Notes from the dead house theme. Notes from the House of the Dead

"Notes from the House of the Dead" can rightly be called the book of the century. If Dostoevsky had left behind only one "Notes from the House of the Dead", even then he would have entered the history of Russian and world literature as its original celebrity. It is no coincidence that critics assigned him, while still alive, a metonymic "second name" - "the author of Notes from the House of the Dead" and used it instead of the writer's surname. This book of Dostoevsky's books caused, as he accurately anticipated back in 1859, i.e. at the beginning of work on it, the interest was "the most capital" and became a sensational literary and social event of the era.

The reader was shocked by the pictures from the hitherto unknown world of the Siberian “military penal servitude” (military hard labor was harder than civilian), honestly and courageously written out by the hand of its prisoner, the master of psychological prose. "Notes from the House of the Dead" made a strong (albeit not the same) impression on A.I. Herzen, L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgenev, N.G. Chernyshevsky, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and others. To the triumphal, but behind the prescription of years, as if almost forgotten glory of the author of "Poor People", a mighty refreshing addition was added the glory of the newly appeared - the great martyr and Dante of the House of the Dead at the same time. The book not only restored, but raised Dostoevsky's literary and civic popularity to new heights.

However, the existence of "Notes from the House of the Dead" in Russian literature cannot be called idyllic. They were stupidly and absurdly censored. Their "mixed" newspaper and magazine first publication (the Russkiy Mir weekly and the Vremya magazine) stretched out for more than two years. The enthusiastic reception of the reader did not mean the understanding that Dostoevsky counted on. How upsetting he regarded the results of literary-critical evaluations of his book: "In criticism" 3<аписки>from Mert<вого>Houses "mean that Dostoevsky denounced the prison, but now it is outdated. So they said in the book<ых>shops<нах>, offering a different, more immediate exposure of prisons" (Notebooks 1876-1877). Criticism downplayed and lost the meaning of Notes from the House of the Dead. Such one-sided and opportunistic approaches to "Notes from the House of the Dead" only as "denunciation" of the penitentiary-hard labor system and - figuratively and symbolically - in general, the "house of the Romanovs" (V.I. Lenin's assessment), the institution of state power have not been completely overcome and until so far. The writer, meanwhile, did not focus on "accusatory" goals, and they did not go beyond the bounds of immanent literary and artistic necessity. That is why politically biased interpretations of the book are essentially fruitless. As always, Dostoevsky here, as a heart expert, is immersed in the elements of the personality of modern man, developing his own concept of the characterological motives of people's behavior in conditions of extreme social evil and violence.

The catastrophe that occurred in 1849 had grave consequences for the Petrashevsky Dostoevsky. Prominent connoisseur and historian of the royal prison M.N. Gernet terribly, but not exaggerating, comments on Dostoevsky’s stay in the Omsk prison: “One must be amazed how the writer did not die here” ( Gernet M.N. History of the royal prison. M., 1961. T. 2. S. 232). However, Dostoevsky took full advantage of unique opportunity to comprehend up close and from within, in all the details inaccessible in the wild, the life of the common people, constrained by hellish circumstances, and to lay the foundations of one's own writer's national knowledge. “You are not worthy to talk about the people – you do not understand anything about them. You did not live with him, but I lived with him,” he wrote to his opponents a quarter of a century later (Notebooks 1875-1876). “Notes from the House of the Dead” is a book worthy of the people (peoples) of Russia, entirely based on the grave personal experience writer.

The creative history of "Notes from the House of the Dead" begins with hidden entries in "my notebook of hard labor<ую>”, which Dostoevsky, violating the establishment of the law, led in the Omsk jail; from Semipalatinsk sketches "from the memoirs<...>stay in hard labor ”(letter to A.N. Maikov dated January 18, 1856) and letters of 1854-1859. (M.M. and A.M. Dostoevsky, A.N. Maikov, N.D. Fonvizina and others), as well as from oral stories in the circle of people close to him. The book was hatched and created for many years and surpassed in the duration of the creative time given to it. Hence, in particular, its genre-stylistic finishing, unusual for Dostoevsky in terms of thoroughness (not a shadow of the style of "Poor People" or), the elegant simplicity of the narration is entirely the peak and perfection of form.

The problem of defining the genre of Notes from the House of the Dead has puzzled researchers. In the set of definitions proposed for the "Notes ...", almost all types of literary prose: memoirs, a book, a novel, an essay, a study ... And yet, none of them converge in the totality of features with the original. The aesthetic phenomenon of this original work consists in the inter-genre boundary, hybridity. Only the author of Notes from the House of the Dead was subject to the combination of document and targeting with the poetry of complex artistic and psychological writing that determined the stamped originality of the book.

The elementary position of the recollector was initially rejected by Dostoevsky (see the indication: "My personality will disappear" - in a letter to his brother Mikhail dated October 9, 1859) as unacceptable for a number of reasons. The fact of his condemnation to hard labor, well-known in itself, did not represent a plot forbidden in the censorship-political sense (with the accession of Alexander II, censorship indulgences were outlined). The figure of an invented man who was imprisoned for the murder of his wife could not mislead anyone either. In essence, it was an understandable mask of Dostoevsky the convict. In other words, the autobiographical (and therefore valuable and captivating) narrative about the Omsk penal servitude and its inhabitants of 1850-1854, although it was overshadowed by a certain look back at censorship, was written according to the laws of an artistic text, free from a self-sufficing and stubborn reminiscence of everyday personality. memoir empiricism.

No satisfactory explanation has yet been offered of how the writer managed to achieve harmonious conjugation in a single creative process of chronicle writing (factography) with personal confession, knowledge of the people with self-knowledge, analytic thought, philosophical meditation with epic depiction, meticulously microscopic analysis of psychological reality with fiction. entertaining and concisely artless, Pushkin's type of storytelling. Moreover, "Notes from the House of the Dead" was an encyclopedia of Siberian penal servitude in the middle of the century before last. The external and internal life of its population is covered - with the laconicism of the story - to the maximum, with unsurpassed fullness. Dostoevsky did not disregard a single undertaking of convict consciousness. Scenes from the life of the prison, chosen by the author for scrupulous consideration and unhurried reflection, were recognized as stunning: “Bath”, “Performance”, “Hospital”, “Claim”, “Exit from hard labor”. Their large, panoramic plan does not obscure the mass of details and details that are all-encompassing in their totality, no less poignant and necessary in their ideological and artistic significance in the general humanistic composition of the work (a penny alms given by a girl to Goryanchikov; etc.)

