Pechorin and the smugglers. Analysis of the chapter “Taman”
Description of the presentation by individual slides:
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help students analyze the third chapter of M.Yu. Lermontov’s novel “Hero of Our Time”
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How many stories does the novel “A Hero of Our Time” include? Features of the composition and genre of the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov “A Hero of Our Time” Do the events described develop consistently? What is unique about the composition of the novel? What task is the disrupted chronology of the novel subordinated to? What is the innovation of the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov?
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Take Lermontov’s story “Taman” - you won’t find a word in it that could be thrown out or inserted; the whole thing sounds from beginning to end in one harmonic chord; what a wonderful language...! D.V. Grigorovich The story of M.Yu. Lermontov “Taman”
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M.Yu. Lermontov's story "Taman" Lermontov's story "Taman" was first published in 1840 in the second issue of the eighth volume of the journal "Otechestvennye zapiski" Who is the narrator in the story "Taman"? Narrator: Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin. We are reading Pechorin's journal - personal notes in which a person, knowing that they will not become known to others, can set forth not only external events, but also internal, hidden from everyone, movements of his soul. Pechorin was sure that he was writing “this magazine... for himself,” which is why he was so open in describing them.
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The story of M.Yu. Lermontov “Taman” Change of narrator Pechorin Maxim Maksimych examines events as if through inverted binoculars and shows the general plan of events. As a storyteller, Pechorin has the greatest advantages, because not only knows more about himself than others, but is also able to comprehend his thoughts, feelings and actions. The officer-narrator brings events closer, transfers them from a general plan to a more enlarged one, but he knows little
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“Taman is the worst little town of all the coastal cities in Russia. I almost died of hunger there, and on top of that they wanted to drown me.” M.Yu. Lermontov’s story “Taman” What state is Pechorin in after arriving in Taman? What will an ordinary person do in moments of extreme physical fatigue? What does Pechorin do when he finds himself in a “bad” place? Why? Late night Began to demand Three nights did not sleep Exhausted Began to get angry Pechorin lays things out...(?) Inspects the pier..(?) Stands on the shore for a long time..(?) Talks about people..(?) Talks to a boy..(?) Takes a weapon..(?)
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Finding himself in an unfamiliar environment and in emergency situations, Pechorin makes mistakes and miscalculations. Which? How does he get out of difficult situations? What personality traits of Pechorin are manifested in the story with the “peaceful smugglers”? Show Pechorin's exceptional powers of observation, for example, in relation to a blind boy and girl. What conclusion does the hero come to at the end of the story? How does this characterize him? The story of M.Yu. Lermontov “Taman”
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What character traits does Pechorin show in Taman? M.Yu. Lermontov's story “Taman” The first meeting with a blind boy Observation of a girl and the first conversation with her The scene of Pechorin’s “charming” by an undine Observation of the meeting of a blind man and Yanko Interest in a person Interest in the unusual in a person “Youthful passion” Sadness Interest in everything mysterious Decisiveness, courage The active principle makes you go on a date The ability to sympathize with the grief of others
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Two worlds: Pechorin and the smugglers The story of M.Yu. Lermontov “Taman” Pechorin and the smugglers are united by a secret and the desire for it. Watching the crying boy, Pechorin realizes that he is as lonely as the blind orphan. He has a feeling of unity of feelings, experiences, destinies. Both Pechorin and the other heroes of the story are not ideal. All of them are infected with vices and passions. But Pechorin is not able to penetrate among ordinary people. Here he loses his intellectual advantages of a civilized person, he is alien to the natural world and life full of dangers.
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“And what do I care about human joys and misfortunes?..” exclaims Pechorin... Indeed, Pechorin’s activity is directed only at himself, it does not have a high goal, he is simply curious. The hero is looking for real action, but finds its likeness, a game. He is annoyed with himself because, invading people’s lives, he does not bring them joy, he is a stranger in this world. The story of M.Yu. Lermontov “Taman” Activity aimed at oneself, or activity for a great goal?
