Influence of the newest literature on modern youth. The problem of youth in modern literature

The poison of the thieves' world is incredibly scary. Poisoning with this poison is the corruption of everything human in a person. All those who come into contact with this world breathe this fetid breath.

Varlam Shalamov.

We know what it means to be decent in the army. Many guys morally broke down after the service, especially the intelligent ones.

From a letter to a newspaper.

"I'm sixteen, I embrace the world lovingly ..." - wrote a young poet from Volgograd, who died tragically at the age of 18. I, too, will soon be 18. Sometimes I feel the immensity of vitality, causeless gaiety and love for the whole world. Why, it seems, to worry when everything in life is going well? Why, then, sometimes cruel melancholy seizes me, nothing pleases me, life seems meaningless? I noticed that most often this happens when in reality or in art I come across phenomena of injustice, cruelty, inhumanity that are new to me.

How do most of my peers spend their time? They drive crazy on motorcycles, disturbing the rest of the inhabitants, wandering the streets, looking for where to drink, or amusing themselves with fights and outrages in discos. It is interesting that many of my comrades do not even think of helping their parents. Sometimes I have nothing to even talk about with those with whom we belong to the same generation. But most of all I am struck by the cruelty of boys and girls. To all: To parents who are not spared at all; to teachers who are driven to illness; to the weak, who can be mocked endlessly; to animals.

I have thought a lot about where cruelty comes from and why it triumphs so often. Of course, there are many reasons: the wars and revolution of this century, the Stalinist camps, through which almost half the country passed, rampant drunkenness and fatherlessness, even the fact that the school puts triples for nothing, allowing you to mess around. And in last years When the facts of the abuse of the authorities were revealed, many of us completely lost faith.

But in this essay I would like to talk about two phenomena and times in our society that give rise to cruelty. Very many pass through the colony, and almost all through the army. About the zone and about the army are two works of modern literature.

Leonid Gabyshev's novel "Odlyan, or the Air of Freedom" is a story about a teenager, later a young man, Kolya, nicknamed first Kambala, then Eye, later Sly Eye. In short, this is a story about a world dominated by continuous humiliation and violence. “The eye became unbearable. The vise squeezed the hand so much that it bent in half: the little finger touched the index finger. It seemed that the arm would break, but the flexible bones held out.

Eye, well, smile. And know: I will slowly squeeze until the bones crackle or until you confess.

Okay, Eye, enough for now. In the evening we will go with you to the stoker. I'll stick your hand, your right hand, into the furnace and wait until you confess."

The worst thing is that, at the request, he filled the zones (in this case, Kamani) Kolya himself puts his hand in a vise or exposes his head to a blow. Otherwise it will be even worse. You read the novel and understand: a person ends up in a colony, and society ceases to protect him. The camp authorities pretend not to notice anything. No, worse, he deliberately uses some of the prisoners (the so-called horns and thieves), who are given benefits and indulgences, so that they keep everyone else in order. "Here's one. Kolya's first days in the zone. Major, nicknamed Ryabchik, checks his duty. He asks the guy:

Did you register?

Kolya was silent. The guys smiled.

They did it, comrade major, - answered the gypsy.

Did you get the shards?

Got it, Kolya answered now.

What nickname was given?

Flounder, - answered Misha.

What the major with the convicts smiled at, registration and kyrochki, consisted in severe beating and humiliation, but the people assigned to monitor the correction of prisoners treat this as a matter of course.

A significant part of the novel consists of such episodes. Well, perhaps, thanks to the writer, not only Tricky Eye, but also the reader comprehends what freedom is.

Sergei Kaledin's story "Stroybat" shows several days in the life of military builders who perform "the honorable duty of Soviet citizens." This is a prefabricated part, a kind of dump, where they collected "filth" from many construction battalions. Therefore, the customs here are not so different from the zone, and the interests are the same. "In short, we went to hell, but ended up in heaven. Here is the gate, and on the right, about two hundred meters, is a store. And in the store - Moldavian loose-leaf, seventeen degrees, two twenty liters. From ten in the morning. Malinnik!"

The law is here: in the case of the strong, the powerless is always to blame! Strong are grandfathers, weak are salabons. It would seem that the difference is small: he joined the service a year earlier. But it's like skin color or language. Grandfathers can not work, get drunk, mock first years. They must all endure. Moreover, being separated by the chiefs, the grandfathers dispose of it like slave owners. “At first, Zhenya decided to give Yegorka and Maksimka to Kostya, but then he changed his mind - he only has these two plowmen. Egorka, in addition to his main job, serves Zhenya and Misha Popov: make a bunk, bring rations from the dining room, do laundry, and Maximka "Kolya, Edik and Stary". The elders also put things in order here quickly: “Egorka Zhenya treated immediately, he almost did not rock the boat. A couple of times he bled a little, and for some reason the Chuchmeks are afraid of their own blood.

The story more than once describes how soldiers drink or inject. The central scene is a grandiose fight between companies. After all the terrible bullying, a characterization of Kostya Karamychev is perceived. For the last eight months he had been working as a loader at a bakery, stealing what he could. From drunkenness "did not dry out." When, "completely overwhelmed", he got caught, the company commander Doshchinin "offered Kostya a choice: either he starts a business, or Kostya urgently cleans ... all four detachment toilets." He chose the latter, taking, of course, assistants from the young. During the "demobilization", this commander gave Kostya the following description: "During the service ... Private Karamychev K.M. proved himself to be an enterprising warrior who fulfills all the statutory requirements ... morally stable ... The characteristic is given for presentation to Moscow University ". Well, the intellectual is ready. Chaos, as the convicts say. Now cooking military reform. I'm afraid, however, my peers will not have time to use it. Perhaps soon I will have to go to serve. Do you really have to live for two years with guys who don't have human feelings? No, I am not afraid of physical deprivation. As the saying goes: "I would be glad to serve, it's sickening to serve."

Both books have been read. They are not too artistic, there are errors against the style and laws of literature. There are no errors in them against the truth. Believe writers. And you also believe that if we really want, then cruelty will be less.

Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lukhmanova

The influence of the latest literature on modern youth

Part one

Many educated and gifted writers began and ended their careers in poverty. Others, following some general fatal law, remained in the shadows and received pennies from the editors, precisely at the very peak of their talent, while the thirst for goodness and justice was burning in their hearts, an ebullient and inspired thought flowed so that the pen could not keep up with it, and achieved fame and security only when the strength of the soul and mind faded away, when life had polished off their too brilliant conscience, their too sharp truth. Many did not live to see the turning point, when their name finally ingrained itself in the memory of the reader and gained them popularity, after which material success begins. Occasionally, exceptional minions of happiness appeared on the horizon of the literary world, whose talents developed among enthusiastic fans, which allowed them to immediately step into fame and glory. But for talent and only talent to immediately throw a person out of the very abyss of insignificance, so that only the power of the word, and even for the first time heard in the dark little newspaper "Kavkaz", which has so little circulation, immediately stirs the minds of readers, this is an exceptional case. If we take from Gorky's first story to the production of his play "At the Bottom", then we will see that ten years have passed, during which the dark tramp, sawing firewood and carrying loads, turned into a European-famous writer, conquered enemies and envious people with the vastness of his talent, acquired crazy fans and made a fortune for himself. What is the reason that Gorky's stories made him immediately popular and spread not only throughout Russia, but throughout Europe? The reason for this lies, firstly, in the fact that before him they wrote about the people only, so to speak, from the outside: need, grief, suffering, drunkenness, debauchery, murder, all this was described by intelligent people who heard, saw, observed, but did not survive who were not active participants in body and soul, passion and hatred of everything that they described. We could be captivated by the artistry of the stories and believe that it was all true. It was as if we were listening to a magnificent mechanical nightingale, and suddenly a real one began to sing, with rifts, breaths, with a groan and cry, as he only sings moonlit nights in the spring, in those inaccessible thickets where his female sits on the nest. And everyone started, hearts beat, blood agitated ... What is it? Where? Who took us to the very depths of the forest? Who put us face to face with a living singer, with wildlife? Such was the impression of immediacy that came from Gorky's stories. The content in Gorky's stories frightened and attracted the reader, it made him think and feel sorry for those people whom he still did not recognize as people. It was a whole world of shadows, puppets, scum that turned into living people with a very special worldview, special logic, morality, special happiness, which is often much higher than ours, because it cannot be given or taken away from a person, because it comes from his own soul and most often harmonizes with the nature around him. The second reason for Gorky's worldwide success is the melancholy with which almost all of his works are saturated. This is not a sleepy or evil boredom that can be walked around and entertained, this is a deep longing, pulling along, causeless, sometimes causing a desire to express an insane protest against life itself. We have so narrowed down, discolored our life, pressed it so carefully into narrow frames, that sometimes we suffocate in it. Every, literally every thinking and feeling person has experienced this melancholy at least from time to time. Every day a man walks to a department or to a service there, every day at the same hour, along the same streets, past the same houses, signboards, cabbies; for years he hears the same door, enters the same room, sits down at the same table, among the same colleagues and takes on the same work, this work is sometimes not even a screw, but only one rifling of a screw, which is part of a huge complex machine called "state improvement" . And to draw every day with a pen along the same thread of the screw, not knowing either the beginning or the end of the line, should, of course, make the work meaningless and routine. And now this official, who has been doing dull, unprincipled work for three quarters of his life, walking obediently like a squirrel on a wheel, suddenly, in a moment of rest, instead of "Niva" or "Zvezda", picks up Gorky's stories. And before him opens new world. He reads (volume two, story "Konovalov", p. 49): "One must be born in a cultured society in order to find the patience to live among it all one's life and not once wish to leave the sphere of these heavy conventions, legalized customs, small, poisonous lies, from the sphere of morbid pride, ideological sectarianism, all kinds of insincerity, in a word, from all this vanity of vanities that cools the senses and corrupts the mind. "But where to go?" “In the countryside,” says Gorky, “it’s almost as unbearably bitter, sickening and sad as among the intelligentsia. It’s best to go to the slums of cities, where, although everything is dirty, everything is so simple and sincere; or go for a walk through the fields and the roads of the motherland, which is very curious, very refreshing and does not require any means other than good hardy legs. [ "Mallow". Note. ed. ] This is well said, tempting, beautiful, but is it fair? Is it true that if we realize that the conditions of our life are difficult and unfair, then we must go to the slums of cities, where everything, although dirty, is still simple and sincere? Will the sight of simple and sincere debauchery and drunkenness satisfy our search for truth? And is it true that there, in the slums, there is only outward, apparent dirt, which often covers even the lofty soul? Why, then, on that day that Gorky showed us in his play, we see the same people, weak-willed, evil, greedy, intriguing on the misfortune or simplicity of their fellow, people with the same morbid pride, with the corrupting boredom of idleness, and with the addition of a terrible environment? Once again I ask: "Would we, intellectuals, find comfort and consolation by leaving our lives in these slums?" In Dostoevsky's story "Underground" the hero exclaims: "No, no, the underground is in any case more profitable. There, at least, it is possible" ... and suddenly adds: "Oh, but I'm lying here too. I'm lying, because and I myself know that two and two make four, which is not at all better in the underground, but something else, which I crave, which I can’t find in any way. To hell with the underground.” But the reader, especially the youth, takes Gorky's word for it that strength is in the underground, that is, in the renunciation of everything. You read in Gorky's stories about the sea, how the wind gently strokes his powerful satin chest, how the sea surface sighs drowsily under the gentle power of these caresses, saturating the air with the salty aroma of its fumes, how greenish waves run on yellow sand, in sand bar, which has gone into the sea, and you see how Malva floats here in a canoe, funny and sweet as a well-fed cat; Vasily, an old fisherman, is waiting for her. Malva has greenish eyes, small white teeth, she is all round, soft, fresh, with pitted cheeks. What are her opinions. “I don’t want to live in the countryside, but I have to get married, and a married woman is an eternal slave, reap and spin, go after cattle and give birth to children, what is left for herself - only husbands’ beatings and abuse ... And here I am a draw, free as a seagull, wherever I want, I will fly there. [" On rafts". Note ed. . ] And a wild free life unfolds before the reader, a strong, purely animal love ... He dreams of a quiet splash of a salty wave and the fervent laughter of a bathing Malva, her body is pink, her passionate caresses, and in comparison with his life, all this seems to him so tempting, so insanely good and at the same time so terribly accessible that he begins to yearn, yearn for a new fantastic longing, which in itself is already pleasure, because it woke him from a stupefying, gray sleep - a dream of reality. Leaning on the granite embankment of the Neva, the reader looks at the lights of far-flying rafts and recalls another female figure - Marya, whose face is burning under the lips of old man Silan kissing her passionately. [" Zuzubrin". Note ed. . ] And the reader dreams, his chest aches under the influx of sensations unknown to him ... And in his mind all the same thoughts: "After all, you just have to want, shake ... and this damned chain of gray meaningless work will break, you just have to decide and step over the human prejudice, through human laws that bound me for life family ties , bonds long rotten, meaningless "... And he may not shake off these bonds, he will not leave his parents, wife and children, he will not go to work on the pier, he will not become a free tramp, because he has neither strength nor health for this But he will dream about it, the images of Gorky's heroes will lie in his soul, and in difficult moments, in an angry outburst, he will shout: ". How can one not worship the reader in front of the writer, with his word like a spear piercing his soul. Both a rich merchant and a well-fed businessman who loves to go on a spree and throw money for a gypsy song, and he will pinch his heart when he reads how they sang in a tavern for bored miller ("Tosca" p. 269 v. I): "Oh, yes, in bad weather, the wind howls, howls, And my little head An evil sadness torments. Oh, yes, and I’ll go to the steppes, In the steppes, I’ll look for shares there ... Mother desert-a ... And the miller, hanging his head on his chest, sits, eagerly listening to the sounds of the song. Reading this, whether a merchant, a businessman, a little ashamed of his revelry, his tavern adventures, receives, as it were, a sanction; he suddenly understands all the poetry of such a revelry, all the spiritual renewal that comes from such songs. Anguish will tear the chest if you do not give it such an outcome from time to time. And Gorky revealed this to him, and he will never forget the name of this writer-man, who alone understands all the twists and turns of a yearning soul. then a poor writer, over whose coffin some orator said the words: "We covered our souls with the rubbish of everyday worries and got used to living without a soul, so used to it that we don't notice how wooden, insensitive, dead we all have become." And suddenly stranded in the soul like a voice rang out: "That's right ... it's so." And then one morning, going out into the garden with the dawn, he heard through the fence how his worker Kuzma, cheerfully and passionately answering the kisses of the girl who passionately loved him, nevertheless said goodbye to her, leaving her only because he was afraid to stagnate, because passion for wandering life, curiosity for life, "greed for life," as Gorky says about his heroes, called him to leave the corner, love and secure work and go wandering again in wide Russia. The girl is ready to share his every share and prays to him: “- Oh, dear you, my Kuzya ... you are my good one. She is again for her own ... I kiss her, sweet as a good one, and she hangs on my neck like a stone ... Well, girl ... And this rigmarole is always with you. - Yes, or am I not a man? .. - Well, a man ... Well. And I? So I'm not human? He will also say ... We agreed to love you ... well, it's time, now, the time to disperse. I also need to love. You need to live, and so do I, we don’t need to confuse each other ... And you are sniffing. Goosey. And you remember: sweet kiss with me. Well. Eh, you... aladya"... Kisses sounded again, interrupted by passionate breathless whispers and deep groaning sighs. This freedom, this ultra-simple view of relationships, the ability to cheerfully and calmly break all sorts of fetters and fascinates the miller, and introduces him to a completely new world of thoughts and feelings, all this devalues ​​in his eyes his own well-fed, aimless existence, all this brings him to a revelry with a aching song, with a desire not only to turn out his pockets, but also his soul, if it were possible, and the final all this - a sore head, physical and moral weakness, and the same vague, heavy thoughts ... Life ... Only one hesitation ... ripples ... Gorky well expressed the boredom, the cruel, terrible boredom that forced me in the story " "hound the unfortunate Arina, the silent, submissive mistress of the watchman Gomozov. And Zuzubrina, the cheerful, mobile, noisy idol of the prison, who, with her antics and reckless gaiety, brightens up and infuses life into a dull and boring prison y. "Notch" is an artist and envies everyone who, besides him, the crowd of prisoners pays attention to. He envies even a small fat kitten, with whom everyone is busy, and now he dips this kitten in green paint. Jokes, jokes, songs - and the kitten's christening is performed with an explosion of wild laughter and unbridled merriment of the crowd. And suddenly the kitten dies before their eyes, and in these simple, rude hearts, from under the bushel of oppressive boredom that makes them pounce on any entertainment, a terrible pity for the tortured animal suddenly awakens, and they beat their former favorite"Znotch". This feeling of at least brutal pity did not wake up in the more cultured hearts of the people who hounded Arina. The reader often asks himself: who are Gorky's heroes, the people or the proletariat? By the word "people" we are accustomed to understand the peasant and, at the same time, not only the peasant, inextricably linked with the field and the plow, but also the driver, janitor, artisan, that is, everyone temporarily or periodically cut off from the village, but still conscious of himself as a peasant, vitally related to the village by kinship, memories and village property in the form of land and a hut. This people, this peasant is not Gorky's hero. In the story "" Gorky brings out a peasant, young guy , stupid, greedy, cruel and cowardly and compares it with a tramp, free, brave, predatory and generous. And the reader remains in his soul complete disgust for the young, blue-eyed, simple-hearted guy, with all the strength of his soul tied to the village, to the land and deciding to kill for the sake of money. All his sympathies are on the side of a thief, a drunkard, a tramp; Chelkash is a hero, his spontaneous nature, his strength captivates and captures. No, the peasant is not Gorky's hero. Not a hero of Gorky and a proletarian. What is a proletarian? No one is born a proletarian, but each of us can enter this category: an officer, an official, a writer, an aristocrat, and an artisan, having lost money, having no income, having reached a cowardly state of despair, can find himself in the ranks of the proletariat. The hand does not reach out to ask, the tongue does not turn to express its need and it's ready ... The worse, the better, rather into the pool of the head. And the gentleman who was today, the former countess, will spend the night next to the tramp in the rooming house tomorrow like a baron in the play "At the Bottom", like Satin and the actor - they are all weak, phrase-mongers, they all bend before life. His hero is a real tramp. Not barefoot, shod with need, not a beggar, shooting with the name of Christ from around the corner, but a real tramp who cannot be tied with any money, no benefits, either to the land, or to work, or to people. Chelkash is a tramp, Konovalov too, he says: "There is nothing convenient for me on earth, I have not found a place for myself" ... Konovalov tells about his love for a beautiful merchant's wife: "It is impossible for any person to live without love No matter how my planet, I would not have left it ... But still I left it, because - melancholy. Konovalov does not respond to the love of the walking girl Kapitolina, he frees her from shameful slavery, but he cannot connect her life with his own. "Well, where do I need a wife. That's porridge. And now I don't like it ... So it sucks me in, and it draws me somewhere like a bottomless quagmire." And Gorky notices: it was in him that the instinct of a vagabond began to speak, an aroused feeling of eternal striving for freedom, on which an attempt was made. Kapitolina, in desperation, becomes an inveterate drunkard and disappears. Drinking begins with Konovalov. "I'm sick of it, that's it," Konovalov sobs in the "Zastenok" tavern, on the last meeting between Maxim Gorky and Konovalov - in Feodosia. In Konovalov's soul there lives the same melancholy, the same rust of