The visual philosophy of Notes from the House of the Dead proves that a “realist in the highest sense,” as Dostoevsky would call himself later, did not allow his most humane (by no means “cruel”!) talent to deviate one iota from the truth of life, no matter how hard-hitting and tragic it might be. neither was. With the book about the House of the Dead, he courageously challenged the literature of half-truths about man. Goryanchikov the narrator (behind whom Dostoevsky himself visibly and tangibly stands), observing a sense of proportion and tact, looks into all corners of the human soul, not avoiding the most distant and gloomy. Thus, not only the savagely sadistic antics of prison mates (Gazin, Akulkin's husband) and ex officio executioners (lieutenants Zherebyatnikov, Smekalov) fell into his field of vision. The anatomy of the ugly and vicious knows no bounds. "Brothers in misfortune" steal and drink the Bible, tell "about the most unnatural deeds, with the most childlike laughter", get drunk and fight on holy days, rave in their sleep with knives and "Raskolnikov's" axes, go crazy, engage in sodomy (scabrous "partnership" to which Sirotkin and Sushilov belong) get used to every kind of abomination. One after another, from private observations of the current life of hard labor people, generalizing aphoristic judgments-maxims follow: “Man is a being who gets used to everything, and, I think, this is his best definition”; "There are people like tigers, thirsty to lick blood"; “It is hard to imagine how much human nature can be distorted,” etc. - then they will join the artistic philosophical and anthropological fund of the “Great Pentateuch” and “The Writer's Diary”. Scientists are right who believe not Notes from the Underground, but Notes from the House of the Dead, to be the beginning of many beginnings in the poetics and ideology of Dostoevsky, a novelist and publicist. It is in this work that the origins of the main literary ideological, thematic and compositional complexes and decisions of Dostoevsky the artist: crime and punishment; voluptuous tyrants and their victims; freedom and money; suffering and love; shackled "our extraordinary people" and nobles - "iron noses" and "fly-hounds"; the narrator-chronicler and the people and events he describes in the spirit of a confessional diary. In "Notes from the House of the Dead" the writer found a blessing for his further creative path.

With all the transparency of the artistic-autobiographical relationship between Dostoevsky (author; prototype; imaginary publisher) and Goryanchikov (narrator; character; imaginary memoirist), there is no reason to simplify them. A complex poetic and psychological mechanism is hidden and hidden here. It is rightly noted: "Dostoevsky typified his cautious fate" (Zakharov). This allowed him to remain in "Notes ..." himself, unconditional Dostoevsky, and at the same time, in principle, following the model of Pushkin's Belkin, not to be him. The advantage of such a creative "two worlds" is in freedom artistic thought which comes, however, from actually documented, historically confirmed sources.

The ideological and artistic significance of the "Notes from the House of the Dead" seems immeasurable, the questions raised in them are innumerable. This is - without exaggeration - a kind of poetic universe of Dostoevsky, a brief edition of his full confession about man. Here, the colossal spiritual experience of a genius who lived for four years “in a heap” with people from the people, robbers, murderers, vagabonds, is summed up directly, when in him, without getting a proper creative outlet, “inner work was in full swing”, and rare, from case to case, fragmentary entries in the "Siberian Notebook" only kindled a passion for full-blooded literary pursuits.

Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov thinks on the scale of the entire geographically and nationally great Russia. There is a paradox of the image of space. Behind the prison fence (“burnings”) of the House of the Dead, the outlines of an immense power appear dotted: the Danube, Taganrog, Starodubye, Chernigov, Poltava, Riga, St. Petersburg, Moscow, “a village near Moscow”, Kursk, Dagestan, the Caucasus, Perm, Siberia, Tyumen, Tobolsk , Irtysh, Omsk, the Kyrgyz “free Steppe” (in the Dostoevsky dictionary this word is spelled with a capital letter), Ust-Kamenogorsk, Eastern Siberia, Nerchinsk, the port of Peter and Paul. Accordingly, for sovereign thinking, America, the Red (Red) Sea, Mount Vesuvius, the island of Sumatra and, indirectly, France and Germany are mentioned. The living contact of the narrator with the East is emphasized (oriental motifs of the "Steppe", Muslim countries). This is consonant with the character multi-ethnicity and multi-confessionalism of "Notes ...". The arresting artel is made up of Great Russians (including Siberians), Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Kalmyks, Tatars, "Circassians" - Lezgins, Chechens. Baklushin's story depicts the Russian-Baltic Germans. The Kirghiz (Kazakhs), “Muslims”, a Chukhonka, an Armenian, Turks, Gypsies, a Frenchman, a Frenchwoman are named and act to one degree or another in the “Notes from the House of the Dead”. In the poetically conditioned dispersion and interlocking of topoi and ethnic groups, there is its own, already "novel" expressive logic. Not only the House of the Dead is a part of Russia, but Russia is also a part of the House of the Dead.

The main spiritual conflict between Dostoevsky and Goryanchikov is connected with the theme of Russia: bewilderment and pain before the fact of the class alienation of the people from the noble intelligentsia, its best part. In the chapter "Claim" - the key to understanding what happened to the narrator-character and the author of the tragedy. Their attempt to take the side of the rebels in solidarity was rejected with deadly categoricalness: they are - under no circumstances and never - "comrades" for their people. The way out of penal servitude solved the most painful problem for all prisoners: de jure and de facto, prison captivity was put an end to. The ending of Notes from the House of the Dead is bright and uplifting: “Freedom, new life, resurrection from the dead ... What a glorious moment! But the problem of separation from the people, which was not envisaged by any of the Russian lawmakers, but which pierced Dostoevsky’s heart forever (“the robber taught me a lot” - Notebook of 1875-1876), remained. It gradually - in the desire of the writer to solve it at least for himself - democratized the direction creative development Dostoevsky and eventually led him to a kind of soil populism.

A modern researcher aptly calls Notes from the House of the Dead "a book about the people" (Tunimanov). Russian literature before Dostoevsky knew nothing of the kind. The central position of the folk theme in the conceptual basis of the book forces us to reckon with it in the first place. "Notes ..." testified to Dostoevsky's tremendous success in understanding the personality of the people. The content of Notes from the House of the Dead is by no means limited to what Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov personally saw and personally experienced. The other, no less significant half is what came to the Notes ... from the environment that tightly surrounded the author-narrator, by oral, "voiced" way (and what the corpus of records of the Siberian Notebook reminds of).

Folk storytellers, jokers, wits, "Petrovichi Conversations" and other Chrysostoms played an invaluable "co-author" role in artistic intent and implementation of "Notes from the House of the Dead". Without what they heard and directly adopted from them, the book - in the form in which it is - would not have taken place. Prisoner's stories, or "chatter" (an expression neutralizing censorship by Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov) recreate the lively - as if according to the dictionary of some cautious Vladimir Dal - the charm of folk colloquial speech of the middle of the century before last. The masterpiece inside Notes from the House of the Dead, the story Akulkin's Husband, no matter how stylized we may recognize it, is based on everyday folklore prose of the highest artistic and psychological merit. In fact, this ingenious interpretation of an oral folk tale is akin to Pushkin's Tales and Gogol's Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. The same can be said about Baklushin's tale-bearing novelistic story-confession. Of exceptional importance for the book are the constant narrative references to rumors, gossip, gossip, visits - grains of everyday folklore life. With appropriate reservations, “Notes from the House of the Dead” should be considered a book, to a certain extent told by the people, “brothers in misfortune,” so great is the share of colloquial tradition, legends, stories, momentary living words in it.

