Lev Losev. Magnificent future of Russia

It so happened that in most literary works, men become the main characters: courageous, strong and with their weaknesses - they often become the main characters of works, especially prose ones. But our life is an interweaving of human destinies. And, of course, in literature it is absolutely impossible to get by with only “the mighty of this world”.

Women's images are a special topic. They play different roles in the works: sometimes they are catalysts for events, direct participants in them; often without them the plot would not have such an emotional mood, brilliance.

In such a voluminous work as “In the First Circle”, written mainly about male destinies, women play a direct role. In this novel, they are assigned the fate of faithful friends, free, unlike men, but not free for various reasons.

Solzhenitsyn's heroines amaze with the depth of their soul. And Simochka, and Clara, and most of the other heroines are ugly in appearance. The author and his characters love them for their inner peace. The image of the girl Agnia is strong in its unusualness, something mystical in it. This girl was from somewhere not from the earth. Unfortunately for herself, she was refined and demanding more than the measure that allows a person to live. There is in it morality, spirituality. And one more quality that belongs to the majority of the female images of the writer. At least those in which the author put a special meaning. This feature is a human oddity. The heroines of Solzhenitsyn are, as it were, "not of this world." Often they are lonely, they are not understood even by the closest people. Sometimes their inner world is so complex, unusual and great that if it were divided into several people, none of them would feel deprived. They rarely find interlocutors who could feel complicity with them, listen and understand.

The girl Clara is considered strange even by her father. And suddenly a miracle happens. She finds a kindred spirit in I. Volodin, an extremely intelligent, who knew and seen a lot, a deep person who himself is strange even for his own wife. “... Clara had a lot of questions that Innokenty could answer!”

In general, this girl, like Simochka, finds warmth and spiritual understanding among people who have learned to appreciate and unravel the inner world of others, despite a superficial glance, to see spiritual beauty and fullness. As already mentioned, Solzhenitsyn's women do not have external attractiveness, and all attention is directed to the inner world, lifestyle, thoughts, and actions. The absence of beauty makes it possible to objectively evaluate the female image according to universal criteria.

The work “Matryona Dvor” is written entirely about a woman. Despite many events unrelated to her, Matryona is the main character. The plot of the story develops around her. And this elderly woman has a lot in common with the young girls from the novel “In the First Circle”. There is something in her appearance, and it was in her youth, something ridiculous, strange. A stranger among her own, she had her own world. Condemned, incomprehensible that she is not like everyone else. "Indeed! - after all, a piglet is in every hut! And she didn’t have!…”

Matryona has a difficult tragic fate. And the stronger her image becomes, the more the hardships of her life are revealed: unhappy youth, restless old age. And at the same time, she does not have a super-expressed individuality, and even a craving for philosophical reasoning, like Clara and Agnia. But how much kindness and love of life! At the end of the work, the author speaks about his heroine of the words characterizing her purpose: “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she is the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand. Neither city. Not all our land."

There are female images in Solzhenitsyn, as if opposed to the faithful wives of prisoners, girls from the wild, with a deep soul and a good-natured old woman toiler. So, not at all like their sister Dabnara and Diener, the beauties who lived in the calm well-being of universal reverence do not arouse the author's sympathy too much: in general, nothing is worth anything behind their outer shell. In any case, they are far from the “strange” Clara with her spirituality and wealth of thoughts. They are frivolous and mundane, although they are beautiful in appearance.

This kind of female images slip in the works, emphasizing the charm of highly spiritual heroines and their inner unattractiveness. There are sometimes more of them, like, for example, neighbors and relatives of Matryona, hypocritical and prudent. But their correctness is not emphasized by the quantity, but rather the opposite: they are all imperceptible shadows or just a screaming crowd, which is forgotten behind the more moral and profound.

The author himself, having gone through a complex and varied life path, having seen many different people, substantiated in his heart the image of a woman - first of all a person: one that will support and understand; one that, having its own inner depth, will understand your inner world, perceive you as you are.

Solzhenitsyn mentions the "righteous man" in the story "Matryona's Dvor" and not by accident. This may apply to all goodies in some way. After all, they all knew how to put up with anything. And at the same time remain fighters - fighters for life, for kindness and spirituality, not forgetting about humanity and morality.

The problem of historical causality constantly occupied Solzhenitsyn's thoughts. Evidence of this is the fact that since the late 1960s the camp theme has faded into the background in the writer's work. L.A. Kolobaeva notes the evolution of the writer's worldview from the predominantly social themes of the early "little ones" to the universal questions of later ones.

The researcher noted "an unusual perspective of seeing people and things, sometimes sharply detached, as if alien, allowing from a new angle to notice the absurdities, the absurdity of human life, especially Soviet" . The most significant, in this regard, is the work of N. Rutych, containing an attempt to comprehend the image of Stalin, based on a comparison of two versions of the novel.

According to the researcher, the first fairly complete literary portrait of Stalin appeared precisely in Krug - 96, when the writer introduced new chapters "A Study of a Great Life" and "Emperor of the Earth". The thought of Ya.S. Lurie, who refuted the omnipotence of the personality of a statesman. The main objects of the image in Solzhenitsyn's work is history created by people, the events described take place in a society based on people.

History is being made not only and not so much by individuals, but by large human masses. In this regard, the researcher's conclusion seems logical that neither Hitler nor Stalin “made history; Lenin did not do it either: for all his fanaticism, he was an opportunist who followed first the rebellious pressure of the masses, and then the desire of the country (and his fellow party members) for market relations.

The huge means of extermination that ended up in the hands of statesmen of the 20th century did not change the fact that they, who took massacres on their conscience, could do this because many people were ready to fulfill their will. One of the first attempts to comprehend the figure of Stalin is the work of A.V. Belinkov, which reveals the peculiarities of the perception of this historical figure. “One of the most controversial, and for some even doubtful in Solzhenitsyn's novel, is the figure of Stalin. Discussions and doubts arise due to the fact that such a Stalin could not have done such deeds (such history). The assessment of Stalin from a universal standpoint was unexpected for many and gave rise to a wave of misunderstanding, however, Belinkov correctly believes that Stalin in Solzhenitsyn's novel "In the First Circle" "exists not as a portrait, separated by a frame from other facts of the work, but as an element in the system of his images" .

The variety of judgments about various ethical and philosophical categories are expressed through the images of the novel, the system of which correlates not only and not so much with history, but with the dominant artistic concept of the novel about the close relationship and mutual influence of the external world and the inner self-consciousness of the character, which led the researcher to the idea that Stalin is "insane, disastrous and unnatural." A. Solzhenitsyn expresses a similar opinion in the pages of The Gulag Ahipelago. “In my pre-prison and prison years, I also believed for a long time that Stalin gave a fatal direction to the course of Soviet statehood. But then Stalin died quietly - and has the course of the ship changed so much? What an imprint of his own, personal, he gave the events - this is dull stupidity, tyranny, self-praise. And for the rest, he definitely walked with his foot in the indicated Leninist foot ... ". Comprehending Solzhenitsyn's work, Ya.S. Lurie comes to the conclusion about the evolution of the writer's worldview, expressed in the loss of Soviet patriotism and the rethinking of this very concept. The concretization of the concept of patriotism, the awareness of common responsibility for everything that happens is reflected in the novel "In the First Circle" and in the epic "Red Wheel". According to N.L. Leiderman, “The main subject of Solzhenitsyn’s epic is history itself, the purpose of writing is the truth about a historical event (the catastrophe of Russia in 1917), while a person is interesting to the author not as an intrinsically valuable person, but as a historical function” .

The purpose of our article is to compare the images of Stolypin and Stalin, taking into account the peculiarities of Solzhenitsyn's interpretation of these characters. From our point of view, in the "Red Wheel" A.I. Solzhenitsyn shows how differently historical events affect people, who, in turn, are positioned in history in accordance with their own worldview. From this point of view, one can reveal the similarities between Stolypin and Stalin, who, it would seem, are diametrically opposed to each other. However, both heroes are similar in their desire to strengthen the existing social order. Stalin, represented in the novel by A.I. Solzhenitsyn “In the First Circle”, was afraid of the revolution, his words are akin to a shamanic spell: “No more revolutions are needed!

Behind, behind all revolutions! Not a single one ahead! . Stolypin, realizing the full danger of the revolution, felt the strength to resist the destructive revolutionary ideas: “All Stolypin's thoughts were of the national warehouse. But first it was necessary to give someone else's police battle - but such as the Russian revolution has not yet met and did not expect. In Stalin's words one can clearly hear the fear for one's own life and the fear of losing power. Stolypin, on the other hand, considered power not as an end in itself, but as a way to carry out reforms that would contribute to the flourishing of Russia: “They need great upheavals, we need great Russia!” . All thoughts and actions of P.A. Stolypin were aimed at improving the life of the people in Russia, at strengthening and developing their Motherland. “Peter Stolypin started such a knot early, as far as he remembered, from childhood in Serednikov near Moscow: a Russian peasant on Russian land, how should he own and use this land, so that it would be good for him and the land.” The revolutionaries, on the other hand, were absolutely not interested in improving the well-being of people, at the forefront for them was the overthrow of the monarchy and the seizure of power. Indicative in this case is the statement of Lenartovich: “You must have a generalizing point of view if you do not want to get into a mess. Who knows who in Russia suffered, suffers! Let the suffering of the wounded be added to the suffering of the workers and peasants.

Disgrace in the case of the wounded is also good. Near the end. The worse the better." The revolutionaries did not set themselves the task of improving life in Russia, it would even be more accurate to say that they considered this as an obstacle to achieving their goal. Selecting certain details, Solzhenitsyn seems to turn the character in a certain direction. Stalin is indifferent to the fate of ordinary people, the only thing that suited him in life, this one life he could understand: you say - and people do what, you point out - and people go. There is nothing better than this, higher than this. This is higher than wealth." The problem of the relationship between the hero and the space surrounding him acquires special significance in the works of Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn showed the alienness of the revolutionaries to Russia by describing the 1st Duma, the primary task of which was not to make life easier for the common man, but to overthrow the government and call for a riot.

