The report on the life of Saltykov Shchedrin is brief. The childhood of Saltykov-Shchedrin

On January 15, 1826, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin was born in a small village in the Tver province. The biography of this man is permeated through and through with philanthropy and contempt for the reactionary state apparatus of his time. However, first things first.

Saltykov-Shchedrin Mikhail Evgrafovich: a biography of the early years

The future famous writer was born in the family of a wealthy nobleman. By the way, Saltykov is his real name. Shchedrin is a creative pseudonym. The boy spent the first years of his life in his father's family estate. The most difficult years of serfdom fell on this period. When in most states the scientific and technological revolution had already taken place or was taking place, and capitalist relations were also developing, the Russian Empire was more and more mired in its own medieval way of life. And in order to somehow keep pace with the development of the great powers, the state machine worked more and more actively, squeezing all the juice out of the peasant class in an extensive way. Actually, the entire subsequent biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin eloquently indicates that he had a sufficient opportunity to observe the situation of the peasants in his youth.

This greatly impressed the young man and left an imprint on all his further work. Mikhail receives his primary education in his own home, and being ten years old, he enters the Moscow Institute of the Nobility. Here he studied for only two years, showing extraordinary abilities. And already in 1838 he transferred to receiving a state scholarship for education. Six years later, he graduates from this educational institution and enters the ministerial military office for service.

Biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin: the beginning of creative activity

Here, a young man is seriously interested in the literature of his time, avidly reads French enlighteners and socialists. During this period, his first own stories were written: "Contradictions", "A Tangled Case", "Domestic Notes". However, the nature of these works, replete with free-thinking and satire on the tsarist autocracy, even then turned the state power against the young official.

Biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin: creative recognition and acceptance by the government

In 1848, Mikhail Evgrafovich went into exile in Vyatka. There he enters the service of a clerical official. This period ended in 1855, when the writer was finally allowed to leave this city. Returning from exile, he is appointed an official for special assignments under the state minister of the interior. In 1860 he became the vice-governor of Tver. At the same time, the writer resumes his creative activity again. Already in 1862, he retires from public office and focuses on literature. At the invitation of Sergei Nekrasov, Saltykov-Shchedrin arrives in St. Petersburg and settles in the editorial office of Sovremennik. Here, and later in the journal "Domestic Notes", where he got under the patronage of the same Nekrasov,

the most fruitful years of his creative activity. Many stories, satirical articles and, of course, the famous grotesque novels: "The History of a City", "Modern Idyll" and others - were written in the second half of 1860-1870.

Biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin: the last years of his life

In the 1880s, the writer's satirical works became more and more famous among the intelligentsia, but at the same time they were increasingly persecuted by the tsarist regime. Thus, the closure of the journal Otechestvennye Zapiski, where he was published, forced Mikhail Evgrafovich to look for publishing houses abroad. This ban on printing in his native country greatly undermined the health of an elderly man. And although he also wrote the famous "Tales" and "Poshekhonskaya antiquity", for several years he had aged a lot, his strength was rapidly leaving him. May 10, 1889 Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin died. The writer, in accordance with his request in his will, was buried in St. Petersburg, next to the grave of I.S. Turgenev.

Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin(real name Saltykov, alias Nikolai Shchedrin; January 15 - April 28 [May 10]) - Russian writer, journalist, editor of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine, Ryazan and Tver vice-governor.

Encyclopedic YouTube

1 / 5

✪ History of one CITY. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

✪ Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. Program 1. The main milestones of biography and creativity

✪ Wild LOWER. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

✪ Mikhail Efgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin | Russian Literature Grade 7 #23 | info lesson

✪ Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. Transfer 5. Tales

Subtitles

Biography

early years

Mikhail Saltykov was born into an old noble family, on the estate of his parents, the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazinsky district, Tver province. He was the sixth child of a hereditary nobleman and collegiate adviser Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov (1776-1851). The writer's mother, Zabelina Olga Mikhailovna (1801-1874), was the daughter of the Moscow nobleman Mikhail Petrovich Zabelin (1765-1849) and Marfa Ivanovna (1770-1814). Although in the footnote to “Poshekhonskaya antiquity” Saltykov asked not to be confused with the personality of Nikanor Zatrapezny, on behalf of whom the story is being told, but the complete similarity of much of what is reported about Zatrapezny with the undoubted facts of Mikhail Saltykov’s life suggests that “Poshekhonskaya antiquity” is partly autobiographical. character.

The first teacher of M.E. Saltykov was the serf of his parents, the painter Pavel Sokolov; then his elder sister, a priest of a neighboring village, a governess and a student of the Moscow Theological Academy worked with him. Ten years old, he entered, and two years later was transferred, as one of the best students, a state-owned pupil to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. It was there that he began his career as a writer.

The beginning of literary activity

In 1844 he graduated from the Lyceum in the second category (that is, with the rank of X class), 17 out of 22 students were expelled because their behavior was certified as no more than “quite good”: to ordinary school misconduct (rudeness, smoking, carelessness in clothes) Shchedrin added "writing poetry" of "disapproving" content. In the lyceum, under the influence of Pushkin's legends, fresh even then, each course had its own poet; in the thirteenth year, Saltykov played this role. Several of his poems were placed in the Library for Reading in 1841 and 1842, when he was still a lyceum student; others, published in Sovremennik (ed. Pletnev) in 1844 and 1845, were also written by him while still at the Lyceum; all these poems are reprinted in the "Materials for the biography of M. E. Saltykov", attached to the complete collection of his works.

Not a single one of Mikhail Saltykov's poems (partly translated, partly original) bears traces of talent; the later ones are even inferior in time to the earlier ones. M. E. Saltykov soon realized that he had no vocation for poetry, stopped writing poetry and did not like being reminded of them. However, in these student exercises, one can feel a sincere mood, mostly sad, melancholy (at that time, Saltykov was known as a “gloomy lyceum student” among acquaintances).

In August 1845, Mikhail Saltykov was enrolled in the office of the Minister of War and only two years later he received his first full-time position there - assistant secretary. Literature already then occupied him much more than service: he not only read a lot, being especially fond of Georges Sand and the French socialists (a brilliant picture of this hobby was drawn by him thirty years later in the fourth chapter of the collection Abroad), but also wrote - at first small bibliographic notes (in "Domestic notes"), then the story "Contradictions" (ibid., November 1847) and "A Tangled Case" (March)

Already in the bibliographic notes, despite the unimportance of the books about which they are written, one can see the author's way of thinking - his aversion to routine, to conventional morality, to serfdom; in some places there are also sparkles of mocking humor.

In M.E. Saltykov’s first story, “Contradictions,” which he never reprinted later, sounds, constricted and muffled, the very theme on which J. Sand’s early novels were written: recognition of the rights of life and passion. The hero of the story, Nagibin, is a man, exhausted by greenhouse upbringing and defenseless against the influences of the environment, against the "little things of life." Fear of these trifles both then and later (for example, in "The Road" in "Provincial Essays") was apparently familiar to Saltykov himself - but for him it was that fear that serves as a source of struggle, not despondency. Thus, only one small corner of the author's inner life was reflected in Nagibin. Another protagonist of the novel - the "female fist", Kroshina - resembles Anna Pavlovna Zatrapeznaya from "Poshekhonskaya antiquity", that is, it was probably inspired by Mikhail Saltykov's family memories.

Much larger than "A Tangled Case" (reprinted in "Innocent Tales"), written under the strong influence of "The Overcoat", maybe "Poor People", but containing some wonderful pages (for example, the image of a pyramid of human bodies, which is dreamed of Michulin). “Russia,” the hero of the story reflects, “is a vast, plentiful and rich state; Yes, a person is stupid, he is starving to himself in a rich state. “Life is a lottery,” tells him the familiar look bequeathed to him by his father; “It is so,” answers some unfriendly voice, “but why is it a lottery, why shouldn’t it just be life?” A few months earlier, such reasoning would perhaps have gone unnoticed - but "A Tangled Case" appeared in the light just when the February Revolution in France was reflected in Russia by the establishment of the so-called Buturlinsky committee (named after its chairman D. P. Buturlin), vested with special powers to curb the press.

Vyatka

The health of Mikhail Evgrafovich, shaken since the middle of the 1870s, was deeply undermined by the ban on Otechestvennye Zapiski. The impression made on him by this event is depicted by him with great force in one of the tales (“The Adventure with Kramolnikov”, who “waking up one morning, quite clearly felt that he was not there”) and in the first “Motley Letter”, which begins words: “a few months ago I suddenly lost the use of the language” ...