Dostoevsky, one of the first in our literature, outlined the types and varieties of folk narrators, cited stylized (and improved by him) samples of their oral art. The Dead House, which, among other things, was also the “house of folklore”, taught the writer to distinguish between storytellers: “realists” (Baklushin, Shishkov, Sirotkin), “comedians” and “buffoons” (Skuratov), ​​“psychologists” and “jokes” ( Shapkin), whipping "veils" (Luchka). Dostoevsky as a novelist could not have been more useful than the analytical study of the convict "Conversations of the Petrovichs", the lexicon-characterological experience that was concentrated and poetically processed in "Notes from the House of the Dead" came in handy and further nourished his narrative skill (Chroniker, biographer of the Karamazovs, writer in the diary, etc.).

Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov equally listens to his collaborators - "good" and "bad", "near" and "far", "famous" and "ordinary", "alive" and "dead". In his "estate" soul there are no hostile, "lordly" or squeamish feelings towards a commoner fellow prisoner. On the contrary, he reveals a Christian-sympathetic, truly "comradely" and "fraternal" attention to the masses of the people under arrest. Attention, unusual in its ideological and psychological predestination and ultimate goals - through the prism of the people to explain himself, and the person in general, and the principles of his life arrangement. It was caught by Ap. A. Grigoriev immediately after the release of "Notes from the House of the Dead" in the light: their author, the critic noted, "reached through a passive psychological process to the point that in the "Dead House" he completely merged with the people ... "( Grigoriev Ap. BUT. Lit. criticism. M., 1967. S. 483).

Dostoevsky did not write a dispassionately objectified chronicle of penal servitude, but a confession-epic and, moreover, "Christian" and "edifying" narrative about "the most gifted, the strongest people of all our people", about its "mighty forces", which in the House of the Dead "died in vain ". In the poetic folk science of "Notes from the House of the Dead" samples of most of the main characters of the late Dostoevsky the artist were expressed: soft hearted”, “kind”, “persistent”, “cute” and “sincere” (Alei); native Great Russian, "most sweet" and "full of fire and life" (Baklushin); “Kazan orphan”, “quiet and meek”, but capable of rebellion in extremes (Sirotkin); "the most resolute, most fearless of all convicts", heroic in potency (Petrov); stoically suffering "for the faith", "meek and meek as a child" schismatic rebel ("grandfather"); "spider" (Gazin); artistic (Potseikin); the "superman" of penal servitude (Orlov) - the entire socio-psychological collection of human types revealed in the "Notes from the House of the Dead" cannot be listed. In the end, one thing remains important: the characterological studies of the Russian jail opened to the writer the horizonless spiritual world of a man from the people. On these empirical grounds, Dostoevsky's novelistic and journalistic thought was updated and affirmed. Internal creative rapprochement with the folk element, which began in the era of the House of the Dead, led her to the writer's formulation in 1871. " law turn to nationality.

The historical merits of the author of "Notes from the House of the Dead" to the national ethnological culture will be infringed if you do not pay focused attention to some other aspects folk life who found their discoverer and first interpreter in Dostoevsky.

The chapters "Performance" and "Convict Animals" are assigned a special ideological and aesthetic status in the "Notes ...". They depict the life and customs of the prisoners in an environment close to the natural, primordial, i.e. unscrupulous folk activity. The essay on the "folk theater" (the term was invented by Dostoevsky and entered the circulation of folklore and theater studies), which formed the core of the illustrious eleventh chapter of Notes from the House of the Dead, is priceless. This is the only one in Russian literature and ethnography that is so complete (“reporting-reporting”) and competent description of the phenomenon. folk theater 19th century - an indispensable and classic source on the history of Russia theatrical.

The drawing of the composition of "Notes from the House of the Dead" is similar to a hard labor chain. Shackles are the heavy, melancholy emblem of the House of the Dead. But the chain arrangement of links-chapters in the book is asymmetrical. The chain, consisting of 21 links, is divided in half just by the middle (unpaired) eleventh chapter. In the main weak-plot architectonics of Notes from the House of the Dead, chapter eleven is out of the ordinary, compositionally, highlighted. Dostoevsky poetically endowed her with an enormous life-affirming power. This is the pre-programmed climax of the story. With all the measure of talent, the writer here pays tribute to the spiritual power and beauty of the people. In a joyful impulse to light and eternal soul Dostoevsky-Goryanchikov, rejoicing, merges with the people's soul (actors and spectators). The principle of human freedom and the inalienable right to it triumphs. Folk art is set as a model, which the highest authorities of Russia can verify: “This is Kamarinskaya in all its scope, and it would be right if Glinka at least accidentally heard it in our prison.”

Behind the guarded palisade, its own, if it is permissible to say so, “dungeon-convict” civilization has developed - a direct reflection in the first place traditional culture Russian peasant. Usually, the chapter on animals is viewed from a stereotypical angle: our smaller brothers share the fate of slaves with the prisoners, figuratively and symbolically supplement, duplicate and shade it. This is undeniably true. The animalistic pages really correspond with the bestial principles in people from the House of the Dead and outside it. But Dostoevsky is alien to the idea of ​​outward resemblance between the human and the animal. Both in the bestiary plots of Notes from the House of the Dead are connected by ties of natural-historical kinship. The narrator does not follow the Christian traditions, which prescribe to see chimerical semblances of the divine or the devil behind the real properties of creatures. He is entirely in the grip of healthy, this-worldly folk-peasant ideas about animals that are close to people every day and about unity with them. The poetry of the chapter "Convict Animals" is in the chaste simplicity of the story about a man from the people, taken in his eternal relationship with animals (horses, dogs, goats and eagles); relations, respectively: loving-household, utilitarian-skuroderskih, amusing-carnival and merciful-respectful. The head-bestiary is involved in a single "passive psychological process” and completes the picture of the tragedy of life in the space of the House of the Dead.

Many books have been written about the Russian prison. From the "Life of Archpriest Avvakum" to the grandiose paintings of A.I. Solzhenitsyn and camp stories by V.T. Shalamova. But the Notes from the House of the Dead remained and will remain comprehensively fundamental in this literary series. They are like an immortal parable or providential mythology, a certain omniscient archetype from Russian literature and history. What could be more unfair than to look for in them during the time of the so-called. "lie of Dostoevism" (Kirpotin)!

A book about Dostoevsky's great, albeit "unexpected" closeness to the people, about a kind, intercessory and infinitely sympathetic attitude towards him - "Notes from the House of the Dead" is primordially imbued with a "Christian human-folk" look ( Grigoriev Ap. BUT. Lit. criticism. P. 503) on an unsettled world. This is the secret of their perfection and charm.