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How do they treat an “unclean” place in the city? Why doesn’t it repel Pechorin, doesn’t frighten him, but attracts him? Who in the story “challenges” Pechorin? What's the secret here? Why does Pechorin talk about what he saw at night to the blind man and the “undine”, but says nothing to his orderly? I firmly decided to get the key to this riddle”... The story of M.Yu. Lermontov “Taman”
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“And why did fate throw me into the peaceful circle of honest smugglers? Like a stone thrown into a smooth spring, I disturbed their calm, and like a stone I almost sank to the bottom!” The hero understands perfectly well that he rudely invaded someone else’s life, disrupted its calm, slow flow, and brought misfortune to people. Thus, Pechorin is clearly aware of his role in the destinies of other people. Thoughts about this bother him constantly, but in this story they are expressed for the first time. In addition, the moral result of these reflections is also important. Pechorin confirms the guess about his complete indifference to the misfortunes of other people: he does not see his personal guilt in what happened, shifting all responsibility to fate. The story of M.Yu. Lermontov “Taman” And again boredom, indifference, disappointment...
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Pechorin and the past Pechorin does not want to remember the past. Lonely, sad, embittered by misfortunes, he wants only one thing - to be left alone, not tormented by memories and hopes. Of course, he remembers everything and suffers from the memories. Pechorin is running not from Maxim Maksimych, but from his memories. The past seems unworthy of attention to him. And although he writes that his diary will be a “precious memory” for him, in the present he is indifferent to the fate of his notes. Pechorin and the present Pechorin’s behavior portrays a depressed person who does not expect anything from life. The meeting with Maxim Maksimych emphasizes the gap between them - between a common man and a nobleman. In addition, the boredom inherent in Pechorin may indicate some of his indifference to his real life. His life has no purpose, he sees no way out either in the present or in the future. In this, as in many other things, Pechorin is typical of his time. The story of M.Yu. Lermontov “Taman” Pechorin and time
A smuggler cannot be honest because he is engaged in illegal activities. Why does Pechorin call smugglers honest? The answer can be found in the chapter “Taman”.
Grigory admits that he becomes sad at the end of the description of what happened to him in Taman. Pechorin sees the only remaining blind boy crying. Yanko and Ondine are carried away into the distance of the sea. For his work and devotion, the boy received a coin for a gingerbread. The reader feels sorry for the blind man, scared for Ondine, and offended for Pechorin.
Gregory himself understands what he has done. He compares himself to a stone thrown into a smooth spring. The epithet smooth correlates with pure, calm. Smugglers do their job to survive. Their squalid housing proves poverty and scarcity. The “peaceful circle” consists of several people, all of whom evoke only pity.
Yanko can be condemned, but his fate is also unenviable: not everyone can rush across a stormy sea on a dark night. What will happen to the old woman and the blind man, where will they find food for themselves?
Honest smugglers “Hero of our time”, honesty, in this case, is caring. Yanko and Ondine tried to alleviate the plight of the disadvantaged. Pechorin intervenes in their lives and forces the smugglers to leave the city they have chosen to live. They will cope and will be able to find a new shelter for themselves, but the blind boy is unlikely to meet the same friends. The only way to be full is broken on the rock of the human soul, busy looking for entertainment for its mind.
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In Lermontov's novel “A Hero of Our Time,” the story “Taman” stands apart. Opening Pechorin's Journal, that is, his diary entries, this story at the same time reveals to us the inner world of the hero. “Another person's soul is darkness” - this proverb perfectly characterizes the general dark and mysterious atmosphere of “Taman”.
Chronologically, this story is the very first, but in the novel it is the third. The reader is already familiar with Pechorin, with his incomprehensible actions and cold heart. And here Lermontov places the hero in an extreme, amazing, semi-fantastic situation. The hero falls into a circle of smugglers. How did this happen?
Pechorin arrives in Taman “on a moving cart late at night.” The new place immediately made a depressing impression on Pechorin: “Taman is the worst little town of all the coastal cities of Russia.” In addition, after a long search for a government-owned apartment, it turned out that there were no vacancies. Except for one, but there, as the foreman reported to Pechorin, “it’s unclean.”
Grigory Alexandrovich nevertheless decided to go on this “vetera”, since he had no choice. Finding himself in a strange place, the hero meets equally strange people. First he meets a blind boy. Upon meeting him, he cannot shake the feeling that the boy’s blindness is a deception. “A suspicion was born in my head that this blind man is not as blind as he seems; in vain I tried to convince myself that it was impossible to fake thorns...”
On the very first night, amazing events begin to happen in the “unclean place”: Pechorin unwittingly witnesses the night transportation of goods by smugglers. This is how he sees Yanko for the first time: “The swimmer was brave, who decided on such a night to set off across the strait at a distance of 20 miles...” Yanko is a brave robber, not afraid of a storm.