Stalin, from the novel "In the First Circle", is so alien to Russia, the space surrounding him, that he ruthlessly destroys it, plunging the country into the darkness of totalitarian terror, destroying everything that could remind of old Russia. Stolypin, on the other hand, is so rooted in Russian reality that he absolutely understands that only a hard-working prosperous peasant will be a reliable stronghold of the state. “Land,” according to Stolypin, “should not be enough from each other, but one should plow one’s own differently: learn to take from a tithe not 36 pounds, but 80 and 100, as in the best farms.” Against the backdrop of Stalin's claims of his own genius, Solzhenitsyn represents the character's thoughts about communism as a society of strict discipline and insufficient satiety. “If a person does not take care of food, he will be freed from the material force of history, existence will no longer determine consciousness, and everything will go topsy-turvy.”

The writer clearly sympathizes with Stolypin, which is felt in the style of the chapters devoted to him. To characterize the character, Solzhenitsyn uses the method of indirect assessment, which serves to objectify the narrative. Not only Solzhenitsyn attached special importance to the figure of the Minister of Internal Affairs, but also the hero's contemporaries were aware of the strength, clarity of mind and the role that Pyotr Arkadyevich played in the history of Russia. This is how Bogrov motivates his decision to kill Stolypin: “We must strike at the very plexus of nerves - so as to paralyze the entire state with one blow. And - on the bottom. Such a blow can only be against Stolypin. He is the most malignant figure, the central pillar of this regime. He stands up to the attacks of the opposition and thus creates an abnormal stability for the regime, which in fact does not exist. His activities are extremely harmful to the welfare of the people. The worst thing that he succeeded in was the incredible drop in people's interest in politics. Bogrov's fear and respect for Stolypin is replaced by obvious irony when describing the tsar: "Yes, Nikolai, he is a toy in the hands of Stolypin." In Solzhenitsyn's description of the tsar, ironic notes are clearly heard, mixed with sympathy and understanding of the character's characteristics.

However, the penetrating description is replaced by satire when it comes to the Soviet dictator. The fear of space comes into conflict with Stalin's "Napoleonic" self-assessments. Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the failure of the hero's claims to greatness and world domination by placing him in a cramped, enclosed space. “Strongly hunched over, tangled in the long skirts of the dressing gown, with a shuffling gait, the ruler of the half world went through the second narrow door, no different from the wall, again in a crooked narrow labyrinth, and with a labyrinth into a low bedroom without a window, with reinforced concrete walls.” The contrast effect arises due to the fact that the author uses not the neutral anthroponyms Stalin, Dzhugashvili, but the semantically expressive metonymy "master of half the world", which enters into semantic opposition with the expressions "narrow door", "narrow labyrinth", "low bedroom".

Stolypin, on the other hand, “ascending the podium with a firm step, strong build, portly, prominent, deep-voiced.” The author's refusal from expressively colored vocabulary when describing a character is one of the ways to positively characterize the hero, who is absolutely not characterized by empty vanity and self-praise. Stolypin exudes strength and confidence and absolutely does not need inflated self-esteem. “Peter Arkadyevich, who loved horseback riding and strong solitary walking through the fields, now walked from hall to hall of the palace or went up to its roof, where there was also a place for royal walks.”

And then the ironic statement of the omniscient writer: “And the emperor of this country was also secretly hiding for the second year in a small estate in Peterhof, and just as long ago he did not dare to show himself anywhere publicly and even drive along the roads of his own country under guard. And in whose hands was Russia then? Haven't the revolutionaries won yet?" . Let us continue the comparison of Solzhenitsyn and look at the time of the final victory of the revolutionaries, who led the country and what kind of state was created? The revolutionaries who fought to overthrow the monarchy created a totalitarian society that had no analogues in the world.

The paradox of the situation lies in the fact that even the adherents of the system, by whose fear and zeal it keeps it, are out of tune with it. This "new" society is headed by a dictator who is most concerned with maintaining his own power. The two characters we offer for comparison are radically different from each other not only in character, but also in behavioral style and moral and volitional qualities. Faced with the difficulties of the revolutionary movement, having spent a year in prison, Stalin lost heart and, in order to alleviate his own plight and save his life, agrees to cooperate with the secret police. The assumption put forward by Solzhenitsyn about the possible service of Stalin in the tsarist secret police is not aimed at clarifying the historical truth, but at revealing the psychological characteristics of the hero. This statement also serves to typify the character and complements this historical-psychological invariant with essential features. Thus, Solzhenitsyn indirectly exposes the rest of the revolutionaries, who hastened to burn the Security Department and destroy all the documents: “The revolutionaries knew that they should have burned it as soon as possible.” All of the above allows us to assert that the writer denies Stalin any exclusivity, emphasizing the commonality of the psychological characteristics of the revolutionaries. Stolypin, on the other hand, steadily pursued his line, in spite of any difficulties.

He tried to convince the rebellious Duma of the need for "patient work for the motherland, when they were only going to shout out - to rebellion." Pyotr Arkadyevich overcame the discontent of the revolutionaries, high-ranking officials of tsarist Russia and Nicholas himself, but was firm in his convictions. “With a large figure, a thick voice, and how firmly he stepped, and how confidently he made decisions - Stolypin still strengthened the impression of strength, invincibility, health, which was also captured through newspapers, from distant places of the All-Russian amphitheater. Yes, power has always been undeniable, since one person could lead such a country out of such a situation. Using the technique of indirect characterization allows Solzhenitsyn to reveal the essence of Stolypin's character. It is noteworthy that it was in Bogrov’s mouth that the writer put a clear and concise description of the prime minister’s character traits: “Solypin’s character is not to evade danger. This is how he will meet his certain death.” The problem of comprehension and adequate perception of ongoing events is reflected in the work of B.G. Reizova: “At the beginning of the 19th century, when it was necessary to prove that the historical novel had the right to exist, critics argued that genuine, objective artistic truth could be achieved only in this genre. Past eras lend themselves better to analysis, because the main trends in their development were revealed in the eras that followed them, and their meaning has already been revealed by history. Modernity, they said, had no consequences yet. The processes taking place in it are not guessed by time, and those who live in the whirlpool of events are not able to appreciate and understand them. Then, when the historical novel was replaced by a story from modern life, the point of view changed. Only a contemporary of events can understand them. Only in the crush of an era, experiencing its disasters and hopes, can one know its essence, its problems, the feelings of those who made it and experienced it. The material collected in this article, despite the forced incompleteness, allows us to conclude that neither Solzhenitsyn, a contemporary of the Stalin era, nor the reader who perceives it as history, is able to unambiguously understand and explain the image of Stalin.

The life and work of Stolypin is also not fully understood, too many facts were hushed up and incorrectly interpreted, based on the conjuncture of the era. The study of the figures of these two historical figures is a matter for the future, but Solzhenitsyn's attempt to comprehend these characters is of unconditional value. The relevance of Solzhenitsyn's work at the present stage is due to the fact that the writer's thoughts are based on the Christian experience of previous generations. The growing role of various theological systems has increased the influence of the anthroposophical moods of modern society and the identification of the personal aspect as dominant in Solzhenitsyn's work, has become the basis of modern research. The deep faith inherent in the writer helps him feel the line between good and evil and direct his life and work along the path of good. Yu.V. Rokotyan believes that "these are the heroes of Solzhenitsyn's works: Ivan Denisovich, outwardly seemingly not religious, Matryona, Spiridon, Vorotyntsev and many others."

Literature

1. Belinkov A.V. Stalin at Solzhenitsyn. From unfinished
books
"The fate and books of Alexander Solzhenitsyn" / A.V. Belinkov // New bell. - 1972. - No. 1. - S. 429-430.

2. Kolobaeva L.A. "Tiny" / L.A. Kolobaeva // Literary review. - 1999. - No. 1. - S. 39-44.

3. Leiderman N.L. Contemporary Russian Literature: 1950s–1990s:
study guide [for students. higher textbook institutions]: in 2 vols. - Vol. 1: 1953–1968
/L.N. Leiderman, M.N. Lipovetsky. - M .: "Academy", 2003. - 416 p.

4. Lurie Ya.S. after Leo Tolstoy. Historical views of Tolstoy and problems of the twentieth century / Ya.S. Lurie. - St. Petersburg. - 1993. - 168 p.

5. Nemzer A.S. She has already arrived. Notes on "August the Fourteenth" // A.S. Nemzer / Solzhenitsyn A.I. Collected works in 30 volumes / A.I. Solzhenitsyn. - T.8. The Red Wheel: Time-bound storytelling in the four Knots. – Node I: August the Fourteenth. Book 2. - M .: Time, 2006. - pp. 484-520.

6. Reizov B.G. Historical and literary research: Collection of articles / B.G. Reizov. - Leningrad: Leningrad University Press, 1991. - 248 p.

7. Rokotyan Yu.V. Christian roots of Solzhenitsyn's journalism / Yu.V. Rokotyan // Moscow. - 2005. - No. 12. - S. 154-159.

8. Rutych N. Stalin in modern literature / N. Rutych // Sowing. - 1980. - No. 2. – S. 48-54.

9. Solzhenitsyn A.I. In the first circle: [novel] / A.I. Solzhenitsyn. - M.: Fiction, 1990. - 766 p. - (Text).

10. Solzhenitsyn A.I. Small collected works: In 9 volumes / A.I. Solzhenitsyn - M .: INCOM NV, 1991. - V. 5: The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Experience in artistic research, vol. 1. - M. - INCOM NV - 1991. - 432 p.

11. Solzhenitsyn A.I. Collected works in 30 volumes / A.I. Solzhenitsyn. - T.7. The Red Wheel: Time-bound storytelling in the four Knots. – Node I: August the Fourteenth. Book 1. - M.: Time, 2006. - 432 p.

12. Solzhenitsyn A.I. Collected works in 30 volumes / A.I. Solzhenitsyn. - T.8. The Red Wheel: Time-bound storytelling in the four Knots. – Node I: August the Fourteenth. Book 2. - M.: Time, 2006. - 536 p.