Vladimirtsev V.P. Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. SPb., 2008. S. 70-74.

"Notes from the House of the Dead" is the pinnacle of Dostoevsky's mature non-novel work. The essay novel "Notes from the House of the Dead", based on the life material of which is based on the impressions of the writer's four-year hard labor in Omsk, occupies a special place in the work of Dostoevsky and in Russian literature. mid-nineteenth in.

Being dramatic and woeful in terms of problems and vital material, "Notes from the House of the Dead" is one of the most harmonious, perfect, "Pushkin" works of Dostoevsky. The innovative nature of "Notes from the House of the Dead" was realized in the synthetic and multi-genre form of the essay story, approaching the organization of the whole to the Book (Bible). The way the story is told, the nature of the narration from the inside overcome the tragedy of the eventful outline of the “notes” and leads the reader to the light of the “truly Christian”, according to L.N. Tolstoy, a view of the world, the fate of Russia and the biography of the main narrator, which is indirectly related to the biography of Dostoevsky himself. "Notes from the House of the Dead" is a book about the fate of Russia in the unity of specific historical and metahistorical aspects, about Goryanchikov's spiritual journey, like Dante's wanderer in the Divine Comedy, overcoming the "dead" beginnings of Russian life with the power of creativity and love and gaining a spiritual fatherland ( House). Unfortunately, the acute historical and social relevance of the problems of "Notes from the House of the Dead" obscured its artistic perfection, the innovation of this type of prose, and the moral and philosophical uniqueness of both contemporaries and researchers of the 20th century. Modern literary criticism, despite great amount private empirical works on the problems and understanding of the socio-historical material of the book, takes only the first steps towards the study unique nature artistic integrity of "Notes from the House of the Dead", poetics, innovation author's position and the nature of intertextuality.

This article gives modern interpretation"Notes from the House of the Dead" through the analysis of the narrative, understood as a process of implementation of the author's holistic activity. The author of Notes from the House of the Dead, as a kind of dynamic integrating principle, exercises his position in constant fluctuations between two opposite (and never fully realized) possibilities - to enter the world he created, striving to interact with the characters as if they were living people (this technique is called “getting used to”), and at the same time, to distance himself as much as possible from the work he created, emphasizing the fictitiousness, “composing” of characters and situations (a technique called by M.M. Bakhtin “alienation”).

Historical and literary situation in the early 1860s. with its active diffusion of genres, which gives rise to the need for hybrid, mixed forms, made it possible to implement in the "Notes from the House of the Dead" epic of folk life, which, with some degree of convention, can be called an "essay story". As in any story, the movement of artistic meaning in Notes from the House of the Dead is realized not in the plot, but in the interaction of different narrative planes (the speech of the main narrator, oral convict narrators, the publisher, rumors).

The very name "Notes from the House of the Dead" does not belong to the person who wrote them (Goryanchikov calls his work "Scenes from the House of the Dead"), but to the publisher. The title seemed to meet two voices, two points of view (Goryanchikov and the publisher), even two semantic beginnings (specific chronicle: "Notes from the Dead House" - as an indication of the genre nature - and the symbolic-conceptual oxymoron formula "Dead House" ).

The figurative formula "Dead House" appears as a kind of moment of concentration of the semantic energy of the narrative and at the same time, in the most general form, outlines the intertextual channel in which the author's value activity will unfold (from the symbolic name of the Russian Empire as Necropolis by P. Ya. Chaadaev to allusions to novels by V. F. Odoevsky "Dead Man's Mockery", "Ball", "The Living Dead Man" and more - the topic is dead spiritless reality in the prose of Russian romanticism and, finally, to the internal controversy with the title of Gogol's poem " Dead Souls”), the oxymoronism of such a name is, as it were, repeated by Dostoevsky on a different semantic level.

The bitter paradox of Gogol's title (the immortal soul is declared dead) is contrasted with the internal tension of the opposing principles in the definition of "Dead House": "Dead" due to stagnation, lack of freedom, isolation from the big world, and most of all from the unconscious spontaneity of life, but still "house "- not only as housing, warmth of the hearth, shelter, sphere of existence, but also as a family, clan, community of people ("strange family"), belonging to one national integrity.

Depth and semantic capacity fiction"Notes from the House of the Dead" reveals itself especially clearly in the introduction about Siberia that opens the introduction. Here the result of spiritual communication between the provincial publisher and the author of the notes is given: at the level of plot-event understanding, it would seem, did not take place, however, the structure of the narrative reveals the interaction and gradual penetration of Goryanchikov's worldview into the style of the publisher.

The publisher, he is also the first reader of Notes from the House of the Dead, comprehending life of the dead at home, at the same time looking for a clue to Goryanchikov, moves towards an increasing understanding of him not through the facts and circumstances of life in hard labor, but rather through the process of familiarizing himself with the worldview of the narrator. And the measure of this initiation and understanding is recorded in Chapter VII of Part Two, in the publisher's report on future fate prisoner - an imaginary parricide.

But Goryanchikov himself is looking for a clue to the soul folk way painfully difficult introduction to the unity of people's life. The reality of the House of the Dead is refracted through different types of consciousness: the publisher, A.P. Goryanchikov, Shishkov, telling the story of a ruined girl (chapter "Akulkin's husband"); all these ways of world perception look at each other, interact, are corrected by one another, on the border of them a new universal vision of the world is born.

The introduction provides an outside view of Notes from the House of the Dead; it ends with a description of the publisher's first impression of reading them. It is important that both principles are present in the mind of the publisher, which determine the internal tension of the narration: it is an interest in both the object and the subject of the story.

“Notes from the House of the Dead” is a story of life not in a biographical sense, but rather in an existential sense, it is not a story of survival, but of life in the conditions of the House of the Dead. Two interrelated processes determine the nature of the narrative of "Notes from the House of the Dead": it is the story of the formation and growth of Goryanchikov's living soul, which takes place as he comprehends the living fruitful foundations of folk life, revealed in the life of the House of the Dead. The spiritual self-knowledge of the narrator and his comprehension of the folk element takes place simultaneously. Compositional construction"Notes from the House of the Dead" is mainly determined by the change in the narrator's view - both by the laws of the psychological reflection of reality in his mind, and by the focus of his attention on the phenomena of life.