The next day, the main character meets another participant in the night scene - a girl, Yanko’s friend. She was not a beauty, but “there was a lot of breed in her,” “in her indirect glances,” there was “something wild and suspicious,” “there was something vague in her smile.” Pechorin was enchanted. And most of all, not by the external beauty of the girl, but by some internal secret, which he was unable to comprehend and reveal. Indeed, the girl’s behavior was quite mysterious: “...quick transitions from the greatest anxiety to complete immobility,...mysterious speeches,...jumping, strange songs.”
The girl’s behavior was justified by the fact that our hero was trying to find out details about their smuggling activities from the blind boy. Having persuaded Pechorin to take a boat ride at night, the undine, as he called her, tried to drown Grigory Alexandrovich. But she failed. Ondine and Yanko, frightened of possible exposure, hastily disappeared.
The first thing that catches your eye when reading the story “Taman” is the amazingly beautiful descriptions of nature. Since this story is part of Pechorin’s Journal, we understand that the narrator in it is the main character himself. Such lengthy descriptions of nature reveal to us Pechorin’s soul from a new side. He subtly, almost poetically feels the beauty of the world around him. And he has a certain literary talent in order to find precise definitions to describe nature: “The shore sloped down to the sea... and below, dark blue waves splashed with a continuous murmur. The moon quietly looked at the restless, but submissive element..."; “Meanwhile, the moon began to become cloudy, and fog rose on the sea; the lantern on the stern of the nearest ship barely shone through it; the foam of boulders sparkled near the shore, threatening to drown it every minute.”
“Hero of Our Time” is a story about a man who absorbed all the vices of the average person of that era. Grigory Aleksandrovich Pechorin is a person who has lost interest in life. He craves impressions, in pursuit of which he goes to the south of Russia. Material goods do not satisfy Gregory, they only make him bored. Pechorin is looking for adventure and new acquaintances. He describes these searches in detail in his diary, which will later become the main source for writing the novel.
“Taman” is one of the chapters of “Pechorin’s Journal”. Chronologically, it opens the hero’s diary entries, despite the fact that M.Yu. Lermontov placed it third in order.
By the will of fate, the hero ends up in Taman. He is forced to stop in a not very clean and gloomy apartment with equally gloomy and strange inhabitants. Acquaintance with them begins with a meeting with a blind boy who, according to the author, “is not so blind.” Also here we see the figures of a young guy named Yanko, his girlfriend and a decrepit old woman - in all likelihood, the mistress of the house.
The owners of the mysterious house are engaged in smuggling; this illegal business is their main source of income and perhaps the only way to feed themselves. Pechorin unwittingly witnesses one night incident, namely the transportation of contraband goods by Yanko, a brave bandit who is helped by a blind boy. This fact attracts Gregory’s attention, and he tries to find out from the boy the details of their activities. The reaction to Pechorin’s excessive interest was an attempt by the Taman people to get rid of the unwanted witness. The girl lures him on a boat trip and tries to drown him, but this attempt ends in failure. Gregory turned out to be stronger.
Frightened by possible exposure, Yanko and his beloved hastily leave Taman, leaving the blind boy and the old woman to their fate. Grigory Pechorin sees the bitter tears of a blind child and only then understands that he had no right to interfere with “honest smugglers”, that with his interest, his fleeting hobby, he breaks human destinies and cripples souls.
As in other chapters, in “Taman” the actions of Grigory Pechorin lead only to tragic consequences. He leaves the peninsula, leaving crippled destinies behind him, but never satisfying his whim.
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These are two extremes, of course. People always try to keep hopes alive in others and in themselves, as they say, a spark. Despair is frowned upon because it is something like depression.
The meeting of Pechorin, the main character of Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time,” with “honest smugglers” is depicted in the story “Taman,” the first in Pechorin’s Journal. The composition of the novel is unusual: it consists of separate stories with their own complete plot, united by a common main character. Lermontov adheres not to the chronology of events, but to the logic of the gradual revelation of the character of the main character. The presence of three narrators is also connected with this. First, Maxim Maksimych talks about Pechorin’s organization of Bela’s kidnapping, his cooling towards her and the death of the girl, then the narrator, wandering around the Caucasus, conveys his impressions of the meeting he saw between Pechorin and Maxim Maksimych. Having received Pechorin’s notes and learned of his death, the narrator allegedly publishes his diaries (“Pechorin’s Journal”) with the goal (as he says in the preface) to show the “history of the soul” of a man called a hero of the time and characterized as a portrait made up of vices of today's young generation.
