and much more. And the more specific features of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s “society of the future” are like two drops of water similar to the reality of the Stalinist dictatorship. Here are the low origins of the “mayor”, and his incredible, inhuman cruelty towards members of his own family, and two official ideological holidays in Nepreklonsk in the spring and autumn, and spy mania, and Burcheev’s gloomy “plan for the transformation of nature”, and even details of the disease and death of Ugryum-Burcheev... When you reflect on how Saltykov-Shchedrin managed to foresee the future of Russia with such accuracy, you come to the conclusion that his literary method of studying the world and the country, based on the artistic logic of fantastic hyperbole, turned out to be much more accurate and more powerful than the scientific methods of forecasting that guided social scientists and philosophers, the writer’s contemporaries. Moreover, in the chapter on Gloomy-Burcheev, he gave a more accurate diagnosis of the society of barracks socialism than most Russian scientists of the twentieth century! This aspect of the problem also attracts attention. When Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote his “dystopia,” much of what he said about Nepreklonsk seemed and was for that time precisely fantasy, hyperbole and grotesque. But 60 years later, the writer’s most fantastic predictions turned out to be realized with amazing accuracy. Here we have an example of how (perhaps for the only time in the history of literature) fantastic grotesquery and artistic hyperbole of such proportions absolutely become real life. In this case, the fantastic grotesque allowed the writer to reveal hidden for the time being, but inexorable mechanisms of transformation of society. The reason that Saltykov-Shchedrin turned out to be more perspicacious than all the major philosophers of his time lay, obviously, in the very nature of his artistic creativity and method: the method of fantastic grotesque allowed him to highlight the essential elements and patterns of the historical process, and his great artistic talent allowed him to simultaneously (unlike the social sciences) to preserve the totality of details, accidents and features of living, real life. The artistic world, constructed in this way by Saltykov-Shchedrin, turned out to be a reflection of such a real force that over time it inexorably and menacingly made its way into life. Instead of a conclusion: “It” The final lines of “The History of a City” contain a gloomy and mysterious prediction, not deciphered by the author: “The north darkened and became covered with clouds; From these clouds something was rushing towards the city: either a downpour, or a tornado... It was getting closer, and as it got closer, time stopped running. Finally the earth shook, the sun darkened... the Foolovites fell on their faces. An inscrutable horror appeared on all faces and gripped all hearts. It has arrived...” Many researchers of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work write that by “it” the writer meant social revolution, “Russian rebellion”, and the overthrow of the autocracy. The fantastic nature of the image of “it” emphasizes in Saltykov-Shchedrin the tragedy of the social cataclysms he expects. It is interesting to compare the prophecy of Saltykov-Shchedrin with the forecasts of other Russian writers. M.Yu. Lermontov in his poem, which is called “Prediction,” wrote: The year will come, Russia’s black year, When the kings’ crown falls; The mob will forget their former love for them, And the food of many will be death and blood;... It is significant that Pushkin described similar events with much greater optimism regarding changes in society itself, and welcomed the most “radical” measures against the tsar, his family and children: Autocratic villain! I hate you, your throne, I see your death, the death of children with cruel joy. Finally, Blok in “Voice in the Clouds” also looks into the future with a fair amount of optimism: We fought with the wind and, with frowning eyebrows, In the darkness we could hardly discern the path... And so, like an ambassador of a growing storm, A prophetic voice struck the crowd. - Sad people, tired people, Wake up, find out that joy is close! There, where the seas sing about a miracle, There the light of the lighthouse is directed! As we see, the opinions of the great Russian poets regarding future Russian vicissitudes differed radically.

It is known that the forecasts of events in Russia made by other great Russian writers - Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov - turned out to be much less accurate than the visions of Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Conclusion

Like his works, the figure of Saltykov-Shchedrin still remains one of the most paradoxical in the history of Russian literature. While many literary scholars and the “general reader” often place him much lower than Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov, connoisseurs of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work consider him a successor to the traditions of the titans of Renaissance and Enlightenment literature: Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift.