“Notes from the House of the Dead”, in terms of external and internal type of compositional organization, reproduces the annual circle, the circle of life in hard labor, comprehended as a circle of being. Of the twenty-two chapters of the book, the first and last are open outside the prison, in the introduction it is given Short story Goryanchikov's life after hard labor. The remaining twenty chapters of the book are built not as a simple description of hard labor, but as a skillful translation of the reader's vision, perception from the external to the internal, from the mundane to the invisible, essential. The first chapter implements the final symbolic formula "House of the Dead", the following three chapters are called "First Impressions", which emphasizes the personality of the narrator's holistic experience. Then two chapters are called "The First Month", which continues the chronicle-dynamic inertia of the reader's perception. Further, three chapters contain a multi-component indication of "new acquaintances", unusual situations, and colorful characters of the prison. Two chapters are culminating - X and XI (“The Feast of the Nativity of Christ” and “Performance”), and in chapter X the deceived expectations of convicts about the failed internal holiday are given, and in the chapter “Performance” the law of the need for personal spiritual and creative participation is revealed in order for the real the holiday took place. The second part contains the four most tragic chapters with impressions about the hospital, human suffering, executioners, victims. This part of the book ends with the overheard story "Akulkin's Husband", where the narrator, yesterday's executioner, turned out to be today's victim, but did not see the meaning of what happened to him. The next five final chapters give a picture of spontaneous impulses, delusions, external actions without understanding the inner meaning of the characters from the people. The final tenth chapter, Exit from Hard Labor, marks not just the physical acquisition of freedom, but also gives Goryanchikov's inner transformation with the light of sympathy and understanding of the tragedy of people's life from the inside.

Based on all of the above, the following conclusions can be drawn: the narration in "Notes from the House of the Dead" develops a new type of relationship with the reader, in the essay novel the author's activity is aimed at shaping the reader's worldview and is realized through the interaction of the consciousnesses of the publisher, narrator and oral narrators from the people, inhabitants Dead house. The publisher acts as a reader of Notes from the House of the Dead and is both the subject and the object of a change in worldview.

The word of the narrator, on the one hand, lives in constant correlation with the opinion of everyone, in other words, with the truth of public life; on the other hand, it is actively addressed to the reader, organizing the integrity of his perception.

The dialogical nature of Goryanchikov's interaction with the horizons of other narrators is not aimed at their self-determination, as in the novel, but at revealing their position in relation to common life, therefore, in many cases, the narrator's word interacts with non-personalized voices that help form his way of seeing.

Gaining a truly epic look becomes a form spiritual overcoming disunity in the conditions of the House of the Dead, which the narrator shares with readers; this epic event determines both the dynamics of the narrative and the genre nature of Notes from the House of the Dead as an essay novel.

The dynamics of the storyteller's narrative is entirely determined by the genre nature of the work, subject to the implementation of the aesthetic task of the genre: from a generalized view from afar, "from a bird's eye view" to the development of a specific phenomenon, which is carried out by comparing different points of view and identifying their commonality based on popular perception; Further, these developed measures of the people's consciousness become the property of the reader's inner spiritual experience. Thus, the point of view acquired in the process of familiarization with the elements of folk life acts in the event of the work as both a means and an end.

Thus, the introduction from the publisher gives an orientation to the genre, removes the figure of the main narrator, Goryanchikov, and makes it possible to show him both from the inside and from the outside, as the subject and object of the story at the same time. The movement of the narrative within the "Notes from the House of the Dead" is determined by two interrelated processes: the spiritual development of Goryanchikov and the self-development of folk life, to the extent that this is revealed as the hero-narrator comprehends it.

The internal tension of the interaction of individual and collective worldview is realized in the alternation of the concrete-momentary point of view of the eyewitness narrator and his final point of view, distanced into the future as the time of the creation of "Notes from the House of the Dead", as well as the point of view of common life, which appears then in its concrete -everyday version of mass psychology, then in the essential being of the universal folk whole.

Akelkina E.A. Notes from the House of the Dead // Dostoevsky: Works, letters, documents: Dictionary-reference book. SPb., 2008. S. 74-77.

Lifetime publications (editions):

1860—1861 — Russian world. The newspaper is political, public and literary. Edited by A.S. Hieroglyphic. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky. Year two. 1860. September 1st. No. 67. P. 1-8. Year three. 1861. January 4th. No. 1, pp. 1-14 (I. The Dead House. II. First Impressions). January 11th. No. 3, pp. 49-54 (III. First Impressions). The 25th of January. No. 7, pp. 129-135 (IV. First Impressions).

1861—1862 — . SPb.: Type. E Praza.
1861: April. pp. 1-68. September. pp. 243-272. October. pp. 461-496. November. pp. 325-360.
1862: January. pp. 321-336. February. pp. 565-597. March. pp. 313-351. May. pp. 291-326. December. pp. 235-249.

1862 — Part one. SPb.: Type. E. Pratsa, 1862. 167 p.

1862 — Second edition. SPb.: Ed. A.F. Bazunov. Type of. I. Ogrizko, 1862. Part one. 269 ​​p. Part two. 198 p.

1863 - St. Petersburg: Type. O.I. Bakst, 1863. - S. 108-124.

1864 — For upper middle classes educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Second edition, corrected and enlarged. Volume one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I. Ogrizko, 1864. - S. 686-700.

1864 -: nach dem Tagebuche eines nach Sibirien Verbannten: nach dem Russischen bearbeitet / herausgegeben von Th. M. Dostojewski. Leipzig: Wolfgang Gerhard, 1864. B. I. 251 s. B. II. 191s.

1865 — Revisited and updated by the author himself. Edition and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865. T. I. S. 70-194.

1865 — In two parts. Third edition, revised and updated with a new chapter. Edition and property of F. Stellovsky. SPb.: Type. F. Stellovsky, 1865. 415 p.

1868 — Issue the first [and only]. [B.m.], 1868. - Notes from the House of the Dead. Akulkin husband. pp. 80-92.

1869 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Third edition, significantly revised. Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. F.S. Sushchinsky, 1869. - Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 665-679.

1871 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fourth edition, significantly revised. Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1871. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 655-670.

1875 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Fifth edition, significantly revised. Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1875. — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 611-624.

1875 — Fourth edition. SPb.: Type. br. Panteleev, 1875. Part one. 244 p. Part two. 180 s.

SPb.: Type. br. Panteleev, 1875. Part one. 244 p. Part two. 180 s.

1880 - For the upper classes of secondary educational institutions. Compiled by Andrey Filonov. Sixth edition (printed from the third edition). Part one. epic poetry. SPb.: Type. I.I. Glazunov, 1879 (in the region - 1880). — Notes from the House of the Dead. Performance. pp. 609-623.

Posthumous edition prepared for printing by A.G. Dostoevskaya:

1881 — Fifth edition. SPb.: [Ed. A.G. Dostoevskaya]. Type of. brother. Panteleev, 1881. Part 1. 217 p. Part 2. 160 p.

