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In the 1950s and 1980s, the genre of so-called "urban" prose flourished. This literature primarily addressed the individual, the problems of everyday moral relations.

The culminating achievement of the "urban" pro-se were the works of Yuri Trifonov. It was his story "The Exchange" that marked the beginning of the cycle of "urban" stories. In the "urban" stories, Trifonov wrote about love and family relationships, the most ordinary, but at the same time complex, about the clash of different characters, different life positions, about the problems, joys, anxieties, hopes of an ordinary person, about his life.

In the center of the story "The Exchange" is a rather typical, ordinary life situation, which nevertheless reveals very important moral problems that arise when it is resolved.

The main characters of the story are engineer Dmitriev, his wife Lena and Dmitrieva's mother Ksenia Fedorovna. They have a rather complicated relationship. Lena never loved her mother-in-law, moreover, the relationship between them "was minted in the form of ossified and enduring enmity." Previously, Dmitriev often started talking about moving in with his mother, an elderly and lonely woman. But Lena always violently protested against this, and gradually this topic arose less and less in conversations between husband and wife, because Dmitriev understood that he could not break Lena's will. In addition, Ksenia Fedorovna became a kind of instrument of enmity in their family skirmishes. During quarrels, the name of Xenia Fedorovna was often heard, although it was not at all that she served as the beginning of the conflict. Dmitriev mentioned his mother when he wanted to accuse Lena of selfishness or callousness, and Lena talked about her, trying to put pressure on the patient or just sarcastically.

Speaking of this, Trifonov points to the flourishing of hostile, hostile relations where, it would seem, there should always be only mutual understanding, patience and love.

The main conflict of the story is connected with the severe illness of Xenia Fedorovna. Doctors suspect "the worst." This is where Lena takes the "bull by the horns". She decides to urgently settle the issue of the exchange, to move in with her mother-in-law. Her illness and, possibly, approaching death become for Dmitriev's wife a way to solve the housing problem. Lena does not think about the moral side of this enterprise. Hearing from his wife about her terrible idea, Dmitriev tries to look into her eyes. Perhaps he hopes to find there doubt, awkwardness, guilt, but he finds only determination. Dmitriev knew that his wife's "spiritual inaccuracy" was exacerbated "when Lena's other, strongest quality came into play: the ability to achieve one's own." The author notes that Lena "bit into her desires like a bulldog" and never retreated from them until they were realized.

Having done the most difficult thing - having said about her plans, Lena acts very methodically. As a subtle psychologist, she "licks" her husband's wound, seeks reconciliation with him. And he, suffering from lack of will, cannot, does not know how to resist it. He perfectly understands all the horror of what is happening, he is aware of the price of the exchange, but he does not find the strength in himself to somehow prevent Lena, just as he once did not find the strength to reconcile her with his mother.

The mission to tell about the upcoming exchange of Ksenia Fedorovna Lena, naturally, entrusted to her husband. This conversation is the most terrible, the most painful for Dmitriev. After the operation, which confirmed the “worst neck”, Ksenia Fedorovna felt better, she gained confidence that she was on the mend. To tell her about the exchange means to deprive her of the last hope for life, because this smart woman could not fail to guess the reason for such loyalty for many years of her daughter-in-law, who was at war with her. The realization of this becomes the most painful for Dmitriev. Lena easily draws up a conversation plan for her husband with Ksenia Fedorovna. "Get it all on me!" she advises. And Dmitriev seems to accept Lenin's condition. His mother is simple-hearted, and if he explains everything to her according to Lenin's plan, she may well believe in the selflessness of exchange. But Dmitriev is afraid of his sister Laura, who is "cunning," shrewd and dislikes Lena very much. Laura has long seen through her brother's wife and will immediately guess what intrigues are behind the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe exchange. Laura believes that Dmitriev quietly betrayed her and her mother, “loked”, that is, he began to live according to the rules that Lena and her mother, Vera Lazarevna, rely on in life, which their father, Ivan Vasilievich, an enterprising man, once established in their family. , a "powerful" person. It was Laura who noticed Lena’s tactlessness at the very beginning of their family life with Dmitriev, when Lena, without hesitation, took all their best cups for herself, put a bucket near Ksenia Fedorovna’s room, and without hesitation took a portrait of her father-in-law with walls of the middle room and outweighed it in the entrance. Outwardly, these are just everyday little things, but behind them, as Laura managed to see, lies something more.

Lena's blasphemy is revealed especially vividly in the morning after the conversation with Dmitriev. She is in a bad mood because her mother, Vera Lazarevna, fell ill. Vera Lazarevna has cerebral spasms. Why not be sad? Of course, the reason. And no foreshadowing of the mother-in-law's death can compare with her grief. Lena is callous in soul and, moreover, selfish.

Not only Lena is endowed with egoism. Dmitriev's colleague Pasha Snitkin is also selfish. The question of his daughter's admission to a music school is much more important to him than the death of a person. Because, as the author emphasizes, the daughter is her own, dear, and a stranger dies.

Lena's inhumanity contrasts with the soulfulness of Dmitriev's former mistress, Tatyana, who, as Dmitriev realizes, "would probably be his best wife." The news of the exchange makes Tanya blush, because she understands everything perfectly, she enters into the position of Dmitriev, offers him a loan and shows all kinds of sympathy.

Lena is also indifferent to her own father. When he lies with a stroke, she only thinks that she has a ticket to Bulgaria, and calmly goes on vacation.

Ksenia Fedorovna herself is opposed to Lena, whom “friends love, colleagues respect, neighbors in the apartment and in the peacock dacha appreciate, because she is virtuous, compliant, ready to help and take part.”