M. E. Saltykov was engaged in editorial work tirelessly and passionately, vividly taking to heart everything related to the magazine. Surrounded by people sympathetic to him and in solidarity with him, Saltykov felt himself, thanks to Fatherland Notes, in constant communication with readers, in constant, so to speak, service to literature, which he loved so dearly and to which he devoted such a wonderful a laudatory hymn (a letter to his son, written shortly before his death, ends with the words: “most of all, love your native literature and prefer the title of a writer to anyone else”).

An irreplaceable loss, therefore, was for him the rupture of the direct connection between him and the public. Mikhail Saltykov knew that the "reader-friend" still existed - but this reader "became timid, lost in the crowd, and it is rather difficult to find out exactly where he is." The thought of loneliness, of "abandonment" depresses him more and more, aggravated by physical suffering and, in turn, aggravates them. "I'm sick," he exclaims in the first chapter of Little Things in Life. The disease has dug into me with all its claws and does not let go of them. The emaciated body cannot oppose him with anything. His last years were slow agony, but he did not stop writing as long as he could hold a pen, and his work remained strong and free to the end: “Poshekhonskaya Starina” is in no way inferior to his best works. Shortly before his death, he began a new work, the main idea of ​​which can be understood already by its title: “Forgotten Words” (“There were, you know, words,” Saltykov said to N.K. Mikhailovsky shortly before his death, “well, conscience, fatherland, humanity, others are still there ... And now take the trouble to look for them! .. I must remind you! ..). He died on April 28 (May 10), 1889, and was buried on May 2 (May 14), according to his wishes, at the Volkovsky cemetery, next to I. S. Turgenev.

The main motives of creativity

There are two lines of research in the interpretation of M.E. Saltykov's texts. One, traditional, dating back to the literary criticism of the 19th century, sees in his work an expression of revealing pathos and almost a chronology of the most important events in the history of Russian society. The second, which was formed not without the influence of hermeneutics and structuralism, reveals objectively given semantic constructs of different levels in the texts, which make it possible to speak of a strong ideological tension in Shchedrin's prose, which puts it on a par with F. M. Dostoevsky and A. P. Chekhov. Representatives of the traditional approach are accused of sociologization and epiphenomenalism, the desire to see in the text what you want to see because of external bias, and not what is given in it.

The traditional critical approach focuses on Saltykov's attitude to reforms (not noticing the difference between personal position and literary text). For twenty years in a row, all the major phenomena of Russian social life met with an echo in the works of Mikhail Saltykov, who sometimes foresaw them even in the bud. This is a kind of historical document, reaching in places a complete combination of real and artistic truth. M. E. Saltykov takes his post at a time when the main cycle of the “great reforms” has ended and, in the words of Nekrasov, “early measures” (early, of course, only from the point of view of their opponents) “lost their proper dimensions and backed away with a bang back".

The implementation of reforms, with one exception, fell into the hands of people hostile to them. In society, the usual results of reaction and stagnation manifested themselves more and more sharply: institutions became smaller, people became smaller, the spirit of theft and profit intensified, everything light and empty floated to the top. Under such conditions, it was difficult for a writer with Saltykov's talent to refrain from satire.

Even an excursion into the past becomes an instrument of struggle in his hands: when compiling the “History of a City”, he means - as can be seen from his letter to A. N. Pypin, published in 1889 - exclusively the present. “The historical form of the story,” he says, “was convenient for me because it allowed me to more freely refer to the known phenomena of life ... The critic must guess for himself and inspire others that Paramosha is not at all Magnitsky only, but at the same time NN. And not even NN., but all people in general of a well-known party, and now they have not lost their strength.

And indeed, Borodavkin (“The History of a City”), who secretly writes “a charter on the non-restriction of city governors by laws”, and the landowner Poskudnikov (“Diary of a provincial in St. Petersburg”), “recognizing it is not useless to shoot all those who disagree thinking” - this is one field of berries; the satire that castigates them pursues the same goal, no matter whether it is about the past or the present. Everything written by Mikhail Saltykov in the first half of the seventies of the 19th century rebuffs, mainly, the desperate efforts of the vanquished - defeated by the reforms of the previous decade - to regain lost positions or to reward themselves, one way or another, for the losses suffered.

In Letters on the Provinces, historiographers - that is, those who have long made Russian history - are fighting against new writers; in the "Diary of a provincial" searchlights are pouring, as if from a cornucopia, highlighting "trustworthy and knowledgeable local landowners"; in "Pompadours and Pompadours" hard-headed "examine" peace mediators, recognized as renegades of the noble camp.

In "Lords of Tashkent" we get acquainted with "enlighteners, free from science" and learn that "Tashkent is a country that lies everywhere, where they beat in the teeth and where the legend of Makar, who does not drive calves, has the right to citizenship." "Pompadours" are leaders who have taken a course in administrative sciences from Borel or from Donon; "Tashkent" are the executors of pompadour orders. M.E. Saltykov does not spare the new institutions - the zemstvo, the court, the bar - does not spare them precisely because he demands a lot from them and is indignant at every concession made by them to the "trifles of life."

Hence his strictness towards certain press organs, which, in his words, were engaged in “foam skimming”. In the heat of the struggle, Saltykov could be unfair to individuals, corporations and institutions, but only because he always had a high idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe tasks of the era.

“Literature, for example, can be called the salt of Russian life: what will happen,” thought Mikhail Saltykov, “if salt ceases to be salty, if it adds voluntary self-restraint to the restrictions that do not depend on literature? ..” With the complication of Russian life, with the emergence of new social forces and the modification of old ones, with the multiplication of dangers threatening the peaceful development of the people, the scope of Saltykov's creativity is also expanding.

By the second half of the seventies, he created such types as Derunov and Strelov, Razuvaev and Kolupaev. In their person, predation, with hitherto unprecedented boldness, lays claim to the role of a "pillar", that is, the pillar of society - and these rights are recognized for it from different sides as something due (let us recall the bailiff Gratsianov and the collector of "materials" in the "Shelter of Mon Repos "). We see the victorious campaign of the “grimy” against the “noble tombs”, we hear the “noble melodies” being sung, we are present during the persecution against the Anpetovs and Parnachevs, suspected of “letting revolution among themselves”.

Even sadder are the pictures presented by a decaying family, an irreconcilable discord between "fathers" and "children" - between cousin Masha and "irrespectful Coronat", between Molchalin and his Pavel Alekseevich, between Razumov and his Styopa. “A sore spot” (published in “Domestic notes”, reprinted in the “Collection”), in which this discord is depicted with amazing drama - one of the culminating points of M.E. Saltykov’s talent “Mooding people”, tired of hoping and languishing in their corners , are contrasted with “people of triumphant modernity”, conservatives in the image of a liberal (Tebenkov) and conservatives with a national tinge (Pleshivtsev), narrow statesmen, striving, in essence, for completely similar results, although they set off alone - “from Ofitserskaya in the capital city of St. Petersburg, the other is from Plyushchikha in the capital city of Moscow.”

With particular indignation, the satirist falls upon the "literary bedbugs", who have chosen the motto: "thinking is not supposed to", the goal is the enslavement of the people, the means to achieve the goal is slandering opponents. The “triumphant pig”, brought to the stage in one of the last chapters, “Abroad”, not only interrogates the “truth”, but also mocks it, “searches for it with its own means”, gnaws it with a loud champ, publicly, not in the least embarrassed . Literature, on the other hand, is invaded by the street, "with its incoherent noisy, base simplicity of demands, wildness of ideals" - the street that serves as the main center of "selfish instincts."

A little later, the time comes for “lying” and closely related “notices”, the “Lord of Thoughts” is “a scoundrel, born of moral and mental dregs, brought up and inspired by selfish cowardice”.

Sometimes (for example, in one of his “Letters to Aunty”) Saltykov hopes for the future, expressing confidence that Russian society “will not succumb to the influx of base anger at everything that goes beyond the barn atmosphere”; sometimes he is seized with despondency at the thought of those “isolated calls of shame that broke through among the masses of shamelessness - and sunk into eternity” (the end of “Modern Idyll”). He is arming himself against the new program: “away with phrases, it’s time to get down to business,” rightly finding that it is just a phrase and, in addition, “decayed under layers of dust and mold” (“Poshekhonsky Tales”). Depressed by the “little things of life”, he sees in their increasing dominance the danger is all the more formidable, the more big questions grow: “forgotten, neglected, drowned out by the noise and crackle of everyday bustle, they knock in vain on the door, which cannot, however, remain forever for them closed." - Watching from his watchtower the changing pictures of the present, Mikhail Saltykov never stopped looking at the same time into the obscure distance of the future.