bewilderment before life and a series of thoughts about it; “And there are many in Russia,” says the author, “such thoughtful people, and the severity of their thoughts is increased by the blindness of the mind.” Notice this. These are the real heroes, there is nothing to list them, but their characteristic features are clear. Physical strength, the strength of the inner big but undeveloped mind, this blind mind rushes into them like a spirit imprisoned in the prison of the body, it helps them to guess, but not to resolve the issues of life. This mind makes up their secret seductiveness, expressing itself in clear eyes, in childish fun, in good intentions, attracts the hearts of women to them, and it torments them like a gloomy spirit, makes them beat in the snares of the incomprehensible contradictions of life and seek a way out in drunkenness, revelry, heartless trampling of weaker personalities. Gorky's tramp is an allegory, a prototype of every Russian people - a natural mind, a spark of God in the heart and the impenetrable darkness of ignorance, he beats in these snares, distorts himself and breaks, and where is the light, when it comes - God knows. Gorky's heroes are not rejected by life, they are not yet called to live, they have not yet found a form of life, they are not enlightened; truth and light only from afar, indirectly, and sometimes in a distorted form, reach them. He has already engendered questions in their minds, engendered aspirations in their souls somewhere, towards something, but still covers all their thoughts and aspirations with the same thick fog of ignorance. Russia was too sharply divided into light and darkness: into people with higher education striving for the development of the spirit and even beyond, and for complete ignorance, with a spirit submissive to witchcraft, dark forces, groveling in the midst of dirt and the most stupefying overwork. A peasant, getting into the city from a fuming kerosene lamp, from kvass and onions, from under a leaky thatched roof and a dirty hut, where he lives next to his cattle, to the capital, where every step unfolds before him the wonders of science and insane luxury, where art, architecture, painting, music begin to come across at every step ... He is completely confused, and with what stronger nature the more receptive, the more capable of intellectual and spiritual culture, the worse, because life does not answer him gradually, with gradual explanations, to awakening inner requests, but on the contrary, it hits right on the nerves, confuses all concepts, gives rise to questions: why, why . As Konovalov says: "Where is the point on which you can rest to keep from falling? How can we build life if we do not know how to do this, and our life has not been successful." And it turns out: "Why did my mother give birth to the world? Nothing is known ... darkness ... crampedness" ... And from these questions to a spree - to shout: "Drink, guys! Drink, take your soul ... Blow all over!" - one step, a step from a man to a tramp, - to a tramp who rejected life, in which there is no light for him. In the mind and soul of Gorky's heroes there is an eternal reassessment of values. Everything that a person who has achieved cherishes seems contemptible in the eyes of those who cannot achieve anything in the right way. Material value, like money, which constitutes a lever in the hands of a civilized person, has no value in the eyes of a tramp. “Do you want to go with me to Samarkand or Tashkent?” Konovalov asks Maxim Gorky. “Come on! I, brother, decided to walk the lands in different sides , this is the best of all - you go to yourself and see everything new ... And you don’t think about anything ... A breeze blows towards you and it’s as if it drives various dust out of your soul. Easy and free... No embarrassment from anyone: if you wanted to eat - you stuck, worked something for a half ... there is no work - ask for bread - they will give you. So at least you will see a lot of land ... The beauty of every ... let's go "... And the idea of ​​\u200b\u200btravel, which the intellectual cherishes so much, which, due to economic considerations, hovers before him as an unattainable dream, this enormous value of freedom of movement, is allowed quite simply by a tramp and depends entirely from desire: "Do you want? Aida". The cost and value of money disappears, he rejected it, and it becomes absurd for him: you will be full, and you will see a lot of land, and all kinds of beauty. The second value is love. What significance does a person of society attach to it, what a painful question does I imagine from her ... how much suffering, dramas and misunderstood trampled feelings. And Konovalov says: "A woman lives, and she is bored, and the people are all sleazy ... Let's say I'm a coachman, but it's all the same to a woman, because and the coachman, and the gentleman, and the officer - all men. And everything is a pig in front of her. "This expressed opinion is naive and false, it only proves that for people of the Konovalov type, a woman is nothing but a woman's nature, and therefore for him, really, there is no difference between the prostitute Kapitolina and the merchant who loved him But Gorky has many such rude, cynical, strongly and authoritatively expressed opinions, and they are accepted by the reader as truth. "is now raised both in life and in literature, and the same Konovalov says:" Well ... you say: "and a woman is a man." It is known that she walks on her hind legs alone, does not eat grass, speaks words, laughs ... that means not cattle. And yet our brother is not company. Y-yes... Why? Ah... I don't know... I feel it doesn't fit, but I can't understand why "... And this value is devalued by him. And the book? The book, without which an intellectual cannot live and says: "Well, imprison me Send me wherever you want, but give me a book... A book... is the world."... And the tramp says: "Books. Well, it’ll be tea, you’ll read books, don’t go, you were born for this ... Yes, and a book ... nonsense ... Well, buy “her” (that is, literally one good book) put it in a knapsack and go." And learning, without which darkness seems to us, and work, without which there is no healthy morality - this is the assessment of learning and work according to the words that Gorky puts into the mouth of Makar Chudra: "Learn and teach - are you talking? Can you learn how to make people happy? No you can not. You turn gray at first and say what you need to learn. Everyone knows what he needs. Who are smarter, they take what they have, who are dumber, they get nothing, and everyone learns on his own. Funny ones work. What for? To whom? No one knows. You see how a man plows and you think: “Here, drop by drop, with sweat, he exudes his strength on the ground, and then he lies down in it and rots in it. Nothing will remain on him, he sees nothing from his field and dies, as he was born a fool What was he born for, then what, to dig the earth and die, without even having time to dig out his own grave? As soon as he was born, he is a slave and a slave all his life, but that’s all. What can he do with himself? , if he gets a little smarter "". And the price of human society, without which one cannot live, the price of friendship, comradeship, the price of mental communication? Indeed, in loneliness an intelligent person can disappear, go crazy. And Konovalov says: "The sister of mercy read me a book about an Englishman -a sailor who escaped from a shipwreck on a deserted island and made his own life on it. I wonder how fear. I really liked the book. So I would go there to him. You understand what life is! Island, sea, sky, you live alone, and you have everything, and you are completely free. There was also a wild one. Well, I'd drown a wild one - why the hell do I need him, huh? It’s not boring for me alone. ”And Malva says:“ I would sit in a boat and in the sea far away, oh, so that I never more people And so the tramp overestimates all the vital, material, and moral values ​​of an intellectual. Our principle of life is: stretch your legs according to your clothes ... enjoyment of life is incomprehensible and ridiculous to a tramp; he needs life beyond the edge. Grigory Orlov says: "My soul is burning ... it wants space ... so that I can turn around with all my strength ... Ehma! I feel an irresistible strength in myself ... You see, I would throw myself at a hundred knives ... So I want to experience this very joy, and so that there is a lot of it ... and I would suffocate in it "... [ Spouses Orlovs". Note ed.] And his wife Matryona is looking for work "to the fullest", and Marya is "greedy to live" on rafts, and the soul of Chelkash is "greedy for impressions", and the miller's backfill, Kuzka says: "You need to live this way and that ... to the fullest" . With this thirst for life, Gorky combines the amazing cruelty of life. Malva, at the moment of the tide of this evil force, says: "I would beat the whole people, and then myself with a terrible death." Orlov dreams: "To crush the whole earth into dust, to rise above all people, to spit on them from a height and then downside down and to smithereens." Sledgehammer (" former people "), he would like with furious pleasure," so that the whole earth would flare up and be torn to pieces, if only I would die last, looking first at others. "And all Gorky's heroes suffer from this megalomania, not having the strength to sort out their spiritual disorder, having neither moral development nor universal, cultural life, they cannot feed their starving mind and seek an outcome in struggle, in exploits, in revelry, if only to pour out, advance, develop their power. The author himself speaks for them: "No matter how low a person falls, he will never deny himself the pleasure of feeling stronger, smarter, at least fuller than his neighbor." Makar Chudra says: "If you live, then and everywhere in all Gorky's stories, as the basis of the characters of all his heroes, this is the desire to stand above everything. But such people are often found in life, precisely among the embittered dark or underdeveloped of people. Wine or resentment, which excites the blood and intoxicates a person no less than wine, suddenly makes him, as they say, break down over people, spit on everything, come to blasphemy. Insignificant people who seize power, to whatever extent and over whomever it is given to them by chance, will always be intoxicated with this power, there will always be torture and insults to those who are subordinate to them. The merchant's "what the leg wants", the police slap, with the words "honorably ask", and to the childish torment of a dumb animal, everyone knows this cruelty as a sick side of life, and not as an uplifting force. Love as the right to flour is also one of the theses that runs like a red thread in all Gorky's stories. The idea of ​​love as a right to suffer is not new. It refers to the enjoyment of physical pain. In Dostoevsky's stories there is also a keen delight in each other's torments out of love, and love itself consists in the voluntarily granted right to tyrannize and mock. Malva teases the old man Vasily, who is in love with her, to the point that he severely beats her, and she does not gasp. Orlov loves and is jealous of his wife, and kicks her in the stomach. His wife, Matryona, "was embittered by the beatings, and this feeling of anger gave her great pleasure." The author says that she did not extinguish his jealousy, on the contrary, she smiled at him mysteriously, and he beat her mercilessly. Why did she do this? And then, for beatings and insults, she expected passionate, tender words of reconciliation ... When Konovalov parted with his merchant's wife, she seized his hand with her teeth and snatched out a whole piece of meat. The old woman Izergil says that when her lover once hit her in the face, she jumped up on her chest like a cat and grabbed his cheek with her teeth, from that time on his cheek became a hole, and he loved it when she kissed her. ["Old Isergil". Note. Ed.] And so everywhere is thinly and rudely scattered the acute pleasure of torment in love and, as it were, the right granted to love for torture and torment. In all Gorky's stories there are real tramps, although they are undoubtedly embellished with mental suffering and strength, which the author has endowed them with too much. They are molded by the author roughly, boldly, but we still recognize people in them, listen to their words, and they touch our soul, demand an account, disturb our conscience, awaken pity, and partly give rise to both envy and admiration. This is all a description of those people with whom Gorky met, lived and worked, but we must not forget that he wrote about them not when they were standing in front of him, but when he moved away from them, when he had already swum out of the pool of taverns and underground, evoked by memories, softened by pity for them, they stood before his soul in their best outlines, and he thickly overlaid paints on them. Each of us knows that in bright moments past suffering is poeticized, in the terrible pain already endured, there is some kind of sweet bitterness. But Gorky also has abstract tramps. It was not for nothing that he was given an unsystematic reading of French spectacular literature about poetic vagabonds, about the noblest robbers. Gorky has many such legendary heroes, he loves fairy tales and tells them to himself in a flowery and passionate way. His Makar Chudra, the handsome Loiko, the beautiful Radda, Izergil is a fantastic old woman, all this is a melodrama, all this is a tribute to the naive, poetic soul of a genius tramp, enchanted by the sun, sea, freedom, wandering life, wide steppes, blue sky, yes captivating song. All this is unreal, all this is naive, but all this is terribly talented and terribly beautiful. Gorky sings, and his song is so good, poetic, so loud and strong that everyone listens to it, and the sensitive youth in particular, and they feel sorry for his impossible hero Larra, by whose own name one must understand all the tramps of Gorky. A whole class of people thrown overboard of life, thrown out not through their fault, but through some strange predestination of fate. Larra is an illegitimate child, a foundling, the son of an eagle and a woman, an unrequited slave who only kneels and cries. He grew up in hatred, lives in violence. Gorky's tramps are nothing new. Such people with a heap of requests for life, with the fetters of an undeveloped mind that cannot give an answer to these requests, and with an invincible disgust for any work, with hatred for society, among which they did not find themselves right place are scattered everywhere. Their types are found in all layers of life, and in the literature of the whole world, scattered among many authors. In French literature, Jean Rictus, in his Loliloques du pauvre, has the same protesting accusation of a ragamuffin, sometimes cynical and rude, sometimes full of noble pride. In Richepin's drama "The Wayfarer" - "Le chemineau" the same yearning tramp is brought out, handsome and slender, curly, with a song that awakens strength and hope in all hearts; he walks along the roads from village to village, from city to city, everywhere with his mighty shoulder, enduring back, strong arms helps in work and, finally, enters one village where he has not been for 22 years, and there he meets a girl who once loved , whom, out of a passion for vagrancy, he abandoned just like Kuzma, the miller's worker, his Lyuba, like Konovalov his merchant's wife. He also finds his son there, an adult guy, and despite this family, ready to accept him with affection and love, he still leaves her again, and that's it, and leaves. He is a road-builder, the road is his homeland, and with it in some ditch is his grave. And in modern French and German literature, this type is often found. But, nevertheless, tramps are not a class, tramps are not a society, tramps can neither be reborn nor re-educated. But such tramps as Gorky describes cannot be created, just as it is impossible to create a poet, artist, genius ... With the germ of such tramps, such aspirations, such strength, beauty and pride, one must be born. Such a tramp can come from all walks of life, he will carry in himself the mysterious heritage of the totality of a million past lives from which his soul was born. And in vain Gorky, in his pity for the wandering homeless Russia, attributed to her the titanic qualities of an ideal tramp. He poeticized, dressed with gold the dirt he saw, filled their speeches with his own inspiration, his acquaintance with philosophers, scientists and writers, which did not ferment in him, with the help of everything he had studied and read, forced them to philosophize and speak in a language impossible for them not native to them. But he described all this so well, made the youth think