We are about to get acquainted with a prose work unprecedented, first of all, in size:

probably ten or twelve thousand book pages. At the same time, after reading "August the Fourteenth", we are convinced that the author is not disingenuous, calling the voluminous "first knot" an introduction. He does not slip us a finished novel that could exist on its own, even if other storylines were to develop in future parts of the epic (as in serial novels like The Human Comedy, Rugan-Makkarov or The Forsyte Saga) ). Despite its impressive size, the very structure of "August the Fourteenth" indicates that this is really only the beginning, the tie ("the first knot"). In the finished work, such a blatant disproportion in the distribution of material would be impossible: about 40% of the text is devoted to the description of military operations, about the same amount of the political history of Russia, and only about one-fifth to the heroes of the book itself: Lazhenitsyn, Vorotyntsev, Tomchaks, Lenartovichs. Most of these characters are only presented in "August the Fourteenth", the reader is left with the impression that they will have to meet more than once, that the main thing is yet to come.

The grandiosity of the project causes comic protests among students and teachers of Russian literature in the West. Imagine an overview course where you have to read and comprehend War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov and The Red Wheel in a semester!

This unimportant academic problem takes on a disturbing tone when complaints about the length of Solzhenitsyn's writings are heard in wider readership. The fact that educated people, those who sometimes sit in front of the TV for hours at a time, following the mechanical twists and turns of the plot of Dallas, do not find time to read fiction is a rather sad comment on the spiritual level of our time.

In my opinion, reading Solzhenitsyn would be worth sacrificing many other activities. Reading and understanding it is very important for each of us individually, because in fact it raises the question of the nature and roots of contemporary global conflict: historically - as a confrontation between the USSR and the West, politically - collectivism against individualism, religiously - atheism against faith.

The psychological problems of the individual in our "age of the masses", the psychology of modern nationalism - all this is explored at a deep level in "August the Fourteenth". Regardless of whether we agree with the author or disagree, whether certain images and descriptions cause delight or objection, we are carried away and excited while reading this book, and we are grateful to Solzhenitsyn already because he managed to raise these damned questions with a depth inaccessible pen of journalists, and, at the same time, with a breadth that you will never find in the works of scientific specialists.

And only after reading to the end and having coped with the influx of impressions, you begin to ask yourself questions that, in the end, come down to three main ones: to what extent is what you read is history? how to qualify the political doctrine developed by the author? and - what we read, to what extent a work of art?

II

It is difficult to give an answer to the last question precisely for the reason that we do not know the finished work, and what we know, despite the already colossal volume, is still too fragmentary, unfinished. The impression of a grandiose and unevenly going construction: we see several ingeniously planned and built floors with a rare quality factor,

and also - pillars, basement ceilings, frames, blocks, which can be seen even at the construction of a palace, even a warehouse. Who knows what will happen: maybe - a temple that has not yet been experienced, or maybe - a chaotic heap of various kinds of premises.

In future reading Total narrative, perhaps, a common rhythm will manifest itself, the beginning, organizing plot-wise, barely connected, different styles and almost diverse sections. In the meantime, willy-nilly, the impression is that I read, as it were, a number of separate things: firstly, the beginning of a big romance with the above-mentioned heroes, secondly, a fictionalized chronicle of military operations in East Prussia at the beginning of the First World War, and then three stories - a story about the terrorist Dmitry Bogrov, the life of Pyotr Stolypin and a pamphlet, a satirical story about Nicholas II. (Another satirical short story about Lenin.)

Thus, the comparison with War and Peace that flickered in the first critical reviews seems very superficial. "Red Wheel" is clearly conceived differently. The military-historical and historiosophical chapters in Tolstoy's novel do not have such an independent status as similar parts in "August the Fourteenth". In Tolstoy they are much more tightly woven into the plot. There are no inserted (composite) elements in Tolstoy. There is no story in War and Peace about the labors and days of Speransky, a satire on Napoleon, or the life of Kutuzov.

The real genre precedent for The Red Wheel can still be found in the history of Russian literature. Only you have to dig much deeper than Tolstoy. These are chronicles. Here in the annals, the document, and the inconsistent story of an eyewitness, and the pious life, and poisonous reproach really accumulated and rubbed against each other. From Nestor, the passage of time served as a connecting beginning of the chronicle narrative, and not just the course of time, but the course of biblical time - from the creation of the world, from the fall to the end of the world and

Last Judgment. In later examples of the chronicle genre, such as, for example, in the "Tale" by Avraamy Palitsyn (XVII century), this form-building basis stood out even more strongly, emphasizing the cyclical composition of the historical narrative: crime gives birth to crime, sin gives birth to sin - a fatal wheel!

III

What is indisputable is Solzhenitsyn's virtuoso writing skills, as it manifests itself within individual fragments.

A few years ago, the famous American historian Barbara Tuckman, discussing the causes and nature of the decline of modern mass culture, introduced the concept of the Q-factor, the quality factor. This factor is determined by the amount of precise knowledge and careful work that the master puts into the product - from a poem to a stool. That is, what distinguishes craftsmanship from both mass production and simple hack work. So this Q-factor in Solzhenitsyn's prose is unusually high. Only a few modern Russian prose writers, belonging to the same tradition of neo-realism as Solzhenitsyn, approached this level in their best works: Bitov in Pushkin's House, here and there Trifonov, Vladimov in Verny Ruslan, Iskander on the best pages. "Sandro from Chegem".

This high quality is manifested, first of all, in the constant concreteness of the descriptions. Solzhenitsyn's pen never clings to the tug of a literary cliche, but always goes on its own, moves by the energy of its five (and more) senses - seeing, hearing, touching, smelling - knowing the world described in detail. If the heroine of Solzhenitsyn is hiding from the midday heat, then the reader is shown not the heat in general, but the heat in the Kuban, in a strong rural economy in 1914:

“The whitening sky shone through, exhausted by the heat, and even in the good shade one could feel the density of the heat. Blurred by him, the puff of locomobiles from the threshing yard reached here, the machine hum from the business yard, and the general continuous buzz of insects and flies ”(I, 44).

If the battlefield is described, at least in one paragraph, then with such details that it is impossible not to see it:

“... the enemy with a rout left their positions, leaving equipment, the wounded and corpses - even standing corpses stuck in a tight, strong young spruce forest” (I, 293).

For this author, there are no trifles that could be missed, smeared into some kind of descriptive spot. When his characters are talking in a pub, we are not only clear about the whole plan of this room, but also where the table they occupy is located - in the back room by the window. And where does the window go - “into a deaf pile of beer boxes” (I, 402). And the quality of the beer is “moderately cool and strong” (1, 404) (and the author is a connoisseur in this: in our time, when it is customary to freeze liquid beer in refrigerators, only connoisseurs remember that beer should not be too cold) .

Good quality, sensuality, closeness of descriptions are materialized in plastic language. Solzhenitsyn does not allow the Russian language to be lazy under his pen. The language, obedient to Solzhenitsyn, constantly reveals its richest and almost unused expressive possibilities: word-formation, sound-like, syntactic.

Solzhenitsyn's words are precise and economical. Prayer - "mumbling out of habit" (I, 325): cf. "a prayer mumbled out of habit." And what a long and clumsy construction would have to be piled up instead of Solzhenitsyn's "it was more comprehensive" (I, 326)! (The root “grip” is generally very fond of Solzhenitsyn, he uses it very productively.)

There is nothing artificial in Solzhenitsyn's word usage. All of his unusual sayings are built strictly according to the laws of Russian word formation, and often simply borrowed from the storerooms of the literary language, from dialects. One can imagine such readers who are annoyed by the abundance of lexical deviations from today's average literary norm. At one time, as is known, Gorky fought against dialectisms and jargon in the literary language. One can be equal to the language of Gorky and Fedin's prose, or one can be equal to the prose of Khlebnikov, Remizov, Tsvetaeva,

whose work with the Russian word Solzhenitsyn takes over.

In fairness, it must be said that, like the latter, in his deep linguistic drilling Solzhenitsyn sometimes takes it so deep that some kind of Proto-Slavic linguistic forces begin to break out into his text. “To stretch”, “courage” - separately, these dialect words can be found in Dahl, but when they merge into a single phrase:

“What the crow’s boldness of General Zhilinsky did not stretch out for ...”

You think that if you heard this on the tram, you wouldn’t understand what language it was said in - it’s clear that some kind of Slavic, but which one?

Syntax, the construction of a phrase and a period, always serves Solzhenitsyn as a means of expression.

He can portray lazy languor by constructing a phrase:

“The book was English, but not in this…” (I, 44; the heroine is too lazy to think out of the heat).

Or maybe with grammatical-syntactic forms to depict pitch darkness:

“They stumbled down a steep road embankment, munched at random on a swampy place (...) And again they stumbled, they fell into a ditch ...” (I, 341).

On one page there is a cluster of sentences without subjects, almost without nouns at all - because it is dark, in the moving mass of soldiers no one sees anyone, you can’t even see what is under your feet (this is a task for translators into languages ​​where vaguely personal sentences are impossible!) .

Of the three stylists with whom I compared Solzhenitsyn above, two, Khlebnikov and Tsvetaeva, are poets. If Solzhenitsyn's style is only isomorphic with Khlebnikov's, then with Tsvetaeva there is an undoubted similarity in many techniques. For example, they equally boldly actualize the rarest, before them, perhaps, without using

existing (but by the nature of the language possible) grammatical forms. These are their unusual, but energetic, capacious participles and participles. Solzhenitsyn: "mumbling". Tsvetaeva: "grass grub". Or incredible plural forms, and even in the genitive case. Tsvetaeva: "ghetto election". Solzhenitsyn: "woe is higher grief» (II, 58).