The fairy-tale element, peculiar, little resembling what is usually understood by this name, was never completely alien to the works of M.E. Saltykov: what he himself called magic often burst into images of real life. This is one of those forms that the poetic vein that sounded strongly in him took. In his fairy tales, on the contrary, reality plays a big role, without preventing the best of them from being real "poems in prose." Such are the “Wise Piskar”, “Poor Wolf”, “Karas-Idealist”, “Forgetful Sheep”, and especially “Konyaga”. Idea and image merge here into one indivisible whole: the strongest effect is achieved by the simplest means.

There are few in our literature such pictures of Russian nature and Russian life as are spread out in the Konyaga. After Nekrasov, no one heard such groans of a soulful voice, pulled out by the spectacle of endless labor over an endless task.

Saltykov is also a great artist in "Lords Gololovlevs". The members of the Golovlyov family, this strange product of the serf era, are not mad in the full sense of the word, but damaged by the cumulative effect of physiological and social conditions. The inner life of these unfortunate, distorted people is depicted with such relief, which our and Western European literature rarely achieves.

This is especially noticeable when comparing paintings similar in plot - for example, paintings of drunkenness by Mikhail Saltykov (Stepan Golovlev) and by Zola (Coupeau, in "The Trap"). The latter was written by an observer-protocolist, the first by a psychologist-artist. M. E. Saltykov has neither clinical terms, nor stenographically recorded delusions, nor hallucinations reproduced in detail; but with the help of a few rays of light thrown into deep darkness, the last, desperate flash of a fruitlessly lost life rises before us. In the drunkard, who has almost reached the point of animal stupefaction, we recognize a man.

Arina Petrovna Golovleva is depicted even more vividly - and in this callous, stingy old woman Saltykov also found human features that inspire compassion. He reveals them even in “Judas” (Porfiry Golovlev) himself - this “hypocrite of a purely Russian type, devoid of any moral measure and not knowing any other truth, except for the one that appears in the alphabetical copybooks.” Loving no one, respecting nothing, replacing the missing content of life with a mass of trifles, Yudushka could be calm and happy in his own way, while around him, without interrupting for a minute, there was a turmoil invented by himself. Her sudden stop was supposed to wake him from his waking sleep, just as a miller wakes up when the mill wheels stop moving. Once waking up, Porfiry Golovlev must have felt a terrible emptiness, must have heard voices that until then had been drowned out by the noise of an artificial whirlpool.

“The humiliated and insulted stood before me, radiant with light, and loudly cried out against the innate injustice, which gave them nothing but fetters.” In the “desecrated image of a slave,” Saltykov recognized the image of a man. The protest against "serf chains", brought up by childhood impressions, over time turned with Mikhail Saltykov, as with Nekrasov, into a protest against all sorts of "other" chains "invented to replace serfs"; intercession for a slave turned into intercession for a person and a citizen. Indignant against the "street" and the "crowd", M.E. Saltykov never identified them with the masses of the people and always stood on the side of the "man eating swan" and "the boy without pants." Based on several misinterpreted passages from various works of Saltykov, his enemies tried to attribute to him an arrogant, contemptuous attitude towards the people; "Poshekhonskaya antiquity" destroyed the possibility of such accusations.

In general, there are few writers who would be hated as strongly and so stubbornly as Saltykov. This hatred outlived him; even the obituaries dedicated to him in some press organs were imbued with it. Misunderstanding was an ally of malice. Saltykov was called a "storyteller", his works were fantasies, sometimes degenerating into a "wonderful farce" and having nothing to do with reality. He was reduced to the degree of a feuilletonist, a funny man, a cartoonist, they saw in his satire "a kind of Nozdrevism and Khlestakovism with a large addition of Sobakevich."

M. E. Saltykov once called his style of writing "slave"; this word was picked up by his opponents - and they assured that thanks to the "slave language" the satirist could chat as much as he wanted and about anything, arousing not indignation, but laughter, amusing even those against whom his blows were directed. According to his opponents, Mikhail Saltykov had no ideals, positive aspirations: he was only engaged in “spitting”, “shuffling and chewing” a small number of topics that bored everyone.

Such views are based, at best, on a series of obvious misunderstandings. The element of fantasy, often found in Saltykov, does not in the least destroy the reality of his satire. Truth is clearly visible through exaggerations - and even exaggerations themselves sometimes turn out to be nothing more than a prediction of the future. Much of what is dreamed of, for example, projectors in the "Diary of a provincial", a few years later turned into reality.

Among the thousands of pages written by M. E. Saltykov, there are, of course, those to which the name of a feuilleton or caricature is applicable - but one cannot judge a huge whole from a small and relatively unimportant part. There are also harsh, rude, even abusive expressions in Saltykov, sometimes, perhaps, overflowing; but politeness and restraint cannot be demanded of satire.

Slave language, in Mikhail Saltykov's own words, "does not in the least obscure his intentions"; they are perfectly clear to anyone who wishes to understand them. His themes are infinitely varied, expanding and updating in accordance with the demands of the times.

Of course, he also has repetitions, depending in part on what he wrote for magazines; but they are justified mainly by the importance of the questions to which he returned. The connecting link of all his writings is the desire for an ideal, which he himself (in "The Little Things of Life") sums up in three words: "freedom, development, justice."

At the end of his life, this formula seems insufficient to him. “What is freedom,” he says, “without participation in the blessings of life? What is development without a clearly defined end goal? What is justice, devoid of the fire of selflessness and love?

In fact, love was never alien to M.E. Saltykov: he always preached it with a "hostile word of denial." Ruthlessly pursuing evil, he inspires indulgence in people in whom it finds expression often beyond their consciousness and will. He protests in the "Sore Place" against the cruel motto: "break with everything." The speech about the fate of the Russian peasant woman, put into the mouth of a rural teacher (“A Midsummer Night's Dream” in the “Collection”), can be put in depth of lyricism along with the best pages of the Nekrasov poem “Who Lives Well in Russia”. “Who sees the tears of a peasant woman? Who hears how they pour drop by drop? They are seen and heard only by a Russian peasant baby, but in him they revive the moral feeling and plant in his heart the first seeds of goodness.

This idea, obviously, has long seized Saltykov. In one of his earliest and best tales (“Conscience Lost”), the conscience, which everyone is burdened with and everyone is trying to get rid of, says to its last owner: “Find me a little Russian child, dissolve before me his pure heart and bury me in it: maybe he will shelter me, an innocent baby, and nurse me, maybe he will produce me to the best of his age, and then he will go out to people with me - he does not disdain ... According to her word, it happened.

The tradesman found a little Russian child, dissolved his pure heart and buried his conscience in him. A little child grows, and conscience grows with him. And the little child will be a great man, and there will be a great conscience in him. And then all unrighteousness, deceit and violence will disappear, because the conscience will not be timid and will want to manage everything itself. These words, full of not only love, but also hope, are a testament left by Mikhail Saltykov to the Russian people.

The style and language of M.E. Saltykov are highly original. Each person he draws speaks exactly as befits his character and position. Derunov's words, for example, breathe self-confidence and importance, the consciousness of a force that is not used to meeting any opposition or even objections. His speech is a mixture of unctuous phrases drawn from church life, echoes of the former reverence for the masters and unbearably harsh notes of a home-grown political and economic doctrine.

The language of Razuvaev is related to the language of Derunov, as the first calligraphic exercises of a schoolchild to the teacher's prescriptions. In the words of Fedinka Neugodov, one can distinguish both the clerical formalism of the highest flight, and something salon-like, and something Offenbach.

When Saltykov speaks in his own person, the originality of his manner is felt in the arrangement and combination of words, in unexpected rapprochements, in quick transitions from one tone to another. Remarkable is Saltykov’s ability to find a suitable nickname for a type, for a social group, for a mode of action (“Pillar”, “Candidate for pillars”, “internal Tashkent”, “Tashkent of the preparatory class”, “Monrepos refuge”, “Waiting for actions”, etc. P.).