From the story “Taman” the reader learns that immediately upon arriving in the Caucasus from St. Petersburg, “out of official necessity,” and not of his own free will, Pechorin found himself in the “bad town” of Taman. There is no detailed description of the town, only a passing mention of dirty alleys and dilapidated fences, but that is not why it is called “bad”. The epithet rather reflects Pechorin’s attitude to the events taking place in this place. Summing up everything that happened, Pechorin writes in his diary: “... a blind boy robbed me, and an eighteen-year-old girl almost drowned me.” Thus, ironically about what happened, the hero names the two main participants in the unfolding drama.
In creating Taman, Lermontov relied on the literary tradition of the robber short story genre, which is romantic in its depiction of heroes and circumstances. At first, one gets the impression that the author does not deviate from this genre. The plot of events - “vatera”, where “unclean”, a blind man who is “not as blind as he seems”, a lunar landscape, a storm at sea, a mysterious white figure, a brave swimmer - all this arouses Pechorin’s interest, makes him not sleep at night, secretly monitor what is happening on the seashore. However, all this does not disturb and captivate him so much that he forgets about what happened in the recent past: the monotonous sound of the sea reminds him of “the murmur of a falling asleep city” and brings back sad memories. At the same time, the night adventure is not so important that, wanting to find out the outcome, Pechorin postponed his departure to Gelendzhik. Having learned that the ship will not arrive for another three or four days, he returns from the commandant “sullen and angry.”
Subsequently, Pechorin will say that for a long time he has been living not with his heart, but with his head. When going on a date with the “undine,” he does not forget to take a pistol with him and warn the Cossack orderly so that when he hears the shot, he should run to the shore. The beauty, apparently, naively thought that, having charmed Pechorin, she would become the mistress of the situation. However, Pechorin is not like that and knows the value of female coquetry. And yet he gets embarrassed, really worried, he gets dizzy when the girl kisses him. On the one hand, he calls her behavior “comedy”, on the other hand, he succumbs to her charm. He is capable of deeply feeling and worrying, but never stops analyzing for a minute.
The climactic scene is a desperate struggle in a boat. Previously, Pechorin compared the girl with a romantic mermaid, admiring her long flowing hair, unusually flexible figure, golden tint of skin, regular nose, comparing her with “a bird scared out of the bush.” Like an educated aristocrat, he casually talked about "little foot" and "Geta's Minion." Now he has to fight for his life, and the girl for hers. And it’s not at all strange that now he says about her: “... like a cat grabbed my clothes... her snake nature withstood this torture.” However, it should be noted that, having climbed ashore, Pechorin was “almost happy” when he recognized “his mermaid” in the white figure on the shore.
The ending is not at all romantic. All the heroes are alive, but the “peaceful circle of honest smugglers” is disturbed, a half-deaf old woman and a blind boy are left to the mercy of fate. Pechorin sympathetically tells how the poor blind man cried for a long, long time, but immediately notes that “thank God, in the morning the opportunity arose to go.” In the finale, he once again remembers the abandoned blind man and the old woman, but philosophically remarks: “... what do I care about the joys and misfortunes of men...”. But whether he is truly indifferent to them or is trying to convince himself of this, the reader must understand for himself, reflecting on what he has read and comparing what he has learned about the hero in different parts of the novel.
Critic V.G. Belinsky assessed Pechorin as a man with “a strong will, courageous, not shy of any danger, inviting storms and anxiety.” This is how we know Pechorin from the stories of Maxim Maksimych, and now, in Taman, he himself spoke about one of these cases. Yes, he is active, brave, resourceful, decisive, intelligent, educated, but he is driven only by idle curiosity. “Smugglers” still wins against its background. They are also brave (Yanko) and resourceful (undine), and also evoke sympathy and pity (old woman, boy); they are fighting for life, and Pechorin plays with it, however, not only his own. The consequences of his interference in other people's destinies are sad, and he understands this by comparing himself to a stone that disturbed the surface of a spring, and then, in “Princess Mary,” with an ax in the hands of fate. Pechorin, according to Maxim Maksimych, feels no less unhappy than those to whom he, voluntarily or unwittingly, does evil. This is indirectly confirmed in Taman.
In this part of the novel, Pechorin does not utter a single large monologue; his thoughts and feelings are still largely hidden from the reader, but are already arousing great interest, thanks to omissions and omissions.
“Taman” was highly valued by Belinsky and Turgenev, Tolstoy and Chekhov for its special flavor, harmony, and beautiful language.