Just as Tsvetaeva transferred into her innovative prose such purely verse techniques of expressiveness as the connection of words by alliteration, assonance, changing root vowel, so Solzhenitsyn effectively uses these, I repeat, verse techniques, although he does not write poetry (he wrote in his youth, but very bad ). Moreover, never with Solzhenitsyn do these techniques simply serve to embellish the style, they are always internally mimetic, depicting something. For example, a chain of mental associations is intoned by sound assonances, dissonances: “I could have let it develop further. frolic” (I, 32); “... seep - into brain? in goiter! in tooth? (II, 146). And sometimes a visual image is given by sound. That's how annoyingly ripples in Sasha Lenartovich's eyes (alliteration in to): "BUT To Ah to in to orot to wow to a to wow something to rivulina to ornevoy with ru to and on ru to u tossed. Ta to and that to. Ta to and this to» (II, 22).

But with a thread piercing Bogrov's consciousness - t-t-t-t- ... - "a three-thousand-year-old, thin, confident call" (II, 146).

However, all these characteristic techniques of Solzhenitsyn's writing are also only threads. The high artistry of Solzhenitsyn is hidden, first of all, in his ability to spin his own fabric from these threads, to pull his text through them, creating stable figurative rows in the mind of the reader. This is the same "long breath", without which there is no novelist.

How he does it?

One of the main themes of the book is the Russian national character. It is nowhere described exhaustively, but throughout the text there is an accumulation of figurative elements that describe it. Thus, Solzhenitsyn sees the negative side of this character in inertia. Figuratively, this is concretized as sleep, hibernation, drowsiness. This is opposed by active, motor heroes - Vorotyntsev (always on the move, full of desire to "pull" or "push" the fatherland), the same "engine" Stolypin, General Martos Ne-Proley-Kapelki, who "got little sleep" (I, 292 ), bursting with an excess of enterprise, engineers Obodovsky and Arkhangorodsky, Zakhar Tomchak, rushing to the steppe in the morning. There are no slow, reflective characters among the author's favorite characters.

The inertia hated by the author arises either in a mocking remark about Russian staff officers who do not take the trouble to encrypt night telegrams: “The Germans should not have intercepted - they couldn’t have been eavesdropping all night without spamming” (I, 115), then pathetically - moral the collapse of General Samsonov occurs as a result of a prophetic dream on the Assumption, then not from the narrator directly, but through the eyes of the character: the historical catastrophe, the murder of Stolypin, could have been prevented, but tomorrow's killer sees - there is not enough intelligence "the sleepy

Kulyabki. In the face of Kulyabka, stupidity is not even personal, but typical, if not racial. He scratches himself, wraps himself up tighter, did not notice anything, everything is correct. Spa-a-a-at! .. - He himself is like a triple pillow ”(II, 156).

In the composition of the first part of "August 14th", as we have already noted, it is still very difficult to catch the author's intention - why in these two places, and not in others, he interrupted the sequence of front-line episodes (most of the first half) with chapters about Lenin and about Sanya and Koti saying goodbye to Moscow. In the composition of the second half, at least, symmetry is easily visible. The central and main (two-thirds) part of the text of the second half is occupied by a historical digression (“From the knots of the previous ones,” the author calls these chapters). The historical part is framed by approximately the same size pieces from the novel "today", i.e. 1914. Moreover, these "today's" pieces are broken at the beginning and at the end also symmetrically: at the beginning - the front, the rear, at the end - the rear, the front.

There is a direct logic in such construction. At the beginning - a picture of the final military defeat. Then, in the rear scenes, talk about the history of the revolutionary movement that shook the Russian state foundations is the cause of the disaster. Then begins a big retreat, to 1911, to the previous catastrophe, the previous "knot", interrupted in turn by two approximately one-dimensional inserted short stories, put in a clear parallel with historical portraits. The apologetic biography of Stolypin begins with a retreat from 1911 to the beginning of his activity and ends with a return to 1911. In the same way, the satirical biography of Nikolai begins with a digression to his first steps and gradually returns us, through 1911, to 1914, to the "today" of the novel, to the ending.

Schematically, it looks like this:

There is undoubtedly a causal harmony in such a construction. The artistic connections between the fragments are less convincing. Perhaps they will show up better in the overall perspective of the Red Wheel.

IV

Where Solzhenitsyn's compositional skill shines through is inside the central fragment. Hence the story of Bogrov's assassination attempt on Stolypin has a special completeness, completeness, and separateness. As if on the wall of a house under construction, where the first floors are still barely built and beams and fittings stick out in all directions, the sculptor has already strengthened the carefully finished bas-relief.

On September 2, 1911, in the Kiev City Theater, in the presence of the tsar, the 24-year-old anarchist Dmitry Bogrov, the son of a local wealthy Jewish lawyer, shot the chairman of the Russian Council of Ministers P.A. Stolypin.

Many contemporaries were inclined to consider this event almost an accident. Terrorism seemed to have left the scene at this time. Known terrorist acts of the past were carried out by underground groups of revolutionaries as key points in their program. But the assassination of Bogrov was the work of a loner who acted at his own peril and risk and did not have any organization behind him, except for the one he himself fantasized to lead the security department by the nose.

There were several versions in circulation explaining Bogrov's crime (all of them were widely discussed in the press after the assassination attempt and again in the twenties, when access to police archives was opened and when old underground workers took up memoirs). There were three main versions, and they all revolved around the undoubted fact of Bogrov's connection with the security department, where he was listed as a secret agent for several years, until the assassination attempt.

According to the first version, Bogrov committed the murder of the prime minister (and, in fact, suicide) in order to rehabilitate himself before his comrades when his connection with the guards became known. This version was rejected by most of the old underground. Yes, and according to the archives, it turned out that Bogrov actually fooled the security department, never providing him with information that could really harm the underground, although he often had such information.

According to another version, already built on pure speculation, Bogrov was a tool in the hands of the security department and those inert court circles who were hindered by the energetic reformer Stolypin.

Finally, according to the third, which is very convincingly presented in the book of the elder brother of the killer, V. Bogrov, “Dm. Bogrov and the murder of Stolypin" (Berlin, ed. "Strela", 1913), Dm. Bogrov was a real anarchist fanatic, he carefully thought out and planned his crime. The choice of target was especially thought out. Why did he shoot Stolypin and not try to kill the tsar? Because the death of Stolypin would be a much more terrible blow to the hated young anarchist Russian statehood than the death of an ordinary tsar. In addition, Bogrov feared that the assassination of the tsar by the hand of a Jew would cause Jewish pogroms.

In the external-historical outline of his story about Bogrov, Solzhenitsyn adheres to precisely this,

latest version. He develops it with his characteristic thoroughness and with that almost exaggerated reverence that is characteristic of his treatment of historical materials. (It is characteristic that on the very last page of the book, already after the table of contents, he considers it necessary to add a kind of "genuinely true": the murder of Stolypin by Bogrov, all the details of military operations, up to the fate of each regiment and many battalions, are genuine.”) In the dialogues and internal monologues of the characters, one can find direct quotations from published materials about Bogrov.

But for the artistic study of history, which is being conducted by Solzhenitsyn, the question of how and why Bogrov killed Stolypin is not so important as - what killed Stolypin and what killed Bogrov.

The structure of this artistic text is complex, the research is carried out on several planes at the same time, and the answer is given not only verbally, but, even more so, in the subtext. And there at different levels: psychological, mythological.

First of all, the image of Bogrov known from the sources, his psychological portrait, is deepened by scrupulous psychoanalysis. A sickly, physically handicapped offspring of a bourgeois family is unobtrusively outlined: “He was tall, always thin, pale, or with an unhealthy blush, unnaturally younger - by the age of twenty there was no facial hair” (II, 116), “there was no bodily strength in him at all ... ”(ibid.),“ but he never had a beloved woman ”(II, 124). At the basis of his revolutionary spirit, zealously kindled in himself, rationalized, there are compensatory mechanisms: the infringed "I" strives to be in the center of everyone's attention, above everyone.

This is reinforced in the text by the expanded, pivotal metaphor of the circus and the acrobat climbing the pole. Bogrov begins direct preparations for the assassination attempt:

“All this looked like a colossal circus, where the whole of Kyiv was called by the audience, but in fact - the whole of Russia, and even the whole world. Hundreds of thousands of spectators were staring from the amphitheater, and upstairs on the ostentatious platform, under the very dome, at the zenith, the crowned fool and Stolypin were performing. And little Bogrov, in order to inflict a fatal injection on one of them, had to come close to them - it means to ascend, but not being able to fly, to climb, but not having a ladder and in opposition to all the many thousands of guards.

The image of the circus evokes the image of a central pole supporting the top of the tent. Here on such a pole - completely smooth, without a notch, without a knot, it will be necessary to crawl up, not supported by anyone, but thrown down by everyone, crawl up, not holding on to anything ”(II, 137–138).

Here is the version presented to Bogrov's guards, hesitated:

“Oh, what a slippery smooth pole! Cling to his stick body with yourself, rub with your whole body and crawl over implausibility ”(II, 141).

But no, the bait is swallowed:

“And the brave one saw himself - already at half a pole, no - above half: those disenfranchised ants already seem small, from which they crawled three hours ago. And the treasured platform is not so far at the top!” (II, 144-146).

Here his intricacies wavered again:

“The whole longitude of the body is stiff, numb, now it will fall from all heights (...) Why do all the stumbles, slips and breakdowns do not befall us in a smooth life, but only on the steepest dangerous place?” (II, 149).

"This audience has not seen how they climb under the dome, under the upper platform - they will see only the last trick" (II, 164).

Under the guise of an infantile underachiever, he is a clever clown, playing with the fate of a great people for the sake of a spectacular trick. But under this inner Bogro-

Underneath this Bogrovian "super-ego", Solzhenitsyn also reveals a third, most deeply hidden of Bogrov's essences. What is it that lies hidden in the very depths of Bogrov's personality, in such a depth where the personality already ceases to be a personality, turns into a generic phenomenon?

And here's what. Bogrov seems to be not only a fearlessly flexible acrobat. Here he admires his own resourcefulness:

“... how it was possible: to crawl silently, invisibly, between the revolution and the police, find a gap there and fit into it exactly” (II, 124).

Another portrait - how the old Socialist-Revolutionary Yegor Lazarev saw Bogrov:

“... a half-sick, tired, beardless young man in a pince-nez, with elongated upper two incisors, they moved forward when the upper lip rose during a conversation ...” (II, 131).

And is it not connected with these incisors - "inflict a fatal injection" (II, 138)? And further, even more precisely:

Bogrov was sitting in a stuffy lock, curled up lay, walked, sat, swayed - pondered. Those few necessary drops before the fatal moment were supposed to accumulate, ooze - in the brain? in the goiter? in the tooth? (II, 146; italics mine. - L.L.).

Snake. The word is never named, but, according to the law of literature subtly noted by Herzen, "implied words increase the power of speech." And in August the Fourteenth itself, Varsonofiev warns Sanya and Kotya, and at the same time the reader:

“Complete clarity happens only in simple things. The best poetry is in riddles. Haven't you noticed what a delicate lacy train of thought is there? (I, 405).

Noticed. And, having crept into the reader's consciousness, merging with the image of an unhealthy young Jew, the image of the snake is realized in new and new details. Here Bogrov goes to the Merchant's Garden - tense, resolute - to hunt for Stolypin. And suddenly an unforeseen circumstance - an orchestra:

“How these violins are taken apart! Or maybe surrender to music…” (II, 150).

As you know, music is an old-fashioned means of bewitching snakes. But in the next episode already Bogrov hypnotizes relaxed, sleepy Kulyabka.

What accumulates in the reader's consciousness gradually, gradually clears up like the serpentine hypostasis of Bogrov - a hundred pages further on, his victim, Stolypin, instantly recognizes at a glance.

This is the second description of the moment of the murder in the novel. The first time it is given through the consciousness of the killer, the second time - the victim. During the intermission of the performance, Stolypin is standing, leaning on the barrier of the orchestra pit, facing the aisle.

“... the passage is empty to the very end. Walked along it like meandered, narrow, long, in tailcoat, black... "(II, 248; italics mine. - L.L.).

And only after the fatal shots, the word itself is finally woven into the narrative:

"Terrorist, snaking black back, ran away ”(II, 249; italics mine. - L.L.).

“Eco business,” another reader will say, “a snake is a common common noun, a curse word. Solzhenitsyn has just stretched this metaphor through a large piece of text.

This is not true. Solzhenitsyn restores the initial force to the metaphor stamped with the use. He reinforces it with a whole series of techniques that are fully manifested only within the framework of the opposition: Bogrov - Stolypin. On this opposition, as on a frame, the plot of the story about Bogrov rests.

Stolypin is the pillar of the fatherland, the embodiment of the best national traits, the pinnacle of the organic development of Russian history.

Bogrov is a cosmopolitan, he has nothing Russian in his blood or character, he is a degenerate of baseless radicalism.

We remember how disembodied, unnatural Bogrov is depicted, “semi-sick”, “with a cracked voice”.

For the first time he encounters the prime minister in St. Petersburg by accident:

This opposition is actualized in the mind of the reader as he reads the narratives about Bogrov and Stolypin that enter into one another and reaches its climax in the repeated scene of the murder.

Solid, large Stolypin is standing, leaning against the barrier, in a white frock coat.

A thin, narrow killer squirms towards him, all dressed in black.

“Stolypin stood talking ...”, “Stolypin stood ...”, “Stolypin stood all alone ...”, “Stolypin raised his left hand - and with it, measuredly, earnestly, slowly, crossed the Sovereign” (II, 248–249).

Throughout the murder scene, Stolypin is described in simple personal sentences: the subject is the predicate, the name is the verb.

The approaching killer is deprived of a noun: “A narrow one walked along it, as it wriggled,” etc.

Let's take another look at these well-defined oppositions:

... and Bogrov?

The mythologeme of the confrontation between Good and Evil is clearly drawn (and the latter, according to the Christian tradition, is characterized by the sign of incorporeality, spinelessness), Light and Darkness, the Cross and the Serpent.

V

Is it possible to rely on "August the Fourteenth" as a source of information on Russian history?

The critic and military historian N. Rutych does not even have such a question. In his detailed article (“From Vorotyntsev to Stolypin”, “Russian Thought”, October 27, 1983), he only marks where Solzhenitsyn carried out an independent historical study (the victory of the corps of the Russian general Martos near Orlau and its role in the course of the European war), and where Solzhenitsyn compiles well-known materials.

The English historian and literary critic Geoffrey Hosking, confirming the authenticity of the events portrayed by Solzhenitsyn, casts doubt on the objectivity of some of the writer's assessments. He, in particular, shows that Stolypin's struggle

with the Duma opposition, Solzhenitsyn sometimes describes in a simplified way, and sometimes simply incorrectly.

“There is no doubt, in my opinion,” writes Hosking, “that Stolypin was the pre-eminent statesman of Russia in the early 20th century, and precisely for the reasons that Solzhenitsyn puts forward. What is disturbing about his historical portrait, however, is the lack of nuance, the complete absence of a sense of the complexity of events” (“Break Into Chaos,” Times Literary Supplement, February 3, 1984).

Yes, Hosking agrees with Solzhenitsyn, Stolypin set himself the historical task of turning Russia into a state of law, but he himself undermined the weak parliamentarianism that was still in its infancy. “The law on leaving the community”, the shock of centuries-old foundations, the cataclysm in Russian history, he carried out according to Art. 87, on "extraordinary circumstances", i.e. around the Duma.

“Solzhenitsyn claims that an agrarian reform was urgently needed, and the Duma would debate it until the end of time. Quite right, - writes Hosking, - in other words, there was a genuine dilemma, and to present the case in such a way that there was a simple and obvious solution for it, which was not pleasing only to malevolent elements, is to distort the complexity of the historical situation ”(ibid.).

Another important issue - about local self-government, about zemstvos - is also incorrectly presented by Solzhenitsyn, according to Hosking. For it was not the left-wing deputies who flunked the bill—the Duma had just adopted Stolypin's proposals on the issue of zemstvos—but the Russian landlords, when discussing the bill at the local level, since the independence of the zemstvos threatened them with a serious infringement of their rights.

“Solzhenitsyn,” concludes Hosking, “in fact does not pay enough attention to those political and social forces that supported Stolypin and only hesitated about certain points of the Stolypin program. He creates the image of Stolypin as a lone defender of progress and national dignity, a brave warrior in an unequal battle. The whole story is melodramatic, overly focused on the assassination attempt, and misses the complexities and contradictions that make up the true drama of the story" (ibid.).

So, according to N. Rutych, "August the Fourteenth" is an impeccable historical source, but according to J. Hosking, not quite. Another author who wrote an interesting article about "August the Fourteenth", Yuri Kublanovskiy, does not go into assessing the quality of Solzhenitsyn's historiography, but simply states at the beginning:

Solzhenitsyn's task is not only to 'interpret', but for the first time write our recent history, carefully concealed, deeply buried by Bolshevism. Accordingly, one artistic “interpretation”, one “image” is not enough here - it is necessary to resurrect the subject itself: it is impossible to do without large documentary fragments” (“At the Origins of Style”, “Russian Thought”, October 20, 1983). *

Thus, this author also considers "August the Fourteenth" as a historical source, more precisely, as a kind of combination of artistic pieces of prose and documentary (he defines it as "documentary and artistic epic").

Probably, speaking of documentary, Kublanovskiy does not mean ten small inserts under the heading "Documents". The satirical meaning of these interpolations is self-evident. As, for example, in the finale, where an ironic vignette ending the tragedy, a telegram from the commander-in-chief to the tsar is given: “I am happy to please Your Majesty ...” Nicholas II, a description of military operations, an outline of the history of the revolutionary movement (in the story of aunts). And the author himself

pushes for such an understanding, prefaces the essay on Stolypin with an apology, which, they say, violates the novel form, is forced to give a story.

However, isn't the author of the critics slightly misleading by this, isn't the critics too willing to agree to play by the proposed rules, forgetting the rules of their own critical craft? Do they not send both their praises and their disagreements with the deviation from the goal as a result?

It seems to me, from my apprenticeship with Bakhtin, that in a literary text everyone whose words, thoughts and actions are presented, the same status - characters, and value relations on the scale of moral and immoral, true and false, historical and fantastic are determined only by the modulations of the author's voice: which of the described is given seriously, and which is ironic, which is like an objective reality, what a biased opinion.

From this point of view, the one who is presented by the author on p. 169 of the second half of "August 14th" as the Author ("The author would not allow himself such a rough break in the novel form ..."), regardless of the author's intentions, does not have authority in the eyes of the reader more than, say, another character - Varsonofiev. From the very first words of the Author's monologue (“Not everyone gives themselves the trouble…”) we see that he is polemical, biased, passionate, i.e. manifests in his "historical sketch" all the qualities that are contraindicated for the historian. Thus, the true author, the hidden deus of the narrative, invites us, as it were, to treat this monologue not only critically, but to take it in comparison with other statements on the same topic in the novel.

"Story - irrational young people. It has its own organic, but for us it can be an incomprehensible fabric (...) History grows like a living tree. And the mind is an ax for her, you won’t grow her with the mind, ”etc. (I, 410).

No, one cannot treat Solzhenitsyn's epic as a direct description of Russian history at the beginning of the century. The point is not only that Solzhenitsyn is often subjective, while objectivity is supposed to be behind the historian. Sometimes and vice versa. Those, for example, who view a work of art as a moral prescription might even reproach it with moral relativism. In the famous scene from Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak's hero shoots a dead tree during a fight. Solzhenitsyn’s hero, Vorotyntsev, hits living people without a miss and quacks with pleasure (“And Vorotyntsev stood with pleasure in that row and beat, scooped up cartridges, loaded, aimed, beat, translated, and when it seemed that From him the German fell - he even quacked", I, 267). However, as a counterbalance to this scene in the mind of the reader, the meeting of the high school student with Tolstoy, brilliantly described at the beginning of the story, emerges, where Tolstoy persistently answers the boy’s persistent questions: “Only with love.”

As part of his narrative, Solzhenitsyn is quite objective, but misunderstood as a historian, he is selective and biased, and therefore unreliable. As a writer, he must be selective and biased, because without style there is no literature, and style, in the final analysis, is intelligibility, partiality, passion.

The reader would be naive if he thought that he got acquainted with the history of the Russian revolutionary underground from the stories of Aunt Adalia and Aunt Agnes (chapters 59-62). In these stories there is a series of narrow-minded doctrinaires, anti-Russian fanatics and hysterics. Solzhenitsyn's sarcasm successfully cracks down on its target - dehumanizing sex -

dance (in the person of aunts, of course). But from a historical point of view, sectarianism is only part of the problem, the root of which lies elsewhere - in the horrendous conditions of the existence of the people in the Romanov state. Solzhenitsyn knows perfectly well that it all began not with the hysteria of a nervous young lady and not with the vengeful plans of a student offended by fate, but with the hunger and slavish lack of rights of a Russian peasant, whose suffering the soul of a young lady and student became wounded. This the writer Solzhenitsyn does not need to restore history: it is widely known from the books of other writers - Nekrasov, Herzen, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Leskov.

The aunts' grotesque stories are both a portrait of themselves and a re-creation of the atmosphere of a moral impasse in which the radical part of the intelligentsia found itself half a century after the start of social unrest. Alas, the fast reader is sometimes in a hurry not to notice Solzhenitsyn's fine writing. Even such a critic as sensitive to style as the poet Kublanovskii sees in the aunts’ chapters a “deheroization of legendaryness”, and “the description of Narodnaya Volya’s exploits is a “Lukulla feast” of subtle irony, reminiscent of Vl. Nabokov about Chernyshevsky” (op. cit.). No, this is by no means the only subtle irony about the tragic history of Narodnaya Volya.

“A schoolgirl, went out to the Borisoglebsky platform, in a clutch - a revolver, to meet the general, the pacifier of the peasants, and - for the whipped peasants - she slammed it on the spot! And before any trial - the Cossack execution to her, they raped her in a platoon, in line ”(II, 82-83).

Is this a subtle irony? Is this comparable to Nabokov's aesthetic satire?

VI

Reading historical facts from "August the Fourteenth" infinitely impoverishes, almost destroys the artistic content of the book. The author gives history not in episodes, details, statements, assessments, but in complex relationships of assessments, statements, details, episodes. Subtracting individual historical judgments from the novel can be simply dangerous: pull out a stone from one side - the arch will collapse. If you subtract Raskolnikov's original reasons separately from Crime and Punishment, you can get a vile conclusion: murder is permissible. If we subtract from "August the Fourteenth" individual pieces of the story about Bogrov, we can get a vile conclusion: anti-Semitism.

In preparing these notes, I read various materials, including the book of Brother Bogrov quoted above. The book is rare, I got a battered copy and richly commented in the margins by some advanced years, judging by the spelling, by a reader shortly after the war. The marginalia of my predecessor were very monotonous. Paints, for example, the author of the spiritual qualities of the deceased (brother, after all!): "Fine spiritual organization, spiritual softness ..." - "Jewish hypocrisy", - comments the pencil in the margins. "According to his deep conviction, he had to make the world happy..." - "Jewish". “What prompted the son of wealthy parents to join the guard?” Here the pencil even chokes with indignation: “Is he a Jew or not?” And, finally, a decisive summary of all the “mysteries” and “riddles” solved in the brochure: “There is no mystery. The Jew fooled the Ukrainian Kulyabko.

Of course, such inflexibility is able to discern the intrigues of the world kahal in everything. As Oleinikov wrote:

If there is no water in the tap,

the Jews drank the water.

A purposeful reader can also learn a lot from the story of how the Jewish whip, obeying the “three thousand-year-old subtle call”, treacherously killed the savior of Russia.

Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the motif of Jewish nationalism in Bogrov's story. Here he completely follows Bogrov himself, who named among his motives revenge on the government for the Jewish pogroms:

“... let me remind you that we are still living under the rule of the Black Hundred leaders. The Jews will never forget the Krushevans, the Dubrovins, the Purishkeviches. Where is Herzenstein? Where is Yollos? Where are the thousands of torn Jews?” (II, 132).

This is only a slightly abridged quotation of the original words of Bogrov, given in the memoirs of Yegor Lazarev. From the very beginning, the name of Bogrov in the story is surrounded almost exclusively by Jewish names. Naum Tysh, br. Gorodetsky, Saul Ashkinazi, Yankel Steiner, Rosa 1st Michelson, Judas Grossman, Khana Budyanskaya, Berta Sklovskaya, Sheina Gutner, Rovka Berger, Endel Schmelte - generously sketched on the first pages of the story about Bogrov. There are almost no non-Jewish names around Bogrov, while in the documents there are more than half of them: Salny Emelyan Emelyanov, Makarenko Luka Gavrilov, Ipatov Evstafiy Mikhailov, Bazarkin Stepan Alekseev, Prosov Afanasy ...

In his documentary sources, Solzhenitsyn neglects some colorful material that any writer would seize on. For example, Bogrov’s depressingly vulgar poems: “Your

caressing, gently bewitching look, Your dear features Resurrected long-forgotten dreams... I can't ignite cold hearts, Ah, like a gluttonous spider, An oppressive melancholy sucks blood from the heart...” (op. cit., pp. 93–94). For Solzhenitsyn, it is not so important that Bogrov is a vulgar, as that he is a Jew.

Finally, in the very image of a snake that mortally stung a Slavic knight making the sign of the cross, an anti-Semite can easily see a parallel with his favorite book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion:

“These wise men decided to peacefully conquer the world for Zion by the cunning of the Symbolic Serpent, the head of which was to be the government of the Jews initiated into the plans of the wise men (always disguised even from their own people), and the body - the Jewish people. Penetrating into the bowels of the states he met on the way, this Serpent undermined and devoured (overthrowing them) all state, non-Jewish forces as they grew.

I am quite sure that Solzhenitsyn has such readers. How will there be those who will argue that Bogrov's Jewishness is an accidental factor that has nothing to do with the death of Stolypin.

Solzhenitsyn bears no more responsibility for the anti-Semitic reading of his book than Shakespeare does for such an interpretation of The Merchant of Venice. The play is true, because Jewish usury was a fact of life, and humanistic, because it says with great poetic force: "And the Jew is a man," a revolutionary bold statement for those times from which we have not gone very far.

Solzhenitsyn "and Bogrov is a man." No matter how disgusting Bogrov is to his author, even this vulgar and murderer with dislocated ideas about morality is

he is some kind of human type, polar to Stolypin, but belonging to humanity.

Why does the theme of wit?

“He was a long-faced, very alert and witty - such are witty - a young Jew” (II, 248), “... and something twitched askance in his face - not triumph, not surprise, but, as it were, an unexpressed wit” (II, 249).

Why does the image of Bogrov's snake nature, which has been gradually preparing for so long, not end with a metaphor of a prick, a bite, a poisonous sting? A completely different plan, a completely unexpected, it would seem, comparison was used by Solzhenitsyn in describing the fatal moment:

“... pulled out a browning free gift... "(II, 167; italics mine. - L.L.).

“A free gift”, as every Russian reader knows, is a quote from Lermontov’s elegy “The Death of a Poet” (1837) (“Didn’t you first so viciously persecute / His free, bold gift ...”). So towards the end of the biography of the terrorist, that seemingly unnecessary, partly anecdotal note, with which this biography begins, enigmatically responds:

“He was born on the day Pushkin died. Day to day, but exactly 50 years later, half a turn of a century, at the other end of the diameter” (II, 114).

What is the connection between the free gift of the greatest national poet and the hysterical crime of the Kyiv white hand? It would seem that if we recall Lermontov, then the parallel should be different: Bogrov-Dantes (“Abandoned to us by the will of fate, / Laughing, he defiantly despised / The land of a foreign language and customs; / He could not spare our glory; / Could not to understand in this bloody moment, / What did he raise his hand to! ..”). But in the description of Solzhenitsyn there is no beating evenly empty heart, a pistol that did not flinch in his hand - which would be logical

for a xenophobic writer. There is an "unspoken witticism" and - even! - Pushkin's "free gift".

This "poignancy", this "free gift" opens up another plan of narration: behind the historical plan, a philosophical one opens up, behind the political one, an anthropological one. In the depths of the depths, it is no longer about Bogrov and Stolypin, not about revolutionaries and reformers, not about Russians and Jews, but about an existential conflict inherent in human nature itself. We are present not only at the attack of a Jewish terrorist on a Russian statesman: here the enraged “pure reason” attacks the “organic principle”.

Against this background, it is absurd, and, perhaps, offensive to the author of the calculations, how many "bad" Jews he has, and how many "good" ones. It is not so important here that among the characters closest to the author's heart is the Jew Arkhangorodsky, how important is his Christian-humanistic view of human affairs.

It is at the end of the story about Bogrov that Solzhenitsyn takes on the most difficult task for an artist and moralist to depict the death penalty. Questions have been posed to them for a long time:

"How it's all happening? how people are waiting? What do they feel? What are they thinking about? What decisions do they come up with? And how are they take? And what do they feel in the last minutes? And how exactly…is…their…is…?” (“The Gulag Archipelago”, vols. I–II, Paris, YMKA-Press, 1973, p. 443).

At the same time, Solzhenitsyn wrote that no one knew this to the end - neither the pardoned nor the executioners.

“Also, it is true, the artist is implicit and unclear, but he knows something right down to the bullet itself, to the very rope” (ibid., p. 446).

Obviously and clearly Solzhenitsyn answers these questions, telling about the last hours of Bogrov. The final horror of the death penalty is concentrated for him not in the body dancing on the gallows, which has already ceased to be a living person, has passed into inanimateness, into the neuter gender: "The body that danced at the beginning - hung for 15 minutes according to the law ..." - but in human beings receiving satisfaction from this spectacle (members of the anti-Semitic "Union of the Russian people" present at the execution of Bogrov).

"Someone from allies said: "Probably, there will be no more shooting." And he didn’t even need to” (II, 321).

These are not Leonid Andreev's tongues hanging out for you. Even Tolstoy would not have said to this: "He frightens me, but I'm not afraid." Scary.

VII

Taken out of context, Solzhenitsyn's heroes are unambiguous. This is the key difference between Solzhenitsyn and the realists of the 19th century. Raskolnikov is a murderer and a conscientious sufferer for humanity. Bogrov is a killer, period. Arkady Dolgoruky now vilely sticks to a defenseless girl on the boulevard, then performs feats of nobility. Solzhenitsyn has nothing but nobility behind Sanya, Yaroslav, and nothing but meanness behind Sasha Lenartovich.

The unambiguity of the characters is dictated by the novel's super-task: to oppose the wrong Russian history with the right Russian utopia.

Utopia is the great engine of literature. Utopia is also a great means of influencing the author on the reader: in the mind of a receptive reader, it rebuilds the system of moral and political guidelines, rooting new incentives for behavior.

In the center of "August the Fourteenth" a historical attempt at the realization of the Russian utopia is told. Stolypin tried to put on a practical footing what for centuries was the peasant's utopian dream of the Promised Russia - of Belovodye, the Mamur River, Kitezh.

Everything in history went wrong, wrong. The geek was allowed to kill Stolypin, and with him the great reforms. The army was entrusted to the wrong generals. The stupid king sat under the shoe of the absurd queen until he lost his throne.

But in art, the artistic representation of irregularity acts as a kind of matrix imprinting a picture in the mind of the reader. correct peace.

Had Stolypin remained alive or had he had worthy successors, he would have carried out his five-year plans, so shamefully caricatured by the Bolsheviks (the Bolsheviks contracted to implement a utopia, but they carried out a nightmarish dystopia - the Gulag Archipelago). Stolypin would have turned the country into a healthy constitutional monarchy. He would have kept her from entering the world war. He would move the economic as well as cultural - national, in a word - core to the safe and generous expanses of Siberia. With a self-sufficient economy, Russia would develop as a powerful and peaceful state in the care of protecting its nature, the physical and spiritual health of the people. It would maintain peaceful economic and cultural relations with its neighbors without claims to their territory (there is enough of its own!) and with distant powers.

More ... More details - in the famous Solzhenitsyn "Letter to the Leaders".

Judging by its mighty beginning, the "Red Wheel" is a letter to the entire Russian people. The wheel will roll to Moscow, the letter will be read and taken to heart - then there can be no doubt that the future of Russia will be great.

FROM THE EDITOR: As we know, the broadcast made on this article on Radio Liberty caused a rather sharp controversy within the station, the initiators of which accused the author of "anti-Semitism" and even "animal racism." If only the late Vladimir Lifshits, one of the purest and most talented people of his generation, who was hunted to death almost to death during the years of the campaign against the "rootless cosmopolitans" would have known, that the time would come when a few mediocrities from journalism, for the sake of their purely crafty goals, would accuse his son in Judeophobia!

By publishing this article, we invite readers to express themselves on this issue on the pages of our journal, because it is time to finally put an end to the inclinations of some individuals in the current emigration to blackmail their ideological opponents, and at the same time the media of the Russian Diaspora with the bogey of anti-Semitism.

Modern anti-Semitism is a serious and painful problem enough to be used as a political skeleton key for someone's frankly selfish, and even downright provocative goals.

In this article, I do not touch on the question of comparing the new edition of "August the Fourteenth" with the old one. Unlike the first edition of In the First Circle, the revision of which led to significant changes in the artistic and ideological structures of the novel (see my article on this in Echo magazine No. 14,1984), the first edition of August the Fourteenth is only incomplete edition.

Here I would not like to dwell on the genesis of Solzhenitsyn's prose. One thing is clear: he did not immediately jump out of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, bypassing the entire intermediate experience of Russian literature, as is sometimes presented. In the structure of his novels, especially the last one, there is much from the experience of the author of "Petersburg", and the very technique of his writing could serve as an even better illustration of Zamyatin's theoretical calculations. about neorealism, than even Zamyatin's own prose (see somewhat simplified, apparently for a young audience, but accurate in terms of settings, Zamyatin's lectures on neo-realism in Russian literature, published in Vestnik RHD No. 141, 1984). It is on the basis of the understanding of Solzhenitsyn's prose as neo-realistic (Zamiatin's term seems to me more accurate, senselessly voluminous than the accepted attribution of this trend as "skazovogo", "Serapionist") that I compare him with writers who grew out of the same root. it would be to compare Solzhenitsyn with modern Russian prose writers of other roots: with Maximov and Dovlatov, with Aleshkovsky and Erofeev, with Aksenov. Just as artistically far from Solzhenitsyn are the "village" writers, although they are close to him in some of their ideas. Here are the "villagers" - a truly unexpected fresh escape from the old populist literature of the 19th century. Solzhenitsyn himself speaks of his connection with the innovative prose of Zamyatin and Tsvetaeva.

It must be remembered that sound recording techniques acquire semantic concreteness only in context. Here, among the materials on "August" lying on my table, my eyes suddenly caught the lines of a genuinely Russian sound: "Russian Thought". N. Ruth s h. "From Vorotyntseva to Table s pinu. Alexander Solzhenits s n…” Why “Russianness”? From assonance to s, sound, which, according to the founder of phonology (and Eurasianism) Prince. Trubetskoy, from the Slavic languages ​​it is peculiar only to Russian (as a Turkic borrowing). But what a set of Russian names! After all, there are no English s Comrade, French P s shele, jews shap s ro or L s fshitz (the latter is the true name of the author of these lines, through and, certainly). Here you can immediately see: a Russian author in a Russian newspaper writes about a Russian book. But in a different context, "Russianness" s would be lost: "Good s th r s king, m s your faithful s e vassal s", for example.

As we know from the memoirs of L. Chukovskaya, when Solzhenitsyn read his poems to Akhmatova, she delicately remarked that there was little mystery in sp. To this, Solzhenitsyn allegedly objected that there was too much mystery in her own poems. This is true: mystery is in the nature of Akhmatov's poetry. But, apparently, Solzhenitsyn nevertheless learned the poetic lesson of Akhmatova. In general, ideologically, there is a lot in common between him and the poetess, who said: "... innocent Rus writhed" - a lot in common.

We note in passing that in this context the semantic load of an indefinitely personal sentence is completely different than in the previously cited example.

Omitted after "torn Jews": men, women and children, with bellies torn open, with cut off noses and ears.

In total, there are 25 names of underground workers known to Bogrov and allegedly given to him, Jewish 11 (op. cit., p. 84).

Cit. on Sat. "Ray of Light", vol. III, Berlin, b/d, p. 218. There is an extensive literature on the mythological serpent (see the article by S. Averintsev and M. Meilakh in the encyclopedia "Myths of the peoples of the world", M., Soviet Encyclopedia, 1980. Vol. 1).

A brilliant analysis of Solzhenitsyn's "Jewish question" is contained in Emil Kogan's Pillar of Salt, The Political Psychology of A. Solzhenitsyn (Créteil, France, Searches, 1982, especially pp. 188–190). Agreeing with all the conclusions of E. Kogan (who dealt with an incomplete version of "August the Fourteenth"), the author of these notes considers himself largely indebted to this painstaking and, I would like to add, imbued with sincere kindness work.

In passing, I would like to note the rhythmization of Solzhenitsyn's prose, its inconspicuous approximation in places to vers libre, in the most pathetic moments. And this separately rendered and started with an opposing union, “But he didn’t have to anymore,” unexpectedly resembles the similarly constructed ending of I. Brodsky’s poem “On the Death of a Friend”: after a caesura, with an opposing union - “Yes, it doesn’t matter to you.”

B.
Paramonov drew my attention to the paradoxical similarity between Letters to the Leaders and
many points of the program of the Green Party in Germany. The point here seems to be in general
anxiety of mankind in the second half of the 20th century due to the threat of the death of nature and national cultures.

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

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allegorical COMPONENTS OF SOLZHENITSYN WORKS

N.N. Stupnitskaya

Permanent metamorphoses that take place throughout human history require the formation of a specific personality structure, capable of simultaneously absorbing new trends in the development of society and maintaining those moral foundations that are pivotal for the self-reliance of each person and society as a whole. From our point of view, it is literature, which has a huge number of expressive means in its arsenal, that is most effectively able to cope with such a task. One of these means, widely used by writers in their works, is allegory.

The purpose of this article is to identify allegorical components and determine their role in Solzhenitsyn's works.

Allegory, according to the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary, is a literary device that contains a hidden meaning. In a narrow sense, allegory is understood as allegory and similar devices, by means of which one phenomenon is characterized through another. In a broad sense, allegory is understood as a fundamental feature of art, as evidenced by A.A. Potebnya, who argues that "each time a poetic image is perceived and animated by the understanding, it tells him something different and more than what is directly contained in it" . Considering the problem of allegory N.P. Antipiev claims that in “a work of art, the world is completely recreated. Because we meet not with a word that we know, but with an image that is unknown to us. Feelings and concepts that do not have a visible form become tangible precisely thanks to allegory, and embodied in the image, they help to most accurately express an abstract concept.

Allegory is a complex concept that includes irony (the comic use of words in the opposite sense, for example, I.A. Krylov has a “smart head” in relation to the Donkey), Aesopian language (the so-called secret writing, when the author replaces real images with animals, endowing them with the appropriate characteristics, widely used by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin), allegory (artistic isolation of concepts through specific images, for example, the use of images of ancient gods in solemn odes of the 18th century - Mars as an allegory of war, Venus - an allegory of love), symbol ( an image that conveys both concrete and abstract content at the same time - a dog as a symbol of the old world in A.A. Blok's poem "The Twelve"), personification (representation of natural phenomena or inanimate objects in the role of actors, endowing them with the properties of a living being, such as , "the bast of grief was girded").

Allegory is used for various purposes: irony creates a comic effect; Aesopian language is necessary in connection with political conditions, the inability to directly say what is needed; allegory refers to the general cultural context; the symbol shows a multifaceted connection between objects and so on.

Various types of allegory help to form moral ideas about the norms of social relations, patterns of behavior and contribute to the assimilation of spiritual and moral categories.

Reading a literary work is a special kind of communication, aesthetic communication that affects the soul of the reader and is of great educational value. A.I. Solzhenitsyn was aware of the power of the writer's word and resorted to various stylistic means to deepen, clarify and enhance the impact of his texts.

So, it should be noted that when creating a portrait of a character, Solzhenitsyn often resorts to comparing him with an animal. Such a comparison is a fairly ancient poetic device, dating back to mythology. It is known that each nation had its own totem, most often any animal acted as a totem. In Russian literature, comparison with an animal was often used by N.V. Gogol. G.A. Gukovsky noted that many characters in "Dead Souls" look like "... like animals, that is, of course, not like real, living animals, but like animals of folklore, fable, ancient folk myth" . This technique is also found in a direct or hidden form in Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Chekhov. If we talk about the immediate predecessors of Solzhenitsyn, then, first of all, the name of E. Zamyatin should be mentioned. The author himself testifies to this: “Zamiatin is striking in many respects. He has incredible brightness and power of portraits. Sometimes with one or two words he gives a whole face. He did much more than Chekhov in this respect. Chekhov already had an attempt not to describe which eyes, which mouth, which nose, but to describe by some kind of comparison. By comparison to convey a face. Zamyatin goes much further, he sometimes captures a portrait in one word, to such an expressive degree as a painter. I believe that no one has reached the height of a laconic portrait like Zamyatin - this is really amazing.

Solzhenitsyn avoided long descriptions, trying to characterize the character with some kind of apt comparison. J. Niva called this technique "joking animal metaphor". “Humanity is a fabled animal world. It shines through the humor of Russian folk tales and epics. The opposition of two worlds: jailers and prisoners, is strengthened by the fact that it is also given at the natural-biological level. In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the guards are constantly compared to wolves and dogs: Lieutenant Volkovoy is "other than a wolf<.>, doesn’t look”, the guards “screamed, rushed like animals”, “just look out so that they don’t rush to your throat”. Prisoners are a defenseless herd. They are counted by head. This opposition of wolves and sheep, boas and rabbits is easily superimposed in our minds on the usual fable-allegorical opposition of strength and defenselessness, prudent cunning and innocence, but here another, more ancient and more general semantic layer is more important - the symbolism of the victim associated with the image of a sheep.

In the context of the era described by Solzhenitsyn, the ambivalence of the symbol of the victim, which combines the opposite meanings of death and life, death and salvation, turns out to be unusually capacious. The substantive value of the opposition lies in its connection with the problem of moral choice: whether or not to accept such a cruel law of survival. The prisoners had to obey silently and did not have the right to fight, so the exposure of the informers was perceived as an emergency and, naturally, could have a detrimental effect not only on the fate of Doronin (the character of the novel “In the First Circle”), but also on the fate of Shikin. “Nine grams to him, you bastard! - his first words escaped with a hiss. Hissing-hissing is a characteristic sign of a snake. It is known that when meeting with a snake, a person experiences chilling horror and becomes numb with fear. Snakes have always been perceived as something hostile to humans. Comparison with a snake is a detail that unites the detective and the main informer - Siromakha.

Commitment to the house, vitality is also expressed in the description of Spiridon's appearance: "In his malachai with ears that are funny falling to one side, like a cur, Spiridon went towards the watch, where prisoners were not allowed except for him."

In this case, the comparison of a character with an animal is based on external resemblance, which, however, does not detract from the symbolic significance of this image.

A similar function is performed by a comparison with a horse when describing Potapov's appearance. “Despite his lameness, he walked quickly, kept his neck tensely arched, first forward and then back, squinted his eyes and looked not at his feet, but somewhere into the distance, as if hurrying with his head and gaze to get ahead of his elderly legs.” The symbolic saturation of the image is beyond doubt - the horse in our minds is clearly associated with the ability to work without rest, with devotion and reliability.

An interesting type of allegory used by Solzhenitsyn in his works is the ironic indirect characterization of the character by interspersing non-direct speech into the actor's narrative, which makes the text more psychologically rich. So, the characterization given by Stalin to Tito in the novel “In the First Circle”: “How many millions of people will she open the eyes of this conceited, proud, cruel, cowardly, nasty, hypocritical, vile tyrant! vile traitor! hopeless fool!" , is an indirect characteristic of the character himself.

"(Fools! And their indignation is stupid - as if he himself, and not a fresh instruction, came up with this order!)" . The personification allows Solzhenitsyn to show not only the illusory nature of the power of Lieutenant Colonel Klimentyev and other leaders, but also the impersonality of Soviet society, the leading role in all spheres of life of which is given to instructions. Such anthropomorphism is determined by the writer's worldview and perception of the life of Soviet society. However, it is precisely the dominance of instructions that makes it possible for Klimentyev to make concessions to the prisoners. He understood that festive evenings were the most difficult and sought to obtain permission for the prisoners to install a Christmas tree. “It was written in the instructions that musical instruments were prohibited, but they didn’t find anything about Christmas trees, and therefore they didn’t give consent, but they didn’t impose a direct ban either.” This state of affairs gave the lieutenant colonel the opportunity to allow the installation of a Christmas tree in the Marfin special prison.

The symbolic richness of the description of Smolosidov, who was constantly in the room, “... for the whole day without leaving the room for a minute, he sat by the tape recorder, guarding it like a gloomy black dog, and looked into their heads, and his relentless heavy look pressed them on the skull and on the brain ", testifies to the special role of the character. The dog is associated in our minds with a guard who does not let strangers into the territory entrusted to him, located on the border of two worlds. By introducing such a symbolic detail, the writer brought two worlds together in one room, demonstrating, nevertheless, their alienation and hostility to each other.

It is necessary, from our point of view, to pay attention to the symbolism of color in the novel by A.I. Solzhenitsyn "In the first circle". It is noteworthy that at the party Dinara is dressed in a black dress, Dotnara is dressed in cherry, which allegorically correlates the heroines with the kingdom of Dante's Satan, symbolized by three satanic faces: red, yellow and black. Having dressed Clara in a green dress, the writer separates the heroine from the representatives of the kingdom of darkness. Before calling the American embassy, ​​Volodin notices the following colors: “The red “M” above the subway was a bit of a bluish haze. A black southern woman was selling yellow flowers. Such a color scheme symbolizes the hero's immersion in the darkness of the underworld and the catastrophic act of the character, who separated from the world of the "living", that is, the free, and moving him to the world of the "dead", that is, prisoners.

Oskolupov's behavior during Roitman's report on the results of his work is noteworthy. Rubin's statement about the possible innocence of one of the suspects Foma Guryanovich did not take into account. He didn't even know it was important. “Absolutely not guilty of anything? .. The organs will be found, sorted out.” The quote is an allegorical reference to the concept of original sin. The satirical effect is created by comparing Christian anthropology (the concept of "original sin") and the atheistic thinking of the Bolsheviks, who did not realize the impossibility of imputing universal guilt from human positions.

Noteworthy, in our opinion, is another statement used by A.I. Solzhenitsyn, when Roitman spoke at a meeting about plans: "However, he sowed - on a stone." In this regard, the parable of Christ about the grains thrown by the sower is recalled: “Some fell on stony places, where there was not much earth, and soon sprang up, because the earth was shallow. When the sun rose, it withered, and, as it had no root, it dried up. One of the most important features of Solzhenitsyn's artistic vision is manifested in the wide use of biblicalisms - the temporal in its connections with the eternal.

The material presented in this article allows us to conclude that A.I. Solzhenitsyn widely used various types of allegory, namely: irony, comparisons with animals, allegory, personification, symbols as allegorical elements in his works to enhance the impact on the reader, give depth to his works, demonstrate their ontological connection with moral principles and cultural the values ​​of the people. The relevance of studying this aspect lies in the fact that it forces the reader to look for the hidden meaning of the allegory, to search for its origins and deep content, thereby plunging not only into the cultural history of the country, but also drawing lessons from it, drawing conclusions and finding their application in the present. . Allegories make the works richer, revealing its deep meaning, linking the past, present and future.

allegory solzhenitsyn irony allegory

Literature

1. Antipiev N.P. Artistic communication: allegory. Bulletin of the Irkutsk State Linguistic University. 2012. No. 1 (17). pp. 119-128.

2. Belopolskaya E.V. Roman A.I. Solzhenitsyn "In the first circle": Problems and poetics: dis .... cand. philol. Sciences: 10.01.02. Rostov-on-Don, 1996. 180 p.

3. Bible. Books of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Canonical. [Reprinted from the Synoid edition]. Chicago, USA, 1990. 1226 p.

4. Big encyclopedic dictionary: [A-Z]. Moscow, St. Petersburg: Bolshaya ros. encicl.: Norint, 1997. 1434 p.

5. Bulgakov M.A. The Master and Margarita. Baku: Azerneshr, 1988. 320 p.

6. Gukovsky G. A. Gogol's Realism. Moscow-Leningrad: Goslitizdat, 1959. 531 p.

7. Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. Perm: Perm book, 1994. 479 p.

8. Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. Moscow: Rosmen, 2006. 584 p.

9. Niva Zh. Solzhenitsyn. Moscow: Fiction, 1992. 189 p.

10. Potebnya A. A. Aesthetics and poetics. Moscow: Art, 1976. 614 p.

11. Solzhenitsyn A.I. In the first circle. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaya Literature, 1990. 766 p.

12. Solzhenitsyn A.I. Small collected works: in 7 volumes. Moscow: INCOM NV, 1991. T 3. 1991. 288 p.

13. Solzhenitsyn A.I. Publicism: in 3 volumes. Yaroslavl: Upper - Volga. book. publishing house, 1996. Vol. 2. 1996. 624 p.

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