Lena still gets her way. The sick woman agrees to the exchange. She dies soon after. Dmitriyev suffers a hypertensive crisis. The portrait of the hero, who yielded to his wife in this merciless deed, realizing the significance of his act and experiencing mental suffering because of this, changes dramatically at the end of the story. “Not an old man yet, but already elderly, with limp cheeks, an uncle,” this is how the narrator sees him. But the hero is only thirty-seven years old.

The word "exchange" in Trifonov's story takes on a broader meaning. It is not only about the exchange of housing, a “moral exchange” is being made, a “concession to dubious life values” is being made. “The exchange has taken place...,” Ksenia Fedorovna says to her son. - That was a long time ago".

The urban theme in Russian literature has a long tradition and is associated with the names of F.M. Dostoevsky, A.P. Chekhov, M. Gorky, M. Bulgakov and many other famous writers. Urban prose is literature, in which the city, as a conditional background, a specific historical and literary color, existing living conditions, occupies an important place and determines the plot, themes and problems of the work. The tragic transition from tribal ties to the laws of ancient city-polises, medieval urban literature, the St. Petersburg-Moscow tradition in Russian literature, the Western European urban novel - these are just some of the milestones that marked the stages of the "urban text" in world literature. Researchers could not ignore this fact: a whole scientific direction has developed that analyzes the features of the image of the city in the work of masters of the word.

Only in the 1970s-1980s of the XX century. works on this topic began to be combined under the heading "urban prose". It is worth recalling that in modern literature, definitions such as "village", "urban", "military" are not scientific terms, they are conditional.

They are used in criticism and make it possible to establish the most general classification of the literary process. Philological analysis, which aims to study the characteristics of styles and genres, the peculiarities of psychologism, types of narration, distinctive features in the use of artistic time and space, and, of course, the language of prose, provides for a different, more precise terminology.

Reasons for the emergence of "urban prose"

What was the reason for the emergence of urban prose in its new quality? In the 1960s and 1970s, migration processes intensified in Russia: the urban population began to increase rapidly. Accordingly, the composition and interests of the readership changed. It should be remembered that in those years the role of literature in the public consciousness was more important than it is now. Naturally, the habits, demeanor, way of thinking and, in general, the psychology of urban natives attracted increased attention. On the other hand, the life of the new urban settlers, in particular the so-called "limiters", provided writers with new opportunities for artistic research into areas of human existence.

"Urban prose": examples, representatives

Y. Trifonov became the pioneer of urban prose. His novels Exchange (1969), Preliminary Results (1970), Long Goodbye (1971), Another Life (1975) depict the everyday life of the Moscow intelligentsia. The reader gets the impression that the writer is focused exclusively on the everyday side of life, but it is deceptive. In his stories, there really are no major social events, upheavals, heartbreaking tragedies. However, human morality goes through copper pipes right here, at the everyday family level. It turns out that to withstand such a test is no easier than extreme situations. On the way to the ideal, which all the heroes of Trifonov dream of, all sorts of little things in life arise, blocking the road and taking the traveler aside. It is they who establish the true value of the characters. The titles of the stories are expressive in this respect.

Psychological realism Yu. Trifonova makes you remember the stories and novels of A. Chekhov. The connection between these artists is undeniable. In all its richness, versatility, the urban theme is revealed in the works of S. Dovlatov, S. Kaledin, M. Kuraev, V. Makanin, L. Petrushevskaya, Yu. Polyakov, Vyach. Pietsukha and others.

Analysis of Trifonov's work

In the story "Exchange", engineer Dmitriev decided to exchange his living space in order to move in with his sick mother. But upon closer examination, it turned out that he had betrayed his mother. The exchange took place, first of all, in terms of the spiritual - G eroy "exchanged" decency for meanness. Preliminary Results examines a common psychological situation when a person, dissatisfied with the life he has lived, is going to draw a line under the past and start all over again from tomorrow. But with the translator Gennady Sergeevich, the preliminary results, as often happens, become final. He is broken, his will is paralyzed, he can no longer fight for himself, for his ideals.

Unable to start a "different life" and Olga Vasilievna, the heroine of the story of the same name, who buried her husband. In these works of Trifonov, the technique of indirect speech is especially successfully used, helping to create an internal monologue of the character, to show his spiritual quest. Only through overcoming petty worldly fuss, "naive" egoism in the name of some lofty goal, can the dream of another life be realized.

Closely adjoins this cycle of stories and novel Time and Place (1981). Here, the two main characters - the writer Antipov and the narrator - manage to live their lives with dignity, despite the fact that the gloomy, difficult time rather contributed to the degradation of the individual.

The emergence of women's prose: representatives, examples

The emergence of "urban prose" provided the best opportunities for the implementation of the creative principles of the "other" prose. Within the framework of the urban theme, I found myself the phenomenon of women's prose. Never before has so many talented writers appeared to the reader at once. In 1990, another collection “Remembering no evil” was released, presenting the work of T. Tolstoy, L. Vaneeva, V. Narbikova, V. Tokareva, N. Sadur and others. Over time, more and more new names are added to them, and women prose goes far beyond the urban theme. Since the mid-1990s, Vagrius Publishing House has been publishing a series of books under the general title “Women's Handwriting”.

Urban prose, like rural prose, belongs mainly to the 1970s and 1980s.

The writing

Yuri Trifonov was born in Moscow on August 28, 1925. His father, Valentin Andreevich Trifonov, a professional revolutionary who went through tsarist hard labor and exile, during the war was a member of the collegium of the People's Commissariat of War, a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of a number of fronts. The Trifonov family lived in the “house on the embankment”, on Bersenevskaya embankment in the Government House, as it was called. The fate of his father is tragic - his life was cut short in 1938.

Yuri Trifonov was fifteen years old when the Great Patriotic War began; at one time he lived in evacuation in Central Asia, then he worked at an aircraft factory in Moscow. In the summer of 1944, Yuri Trifonov submits documents to the Literary Institute. His first story, "Students", was a graduation work.

In this work, we meet a positive character, a student of the Faculty of Literature Vadim Bely, who talks about literature. For example, like this: “This is Dostoevsky, whom the people did not understand and will never understand.” Already in "Students" among the characters we find a novice writer - Sergei Palavin.

He speaks to students with a reading of his story "High Heat". Its content is outlined:

“The turner Tolokin fell in love with the secretary of the plant management, Polya. Polya decides to go to work in the workshop, but Tolokin is against it. He does not believe that she will be able to work for real” Trifonov gives a “test” and the style of Palavin’s story: “And the dazzling spring sun burst into the wide transoms.” The listeners do not accept the story; during the discussion, they speak passionately about its schematism. And - the last detail of the chapter, which tells about the reading of the story by the opportunist Palavin: “A bright large poster of the Palavin evening dangled on a nail. Then one of the dancers touched her, she fell to the floor, and someone else casually threw her under the piano. No weaker than the “dazzling spring sun”, which “burst”! But the young writer Trifonov did not feel this. Nor did he feel that, in principle, his work was related, close in its schematism and opportunism to the Palavin story. Only Palavin’s transom “broke in a dazzling spring sun”, while the creator, Trifonov, begins the story with the sun melting the rolled street asphalt; The windows are dazzlingly blazing”; and ends - “the sun is burning in the glass of the open windows”, that is, the same “creative manner”! Palavin's manuscript, destroyed like a twin, turns out to be similar in style to Trifonov's story.

The fact that Palavin is an aspiring writer was not felt either in his words, or in his thoughts, or in his actions.

Here, in "Students", Trifonov depicted the surface, the result. And since from the very beginning of the story it is clear that nothing good should be expected from Palavin, you do not expect anything in advance from his story either. With the same predetermination, the factory literary circle, led by Vadim Belov, the main character and opponent of Palavin, is depicted in "Students". For example, graphomaniac verses by locksmith Batulin are discussed:

Here are electric drills

Singing lyrical trills

And a pneumatic hammer

Forever young

All day rumbles and knocks.

Vadim, having mobilized all his implied pedagogical gift, says at the discussion: “In poetry, everything must be precise. And the main thing in it is not a ringing rhyme, but an interesting, deep thought.” Not a very fresh conclusion, is it? Most of all in the story they talk about literature - the faculty of literature!

When asked about his writing path, Y. Trifonov answered this way: “This question concerns not only my own development as a writer. It is due to the time in which I lived. After all, times have changed a lot. The novel "Students" was written in 1949-50. Now, thank God, we have entered the 80s. I have been a professional writer for almost thirty years. And the life of our country has changed enormously in these thirty years. If we remember what happened thirty years ago, what happened in different spheres of our life, then even today, in hindsight, we can be surprised that such colossal changes became possible and that they took place, because when you live in this time, you almost don’t notice all changes. So we need to look back. With the change of life, the conditions of life, my attitude towards this life has also changed. And besides, I became a more experienced, more mature writer. I wanted to find a new key to understanding reality, a new style. so I strove to get away from the students.” Some critics have made rather naive reproaches against me: what does this mean? In "Students" you wrote in this way, portrayed the student life of that time in this way, but in "House on the Embankment" in a completely different way? Some felt that “such literature is not harmless, especially when addressed to young people. Falsehood is falsehood, even if it is involuntary. And on a fragile youthful understanding, it is capable of exerting by no means a beneficial effect. To justify the author of The Students, one can only say that Yuri Trifonov himself was then 25 years old. Such a formulation of the question seems to me dogmatic. I didn't change, the time has changed incredibly. Time has taught me to look at familiar events with different eyes.”

Thirst for justice

The novel "The Quenching of Thirst" was difficult to come into being. It was written under an agreement with the Znamya magazine, and was completed by the end of 1962, but according to the submitted manuscript, the magazine refused to publish it. Trifonov showed the novel to Novy Mir, but even there he received a hasty refusal. In the end, the novel was nevertheless published in Znamya.

There are two storylines in the novel: a story about the builders of the Karakum Canal, and a story about the fate of the narrator himself, Pyotr Koryshev. For the first time, for the first time, the hero writer appears on the pages of Trifonov's prose (except for the early experience with Sergei Palavinin - but there “writing” was not the internal problem of which it is in Quenching Thirst). The genre form of the novel, which Trifonov refers to for the first time, opens up new possibilities for him - to see a person in his complex relationships with society. The novel was relevant not so much in terms of “geography” as in the depicted time of the late 50s, when people developed “a thirst no less strong than a thirst for water, a thirst for justice,” the time of the 20th Party Congress, which restored historical justice for those which included the communist Valentin Andreevich Trifonov., the father of the writer. On the pages of the novel there is a dispute:

“- Do you know how Turkmens quench their thirst? Here, listen: first they quench the “small thirst”, two or three bowls, and then, after dinner, the “great thirst” when the big teapot is ripe. And a man who comes from the desert is never given much water. give a little.

Otherwise, he will feel bad, said Platon Kiryanovich.

Let no one feel bad! It's nonsense! I do not believe! Tamara says excitedly. How can there be too much truth? Or too much justice?

The parable of “quenching one's thirst” defines the main internal theme of Trifonov's new novel, which is especially evident in the story of the journalist Pyotr Koryshev, on behalf of whom the narration is being conducted. With a significant motive of thirst and stuffiness, the novel begins, in which the exoticism of the desert is reduced, “grounded” literally from the first lines: “It was painful to drive, we sat in shorts and T-shirts on mattresses wet with sweat and fanned ourselves with state-owned waffle towels. I went to the desert because I had no way out. And I did not love her, and did not think about her, did not remember her. I was thinking about something else. And besides, I was thirsty.”

The heroes of the novel are in a state of permanent dispute. Their positions in life, way of life and way of life are arguing - not only words are arguing, so to speak. The dispute is about the most important thing - about time: “People argued about the steepness of slopes, dams about phrases, about trifles, but in fact they were disputes about time and fate.”

These disputes about time unfold at different levels of the novel. Pyotr Koryshev, a young man who has already experienced a lot (his father was repressed and rehabilitated posthumously), feels broken (“Damned uncertainty. It sits in me like a bacillus”). His position in life (the beginning of the novel) is extremely unstable, unstable: there is still no work, no solid ground under his feet. But the only thing he really has is life experience.

The issue of restoring justice was the most pressing issue in the public mind in the late 50s - early 60s.

It began to gain strength, public opinion developed. And the result of this development was an ardent and natural interest in civic issues, the actualization of the social sciences (especially sociology), art and literature. literature felt an inner need for a direct, topical response to a moral event of national significance. And in pose, and in poetry, and in criticism, an open civil voice sounded; poetry came to the podium, later called the stage; prose - directly appealed to the complex, critical consciousness of society, appealing to the self-consciousness of every citizen; criticism actively participated in the formation of the social and moral attitude of the Soviet people. The thirst for justice was a public thirst.

No, not about everyday life - about life!

There is, perhaps, no more mysterious multidimensional and incomprehensible word in the Russian language. Well, what is life! Whether it is - some kind of weekdays - some kind of home everyday life, some kind of pantyhose at the stove, shopping, laundromats. Dry cleaners, hairdressers… Yes, this is called everyday life. But family life is also life. The relationship of husband and wife, parents and children, relatives distant and close to each other - and this. And the birth of a person, and the death of old people, and illness, and weddings are also everyday life. And the relationship of friends, workmates, love, quarrels, jealousy, envy - all this is also everyday life, but this is what life consists of!
They will say: "Trifonov casts a shadow on a clear day, defends everydayism." And I ask one thing: explain what this means. (From the article of the same name by Trifonov).

The stories “Exchange”, Preliminary Results”, “Long Farewell”, “Another Life”, “House on the Embankment” brought the writer wide popularity among readers and almost complete misunderstanding among critics. Trifonov was reproached for the fact that there were no major personalities in his new works, that conflicts were built on everyday, everyday, and not large-scale situations.

As if responding to this criticism, Yuri Trifonov, one after another, created works on historical, more precisely, historical-revolutionary themes. (“Glare of the fire”, “Impatience”, “Old man”). Where he again paired the high and the ordinary, looking for a connection between revolutionary intransigence and the cruelty of our days.

Trifonov for a long time kept faith in revolutionary ideals, saw in them the highest manifestations of the human spirit. However, he could not help but be concerned about the problem of the relationship between the noble goal of tracking historical progress and the means of such service, once raised by F. Dostoevsky in "Demons" (Yu. Trifonov highly appreciated this novel). For the first time she sounded in the “Bonfire Reflection”.

“Glare of a Campfire” is not a historical essay, not a memory of his father, not his biography, not an obituary. This is not the story of his life. All this arose after reading the papers that were found in the chest, a fact nested in them, they smelled of history, but because the papers were random, they were stored randomly, and a person’s life looked through them fragmentarily, in pieces, sometimes the main thing was missing, and the insignificant crawled out outward: therefore, in what is written below, there is no coherent story, no true story, no true coverage of events and listing of important names necessary for a historical narrative, and no sequence necessary for a biography - everything could be stated much shorter and in the same time wider. I followed the document. I was fascinated by the smell of time, which was preserved in old telegrams, protocols, newspapers, leaflets, and letters. They were all painted with red light, a reflection of that huge, humming fire, in the fire of which the former Russian life burned - this is how Trifonov spoke of his documentary story.

The mature talent of Y. Trifonov manifested itself in the “Moscow stories”. There are no sharp social and ideological clashes here, as in The Students, no epic descriptions, as in Quenching Your Thirst.

The action in Y. Trifonov's stories takes place in ordinary Moscow apartments and ordinary summer cottages. the writer aspired, in his characters - engineers, researchers, teachers, even writers, actresses, scientists - the reader unmistakably guessed himself. My prose, he argued, “is not about some philistines, but about you and me”, about ordinary citizens.

“History is present in every day today, in every fate,” the artist claimed. “It piles up in powerful invisible layers – however, sometimes visible, even distinctly – in everything that forms the present.”

Trifonov is interested in completely different characters: searching, evolving, subtle in their own way. connected with them are problems that have always confronted Russian literature and are especially manifested in our days: the moral freedom of a person in the face of circumstances.

In the “Moscow stories” such circumstances are the little things of life, which, as it is not difficult to see, make Y. Trifonov related to his beloved writer A. Chekhov. Chekhov's plot of the imperceptible degradation of the personality acquires a different sound in Y. Trifonov's characters. Chekhovsky Ivanov, in response to the sympathetic remark of one of the interlocutors that he, Ivanov, was “stuck by Wednesday,” angrily replies that the environment has nothing to do with it, and takes full responsibility for the wasted years. Trifonov's heroes, on the contrary, are happy to explain their moral betrayals and compromises by circumstances and environment.

Trifonov's prose is distinguished by internal unity. Theme with variations. For example, the theme of the exchange runs through all of Trifonov's works, up to the "Old Man". In the novel "Time and Place" all the prose is outlined - from "Students" to the exchange, "Long Farewell", "Preliminary Results" and "House on the Embankment"; there you can find all Trifonov's motifs. “The repetition of topics is the development of the task, its growth,” Marina Tsvetaeva noted. So with Trifonov, the theme deepened, went in circles, returning, but on a different level. “I am not interested in the horizontal lines of prose, but in its vertical lines,” Trifonov remarked in one of his last stories.

So unity.

Whatever material he turned to, whether it was modernity, the time of the civil war, the 30s of our century or the 70s of the past, he faced, first of all, the problem of the relationship between the individual and society, and therefore their mutual responsibility. Trifonov was a moralist - but not in the primitive sense of the word; not a hypocrite or a dogmatist, no - he believed that a person is responsible for his actions, which make up the history of a people, a country; and society, the collective cannot, does not have the right to neglect the fate of the individual. Trifonov perceived modern reality as an era and persistently searched for the reason for the change in public consciousness, stretching the thread farther and farther - into the depths of time. Trifonov was characterized by historical thinking; he analyzed each specific social phenomenon, treating reality as a witness and historian of our time and a person who is deeply rooted in Russian history, inseparable from it. as a witness and historian of our time and a person who is deeply rooted in Russian history, inseparable from it. While "village" prose was looking for its roots and origins, Trifonov was also looking for his "soil". “My soil is everything that Russia has suffered!” - Trifonov himself could subscribe to these words of his hero. Indeed, this was his soil, in the fate and suffering of the country his fate took shape. Moreover: this soil began to nourish the root system of his books. The search for historical memory unites Trifonov with many contemporary Soviet writers. At the same time, the memory was also his “home”, family memory - a purely Moscow feature - inseparable from the memory of the country. This is how he describes the last meeting of the lyrical hero of “House on the Embankment” with one of the boys - childhood friends, with Anton: “He said that in a day he was evacuating with his mother to the Urals, and he consulted what to take with him: diaries, novel or picture books? His worries seemed like nothing to me. What albums, what novels could one think of when the Germans were on the threshold of Moscow. Anton drew and wrote every day. From the pocket of his jacket protruded a double-folded general notebook. He said: “I will write down this meeting at the bakery. And our whole conversation. Because everything is important for the story”

Trifonov, like other writers, as well as the entire literary process as a whole, was, of course, influenced by time. But in his work, he not only honestly and truthfully reflected certain facts of our time, our reality, but sought to get to the bottom of the causes of these facts. Social historicism is a fundamental quality of his prose: I believe that the story "The House on the Embankment" is no less historical than the novel "Impatience", written on historical material.

At the same time, Trifonov's interest in the past was of a special, individual nature. This interest was not just an expression of historical emotionality - a trait, by the way, quite common. Trifonov dwelled only on those epochs and those historical facts that predetermined the fate of his generation. So he "came out" for the duration of the civil war, and so on - against the People's Will. Revolutionary terror - this is what Trifonov's last essay "The Riddle and Providence of Dostoevsky" is devoted to. Trifonov, who at the very beginning of his journey tried to offer a very contradictory and complex time (the end of the 40s) more than favorable - a ceremonial portrait, so to speak, to mythologize time, through mistakes and trials comes to exploratory realism with its harsh anti-romanticism, comes to demologization , degendarization of modernity and history. And with this non-illusory nature of his prose, it is undeniably poetic. Trifonov, in order to understand himself, it was necessary to go back, row back in time, to the beginning, this was a search for the roots or core of a phenomenon, this was a search for oneself, a work of self-consciousness.

So, Moscow is poetic and dear to his heart. “Anton and I stood on the roof near a metal fence made of thin rods and looked at the black night city. Not a glimpse, not a light below, everything is impenetrable and muffled, only two pink moving wounds in this blackness - fires in Zamoskvorechye. The city was infinitely large. It is difficult to defend immensity. And you can't hide the river. It glowed, reflecting the stars, its curves marking the districts. We thought of the city as a living being that needed help.” Military and peaceful, pre-war and modern Moscow: with Tverskoy Boulevard, Begovaya, the Dynamo stadium, Serebryany Bor. He painted winter, snowy Moscow, illuminated by warm Moscow lanterns; Moscow smoky, "burning" - the summer of 1972; he painted the Moskvoretsky beaches opposite the Trinity - Lykov, the color of river water, the Neskuchny Garden with the First City Hospital turning yellow at the top. The movements of his heroes in Moscow are distinguished by the accuracy and reliability of the topography. moreover, he enlarged the details of the Moscow landscape, saw - through the houses and streets - the fate of the city.

So, it is impossible not to remember Trifonov's prose when you drive past a gray house on Bersenevskaya embankment - thanks to Trifonov, it has become a monument of the era.
The ever-increasing interest in Trifonov's books was often combined with superficial reviews, indicating an unwillingness to understand his thoughts on the merits. Trifonov was deeply affected by lack of understanding, critical self-will, the intention to establish himself at his expense. In his posthumously published conversation with the critic L. Aininsky, the writer's resentment, accumulated over many years, is clearly heard, with whom they are not talking about what worries him at all. What ecology! What “problems of nature” and the relationship of man with it! This for him, a social writer, sounded “out of place”. He did not allow himself to be carried away by the problems of scientific and technological revolution, neither by ecology, nor by other fashionable topics. He believed that all this leads literature away from the main thing - from the analysis of social relations.

Conclusion

“We are doing one common thing. Soviet literature is a huge construction project in which different and unlike writers take part. A whole is created from our efforts. Meanwhile, criticism sometimes demands such integrity, such universality from each work, as if each work should be an encyclopedia. a kind of station wagon where you can get everything. “Why isn't this here? Why is something not reflected? But first, it's impossible. Secondly, you don't need to. Let critics learn to see what is, not what is not. There are people who have some kind of special, I would say, supernatural vision: they see what is not, much more clearly and distinctly than what is.” (Yu. Trifonov)

The fate of Trifonov's prose can be called happy. It is read by a country where Trifonov's books have collected millions of copies in thirty years; it is translated and published by East and West, Latin America and Africa. Due to the deep social specificity of the person he depicted and the key moments of Russian and Soviet history, he became interesting to readers all over the world.

Trifonov died on March 28, 1981. After his death, the cycle of stories "The Published House" and the novel "Time and Place" were published, on which he worked until his last days. Trifonov made his tasks more and more difficult; the idea of ​​his last novel, perhaps, is perhaps so large in nature that there is no need to talk about the final version.

Trifonov worked honestly and wrote the truth; he created his own world and therefore became necessary for literature, that is why we felt such an emptiness after his death. The speakers said that Trifonov's work "awakened our conscience", that he was able to see "a glimpse of history on the face of every person", that he "was kind", that he would still create very large, "maybe great works" (on Trifonov's funeral).

The story "Exchange" was written by Trifonov in 1969 and published in the "New World" in the same year in the last issue. She opened the cycle of "Moscow stories" about the pressing problems of Soviet citizens.

Genre originality

In the foreground in the story are family and everyday problems that expose the philosophical questions of the meaning of human life. This is a story about a worthy life and death. In addition, Trifonov reveals the psychology of each character, even minor ones. Each of them has their own truth, but the dialogue does not work.

Issues

Trifonov addresses the topic of confrontation between two families. Victor Dmitriev, having married Lena Lukyanova, could not convey to her the values ​​of the Dmitriev family: spiritual sensitivity, gentleness, tact, intelligence. On the other hand, Dmitriev himself, in the words of Sister Laura, “became lukewarm,” that is, he became pragmatic, striving not so much for material goods as for being left alone.

Trifonov raises important social problems in the story. The modern reader does not understand the problem of the protagonist. The Soviet man, as if having no property, did not have the right to live in a normal apartment with rooms for spouses and a child. And it was completely wild that the mother’s room after death could not be inherited, but would go to the state. So Lena tried to save the property in the only possible way: by exchanging two rooms in a communal apartment for a two-room apartment. Another thing is that Ksenia Fedorovna immediately guessed about her fatal illness. It is in this, and not in the exchange itself, that the evil emanating from the insensitive Lena lies.

Plot and composition

The main action takes place on an October afternoon and the next morning. But the reader gets acquainted not only with the whole life of the protagonist, but also learns about the families of the Lukyanovs and Dmitrievs. This Trifonov achieves with the help of retrospection. The protagonist reflects on the events happening to him and his own actions, remembering the past.

The hero faces a difficult task: to inform the terminally ill mother, who is unaware of the seriousness of her illness, and her sister that Lena's wife is planning an exchange. In addition, the hero needs to get money for treatment for his sister Laura, with whom her mother lives now. The hero solves both tasks brilliantly, so that his former lover offers him money, and by moving to his mother, he supposedly helps his sister leave on a long business trip.

The last page of the story contains the events of six months: there is a move, the mother dies, the hero feels miserable. The narrator adds on his own behalf that Dmitriev's childhood home was demolished, where he was never able to convey family values. So the Lukyanovs defeated the Dmitrievs in a symbolic sense.

Heroes of the story

The protagonist of the story is 37-year-old Dmitriev. He is middle-aged, plump, with an eternal smell of tobacco from his mouth. The hero is proud, he takes the love of his mother, wife, mistress for granted. Dmitriev's life credo is "I got used to it and calmed down." He comes to terms with the fact that his loving wife and mother do not get along.

Dmitriev defends his mother, whom Lena calls a hypocrite. The sister believes that Dmitriev has gone rogue, that is, he betrayed his high spirit and disinterestedness for the sake of the material.

Dmitriev considers peace to be the most valuable thing in life and protects it with all his might. Another value of Dmitriev and his consolation is that he has "everything like everyone else."

Dmitriev is helpless. He cannot write a dissertation, although Lena agrees to help in everything. Especially revealing is the story of Levka Bubrik, whose father-in-law, at the request of Lena, found a good place in GINEGA, where Dmitriev himself eventually went to work. And Lena took all the blame. Everything was revealed when Lena, at Ksenia Fedorovna's birthday, said that it was Dmitriev's decision.

At the end of the story, Dmitriev's mother explains the subtext of the exchange made by the hero: having exchanged true values ​​for momentary gain, he lost his emotional sensitivity.

Dmitriev's wife Lena is smart. She is a specialist in technical translation. Dmitriev considers Lena selfish and callous. According to Dmitriev, Lena notes some mental inaccuracy. He throws an accusation in his wife's face that she has a mental defect, underdevelopment of feelings, something subhuman.

Lena knows how to get her way. Wanting to exchange an apartment, she cares not about herself, but about her family.

Dmitriev's father-in-law, Ivan Vasilievich, was a tanner by profession, but he was advancing along the trade union line. Through his efforts, a telephone was installed in the dacha six months later. He was always on the alert, he did not trust anyone. The father-in-law's speech was full of clericalism, which is why Dmitriev's mother considered him unintelligent.

Tanya is Dmitriev's former mistress, with whom he got together 3 years ago for one summer. She is 34 years old, she looks sickly: thin, pale. Her eyes are big and kind. Tanya is afraid for Dmitriev. After a relationship with him, she stayed with her son Alik: her husband quit his job and left Moscow, because Tanya could no longer live with him. Her husband really loved her. Dmitriev thinks that Tanya would be the best wife for him, but leaves everything as it is.

Tatyana and Ksenia Fedorovna are nice to each other. Tatyana pities Dmitriev and loves him, while Dmitriev pities her only for a moment. Dmitriev thinks that this love is forever. Tatyana knows many poems and reads them by heart in a whisper, especially when there is nothing to talk about.

Mother Dmitrieva Ksenia Fedorovna is an intelligent, respected woman. She worked as a senior bibliographer in one of the academic libraries. The mother is so simple-hearted that she does not understand the danger of her illness. She made peace with Lena. Ksenia Fedorovna is "benevolent, compliant, ready to help and takes part." Only Lena does not appreciate this. Ksenia Fedorovna is not inclined to lose heart, she communicates in a joking manner.

Mother loves selflessly to help distant acquaintances and relatives. But Dmitriev understands that the mother is doing this in order to be known as a good person. For this, Lena called Dmitriev's mother a hypocrite.

Dmitriev's grandfather is the keeper of family values. Lena called him a well-preserved monster. Grandfather was a lawyer who graduated from St. Petersburg University, in his youth he was in a fortress, was in exile and fled abroad. Grandfather was small and shrunken, his skin was tanned, and his hands were clumsy and disfigured by hard work.

Unlike the daughter, the grandfather does not despise people if they belong to a different circle, and does not condemn anyone. He lives not in the past, but in his short future. It was the grandfather who gave a well-aimed description of Victor: “You are not a bad person. But not amazing either."

Laura, Dmitriev's sister, is middle-aged, with gray-black hair and a tanned forehead. She spends 5 months in Central Asia every year. Laura is cunning and perspicacious. She did not come to terms with Lena's attitude towards her mother. Laura is uncompromising: “Her thoughts never bend. Always sticking out and pricking.

Artistic originality

The author uses details instead of lengthy characteristics. For example, the sagging belly of his wife, seen by Dmitriev, speaks of his coldness towards her. Two pillows on the matrimonial bed, one of which, stale, belongs to the husband, indicate that there is no true love between the spouses.

Literature lesson summary in grade 11

"Urban Prose in Contemporary Literature".
Yu. V. Trifonov. story "The Exchange"

Goals: give the concept of "urban" prose of the twentieth century; consider the eternal problems raised by the author against the backdrop of urban life; to determine the features of Trifonov's work (semantic ambiguity of the title, subtle psychologism).

During the classes

Take care of the intimate, intimate: all the treasures of the world are dearer than the intimacy of your soul!

V. V. Rozanov

I. "Urban" prose in the literature of the XX century.

1. Work with the textbook.

Read the article (textbook edited by Zhuravlev, pp. 418-422).

What do you think the concept of "urban" prose means? What are its features?

Draw up your conclusions in the form of a plan.

Sample Plan

1) Features of "urban" prose:

a) it is a cry of pain for a person "turned into a grain of sand";

b) literature explores the world "through the prism of culture, philosophy, religion."

3) "Urban" prose by Y. Trifonov:

a) in the story "Preliminary results" he reasoned with "empty" philosophers;

b) in the story "Long Farewell" reveals the theme of the collapse of the bright beginning in a person in his concessions to the bourgeoisie.

2. Appeal to the epigraph of the lesson.

How is the content of "urban" prose related to the epigraph of today's lesson?

II. "Urban" prose of Yuri Trifonov.

1. Trifonov's life and work.

The complexity of the fate of the writer and his generation, the talent for the embodiment of spiritual searches, the originality of manner - all this predetermines attention to Trifonov's life path.

The writer's parents were professional revolutionaries. Father, Valentin Andreevich, joined the party in 1904, was exiled to administrative exile in Siberia, and went through hard labor. Later he became a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee in October 1917. In 1923-1925. Headed the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR.

In the 1930s, father and mother were repressed. In 1965, Y. Trifonov's documentary book "The Reflection of the Fire" appeared, in which he used his father's archive. From the pages of the work rises the image of a man who "kindled a fire and himself died in this flame." In the novel, Trifonov for the first time applied the principle of montage of time as a kind of artistic technique.

History will disturb Trifonov constantly ("The Old Man", "The House on the Embankment"). The writer realized his philosophical principle: “We must remember - here is hidden the only possibility of competition with time. Man is doomed, time triumphs.

During the war, Yuri Trifonov was evacuated to Central Asia, worked at an aircraft factory in Moscow. In 1944 he entered the Literary Institute. Gorky.

The memoirs of his contemporaries help to visibly present the writer: “He was over forty. A clumsy, slightly baggy figure, short black hair, in some places in barely visible lamb curls, with rare threads of gray hair, an open wrinkled forehead. From a wide, slightly swollen pale face, through heavy horn-rimmed glasses, intelligent gray eyes looked at me shyly and unprotectedly.

The first story "Students" is the diploma work of a novice prose writer. The story was published by A. Tvardovsky's Novy Mir magazine in 1950, and in 1951 the author received the Stalin Prize for it.

It is generally accepted that the main theme of the writer is everyday life, being dragged into everyday life. One of the well-known researchers of Trifonov’s work, N. B. Ivanova, writes: “At the first reading of Trifonov, there is a deceptive ease of perception of his prose, immersion in familiar situations close to us, collisions with people and phenomena known in life ...” This is true, but only when reading superficially.

Trifonov himself claimed: “Yes, I do not write life, but life.”

Critic Yu. M. Oklyansky rightly asserts: “The test of everyday life, the imperious force of everyday circumstances and the hero, one way or another romantically opposing them ... is a through and title theme of the late Trifonov ...”.

2. Problems of the story by Y. Trifonov "Exchange".

1) - Remember the plot of the work.

The family of Viktor Georgievich Dmitriev, an employee of one of the research institutes, lives in a communal apartment. Daughter Natasha - teenager - behind the curtain. Dmitriev's dream of moving in with his mother did not find support from Lena, his wife. Everything changed when the mother was operated on for cancer. Lena herself started talking about the exchange. The actions and feelings of the heroes, manifested in the solution of this everyday issue, which ended in a successful exchange, and soon the death of Ksenia Fedorovna, constitute the content of a short story.

So, the exchange is the plot core of the story, but is it possible to say that this is also a metaphor that the author uses?

2) The protagonist of the story is a representative of the third generation of the Dmitrievs.

Grandfather Fyodor Nikolaevich is intelligent, principled, humane.

And what about the hero's mother?

Find the characteristic in the text:

“Ksenia Fedorovna is loved by friends, respected by colleagues, appreciated by neighbors in the apartment and in the pavlinovskaya dacha, because she is friendly, compliant, ready to help and take part ...”

But Viktor Georgievich Dmitriev falls under the influence of his wife, "gets sloppy." The essence of the title of the story, its pathos, the author's position, as it follows from the artistic logic of the story, are revealed in the dialogue between Xenia Fyodorovna and her son about the exchange: “I really wanted to live with you and Natasha ... - Ksenia Fyodorovna paused. - And now - no "-" Why? - “You have already exchanged, Vitya. The exchange has taken place."

What is the meaning of these words?

3) What makes up the image of the main character?

Description of the image based on the text.

How does the emerging conflict with his wife over the exchange end?(“...He lay down in his place against the wall and turned to face the wallpaper.”)

What does this pose of Dmitriev express?(This is a desire to get away from the conflict, humility, non-resistance, although in words he did not agree with Lena.)

And here is another subtle psychological sketch: Dmitriev, falling asleep, feels his wife’s hand on his shoulder, which at first “lightly strokes his shoulder”, and then presses “with considerable weight”.

The hero realizes that his wife's hand is inviting him to turn around. He resists (this is how the author depicts the internal struggle in detail). But ... "Dmitriev, without saying a word, turned on his left side."

What other details indicate the subordination of the hero to his wife, when we understand that he is a follower?(In the morning, the wife reminded her to talk to her mother.

“Dmitriev wanted to say something,” but he “took two steps after Lena, stood in the corridor and returned to the room.”)

This detail - "two steps forward" - "two steps back" - is a clear evidence of the impossibility for Dmitriev to go beyond the limits that are imposed on him by external circumstances.

Whose rating does the hero get?(We learn his assessment from his mother, from his grandfather: “You are not a bad person. But not amazing either.”)

4) The right to be called a person Dmitriev was denied by his relatives. Lena was denied by the author: “... she bit into her desires like a bulldog. Such a pretty bulldog woman ... She did not let go until the desires - right in her teeth - did not turn into flesh ... "

Oxymoron* cute female bulldogfurther emphasizes the negative attitude of the author to the heroine.

Yes, Trifonov clearly defined his position. This is contradicted by the statement of N. Ivanova: "Trifonov did not set himself the task of either condemning or rewarding his heroes: the task was different - to understand." This is partly true...

It seems that another remark of the same literary critic is more fair: “...behind the external simplicity of presentation, calm intonation, designed for an equal and understanding reader, is Trifonov's poetics. And - an attempt at social aesthetic education.

What is your attitude towards the Dmitriev family?

Do you want life to be like this in your families?(Trifonov managed to draw a typical picture of family relations of our time: the feminization of the family, the transition of the initiative into the hands of predators, the triumph of consumerism, the lack of unity in raising children, the loss of traditional family values. The desire for peace as the only joy makes men put up with their secondary importance in the family. They lose their firm masculinity, the family is left without a head.)

III. Summary of the lesson.

What questions did the author of the story “The Exchange” make you think about?

Do you agree that B. Pankin, speaking about this story, calls a genre that combines a physiological sketch of modern urban life and a parable?

Homework.

“The exchange saw the light in 1969. At that time, the author was blamed for reproducing a “terrible mud of trifles”, for the fact that in his work “there is no enlightening truth”, for the fact that spiritual dead people roam in Trifonov’s stories, pretending to be alive. There are no ideals, man has been crushed and humiliated, crushed by life and his own insignificance.

Express your attitude to these assessments by answering the questions:

What comes to the fore in the story when we perceive it now?

Does Trifonov really have no ideals?

Will this story remain in literature, in your opinion, and how will it be perceived in another 40 years?