so much, suffer, so excited them that they are deeply grateful to him for the mirage he created. Everyone is so accustomed with longing and grief to listen to life, to the croaking of crows, to their song: "In the struggle against the harsh rock, We, insignificant ones, have no salvation, Everything that you look at with your eyes - Pain and grief, dust and decay. Terrible are the blows of rock, let the wise man submit to them. . And suddenly the song of Chizh, an ordinary little, gray Chizh, was heard: “I hear the cawing of crows Embarrassed by cold and darkness ... I see darkness, but what is it to me, If my mind is cheerful and clear ... Follow me, who dares. Let the darkness perish The living soul has no place in it Let's light our hearts with the fire of the mind And light reigns everywhere get out... Friends! , and young fighters ready to lay down their lives for ideals? Yes, all this is strong, beautiful and terribly sad, because nowhere is the middle indicated, nowhere does it say: "Armed with experience and knowledge, be strong, hope," but only - either submit or accept death in battle. Gorky does not mention Nietzsche anywhere, one would think that he did not read him, and yet there are so many Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in his ideas and judgments. True, the Germans do not recognize Nietzsche as a populist and say about him that, despite the fact that he smashes the aristocracy and capital, he is nevertheless durch und durch himself imbued with aristocracy, but he also dreams of dying in some great unattainable feat, he in the same way, for the strong, he preaches loneliness - Einsamkeits - lehre, that is, the science of loneliness, he admits that a passionate thirst for power lives in the strong, and that this strong man has the right to be cruel to the weak and cowardly, and that this cruelty in brings pleasure to itself. In The Morning Dawn, Nietzsche says that he who is cramped in his own country, let him go, go and look for new countries where he can establish his dominion. And even Gorky's song about "Chizh" resonates strangely and consonantly in one of Nietzsche's articles. The heroes of Gorky, rude, drunken, criminal people, have much in common with the heroes of Dostoevsky, especially in painful questions, in longing, in enjoying the pain and suffering of another, and most importantly, in recognizing the right to a superman, to a judge and an executioner. all the ordinary little people. Are Gorky's tramps in the pit? No. In this pit, involuntary poor people sit and suffocate, small, vicious, crowded with life people who got there by accident, and who have no strength to get out of there. But, after all, these are not Gorky's heroes, these are the booty of the police stations and the beggarly committee; Gorky's heroes are eagles. These people consider our life as a pit, the life of the slaves of civilization, it is we who are cautious woodpeckers who do not believe that there is a way out of our life, who, once having learned that the earth is round, are convinced that wherever we go, the earth will turn us to the same place - the source of slavery, the pit in which live such tramps as Konovalov, Chelkash, various Zobars and Loiko, where there are such meetings as Gorky himself "Once in the Autumn" with the girl Natasha. Gorky showered the pit with the rays of the sun, nightingale songs and fragrant roses so that we, people beaten by life, are drawn to it, and the youth are breathtaking, and their heads are spinning from the mere thought of it. Poorly outlined muddy figures, like spots in Gorky's stories, are an intellectual and a woman, and the child is absent. For Nietzsche, a woman is a toy, and her best calling is one: to give birth to a superman, and about relations with her he is of the opinion that if you go to a woman, do not forget to take a whip with you. And Gorky has a woman for the most part only a voluptuous female, she cries and clings to a man. There is a lot of debauchery and cruelty in it. Malva pits her admirers, Kapitolina Konovalovskaya sees all salvation in his love and almost needs him, plunges into the same mud again, and Natasha sees nothing higher than a baker with a red mustache, and only the superwoman Radda laughs at Zobar, who is in love with her, yes Varenka Olesova does not succumb to the vile searches of Privatdozent Polkanov, and for his nasty peeping while she is bathing, she calls him "an ugly dog" and, having rolled up a sheet with a tourniquet, spanks him into unconsciousness. In "Foma Gordeev" he also exposes a superwoman, reminiscent of both Malva and Izergil - Sasha, who, to Gordeev's tavern trick - to cut the rope of the raft, on which some drunken company with women is carousing, answers that, having rushed into the water, sails to the raft where Thomas is and wet, cold, like a fish, with insane caresses, chains the heart of this tyrannical hero to herself. But we will have to return to Gorky's heroes and heroines when we analyze his plays The Philistines and At the Bottom, but for now, finishing with his short stories, I just want to repeat once again that Gorky conquered our youth, firstly, by the power of his talent, and, secondly, by the fact that he bombarded them with a mass of questions, awakened thousands of thoughts, and most importantly, with an imperious hand he squeezed their young heart and made them suffer and cry, suffer and cry like a person who could fly, but where -something in the trash of life has lost its wings. This is where Gorky's strength lies. This is the fault of Gorky, that under the guise of a rough real life, he showed us such a rainbow, where you can’t distinguish the main color from the mass of overflows and rays. So, summing up Gorky's influence on young people, I repeat once again that he owes his exceptional success to: 1) unconditional talent; 2) beautiful, rich and expressive language, and 3) not because his heroes are tramps, but because, due to the fact that they are tramps, that is, people who have broken with all the laws of society, he invests in them hatred of the authorities, the established law, order, life, a passionate love for freedom, not only in the form of movement, but for freedom in all respects, for the freedom of familylessness, contempt for a woman, he, as it were, gives them the right to hate everything that is up to Until now, a person has obeyed as a family man and as a citizen. Gorky's heroes have no children, there are no mothers among women, strength is everywhere, overwhelming weakness, physical strength as triumph and self-intoxication, moral strength, only as a rebuff to violence, and work, and love, and family are also called violence. All this makes an enormous impression on the youth, because youth in itself is strength, and strength is always ready to protest and fight back. Young blood boils up in itself quickly, and therefore, if there is a leader who writes on his banner: "Follow me! May all violence perish, all oppression, and long live justice and freedom!" - he can be sure that the crowd will rush after him, passionately rush, without even understanding what kind of power he wants to overthrow, what freedom to win, and with such strong beautiful words Gorky throws the reader, blinds him, not even allowing him to understand his feelings. His enormous talent bribes the youth, and they are blinded to the point that they do not even allow impartial conscientious criticism of Gorky's works. Andreev's unexpected and major success is partly based on a scandal. I will convey a small scene that I witnessed. Leaving Moscow, at the station of the Nikolaev railway. On the way, I stopped near a bookstore. Two ladies came up, one asked: "Do you have Andreev's "In the Fog"?" The seller replied: "This is not in the publication." “Ah, what a pity,” the lady became sincerely agitated and explained to another, “you know, they say it’s such a vile thing, such a vile thing that it is necessary to read ... I couldn’t get it anywhere ... When Countess Tolstaya printed her letter, in In essence, speaking completely superfluous, this very thing raised interest in Andreev's stories to such an extent that they were immediately translated into French. A whole correspondence from fathers and "children" arose in Russkiye Vedomosti, many letters were from young people who, with indignation and disgust, justified themselves from the slander raised against them in the story "The Abyss". But there were also such letters in which those who wrote, if they found the fact told ugly, nevertheless agreed that “the nature of love is base and rude, and therefore immoral, take away from it the ordinary atmosphere of tenderness, courtship, well, at least simply that necessary introduction, without which any more conscientious people cannot do, and love will turn into animal, rude and cruel lust. The surest thing that could be drawn from all the letters received by the newspaper is that in a certain part of the Russian youth lives the consciousness that chastity and purity are not unnatural violence against nature, but simply a state compatible with the feeling of true human life, for which sexual a question that is not conditioned by love and the rights of marriage is something base and shameful. If this consciousness, expressed in many letters, is sincere, then it greatly facilitates the preaching of the possibility and necessity of the same chastity among young people, which is required from young girls. This means that this sermon will be based not only on the severity and purity of religion, on the arguments of morality, social justice and hygiene, but also on our own deep need for purity. There is no point flattering yourself that such views are shared by the majority of young people, you cannot demand that a young man, passionate to the point of unbridledness, also reason in this way. But we must rejoice already at the fact that the desire for purity and abstinence is often expressed by many. Between the letters there were also laudatory hymns to Mr. Andreev. Letters from mothers come down in most cases to one thing. Let every father understand that in earning the means of subsistence, this does not exhaust all his duties towards the family, since he cannot be replaced by a mother in some aspects of raising his sons. How to talk to a mother about certain things with her son, how to start? Here are the troubling questions. A father, on the other hand, taking at least a little time to reasonably follow the development of his son, can warn him against a lot. And as long as fathers do not recognize the need to delve into the education of their sons, our children will be "in a fog." So, some admire the courage of the author, who tore the veil from the secret, others are indignant, saying that the stories prompt him, impose the premature disclosure of ulcers and secrets on those who have not yet thought about them. And heated controversy, oral and written, with equally passionate praises as well as attacks, made the name of Mr. Andreev not leave the lips of the youth, and his book, where the "Abyss" was printed, was sold in 24,000 copies. I will not analyze the story "The Abyss". For me, as for a woman, as for one of the thousands of women who have already spoken out about this story, it is inaccessible, incomprehensible, especially if his hero, a student, is a normal young man who loved a dead girl. The second, no less famous story, "In the Fog", I can only analyze in its middle part, concerning Pavel Rybakov's relationship to his family. I skip the beginning of this story with the youth walking in the woods, joking, laughing and singing, it is well written, but no better, no brighter than many such descriptions scattered through novels and stories by various authors. I do not take the last part of the story, i.e., Rybakov's meeting with a prostitute and the picture of the murder, because in this part only disgusting, anti-literary and implausible details belong to the pen of Mr. Andreev, the rest is taken by him from the protocol of the murder of a prostitute by a high school student in 1901 year in Moscow, in Bogoslovsky lane. When I read the middle part of the story "In the Fog", I became frightened, because here I sensed the truth, the truth of the huge gap between parents and children, the complete inability of some to approach others, the complete helplessness of the son and the complete unconsciousness of the father. A father may not know that his son is physically ill, but he found a drawing made by his son, a drawing so cynical that he understands that his son is morally ill, that his mind is distorted, his blood is infected, his thoughts are dirty. And so, with this drawing in his pocket, he goes to his son's room, and a cat and mouse game begins between them. The son feels that something is about to break out, that all these “smart” and “comradely” conversations of his father are just a prelude, but now something terrible, terrible is coming, which is the real thing. The mother enters, also a kind, not bad woman, but probably the same as the father, who believes that if their children are well-fed, cleanly dressed and provided with the opportunity for correct teaching, then everything has been done for them, and no one has the right to demand more from their parents. The mother affectionately pats her son on the cheek, and obviously delighted that she found him in a conversation with his father, leaves without noticing anything, without feeling anything. Her maternal instinct, like maternal blood, is silent, does not feel either the physical or moral suffering of her child, and yet all of us women know how painfully sensitive we are to those we love, how difficult it is to hide and deceive our flair even to more skillful people than the boy standing in front of her, her son. So the mother leaves. Father suddenly takes out a drawing: "Did you draw it?" And this piece of paper, this rubbish with a vulgar drawing, which still means absolutely nothing, which could not be of great importance as sometimes cynical rude abuse from the lips of a completely good-natured and unspoiled street boy, at these moments seems to him the most important thing, and with the consciousness of his son, anger and disgust seizes him so much that he finds nothing, cannot say anything, nor call his son out of his soul, and almost runs away, slamming the door and shouting that he should not be expected for dinner. What happened after his son, he could not foresee, because he did not delve into the depths of his soul, but with his lordly, squeamish judgment he stopped only at the depravity of his son’s thought, he did not even make out whether the thought came after the facts, or the fact led to thought. Whether drawing is a consequence of a fall, or, on the contrary, drawing is the first step that can lead to a fall. He did not try to penetrate this secret and, leaving the crumpled, nervously exhausted, painfully broken child to the mercy of his own thoughts and discussions, fled. This is the horror of how far children are from their parents. The mother still finds her way to her daughter's heart, she is mostly the keeper of her purity and girlish secrets, but the father is almost always a stranger to the spiritual world of sons, and since the mother in most cases does not know how to approach her son in this matter, then our sons are left on their own. yourself. And they fight, and fall, and die without help. A mother is required to keep her daughter clean before marriage. Every mistake, and even more so the fall of the daughter, is entirely attributed to the mother's oversight, or even worse, to her criminal indifference. The mother of the dead girl is almost always condemned more severely than even the daughter herself. So wouldn't it be fair if the society would also blame the fathers for the death and fall of sons? After all, it is difficult, almost impossible, to fight alone against temptations, the bad advice of comrades and the million corrupting side influences of literature, exhibitions, servants and the street, but with the help of a father, whose friendship the son is proud of, with the help of his example, his advice, his society - it is easy or completely to remain pure or, as far as possible, to treat every phenomenon morally and calmly. I think that the question of involving fathers in the upbringing of sons, not in a word, but also by an example of life, has come. Previously, only one thing was required from the father - obtaining a livelihood, but since the woman, in one way or another, agreed to take part in this and she herself stepped out of the role of an adult child, the burden of lying in her husband's arms, the parents together could solve the damned question destroying sons, and to help them, according to the strength of the opportunity, sensibly and morally step over the youthful period. I accuse Mr. Andreev not of writing