Saltykov-Shchedrin, with the help of elements of fantasy, was able to see and reflect in his fairy tales not only the concrete and passing troubles of his time, but also the eternal problems of relations between the people and the authorities, and the shortcomings of the people's character.

Perhaps centuries will pass, and the work of our great satirist writer will be as relevant as it was a hundred years ago, as it is now. In the meantime, together with him, we “laughingly say goodbye to our past” and peer with anxiety and hope into the future of our great and unfortunate Motherland.

Bibliography

1. Efimov A.I. The language of Saltykov-Shchedrin's satire. - M.: Moscow University Publishing House, 1953.

2. Makashin S.A. Saltykov, Mikhail Evgrafovich. // KLE. T.6. - M.: SE, 1971.

3. Saltykov-Shchedrin Mikhail Evgrafovich // Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: Who is Who / Ed. V. Gakova. - Minsk: IKO Galaxias, 1995.

Similar documents

Studying the life and creative path of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, the formation of his socio-political views. Review of the plots of the writer's fairy tales, artistic and ideological features of the genre of political fairy tales created by the great Russian satirist.

abstract, added 10/17/2011

Features of the atmosphere in which Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin spent his childhood years. Years of study, Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Serving as an official in the office of the War Ministry. Petrashevsky's circle, arrest and exile. Tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

presentation, added 04/20/2015

The concept of "genre", "fairy tale" in literary criticism. Satire as a centuries-old weapon of class struggle in literature. The fairy-tale world of Saltykov-Shchedrin. The connection between fairy tales and folklore traditions. Universal sound and distinctive features of Shchedrin's fairy tales.

course work, added 05/15/2009

Studying the genre and features of the storyline of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals." The artistic meaning of a combination of stylistic systems. The speech system of a fairy tale with the appearance of improperly direct speech.

abstract, added 06/14/2010

Memoirs of Saltykov-Shchedrin about childhood, his parents and the methods of their upbringing. Education of young Saltykov. Wife and kids. Vyatka captivity, return from exile. The writer's life credo. The significance of his work in socio-political processes.

presentation, added 02/04/2016

The history of fairy tales by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The main features of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s satire, manifested in the fairy tales “The Wild Landowner” and “The Bear in the Voivodeship”. Expressive means of humor and satire in fairy tales. Phraseologism as a means of satire.

abstract, added 11/17/2003

Familiarization with the stylistic features of writing and the storyline of the satirical painting “The History of a City” by Saltykov-Shchedrin. Depiction of general lack of faith and loss of moral values of the nation in the novel “Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky.

abstract, added 06/20/2010

Characteristics of the genre "satire". Laughter as a consequence of satirical creativity. An important type of satire, represented by artistic parodies. Expressive means of humor and satire in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales “The Wild Landowner” and “The Bear in the Voivodeship.”

abstract, added 10/19/2012

Comparison of the ideological positions of M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, L. Tolstoy. Comparative analysis of two images of the main characters (Judushka and Ivan Ilyich). Conditions for the onset of a crisis: mental shock and loneliness. The death of Porfiry Golovlev is like forgiveness without words.

thesis, added 04/06/2012

A brief biographical sketch of the life path of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin - Russian writer and prose writer. The beginning of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s literary activity, his first stories. The writer's exile to Vyatka. Resuming his writing and editing work.

Option I

In the 80s of the 19th century, the persecution of literature by government censorship became especially cruel, and as a result, the closure of the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski, edited by Shchedrin. Shchedrin, a master of “Aesopian language”, a bright satirist, subtly noticing human vices and ridiculing the nature of their occurrence, was forced to look for a new form of communication with the reader in order to bypass censorship. His tales, which primarily reflected the class struggle in Russia in the second half of the 19th century, were an ideal way out of the current situation.

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin was born into the family of a serf-owning landowner and, in his own words, was raised by “serf mothers” and “taught to read and write by a serf literate.” From childhood, an observant and sensitive teenager awakens to protest against cruelty and inhumanity towards the common people, and later he will say: “I saw all the horrors of centuries-old bondage ... in their nakedness.” Saltykov-Shchedrin reflects all observations and beliefs in his works. Shchedrin, one might say, creates a new genre of fairy tale - a political one, where fantasy and topical political reality overlap.

We can say that Shchedrin’s fairy tales show the confrontation between two social forces: the people and their exploiters. The people in fairy tales are depicted under the masks of kind and defenseless animals and birds, and the exploiters are portrayed as predators.

The fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” reveals a burning problem of that time: the relationship between post-reform peasants and landowners. The landowner, fearing that the man might “eat up all his goods,” tries to get rid of him: “...And not just somehow, but everything according to the rule. Whether a peasant chicken wanders into the master's oats - now, as a rule, it is in the soup; Whether a peasant gathers to chop wood in secret in the master’s forest... this same firewood will go to the master’s yard, and, as a rule, the chopper will be fined.” In the end, “the merciful God heard the tearful prayer,” and “there was no man in the entire domain of the stupid landowner.”

And then it turns out that the landowner has no life without a peasant, because all he is used to is taking care of his “soft,” “white,” “crumbly” body, and without a peasant there is no one to wipe off the dust , there is no one to cook the food, not even a mouse, and he knows that “the landowner cannot do him any harm without Senka.” The author thus makes it clear that the people, who are mocked as if they are being tested for survival, are the only thing that does not allow the landowner to turn into an animal, as happened in the fairy tale (“He is all overgrown from head to toe.” hair... and his nails became like iron... he walked more on all fours and was even surprised how he had not noticed before that this way of walking was the most decent and... comfortable").

In the fairy tale “The Eagle Patron”, the author mercilessly ridicules the tsar and his regime using allegorical language. The distribution of positions gives an idea of the “remarkable” intelligence of the eagle ruler: the magpie, “luckily she was a thief, they entrusted the keys to the treasury.”

The bird kingdom went through all the stages of the formation of the state: first, joy and carelessness from a bright future, then “the tension in relations, which intrigue hastened to take advantage of,” then the vices of the royal power came to the surface: careerism, selfishness, hypocrisy, fear, censorship. Having felt the punishing finger of the latter in real life, the author expresses his position here. Education is a sufficient argument to “put a woodpecker in shackles and imprison him in a hollow forever.” But silence can also be punishable: “Even a deaf black grouse was suspected of having a “way of thinking,” on the grounds that he is silent during the day and sleeps at night.”

Unfortunately, the heroes of Saltykov-Shchedrin did not fade into oblivion, since today we are faced with hypocrisy, irresponsibility, and stupidity. A passionate and indignant satirical writer helps us overcome these vices.

Option 2

In the satirical works of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin there is a combination of the real and the fantastic. Fiction is a means of revealing the patterns of reality.

Fairy tales are a fantastic genre. But the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin are permeated with the real spirit of the time and reflect it. Under the influence of the spirit of the times, traditional fairy-tale characters are being transformed. The hare turns out to be “sane” or “selfless,” the wolf is “poor,” and the eagle is a philanthropist. And next to them appear unconventional images brought to life by the author’s imagination: an idealistic crucian carp, a wise minnow, and so on. And all of them - animals, birds, fish - are humanized, they behave like people, and at the same time remain animals. Bears, eagles, pikes administer justice and reprisals, conduct scientific debates, and preach.

A bizarre fantasy world emerges. But while creating this world, the satirist simultaneously explores types of human behavior and various types of adaptive reactions. The satirist mercilessly ridicules all unrealistic hopes and expectations, convinces the reader of the meaninglessness of any compromise with the authorities. Neither the dedication of a hare sitting under a bush according to a “wolf resolution”, nor the wisdom of a minnow huddled in a hole, nor the determination of an idealistic crucian carp who entered into a discussion with a pike about the possibility of establishing social harmony peacefully, can save you from death.