The second of the mentioned approaches, going back to the ideas of V. B. Shklovsky and the formalists, M. M. Bakhtin, indicates that behind the recognizable “realistic” storylines and system of characters lies a collision of extremely abstract worldview concepts, including “life” and "death". Their struggle in the world, the outcome of which seemed unobvious to the writer, is presented by various means in most of Shchedrin's texts. It should be noted that the writer paid special attention to the mimicry of death, clothed in outwardly life forms. Hence the motif of puppets and puppetry (“Little toy business”, Organchik and Pimple in “The History of a City”), zoomorphic images with different types of transitions from man to beast (humanized animals in “Fairy Tales”, animal-like people in “Lords of Tashkent”). The expansion of death forms the total dehumanization of the living space, which Shchedrin displays. It is not surprising that the mortal theme often appears in Shchedrin's texts. An escalation of mortal images, reaching almost the degree of phantasmagoria, is observed in “Lords Heads”: these are not only numerous repeated physical deaths, but also the oppressed state of nature, the destruction and decay of things, all sorts of visions and dreams, the calculations of Porfiry Vladimirych, when the “tsifir” is not only loses touch with reality, but turns into a kind of fantastic vision, ending with a shift in time layers. Death and lethality in social reality, where Shchedrin painfully sees alienation leading to the loss of himself by a person, turns out to be only one of the cases of the expansion of the deadly, which makes it necessary to divert attention only from “social life writing”. In this case, the realistic external forms of writing by Mikhail Saltykov hide the deep existential orientation of Shchedrin's work, make it comparable to E. T. A. Hoffman, F. M. Dostoevsky and F. Kafka.

There are few such notes, few such colors that could not be found in M.E. Saltykov. The sparkling humor that fills the amazing conversation between a boy in pants and a boy without pants is as fresh and original as the soulful lyricism that permeates the last pages of The Golovlevs and The Sore Spot. Saltykov has few descriptions, but even among them there are such pearls as the picture of a village autumn in The Golovlevs or a falling asleep county town in Well-meaning Speeches. The collected works of M.E. Saltykov with the appendix "Materials for his biography" were published for the first time (in 9 volumes) in the year of his death () and have gone through many editions since then.

The works of Mikhail Saltykov also exist in translations into foreign languages, although Saltykov's peculiar style presents extreme difficulties for the translator. "Little Things in Life" and "Golovlevs" have been translated into German (in the Universal Library of Advertising), and "Golovlevs" and "Poshekhonskaya Antiquity" (in "Bibliothèque des auteurs étrangers", ed. "Nouvelle Parisienne") have been translated into French.

Memory

File:The Monument Saltykhov-Shchedrin.jpg

Monument to M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin on Nikolodvoryanskaya Street in Ryazan

In honor of Mikhail Saltykov are named:

street and lane in Kaluga;

lane in the city of Shakhty;

and etc.

• State public library named after Saltykov-Shchedrin (St. Petersburg).
• Before the renaming, Saltykov-Shchedrin Street was in St. Petersburg.
• Memorial museums of Saltykov-Shchedrin exist in:
  • the village of Spas-Ugol, Taldomsky District, Moscow Region.
• Monuments to the writer are installed in:

• the village of Lebyazhye, Leningrad Region;
• in the city of Tver on Tverskaya Square (opened on January 26, 1976 in connection with the celebration of the 150th anniversary of his birth). Depicted seated in a carved chair, leaning his hands on a cane. Sculptor O. K. Komov, architect N. A. Kovalchuk. Mikhail Saltykov was vice-governor of Tver from 1860 to 1862. The writer's impressions from Tver were reflected in "Satires in Prose" (1860-1862), "History of a City" (1870), "Gentlemen Heads" (1880) and other works.
• the city of Taldom, Moscow Region ((opened on August 6, 2016 in connection with the celebration of the 190th anniversary of his birth). Depicted sitting in an armchair, in his right hand is a piece of paper with the quote “Do not get bogged down in the details of the present, but educate yourself in the ideals of the future "(from" Poshekhonskaya antiquity "). The chair is an exact copy of the real Saltykov chair, stored in the museum of the writer in the school of the village of Ermolino, Taldom district. The writer's homeland - the village of Spas-Ugol - is located on the territory of the Taldomsky municipal district, the center of which is the city of Taldom. Sculptor D. A. Stretovich, architect A. A. Airapetov.

• Busts of the writer are installed in:
  • Ryazan. The opening ceremony took place on April 11, 2008, in connection with the 150th anniversary of the appointment of Mikhail Saltykov to the post of vice-governor in Ryazan. The bust was installed in a public garden next to the house, which is currently a branch of the Ryazan Regional Library, and previously served as the residence of the Ryazan Vice-Governor. The author of the monument is Ivan Cherapkin, Honored Artist of Russia, Professor of the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after Surikov;
  • Kirov. The stone statue, the author of which was the Kirov artist Maxim Naumov, is located on the wall of the building of the former Vyatka provincial government (Dinamovskiy proezd, 4), where Mikhail Evgrafovich served as an official during his stay in Vyatka.
  • Spas-Ugol village, Taldomsky district, Moscow region.
• The Saltykiada project, conceived and born in Vyatka, dedicated to the 190th anniversary of the birth of M.E. Saltykov Shchedrin, uniting literature and fine arts. It included: the procedure for open defense of diploma projects of students of the Department of Technology and Design of Vyatka State University, at which the solemn transfer of the statuette of the symbol of the All-Russian Prize M.E. museum. The M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin Prize was presented to Evgeny Grishkovets (September 14, 2015). Exhibition "M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The Image of Time” where the project of a sculptural monument to the writer was presented. Exhibition of works by Maxim Naumov "Saltykiada" in the Kirov Regional Art Museum named after the Vasnetsov brothers (March - April 2016). In October 2016, within the framework of the Saltykov Readings, a presentation of the multi-information album "Saltykiada" was held.
• In 2017, the play “How Saltykov Met Shchedrin” was written by Maxim Naumov. At the exhibition “Saltykiada. The History of One Book”, which took place on March 16, 2017, presented 22 new graphic works of the cycle, as well as works from the collections of the Vyatka Art Museum. The book “Saltykiada. How Saltykov met Shchedrin in Vyatka. Famous people of the city took part in the reading of the play.
• Postage stamps dedicated to Mikhail Saltykov were issued in the USSR.
• In the USSR and Russia were released

One can talk endlessly about the biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin, given his status as the founder of Russian satirical literature with elements of a fairy tale. Therefore, in brief facts about the most important events in the writer's life, the attitude of the degenerated nobility to the state of affairs in the serf state is clearly traced.

Childhood

1. The parents of the future satirist were Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov and Olga Mikhailovna Zabelina. The pope served as a collegiate adviser and had no weight either in society or in the family, due to his origin from a poor noble family. Everything was run by the mother, a strict woman with primitive ideas about raising children and great greed for her own wealth.
2. She was given in marriage as a very young girl, because of which she transferred the foundations of landowner life to her own family and adhered to them with strict rigor.
3. The writer was born as the sixth child of 9 living brothers and sisters on January 15, 1826 in the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazinsky district, Tver province. Until the age of 10, he was considered the most beloved child in the family, which was reflected in the somewhat strange attitude of his greedy and domineering mother towards him - the remnants of the festive dinner were the first to be given to Mikhail.
4. The master's children were taught by teachers and tutors from their own serfs, as well as the writer's elder sister Nadezhda, together with her colleague at the Catherine Institute, Avdotya Vasilevskaya. A little later, a priest from a neighboring village and a student of a theological seminary joined the education of teenagers.
5. For his excellent knowledge of basic subjects, Mikhail Saltykov was admitted in 1836 to the Moscow Noble Institute immediately in the third grade. Following the results of his studies, he was enrolled in 1838 in the capital's lyceum for state support, as a successful student.

It is noteworthy that the writer's craving for creativity developed within the walls of the Lyceum under the influence of Pushkin's work and his sudden death. Initially, Mikhail Saltykov tried to engage in poetry, which he quickly got tired of because of the need to "squeeze good thoughts into the framework of rhyming lines."

Career and exile

After graduation, for freethinking and craving for Protestant sentiments, Mikhail Evgrafovich received a low rank in the table of ranks, which prevented him from taking a high position in the civil service. At the same time, he continued to improve in writing, for which he was exiled to the provinces.

His further activities are inextricably linked with living in various provinces of the Russian Empire and activities as an official in authoritative positions:

1. In April 1948, Saltykov was sent to Vyatka by his immediate superior, Count Chernyshov, frightened by the writer's thoughts expressed in the story "A Tangled Case". By this time, Europe was frightened by the French Revolution and the German uprisings, which led to the tightening of censorship and the exile of all educated people who sympathized with the problems of the lower strata of the population.
2. In 1951, the disgraced satirist was able to avoid bloodshed between tenants and peasants in the surrounding villages.
3. Until the end of his exile in 1955, the writer did a lot of translations of French enlighteners, and also compiled the “History of the Russian State” to teach this subject to the daughters of his friend, the vice-governor of Vyatka and nearby villages. He had a warm welcome in the Boltin family and constantly spent his free time with the younger daughters of the mayor, which later played an important role in the biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin - the St. Petersburg State Councilor fell in love with his wife, Elena Appolonyevna Boltina, when she was barely 12 years old.
4. In 1856, having become a real state councilor from the Ministry of the Interior, he married his chosen one, who was barely 14 years old. Only the elder brother of the writer came to the wedding - Mikhail Evgrafovich's mother did not like the daughter-in-law because of her youth and the lack of a rich dowry.
5. From 1858 to 1862 he served as chief police chief in the Tver and Ryazan provinces. During this time, he was able to organize several sites to control the order in the areas adjacent to these cities and proved to be a progressive fighter for justice in relation to the disenfranchised sections of the population - lower-ranking officials, serfs and farmers.

