Dostoevsky "Christ's boy on the Christmas tree" - analysis. Coursework: "Christ's boy on the Christmas tree" as a Christmas story in the works of F.M.

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Federal Agency for Education of the Russian Federation

Togliatti State University

Humanitarian Institute

Department of Literature

COURSE WORK

"Christ's boy on the Christmas tree"

as a Christmas story in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky

Work is done

a student of the Phil-301 group

Murzaeva E.A.

Scientific adviser:

Candidate of Philology

Anashkina Natalya Vasilievna

Togliatti 2007

Introduction

Conclusion

Bibliographic list

Application

Introduction

Through all the work of F.M. Dostoevsky passes the thought of children, of their early impressions, deceived expectations. The writer was sure of the purity and sinlessness of the child's soul and even insisted on this: "Listen, we should not exalt ourselves over children, we are worse than them. And if we teach them something to make them better, then they teach us a lot and also make us better by our mere contact with us. They humanize our soul by their mere appearance between us. Therefore, we must respect them and approach them with respect for their angelic face, for their innocence and for their touching defenselessness ".

Among the "humiliated and insulted" heroes F.M. Dostoevsky, children suffering without guilt, punished without crime are especially distinguished. It is this theme of childhood suffering that sounds in the Christmas story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree." In the work, the image of childhood is mournful - "the child is crying." Children's tears are perceived here as the result of the unrighteous, evil life of adults. And only the genre of the Christmas story allows you to escape from the everyday bustle, human indifference, look into the world of the wonderful, remind you of kindness and mercy. At present, the interrupted tradition of publishing Christmas stories is actively returning, which is the reason for the relevance of our study.

F.M. Dostoevsky was one of the first to talk about homeless children. In the story "A Boy with a Pen", coupled with the story "A Boy at Christ's Tree", the writer drew attention to the problem of the future of such children. Here F.M. Dostoevsky showed himself as a prophet. No wonder M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky called him "the writer of the future". The problems identified in two works are relevant at the present time. The statistics give terrible figures: in today's Russia there are two million homeless children, tens of thousands of juvenile delinquents. Drug addiction among children has become the norm. But children are the future of Russia.

The purpose of our study is to consider the story "The Boy at Christ's Tree" as a Christmas story. The object of the study is the story "The Boy at Christ's Tree" and related to it - "The Boy with the Pen". The subject is the specific manifestation of the Christmas story genre in the work under study. Based on the object, subject and purpose of the course work, we formulated the following tasks:

to identify the features of the history of the emergence of the genre of the Christmas story, to determine its genre features;

determine the place of the story in the "Christmas tradition" and the context of the writer's work.

The solution of the tasks set is an integrated approach to the material, combining the historical-literary and typological methods.

This course work consists of introduction, main part and conclusion. In the introduction, we substantiated the choice and relevance of our study, and also formulated the goal, objectives, indicated the object, subject and methods. The main part consists of two chapters, in the first we highlight the features of the Christmas story genre, in the second we analyze the story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree". In conclusion, we summarize all the conclusions obtained from the study. The list of references includes 13 sources.

Chapter 1

A Christmas story (Christmas story) is a literary genre that belongs to the category of calendar literature and is characterized by certain specifics in comparison with the traditional story genre.

The usual Christmas present for readers of the 19th century were Christmas stories published on the pages of magazines and newspapers, such as: "Niva", "Petersburg Life", "Motherland", "Spark", "Star". Very different: kind and touching, fantastic and ironic, sad and even mournful, instructive and sentimental, they always tried to soften people's hearts. With all the variety of holiday stories, the main thing was preserved - a special, Christmas worldview. The stories contained dreams of a good and joyful life, of generous and selfless souls, of a merciful attitude towards each other, of the victory of good over evil.

In Leskov's Christmas story "The Pearl Necklace", the hero-narrator discusses the features of this genre: "It is absolutely required from the Christmas story that it be timed to coincide with the events of the Christmas evening - from Christmas to Epiphany, that it be somehow fantastic, have some morality, at least in the form of a refutation of a harmful prejudice, and finally - so that it ends without fail cheerfully. The researchers add that the latter is not always necessary: there are stories with sad and tragic or dramatic endings. And in the journal "Orthodox Conversation" in the section "Grain" the following definition is given: "This is a story about some boy or girl whose life is difficult and bleak, and at Christmas happiness suddenly comes to them." The researchers note that the terms "Christmas story" and "Christmas story", for the most part, are used as synonyms: in the texts with the subtitle "Christmas story" motifs related to the Christmas holiday could prevail, and the subtitle "Christmas story" did not imply the absence of text motifs of folk Christmas. The phrase Christmas story was introduced by N. Polev.

The forerunner of the literary Christmas story was oral stories or bylichki, usually told in villages on Christmas evenings - twelve days after the Nativity of Christ until Christmas Eve on the feast of the Epiphany. Christmas time was considered one of the largest and noisiest holidays of peasant life, combining violent fun and a person’s fear of the forces of darkness. According to popular ideas, evil spirits acquired special power at that time and freely walked the earth, right up to Baptism. Christmas stories usually told about incidents with fortune-tellers (meeting with a betrothed) or about meetings with evil spirits.

For the first time, as M. Kucherskaya points out, Christmastide stories appeared on the pages of a magazine in the 18th century. "Either way." Its publisher, M.D. Chulkov, placed here a wide variety of materials on ethnography: songs, proverbs, sayings. At the same time, he tried to connect them with folk and church calendar holidays: for Easter, a household sketch was printed describing the Easter festivities; to Christmas time - texts of spy songs, a meticulous story about the methods of divination and Christmas tales. Christmas stories in the magazine were not a mechanical repetition of oral stories: Chulkov retold them with no small amount of irony, inserting his own remarks and explanations. And the genre began to take shape within the framework of romantic prose of the 20-30s. 19th century with her interest in national antiquity and the mysterious. Literary adaptations of Christmastide tales appear. "Svetlana" V.A. Zhukovsky uses a plot about a heroine fortune-telling at Christmas time.

A rare Christmas story did without a miraculous element, but the fantastic beginning was represented not only by ghosts, ghosts and evil spirits, but also by angels, the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ. Dark and light forces with surprising ease were placed by compilers of Christmas almanacs under one cover. And such duality is a reflection of life's reality: the eerie, playful atmosphere of Christmas time got along quite well with the pious church celebration of Christmas and Epiphany.

Starting from everyday life, the literary Christmas story inherited this duality. Therefore, along with the "terrible" Christmas stories, which directly refer readers to a folklore source, there was another group of stories, internally more closely connected with the Nativity of Christ, and not with the Christmas season. The genre of the Christmas story, as E.S. Bezborodkin, appeared in Russian literature much later than Yuletide - by the forties of the 19th century. M. Kucherskaya noted that the first stories of this type appeared in Europe: the Catholic and Protestant West always felt the need to bring sacred events and characters as close as possible to itself, and therefore the celebration of Christmas quickly acquired here not only religious, but also everyday, domestic significance.

The cult of the House, the cult of the Hearth, so comfortably blazing in the living room and opposing the street bad weather - all this was well known to the Russian reader from the works of Charles Dickens, rightfully recognized as the founder of the "Christmas" genre. "The ideal of comfort is a purely English ideal; it is the ideal of an English Christmas, but most of all, the ideal of Dickens," Chesterton wrote. "Christmas Stories" ("A Christmas Carol in Prose", "The Bells", "The Cricket on the Stove") of the writer were translated in Russia almost immediately after their appearance - in the 40s. Researchers argue that other popular works also stimulated the emergence of Russian Christmas prose. An important role was played by Hoffmann's "Lord of the Fleas" and "The Nutcracker", as well as some of Andersen's fairy tales, especially "The Christmas Tree" and "The Little Matchmaker".

The tradition of Dickens in Russia was quickly accepted and partly rethought. If the English writer's indispensable ending was the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, then tragic endings are not uncommon in Russian literature. The specificity of the Dickensian tradition demanded a happy, even if not natural and implausible, ending, reminiscent of the gospel miracle and creating a wonderful Christmas atmosphere. In contrast, more realistic works were often created that combined gospel motifs and the main genre specifics of the Christmas story with an enhanced social component.

One of the main motifs in the Christmas (Christmas) story is a motif that has a Christian basis - this is the motif of the "divine child" - a baby sent to earth by God to save mankind. Salvation can be interpreted not only in the literal sense of the word, as the idea of the Messiah, but also in terms of simple human feelings and relationships. In Dickens's "Cricket Behind the Hearth" (1845), the role of the "divine child" is played by the son of Tiny and John Piribingle - "Blessed young Piribingle". The author, following the young mother, admires the baby, its healthy appearance, calm character and exemplary behavior. But the main distinguishing feature of this image and the motif associated with it is the following. It is this child, well, and also a cricket, that embody the idea of a happy home. Without a baby, young Tiny used to be bored, lonely, and sometimes scared. And although the role of the young Piribingle is a "role without words", but it is this child who becomes the main unifying center of the family, the basis of her fun, happiness and love.

The motif of the "divine child" is clearly traced in the story of N.P. Wagner "Christ's child" (1888). A foundling found and rescued, this baby on Christmas Eve symbolizes the idea of love and mercy. But, if in Dickens the image of a child is drawn realistically, ordinary, then in the Russian Christmas story, in the interpretation of such an image, a Christian orientation is clearly visible. Here is the manger in which the baby is placed, so similar to the manger where Jesus lay and the story of the foundling itself - "God gave Christ's little baby."

The Christmas story contains moments that make it related to the Christmas tradition. This is the role of the supernatural, the miracle that happens at Christmas - the second motif of Christmas (Christmas) stories. It should be noted here the role of conversation, which often serves as a frame for the main plot, as well as the tendency to sudden narrative moves that make the work entertaining.

In many plots, the element of asserting Christian virtue is especially significant, events are interpreted in an elevated tone, because the Christmas holidays became, in Dostoevsky's words, "days of family gatherings", days of mercy, reconciliation and universal love. Just as a miracle happened in Bethlehem, so it should be done on this day. Events take place on the great night of Salvation. Therefore, there were no unconsoled. The task of the authors of the stories was to set up a festive atmosphere in the homes of readers, tearing them away from worldly worries, to remind them of those who work and are burdened, of the need for mercy and love. Therefore, the stories dedicated to the holiday began to line up according to a certain law. Very often they have happy endings: lovers meet after a long separation, miraculously escape from inevitable death, a terminally ill person (most often a child) recovers, enemies reconcile, immoral people miraculously transform, insults are forgotten. Most stories begin with a description of the misfortunes of the heroes. But the radiance of the great miracle of the holiday scatters in thousands of sparks - a miracle enters the private life of people. It is not necessarily of a supernatural order, much more often it is a miracle of everyday life, which is perceived as a fortunate combination of circumstances, as a happy accident. In a successful combination of circumstances, the author and the characters see Heavenly intercession. The logic of the plot of the story is subordinated to overcoming the incompleteness, disharmony of life. It was imprinted in the minds of people that the day when the Savior of mankind was born should be accompanied from year to year by the performance of new miracles, because the Birth of Christ is the main miracle of the world. In Christmas (Christmas) stories, there should be children among the characters. Indeed, who, if not a child, is able to rejoice so keenly at gifts, be happy from the mere sight of a shining Christmas tree dress, so trustingly expect a miracle? No wonder Christmas night was called the night of babies, and Christmas - the holiday of children. At the denouement of the Christmas story, beauty, goodness, humanity, faith in the possibility of a dream come true should triumph at least for a moment. The Christmas story always contains a certain moral lesson, a parable, awakens hope and love in the hearts of readers. And if our skeptical mind chuckles, then the heart is always ready to thaw and respond to the spiritual truth embedded in the plot and characters of the Christmas (Christmas) story.