Saltykov-Shchedrin especially mercilessly ridiculed the liberals. Having given up struggle and protest, they inevitably come to meanness. In the fairy tale “The Liberal,” the satirist called the phenomenon he hated by his own name and branded it for all time.

Intelligibly and convincingly, Saltykov-Shchedrin shows the reader that autocracy, like a hero born from Baba Yaga, is unviable because it is “rotten from the inside” (“Bogatyr”). Moreover, the activities of the tsarist administrators inevitably boil down to “atrocities.” Crimes can be different: “shameful”, “brilliant”, “natural”. But they are determined not by the personal qualities of the Toptygins, but by the very nature of power, hostile to the people (“Bear in the Voivodeship”).

The generalized image of the people with the greatest emotional power is embodied in the fairy tale “The Horse”. Saltykov-Shchedrin rejects any idealization of folk life, peasant labor, and even rural nature. Life, work, and nature are revealed to him through the eternal suffering of the peasant and the horse. The fairy tale expresses not just sympathy and compassion, but an understanding of the tragic hopelessness of their endless labor under the scorching rays of the sun: “How many centuries he carries this yoke - he does not know; He doesn’t calculate how many centuries he will have to carry it ahead.” The suffering of the people grows to a universal scale, beyond the control of time.

There is nothing fantastic in this tale, except for the symbolic image of eternal work and eternal suffering. A sober thinker, Saltykov-Shchedrin does not want and cannot invent a special fabulous power that would ease the suffering of the people. Obviously, this strength lies in the people themselves? But will she wake up? And what will its manifestations turn out to be? All this is in the fog of the distant future.

In the words of N.V. Gogol, “a fairy tale can be a lofty creation when it serves as an allegorical garment, clothing a lofty spiritual truth, when it reveals tangibly and visibly even to a commoner a matter that is accessible only to a sage.” M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin valued the accessibility of the fairy tale genre. He brought both the commoner and the sage the truth about Russian life.

Option 3

The publishers called the collection of fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “Fairy tales for children of a fair age,” that is, for adults, or rather, for those who not only think about life, but also “learn to be a citizen.” Why did the writer choose this particular genre? Firstly, caustic accusatory satire required an allergic form. Secondly, any fairy tale contains folk wisdom. Thirdly, the language of fairy tales is precise, vivid, and figurative, which allows the idea of the work to be clearly and succinctly conveyed to the reader.

In the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the writer’s contemporary life is intertwined with fairy-tale events. Animal heroes behave, at first glance, as animals should. But suddenly something appears in their characteristics that is inherent to a person, and even belonging to a certain class and living in a very specific historical time. The generals on a desert island read the Moskovskie Vedomosti, the “wild landowner” invites the actor Sadovsky to visit, and the “wise minnow.” enlightened, moderately liberal, “doesn’t play cards, doesn’t drink wine, doesn’t smoke tobacco, doesn’t chase red girls.”

Fairy tales and fairy-tale fiction have always been close to the work of the satirist. He used them in “The History of a City” (“Organchik”, the mayor with a stuffed head), and in “Modern Idyll” (“The Tale of a Zealous Chief”), and in the cycle of essays “Abroad” (“The Triumphant Pig, or conversation between a pig and the truth"), and in "Satires in Prose". Russian folk tales attracted the writer with their life truth, sly humor, constant condemnation of evil, injustice, stupidity, betrayal, cowardice, laziness, glorification of goodness, nobility, intelligence, loyalty, courage, hard work, evil mockery of the oppressors, sympathy and love for the oppressed. In fantastic, fairy-tale images, the people reflected the phenomena of reality, and this made fairy tales akin to Shchedrin’s talent.