In the essays of contemporaries, telling about the most important facts from the life of the first satirist, the time of service in government positions for Saltykov-Shchedrin was not in vain. Observations of the life and foundations of provincial settlements and cities served as a rich basis for future works of the classic.

Success in literary work

Mikhail Evgrafovich did not give up hope of making a name for himself as a progressive writer of our time, and therefore, throughout the entire period of public service, he worked hard on his own written observations and reflections. The fruitfulness of his efforts was determined by the undoubted popularity of individual works that saw the light at different stages of his work:

1. 1856 - the beginning of a series of publications under the general title "Provincial Notes" in the journal "Russian Bulletin".
2. Since June 1868, after the secondary and final resignation, Saltykov became the de facto editor of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine together with Nekrasov. By this time, a collection of his essays and stories was published, compiled from many years of publications in Moskovskie Vedomosti and Sovremennik.
3. In the period from 1868 to 1884, the publication published most of the famous works of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, which allowed him and his family to exist and travel around Europe with dignity.

The writer died in 1989, leaving behind not only a young widow, but also a son and daughter. Despite the huge number of sources claiming that Saltykov-Shchedrin did not love his family, there are many reasons to assert the opposite - the writer's suicide notes to his son have been preserved. In them, the dying man with great tenderness and love asks the heir to take care of his sister and mother after his death.

These biographical sketches were published about a hundred years ago in the series `Life of Remarkable People`, carried out by F.F. Pavlenkov (1839-1900). Written in the genre of poetic chronicle and historical and cultural research, which was new for that time, these texts retain their value to this day. Written `for ordinary people`, for the Russian provinces, today they can be recommended not only to bibliophiles, but to the widest readership: both those who are not at all tempted in the history and psychology of great people, and those for whom these subjects are a profession .

A series: Life of wonderful people

* * *

by the LitRes company.

Biographical sketch of S. N. Krivenko.

FROM portrait of M. E. Saltykov, engraved in Leipzig by Gedan.

CHAPTER I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

The proximity of death does not usually allow one to see the real magnitude of a person’s merits, and while the merits of some are exaggerated, the merits of others are undoubtedly presented in an underestimated form, even if no one doubted their existence and even enemies paid them a tacitly known tribute of respect. The latter also applies to Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov.

There are few names in Russia that would speak as much to the mind and heart as his name; there are few writers who had such an influence during their lifetime and left society such an extensive literary heritage, a rich and diverse heritage both in terms of internal content and external form and a very special language, which during their lifetime began to be called “Saltykovsky”. Adjacent to the nature of creativity directly to Gogol, he is in no way inferior to him either in originality or in the power of talent. Finally, there are few people who would be distinguished by such an integral character and who would pass the career of life with such honor as he did.

Mikhail Evgrafovich was born on January 15, 1826 in the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazinsky district, Tver province. His parents - his father, a collegiate adviser, Evgraf Vasilyevich, and his mother, Olga Mikhailovna, nee Zabelina, of a merchant family - were quite wealthy local landowners; His aunt Marya Vasilievna Saltykova and the Uglich tradesman Dmitry Mikhailovich Kurbatov baptized him. The latter ended up as a successor in a noble house due to a rather exceptional antecedent circumstance, which Saltykov talks about in a joking tone and personally, and then in Poshekhonskaya Antiquity, where Kurbatov was bred under the name of Barkhatov. This Kurbatov was famous for his piety and foresight, and, going constantly on pilgrimage to the monasteries, he stopped by along the way and stayed for quite a long time with the Saltykovs. It happened to him in the same way to go to them in 1826, shortly before being born to Mikhail Evgrafovich. To the question of Olga Mikhailovna, who will be born to her - a son or a daughter, he answered: “Cockerel, cockerel, nail cock! He will conquer many adversaries and will be a female dispersal. When a son really was born, he was named Michael, in honor of Michael the Archangel, and Kurbatov was invited to be godfathers.

The upbringing of landlord children was carried out at that time according to a fairly common pattern, had some kind of abbreviated, as if factory, character and did not abound with parental attention: children were usually raised and brought up in a special quarter, first by wet nurses, and then by nannies and governesses or uncles and tutors, then they were taught for up to ten years by parish priests and some "home teachers", often from their own serfs, and then they were sold to educational institutions, mainly state-owned, or to some preparatory boarding schools. This upbringing, in general, cannot be called rational, and Saltykov’s even more so because of the severity of the domestic regime and the rather exceptional family situation that was created on the basis of serfdom, and the subordination of a spineless father to a practical, businesslike mother, who thought most of all about the household. Little Saltykov saw a lot of both serf and family untruth, which offended human dignity and oppressed the impressionable childish soul; but his gifted nature did not break, but, on the contrary, seemed to be tempered in the test and gathered strength in order to subsequently spread its wings widely over human untruth in general. Once we talked to him about memory - at what age does a person begin to remember himself and his surroundings - and he said to me: “Do you know when my memory began? I remember that they flogged me, who exactly, I don’t remember; but they whip me properly, with a rod, and the German woman, the governess of my older brothers and sisters, intercedes for me, covers me with her palm from the blows and says that I am still too small for this. I must have been two years old then, no more.” In general, Saltykov's childhood is not replete with bright impressions.

"Poshekhonskaya antiquity", which undoubtedly has autobiographical significance, is overflowing with the saddest colors and gives, if not literally accurate, then at least a fairly close picture of his domestic upbringing in the period up to the age of ten. Mikhail Evgrafovich had to grow up and study separately from his older brothers, who were already in educational institutions at that time, but still he remembered their childhood and experienced, albeit to a lesser extent, the same educational way in which corporal punishment in various forms and forms were the main pedagogical device. Children were put on their knees, torn by the whirlwinds and by the ears, flogged, and most often fed with slaps and mallets as a more convenient way.

“I recall the incessant crying of children, the incessant moans of children at the classroom table,” he makes his Shabby One speak, “I recall a whole retinue of governesses who followed one after another and, with cruelty incomprehensible to the present time, poured mallets right and left ... They all fought inhumanly, and Marya Andreevna (daughter of a Moscow German shoemaker), even our strict mother called a fury. So during her stay, the children's ears were constantly covered with sores.

Parents remained indifferent to all this, and the mother usually even increased the punishment. She was the highest punitive authority. Saltykov did not like to recall his childhood, and when he recalled any of its individual features, he always recalled it with great bitterness. At the same time, he did not personally blame anyone, but said that then the whole system, the whole order of life and relationships was like that. Neither those who punished and squandered punishments recognized themselves as cruel, nor did outsiders look at them like that; then it was simply said: “It is impossible without children without this,” and this was the whole horror, much greater than personal horrors, because it made them possible and gave them the rights of citizenship. The external environment of childhood, in terms of hygiene, neatness and nutrition, also could not be boasted. Although there were quite large and bright rooms in the house, they were rooms ceremonial, the children were constantly crowded during the day in a small classroom, and at night in the common nursery, also small and with a low ceiling, where there were several cribs, and nannies slept on the floor, on felts. In the summer the children were a little more lively under the influence of the fresh air, but in the winter they were positively corked up within four walls and not a single jet of fresh air reached them, because there were no windows in the house, and the room atmosphere was refreshed only by the fire of the stoves. They only knew one thing - to heat it up hotter and wrap it up well. It was called gentle upbringing. It is very possible that due to precisely such hygienic conditions, Saltykov subsequently turned out to be so frail and sickly. Neatness was also badly respected: children's rooms were often left unswept; the clothes on the children were bad, most often altered from something old or passed from older to younger. Add to this the servants, dressed in some kind of smelly, patched rags. The same can be said about food: it was very scarce. In this regard, the landlord families were divided into two categories: in some, food was elevated to some kind of cult, they ate all day long, ate up fortunes, and children were also stuffed, overfed and made gluttons; in others, on the contrary, it was not that stinginess that dominated, but some kind of incomprehensible hoarding: it always seemed that there was not enough, and everything was a pity. Sheds, glaciers, cellars and pantries were bursting with provisions, many dishes were being prepared, but not for themselves, but for guests; leftovers and what was already beginning to deteriorate and stale were served on the table; there were a hundred or more cows in the barnyard, and skimmed, blue milk, etc., was served for tea.