stories in which he roughly and directly calls the facts by their proper names, and exposes terrible secrets from the life of our sons, no - one could thank the author for this. Even isolated cases, if they are taken by him from life and placed before the eyes of mothers and fathers like a phantom of death, are useful for life, but I accuse him of corrupting the youth. His unnecessary, detailed and at the same time vague descriptions, for example, of a drawing found by Pavel Rybakov's father and a lot of unbearably cynical details, all too real and written in fragmentary words, hints that can tease a ill-directed imagination. His stories are harmful to young people not so much in essence as in form, he is certainly to blame for this. The story of Mr. Andreev "Thought" is probably known to everyone. The hero, who recognizes himself as a superman, wants to test his nerves and sneaks into the room of the maid, who shared her caresses equally with him and with his father, on the night when his father's corpse lies in the room nearby. As a student, he steals money from a friend and swindles it in a restaurant, knowing that at that time the robbed friend is starving. He feigns fits of insanity in order to kill a friend with impunity. Throughout this story, the author plays with the soul of the reader, exposing his hero, Kerzhentsev, either insane or completely a normal person . After reading this story, you are left with a feeling of anger and disgust. For a while it torments you like a nightmare, but then you dismiss it as a too crude, too bright, ugly caricature. You consider it to be a conglomerate of a thousand human passions and a thousand dirty human impulses. You are waiting for criticism to test your thoughts, and suddenly you read that the hero of "Thought" is an extremely intelligent, energetic and only too lonely person, a superman who has neither a suitable environment nor a friend, and there were several such critics, and these are - then the critics horrify you. This means that there are reasonable, calm people who consider Pavel Rybakov, Nemovetsky from The Abyss, an ordinary phenomenon among our youth and Dr. Kerzhentsev, a type often encountered in our society. This explanation of Andreev's stories is much more terrible than the text itself. It confuses the reading youth, it takes away the instinctive, healthy disgust, it makes them think, hesitate, and, finally, relying on the authority of criticism, agree that this is possible. I accuse Mr. Andreev of the fact that the stories "Thought" and "The Abyss" were not caused by his observation of life, but were invented, rigged, painfully conceived and launched into the public like a stone into the crowd: "Come on, figure it out, I'm a hero going alone against everyone, am I a madman who killed a person for nothing, for nothing, or am I a well-aimed shooter who hit exactly the one whose life I needed. And it is in this "sort-guess" that modern success lies. What did Mr. Bunin want to say by undressing Leo Tolstoy in his painting? Whether this is a mockery of the desire of the great writer to "clear up" or, on the contrary, a symbol of a person trapping people with nets, or these are not even portraits at all, but an accidental resemblance - that's "sort it out and guess." Mr. Repin draws a student with a young lady walking on the sea as if on dry land, and again all the critics, all the newspapers sound the alarm. What's this? Is it that brave youth, for whom "rocks, and stormy shallows, and storms of life - do not care." Or is it a golden youth, which is glad to test its nerves, under the influx of a cold wave? Is it just a scandal of a young couple who absolutely do not care if she gathers a crowd around her, or is it, finally, the solution of the entire women's issue, with proof that no wave of life will knock a woman down if she walks trustingly leaning on a man's hand ? Yes, sort it out here, but in essence, the stories of Andreev, and the paintings of Bunin and Repin - this is the only and surest path to fame in our time. The nail of success depends neither on strength, nor on beauty, nor on truth, but on dexterity, courage, on the choice of topic and on the amount of noise that rises around. As in the old French song "La corde sencible" everyone is now chasing this sensitive string - to expose the nerve and pull on it, but how it will respond to others - pain, suffering, scandal, it doesn't matter - find a naked nerve, touch it, and your name will be heard in a terrible cry - glory is created. This is especially true for Andreev. Turning to Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull, I must remind you that the play had both its success and its failure. It was taken off the stage like a bad piece and put on stage like a first-rate play. I will not analyze the merits and demerits of this work, I only want to point out how gray, pale, how vulgarly woman's love is expressed in this play. However, this is not even love, it is precisely that painful falling in love that so often replaces love in a woman. The hero of the play Treplev, a young novice writer, the son of the actress Arkadina, loves a young girl, Nina. He says: "I hear steps... I can't live without her... Even the sound of her steps is beautiful... A sorceress... my dream." Nina answers him: "My heart is full of you." Treplev kisses Nina and believes that the girl loves him. But Treplev's play, in which Nina plays, is ridiculed by his mother, the actress Arkadina, is not understood by others, and this is enough for the girl not only to turn away from the person who loves her, but, forgetting both her words and her kisses, falls in love with a fashionable writer Trigorina, whom she meets for the first time on the evening of the failed performance, falls in love, because this person enjoys both literary and love success. Treplev says to her: “If you only knew how unhappy I am. Your cooling is terrible, unbelievable, as if I woke up and see this lake suddenly dried up or flowed into the ground ... My play was not liked, and you despise me.” Women do not forgive failure. He puts a dead seagull at the girl's feet, and to the girl's question, what is it, what does it mean, he answers: "Soon in the same way I will kill myself." But Nina does not care, she no longer understands and does not feel sorry for Treplev, she is glad that he left and left her with Trigorin who came up. Trigorin does not pay attention to her, but she courts him, flatters him. "You are dissatisfied with yourself," she tells him, "but for others you are great and beautiful." When Trigorin leaves, she gives him a medallion on which the title of his story, a page and lines are carved, and when he finds these lines, he reads: "If you ever need my life, come and take it." Nina engraved this inscription on her medallion, of course, not now and, of course, not for Trigorin, it’s just a beautiful motto of that need for love that already lives in her, but which she so far only tries on on the men she meets. Trigorin takes this as a tribute and hurries to take the life of a young girl who has thrown her love under his feet for no reason. Nina runs away from her father to Moscow, Trigorin lives with her for a short time and leaves her with the child. Then Nina acts like a murderer, according to legend, returning to the corpse. She knows that she broke the heart of the young poet Treplev, and now beaten by life, having lost her child, not finding any satisfaction on the stage, faded, even cold, she comes to Treplev at night. What for? Heal an inflicted wound? Ask for forgiveness for the previous deceit? To say goodbye and rest on the chest of a person who loves her? No, she comes because of a momentary, beautiful fantasy and inflames a half-healed wound: “When you see Trigorin (and Trigorin is right there at the door calmly having dinner) don’t say anything to him ... I love him, I love him more than before, I love him passionately I love to despair." And then, having recited an excerpt from a play written by Treplev in a crazy impulse of youth and love, she embraces him and runs away. And Treplev, before whom everything was resurrected: that starry, clear, joyful night in which his poem, incomprehensible to anyone, was played out, and the voice of his beloved girl, who recited the unforgettable, vague thoughts of that play, into which he put all the questions and dreams that tormented him, and her love, and caress, and a fall, and the emaciated, hungry ghost he had just seen, could not stand it and shot himself. And here is the second love from the same "The Seagull", the love of the manager's wife, Polina Andreevna, an old woman, burning with absurd jealousy for Dr. Dorn. She does not want and cannot understand that a woman is dead, funny, ugly, disgusting, if she has not managed to catch the line that should turn love into a good, lasting friendship. A woman perished if she did not cease to be only a woman in certain years and did not reincarnate into a woman-man, into a woman-comrade. Polina Andreevna says to Dorn: "I can't stand the rudeness of my husband, Evgeny, dear, beloved, take me to you." Dorn, who did not do this and did not want to lead her to this decision in her youth, while at least passion bound them, answers reasonably: "I'm 55 years old, it's too late to change my life now." “That’s why you refuse me,” Polina Andreevna no longer restrains herself, “because besides me there are women who are close to you. I suffer from jealousy.” She cries, and Dorn sings and does not know how to get rid of this funny and pathetic scene. Nina comes and gives the doctor a bouquet of flowers. The doctor, touched by the attention, takes it, and Polina Andreevna hisses dully: “Give me these flowers. .. give "... snatches them, tears and tramples. And how embarrassing to look from the stage at the humiliation of this gray-haired woman, at the amazing lack of sensitivity and self-esteem in this woman. She is surrounded by nature, work, household, her own family, and she, like a blind mole, swarms in her little egoistic world. Of all the women around her, she understands only her daughter Masha, and only because she, in the same way, probably due to heredity and upbringing, is completely immersed in her love. Masha is in love with She knows very well that he does not pay any attention to her, and even to her, such as she is, a sloppy, sniffing snuff, drinking vodka, young poet and could not help but pay attention, she does not care. she does not inspire her, she, like her mother, tearfully, meekly crawls on the ground, begging only for affection. hopeless love, it goes beyond marry him. But now a year has passed. Nina has already disappeared, Treplev, who shot himself after her escape, has recovered, works in magazines, and is successful. Masha is married, she has a child, but she is still in love with Treplev and, apart from her love, does not understand anything and does not want to know anything. "Masha, let's go home," her husband pleads. "I'll stay here for the night..." she replies. - It's a pity ... it's the third night without a mother. - Boring you ... Everything is a child ... home ... child ... home ... - Let's go, Masha. "Are you coming tomorrow? Masha, snuffing tobacco: "Well, tomorrow... I'm stuck..."... And indifferent to the child's hunger, to the anguish of her husband, she almost tears the sheets out of her mother's hands in order to make Treplev's bed herself. And this is done and said in the presence of Treplev, which means that Masha does not even realize what a feeling of disgust she must arouse in the young poet with her heartlessness, rudeness towards her child, her husband and slavish fawning before him. And her mother, on top of everything, immediately says to Treplev, running her hand through his hair: "What a handsome man he has become ... Dear Kostya, good, be gentle with my Mashenka. She is nice" ... Treplev silently leaves. And again, both women do not understand to what extent they must be disgusting in his eyes. "-- So they made me angry," says Masha. "I feel sorry for you, Masha, I see everything, I understand everything." weather seas". Meanwhile, this woman is waiting... What? So that this person who does not love her, in a moment of boredom or pity, would call her to him and thereby give her, as it were, the right, in the name of a high feeling of love, to abandon her baby and finally laugh at her husband who loves her. And here is the fourth woman from the same "The Seagull", and the fourth love: the actress Arkadina, the mother of the poet Treplev, and her lover, the writer Trigorin. She is not young, but beautiful, talented, stingy. She needs both material support and a brilliant connection. Suddenly captured by Nina's passion, he does not want to leave the village, but Arkadina entangles him with an invincible weapon - flattery: "My beautiful, marvelous ... (kneels down). My joy, my pride, my bliss (hugs his knees)" . Trigorin, intoxicated with flattery, without which he cannot live, weak-willed, spineless, incapable, of course, of real, pure love, answers Arkadina: "Take me, take me away, but just don't let me go a single step." Of course, this does not in the least prevent him from casually ruining Nina's life, leaving her with the child and continuing to communicate with Arkadina. And Arkadina, who does not know how to love or understand her son, who regrets giving him any money even for a decent dress, also plays on lofty feelings and calls her relationship with Trigorin love. And now - the play "The Seagull", complete female love. Here are four types loving women. And when you leave after the performance of this play, then in your feminine heart you carry away such a heavy, hurtful feeling for the feminine mind, for female heart , for women's understanding of the word "love". And here is Chekhov's Three Sisters. Here Natasha was bred from him, it would seem so unpretentious, young, bashful; her fiancé Andrey Prozorov tells her: "Oh, youth, wonderful, beautiful youth. My dear, my good, do not worry so ... I fell in love with you, I love you, I love you like no one else." And now, in the second act, they are already husband and wife. They have their first child, and Natasha has already developed into a female, self-confident, unceremonious, starting to subordinate everything and everyone. She takes away a room from one of her husband's sisters, where the sun is all day long, and Andrei himself, who once dreamed of being a professor at Moscow University, serves as a secretary in the zemstvo council. Then, when the chairman of this council, Protopopov, sits with his wife, he rolls the child’s stroller around the garden, and she gradually disperses the old servants, then, with the second child, he unceremoniously says to the maid: “Protopopov will sit with Sofochka, and let Andrei roll Bobik Sergeevich, i.e. husband. And she evicts her husband from his room somewhere, where you can’t hear how he saws on the violin, and so little by little on someone else’s grief, on someone else’s longing, with the gloomy groans of the sisters: “To Moscow, to Moscow” ... The monstrous vulgarity, stupidity and licentiousness of Natasha flourishes magnificently and calmly, the only woman in the play who has succeeded in love, to whom life has given the satisfaction of being a wife, mother, mistress. That's how gray and vulgar women's love is exhibited in these two plays by a talented author. So, little by little, the type of a woman-mother, friend, sister, bride, the type of kindness, purity, love and fidelity disappears from literature, only a passionate female or selfish girl, a seagull, a half-virgin remains. If the best people are writers, young people are assured of this, they must believe them. But if you believe - is a family conceivable? Is happiness conceivable? Is life itself conceivable with such a woman? There was a time when a woman was compared with a chicken, with that simple mother hen, which, expanding, spreading her wings, sheltered all the chickens under them, warms, shelters from rain, wind and bad weather. But after all, a hen, when making a nest, plucks feathers on her chest, heats eggs to call forth the life lurking in them, sits without food, without drink, often dies of exhaustion on the nest if people forget to bring her food, this weak, little hen -mother, ruffling her feathers, with a cry that is ridiculous in her impotence, rushes at a kite, at a hawk, in defense of her children. Now this comparison is outdated. A woman is compared only with a female, and a girl is a lily, a branch of mimosa, now she is a seagull, half a fish, half a bird, beautiful, white creature, unfit for food, or in a cage, or in a poultry yard, or her voice, or the ability to be made tame. Shoot a seagull from a distance and throw it. Is it possible that our youth should believe modern authors and see in modern girl seagull, and in a woman - a female?

Part two

Naydenov's play "Children of Vanyushin" is one of those plays that parents who lead the upbringing of children should read before leading their children to it. The play "Children of Vanyushin" is snatched straight from life, but as the heaviest, darkest page, it leaves a bad aftertaste in young, impressionable souls. A word spoken from the stage, life played out in faces, gives the impression of truth, and the better the performance, the more real and deeper the impression. Old man Vanyushin, all gone for a penny, his good-natured, weak-willed wife, six children, of which two daughters are married, their husbands, general Kukarnikova, her daughter Nina ... These are the main characters. The eldest son Konstantin, 24 years old, a man without morality, without principles, as they say - without God in his soul, leads cupids with an orphan niece who lives right there in his father's house. Alyosha, a high school student who is already starting to revel, steals money from his mother. Among all this dirt of debauchery, blackmail, reproaches and mutual squabbles, the father's heart is revealed. He had already said before: “I always wish all my children only good things, but it doesn’t turn out that way. I looked - my soul was crying, and you only saw anger and enmity in my eyes ... You don’t know your father.” But when talking with Alyosha, he finally begins to see clearly. The son says: “I’m not a boy, and I’m not a boy for a long time, but they consider me for some little one, they don’t talk, they tear me up, they regale me with common morals. . With these words, laughter and applause are always heard. "I didn't know you could talk like that. So where did you come from like that?" "From above: you lived below, and we were above. We went to you when we needed something, and you went upstairs when you found it necessary to scold or beat us. And so we grew up and came down from above already adults, with our tastes, desires, demands, and you ask: where are we from? His father kisses him, and Alexey exclaims: "You kiss. After all, this is the first kiss of the father!" This comedy concerns not at all the merchant, not the petty-bourgeois life, but all mothers, all fathers. Is it all the same, an apartment with mezzanines, where literally children live upstairs, and parents live downstairs, or is it an amfilade of rooms where governesses and children’s rooms go behind boudoirs, halls and living rooms, doesn’t it matter if parents of children are punished and beaten or reprimand them in French and English, the fact is that parents feed, water, teach children and completely do not know either their soul or their thoughts. The day comes when the children come to us ready people, and we ask them: "Where did you come from?" And it was painful for me to be present at the performance of Vanyushin's Children, and it seemed to me that this was not a theater hall, but a courtroom where a terrible indictment of parents was being read. One more play, and again parents and children will be judged. This is Gorky's Petty Bourgeois. Bessemenov, foreman of the painting shop, his wife, Akulina Ivanovna, children: Peter is a student, Tatyana is a school teacher, a pupil is Nil, Fields is a seamstress, the daughter of a bird-catcher Perchikhina, a lodger Elena Nikolaevna Krivtsova and other persons. There is no longer up and down, everything is in a heap, and there is nowhere for them to disperse. The education of Peter and Tatyana pushed them out of the environment, but did not inspire them, for they are lethargic, gloomy, embittered; bad food, bad air gave them bad blood, they despise both their environment and their environment, but they cannot rise from it, and both, due to their weakness of will and at the same time impulses of the mind enlightened by education, are drawn to the light and instinctively seek support, alien wings, alien energy. Pyotr goes to the empty but cheerful Elena, and Tatiana goes to the Nile. For their parents, they also imperceptibly became ready-made people - those who made a penny, worked and struggled could not even be interested in the spiritual world of children, and perhaps they never thought that they had it, and the children did not even imagine that parents pray to another God, except for gain and saving a penny. They cannot stand their mother's grumblings, their father's remarks, they do not put up with their narrow views, they do not hesitate to express their impatience and irritation; father and mother literally become cramped in their house, they feel superfluous, unnecessary. The question arises in them: "Why is this?", and the following answer is involuntarily found: "In vain, without thinking well, I let you into education - here Peter was expelled, you are sitting in the girls." Tatyana sits in girls because she loves Nile. But the healthy instinct of a worker, strong and courageous, tells Neil that he does not need a lethargic, chilly, half-young lady, who does not even know how to desire anything strongly, but a half-literate, healthy, strong, cheerful and courageous Field. Such a girl will sing songs at work, and she will be able to love, and she will give birth to healthy children, and work will not fall out of her hands. Nile -- real hero Gorky, he is also greedy for life, and also will not hesitate to throw the weak out of his way, because he feels that strength, health and courage are three chances against four in the struggle for life. Gorky, not sparing, puts so many good, strong words into the mouth of his hero, such a rush forward, a challenge to fight, a protest against boredom, that young people are enchanted, they are no longer able to see Nil's ingratitude to the family that brought him up, terrible dryness, heartlessness , self-adoration and recognition in oneself of a superman who, going uphill, is allowed to step on others on the way. Neil is elevated to the ideals of a wrestler. To the complaints of Tatyana, who has grown up as a sister next to him, he replies: “You really like to complain about everything and everything ... Who will help you? She was waiting for help, and stretched out her hand to him. "-- Why are you so callous, Neil? - Is this callousness? - Cruelty... You are inattentive to people. - Not to everyone. - To me. - To you. N-yes... You see, I’m here for you, that is, I’m for you (Tatyana, waiting for the word love, makes a movement towards Nile, but Nil doesn’t even notice him) ... I respect him very much ... and ... I love you, but I don’t like why you're a teacher... You don't like this thing, it's a huge thing... Children, after all, these are people of the future... You know, I'm terribly fond of forging, in front of you is a shapeless red mass, angry, burning. pleasure. She spits at you with hissing, fiery spittles, wants to burn out your eyes, blind you, throw you away from yourself. She is alive, resilient, and with strong blows from the shoulder you make everything you need out of her." Crackling beautiful phrases ... A girl who loves him stands with anguish in front of him, and he ... he says to her: "I ... my strength, my feelings" ... because for himself he is God, and besides he is interested in himself and his feelings by no one and nothing. After the scene of explaining with Bessemyonov that he is marrying Paul, Neil says: "How I hate this man ... this house ... all my life, a rotten life. Everyone here ... some kind of freaks." Again, this curse is strong for weak and old people, but is it fair? If instead of hatred, a little reflection, a little gratitude to the family, maybe he would find an excuse for them. After all, Bessemenov does not say anything new, does not demand, he stands on his old testaments and acts according to the wisdom bequeathed to him by his father and grandfather. It’s not his fault with his roots that from oak roots he grew up not as a flexible hazel, not as a flowering linden, but as the same strong and rough oak. But Neil doesn't think about anyone or anything else. I hate it and it's over, so I took an ax and chopped it off. When he kisses Polya and, leaving the room, stumbles upon Tatyana, who, according to the author's remark, silently looks at him with dead eyes, with a crooked smile on her face - again, he does not see someone else's suffering, not a spark of sympathy for the girl, almost his sister who grew up before his eyes - almost one contempt: "I was eavesdropping. I was peeping. Eh you"... And this "eh you" is worse than a slap in the face, worse than spitting... For what? Tatyana poisoned herself, but remained alive; sick, weak, she lies on the couch. Teterev explains to her that in Russia it’s easier to be a drunkard, a vagabond than an honest person, sober, efficient, that only people are mercilessly straight, hard as swords, only they will pierce ... What ... he doesn’t finish, because the Nile enters, ruthlessly straight and hard as a sword. He enters cheerfully after fighting the clubhead depot master he defeated. Why is it good to live in Russia only for bastards, and why are all the bosses cudgel-headed? Because the one who says not the opposite, but even though he finds an exception, will himself be numbered among the clubheads. Because these biting, indiscriminately blaming everything phrases always have a huge success with young people. An argument comes up, and Peter says: "If a person has a different opinion, I will not grab him by the throat for this." Neal says, "I'll get it." "Who gave it the right?" Neil replies: "The right is not given. The right is taken ... A person must win rights for himself if he does not want to be crushed by a rude duty." Again beautiful phrase and completely immoral, because only he who recognizes duties also has rights, otherwise people would again return to the right of the fist - some would have only rights, others only duties. “You, Neil,” says Peter, “at every step you try to show your father that you don’t respect him. Why hide it?” Is this effort at every step to insult the old man - this answer: "Why hide it?", Isn't it cynical and stupidly childish? But Neil talks about life and, as he says, poetically and forcefully, and too literary for a simple worker. "To live is a glorious occupation, on crappy steam locomotives on autumn nights in the rain and wind, in winter in a snowstorm, when there is no space around you, everything on earth is covered with darkness ... tiring ... dangerous ... but this has its own charm. Only one thing that me and others honest people pigs, fools and thieves are in command "... If this is so, if only pigs, fools and thieves really have the right to lead and vote, then, of course, it's not worth living. But is it so? Is it really all black around? the main thing is that it is not the first generation that accuses the government of cruelty, corruption and inertia, but who is in power? groans... But at the age of 30, after all, a lot could change and brighten up. Isn't it the youth's fault, isn't it the youth that forgets the impulses, the precepts of youth? , enters the usual course when he receives a fortress?And then again a passionate monologue about life, which ends with words that cause a storm of applause: "Ours will take! And with all the means of my soul I will satisfy my desire to intervene in the very thick, knead it this way and that, to prevent this, to help this ... that is the joy of life. "But this is an eternal dump ... because the thick of life for everyday life is inaccessible, God forbid, even in the area where life revolves, in those requests, needs and sufferings that are encountered on the way of people, help only with reason, composure and tremendous kindness and attention, patience and justice, i.e. those qualities , which are unthinkable in a dump, and which the literary "Niles" by no means have. But what he says is beautiful and strong. Finally, Neil teases, incites Bessemenov to the last scandal, even Peter, who does not love his father, says to Neil : "Well. Waited. Oh, you, you would be ashamed. " But Neil still breaks down, until, finally, Peter, exhausted for himself, and for his sister, and for his father by this scene, shouts to him: "Go away, damn it." And then he, taken aback , leaves with the words: "I'm going ... Farewell ... What, however, you are. " And this Neil, this impossible Neil - a collective tramp, because he surpasses several typical tramps from Gorky's stories, many consider light type , for the prophet of life. In my lecture, I cannot analyze in detail all the faces from this, after all, remarkably talented comedy - I want to say only a few words about Elena Nikolaevna and her relationship with Peter. Many critics called her a bright personality - I cannot agree with this. Yes, the author gave her a few good, warm words about the prisoners, for whom she dressed in bright clothes to brighten their lives, but then - what is she? A cheerful widow, who can only remember about her husband that he had a three-inch mustache. She flirts with Peter, but for her to love him - it's hard to believe why. This is a man without a face, as even his father says about him. Always gloomy, lethargic, irritable, not finishing the course. Already in one monologue of Peter, any woman whose heart is in place and her head thinks would be imbued with contempt for his formlessness - I can’t put it differently. Here is this monologue: “I think when a Frenchman or an Englishman says:“ France, England ”, he certainly imagines behind this word something real, tangible, understandable to him. And I say:“ Russia ”and I feel that for me this is a sound empty. And I have no way to put any clear content into this word." Is it really possible for us, Russian mothers, to live to the point that our children will talk like that about their homeland? But then we perished, then we no longer have a fatherland, no language, no religion, nothing. So we failed to convey to them with our milk, with children's lullabies, with the graves of their fathers, with prayer at their bedside when they were ill, to convey to them the Russian feeling - love for our Russian land. What criminal mothers we are, what unfortunate children we are. An Englishman, a Frenchman, a Pole, a German have both pride and a passionate love for their homeland, but we have an empty phrase. Is this not a slander of the youth? Is this Peter without a face not a degenerate, but one of many? Then he says: “The devil pulled me to take part in these stupid unrest. I came to the university to study and studied. I didn’t feel any regime that prevented me from studying Roman law. No, I didn’t feel it at all. gave way to him. Two years have been erased from my life ... yes ... This is violence. Violence against me. Isn't it?" True, violence, since he was a panurge sheep, which, without knowing what it was, bleated and followed the flock. But can such a sheep inspire love in a reasonable, energetic woman? Is it a friend, comrade? No, but it can be a comfortable, spineless husband, under a shoe, such as Elena Nikolaevna is looking for. She unceremoniously, despite the obvious antipathy of the old people towards her, comes to them and takes part in the persecution of them both by the Nile and by the children. Peter is not fascinated by the prospect of marrying Elena; he says to Neil: "Firstly, students are not allowed to marry, secondly, I will have to endure a battle with my parents, thirdly" ... (he does not finish that in the third). Perchikhin says to Peter: "I don't love you, Peter. You are a proud and empty man"... But Elena takes Peter's head in her hands and makes him repeat after herself: "I love you." (Peter becomes a sheep). "Oh, yes, yes ... But no, you're joking" ... "Really, I'm completely serious - I decided to marry you a long time ago. Maybe it's very bad, but I really want it." At this time, the groan of the sick, suffering, just poisoned because of Tatyana's rejected love is heard. Pyotr's conscience stirred - he says, rushing to his sister: "She is lying there, and we ... we." And Elena answers him cheerfully and heartlessly to the point of vulgarity: "What's wrong with that? Even in the theater, after the drama, they give something funny." And takes him by the hand. She doesn’t even hear how Tatyana, left by them, moans deafly: “Lena ... Lena” ... As a final description of Elena, I cite the monologue of the latter, before leaving with Peter from her parental home: “Yes, that’s right. Yes, I myself took him from you, myself. I myself, I was the first to tell him, offered to marry me. Do you hear, you owl? Do you hear? It was I who wrested him from you. You know, I may not marry him. Are you glad, yes? Oh, it very well may be. Do not be frightened before the time. I will so easily live with him without a crown, but I will not give it to you. I will not. No. And he will never come to you. Never. Never . Never". Isn’t it called in a feminine way, to pour poison over the skin as much as you like, and at the same time, everyone has the conviction in their souls that when this hated, abandoned owl, Pyotr, who is married to Elena Nikolaevna, dies (because, of course, , she needs him as a husband), will gladly inherit the pennies he despised, especially since before this inheritance he will have to live on the means of Elena Nikolaevna, and then she will reward herself and sew herself a few light blouses to dispel her husband's melancholy. And the philosopher Teterev says to Bessemyonov: “He won’t go far from you. He temporarily went upstairs, but he will come down. If you die, he will rebuild this barn a little, rearrange the furniture in it and will live like you: calmly, reasonably and comfortably” . New play Gorky's "At the Bottom" and a new noise, literally the alarm, both in the press and among the public. Prohibition, permission, hope to see her, complete disappointment, and, finally, Stanislavsky's troupe arrives, ticket subscription is open, and around the Maly Theater there is a camp of intelligent youth, able to endure hunger, cold, sleepless nights, just to get to this "bottom , discovered by Gorky. And, meanwhile, this play is certainly lower than "Petty Bourgeois". She does not glorify the forces, does not call for a fight like the tirades of the Nile, but still she asks questions, stirs up disputes. It contains types of tramps that have long been familiar from Gorky's stories. Yes, and there are no colorful, sunny tramps there, there are just thieves, card sharpers, drunkards or losers of work, driven into the "pit". There is Ashes there, a hero reminiscent of the pale shadow of the Nile, but this is just a young, daring thief who still wants to live like a human being, because, obviously, in addition to a rooming house, he is well acquainted with both the sites and the prison, or maybe to be with a merciless beating, which the janitors and townsfolk who caught the thief are not ashamed of. Himself cruel by nature, vicious, he nevertheless dreams of a kind and quiet Natasha. It is very possible that later, like the tramp Orlov, also a dreamer, he would beat his wife with both heels and fists (at one word from Natasha: "There is nowhere to go ... I know ... I thought" ... Ash replies: " I won’t let you in, I’d rather kill you”), but now he doesn’t need his former mistress, Natasha’s sister, the beautiful Vasilisa, the hostess of the rooming house, not because she is vicious, but he is virtuous, that she is evil, but he is good, no, simply because that two wolves in one hole can not get along. Ashes and Natasha are a wolf and a lamb. Ashes and Vasilisa are two beasts that sooner or later must cut each other's throats. Vasilisa persuades Pepel to kill her husband. Ash does not agree, he is disgusted with the idea of ​​deliberately killing the old man, but after a few hours, under a flash of anger, he already grabs Vasilisa Kostylev's husband by the throat, and if it were not for the accidental presence of the wanderer Luka, the murder would have been committed, and he kills him in the last act and on charges of Vasilisa goes to prison. Natasha is colorless like Tatyana in "Petty Bourgeois", although she still dreams languidly and formlessly: "Well, I think tomorrow ... someone will arrive ... someone ... special ... or something will happen ... also unprecedented ... I wait a long time ... I always wait "... She does not have the strength to actively move, and when, after the murder, she, scalded by her sister, first goes to the hospital, and then disappears, one must think that she exactly on that road, for the mere thought of which Cinder already wanted to kill her. Natasha is weakly outlined, just as she herself is weak in internal content; her sister Vasilisa, angry, passionate, vile, dreaming of killing her husband, who tortured and scalded her sister, does not value the life of her lover who left her, and throws him into prison with her denunciation. This is the most ordinary type of woman-fist. Satin, the actor, the baron, are all tramps, free and involuntary, two or three degrees paler than those already described by Gorky in his stories. A prostitute dreaming of the student Gaston in patent-leather boots, with a left-winger, a miserable, touching type, but one that has long been used by our literature. The attention of the audience is caught by the wanderer Luka, a blissful dreamer who accidentally fell to the bottom, but the viewer is embarrassed that this is the best man who has gone from the lies of life into voluntary wandering, makes two hungry thieves, under the pointed muzzle of his gun, flog each other with rods in the most merciless way and only then does he give them bread, but if you remember that the peasants, by the verdict of the volost court, still have flogging, then it becomes scary for the simple truth that the best of the peasants, like Luka, is also obscure, also absolutely deaf to the feeling of human dignity; he acts naturally, in his own way he brings the guilty to their senses, and this is the whole horror. Satin is tired of human words, but there is deep meaning: nineteen centuries ago, a teacher gave people a lesson, simple and short: "Love God, love your neighbor." These words have become ordinary human words, everyone repeats them, but where is the fulfillment of these words? Why is it so tricky that one can hate such human words and exclaim like Satin: "Lie is the religion of slaves and masters, truth is the God of a free man." Satin gives the inhabitants of the rooming house the highest lesson in love for a woman as a person. Revenging for the desecrated honor of his sister, he kills her offender and ends up in prison, where he becomes corrupted, learns to cheat and is pushed to the bottom. And, despite all this, love for his sister has not died in him, not the slightest malice awakens in him towards her as the culprit of his suffering. He says: "My sister was a good human being." Notice, not a woman, but a “human being”, which means he is at the bottom, the scum of society, gives his sister the right that many higher minds take away from us women. He recognizes his sister as a good person, and the truth of life is felt in this ... But when the same dark Luka, who, laughing, tells how hungry poor people flogged each other, answers Satina's question: "Why do people live?" , - quotes from Schopenhauer, then the lie and inconsistency are already felt not in the answer, but in its depths. "Why do people live?" Satin says. Luka replies: “But people live for the best, dear ... Everyone thinks that he lives for himself, but it turns out that for the best. A hundred years, or maybe more for better people live". And Schopenhauer says: "Life is by no means a gift given for enjoyment, but a task - to work out a lesson, and accordingly, everywhere we arrange both in big and small universal need, tireless work, tireless striving, endless struggle, forced labor with extreme exertion of all vital and spiritual forces, the blood and sweat of entire nations flows in order to enable units to achieve their goal. "Luke tells the actor about a house with marble floors where alcoholics are cured, and about how one convict in Siberia, having learned from a scientist who was exiled there that there is no righteous land, he took it and hanged himself.Let's forget that Luke says this, what the author tells us, but how painful and terrible it is to learn that there is no righteous land, when we are all small, and the old all our lives we live and die even with the hope that if not we, that at least our grandchildren will enter the righteous land Yes, sometimes we need a lie, a lie that with its iridescent prism would keep us from despair and suicide. we we feel that all the heroes of the play "At the Bottom" have no connection with each other, no inner world, no ideals, no strength to work, and they have no desire to get them out of there, that they will not be saved by anyone. hospitals with marble floors, nor righteous lands, yet the play captures, and in the hearts of many is a huge success. Why? Firstly, because it is Gorky, a person who won the sympathy and delight of the reader, secondly, because it was banned for a long time, thirdly, there are a lot of good, deep thoughts in it, and there is a song that so it is sung that grabs everyone by the heart: “The sun rises and sets, And it’s dark in my prison, Days and nights are sentry, yes, uh, Guard my window. , yes, uh, I can’t break the chain "... The youth listens, their hearts boil, and they don’t think that they sing this song not freedom fighters imprisoned, but petty thieves, drunkards who Gorky attributed ideas and feelings incompatible with their concepts. God is with them, with those who sing, and it is hard and sweet for those who listen to her. The very setting of the play "At the Bottom" makes a huge impression: "A cellar that looks like a cave, and the spring sun sets in oblique rays through the window" ... And the remarks: "The noise on the stage goes out like a fire that is flooded with water." After all, this is a straight tuning fork. Now we just have to wait and see what happens next for a writer who started wandering alone among empty buildings and trading ports and thought about how good it is to be well fed, and now he has gained European fame and a wealthy fortune. Once he spoke in the story "Once Upon a Fall": "By God, the soul of a hungry person always eats better and healthier than the soul of a well-fed one." Let's see what he will eat now, what songs his soul of a completely well-fed person will continue to sing.

When making any "behavioral decisions", a person, as a rule, is guided by certain life principles, values ​​and ideals that he has learned in the process of socialization. Hence the category "ideal" has a deep social meaning. Ideals essentially express universal human values, organize the life of a person, influence his spiritual potential and creative activity, act as an indicator of the degree of social maturity.

Today, the formation of ideals and value orientations young man influenced by many different factors. There is an opinion that in the information technology society the role of traditional channels for the formation of ideals, such as family, school, art, including fiction, is gradually losing its significance, giving way to mass communication channels.

Despite this, art culture continues to have a significant impact on the inner spiritual world of man. Art and literature are the most important means of self-knowledge, determination of value orientations and preferences, in which the worldview of a young person is formed. Today, people continue to look in art for answers to questions about good and evil, justice and lawlessness, the meaning of life and destiny.

The young man, due to his age and psychological features it is common to compare, compare oneself with the heroes of works of art, to transfer onto oneself the events taking place on the stage, on the screen or in the book, to plunge into the world of illusions created by the imagination of the author of the work.

Of particular interest in this regard is fiction as a special kind of art, where the artistic image is not static, but acts in a certain time and space, thereby setting patterns of behavior in certain situations. Behind each hero is a specific picture of the world. A person often evaluates his actions and actions, sometimes without realizing it himself, comparing them with the values ​​\u200b\u200bthat the reference hero adheres to. Hence, the images created by fiction can have a direct impact on a person's life in a given situation.

Thus, fiction is called upon to perform a number of functions that allow people to know the world around them, experience certain emotions, get aesthetic pleasure, escape reality into the world of imagination, enrich themselves with the experience of other people by comparing themselves with the characters. literary works. However, not all of these functions are fully implemented.

This raises the problem of the discrepancy between the role that society assigns to fiction as a special kind of art in the process of forming the moral and aesthetic ideals of the younger generation, and real place fiction in the life of today's youth in the context of a variety of channels for transmitting values ​​and ideals.

The problem of studying the value orientations of young people, as well as the factors in the formation of values ​​and ideals, on the basis of which young people will build their future and the future of the whole country, is of particular research socio-psychological interest.

In 2010, on the basis of the Department of Sociology of Youth and Youth Policy of the Faculty of Sociology of St. Petersburg State University, an empirical study was conducted on the topic "The role of fiction in shaping the ideals of young students in St. Petersburg."

Subject of study: reader self-assessment of St. Petersburg students, as well as factors influencing the reading motivation of young people.

Was delivered goal- to reveal the mechanism of the formation of ideals through fiction in the structure various kinds arts and youth leisure.

Object of study pupils of schools and universities of St. Petersburg (257 respondents) spoke. The age interval is represented by three groups: 15-17 years old, 18-22 years old, 23 years old and over. Of these, 103 boys (40.1%) and 154 girls (59.9%). The survey involved students of various profiles - humanitarian, technical, natural sciences.

The data obtained in the course of the study allow us to state that today's youth retains an interest in reading: 82.1% of the respondents confirmed that they love to read. At the same time, a third of the respondents (29.7%) read constantly, every day; more than half of the respondents (54.7%) read occasionally, not daily; 14.1% read very rarely, no more than once a week; only 1.6% do not read at all.

In the context this study Fiction is of the greatest interest in terms of its influence on the formation of youth ideals. The results of the survey showed that young people show significant interest in works of fiction. In the system of other arts, fiction ranks third in popularity after music and cinema.

Among the books read last six months high school students, most often called the works of the school course: “Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky, "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy, "Fathers and Sons" by I.S. Turgenev, "Master and Margarita" M.A. Bulgakov and others. Of the works not included in the program, a large number of works by modern foreign writers(Paulo Coelho, Haruki Murakami, Stephenie Meyer, etc.).

As for the students, they show great interest in the works of Russian classical literature. The list of books read over the past six months includes works from the school curriculum on literature (L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace", F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment", M.A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita", M. Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time", etc.), which, perhaps, indicates the desire of students to re-read and rethink some works of the school course from the point of view of their new personal positions. At the same time, the respondents listed non-programmed works by program authors (“The Brothers Karamazov” by F. M. Dostoevsky, “In the First Circle” by A. I. Solzhenitsyn, “Days of the Turbins” by M. A. Bulgakov), which indicates the continued interest in works of Russian classics.

On the other hand, students show considerable interest in works of foreign literature, both classical and modern. The most popular among students are the following works: "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. Salinger, "Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by K. Kesey, "Three Comrades", "Life on Loan" by E.M. Remark and others.

At each age stage, new motives for reading appear in the reader's demand of students, which is explained by the content of the tasks and requirements that the educational role-playing and, in general, put forward for them. life position. This is evidenced by changes in genre preferences depending on the educational profile. So, for example, students of the humanities are most interested in foreign classics (54.9%), in Russian classics (52%) and modern foreign literature(48%), while students of technical specialties prefer, first of all, science fiction (51.1%), adventure literature (38.6%), fantasy (34.1%) and Russian classics (31. eight %). As for students of the natural science profile, unlike the previous category, they put Russian classical literature in first place, and then adventure literature and science fiction.

With age, a young person is more aware of his connection with other people, peers and the need to analyze his actions in accordance with accepted norms. Hence, interest in works of art increases, which make one think about important moral problems: 52.9% of students noted that they pay attention to the problems raised in the work, for 70% of respondents it is very important, when reading fiction, to be able to think about these problems.

It should be noted that young people who devote a significant part of their time to reading fiction are more likely to show the ability for creative activity in the field of literature. Table 1 presents the results of a correlation analysis, which allow us to state that there is a relationship between active reading and creative activity: the desire and ability to write compositions, poems, stories, essays (Pearson's correlation coefficient r = 0.157, significance level p = 0.05).

However, the main goal of this study was to identify the mechanism for the formation of youth ideals through fiction. It was shown that this process is carried out not directly, through imitation of the appearance and behavior of the hero, but in a hidden, indirect form, by comparison, identification with the heroes of literary works and their actions in situations similar to their own life circumstances.

Table 1. Results of correlation analysis in terms of reading frequency and creative activity

The majority of respondents (71.5%) agreed that "when reading fiction, a young person compares himself with the heroes of works and thus forms his own ideal image." At the same time, 28.5% of respondents believe that fiction does not have an impact on the creation of images and ideals, since, in their opinion, a young person forms his ideal image by other means.

For the majority of survey participants (62.6%), the coincidence of life situations, events, characteristic features heroes with their own. At the same time, 41.4% of respondents noted that the behavior of the hero can serve as a personal example. The results of the correlation analysis presented in Table. 2 show that young people, for whom the behavior of literary heroes can serve as an example, need a positive hero (a positive correlation was found r = 0.196 with a significance level p = 0.01). The presence of a positive hero in literature is also significant when comparing one's own life experience with the experience of the heroes of a literary work (r = 0.158 with a significance level of p = 0.05).

Table 2. Results of correlation analysis for two indicators:

The majority of respondents (84.3%) tend to compare their personal life experience with the experience of the heroes of literary works, of which 70.8% refer to the experience of the heroes of their favorite books when the situation described in the literary work is identical to their own life situation. On the other hand, 30.1% of respondents believe that no literary work can help in solving personal problems.

During the survey, some respondents noted that among the works of fiction they read, there are those that allowed them to form some life principles, such as “treat people the way you want to be treated”, “a person should strive for the best, work over oneself, achieving the goal”, “bad experience is also an experience”, “attitude towards life as a great miracle”, etc.

Thus, the results of the study allow us to conclude that today's youth retains an interest in fiction. In addition, many young people feel the need for positive characters who could be guided in certain life situations. Unfortunately, as the results of the study showed, modern domestic literature does not provide young people with a sufficient number of such characters that could act as a role model. A question of development domestic literature, popularizing the works of domestic authors, raising the artistic level of books, stimulating the release and distribution of social significant literature requires attention from the scientific community, the media and government institutions in order to identify priority areas for the support and development of reading in Russia, including in St. Petersburg.

Pushkina A.V. Influence of fiction on the formation of the ideals of modern Russian youth // Social psychology and society. 2014. Volume 5. No. 2. S. 152–157.

LITERATURE

1. Bakhtin M.M. Author and Hero: philosophical foundations humanities. SPb., 2000.
2. Lisovsky V.T. Spiritual world and value orientations of Russian youth. SPb., 2000.
3. Sikevich Z.V. Youth culture: pros and cons: notes of a sociologist. L., 1990.
4. Fiction. Problems of historical development, functioning and interpretation of the text. Sat. scientific tr. Minsk, 2001.

When making any "behavioral decisions", a person, as a rule, is guided by certain life principles, values ​​and ideals that he has learned in the process of socialization. Hence the category "ideal" has a deep social meaning. Ideals essentially express universal human values, organize the life of a person, influence his spiritual potential and creative activity, act as an indicator of the degree of social maturity. Today, the formation of the ideals and value orientations of a young person is influenced by many different factors. There is an opinion that in the information technology society the role of traditional channels for the formation of ideals, such as family, school, art, including fiction, is gradually losing its significance, giving way to mass communication channels. Despite this, artistic culture continues to have a significant impact on the inner spiritual world of a person. Art and literature are the most important means of self-knowledge, determination of value orientations and preferences, in which the worldview of a young person is formed. Today, people continue to look in art for answers to questions about good and evil, justice and lawlessness, the meaning of life and destiny. A young person, due to his age and psychological characteristics, tends to compare, compare himself with the heroes of works of art, transfer to himself the events taking place on the stage, on the screen or in the book, immerse himself in the world of illusions created by the imagination of the author of the work. Of particular interest in this regard is fiction as a special kind of art, where the artistic image is not static, but acts in a certain time and space, thereby setting patterns of behavior in certain situations. Behind each hero is a specific picture of the world. A person often evaluates his actions and actions, sometimes without realizing it himself, comparing them with the values ​​\u200b\u200bthat the reference hero adheres to. Hence, the images created by fiction can have a direct impact on a person's life in a given situation. Thus, fiction is called upon to perform a number of functions that allow people to know the world around them, experience certain emotions, get aesthetic pleasure, escape from reality into the world of imagination, enrich themselves with the experience of other people by comparing themselves with the heroes of literary works. However, not all of these functions are fully implemented. This raises the problem of the discrepancy between the role that society assigns to fiction as a special kind of art in the process of forming the moral and aesthetic ideals of the younger generation, and the real place of fiction in the life of modern youth in the context of a variety of channels for transmitting values ​​and ideals. The problem of studying the value orientations of young people, as well as the factors in the formation of values ​​and ideals, on the basis of which young people will build their future and the future of the whole country, is of particular research socio-psychological interest. In 2010, on the basis of the Department of Sociology of Youth and Youth Policy of the Faculty of Sociology of St. Petersburg State University, an empirical study was conducted on the topic "The role of fiction in shaping the ideals of young students in St. Petersburg." Subject of study: reader self-assessment of St. Petersburg students, as well as factors influencing the reading motivation of young people. Was delivered goal- to reveal the mechanism of formation of ideals through fiction in the structure of various types of art and youth leisure. Object of study pupils of schools and universities of St. Petersburg (257 respondents) spoke. The age interval is represented by three groups: 15-17 years old, 18-22 years old, 23 years old and over. Of these, 103 boys (40.1%) and 154 girls (59.9%). The survey involved students of various profiles - humanitarian, technical, natural sciences. The data obtained in the course of the study allow us to state that today's youth retains an interest in reading: 82.1% of the respondents confirmed that they love to read. At the same time, a third of the respondents (29.7%) read constantly, every day; more than half of the respondents (54.7%) read occasionally, not daily; 14.1% read very rarely, no more than once a week; only 1.6% do not read at all. In the context of this study, fiction is of the greatest interest in terms of its influence on the formation of youth ideals. The results of the survey showed that young people show significant interest in works of fiction. In the system of other arts, fiction ranks third in popularity after music and cinema. Among the books read over the past six months by high school students, the works of the school course were most often called: “Crime and Punishment” by F.M. Dostoevsky, "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy, "Fathers and Sons" by I.S. Turgenev, "Master and Margarita" M.A. Bulgakov and others. Of the works not included in the program, a large number of works by contemporary foreign writers (Paulo Coelho, Haruki Murakami, Stephenie Meyer, etc.) were named. As for the students, they show great interest in the works of Russian classical literature. The list of books read over the past six months includes works from the school curriculum on literature (L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace", F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment", M.A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita", M. Yu. Lermontov "A Hero of Our Time", etc.), which, perhaps, indicates the desire of students to re-read and rethink some works of the school course from the point of view of their new personal positions. At the same time, the respondents listed non-programmed works by program authors (“The Brothers Karamazov” by F. M. Dostoevsky, “In the First Circle” by A. I. Solzhenitsyn, “Days of the Turbins” by M. A. Bulgakov), which indicates the continued interest in works of Russian classics. On the other hand, students show considerable interest in works of foreign literature, both classical and modern. The following works are the most popular among students: "The Catcher in the Rye" by J. Salinger, "Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by K. Kesey, "Three Comrades", "Life on Loan" by E.M. Remarque and others. At each age stage, new motives for reading appear in the reader's demand of students, which is explained by the content of the tasks and requirements that the educational role-playing and, in general, life position puts forward for them. This is evidenced by changes in genre preferences depending on the educational profile. So, for example, students of the humanities are most interested in foreign classics (54.9%), Russian classics (52%) and modern foreign literature (48%), while students of technical specialties prefer, first of all, science fiction (51.1%), adventure literature (38.6%), fantasy (34.1%) and Russian classics (31.8%). As for students of the natural science profile, unlike the previous category, they put Russian classical literature in first place, and then adventure literature and science fiction. With age, a young person is more aware of his connection with other people, peers and the need to analyze his actions in accordance with accepted norms. Hence, interest in works of art increases, which make one think about important moral problems: 52.9% of students noted that they pay attention to the problems raised in the work, for 70% of respondents it is very important, when reading fiction, to be able to think about these problems. It should be noted that young people who devote a significant part of their time to reading fiction are more likely to show the ability for creative activity in the field of literature. Table 1 presents the results of a correlation analysis, which allow us to state that there is a relationship between active reading and creative activity: the desire and ability to write compositions, poems, stories, essays (Pearson's correlation coefficient r = 0.157, significance level p = 0.05). However, the main goal of this study was to identify the mechanism for the formation of youth ideals through fiction. It was shown that this process is carried out not directly, through imitation of the appearance and behavior of the hero, but in a hidden, indirect form, by comparison, identification with the heroes of literary works and their actions in situations similar to their own life circumstances. Table 1. Results of correlation analysis in terms of reading frequency and creative activity* correlation is significant at 0.05 (2-sided); N is the number of used pairs of variable values. The majority of respondents (71.5%) agreed that "when reading fiction, a young person compares himself with the heroes of works and thus forms his own ideal image." At the same time, 28.5% of respondents believe that fiction does not have an impact on the creation of images and ideals, since, in their opinion, a young person forms his ideal image by other means. For the majority of survey participants (62.6%), when reading fiction, it is also important that life situations, events, and characteristics of heroes coincide with their own. At the same time, 41.4% of respondents noted that the behavior of the hero can serve as a personal example. The results of the correlation analysis presented in Table. 2 show that young people, for whom the behavior of literary heroes can serve as an example, need a positive hero (a positive correlation was found r = 0.196 with a significance level p = 0.01). The presence of a positive hero in literature is also significant when comparing one's own life experience with the experience of the heroes of a literary work (r = 0.158 with a significance level of p = 0.05). Table 2. Results of correlation analysis for two indicators:* correlation is significant at 0.05 (2-sided); * correlation is significant at 0.01 (2-sided); N is the number of used pairs of variable values. The majority of respondents (84.3%) tend to compare their personal life experience with the experience of the heroes of literary works, of which 70.8% refer to the experience of the heroes of their favorite books when the situation described in the literary work is identical to their own life situation. On the other hand, 30.1% of respondents believe that no literary work can help in solving personal problems. During the survey, some respondents noted that among the works of fiction they read, there are those that allowed them to form some life principles, such as “treat people the way you want to be treated”, “a person should strive for the best, work over oneself, achieving the goal”, “bad experience is also an experience”, “attitude towards life as a great miracle”, etc. Thus, the results of the study allow us to conclude that today's youth retains an interest in fiction. In addition, many young people feel the need for positive characters who could be guided in certain life situations. Unfortunately, as the results of the study showed, modern domestic literature does not provide young people with a sufficient number of such characters that could act as a role model. The issue of developing domestic literature, popularizing the works of domestic authors, raising the artistic level of books, stimulating the production and distribution of socially significant literature requires attention from the scientific community, the media and government institutions in order to determine priority areas for supporting and developing reading in Russia, including including in St. Petersburg. Pushkina A.V. Influence of fiction on the formation of the ideals of modern Russian youth // Social psychology and society. 2014. Volume 5. No. 2. S. 152-157. LITERATURE 1. Bakhtin M.M. Author and hero: to the philosophical foundations of the humanities. SPb., 2000. 2. Lisovsky V.T. Spiritual world and value orientations of Russian youth. SPb., 2000. 3. Sikevich Z.V. Youth culture: pros and cons: notes of a sociologist. L., 1990. 4. Fiction. Problems of historical development, functioning and interpretation of the text. Sat. scientific tr. Minsk, 2001.