In total, the writer created more than 30 fairy tales, and the vast majority of them were written in the 80s. This is no coincidence: in the 80s, censorship oppression increased unheard of, the autocracy mercilessly dealt with revolutionary organizations, and a hail of persecution fell on advanced literature. In April 1884, the best magazine of the era, Otechestvennye zapiski, was closed, at the head of which Shchedrin had been for many years. The writer, in his words, “had his soul taken away, crumpled and sealed.” In this era of “unbridled, incredibly senseless and brutal reaction” (V.I. Belinsky), it was difficult to live, almost impossible to write. But the reactionaries failed to drown out the voice of the great satirist. True to his revolutionary duty, Shchedrin continued to serve those ideas for which he gave his whole life. “I disciplined myself so much,” he wrote, “that it seems that I won’t allow myself to die without working out.”

During these years of unprecedented rampant reaction, Shchedrin created most of his brilliant fairy tales.

The hostility of the autocracy to the people, culture and art is perfectly shown in the fairy tale “The Eagle Patron.” The predatory and merciless eagle, who was accustomed to robbery, “was disgusted with living in alienation,” he, on the advice of those close to him, began to “patronize” the sciences and arts, although he himself was an ignorant and “never ... saw a single newspaper.” The “Golden Age” at the court of the patron eagle began with the fact that a new tax called “educational” was imposed on crows. The “golden age” did not last long, however. The eagle tore his teachers - the owl and the falcon - in two, the nightingale because “art” could not sit in it within the servile framework and was constantly pushing out into the wild... they quickly hid it in a trick,” the woodpecker because he was literate, “dressed up ... in shackles and imprisoned in a hollow forever"; then followed a pogrom at the academy, where owls and owls protected science “from evil eyes”, the alphabet was taken away from the crows, “they pounded it in a mortar and made playing cards from the resulting mass.” The fairy tale ends with the thought that “enlightenment is harmful for eagles...” and that “eagles are harmful for enlightenment.”

Composition

M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin created more than 30 fairy tales. Turning to this genre was natural for the writer. Fairy-tale elements (fantasy, hyperbole, convention, etc.) permeate all of his work. Themes of fairy tales: despotic power (“The Bear in the Voivodeship”), masters and slaves (“The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals,” “The Wild Landowner”), fear as the basis of slave psychology (“The Wise Minnow”), hard labor (“Horse”), etc. The unifying thematic principle of all fairy tales is the life of the people in its correlation with the life of the ruling classes.

What brings Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales closer to folk tales? Typical fairy tale beginnings (“Once upon a time there were two generals...”, “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there lived a landowner...”; sayings (“at the command of a pike,” “neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen.” ); phrases characteristic of folk speech (“thought-thought”, “said-done”); syntax, vocabulary, spelling close to the folk language. As in folk tales, a miraculous incident sets the plot in motion: two generals “suddenly found themselves on a desert island "; by the grace of God, "there became a peasant throughout the entire domain of the stupid landowner." Saltykov-Shchedrin also follows the folk tradition in fairy tales about animals, when he ridicules the shortcomings of society in an allegorical form.

Differences. Interweaving the fantastic with the real and even historically accurate. “A Bear in the Voivodeship” - among the animal characters, the image of Magnitsky, a well-known reactionary in Russian history, suddenly appears: even before the Toptygins appeared in the forest, Magnitsky destroyed all the printing houses, students were sent to be soldiers, academicians were imprisoned. In the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner,” the hero gradually degrades, turning into an animal. The hero’s incredible story is largely explained by the fact that he read the newspaper “Vest” and followed its advice. Saltykov-Shchedrin simultaneously respects the form of a folk tale and destroys it. The magical in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales is explained by the real; the reader cannot escape reality, which is constantly felt behind the images of animals and fantastic events. Fairy-tale forms allowed Saltykov-Shchedrin to present ideas close to him in a new way, to show or ridicule social shortcomings.

“The Wise Minnow” is an image of a frightened man in the street who “is only saving his cold life.” Can the slogan “survive and not get caught by the pike” be the meaning of life for a person?

Introduction