In the remote regions of Siberia, among the steppes, mountains or impenetrable forests, occasionally come across small towns, with one, many with two thousand inhabitants, wooden, nondescript, with two churches - one in the city, the other in a cemetery - cities that look more like a good suburban village than in the city. They are usually very adequately equipped with police officers, assessors, and all the rest of the subaltern rank. In general, in Siberia, despite the cold, it is extremely warm to serve. People live simple, illiberal; orders are old, strong, consecrated for centuries. Officials who rightly play the role of the Siberian nobility are either natives, hardened Siberians, or strangers from Russia, mostly from the capitals, seduced by the salary that is not set off, double runs and tempting hopes in the future. Of these, those who know how to solve the riddle of life almost always remain in Siberia and take root in it with pleasure. Subsequently, they bear rich and sweet fruits. But others, a frivolous people who do not know how to solve the riddle of life, will soon get bored with Siberia and ask themselves with anguish: why did they come to it? They impatiently serve their legal term of service, three years, and after it has expired, they immediately fuss about their transfer and return home, scolding Siberia and laughing at her. They are wrong: not only from official, but even from many points of view, one can be blessed in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants; many extremely sufficient foreigners. Young ladies bloom with roses and are moral to the last extreme. The game flies through the streets and stumbles upon the hunter itself. Champagne is drunk unnaturally much. Caviar is amazing. Harvest happens in other places fifteen times ... In general, the land is blessed. You just need to know how to use it. In Siberia, they know how to use it.

In one of these cheerful and self-satisfied towns, with the sweetest people, the memory of which will remain indelible in my heart, I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a settler who was born in Russia as a nobleman and landowner, who later became a second-class exile convict for the murder of his wife and, after the expiration of a ten-year term of hard labor determined for him by law, he humbly and inaudibly lived out his life in the town of K. as a settler. He, in fact, was assigned to one suburban volost, but he lived in the city, having the opportunity to get at least some kind of livelihood in it by teaching children. In Siberian cities one often comes across teachers from exiled settlers; they are not shy. They teach primarily French, so necessary in the field of life and about which without them in the remote regions of Siberia they would not even have a clue. For the first time I met Alexander Petrovich in the house of an old, honored and hospitable official, Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, who had five daughters, of different years, who showed great promise. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, thirty silver kopecks a lesson. His appearance intrigued me. He was an extremely pale and thin man, not yet old, about thirty-five, small and frail. He was always dressed very cleanly, in a European way. If you spoke to him, he looked at you extremely intently and attentively, listening with strict politeness to your every word, as if pondering it, as if you had asked him a task with your question or wanted to extort some secret from him, and, finally, he answered clearly and briefly, but weighing every word of his answer to such an extent that you suddenly felt awkward for some reason, and you yourself finally rejoiced at the end of the conversation. I then asked Ivan Ivanovich about him and found out that Goryanchikov lives impeccably and morally, and that otherwise Ivan Ivanovich would not have invited him for his daughters; but that he is terribly unsociable, hiding from everyone, extremely learned, reads a lot, but speaks very little, and that in general it is quite difficult to get into conversation with him. Others claimed that he was positively insane, although they found that, in essence, this was not such an important shortcoming, that many of the honorary members of the city were ready to caress Alexander Petrovich in every possible way, that he could even be useful, write requests and so on. It was believed that he should have decent relatives in Russia, maybe not even last people, but they knew that from the very exile he stubbornly cut off all communication with them - in a word, he harmed himself. In addition, everyone here knew his story, they knew that he had killed his wife in the first year of his marriage, killed him out of jealousy and himself denounced himself (which greatly facilitated his punishment). The same crimes are always looked upon as misfortunes and regretted. But, in spite of all this, the eccentric stubbornly avoided everyone and appeared in public only to give lessons.

At first I did not pay much attention to him, but, I do not know why, he gradually began to interest me. There was something mysterious about him. There was no way to talk to him. Of course, he always answered my questions, and even with an air as if he considered this his first duty; but after his answers I somehow found it hard to question him longer; and on his face, after such conversations, one could always see some kind of suffering and fatigue. I remember walking with him one fine summer evening from Ivan Ivanovich. It suddenly occurred to me to invite him over for a minute to smoke a cigarette. I cannot describe the horror expressed on his face; he was completely lost, began to mutter some incoherent words, and suddenly, looking angrily at me, rushed to run in the opposite direction. I was even surprised. Since then, when meeting with me, he looked at me as if with some kind of fear. But I did not let up; something drew me to him, and a month later, for no apparent reason, I myself went to Goryanchikov. Of course, I acted stupidly and indelicately. He lodged on the very outskirts of the city, with an old bourgeois woman who had a sick, consumptive daughter, and she had an illegitimate daughter, a child of ten years old, a pretty and cheerful girl. Alexander Petrovich was sitting with her and teaching her to read the minute I went in to see him. When he saw me, he became so confused, as if I had caught him in some kind of crime. He was completely at a loss, jumped up from his chair and looked at me with all his eyes. We finally sat down; he closely followed my every glance, as if he suspected some special mysterious meaning in each of them. I guessed that he was suspicious to the point of madness. He looked at me with hatred, almost asking: “Will you leave here soon?” I talked to him about our town, current news; he remained silent and smiled maliciously; it turned out that he not only did not know the most ordinary, well-known city news, but was not even interested in knowing them. Then I started talking about our region, about its needs; he listened to me in silence and looked into my eyes so strangely that I finally felt ashamed of our conversation. However, I almost teased him with new books and magazines; I had them in my hands, fresh from the post office, and I offered them uncut to him. He gave them a greedy look, but immediately changed his mind and declined the offer, responding with lack of time. Finally I said goodbye to him and, leaving him, I felt that some unbearable weight had been lifted from my heart. I was ashamed and it seemed extremely stupid to pester a person who, precisely, sets his main task - to hide as far as possible from the whole world. But the deed was done. I remember that I hardly noticed his books at all, and, therefore, it was unfairly said about him that he reads a lot. However, driving twice, very late at night, past his windows, I noticed a light in them. What did he do, sitting up until dawn? Did he write? And if so, what exactly?

Circumstances removed me from our town for three months. Returning home already in the winter, I learned that Alexander Petrovich died in the autumn, died in seclusion and never even called a doctor to him. The town has almost forgotten about him. His apartment was empty. I immediately made the acquaintance of the mistress of the dead man, intending to find out from her; What was her lodger particularly busy with, and did he write anything? For two kopecks, she brought me a whole basket of papers left over from the deceased. The old woman confessed that she had already used up two notebooks. She was a gloomy and silent woman, from whom it was difficult to get anything worthwhile. She had nothing new to tell me about her tenant. According to her, he almost never did anything and for months did not open a book and did not take a pen in his hands; but whole nights he paced up and down the room and kept thinking something, and sometimes talking to himself; that he was very fond of and very fond of her granddaughter, Katya, especially since he found out that her name was Katya, and that on Catherine's day every time he went to someone to serve a memorial service. Guests could not stand; he went out from the yard only to teach children; he even looked askance at her, the old woman, when she, once a week, came at least a little to tidy up his room, and almost never said a single word to her for three whole years. I asked Katya: does she remember her teacher? She looked at me silently, turned to the wall and began to cry. So, this man could at least make someone love him.