Surname, name, patronymic (in full) Smirnova Irina Yurievna

Name of place of work/study MBOU "Novoportovskaya boarding school named after L.V. Laptsuy"

Name municipality Name locality New Port village

Today, in the age of computers, super smart gadgets, robots, nanotechnologies, one of the main problems is the problem of spiritual, moral, aesthetic and patriotic education of young people.

Our society aims young people at success, self-sufficiency, and the ability to earn money. These are the requirements of a market economy. The mass media propagate the norms of modern life, suggesting to young people that such vices as pride, anger, gluttony, envy, despondency, avarice, fornication are not sins at all. As a result, in the process of becoming a person, we get a human consumer who is absolutely indifferent to other people's pain, other people's problems, a person who suddenly forgot that no wealth can replace honesty, kindness, decency. A modern young man, mentally developed, possessing certain scientific knowledge, is at the lowest level spiritually and emotionally.

The main goal of the school library is to form a thinking and feeling, loving and active person ready to be creative in any area of ​​life. The moral education of the younger generation is the primary task of society, since morality is the highest measure of humanity. The school and the library should join forces in the formation of moral values.

As a librarian, I am interested in how emotionally young readers perceive artistic text how deeply they understand him, whether they empathize with literary heroes. The ability of the reader, and even more so of the young reader, to experience joy, anger, sadness is important in the spiritual life of a person. Emotional imagination enables the reader to understand the world of feelings of literary characters, live their lives with them, imagine themselves as any character from the book, break away from reality and experience incredible adventures. Hence the conclusion - reading develops the imagination. “The reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. A person who never reads experiences only one ”(D. Martin).

Loud readings often take place in our library, with stops to answer questions that arise during the reading. artwork, questions, to discuss the actions of literary heroes. And even those guys who do not like to read are imbued with an interest in the fate of the heroes of the book, a thirst to find out what will happen next, how the plot will end.

Of particular interest are books that tell about the fate of teenagers like ours. dear readers(Zheleznyakov V.K. "Scarecrow", Kaverin V. "Two Captains"), books about the Great Patriotic War(Kuznetsov A. "Babi Yar", Kassil L. "Street younger son”, Baklanov G. “Forever nineteen”, Cherkashin G. “Doll”, etc.) about friendship and love (Shcherbakova G. “You never dreamed of”, Grossman D. “Whom to run with”, Sabitova Dina “Three of your name", Sharon Draper "Hi, let's talk"), historical plots.

To attract students to reading spiritual and moral literature, book and illustrative exhibitions are held dedicated to the life of Sergius of Radonezh, Alexander Nevsky, the great enlighteners Cyril and Methodius. In the days Orthodox book review discussions are held in the library, round tables, loud readings of the evangelical theme of Russian writers I. S. Shmelev ("Summer of the Lord", "Praying"), L. Andreev ("Hotel"), A. P. Chekhov ("On Strastnaya"), N. S. Leskova ( "Figure"), L. N. Tolstoy ("Candle"), F. M. Dostoevsky ("Christ's boy on the Christmas tree"),

In our library, just like in any other, there is a fund of Orthodox literature, which is used in exhibition work when it comes to the ethno-cultural traditions of the Russian people. And, as you know, the culture of the Russian people is inextricably linked with Orthodoxy. Orthodox holidays that are well-known and celebrated by everyone: Naum Literacy Day on December 14, January 25 - St. Tatiana's Day, celebrated as Students' Day, May 24 - Memorial Day of Cyril and Methodius Equal-to-the-Apostles, also known as the Day of Slavic writing and culture. There are always a number of events held at the school for these holidays. These are exhibitions of fiction and Orthodox literature, review talks, loud readings, quizzes, flash mobs, etc.

Adolescence, according to many teachers and parents, is difficult and critical. A good book can help a teenager understand the system of moral values ​​and ideals, organize his behavior and activities, teach self-control and responsibility for the results of his actions. There are many contemporary authors, both Russian and foreign, writing for teenagers.

Here are some of them: Eduard Verkin "Cloud Regiment"; Olga Gromova "Sugar Child"; Vladislav Krapivin "On the night of the high tide"; Tamara Kryukova "Witch"; Mark Levy "Shadow Thief"; Boris Almazov "Look - I'm growing"; Nikolai and Svetlana Ponomarev "Are you afraid of the dark?" and "Photo on the ruins"; Mikhail Samarsky "Rainbow for a friend", Evgeny Yelchin "Stalin's nose"; Boris Balter's story "Goodbye, boys!". These are books by modern authors about philanthropy, moral problems, understanding the meaning of life, about the experiences of heroes, their struggle for justice and honesty, their nobility, readiness to help their friends and their selflessness.

A children's book should give children hope that everything can be fine, that there is a good choice. The book helps to understand where there is goodness, mercy, compassion, what repentance is and what self-love, idleness, anger, envy, pride are. Finding and recommending a good book to a teenager is the task of a librarian and literature teacher. Reading parents can also become leaders in reading a teenager, because they can introduce them to reading by personal example.

Over the past two or three years, there has been an increased demand for classical literature that is not included in the school curriculum. This is Dostoevsky F.M. "The Brothers Karamazov"; Tolstoy L.N., "Anna Karenina", "Resurrection"; Fadeev "Young Guard", Shmelev "Summer of the Lord".

And, of course, the works of Pushkin A. S., Lermontov M. Yu., Gogol N. V., Tolstoy L. N., Dostoevsky F. M., Chekhov A. P., Sholokhov M. - allow the young reader not only to learn the past, but also to experience together with the heroes of their books, form views, feelings, character, awaken love for the beautiful, bring up readiness to fight for the triumph of good and truth.

Modern teenagers prefer to watch a film based on literary works, and not to read the work itself, since a lot of time is spent on reading. But the one who read the book did not regret the time spent. Here is what the guys who read books about the war say:

“Any book about war teaches us to value life, to protect the most precious thing, to believe, to hope. We learn about such qualities as kindness, self-sacrifice, the ability to be friends. Every self-respecting person must read at least one book about the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945!”

The guys believe that reading books about the war is necessary for every person in order to know the history of their country, to know at what price the peace in which we all live was paid, in order to remember the heroes of the war, about their exploits.

Reading books about war teaches you to be humane even in the most difficult and terrible situations, teaches you to adhere to your principles to the end, teaches you to love, believe, hope, teaches people to unite for the sake of one great goal - Victory.

Nowadays, it is necessary to read books about the war, especially about the Great Patriotic War, in order to cultivate the spirit of patriotism, pride in one's country, and most importantly, so that the current generation does not forget thanks to whom it lives on this earth under a peaceful sky. This is not necessarily fiction, but also documentary, the reading of which allows you to develop your own point of view on current events.

Reading young people who know the traditions, history and culture of their country are a high potential for the future of Russia.

Remember, young citizen,

Book - growth vitamin!

The great Russian writer A. M. Gorky wrote: “I owe everything good in life to books.”

Today, more than ever, it is important to familiarize children and adolescents with the world of spiritual values ​​of history and culture. Russian classic literature, aspiring to harmony and the search for the meaning of life, to the resolution eternal questions, makes it possible to use the richest material for the formation of a culture of personality. For example, the books “Alive” by B. Mozhaev, “The Usual Business” by V. Belov, “Farewell to Mother” by V. Rasputin help to rethink the essence of human relations and actions in a new way. They affirm the ideals of reason, beauty, harmony, they speak of a person's responsibility for every step on earth.

Modern youth needs to read and read the best of the classics in order to understand themselves, who you are, what you want to achieve. The moral problems of the individual can be traced in the works of such writers as Chingiz Aitmatov, B. Vasiliev, V. Astafiev, V. Rasputin, Yu. Bondarev and many others.

But the most important thing that the book gives is wise advice.

A teenager observing thoughts, feelings, experiences and actions literary characters, learns not to make their mistakes in his life, tries to take an example only from goodies.

Books teach the younger generation to think, imagine, experience and empathize. Sometimes they just help them have a good time, and sometimes they become indispensable friends and advisers. Books teach you to do the right thing in a given situation, they seem to ask their readers to be better, they help you navigate life.

An important role in the development of a teenager's personality is played by books about prominent people both our country and other countries of the world. The history of mankind over the millennia of its existence has accumulated a lot of life experience, and it would be nice to study this experience for our children. A series of books "The Life of Remarkable People" will reveal the details of the biographies of prominent personalities.

Reading books about outstanding people helps readers to worthily walk the paths of life, shape their character, and achieve their goals. These books are a great motivator for those who have met with obstacles on the way to their dreams. Books educate the moral qualities of a person, teach to think and reason, help to develop the inner world.

• The book teaches you to think.
• The book teaches to speak.
• The book teaches to understand people.

I consider Vladimir Vysotsky's poems "The Ballad of the Struggle" to be the best poems dedicated to children's and teenage reading. A summary of the ballad in a poem by V. V. Radin:

Books teach children

All the wisdom of life -

How to be human

And to be needed by the Fatherland,

And how truth from lies

Everyone must be different.

How to deal with the enemy

And how to overcome evil.

I want to finish my thoughts with the words of A. M. Gorky: “Love a book, it will make your life easier, it will help you sort out the motley and stormy confusion of thoughts, feelings, events in a friendly way. It will teach you to respect the person and yourself, it inspires the mind and heart with a feeling of love for the world, for the person.

Literature:

1. Spiritual and moral education of children and adolescents in the modern library environment / ed. comp. E. M. Zueva. - M.: Russian School Library Association, 2008. - 336 p.
2. Kagan M.S. Philosophical theory values. - SPb., 1997.
3. Komensky Ya. A. On the skillful use of books - the first tool for the development of natural talents / School Library - 2000. - No. 5 - p.58-62