The third motif of the Christmas (Christmas) story is the motif of "moral rebirth". According to Dickens, children are the best way to contribute to the moral revival, the re-education of other characters. Let us recall what a shock Scrooge experiences when he sees a boy and a girl next to the Spirit of the Current Christmastide ("A Christmas Carol in Prose"). "Skinny, deathly pale, in rags, they looked askance like wolf cubs ... The boy's name is Ignorance. The girl's name is Poverty." So, using allegory in the depiction of children's images, the author tries to influence not only Scrooge, but also all reasonable people. "For my sake, in my name, help this little sufferer!" - this cry of despair sounds from the pages of Dickens's works, it sounds in every image of a child that he created.

Almost simultaneously with the stories about the "Christmas miracle", an "antagonistic" variety of the Christmas story appears in Russian literature. These lyrics are about hard life, about grief, separation at Christmas. An example of anti-Christmas stories is the essay "Christmas Story. From the Official's Travel Notes" by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

In the middle of the XIX century. there are many so-called "Christmas tree texts". They can be classified as follows:

1) A cycle of stories, the center of which is the Christmas tree itself - the heroine of the festive celebration. Here the researchers point to the influence of G.Kh. Andersen's "Yolka", the plot center of which is the idea of family, mercy, forgiveness. These stories are very diverse in subject matter. They contain unbridled children's fun, and deep disappointment, and other difficult experiences. On Russian soil, for example, the story is Dostoevsky's feuilleton "The Christmas Tree and the Wedding" (1848).

2) A group of stories dating back to the European tradition. They are clearly influenced by the plot of Andersen's fairy tale "The Girl with Sulfur Matches" and F. Rückert's poem "The Orphan's Tree". These are the stories: M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "Christmas Tree" (included in the "Provincial Essays"), F. M. Dostoevsky "The Boy at Christ on the Tree", K. M. Stanyukovich "Christmas Night", "Christmas Tree".

In the last third of the XIX century. the number of Christmas stories is rapidly increasing. Published in periodicals, it begins to be perceived as a specific literary genre - as a kind of story with its own genre characteristics - motives, composition, characters. Exactly one hundred years after the first experiments of M.D. Chulkov, the time has come when one could say about the Christmas story that his formation was over. In 1873, with the story "The Sealed Angel", N.S. Leskov. He becomes a master and theorist of the Christmas story.

But no matter how lofty the task of the Christmas story was initially, very soon the genre became a favorite target for parodists. Kucherskaya notes that from the pages of the Christmas issues of humorous newspapers and magazines of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, deadly mockery sounded at the rudeness of the methods by which the authors try to knock tears out of the reader, at the limited plots and themes, at the artistic second-rate quality of many Christmas stories. Indeed, writing stories for the holiday quickly turned into production. Non-professionals began to take up the pen. Without hesitation, names, plots, and a system of images were borrowed. The genre has faded.

In 1917, for obvious reasons, the Christmas story in its canonical form disappeared from the pages of the Russian periodical press (the situation was different for Russian émigré periodicals, which retained the genre). However, he was not destroyed without a trace, but found himself in an environment well known to him - in everyday life. Folklore bylichki and stories about fortune-telling, about the betrothed to this day are passed from mouth to mouth, they can be heard from many villagers. In addition, there was a gradual flow of the Christmas story into other genres, primarily into cinematography - which is understandable, because cinematography is also oriented towards mass perception. Dozens of New Year's children's cartoons, fairy tales, the film by E. Ryazanov "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath" are recalled here. After the nineties of the XX century, Christmas and Christmas stories began to return to the pages of newspapers and magazines. They publish the stories of the classics of the 19th century and very "fresh" stories. Christmas literature is actively returning.

Thus, the genre of the Christmas story in Russia arose before the Christmas one. The forerunners of the first were oral histories or bylichki told on Christmas Eve. The Christmas story is more closely connected with Christmas, the first stories of this type appeared in Europe. The English writer Charles Dickens is recognized as the ancestor of this genre. The indispensable finale in his stories was the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, the moral rebirth of heroes. The Christmas story can be recognized by the following features:

the presence of an element of the miraculous;

the presence of a narrator;

the presence of a child among the heroes;

Chapter 2 Dostoevsky "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree"

According to the wife of F.M. Dostoevsky, A.G. Dostoevskaya, "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree" was one of those works of art that the writer most valued at the end of his life. This story was published in the January issue of The Writer's Diary in 1876.

On the one hand, this is a well-known magazine intended for a wide range of readers, on the other hand, it is a diary, so to speak, for himself, in which the writer expresses his thoughts, views under the influence of current events, but not his personal life, but his public one. "The Diary of a Writer" is considered an artistic and journalistic genre, but in this work there are chapters in which there is no journalism. Instead of it, Dostoevsky could give a work of art ("The Fantastic Story" "A Gentle One" occupies the entire November issue of 1876), instead of the author he could enter

"dummy" persons ("one person", several "paradoxicalists"), could conjecture and imagine a fact, instead of "moralizing" he could present a phenomenon, tell an anecdote or a parable, instead of explaining - only compare the facts. The author of The Writer's Diary was extremely sincere in his dialogue with the reader, from whom he has no secrets. Dostoevsky shows how he composes, how a fact turns into an artistic event, how a street scene becomes a story, how an artistic image is created. The fact that he is a novelist, the writer constantly reminds the reader on the pages of the "Diary".

Preparing the January issue of the magazine, Dostoevsky wrote that he intended to say in it "something about children - about children in general, about children with fathers, about children without fathers in particular, about children on Christmas trees, without Christmas trees, about criminal children ...". So, the story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree" is placed, as N.M. Kopyttsev, between two journalistic fragments: "A boy with a pen" and a fragment "Colony for juvenile delinquents ...". The first fragment tells about the author's meeting with a boy "no more than about seven years old" and about many other boys: "they are sent out with a" pen "even in the most terrible frost, and if they don't get anything, then they will probably be beaten" . S.V. Sergusheva suggests that the fragment "Boy with a Pen" be conditionally divided into two parts. In the beginning, the author describes a real event, a fact from reality, in the second part Dostoevsky contemplates what he saw, tries to "finish" the hidden aspects of the life of a little boy. So, in the second part of the fragment, a detail conjectured by the author is striking: a boy with red, stiff hands returns to "some kind of basement where some gang of negligent people are drinking." The frozen hands of a child are, according to S.V. Sergusheva, which clearly shows the plight of the boy. “But Dostoevsky,” the researcher writes, “always saw behind the external, everyday, intuitively felt inwardly. A little man in the dark corners of a huge city feels not only the physical cold from the January frost, but his soul languishes in the cold, because no one needs him , he does not have a home warmed by the warmth of love and participation ". In one of the episodes from the life of street children, the cold indifference of those around them is shown. “One of them,” Dostoevsky points out, “spent several nights in a row with one janitor in some kind of basket, and he never noticed him.” S.V. Sergusheva discovers that it was no accident that the author used the imperfect form of the verb "didn't notice." "Didn't notice" is a one-time action. The imperfective verb emphasizes the constancy of the action; "didn't notice" expresses the indifference of people to the fate of the child as an ordinary fact. As Dostoevsky believed, criminal indifference is the cause of the crimes of children. This is what the following sentence says: "They become thieves by themselves." Thus, the crimes of children are a consequence of the crimes of adults. The researcher notes that "such a society will face savagery in the future, ignorance of what a home, family, Motherland, God are, and this is what holds the life of mankind together, what it stands on" .

N.M. Kopyttseva writes in her article that in the original version, the fragment "The Boy with the Pen" followed the story "The Boy at Christ's Tree", being a direct answer to the question: what would happen to the boy of the story if he stayed alive - he, obviously, would also join the "darkness of darkness." From the change in the location of the fragments, the fact that the genre of the Christmas story made it possible for a different solution to the children's fate has changed: to be transported to the bright, afterlife future of this child. N.M. Kopyttseva points out that it is not by chance that Dostoevsky follows the story with the fragment "Colony for juvenile delinquents...". Here the colony is depicted as it should be. The fragment begins like this: "On the third day I saw all these fallen angels, as many as fifty together." Further, the author stipulates that he does not laugh, naming children from the street that way. There is no doubt that these are "offended" children. The colony, according to the writer, must prepare for the re-creation of the family, headed by educators, who face a very important and responsible task: to be not tutors of children, but their fathers, to enter into a struggle with terrible childhood impressions in order to eradicate them and plant new ones. In this journalistic going beyond the story, a specific plan is outlined for the implementation of the main task of the teacher, the writer - "to restore a perishing person."

According to V.N. Zakharov, the story about the "boy with a pen" gradually turns into the story "Christ's boy on the Christmas tree", where the story of the fate of homeless children flows into the story of one boy. In this story, the reader becomes a witness to the very creative process: when from one small real detail - a child he met on the street by chance - the writer's fantasy creates an integral living picture, real and fantastic at the same time. “Wandering the streets, I love to look at other completely unfamiliar passers-by, to study their faces and guess who they are, how they live, what they do and what interests them especially at that moment.” Often he suddenly began to imagine certain images, events, coincidences of circumstances. Imagination is already unstoppable, and it gives birth to a story.

The plot of the work under study is fictitious. "But I am a novelist, and, it seems, I composed one 'story' myself," writes Dostoevsky. But on the other hand, the writer seeks to emphasize the reality of the events described: "But I keep imagining that it happened somewhere and sometime." The reality of what is described will become one of the main features of the story. So, in the finale, the author once again reminds that it is important for him to consider real events: “And why did I write such a story that doesn’t fit into an ordinary reasonable diary, and even a writer? And he also promised stories mainly about real events! But that's the thing, it always seems and imagines to me that all this could really happen - that is, what happened in the basement and behind the firewood, and there about Christ's Christmas tree - I don’t know how to tell you, could will it happen or not? That's what I'm a novelist to invent." V.A. Tunimanov in his dissertation will say that the works of art placed in the "Diary of a Writer" will be a new step towards the development by Dostoevsky of the principles of "realism reaching fantastic" - realism that combines the monumentality of artistic generalizations, the depth and accuracy of the social vision of the world with a special inner tension and increased attention of the artist to the analysis of "mysteries of the human soul".

"Christ's Boy on the Christmas Tree" is written in the genre of a Christmas (Christmas) story. It contains all of its features:

calendar timing. The action takes place on Christmas Eve;

the protagonist of the story is a child;

miraculous motif.

The last feature of the genre in the story is solved ambiguously. Thus, the presence of the miraculous in Christmas stories is associated with a change in the lives of heroes for the better, for example, with salvation from death. The outcome of the work under study is tragic: the hero dies. In the real layer of the depicted miracle does not occur. It takes place in a different, heavenly plane, where the miraculous, as N.M. Kopyttsev, "is connected with a supernatural event - with the appearance of the Lord Himself." So, in a dying vision, it seems to the poor, unfortunate boy that Christ is leading him to the heavenly tree. The researcher notes that "the supernatural is depicted here simultaneously as a natural phenomenon, that is, the logic of life at the point of contact between heaven and earth coincides with the internal logic of the Christmas story, overcoming the tragic contradiction of the world at the cost of death, which, however, is understood as overcoming it. Death leads to renewal , to the resurrection into eternal life. The boy freezes in the icy winter season, but, warmed by the love of the Savior, he rises already in His Heaven, "where he finds everything that he really lacked - light, warmth, a luxurious Christmas tree, a loving look mothers.

The story begins with an exposition from which we learn the story of the boy, some details of his life. It is known that he is six years old or even less. Here it is clearly indicated that before us is a sinless baby. At the age of seven, a child is called a child. He is no longer sinless, he needs confession.

The boy wakes up in a cold and damp basement, where he stays all day. His mother dies, which the hero does not even suspect. Feeling cold and homeless, the boy goes outside. All alone, dressed in a thin robe, he finds himself in a huge cold city.

This strange dress (thin robe), as T. Kasatkina points out, is necessary only from one point of view: if we recall the most famous icons of the "Tenderness" type in Russia, starting with the Vladimir one, we will find that the most adequate description of the Christ Child on these icons - "a boy of six years or even less, dressed in some kind of dressing gown." Dostoevsky will make his boy wander through the streets of a huge city in this dressing gown on Christmas Eve, so that the image resembles the image of the born Christ.

At the beginning of the Christmas story, an image of a devastated den is created. Nativity scene - a puppet cave, made for the Christmas holidays and representing the scene of the Nativity of Christ. We have a basement in front of us, where in the center of the composition, on a bed as thin as a pancake (you need to see, for example, the icon of the Nativity of Christ of the 15th century, located in the Tretyakov Gallery, in order to understand the accuracy of the description of what the Mother of God is reclining on), the dead mother of the boy rests. In one of the lower corners of the icon, Joseph was traditionally placed, in the other - the midwife called by him (here - "nanny"), preparing to wash the Infant. Sometimes there were two midwives. But from the devastated den, everyone dispersed, only the dead, dying or dead drunk remained.

Dostoevsky constructs an image with extreme rigidity and defiance: in the center of the city, which is preparing to celebrate Christmas, there is a devastated nativity scene. The mother is dead, and the baby is hungry and cold. And for everyone celebrating the Christmas of the One Who is so clearly imagined in a boy, he, the boy, is superfluous and interferes with the holiday.

The situation of Christmas is repeated in a worse version: once upon a time, for the Mother of God, who was ready to give birth, who arrived from another city, there was no place in the hotels and houses of Bethlehem, no one accepted her; almost two thousand years later, in a Christian city, on the eve of a great holiday, a mother who came from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill dies and her boy does not find help and shelter.

Dostoevsky clearly shows us that nothing has passed, in our life we are constantly faced with the events of the Gospel story, this story goes on and on for centuries, and we turn out to be just as hard-hearted, unresponsive, ungrateful as most of its original participants. The Lord constantly hopes for us - and we just as constantly deceive His hopes.

It should be noted that the author does not directly name the city in which the action takes place: "... it happened in some huge city and in a terrible frost." But the researchers point out that Dostoevsky reproduces the "Petersburg flavor" on the pages of the story, thereby emphasizing the reality of what is happening. It is created due to the presence in the work of a number of figures typical of Russian life ("mistress of the corners", "dressing gown", "guardian of order", "lady", "wipers"), thanks to the contrasting characteristics of the corner of the Russian province where the hero came from ("wooden low houses" with shutters, darkness, dogs) and the capital, the description of which is close to the description of St. Petersburg with its fantastic, mirage lights in "Nevsky Prospekt". "Here they will probably crush them like that; how they all scream, run and ride, but the light, the light!" - says the hero. So, on the one hand, Dostoevsky creates an image of St. Petersburg, on the other hand, highlighting the word in some italics, he wants to emphasize the universal nature of what is happening: children die of cold and hunger in any Russian city. For these purposes, the writer does not give the name of the boy, wishing to draw attention to the fact that the events described in the story could happen to any abandoned and forgotten child.

In the city in which the boy finds himself, we find, as the researchers note, an eccentric boiling of life, selfishness, coldness, isolation of everyone from each other, so the feeling of loneliness and a sense of fuss around does not leave the one who finds himself in this vast space: "And melancholy takes him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrifying ... ". The result of general disunity is indifference to children's suffering: "The guardian of order passed by and turned away so as not to notice the boy." E. Dushechkina in her articles points out that some writers of the 19th century considered St. Petersburg the most non-Christmas place in Russia.I. I. Panov, a great lover of Russian Christmas time, complained: "Maybe, inside Russia, Christmas time still retains the poetry of antiquity ... but Petersburg has long lost it."

Yu.V. Sterlikova writes in her article that "the heroes-children of Dostoevsky are able to soften callous, criminal souls, to revive the holy and saving feelings hidden in the depths of the soul of every person. According to the writer, children live as" some kind of instruction to us ", they are messengers God's on earth. The author embodies this idea, revealing the amazing influence of a child on an adult. Children are reminded of the possibility of rebirth ". There is no similar motive for the rebirth of a callous soul in the story "Christ's Boy on the Christmas Tree". Here the hero meets, as noted earlier, with a striking callousness and indifference towards him on the part of adults. In this, Dostoevsky's work differs from traditional Christmas (Christmas) stories, where the image of a child reminded an adult of something good and eternal.

In the meetings of the hero of the story with the guardian of order, the lady, the big boy, people are invited to recognize the Christ Child in the boy and the friend of Christ in themselves. It's so easy - after all, Christmas is in the yard, and everyone is now remembering the events and images of two thousand years ago. But no one is able to see them again around him. No one recognizes Christ in a "slave form". Again and again the prediction in the Gospel is being realized: “For I was hungry and you did not give Me food; I was thirsty and you did not give Me drink; I was a stranger and you did not receive Me; I was naked and did not clothe Me; sick and in prison, and did not visit me." And when they ask Him: “Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not serve You? this to one of the least of these, they did not do it to Me."

At the end of December 1875, Dostoevsky and his daughter attended a Christmas tree and a children's ball at the St. Petersburg Artists' Club. The Golos newspaper reported about this Christmas tree: “On Friday, December 26, a large children’s holiday “tree” was scheduled at the St. Petersburg meeting of artists with free gifts for children, acrobats, magicians, two music orchestras, mountains, electric lighting, etc. and so on. "The Christmas trees of the St. Petersburg collection of artists have been famous for their excellent arrangement for many years. In this probability, the current Christmas tree will not be worse than the previous ones and will bring a lot of pleasure to its little visitors. It's not a bad thing to stock up on entrance tickets in advance."

The writer's visit to this holiday is reflected in the story. It is given through the description of the Christmas tree, seen by the boy only through a large glass. “What is this? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass is a room, and in the room there is a tree up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and there are so many lights on the Christmas tree, how many gold pieces of paper and apples, and around there are dolls, little horses; and around the room children run around, neatly dressed, laugh and play, and eat, and drink something.

Christmas is considered the brightest and kindest holiday, because its cosiness, its warmth create a special experience of the closeness of people gathered around a luminous Christmas tree. But this holiday does not bring joy to the child. Here, festive cordiality and hospitality coexist with cruelty and callousness, which makes the little boy feel lonely and scared. Recall that his lady pushed him out the door, the crowd scared him to death. "No one showed compassion even on Christmas days, on the days of mercy, kindness, forgiveness. In this unfair world, even innocent children suffer - and this is due to the indifference of society, which considers this situation inevitable and quite reasonable," writes L.V. Kiryakova in her article.

After describing the children's holiday, the author reproduces the boy's admiration for the dolls he saw, "small, dressed in red and green dresses," which were "quite like alive." It is no coincidence that Dostoevsky depicts these pupae: they, "living pupae", are opposed to people who are dead in soul.

The author also uses the opposition technique when he describes the fabulous Christmas tree near Christ. If on an earthly tree a boy meets with soullessness and egoism, then on a Christmas tree with Christ he finds himself in an atmosphere of love and participation, finding what he did not have on earth - a family, a house where he is loved. "... oh, what a light! Oh, what a Christmas tree! Yes, and it’s not a Christmas tree, he hasn’t seen such trees yet! Where is he now: everything glitters, everything shines and all the dolls are around - but no, these are all boys and girls , only so bright, they all circle around him, fly, they all kiss him ... ".

In Dostoevsky's story we find an abundance of interrogative and exclamatory sentences that convey the boy's state of mind: now admiration and joy, now pain and fear: "Here again the street - oh, what a wide one! they go, but the light is, the light is something "! So, interrogative sentences help to introduce the reader into the stream of consciousness of the hero. “But what is this again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very like alive!” - admires the boy. Thus, as S.V. Sergushev, one gets the impression that the reader is next to the hero, sees and hears him. The researcher notices that the effect of "presence" is also created by homogeneous terms, which make the description more detailed, make one pay attention to the mournful details of the boy's life. As, for example, in the following passage: “The boy looks, marvels, laughs, and his fingers and legs hurt, and they began to suck red on his hands, they no longer bend and move painfully. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, he cried and ran on. S.V. Sergusheva notes that the boy is cold not so much from frost, but from human heartlessness, spiritual deadness. And one of the critics of the 19th century wrote that in this story "all the power of the gift of a psychologist-novelist, all the warmth of feelings with which such a master plays" affected Dostoevsky.

G.M. Friedländer identified the literary source that gave Dostoevsky a ready-made frame for the conceived Christmas story. This source was the popular Christmas poem by the German poet Friedrich Rückert "The Orphan's Tree", which tells about a freezing child on Christmas night on the street and after death falls on the "Christ Tree". Researchers note that these two works are artistically incommensurable: Dostoevsky created an original story, deeply national, Petersburg in content and very far from Rückert's poem in tone and color, style and language.

In Ruckert, the child, having found bliss in heaven, calmed down and forgot about his earthly sufferings: “Now the orphan child has returned to his homeland, to the Christmas tree to Christ. And what was prepared for him on earth, it will easily forget there.” The poem calls for hope for the future and hope for divine justice. In Dostoevsky, according to researchers, the picture of poverty and suffering of a child is written in too sharp and bright colors so that these sufferings could be forgiven, could be completely erased from the reader's memory. It is no coincidence that the boy is met on the Christmas tree not by angels, but by children just like him. And each child has his own terrible story of death, striking in its everydayness, documentary, which, as the writer believed, is unforgivable to forget: “And he found out that these boys and girls were all the same as him, children, but some were still cold. in their baskets, in which they were thrown on the stairs to the doors of St. Petersburg officials, others suffocated at the little chicks, from the orphanage to be fed, the third died at the withered breasts of their mothers, during the Samara famine, the fourth suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench ... ". Dostoevsky cannot afford to forget about childhood suffering not only on earth, but also in heaven, where, it would seem, one finds peace and comfort. But on the other hand, as V.N. Zakharov, in reproach to the malice of this world, the joy of those invited to the Christmas tree to Christ arises. It is not by chance that Dostoevsky reminds the reader of another festive world - the just world of joy and Christ's love. The meaning of the story lies in the author's indication of this ideal.

So, the story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree" contains all the genre features of the Christmas story. Its action takes place in two time layers: in real and in fantasy. And if reality turns into a tragedy for the hero (a child freezes on Christmas Eve), then the fantastic plan of the depicted introduces an element of the miraculous. The miracle here is represented by the appearance of Jesus Christ. But the fantastic in the story does not go beyond the real, it is connected with the dying vision of the freezing boy. The reality of what is happening is emphasized, on the one hand, by the image of the author-narrator, framing the entire narrative, and, on the other hand, by the recreated image of St. Petersburg. The motif of reality is closely connected with fantastic elements. So, on the Christmas tree of Christ, each child has his own story of death, striking documentary and everyday life. No wonder V.A. Tunimanov will notice that F.M. Dostoevsky developed in the works published in the "Diary of a Writer" the principle of realism, reaching the fantastic.

Conclusion

During our study, we came to the following conclusions.

The genre of the Christmas story in Russia arose before the Christmas one. The forerunners of the first were oral histories or bylichkas told on Christmastide evenings from Christmas to Epiphany. The genre began to take shape within the framework of romantic prose of the 20-30s. 19th century with her interest in national antiquity and the mysterious. The Christmas story is more closely connected with Christmas, the first stories of this type appeared in Europe. The English writer Ch. Dickens is considered to be the ancestor of the genre. The finale in his stories was the victory of light over darkness, good over evil. The Christmas (Christmas) story can be recognized by the following features:

chronological confinement;

the presence of an element of the miraculous;

the presence of a narrator;

the presence of a child among the heroes;

the presence of a moral lesson, morality.

Among the main motifs of the Christmas (Christmas) story, the following are distinguished: the motif of the "moral rebirth of the heroes", the motif of the "divine child", the motif of the "Christmas miracle".

In the story "Christ's Boy on the Christmas Tree" we find all of the above signs. So, its action takes place on Christmas Eve. The image of the protagonist reflects the motif of the "divine child": the infant Christ, not accepted by the world. The image of Christ is indicated by the age of the hero and his clothes: he is six years old or even less, he is dressed in some kind of robe. This is how the infant Christ appears in many Orthodox icons. The motif of the "divine child" connects the story under study with other Christmas works ("The Cricket Behind the Hearth" by C. Dickens, "Christ's Child" by Wagner), where the child symbolizes the idea of kindness and mercy.

In the story we are studying, there is a gospel orientation associated with the image of the basement. It resembles the image of a devastated den, from which everyone has dispersed, except for the dying old woman and the deadly drunk negligent. The situation of Christmas is repeated in a worse version: just as once there was no place for the Mother of God ready to give birth in the hotels and houses of Bethlehem, so in the story under study, on the eve of the great holiday, no one helped a sick mother who arrived from a foreign city, and her boy.

The motif of the miraculous is connected in the story with the surreal, with the dying vision of a freezing boy. The miracle here is represented by the appearance of Jesus Christ. In the real layer of the depicted miracle does not occur, a tragedy occurs: the child freezes. This tragic denouement makes the story related to other Christmas works: G.Kh. Andersen's "The Girl with Sulfur Matches" and F. Ruckert's "The Orphan's Tree", in which, according to the plot, the children-heroes find happiness, warmth, and comfort in the other world. Such a tragic ending distinguishes the story we are studying from the context of the entire "Christmas tradition", where goodness, mercy must be accomplished on earth. There is no motif in the story of the "moral rebirth of the heroes", which also separates it from many Christmas works. Here, in the image of a hero, no one wants to recognize the baby Christ. The child is met with surprising indifference on the part of adults. And only Christ is ready to open his arms for the "humiliated and offended" boy.

The realistic image in the story becomes its leading feature. The reality of what is happening is constantly indicated by the image of the author-narrator and the recreated image of St. Petersburg, which is considered one of the non-holiday places in Russia. Perhaps because of such a chronotope, a miracle does not occur on earth. The motif of the tragic does not leave the depicted paradise tree near Christ, where each child has his own story of death, striking in documentary and everyday life. F.M. Dostoevsky seems to want to say that one must not forget the suffering of children, not only on earth, but also in heaven.

In the story, a special psychologism is created, transmitted through the depicted stream of consciousness of the hero.

The story "The Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree" is associated, on the one hand, with the theme of the humiliated and insulted, and on the other hand, with the philosophical and symbolic problem of the undeserved and unjustifiable, innocent suffering of children in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov", where not a single tear of a child cannot cost the happiness of the whole world.

Bibliographic list

1. Bezborodkina E.S. Discussion of issues of life and death in the study of Christmas stories // http: // www. palomnic. org/bibl_lit/bibl/edu

2. Egorov V.N. Value priorities of F.M. Dostoevsky: Textbook. - Tolyatti: Development through education, 1994. - 48 p.

3. Zakharov V.N. Learn Russia // http: // www. portal-slovo. en

4. Kasatkina, T. "Christ's boy on the tree" // http: // www. religion. en/monitoring48204. htm

5. Kiryakova L.V. "Christ's boy on the Christmas tree" F.M. Dostoevsky and "A Christmas Carol in Prose" by C. Dickens. // Literature at school. - 2003. - No. 5. - P.37.

6. Kopyttseva N.M. Yuletide story F.M. Dostoevsky "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree" // Literature at school - 2003. - No. 5. - P.35-36.

7. Yuletide stories: Stories. Sermons / Foreword, comp., note. and words. M. Kucherskaya; - M.: Det. lit., 1996. - 223 p.: ill.

8. Sergusheva S.V. The theme of childhood in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky // Literature at school. - 2003. - No. 5. - S.32-35.

9. Sterlikova Yu.V. The image of childhood in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky // Spiritual and moral meanings of national education at the turn of the century: Scientific collection / N.V. Anashkina, N.P. Bakharev, A.A. Ilyin, O.G. Kamenskaya and others; Scientific adviser V.V. Rubtsov. - Tolyatti: TSU, 2002. - S.85-97.

10. Dostoevsky F.M. Complete works in 30 volumes. T.22. - L.: Nauka, 1981. - 407 p.

11. Dostoevsky F.M. Collected works in 12 volumes. T.12. - M.: Pravda, 1982. - 544 p.

12. Shvachko M.V. Images of children in Christmas stories by Ch. Dickens and Christmas stories of Russian writers of the second half of the 19th century // http: // 64.233.183.104/search? q=cache: j3J5aD7Sm2IJ: tsu. tmb. ru/ru/ob_yniv/struct_podr/inst_filologii/dikkens/shvachko. doc

13.http: //ru. wikipedia. org/wiki/

Application

Application No. 1

Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) "The Orphan's Tree".

On the evening before Christmas, an orphan child runs through the streets of the city to admire the lit candles.

It stands for a long time in front of each house, looks into the illuminated rooms that look out the window, sees the Christmas trees decorated with candles, and it becomes unbearably heavy on the heart of the child.

The child, sobbing, says: “Today every child has his own Christmas tree, his own candles, they bring him joy, only I, the poor one, don’t have it.

Before, when at home I lived with brothers and sisters, and the light of Christmas shone for me; now, in a foreign land, I am forgotten by everyone.

Is it really that he won’t call me to him and give me nothing, is there really no corner for me - even the smallest one - about all these rows of houses?

Won't anyone let me in? After all, I don’t need anything for myself, I just want to enjoy the splendor of Christmas gifts that are intended for others!

The child knocks on doors and gates, on windows and shop windows, but no one comes out to call him along; all nutria are deaf to his pleas.

Every father is busy with his children; their mother thinks about them and bestows them; no one cares about someone else's child.

"O dear Christ-patron! I have neither father nor mother, except for you. Be my comforter, since everyone has forgotten about me!"

The child tries to warm his frozen hand with his breath, he hides deeper in his clothes and, full of expectation, freezes in the middle of the street.

But now another child in a white robe is approaching him across the street. In his hand is a lamp, and how wonderfully his voice sounds!

"I am Christ, whose birthday is celebrated today, I was once a child - like you. And I will not forget about you, even if everyone else has forgotten.

My word belongs equally to everyone. I bestow my treasures here in the streets as well as there in the rooms.

I will make your Christmas tree shine here in the open air, with such bright lights as no one shines inside."

The Christ child pointed to the sky with his hand - there was a Christmas tree, sparkling with stars on countless branches.

Oh, how the candles sparkled, so far and at the same time close! And how the heart of an orphan child who saw his Christmas tree began to beat!

He felt like a dream, then angels descended from the tree and carried him upstairs to the light.

Now the orphan child has returned to his homeland, to the Christmas tree to Christ. And what was prepared for him on earth, it will easily forget there.

Features of the theme and genre of the story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree"

The story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree", according to the writer's wife, belonged to those works of art that the writer most valued at the end of his life. This story was published in the January issue of The Writer's Diary in 1876.

On the one hand, this is a well-known magazine intended for a wide range of readers, on the other hand, it is a diary in which the writer expresses his thoughts, views, influenced by current events, but not his personal life, but his public one. "The Diary of a Writer" is considered an artistic and journalistic genre, but in this work there are chapters in which there is no journalism. Instead of it, Dostoevsky could give a work of art ("The Fantastic Story" "A Gentle One" occupies the entire November issue of 1876), instead of the author he could introduce "dummy" persons ("one person", several "paradoxicalists"), he could conjecture and imagine a fact, he could instead of "moralizing" to present a phenomenon, to tell an anecdote or a parable, instead of an explanation - only to compare the facts. The author of The Writer's Diary was extremely sincere in his dialogue with the reader, from whom he has no secrets. Dostoevsky shows how he composes, how a fact turns into an artistic event, how a street scene becomes a story, how an artistic image is created. The fact that he is a novelist, the writer constantly reminds the reader on the pages of the "Diary".

Preparing the January issue of the magazine, Dostoevsky wrote that he intended to say in it "something about children - about children in general, about children with fathers, about children without fathers in particular, about children on Christmas trees, without Christmas trees, about criminal children ...". So, the story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree" is placed, as N.M. Kopyttsev, between two journalistic fragments: "A boy with a pen" and a fragment "Colony for juvenile delinquents ...". The first fragment tells about the author's meeting with a boy "no more than about seven years old" and about many other boys: "they are sent out with a" pen "even in the most terrible frost, and if they do not get anything, then they will probably be beaten." S.V. Sergusheva suggests that the fragment "Boy with a Pen" be conditionally divided into two parts. In the beginning, the author describes a real event, a fact from reality, in the second part Dostoevsky contemplates what he saw, tries to "finish" the hidden aspects of the life of a little boy. So, in the second part of the fragment, a detail contrived by the author is striking: a boy with red, stiff hands returns to "some basement where some gang of negligent people are drinking." The frozen hands of a child are, according to S.V. Sergusheva, which clearly shows the plight of the boy. “But Dostoevsky,” the researcher writes, “always saw behind the external, everyday, intuitively felt inwardly. A little man in the dark corners of a huge city feels not only the physical cold from the January frost, but his soul languishes in the cold, because no one needs him , he does not have a home warmed by the warmth of love and participation. In one of the episodes from the life of street children, the cold indifference of those around them is shown. "One of them," Dostoevsky points out, "spent several nights in a row with a janitor in some kind of basket, and he never noticed him." S.V. Sergusheva discovers that it was no accident that the author used the imperfect form of the verb "didn't notice." "Didn't notice" is a one-time action. The imperfective verb emphasizes the constancy of the action; "didn't notice" expresses the indifference of people to the fate of the child as an ordinary fact. As Dostoevsky believed, criminal indifference is the cause of the crimes of children. This is what the following sentence says: "They become thieves by themselves." Thus, the crimes of children are a consequence of the crimes of adults. The researcher notes that "such a society is waiting in the future for savagery, ignorance of what a home, family, Motherland, God are, and this is what holds the life of mankind together, what it stands on."

"Christ's Boy on the Christmas Tree" is written in the genre of a Christmas (Christmas) story. It contains all its features: calendar timing. The action takes place on Christmas Eve; the presence of an author-narrator who frames the narrative; the protagonist of the story is a child; miraculous motif.

The last feature of the genre in the story is solved ambiguously. Thus, the presence of the miraculous in Christmas stories is associated with a change in the lives of heroes for the better, for example, with salvation from death. The outcome of the work under study is tragic: the hero dies. In the real layer of the depicted miracle does not occur. It takes place in a different, heavenly plane, where the miraculous, as N.M. Kopyttsev, "is connected with a supernatural event - with the appearance of the Lord Himself." So, in a dying vision, it seems to the poor, unfortunate boy that Christ is leading him to the heavenly tree. The researcher notes that "the supernatural is depicted here at the same time as a natural phenomenon, that is, the logic of life at the point of contact between heaven and earth coincides with the internal logic of the Christmas story, overcoming the tragic contradiction of the world at the cost of death, which, however, is understood as overcoming it. Death leads to renewal , to the resurrection into eternal life. The boy freezes in the icy winter season, but, warmed by the love of the Savior, he rises already in His Heaven, "where he finds everything that he really lacked - light, warmth, a luxurious Christmas tree, a loving look mother.

This strange dress (thin robe), as T. Kasatkina points out, is necessary only from one point of view: if we recall the most famous icons of the “Tenderness” type in Russia, starting with the Vladimir one, we will find that the most adequate description of the Christ Child on these icons - "a boy of six years or even less, dressed in some kind of robe" . Dostoevsky will make his boy wander through the streets of a huge city in this dressing gown on Christmas Eve, so that the image resembles the image of the born Christ.

Dostoevsky constructs an image with extreme rigidity and defiance: in the center of the city, which is preparing to celebrate Christmas, there is a devastated nativity scene. The mother is dead, and the baby is hungry and cold. And for everyone celebrating Christmas, who is so clearly imagined in a boy, he, the boy, is superfluous and interferes with the holiday.