Notes from the House of the Dead Fedor Dostoevsky

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Title: Notes from the House of the Dead

About the book "Notes from the Dead House" Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Notes from the House of the Dead" Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky wrote shortly after he returned from hard labor. Being arrested on the political case of the Petrashevites, he spent four years in hard labor in Omsk. So practically all the events take place in the hard labor barracks in the prison, one of the many hundreds in Russia, where thousands and thousands of prisoners were sent.

Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov is a nobleman who was exiled to prison for the murder of his wife, in which he himself confessed. In hard labor, the hero is under double oppression. On the one hand, he never found himself in conditions similar to hard labor. Bondage seems to him the most terrible punishment. On the other hand, the other prisoners dislike him and despise him for being unprepared. After all, Alexander Petrovich is a gentleman, although a former one, and before he could command simple peasants.

"Notes from the House of the Dead" does not contain a coherent plot, although they have a main character - Alexander Goryanchikov (although there is no doubt whose thoughts, words and feelings he relays). All events of the novel are told in chronological order and reflect how slowly and painfully the hero adapted to hard labor. The story consists of small sketches, the heroes of which are people from the environment of Alexander Goryanchikov, he himself and the guards, or they look like false stories heard by the heroes.

In them, Fyodor Dostoevsky tried to record what he experienced during his own stay in hard labor, so the work is more of a documentary character. In the chapters there are personal impressions of the author, retelling of the stories of other convicts, experiences, discussions about religion, honor, life and death.

The main place in the "Notes from the House of the Dead" is given to a detailed description of the life and unspoken code of conduct of convicts. Auto tells about their relationship to each other, about hard work and almost army discipline, faith in God, the fate of prisoners and the crimes for which they were convicted. Fyodor Dostoevsky talks about the daily life of convicts, about entertainment, dreams, relationships, punishments and small joys. In this story, the author managed to collect the entire spectrum of human morality: from an informer and a traitor, able to slander for money, to a kind-hearted widow who disinterestedly takes care of prisoners. The author tells about the national composition and different classes (nobles, peasants, soldiers) of people who fell into inhuman conditions. Almost all the stories from their lives (and some of them can be traced to the end) are reverently conveyed by the author. Dostoevsky also mentions what happens to these people when their penal servitude (and this is a whole life of years) ends.

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Quotes from the book Notes from the House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The highest and sharpest characteristic feature of our people is a sense of justice and a thirst for it.

Money is minted freedom, and therefore for a person completely deprived of freedom, it is ten times more expensive.

In a word, the right of corporal punishment, given to one over another, is one of the sores of society, one of the most powerful means for destroying every germ in it, every attempt at citizenship, and a complete foundation for its inevitable and irresistible decay.

Tyranny is a habit; it is endowed with development, it develops, finally, into a disease.

But all his charm was gone, he had just taken off his uniform. In his uniform he was a thunderstorm, a god. In a frock coat he suddenly became completely nothing and looked like a footman. It's amazing how much the uniform of these people is.

Impression of the realities of a prison or hard labor- a fairly common theme in Russian literature, both in poetry and in prose. Literary masterpieces, in which pictures of the life of prisoners are embodied, belong to the pen of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Anton Chekhov and other great Russian writers. One of the first to open to the reader the paintings of another, unknown ordinary people the world of the prison, with its laws and rules, specific speech, and its social hierarchy, the master of psychological realism, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, dared to.

Although the work belongs to the early work of the great writer, when he was still honing his prose skills, attempts at a psychological analysis of the state of a person who is in critical conditions of life are already felt in the story. Dostoevsky not only recreates the realities of prison reality, the author, using the method of analytical reflection, explores the impressions of people from being in prison, their physical and psychological state, the influence of hard labor on the individual assessment and self-control of the characters.

Analysis of the work

Interesting genre. In academic criticism, the genre is defined as a story in two parts. However, the author himself called it notes, that is, a genre close to memoir-epistolary. The author's memoirs are not reflections on his fate or events from own life. "Notes from the House of the Dead" is a documentary re-creation of prison reality pictures, which were the result of comprehension of what he saw and heard over the four years spent by F.M. Dostoevsky in hard labor in Omsk.

Story style

Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead is a story within a story. The introduction speaks on behalf of the nameless author, who tells about a certain person - the nobleman Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov.

From the words of the author, the reader becomes aware that Goryanchikov, a man of 35 years old, lives out his life in the small Siberian town of K. For the murder of his wife, Alexander was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor, after which he lives in a settlement in Siberia.

Once the narrator, passing by Alexander's house, saw the light and realized that the former prisoner was writing something. Somewhat later, the narrator found out about his death, and the landlady gave him the papers of the deceased, among which was a notebook with a description of prison memories. Goryanchikov called his creation "Scenes from the House of the Dead". Further elements of the composition of the work are 10 chapters, revealing the realities of camp life, the narration in which is conducted on behalf of Alexander Petrovich.

The system of characters in the work is quite diverse. However, it cannot be called a “system” in the true sense of the term. Characters appear and disappear outside plot structure and logic of the story. The heroes of the work are all those who surround the prisoner Goryanchikov: neighbors in the barracks, other prisoners, employees of the infirmary, guards, military men, residents of the city. Little by little, the narrator introduces the reader to some of the prisoners or camp staff, casually talking about them. There is evidence of the real existence of some characters whose names were somewhat changed by Dostoevsky.

The main character of the documentary work is Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, on whose behalf the narration is being conducted. Through his eyes the reader sees pictures of camp life. Through the prism of his relationship, the characters of the surrounding convicts are perceived, and at the end of his term of imprisonment, the story ends. From the story we learn more about others than about Alexander Petrovich. After all, what does the reader really know about him? Goryanchikov was convicted of killing his wife out of jealousy and sentenced to hard labor for 10 years. At the beginning of the story, the hero is 35 years old. Three months later, he dies. Dostoevsky does not focus maximum attention on the image of Alexander Petrovich, since there are two deeper and more important images in the story that can hardly be called heroes.

At the heart of the work is the image of a Russian camp for convicts. The author describes in detail the life and outskirts of the camp, its charter and routine of life in it. The narrator reflects on how and why people end up there. Someone deliberately commits a crime in order to escape from worldly life. Many of the prisoners are real criminals: thieves, swindlers, murderers. And someone commits a crime, protecting their dignity or the honor of their loved ones, for example, daughters or sisters. There are among the prisoners and objectionable modern author power elements, that is, political prisoners. Alexander Petrovich does not understand how they can be united all of them together and punished almost equally.

Dostoevsky gives a name to the image of the camp through the mouth of Goryanchikov - the House of the Dead. This allegorical image reveals the author's attitude to one of the main images. A dead house is a place where people do not live, but exist in anticipation of life. Somewhere deep in the soul, hiding from the ridicule of other prisoners, they cherish the hope of a free full life. And some don't even have it.

The main work, no doubt, is the Russian people, in all its diversity. The author shows the various layers of Russian people by nationality, as well as Poles, Ukrainians, Tatars, Chechens, who were united by one fate in the House of the Dead.