This kind of order, and even to an enhanced degree, was in the Saltykov family. But the moral and pedagogical conditions of education were even lower than the physical ones. There were constant quarrels between father and mother. Submitting to his mother and conscious of his humiliation, the father repaid this by showering her with impotent abuse, reproaches and reproaches at every opportunity. The children were unwitting witnesses to this scolding, they did not understand anything about it, but only saw that strength was on the mother’s side, but that she had offended their father in some way, although she usually listened silently to his scolding, and therefore felt an unaccountable fear of her, and to him as a spineless person and unable to protect not only them, but also himself, complete indifference. Saltykov said that neither father nor mother took care of them, that they grew up like outsiders, and that he, at least, did not know at all what is called parental affection. Favorites were still peculiarly caressed, the rest were not. This very division of children into loved ones and unloved ones must have spoiled the former and deeply offended the latter. Then, if unfair and severe punishments acted in a cruel way on children, then the actions and conversations that took place in their presence opened up to them the whole wrong side of life; and the elders, unfortunately, did not consider it necessary to restrain themselves even for a short time and, without the slightest hesitation, turned out both the serf and any other mud.

More than once Saltykov complained about the lack of communication with nature in childhood, about the lack of a direct and living connection with her freedom, with her warmth and light, which have such a beneficial effect on a person that fills his whole being and then passes through his whole life. And this is what we read in “Poshekhonskaya Starina” on behalf of Shabby: “... we got acquainted with nature by chance and in fits and starts - only during long journeys to Moscow or from one estate to another. The rest of the time everything around us was dark and silent.” No one had any idea about any hunting; occasionally they picked mushrooms and caught crucian carp in the pond, but “this fishing was purely economic in nature and had nothing to do with nature”; then, there were no live animals or birds in the house, so both animals and birds “we knew only in salted, boiled and fried form”. This also affected his works: descriptions of nature are rarely found in him, and he is far from being such a master at such descriptions as, for example, Turgenev, Lermontov, Aksakov and others. However, northern nature could not give a child much joy either - poor and gloomy nature, which, in turn, made a depressing impression not with some majestic severity, but precisely with poverty, unfriendlyness and a gray color. The area where Saltykov was born and where his childhood passed, even in the provincial side, was a backwater. It was a plain covered with coniferous forests and swamps, stretching without interruption for many tens of miles. The forests were burning, rotting on the vine and cluttered with deadwood and windbreak; the swamps infested the neighborhood with miasma, the roads did not dry out in the most intense summer heat, and there was little flowing water. Small streams barely flowed among the swampy swamps, either forming stagnant bochas, or completely lost under a thick veil of water thickets. In summer, the air was saturated with vapors and filled with clouds of insects that haunted neither people nor animals.

In Saltykov's childhood, there were two circumstances that favored his development and the preservation in him of that spark of God, which later burned so brightly. One of these circumstances, in essence, of a negative nature - the fact that he grew up separately and that there was less supervision for him for some time - gave, however, a positive result: he thought more, concentrated his thoughts on himself and around him, and began to read and read independently. engage in, accustoming to amateur performance and independence, to relying on oneself and believing in one's own strengths. There was almost nothing to read, since there were almost no books in the house, and therefore he read the textbooks left over from his older brothers. Among them, the gospel made a special impression on him. This was the second circumstance that had the most decisive influence on him. He later remembered him as a life-giving ray that suddenly broke into his life and illuminated both his own existence and the darkness surrounding him. He became acquainted with the Gospel not scholastically, but perceived it directly with a childlike soul. He was then eight or nine years old. We have no doubt that in the face of Shabby, he recalls precisely his acquaintance with the “Reading from the Four Evangelists”. Here are those wonderful lines:

“The main thing that I learned from reading the Gospel was that it sowed in my heart the rudiments of a universal conscience and called out from the depths of my being something stable, own, thanks to which the prevailing way of life no longer easily enslaved me. With the help of these new elements, I acquired a more or less solid basis for evaluating both my own actions and the phenomena and actions that took place in my environment ... I began to recognize myself as a person. Not only that: I transferred the right to this consciousness to others. Hitherto I knew nothing of the hungry, nor of the thirsty and burdened, but I saw only human individuals, formed under the influence of the indestructible order of things; now these humiliated and insulted stood before me, illumined with light, and loudly cried out against the innate injustice, which gave them nothing but shackles... And the excited thought was involuntarily transferred to the concrete reality in the girl's, in the table, where dozens of desecrated and tortured human beings were suffocating … I can even state with certainty that this moment had an undoubted influence on the entire later warehouse of my worldview. In this recognition of the human image, where, according to the strength of the generally established belief, there was only a desecrated image of a slave, was the main and essential result that I brought out of those attempts at self-education, which I indulged in during the year.

I can’t help but cite the following remarkably deep feeling of the place, which speaks of the growth of Saltykov’s sympathy and inclination towards the people, a process that shows an understanding of the people’s mood and a close, organic connection of this mood with his own state of mind:

“I understand that the most ardent religiosity can be accessible not only to dogmatists and theologians, but also to people who do not have a clear understanding of the meaning of the word “religion”. I understand that the most undeveloped commoner, crushed under the yoke, has every right to call himself religious, despite the fact that instead of a formulated prayer, he brings to the temple only a tormented heart, tears and a chest overflowing with sighs. These tears and sighs are a wordless prayer that lightens his soul and enlightens his being. Under its inspiration, he sincerely and ardently believes. He believes that there is something higher in the world than wild arbitrariness, that there is Truth in the world and that in its depths lies a Miracle that will come to his aid and lead him out of darkness. Let each new day assure him that there is no end to witchcraft; let the chains of slavery dig deeper and deeper into his emaciated body every hour ... He believes that his misfortune is not indefinite and that the moment will come when the Truth will shine on him along with other hungry and thirsty. And his faith will live until the source of tears dries up in his eyes and the last breath freezes in his chest. Yes! Sorcery is broken, the chains of slavery will fall, light will come, which darkness will not conquer! If not life, then death will perform this miracle. Not without reason, at the foot of the temple in which he prays, there is a rural cemetery, where his fathers laid the bones. And they prayed the same wordless prayer, and they believed in the same miracle. And a miracle happened: death came and announced their freedom. In turn, she will come to him, the believing son of believing fathers, and will give the free man wings to fly into the realm of freedom, towards free fathers…”

In another place, on behalf of the same Shabby, Saltykov says even more clearly:

“Serfdom brought me closer to the forced masses. This may seem strange, but even now I am still aware that serfdom played an enormous role in my life, and that only after having experienced all its phases could I come to a complete conscious and passionate denial of it.

In general, “Poshekhonskaya antiquity” is of great interest in relation to the author, because it throws light not only on the childhood, but also on his entire subsequent life. Although he appears there only sporadically, against the background of the general everyday picture, although we cannot follow him day after day, it is still clear how, under what influences and from what elements his character, his mental and moral appearance was composed. . We repeat: it is impossible, of course, to assert that everything was exactly as it was told there, but much of what Saltykov personally told during his lifetime was reproduced by him with literal accuracy, even some names were preserved (for example, the midwife who received him, Kalyazinsky philistine Ulyana Ivanovna, his first teacher Pavel, etc.) or only partly changed.

His first teacher was his own serf, the painter Pavel, who on the very birthday of Mikhail Evgrafovich on January 15, 1833, that is, when he was seven years old, was ordered to start teaching him to read and write, which he did, having come to class with pointer and start with the alphabet. There is some inaccuracy here: talking about the first lesson of Pavel Shabby, he says that before that he neither read nor write - neither in what, even in Russian, he could not, but only learned to chat in French around his older brothers and sisters and in German yes to memorize at the insistence of governesses and say congratulatory verses on the days of name days and births of parents; meanwhile, the French poem cited in the 5th chapter of Poshekhonskaya antiquity turned out to be among Saltykov’s papers and was written in a child’s handwriting and signed like this: “écrit par votre très humble fils Michel Saltykoff. Le 16 October 1832”. The boy was not even seven years old then, therefore, one of two assumptions can be made: either that he read and wrote in French earlier than in Russian, or that the poem was written on his behalf by one of the older children. But this is a minor inaccuracy, which is not worth dwelling on.

In 1834, the elder sister of Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov, Nadezhda Evgrafovna, left the Moscow Catherine Institute, and his further education was entrusted to her and her friend at the institute, Avdotya Petrovna Vasilevskaya, who entered the house as a governess. They were assisted by the priest of the village of Zaozerye, Fr. Ivan Vasilyevich, who taught Saltykov the Latin language according to the grammar of Koshansky, and a student of the Trinity Theological Academy Matvey Petrovich Salmin, who was invited for two years in a row to summer vacations. Saltykov studied diligently and so well that in August 1836 he was admitted to the third grade of the then six-year Moscow Noble Institute, which had just been converted from a university boarding school. However, he had to stay in the third grade for two years; but this is not due to bad successes, but exclusively due to infancy. He continued to study well, and in 1838 he was transferred as excellent student in the lyceum. The Moscow Institute of Nobility took advantage of sending two of the best students to the lyceum every year and a half, where they entered for state support, and one of these was Saltykov.

In the lyceum, already in the first grade, he felt attracted to literature and began to write poetry. For this, as well as for reading books, he endured all kinds of persecution both from the tutors and the lyceum authorities, and especially from the teacher of the Russian language Grozdov. Obviously, his talent was not recognized. He was forced to hide poems, especially if their content might seem reprehensible, in the sleeves of his jacket and even in his boots, but contraband was found, and this had a strong influence on the marks for behavior: during the entire time he was in the lyceum, he almost did not receive, at 12 -point system, over 9 points until the very last months before graduation, when usually everyone was given a full point. Therefore, in the certificate issued to him it says: “when enough good behavior”, which means that the average behavior score for the last two years has been below eight. And it all began with poetry, which was later joined by “rudeness”, that is, an unbuttoned button on a jacket or uniform, wearing a cocked hat from the “field”, and not in form (which was unusually difficult and constituted a whole science in itself), smoking tobacco and other school crimes.

Starting from the 2nd grade in the lyceum, pupils were allowed to subscribe for magazines at their own expense. Thus, Saltykov received: “Notes of the Fatherland”, “Library for Reading” (Senkovsky), “Son of the Fatherland” (Field), “Mayak” (Burachka) and “Revue Etrangére”. Magazines were read by pupils with greed; especially strong was the influence of Otechestvennye Zapiski, where Belinsky wrote critical articles. In general, the influence of literature was then very strong in the lyceum: the recollection of the recently deceased Pushkin seemed to oblige him to carry his banner, and his successor was expected at each course. V. R. Zotov, N. P. Semenov (senator), L. A. Mei, V. P. Gaevsky and others, including Saltykov, were considered such successors. The first poem of his "Lyra" was published in the "Library for Reading" in 1841 signed S-v. In 1842, his other poem “Two Lives” appeared there, signed by S. Then his works appear in Sovremennik (Pletnev): in 1844 - “Our Century”, “Spring” and two translations, from Heine and Byron; in 1845 - "Winter Elegy", "Evening" and "Music". Under all these poems the signature: M. Saltykov. At that time he had already left the lyceum, but these poems were written there. Apparently, he didn’t write anything else in poetic form, at least he didn’t print, but gave to print only what was already in the portfolio, and gave it not in the order of writing, but as it happens: later things written earlier , and early - later. We will cite some of these poems both in order to show how Saltykov wrote poetry, and in order to see the spiritual mood of the young man reflected in them - the future outstanding writer.

(From Heine. 1841)

Oh sweet girl! fast

Send your shuttle to me!

Sit next to me and be quiet

We will talk in darkness.

And to the heart of the sufferer you are strong

Press the young head -

After all, you entrust yourself to the sea

And in the storm, and on clear days.

And my heart is the same sea -

It rages and boils

And many priceless treasures

At the bottom of his clear keeps.

Music (1843)

I remember the evening: you played

I listened to the sounds with horror,

The bloody moon shimmered -

And the old hall was gloomy.

Your dead face, your suffering

Grave shine of your eyes

And mouth cold breath,

And fluttering breasts -

Everything was gloomy cold.

You played ... I was trembling all over,

And the echo repeated the sounds,

And the old hall was terrible ...

Play, play: let the torment

Fill my soul with longing;

My love lives on suffering

And she is afraid of peace!

Our Age (1844)

In our strange age, everything is striking with sadness.

No wonder: we are used to meeting

Work every day; everything imposes

We have a special seal on our souls,

We are in a hurry to live. No purpose, no meaning

Life goes on, day after day passes -

Where, why? We don't know about that.

Our whole life is a vague kind of doubt.

We are immersed in a heavy sleep.

How boring everything is: infant dreams

Some secret sadness full

And the joke is somehow said through tears!

And our lyre blows after life

Terrible emptiness: hard!

A tired mind stagnates untimely,

And the feeling in him is silent, lulled to sleep.

What is fun in life? Involuntarily

Silent grief will come running into the soul

And the shadow of doubt will darken the heart ...

No, really, to live is sad, and it hurts! ..

The melancholic mood of the author, sadness and questions about why life is going so sadly and what is the reason for this - are definitely heard and sound sincere and deep. Life at that time did indeed offer little comfort and was replete with heavy pictures of lawlessness and arbitrariness. For this, one did not have to live long and go far, but it was enough to see serfdom alone. But you feel that this mood does not give off a disappointment that makes you fold your hands, it also does not look like fruitless melancholy, but, on the contrary, you can already hear in it a note of effective love (“my love lives in suffering and peace is terrible for it!”), Which then it flared up brighter and brighter and did not go out until his very last days. He soon stopped writing poetry, either because they were not given to him, or because the very form did not correspond to the turn of his mind, but the mood remained, and the thought continued to work in the same direction.

“Even within the walls of the Lyceum,” says Mr. Skabichevsky, “Saltykov abandoned his dreams of becoming a second Pushkin. Subsequently, he did not even like it when someone reminded him of the poetic sins of his youth, blushing, frowning at this occasion and trying in every possible way to hush up the conversation. Once he even expressed a paradox about poets that, in his opinion, they are all crazy people. “Excuse me,” he explained, “isn’t it crazy to rack your brains for hours on end in order to squeeze live, natural human speech, by all means, into measured rhymed lines! It's the same as if someone would suddenly think of walking only along a spread rope, and without fail crouching at every step. “Of course,” Mr. Skabichevsky adds, “it was nothing more than one of the satirical hyperbole of the great humorist, because in fact he was a fine connoisseur and connoisseur of good poetry, and Nekrasov was constantly one of the first to read his new poems to him.”

Several lines of A. Ya. Golovacheva about Saltykov the lyceum student in her literary “Memoirs” date back to the time we are talking about: “... I saw him in the early forties in the house of M. Ya. Yazykov. Even then he did not have a cheerful expression on his face. His large gray eyes looked sternly at everyone, and he was always silent. He always sat not in the room where all the guests were sitting, but was placed in another, opposite the door, and from there he listened attentively to the conversations. The smile of the “gloomy lyceum student” was considered a miracle. According to Yazykov, Saltykov went to him "to look at the writers." The idea of ​​becoming a writer himself was obviously deeply embedded in him. In addition, as we have already said, in the lyceum of that time they were interested in literature and read a lot, reading itself raised questions that worried and tormented, demanded answers and gave rise to a natural desire to hear the living word of smart people. In addition to the subscribed periodicals, many other things were read at the lyceum. K. K. Arseniev says in “Materials for the biography of M. E. Saltykov” that “even in the late forties, in the early fifties, after the thunderstorm of 1848, after the case of the Petrashevites, in which many of the former lyceum students were not accidentally involved ( Petrashevsky, Speshnev, Kashkin, Evropeyus), among the pupils of the lyceum there were still ideas that inspired the young man Saltykov.

Saltykov left the Lyceum in the first category. At that time, as now, those who graduated from the lyceum with the rank of IX, X and XII classes were released from the lyceum, depending on their success in the sciences and “behavior”. Since Saltykov received bad scores for behavior and by subject did not try especially hard, then he left with the rank of the X class, the seventeenth on the list. Of the 22 students of the 1844 graduation, 12 people were released in the IX class, 5-X and 5-XII. Our lyceum student also belonged to the middle group. It is curious that Pushkin, Delvig, and May left the lyceum with the rank of X class. Of Saltykov's lyceum comrades, who were at the same time with him both in his and in other courses, no one made himself such a major literary name as he was, although many wrote and tried to write; in regard to social activities, too, there is no more eminent name; and in the service, many reached high positions: for example, Count A.P. Bobrinsky, Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky (ambassador in Vienna) and others. At the end of the course, Saltykov entered the service in the office of the military ministry under Count Chernyshev.

He did not keep good memories of the Lyceum and did not like to think about it. “I remember school,” he wrote ten years after graduation in one of his essays, “but somehow gloomy and unfriendly it resurrects in my imagination ...” On the contrary, the time of youth, youthful hopes and beliefs, a passionate desire from impenetrable darkness to light and truth, comrades who aspired to the same ideals with which he thought and worried together, are remembered by him more than once and with pleasure. Comparing what was in the then pre-reform Russia with what was in Europe, young people were especially fond of France.

“With the idea of ​​France and Paris,” we read in another essay by Saltykov, “for me, the memory of my youth, that is, the forties, is inextricably linked. And not only for me personally, but also for all of us peers, these two words contained something radiant, luminous, which warmed our life and, in a certain sense, even determined its content. As you know, in the forties, Russian literature (and after it, of course, the young reading public) was divided into two camps: Westerners and Slavophiles. There was also a third camp, in which the Bulgarins, Brandts, Puppeteers, etc., swarm, but this camp no longer had the slightest influence on the younger generation, and we knew it only to the extent that it showed itself to be in touch with the department of the deanery. At that time I had just left the school bench and, brought up on the articles of Belinsky, naturally joined the Westerners.

Telling further that he joined, in fact, not the most extensive and the only authoritative then, in literature, the circle of Westerners, which was engaged in German philosophy, and to the obscure circle, instinctively clinging to the French idealists, to France, not official, but to the one that aspired to the best and set broad tasks for humanity, Saltykov says: in France “everything was clear like a day ... everything seemed to have just begun. And not only now, at this moment, but for more than half a century in a row, everything began, and again, and again it began, and did not express the slightest desire to end. With genuine excitement, we followed the ups and downs of the drama of the last two years of the reign of Louis Philippe and enthusiastically read the “History of the Decade” ... Louis Philippe and Guizot, and Duchatel, and Thiers - all these were, as it were, personal enemies, whose success upset, failure pleased. The Trial of Minister Testa, the agitation in favor of electoral reform, the arrogant speeches of Guizot... all this still stands in my memory so vividly, as if it had happened yesterday.” “France seemed like a wonderland. Was it possible, having a young heart in the breast, not to be captivated by this inexhaustible creativity of life, which, moreover, did not at all agree to be concentrated within certain boundaries, but strove to seize further and further?

If we add to this that Saltykov was a Russian man in the best sense of the word, was firmly connected with all his being with Russian life and passionately loved his native country and people, loved them not at all sentimental, but with a living and active love that does not close his eyes to shortcomings and dark sides, but is looking for ways to eliminate them and ways to happiness, we will see that he entered life, if not a fully prepared person, then in any case already with a fairly definite worldview and a fairly definite criterion, which only had to develop further and get stronger. Saltykov's love for Russia was rarely expressed in any doxology, but it was expressed so often and in so many works that I would make it difficult for the reader with proofs and quotations. Complaining about the lack of communication with nature in childhood, describing the meager northern nature of the outback in which he was destined to be born, he is imbued with a very special tenderness and love for her. Even in the “Provincial Essays” we read the following:

“I love this poor nature, perhaps because, whatever it is, it still belongs to me; she became related to me in the same way that I became related to her; she cherished my youth; she witnessed the first anxieties of my heart, and since then the best part of myself has belonged to her. Take me to Switzerland, to India, to Germany, surround me with whatever luxurious nature you like, throw whatever transparent and blue sky you want on this nature - I still find everywhere the lovely gray tones of my homeland, because I always and everywhere wear them in my heart, because my soul keeps them as its best possession.”

* * *

The following excerpt from the book Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. His life and literary activity (S. N. Krivenko) provided by our book partner -

Name: Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin
Date of Birth: 27.01.1826
Age: 192 years old
Date of death: 10.05.1889.
Place of Birth: Spas-Ugol, Russia
Activity: Russian writer, journalist
Family status: married

One can talk endlessly about the biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin, given his status as the founder of Russian satirical literature with elements of a fairy tale. Therefore, in brief facts about the most important events in the writer's life, the attitude of the degenerated nobility to the state of affairs in the serf state is clearly traced.

Childhood

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin in his youth
The parents of the future satirist were Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov and Olga Mikhailovna Zabelina. The pope served as a collegiate adviser and had no weight either in society or in the family, due to his origin from a poor noble family. Everything was run by the mother, a strict woman with primitive ideas about raising children and great greed for her own wealth.
She was given in marriage as a very young girl, because of which she transferred the foundations of landowner life to her own family and adhered to them with strict rigor.
The writer was born as the sixth child of 9 living brothers and sisters on January 15, 1826 in the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazinsky district, Tver province. Until the age of 10, he was considered the most beloved child in the family, which was reflected in the somewhat strange attitude of his greedy and domineering mother towards him - the remnants of the festive dinner were the first to be given to Mikhail.
The master's children were taught by teachers and tutors from their own serfs, as well as the writer's elder sister Nadezhda, together with her colleague at the Catherine Institute, Avdotya Vasilevskaya. A little later, a priest from a neighboring village and a student of a theological seminary joined the education of teenagers.
For his excellent knowledge of basic subjects, Mikhail Saltykov was admitted in 1836 to the Moscow Noble Institute immediately in the third grade. Following the results of his studies, he was enrolled in 1838 in the capital's lyceum for state support, as a successful student.
Famous writer Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin

It is noteworthy that the writer's craving for creativity developed within the walls of the Lyceum under the influence of Pushkin's work and his sudden death. Initially, Mikhail Saltykov tried to engage in poetry, which he quickly got tired of because of the need to "squeeze good thoughts into the framework of rhyming lines."

Interesting: Alexandra Child: biography, personal life

Career and exile

After graduation, for freethinking and craving for Protestant sentiments, Mikhail Evgrafovich received a low rank in the table of ranks, which prevented him from taking a high position in the civil service. At the same time, he continued to improve in writing, for which he was exiled to the provinces.

His further activities are inextricably linked with living in various provinces of the Russian Empire and activities as an official in authoritative positions:

Elizabeth the writer's daughter
In April 1948, Saltykov was sent to Vyatka by his immediate superior, Count Chernyshov, frightened by the writer's thoughts expressed in the story "A Tangled Case". By this time, Europe was frightened by the French Revolution and the German uprisings, which led to the tightening of censorship and the exile of all educated people who sympathized with the problems of the lower strata of the population.
In 1951, the disgraced satirist was able to avoid bloodshed between tenants and peasants in the surrounding villages.
Until the end of his exile in 1955, the writer did a lot of translations of French enlighteners, and also compiled the “History of the Russian State” to teach this subject to the daughters of his friend, the vice-governor of Vyatka and nearby villages. He had a warm welcome in the Boltin family and constantly spent his free time with the younger daughters of the mayor, which later played an important role in the biography of Saltykov-Shchedrin - the St. Petersburg State Councilor fell in love with his wife, Elena Appolonyevna Boltina, when she was barely 12 years old.
In 1856, having become a real state councilor from the Ministry of the Interior, he married his chosen one, who was barely 14 years old. Only the elder brother of the writer came to the wedding - Mikhail Evgrafovich's mother did not like the daughter-in-law because of her youth and the lack of a rich dowry.
From 1858 to 1862 he served as chief police chief in the Tver and Ryazan provinces. During this time, he was able to organize several sites to control the order in the areas adjacent to these cities and proved to be a progressive fighter for justice in relation to the disenfranchised sections of the population - lower-ranking officials, serfs and farmers.

In the essays of contemporaries, telling about the most important facts from the life of the first satirist, the time of service in government positions for Saltykov-Shchedrin was not in vain. Observations of the life and foundations of provincial settlements and cities served as a rich basis for future works of the classic.

Saltykov-Shchedrin: photo

Success in literary work

Mikhail Evgrafovich did not give up hope of making a name for himself as a progressive writer of our time, and therefore, throughout the entire period of public service, he worked hard on his own written observations and reflections. The fruitfulness of his efforts was determined by the undoubted popularity of individual works that saw the light at different stages of his work:

1856 - the beginning of a series of publications under the general title "Provincial Notes" in the journal "Russian Bulletin".
Since June 1868, after the secondary and final resignation, Saltykov became the de facto editor of the Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine together with Nekrasov. By this time, a collection of his essays and stories was published, compiled from many years of publications in Moskovskie Vedomosti and Sovremennik.
In the period from 1868 to 1884, the publication published most of the famous works of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, which allowed him and his family to exist and travel around Europe with dignity.

Interesting: Kirienko Sergey Vladilenovich: biography, personal life, photo

Saltykov-Shchedrin founder of Russian satirical literature with elements of a fairy tale

The writer died in 1989, leaving behind not only a young widow, but also a son and daughter. Despite the huge number of sources claiming that Saltykov-Shchedrin did not love his family, there are many reasons to assert the opposite - the writer's suicide notes to his son have been preserved. In them, the dying man with great tenderness and love asks the heir to take care of his sister and mother after his death.