In the city in which the boy finds himself, we find, as the researchers note, an eccentric boiling of life, selfishness, coldness, isolation of everyone from each other, so the feeling of loneliness and a sense of fuss around does not leave the one who finds himself in this vast space: "And melancholy takes him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrifying ... ". The result of general disunity is indifference to children's suffering: "The guardian of order passed by and turned away so as not to notice the boy." E. Dushechkina in her articles points out that some writers of the 19th century considered St. Petersburg the most non-Christmas place in Russia. I. I. Panov, a great lover of Russian Christmas time, complained: "Maybe, inside Russia, Christmas time still retains the poetry of antiquity ... but St. Petersburg has long lost it."

At the end of December 1875, Dostoevsky and his daughter attended a Christmas tree and a children's ball at the St. Petersburg Artists' Club. The Golos newspaper reported about this Christmas tree: “On Friday, December 26, in the St. Petersburg meeting of artists, a big children’s holiday “tree” was scheduled with free gifts for children, acrobats, magicians, two music orchestras, mountains, electric lighting, etc. and so on. "The Christmas trees of the St. Petersburg collection of artists have been famous for their excellent arrangement for many years. In this probability, the current Christmas tree will not be worse than the previous ones and will bring a lot of pleasure to its little visitors. It's not a bad thing to stock up on entrance tickets in advance."

The writer's visit to this holiday is reflected in the story. It is given through the description of the Christmas tree, seen by the boy only through a large glass. “What is this? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass is a room, and in the room there is a tree up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and there are so many lights on the Christmas tree, how many gold papers and apples, and around there are dolls, little horses; and around the room children run around, neatly dressed, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something.

In Dostoevsky's story we find an abundance of interrogative and exclamatory sentences that convey the boy's state of mind: now admiration and joy, now pain and fear: "Here again the street - oh, what a wide one! they go, but the light is, the light is something "! So, interrogative sentences help to introduce the reader into the stream of consciousness of the hero. “But what is this again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very like alive!” - admires the boy. Thus, as S.V. Sergushev, it seems that the reader is next to the hero, sees and hears him. The researcher notices that the effect of "presence" is also created by homogeneous terms, which make the description more detailed, make one pay attention to the mournful details of the boy's life. As, for example, in the following passage: “The boy looks, marvels, laughs, and his fingers and legs hurt, and they began to suck red on his hands, they no longer bend and move painfully. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, he cried and ran on. S.V. Sergusheva notes that the boy is cold not so much from frost, but from human heartlessness, spiritual deadness. And one of the critics of the 19th century wrote that in this story "all the power of the gift of a psychologist-novelist, all the warmth of feelings, with which such a master plays" Dostoevsky, had an effect.

In Ruckert, the child, having found bliss in heaven, calmed down and forgot about his earthly sufferings: “Now the orphan child has returned to his homeland, to the Christmas tree to Christ. And what was prepared for him on earth, it will easily forget there.” The poem calls for hope for the future and hope for divine justice. In Dostoevsky, according to researchers, the picture of poverty and suffering of a child is written in too sharp and bright colors for these sufferings to be forgiven, to be completely erased from the reader's memory. It is no coincidence that the boy is met on the Christmas tree not by angels, but by children just like him. And each child has his own terrible story of death, striking in its everydayness, documentary, which, as the writer believed, is unforgivable to forget: “And he found out that these boys and girls were all the same as him, children, but some were still cold. in their baskets, in which they were thrown on the stairs to the doors of St. Petersburg officials, others suffocated at the little chicks, from the orphanage to be fed, the third died at the withered breasts of their mothers, during the Samara famine, the fourth suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench ... ". Dostoevsky cannot afford to forget about childhood suffering not only on earth, but also in heaven, where, it would seem, one finds peace and comfort. But on the other hand, as V.N. Zakharov, in reproach to the malice of this world, the joy of those invited to the Christmas tree to Christ arises. It is not by chance that Dostoevsky reminds the reader of another festive world - the just world of joy and Christ's love.

So, the story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree" contains all the genre features of the Christmas story. Its action takes place in two time layers: in real and in fantasy. And if reality turns into a tragedy for the hero (a child freezes on Christmas Eve), then the fantastic plan of the depicted introduces an element of the miraculous. The miracle here is represented by the appearance of Jesus Christ. But the fantastic in the story does not go beyond the real, it is connected with the dying vision of the freezing boy. The reality of what is happening is emphasized, on the one hand, by the image of the author-narrator, framing the entire narrative, and, on the other hand, by the recreated image of St. Petersburg. The motif of reality is closely connected with fantastic elements. So, on the Christmas tree of Christ, each child has his own story of death, striking documentary and everyday life. No wonder V.A. Tunimanov noticed that F.M. Dostoevsky developed in the works published in the "Diary of a Writer" the principle of realism, reaching the fantastic.

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF THE REPUBLIC OF KAZAKHSTAN

Talgar College of Humanities and Economics

Specialty: 0314002 - "primary general education"

Course work

on the topic: Analysis of F.M. Dostoevsky(based on the story "Christ's boy on the Christmas tree")

Completed by: student Maksimovich E. A.

Scientific adviser: Yakhina Kh. Kh.

Talgar, 2011

Introduction

SECTION 1. The main periods of the life and work of F.M. Dostoevsky

1.1 Biography of F.M. Dostoevsky

2 F.M. Dostoevsky's stories about children

SECTION 2. Genre originality of the Christmas story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree"

2.1 Review of the works of F.M. Dostoevsky

2 Features of the theme and genre of the story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree"

CONCLUSION

LIST OF USED SOURCES

INTRODUCTION

Relevance of the research topic

The work of the great Russian writer F. M. Dostoevsky is multifaceted. It is devoted to various problems of the social reality of that period of development of society, when the serfdom of tsarist Russia reached its climax. All of his work is permeated with problems of morality, duty, sense of responsibility and purity of human conscience. In addition, in his work F.M. Dostoevsky reflects on children, on their early impressions, deceived expectations. The writer was sure of the purity and sinlessness of the child's soul and even insisted on this: "Listen, we should not exalt ourselves over children, we are worse than them. And if we teach them something to make them better, then they teach us a lot and also make us better by our mere contact with us. They humanize our soul by their mere appearance between us. Therefore, we must respect them and approach them with respect for their angelic face, for their innocence and for their touching defenselessness ".

F.M. Dostoevsky was one of the first to talk about homeless children. In the story "A Boy with a Pen", coupled with the story "A Boy at Christ's Tree", the writer drew attention to the problem of the future of such children. Here F.M. Dostoevsky showed himself as a prophet. No wonder M.I. Tugan-Baranovsky called him "the writer of the future". The problems identified in two works are relevant at the present time. Statistics give terrible figures: at the present time, there are millions of homeless children and juvenile delinquents all over the world. Drug addiction among children has become the norm. But children are the future of any country and nation as a whole.

Object of studyis the story "The Boy at Christ on the Tree"

The subject of the course workis the specificity of the manifestation of the genre of the Christmas story in the work under study.

Purpose of the study- consider the story "The Boy at Christ's Tree" as a Christmas story.

Objectives of the course work :

to determine the historical information about the emergence of the genre of the Christmas story;

determine its genre features;

determine the place of the story in the "Christmas tradition" in the context of the writer's work;

set the features of the story "Christ's boy on the Christmas tree"

The structure of the course work

Coursework on the topic "Christ's boy on the Christmas tree" consists of an introduction, two sections and four subsections, a list of sources, and a conclusion.

In the introduction, the choice and relevance of our study are justified, as well as the goal, objectives are formulated, the object and subject of the course work are indicated.

The first section describes the biography and creative activity of F.M. Dostoevsky, as well as the place of the story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree" in the writer's work.

The second section provides an overview of the content of the writer's works, analyzes the story "The Boy at Christ's Tree" and identifies its genre, and also determines the peculiarity of this story among other works of the writer.

In conclusion, the results of the work on the topic of the study are summed up, the main features and differences of the Christmas story genre in comparison with the varieties of literary works are established, and the life similarities of the story of our hero with the story of Jesus Christ are revealed.

The list of sources indicates the main materials used to write this course work.

SECTION 1. The main periods of life and work of F.M. Dostoevsky

.1 Biography of F.M. Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821 in Moscow. The father of the future writer was a retired military doctor Mikhail Andreevich (participant in the Patriotic War of 1812), and his mother Maria Fedorovna (nee Nechaeva). Mikhail was the first child in the family, and Fedor was the second.

Throughout his life, the two older brothers remained the closest people.

In addition to them, five more children grew up in the Dostoevsky family - Varenka, Andrey, Verochka, Nikolai, and Alexandra was the youngest child.

The father of the family was a strict man. He established order at home and demanded that it be strictly observed.

But she was a kind and loving mother. There was also a nanny hired from Moscow bourgeois women, whose name was Alena Frolovna. Dostoevsky remembered her with the same tenderness as Pushkin remembered Arina Rodionovna.

It was from her that he heard the first fairy tales: about the Firebird, Alyosha Popovich, the Blue Bird, etc. Often in the evenings, family readings were held in the Dostoevsky family.

The historian Karamzin, writers and poets Derzhavin, Lazhechnikov, Zagoskin, Zhukovsky and, of course, Pushkin were read. The younger brother of Fyodor Mikhailovich, Andrei Mikhailovich, wrote that “brother Fedya read more historical, serious, and also novels that came across. Brother Mikhail loved poetry and wrote poetry himself ... But on Pushkin they put up, and both, it seems, then almost knew everything by heart ... ". The death of Alexander Sergeevich by young Fedya was perceived as a personal grief. Andrei Mikhailovich wrote: “Brother Fedya, in conversations with his older brother, repeated several times that if we didn’t have family mourning (mother Maria Fedorovna died), then he would ask his father’s permission to mourn for Pushkin.” 1834, young Fedor and Mikhail are assigned to the boarding school of L.I. Chermak, which was located on Basmannaya Street, where they studied until 1837. His fellow student V.M. Kachenovsky told about Dostoevsky as a boarder: "... he was a serious, thoughtful boy, blond, with a pale face. He was little interested in games: during recreation, he did not leave almost books, spending the rest of his free time in conversations with senior pupils of the boarding school ... ".

As already mentioned above, in the winter of 1837 Fyodor Mikhailovich's mother died, and this period is considered to be the end of the writer's childhood. And exactly one year later, he and his brother Mikhail went to St. Petersburg to enter the Engineering School. But Mikhail cannot be enrolled there for health reasons and he was forced to enter the engineering junker in Revel.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky did not really like to talk about his service and study at the Engineering School, both during his studies and after. This is probably due to the fact that he entered there only at the behest of his father, who died in the early summer of 1839. The future writer endured this tragedy very hard, especially since there were persistent rumors that Mikhail Andreevich, who liked to pester village girls, was killed by his own peasants in the village of Darovoye (Tula province, where little Fedya spent every summer), which they bought in 1831. And it was with the death of his father that the first attack of epilepsy was connected, which haunted Fyodor Mikhailovich until the end of his life.

One of the happiest moments in the first years of Dostoevsky's life and study in St. Petersburg was communication with the romantic poet I. N. Shidlovsky. Here is what he wrote to his brother Mikhail: "... Oh, what a frank, pure soul!... Oh, if you knew those poems that he wrote last spring ...". Dostoevsky simply rested in communion with him with his soul from everyday activities at the school.

The years spent at the school can be considered as the years of the formation of the writer. Here is what Grigorovich, who was a friend of Dostoevsky and who studied with him, wrote: “Fyodor Mikhailovich even then showed signs of lack of sociability, shunned, did not take part in games, sat, poring over a book, and looked for a solitary place ... In the reactionary time of his one could always... find... with a book." Dostoevsky read at that time Schiller and Shakespeare, Goethe and Balzac. And it was during his years of study that he learned to understand Gogol, or rather, to notice those life situations that Gogol was so good at putting on paper. In the future, Dostoevsky was not inferior to Gogol in this regard.

After graduating from college, in 1843, Dostoevsky was enlisted in the drawing room of the engineering department, but a year later he sought dismissal from military service and, together with D.V. Grigorovich (already a well-known writer in certain circles), rented an apartment. In May 1845, Dostoevsky wrote the first work, which he called "Poor People". But the first attempt at writing was the translation of Balzac's Eugene Grandet, which was published in 1844.

Dostoevsky read the novel "Poor People" to Grigorovich, who, in turn, showed it to N.A. Nekrasov, who, with the words "A new Gogol has appeared!", took the book to V.G. Belinsky. The delighted Vissarion Grigorievich called the author to him and said: “Do you understand yourself ... what you wrote! It cannot be that you, at your twenty years old, already understand this ... as an artist, I got it as a gift, appreciate your gift and remain faithful and you will be a great writer! Subsequently, Fedor Mikhailovich recalled: "It was the most delightful minute in my whole life."

Dostoevsky remained true to his gift, but he parted ways with Belinsky (Belinsky was an atheist). But subsequently Dostoevsky more than once remembered the great critic with gratitude.

The novel "Poor People" was published in the "Petersburg Collection". And it was after this that he became widely known. And just like Nekrasov, many considered him a successor to the traditions of Gogol. But unlike Gogol, Dostoevsky describes his characters more deeply from the psychological side.

After "Poor People" Dostoevsky opens a whole cycle of works showing the life of various strata of society. He writes the novels: "The Double", "The Mistress", "A Novel in Nine Letters", "Mr. Prokharchin", "Crawlers" and, to the delight of many, several stories about "dreamers". The appearance of works about "dreamers" was preceded by Dostoevsky's publication of a number of feuilletons under the general title "Petersburg Chronicle" (1847), in which he explained the reason for the appearance of "dreamers" in life. Not feeling in themselves the strength to fight, they ("dreamers") go into their fictional world, the world of fantasies and dreams.

But Dostoevsky's most "main" dreamer was the protagonist of the story "White Nights". The protagonist of the story understands that it is impossible to live in your dreams all your life. And at the first encounter with real life, he is defeated.

Then Dostoevsky begins to write the novel Netochka Nezvanova. But he fails to finish it.

Early in the morning, at 4 o'clock on April 23, 1849, gendarmes came to Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, on the personal order of the then Tsar Nicholas I, arrested him and imprisoned him in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Several dozen Petrashevites were arrested along with him.

This arrest was preceded (in March 1846, a stranger in a black cloak came up on Nevsky Prospekt and asked Dostoevsky: "What is the idea of your future story, may I ask?") acquaintance with a former employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs M.V. Butashevich-Petrashevsky.

And starting in the spring of 1847, the writer became a permanent member of the Petrashevsky circle. Political, socio-economic, literary and other problems were discussed at these meetings. Dostoevsky was a supporter of the abolition of serfdom and the abolition of censorship of literature. But unlike the rest of the Petrashevites, he was an ardent opponent of the violent overthrow of the existing government.

In Petrashevsky's circle, Dostoevsky becomes close to Durov, Speshnev, Mombelli and they plan to create their own printing house, but do not have time.

On one of the "Fridays" the writer read Belinsky's famous letter to Gogol with sharp criticism of "Selected passages from correspondence with friends." Reading this "criminal" letter became one of the main points of Dostoevsky's accusation, since the investigation did not find out about the plans to create a secret printing house. Later, Dostoevsky was outraged that he was arrested only for reading Belinsky and Gogol, but for reading exactly whom, he did not understand. In general, it is difficult to attribute Dostoevsky to the socialist utopians, and he became a member of the circle so as not to remain aloof from public life.

By court decision, Dostoevsky and nine other members of the circle were deprived of their noble titles and ranks and were imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. But this arrest did not break his will in any way: “I see that there is so much vitality in me that you cannot draw it out - this is a line from a letter written from the fortress to my brother.

During the nine months spent awaiting trial, Fyodor Mikhailovich was very interested in everything that happened at large, asked his brother to send him more books and wrote one story, "The Little Hero."

All this time, an investigation was conducted, during which the accused writer denied all the charges against him. He did not betray any of his comrades, citing his ignorance. But the military court recognized Dostoevsky as "one of the most important criminals" and, accusing him of criminal plans against the government, sentenced him to death.

Fyodor Mikhailovich described his life in a Siberian prison in the book Notes from the House of the Dead (1860), in which he eloquently showed not romantic robbers, but the off-camera life of real thugs who had lost everything human; quiet and meek people who could not stand the soldier's service and killed their officer; and completely innocent, accused of a crime, although they did not participate in it. In prison, Dostoevsky was mentally lonely due to the fact that the prisoners often did not want to communicate with him, considering him a nobleman, a man from another world. But even there he managed to write (although it is strictly forbidden there) an essay known as the Siberian Notebook, where he wrote down his thoughts, prison songs, proverbs, etc. "Siberian Notebook" and became the main material for the creation of "Notes from the Dead House".

In February 1854, Dostoevsky, by decision of the same court, was appointed as a private in the Semipalatinsk line battalion, where he tried to write. But he did not finish a single work in exile, probably the soldier's life interfered with him. But Dostoevsky was already a well-known writer in his circles, and thanks to this he becomes a friend of the regional prosecutor Wrangel, who was present at the execution of the Petrashevites in the winter of 1849. This gave Fyodor Mikhailovich the opportunity to be in high society (where he also met Ch.Ch. Valikhanov, a prominent Kazakh figure, with whom he kept in touch even after his exile) and thanks to this acquaintance, Private Dostoevsky received an officer rank on October 1, 1856, and a little earlier, the title of nobility was returned to him.

At the beginning of 1857 Dostoevsky marries. The widow of a retired official, Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, becomes his wife. He fell in love with her (even when she was married) at first sight, but Maria Dmitrievna did not have an angelic character, and therefore the marriage was unsuccessful, but Dostoevsky is rescued by literary work and he makes sketches for the works "Uncle's Dream" and "The Village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants", which were completed after the exile. They settled in Semipalatinsk, and two years later Dostoevsky nevertheless achieved his resignation, already in the rank of ensign. But he is not immediately allowed to live in St. Petersburg, so beloved to him, or at least in Moscow, but is settled (again, not without the "help" of the Russian government) to live in Tver (March 1859). But very soon Dostoevsky seeks to move to the northern capital, and in the second half of December 1859, exactly 10 years after the "execution" on the Semyonovsky parade ground, he again finds himself in St. Petersburg.

Upon his return from Siberia, Dostoevsky wants to tell everyone about his new world outlook that has developed after hard labor and actually begins to manage the political magazine Vremya, which was founded by brother Mikhail in 1861. And the first major work written by Fyodor Mikhailovich after the exile was published precisely in the first issues of Vremya in early 1861. And this work was called "Humiliated and Insulted", in which the main character was Ivan Petrovich, who embodied some facts from the life of the author himself.

Almost at the same time, the work of art "Notes from the House of the Dead" was published, in which Dostoevsky eloquently described life in the Siberian prison. In 1863, he published a series of essays "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions", in which he describes life in European countries, seen in the summer of 1862.

In April 1863, the Vremya magazine was closed by censors. From the very opening, the policy of the publication was distinguished by independence, and the authorities did not really like it, and for the article “The Fatal Question”, dedicated to the Polish uprising, written by the employee N. N. Strakhov, the magazine “Vremya” was banned.

But in 1864, Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky managed to obtain a license to publish a new magazine, which became known as "The Epoch", one of whose employees was again Fyodor Mikhailovich, who wrote "Notes from the Underground" in the same year. Many literary critics call this work a prologue to a mature novel.

In 1864, Dostoevsky's wife, Maria Dmitrievna, died, and on July 22 of the same year, brother Mikhail died of illness. For Fyodor Mikhailovich, this was a heavy blow, and besides, all the main concerns related to the Epoch fell on his shoulders, but this still did not help the magazine, and in February 1856 the publication was forced to close.

Even before the death of his wife (1862), Dostoevsky had another love. She was the young and ardent Apollinaria Suslova, who was very attracted to everything revolutionary and immediately fell in love with Dostoevsky, who had recently served his sentence in the political case. She was not like the sickly Maria Dmitrievna, who often left either for treatment or for her abnormal son. (still from his first marriage), then to his parents. Apollinaria awakened in Dostoevsky those feelings that he had long forgotten about and proposes to her, but she rejects him and runs away with another man. But Dostoevsky catches up with her in Paris and they travel around Europe together for 2 whole months. But in the end, she was forced to leave him because of Dostoevsky's strong addiction to roulette (he lost everything, including her jewelry). And until the spring of 1871, Dostoevsky continued to periodically visit gambling houses to the detriment of himself and his family. As for Suslova, Fyodor Mikhailovich maintained contact with her (by correspondence) until May 1867, when he was already married a second time. But the writer did not forget her and described her prototype of Polina in the novel "The Gambler".

Dostoevsky was left without a livelihood and concluded an enslaving contract with the book publisher Stelovsky, according to which Dostoevsky was obliged to write a new novel by November 1, 1866 for the collection of his works that was being prepared for publication. In the event of failure to comply with this clause of the contract, the writer lost the ownership of all his works for nine years.

But he couldn't write anything. And when there was a month left, on the advice of his friends, he hired a stenographer and in 28 days dictated the novel "The Gambler" to her, all the more so Dostoevsky knew the psychology and tactics of a roulette player like no one else. In my opinion, Dostoevsky was the most gambler of all celebrities. And after a short time, Fyodor Mikhailovich makes an offer to the same stenographer, who turned out to be Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina.

In the same 1866, Dostoevsky, living in Olonkin's house on Kaznacheyskaya Street (where he moved immediately after the death of his brother), dictated his immortal novel Crime and Punishment to his new stenographer, which was fully completed the following year. Anna Grigoryevna recalled: “Fyodor Mikhailovich, in the first weeks of our married life, walking with me, took me to the courtyard of a house and showed me a stone under which Raskolnikov hid the things stolen from the old woman.” "Crime and Punishment" became the first thriller in the world and the first domestic detective story, the main meaning of which is that the worst punishment after the committed crime occurs in the soul of a person, and not in hard labor or anywhere else.

February 1867 she became his wife. And it was a truly happy marriage. From 1867 to 1871, the writer, together with his new wife, fleeing from creditors, spends abroad, only occasionally coming to Russia. They alternately lived in Dresden, Berlin, Basel, Geneva and Florence. And only at the end of 1871, after the writer managed to partially pay off his debts (some of which he had done while playing in the casino, some remained from his brother, which he himself took), he was able to return to St. Petersburg.

In July 1871 Dostoevsky with his wife and daughter returned to St. Petersburg. The writer and his family spent the summer of 1872 in Staraya Russa; this city became the family's permanent summer residence. In 1876 Dostoevsky bought a house here. In 1872, the writer visits the Wednesdays of Prince V. P. Meshchersky, a supporter of counter-reforms and publisher of the newspaper-magazine Grazhdanin. At the request of the publisher, supported by A. Maikov and Tyutchev, in December 1872 Dostoevsky agreed to take over the editing of The Citizen, having stipulated in advance that he would take on these duties temporarily. In "The Citizen" (1873), Dostoevsky implemented the long-conceived idea of "A Writer's Diary" (a cycle of essays of a political, literary and memoir nature, united by the idea of direct, personal communication with the reader), published a number of articles and notes (including political reviews "Foreign events "). Dostoevsky soon became weary of editorial work, clashes with Meshchersky also became more and more violent, and the impossibility of turning the weekly into "an organ of people with independent convictions" became more obvious. In the spring of 1874, the writer resigned as editor, although he occasionally collaborated on The Citizen later. Due to deteriorating health (increased emphysema) in June 1847, he leaves for treatment in Ems and repeats trips there in 1875, 1876 and 1879. In January 1877, under the influence of Nekrasov's "Last Songs", Dostoevsky visits the dying poet, often sees him in November; December 30 delivers a speech at the funeral of Nekrasov.

Dostoevsky's activity demanded direct acquaintance with "living life". He visits (with the assistance of A.F. Koni) the colonies of juvenile delinquents (1875) and the Orphanage (1876). In 1878, after the death of his beloved son Alyosha, he made a trip to Optina Hermitage, where he talked with Elder Ambrose. The writer is especially concerned about the events in Russia. The "Diary of a Writer" matured and tested the ideas and plot of his last novel. At the end of 1877, Dostoevsky announced the termination of the "Diary" in connection with the intention to deal with "one artistic work that has developed ... in these two years of publication of the Diary imperceptibly and involuntarily." "The Brothers Karamazov" is the final work of the writer, in which the artistic embodiment received many of the ideas of his work.The history of the Karamazovs, as the author wrote, is not just a family chronicle, but a typified and generalized "image of our modern reality, our modern intellectual Russia." Philosophy and psychology of "crime and punishment", the dilemma of "socialism and Christianity ", the eternal struggle of "divine" and "devilish" in the souls of people, the theme of "fathers and children" traditional for classical Russian literature - such is the problematic of the novel. On the night of January 25-26, Dostoevsky bled in his throat. children, he died at 8:38 pm On January 31, 1881, with a huge gathering of people, the funeral of the writer took place. - Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.

Dostoevsky Christmas story genre

1.2 F.M. Dostoevsky's stories about children

In the work of F.M. Dostoevsky in terms of genre, among the numerous novels and short stories, stories that are dedicated to children occupy a significant place. Particular attention of readers is drawn to such stories of the writer as “The Boy with a Pen” and “The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree”. Both of these works of the writer touch upon the most important topic for human existence, morality and the need for spirituality in relation to children and in human relations in general.

Children are a strange people, they dream and imagine. In front of the tree, and right before Christmas, on the street, on a certain corner, I kept meeting a boy, no more than seven years old. In the terrible frost, he was dressed almost like a summer dress, but his neck was tied with some kind of junk, which means that someone still equipped him, sending him. He walked "with a pen"; this is a technical term, it means to beg. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something learned by heart; but this one did not howl, and spoke somehow innocently and unusually, and looked trustingly into my eyes, - therefore, he was just beginning his profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister, she was unemployed, sick; maybe it’s true, but only later I found out that these boys are in the dark: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected kopecks, the boy returns with red, stiff hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent people are drinking, from the very ones who, “having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work again no earlier than on Wednesday evening” . There, in the basements, their hungry and beaten wives drink with them, and their hungry babies squeak right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected kopecks, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, they sometimes pour a pigtail into his mouth and laugh when, with a choked breath, he falls almost unconscious on the floor.

When he grows up, they quickly sell him somewhere to the factory, but everything that he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the caretakers, and they again drink it away. But even before the factory, these children become perfect criminals. They wander around the city and know such places in different basements that you can crawl into and where you can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with a janitor in a basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even in eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end, they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for only one thing, for freedom, and they run away from their negligent wanderers already from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a god, whether there is a sovereign; even such convey things about them that are unbelievable to hear, and yet they are all facts.

The story "The boy at Christ on the Christmas tree"

In this story, the writer tells about the difficult non-human existence of people, among whom begging children cause particular pain. One of these little people lived in the corner of the basement, about which the writer spoke as follows: “It seems to me that there was a boy in the basement, but still very small, about six years old or even less. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was trembling. His breath came out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on the chest, out of boredom, purposely let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself, watching how it flies out. But he really wanted to eat. Several times in the morning he approached the bunks, where on a bedding as thin as a pancake and on some bundle under his head, instead of a pillow, lay his sick mother. How did she get here? She must have come with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The mistress of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants dispersed, it was a festive matter, and the remaining one dressing gown had been lying dead drunk for a whole day, not even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman was moaning from rheumatism, who once lived somewhere in nannies, and now she was dying alone, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he already began to be afraid to come close to her corner. Somewhere he got a drink in the hallway, but he did not find a crust anywhere, and once in the tenth he already came up to wake his mother. He felt terrible, at last, in the darkness: evening had already begun long ago, but no fire was lit. Feeling his mother's face, he was surprised that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. “It’s very cold here,” he thought, stood a little, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, then breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, groping for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, went out of the cellar. He would have gone earlier, but he was always afraid upstairs, on the stairs, of a big dog that had been howling all day at the neighbor's door. But the dog was gone, and he suddenly went out into the street.

God, what a city! Never before had he seen anything like it. There, from where he came, at night such black darkness, one lamp on the whole street. Wooden low houses are locked with shutters; on the street, it gets a little dark - nobody, everyone shuts up at home, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But it was so warm there and they gave him food, but here, God, if only he could eat! And what a knock and thunder here, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam pours from driven horses, from their hotly breathing snouts; horseshoes clinking against the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing like that, and, Lord, I so want to eat, at least a piece of some kind, and my fingers suddenly hurt so much. A law enforcement officer passed by and turned away so as not to notice the boy.

Here again the street - oh, what a wide! Here they will probably crush them like that; how they all shout, run and ride, but the light, the light! And what's that? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass is a room, and in the room there is a tree up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and there are so many lights on the Christmas tree, how many golden bills and apples, and all around are dolls, little horses; and children running around the room, smart, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here is the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, marvels, and already laughs, and his fingers and legs already hurt, and on his hands they have become completely red, they can no longer bend and move painfully. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers were so sore, he began to cry and ran on, and now he again sees a room through another glass, again there are trees, but there are pies on the tables, all sorts - almond, red, yellow, and four people are sitting there. rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen enter them from the street. A boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and went in. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady came up quickly and thrust a kopeck into his hand, and she herself opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! And the kopeck immediately rolled out and rang on the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went quickly, quickly, but where he did not know. He wants to cry again, but he's afraid, and he runs, runs and blows on his hands. And longing takes him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrifying, and suddenly, Lord! So what is it again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very much like they are alive! Some old man sits and seems to be playing a big violin, two others stand right there and play small violins, and shake their heads in time, and look at each other, and their lips move, they talk, they really talk, - only now because of the glass is not audible. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he completely guessed that they were pupae, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that there were such! And he wants to cry, but it's so funny, funny on pupae. Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the dressing gown from behind: a big angry boy stood nearby and suddenly cracked him on the head, tore off his cap, and gave him a leg from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stupefied, jumped up and ran, ran, and suddenly he ran he didn’t know where, into the doorway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down for firewood: “They won’t find it here, and it’s dark.”

He sat down and writhed, but he himself could not catch his breath from fear, and suddenly, quite suddenly, he felt so good: his arms and legs suddenly stopped hurting and it became as warm, as warm as on the stove; now he shuddered all over: oh, why, he was about to fall asleep! How good it is to fall asleep here: “I’ll sit here and go again to look at the pupae,” the boy thought and grinned, remembering them, “just like they are alive! ..” And suddenly he heard that his mother sang a song over him. "Mom, I'm sleeping, oh, how good it is to sleep here!"

Let's go to my Christmas tree, boy, - a quiet voice suddenly whispered above him.

He thought it was all his mother, but no, not her; Who called him, he does not see, but someone bent over him and hugged him in the darkness, and he held out his hand to him and ... and suddenly, - oh, what a light! Oh what a tree! And this is not a Christmas tree, he has not yet seen such trees! Where is he now: everything glitters, everything shines and all around are dolls - but no, they are all boys and girls, only so bright, they all circle around him, fly, they all kiss him, take him, carry him with them, yes and he himself flies, and he sees: his mother looks and laughs at him joyfully.

Mother! Mother! Oh, how good it is here, mom! - the boy shouts to her, and again kisses the children, and he wants to tell them as soon as possible about those dolls behind the glass. - Who are you boys? Who are you girls? he asks, laughing and loving them.

This is the “Christ tree,” they answer him. - Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day for little children who don’t have their own Christmas tree there ... - And he found out that these boys and girls were all the same as him, children, but some were still frozen in their baskets, in which they were thrown on the stairs to the doors of St. Petersburg officials, others suffocated at the little chuffs, from the orphanage to be fed, others died at the withered breasts of their mothers during the Samara famine, the fourth suffocated in the third-class carriages from the stench, and yet they are now here, they are all now like angels, all with Christ, and he himself is in the midst of them, and stretches out his hands to them, and blesses them and their sinful mothers ... And the mothers of these children all stand right there, on the sidelines, and cry; each recognizes her boy or girl, and they fly up to them and kiss them, wipe their tears with their hands and beg them not to cry, because they feel so good here ...

And below, in the morning, the janitors found a small corpse of a boy who had run in and froze behind firewood; they also found his mother ... She died even before him; both met with the Lord God in the sky.

And why did I write such a story, so not going into an ordinary reasonable diary, and even a writer? He also promised stories mainly about real events! But that's just the point, it always seems and imagines to me that all this could really happen - that is, what happened in the basement and behind the firewood, and there about Christ's Christmas tree - I don’t know how to tell you could it happen or not? That's why I'm a novelist, to invent.

SECTION 2. Genre originality of the Christmas story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree"

.1 Overview of the works of F.M. Dostoevsky (theme and main storyline)

The story "The village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants"

Sergei Alexandrovich receives a letter from his uncle with a request to come to Stepanchikovo and "marry as soon as possible his former pupil, the daughter of one of the poorest provincial officials, by the name of Yezhevikin." On the way to Stepanchikovo, he meets Stepan Alekseevich Bakhcheev, who describes to him briefly the last events in the village and the role of Foma Fomich in these events. Arriving in Stepanchikovo, Sergey Alexandrovich meets his uncle and tries to find out from him why he invited him to come, but does not receive a clear answer. Gradually it turns out that Colonel Rostanev is in love with Nastenka and would like to marry her, but his mother knows about these plans and Foma Fomich, who are trying to upset the marriage. Foma Fomich arranges one scandal after another, demanding that his name day be celebrated on the same day as the name day of the son of Colonel Ilyusha. The colonel cannot stand it and tries to pay off Foma Fomich, offering him fifteen thousand silver rubles, but only that he leave Stepanchikovo. Foma refuses money, threatens to leave Stepanchikov, accusing the colonel of "mysteriously weaving nets" into which he "fell like a fool." The colonel regrets his act and asks Foma to stay. Foma Fomich demands that the regiments Nickcalled him "Your Excellency", to which the colonel finally agrees. When all the inhabitants of Stepanchikovo gathered to celebrate Ilyusha's name day, Foma Fomich declares that he is leaving the colonel's house, accusing him of "seducing the unfortunate girl" Nastenka Ezhevikina. The colonel literally throws Foma out of the house and asks his mother for blessings for marriage with Nastenka. The general's wife refuses, demanding that Foma Fomich be returned to the house and begging Nastenka not to marry the colonel. After this scene, Nastenka refuses to marry the colonel, because she does not want to "settle discord in your house through herself." Foma Fomich is returned to Stepanchikovo. He makes a fiery speech, the result of which is the blessing of the marriage of Colonel Rostanev and Nastenka Ezhevikina.

The story "Crocodile"

An official, Ivan Matveich, is swallowed by a crocodile. To the considerable surprise of those around him, Ivan Matveich not only remains alive, but is completely satisfied with the current state of affairs. Realizing that this attracts everyone's attention, he indulges in fantasies that now he will be able to influence the minds of his fellow citizens through the crocodile, bringing them light and new theories that are surprisingly easy to come up with in a crocodile:

Ivan Matveich is going to live for 1000 years and is only annoyed that he is wearing clothes made of Russian, and not English fabric - he will not last long and he, perhaps, can be digested in 1000 years. For himself and his wife, the former modest official builds grandiose plans, one more ambitious than the other.

The other participants in the story behave in the same absurd way. The German, the owner of the crocodile, is concerned about the health of the crocodile, his main capital. Ivan Matveich's wife is more interested in her current position as a "widow". A solid acquaintance Timofey Semenych - no matter how he had to be responsible for a colleague at work and not attract too much attention from his superiors. Newspapers either stigmatize a Russian drunken official who climbed into a crocodile and never wants to get out of there, or describe how a food lover bought and ate a whole crocodile at a time “still alive, cutting off juicy pieces with a penknife and swallowing them with extreme haste” .

Novel "Crime and Punishment"

The plot revolves around the main character, Rodion Raskolnikov, in whose head the theory of crime is ripening. According to his idea, humanity is divided into "the right to have" and "trembling creatures." “Having the right” (Napoleon is a classic example) have the right to commit a murder or several murders for the sake of future great deeds. Raskolnikov himself is very poor, he cannot pay not only for his studies at the university, but also for his own living. His mother and sister are also poor, he soon learns that his sister (Avdotya Romanovna) is ready to marry a man she does not love for the sake of money to help her family. This was the last straw, and Raskolnikov commits the deliberate murder of an old pawnbroker ("louse" by his definition) and the forced murder of her sister, a witness. But Raskolnikov cannot use the stolen goods, he hides it. From this time begins the terrible life of a criminal, a restless, feverish consciousness, his attempts to find support and meaning in life, justify an act and evaluate it. Subtle psychologism, existential understanding of the act and the further existence of Raskolnikov are colorfully conveyed by Dostoevsky. More and more new faces are involved in the action of the novel. Fate confronts him with a lonely, frightened, poor girl, in whom he finds a kindred spirit and support, Sonya Marmeladova, who has taken the road of self-sale in order to provide for her family. Sonya, who believes in God, is trying to somehow survive in life, having lost her father, and later her stepmother (she lost her mother in early childhood). Raskolnikov also finds support in his university friend Razumikhin, who is in love with his sister Avdotya Romanovna. Such characters appear as investigator Porfiry Petrovich, who understood Raskolnikov’s soul and witty brought him to clean water, Svidrigailov, a libertine and a scoundrel, is a vivid example of a “having the right” person (according to Raskolnikov’s theory), Luzhin, a lawyer and a cunning egoist and others. The novel reveals the social and psychological causes of crimes and disasters, moral contradictions, the oppressive circumstances of the fall, describes the life of the St. Petersburg poor. Throughout the novel, Raskolnikov is trying to understand whether he is a worthy person, whether he has the right to judge other people. Unable to withstand the burden of his crime, the protagonist confesses to the murder. However, he blames himself not for committing the murder, but for going for it without appreciating his inner weakness. Raskolnikov is sent to hard labor, but Sonya remains by his side. These two lonely people found each other at a very difficult time for both of them. In the end, the hero renounces his claim to being chosen and finds support in his love for Sonya.

Novel "Teenager"

Arkady Dolgoruky is nineteen years old. The author calls him Teenager. This is how all the characters in the novel perceive him. In the drafts for the novel, Arkady says: "Everyone thinks I'm a teenager." He objects to this: “What a teenager I am! Do they grow up at nineteen?”; and at the same time appeals to "the rank of youth of an unprotected teenager." Arkady gets into circumstances that make the problem of choice possible and inevitable. The opportunity is in his youth, the incompleteness of the process of becoming. This is inevitable in that state of the already begun disintegration of his personality, moral and mental, which marks the critical side of the consciousness of the hero himself. Inevitability and in the author's decision.

The nineteen-year-old age of Arkady during the period of the events he describes is emphasized by Dostoevsky already in the first drafts for the novel. It is significant at the same time that, correlating the concept of "teenager" with the nineteen years of the hero, the author notes the discrepancy between his age and the traditional interpretation of the age limits of the definition of "teenager". "I would call him a teenager if he had not passed 19 years old." Justifying for himself the right to call the hero a "teenager", Dostoevsky continues: "Really, do they grow up after 19 years old?", as if arguing with his hero, and answers: "If not physically, then morally." The following remark by Dostoevsky is also characteristic: “The fact that he was so easily discharged, having sent him money from his aunt’s Moscow, is explained by his 19 years: there is nothing to stand on ceremony, and it’s not worth talking”

The novel "The Brothers Karamazov"

The action of the novel takes place in the city of Skotoprigonievsk (Dostoevsky took Staraya Russa as the basis). Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, 55 years old, married a rich woman and began to manage her fortune. Among other things, he arranged sprees and suffered beatings from his wife. Ultimately, his wife left him for St. Petersburg with an officer, leaving his father with a very young son, Dmitry. Not having time to dispose of her fortune, she died in St. Petersburg, and Fyodor Pavlovich got the opportunity to dispose of all the capital of the deceased. He safely forgot about his son, indulging in speculation and orgies of various kinds. After some time, he married a second time - to a beautiful orphan, completely without a dowry, and had two children with her - the elder Ivan and the younger Alexei. By mocking his wife and not stopping a dissolute life during marriage, he ultimately drove her to insanity and brought her to the grave. Fedor Pavlovich left three children - Dmitry from his first marriage, Ivan and Alexei from his second.

The children were brought up first by Grigory, a servant of Karamazov, then they were given to guardians. Dmitry, when he grew up, went to military service, Ivan and Alexei were sent to study at the university. During all this time, Fyodor Pavlovich did not remember his children. Dmitry inherited part of his mother’s fortune, but in fact he periodically received money from his father, however, not having an accurate idea of the size of his inheritance, he lived everything quickly and, according to Fyodor Pavlovich, still owed him. Ivan did not take money from his father during his studies and even managed to achieve financial independence. Alexei dropped out of the gymnasium and went as a novice to a monastery. His mentor, Elder Zosima, agreed to judge between father and son. Alyosha was most afraid that his relatives would behave unworthily in front of the elder - and it happened. Their meeting in the monastery ended in a uniform scandal, which Fyodor Pavlovich perpetrated. The feud between father and son, in addition to the material part, contained a conflict on the basis of love: both looked after Agrafena Svetlova (Grushenka) - a wayward bourgeois woman with certain means. Almost immediately after the scandal, the elder Zosima dies, sending Alexei "to serve the world."

Dmitry reveals to Alyosha that he is burdened not only by hostile relations with his father and uncertain relations with Grusha (Svetlova), but also by the fact that he has a debt to Ekaterina Ivanovna Verkhovtseva, his bride, whom he left because he considers himself unworthy of her (since she wants to become his wife in order to save Mitya "from himself", considering herself indebted to him for helping her father avoid the shame of embezzlement of state money). She gave him three thousand to give this money to her relative in Moscow, and he spent it on a spree with Grusha in the village of Mokroe. Now Dmitry hopes to receive three thousand from his father on account of what was not given to him, and Fyodor Pavlovich decided to use just such an amount out of anger to seduce Grusha. He wrapped this money in paper, tied it with a ribbon, even wrote a touching inscription to Grushenka, and hid it under the pillow.

Being in a severe mental disorder, and thinking that Agrafena would agree to come to Fyodor Pavlovich, Dmitry sneaks up to his father’s house at night, runs up to the window with the intention of distracting him with a secret signal and taking away the money, however, at the last moment, bad thoughts leave him and he breaks his head rushes to the fence. He is overtaken by the servant Gregory, who considered Dmitry a "paricide". In a rush, Dmitry wounds Grigory with a metal pestle on the head. From this wound, the servant loses consciousness, and Dmitry, thinking that he is dead, bitterly leaves him there by the fence. After some time, it turns out that Grigory's suspicions about the death of master Fyodor Pavlovich are not in vain. He is indeed found dead in his room, and, of course, he is accused of the crime of Dmitry Karamazov.

Dmitry rushes to the village of Mokroe that night, having learned that Grushenka went there, to her lover, who, having deceived her, disappeared 5 years ago. Upon arrival, Dmitry discovers his beloved in the company of the "only one", as she herself calls him; however, Grushenka sits upset, because she has long lost feelings for this man. In addition, there was no trace of the ardent, interesting officer whom she had known before. Dmitry offers the pan (beloved - a former officer) 3 thousand so that he gets out immediately and no longer looks for Grushenka. Pan does not agree, because Dmitry is not ready to give the entire amount at once. There is a scandal over a game of cards (Dmitri and Pan are playing), as Pan makes a deck swap. The pan demands from Grushenka that she appease Dmitri, Grushenka drives the pan away. Village girls and peasants come to the inn where Dmitry, Grusha, Polish lords are, everyone sings and dances, money is distributed right and left - a drunken revelry begins. Grushenka tells Dmitry that she loves him, that she is ready to leave with him and start a new, honest life. Dmitry is inspired, asks God that the old man Grigory, whom he accidentally hit, stays alive.

Quite unexpectedly, the police appear and arrest Dmitry. A preliminary investigation begins, where Dmitry swears that he did not kill his father. Dmitry tells the investigators that he really was in his father's garden, thinking that Grusha is with him. Convinced that she is not there, he rushes out of the garden; when he climbed over the fence, his servant Grigory grabbed him by the clothes, and Dmitry, being very excited, hit him on the head. Seeing the blood (that's where the blood is on his hands), he jumped off to see if the old man was still alive. When Dmitri is informed that Grigory is not dead, Karamazov seems to come to life, saying "there is no blood on my hands." After the incident in the garden (according to Dmitry), he rushed to Wet. When asked by the investigator where he got the money from, Dmitry does not want to answer for reasons of honor, however, then he tells how he borrowed 3 thousand from Mrs. Verkhovtsova, but spent only half, and sewed the other half in an amulet around his neck. The catch is that during the first spree in Mokry, Dmirty himself told everyone and everyone that he brought exactly 3 thousand to spend (although in fact 2 times less), everyone confirms this. The investigator says that an envelope from under the money that the old man saved for Pear was found at the crime scene. Dmitry says that he heard about this envelope, but never saw it and did not take money. But all the evidence and testimonies of other people speak against him. At the end of the interrogation, Dmitry is taken into custody, imprisoned.

Ivan returns, he is sure that the killer is his brother Dmitry. Alyosha is convinced that Dmitry is not guilty. Dmitry himself is sure that he killed Smerdyakov, who was in the house on the night of the murder, but Smerdyakov on this day feigns an epileptic seizure and his "alibi" is confirmed by the doctors. Meanwhile, Ivan is tormented by conscience, it seems to him that he is to blame for what he did, because he wished his father to die, perhaps he influenced Smerdyakov (Ivan could not decide who killed him). Ivan goes to Smerdyakov, who is in the hospital due to a prolonged epileptic fit; talks to Ivan impudently, laughs. Ivan walks again and again. In the end, Smerdyakov says that it was he who killed the master, but the true killer is Ivan, because he taught Smerdyakov (“everything is permitted”, “what if one reptile devours another?”) And did not interfere with the crime, although he guessed that it will come true. Gives money (3 thousand). Ivan screams in horror that tomorrow (on the day of the trial) he will betray Smerdyakov. At home, Ivan begins to have a fever (in continuation of nervous attacks with hallucinations), Smerdyakov hangs himself.

At the trial, Katerina Ivanovna, Dmitry's ex-fiancee, presents to the court a letter written by Dmitry in a drunken state, where he promises to find money. who borrowed. He will definitely give it back, even if he has to kill his father, he will do it. Katerina Ivanovna does this to save Ivan, whom she loves. Ivan bursts in, shouting that the killer is Smerdyakov, but by this time Ivan is already going crazy, no one believes him. However, it would seem that the jury believes in Dmitry's innocence, everyone is waiting for a pardon, but the jury passes the verdict "guilty". Dmitry is sentenced to 20 years in hard labor.

The novel ends with Alyosha helping to develop a plan for Dmitry's escape, that is, he considers the sentence unfair.

2.2 Features of the theme and genre of the story "The Boy at Christ on the Christmas Tree"