The main idea of ​​the story

Places of deprivation of liberty, especially on domestic soil, are a special world, closed and unknown to other people. Living an ordinary worldly life, few people think about what this place is like for keeping criminals, whose imprisonment is accompanied by inhuman physical exertion. Perhaps only those who have visited the House of the Dead have an idea about this place. Dostoevsky from 1954 to 1954 was in prison. The writer set himself the goal of showing all the features of the House of the Dead through the eyes of a prisoner, which became the main idea of ​​the documentary story.

At first, Dostoevsky was horrified by the thought of which contingent he was among. But his penchant for psychological analysis of personality led him to observe people, their state, reactions, and actions. In his first letter on leaving the prison, Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote to his brother that he had not wasted four years spent among real criminals and innocently convicted people. Even if he did not recognize Russia, he knew the Russian people well. As well as he, perhaps, no one recognized. Another idea of ​​the work is to reflect the state of the prisoner.

History of creation

The story is documentary in nature and introduces the reader to the life of imprisoned criminals in Siberia in the second half of the 19th century. The writer artistically comprehended everything he saw and experienced during the four years of hard labor (from to), being exiled there in the case of the Petrashevites. The work was created from one year to the next, the first chapters were published in the Vremya magazine.

Plot

The presentation is conducted on behalf of the protagonist, Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a nobleman who ended up in hard labor for a period of 10 years for the murder of his wife. Having killed his wife out of jealousy, Alexander Petrovich himself confessed to the murder, and after serving hard labor, cut off all ties with relatives and remained in a settlement in the Siberian city of K., leading a secluded life and earning a living by tutoring. One of his few entertainments is reading and literary sketches about penal servitude. Actually, "alive by the House of the Dead", which gave the name of the story, the author calls the jail, where the convicts are serving their sentences, and his notes - "Scenes from the House of the Dead".

Characters

• Goryanchikov Alexander Petrovich - the main character of the story, on whose behalf the story is being told.
• Akim Akimych - one of the four former nobles, comrade Goryanchikov, senior prisoner in the barracks. Sentenced to 12 years for the execution of a Caucasian prince who set fire to his fortress. An extremely pedantic and stupidly well-behaved person.
• Gazin is a convict kisser, a wine merchant, a Tatar, the strongest convict in prison.
• Sirotkin is a former recruit, aged 23, who went to hard labor for the murder of a commander.
• Dutov is a former soldier who rushed at the guard officer in order to delay the punishment (driving through the ranks) and received an even longer sentence.
• Orlov is a killer with strong will, completely fearless before punishments and trials.
• Nurra is a highlander, Lezgin, cheerful, intolerant of theft, drunkenness, devout, a favorite of convicts.
• Aley is a Dagestanian, 22 years old, who ended up in hard labor with his older brothers for attacking an Armenian merchant. A neighbor on the bunks of Goryanchikov, who became close friends with him and taught Alei to read and write in Russian.
• Isai Fomich is a Jew who went to hard labor for murder. Moneylender and jeweler. Was in friendly relations with Goryanchikov.
• Osip - a smuggler who elevated smuggling to the rank of art, carried wine in prison. He was terribly afraid of punishments and many times refused to engage in carrying, but he still broke down. Most of the time he worked as a cook, preparing separate (not state-owned) food for the money of the prisoners (including Goryanchikov).
• Sushilov is a prisoner who changed his name at the stage with another prisoner: for a ruble, silver and a red shirt, he changed the settlement to eternal hard labor. Served Goryanchikov.
• A-v - one of the four nobles. He received 10 years of hard labor for a false denunciation, on which he wanted to earn money. Hard labor did not lead him to repentance, but corrupted him, turning him into an informer and a scoundrel. The author uses this character to portray the full moral decline person. One of the escapees.
• Nastasya Ivanovna is a widow who disinterestedly takes care of the convicts.
• Petrov, a former soldier, ended up in hard labor, having stabbed a colonel during an exercise, because he unfairly hit him. Characterized as the most determined convict. He sympathized with Goryanchikov, but treated him as a dependent person, a curiosity of the prison.
• Baklushin - went to hard labor for the murder of a German who wooed his bride. The organizer of the theater in prison.
• Luchka, a Ukrainian, went to hard labor for the murder of six people, and in conclusion he killed the head of the prison.
• Ustyantsev - a former soldier, in order to avoid punishment, drank wine infused with tea to induce consumption, from which he later died.
• Mikhailov is a convict who died in a military hospital from consumption.
• Zherebyatnikov is a lieutenant, an executioner with sadistic inclinations.
• Smekalov is a lieutenant, an executioner who was popular among convicts.
• Shishkov is a prisoner who went to hard labor for the murder of his wife (the story "Akulkin's husband").
• Kulikov is a gypsy, a horse thief, a cautious veterinarian. One of the escapees.
• Elkin is a Siberian who ended up in hard labor for counterfeiting. A cautious veterinarian who quickly took Kulikov's practice away from him.
• The story features an unnamed fourth nobleman, a frivolous, eccentric, unreasonable and not cruel person, falsely accused of killing his father, acquitted and released from hard labor only ten years later. The prototype of Dmitry from the novel The Brothers Karamazov.

Part one

• I. Dead house
• II. First Impressions
• III. First Impressions
• IV. First Impressions
• V. First month
• VI. First month
• VII. New acquaintances. Petrov
• VIII. Decisive people. Luchka
• IX. Isai Fomich. Bath. Baklushin's story
• X. Feast of the Nativity of Christ
• XI. Performance

Part two

• I. Hospital
• II. Continuation
• III. Continuation
• IV. Akulkin husband. Story
• V. Summer couple
• VI. convict animals
• VII. Claim
• VIII. Comrades
• IX. The escape
• X. Exit from hard labor

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See what "Notes from the Dead House" is in other dictionaries:

- "NOTES FROM A DEAD HOUSE", Russia, REN TV, 1997, color, 36 min. Documentary. The film is a confession about the inhabitants of the island of Fire, near Vologda. Pardoned murderers of one hundred and fifty "suicide bombers", for whom the death penalty is the Decree of the President ... ... Cinema Encyclopedia

Notes from the House of the Dead ... Wikipedia

Writer, born October 30, 1821 in Moscow, died January 29, 1881, in St. Petersburg. His father, Mikhail Andreevich, married to the daughter of a merchant, Marya Fedorovna Nechaeva, served as the headquarters of the doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. Employed in the hospital and… … Big biographical encyclopedia

Renowned novelist, b. Oct 30 1821 in Moscow, in the building of the Maryinsky hospital, where his father served as a staff doctor. Mother, nee Nechaeva, came from the Moscow merchants (from a family, apparently, intelligent). D.'s family was… …

The history of Russian literature for the convenience of reviewing the main phenomena of its development can be divided into three periods: I from the first monuments to the Tatar yoke; II to the end of the XVII century; III to our time. In reality, these periods are not sharply ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary F. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron