The story is a small literary form; a narrative work of small volume with a small number of characters and the short duration of the events depicted. Or according to the "Literary Encyclopedic Dictionary" by V.M. Kozhevnikov and P.A. Nikolaeva: “A small epic genre form of fiction is a small prose work in terms of the volume of the depicted phenomena of life, and hence in terms of the volume of the text. Belinsky already distinguished the story and essay as small genres of prose from the novel and story as larger ones.In the second half of the 19th century, when essay works were widely developed in Russian democratic literature, it was believed that this genre is always documentary, while stories are created on the basis of creative imagination. According to another opinion, the story differs from the essay in the conflict of the plot, while the essay is a work mainly descriptive.

There is another kind of small prose work - a short story. Unlike the short story, a genre of new literature at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, which brought to the fore the figurative and verbal texture of the narrative and gravitated toward detailed characteristics, the short story is the art of plot in its purest form, which developed in ancient times in close connection with the ritual magic and myths, addressed primarily to the active, and not the contemplative side of human existence. The novelistic plot, built on sharp antitheses and metamorphoses, on the sudden transformation of one situation into another, directly opposite to it, is common in many folklore genres (fairy tale, fable, medieval anecdote, fablio, schwank).

The short story genre originated in America. Poe and Hawthorne were especially famous in this form, who had to intervene their talents in the "Procrustean bed" of a newspaper story. But the result turned out to be successful: the short story genre gained unprecedented depth and became a national American genre.

1. The emergence and main distinguishing features of the short story as one of the prosaic genres of literature.

The problem of literary genres traditionally attracts the attention of researchers and is actively developed in literary criticism and linguistics. Being not only a form of being of literature, but also a form of being of language, the genre focuses in itself all the most important aspects of works of art: the nature of the reference in the text, the ambivalence of semantics, the plurality of interpretations of the word, absolute anthropocentrism.

The variety of life relations brings to life the variety of life forms in which we find different ways of depicting human characters in the most typical manifestations for them. One of these forms is the story.

Novella (Italian novella - news) is a narrative prose genre, which is characterized by brevity, a sharp plot, a neutral style of presentation, a lack of psychologism, and an unexpected denouement. Sometimes it is used as a synonym for a story, sometimes it is called a kind of story.

The short story is characterized by several important features: extreme brevity, a sharp, even paradoxical plot, a neutral style of presentation, a lack of psychologism and descriptiveness, and an unexpected denouement. The plot structure of the novel is similar to the dramatic one, but usually simpler.

Goethe spoke about the action-packed nature of the novel, giving it the following definition: "an unheard-of event that has taken place."

The story emphasizes the meaning of the denouement, which contains an unexpected turn (pointe, "falcon turn"). According to the French researcher, "ultimately, one can even say that the whole short story is conceived as a denouement."

Among the predecessors of Boccaccio, the short story had a moralizing attitude. Boccaccio retained this motif, but his morality followed from the short story not logically, but psychologically, and often was only a pretext and a device. The later short story convinces the reader of the relativity of moral criteria.

Often the short story is identified with the story and even the story. In the 19th century, these genres were difficult to distinguish: for example, A. S. Pushkin's Belkin's Tale is, rather, five short stories.

The story is similar to the short story in volume, but differs in structure: the emphasis on the figurative and verbal texture of the narrative and the inclination towards detailed psychological characteristics.

The story is distinguished by the fact that in it the plot focuses not on one central event, but on a whole series of events covering a significant part of the hero's life, and often several heroes. The story is more calm and unhurried.

When studying short stories, the idea of ​​M.M. Bakhtin about the unconditional communicative determinism of the speech genre and the dependence of the language structure and compositional construction on the genre specificity of the work. A similar perspective of the study suggests, when studying the genre from the standpoint of linguistic stylistics, the integration of data on the specific features of the story.

The study of genres is one of the most complex and insufficiently developed issues both in literary criticism and linguistic stylistics. The very term "genre" is polysemantic. They denote both the literary genre (epos, lyrics, drama), and the type of work of art (novel, story, short story), and genre form (for example, a science fiction story). Therefore, they talk about the genre of the story, and the genre of science fiction, and the genre of the science fiction story.

In literary criticism, "genre" is defined as "the unity of the compositional structure, repeated in many works throughout the history of the development of literature, due to the originality of the reflected phenomena of reality and the nature of the artist's attitude towards it." From the point of view of linguistics, a genre is a certain selection and combinatorics of linguistic means.

Genre is not a permanent system. It is updated, modified along with the era, reflecting its contemporary picture of the world in the language of a certain era. The works that form the genre differ significantly in form in the works of writers belonging to different literary movements and historical eras. At the same time, the genre does not lose the certainty and stability of the main structural features. The process of the birth of genres "never stops. A genre arises ... and subsides, turning into the rudiments of other systems." Traditional genres can mix, forming new ones. Modern genre theory does not limit their number.

The final design of the story as an independent genre in English-language prose falls on the 19th-20th centuries. By this time, the story takes on its characteristic outlines, the first works on the theory of the small genre appear (E. Poe in the USA, B. Matthews in England), in which researchers try to determine the properties inherent in the works of the "short story" genre.

The signs of the story reveal themselves in different genre forms in many different ways. The plot of a story can be driven by the power of individual psychological impulses, social contradictions, juxtaposition and opposition of pictures of the future, the present, and so on. Hence the variety of varieties of the story: psychological, social, sci-fi, etc. Despite the diversity of topics and issues that led to the existence of varieties of the story, some characteristic features of the story as a genre can be distinguished.

The story is characterized by the metonymic principle of reality coverage, according to which the artistic picture of the world, modeled in the story, is presented as a key fragment of the big world. Therefore, they say about the fragmentation of the story.

The metonymic principle of reflecting reality determines:

- single-event, single-problem story. The story usually explores the situation in which the hero shows himself most prominently (the boundary situation);

- small volume;

- a limited number of characters;

- integrity: the narration in the story is, as it were, pulled together to one node;

- conciseness, dynamism and tension. There is no redundant information. All elements of the text are informationally significant. A large artistic load is carried by a detail that allows you to create an image with a few strokes.

A story, like any other type of text, has its own temporal system that most adequately satisfies the structural, compositional and stylistic features of texts of this type. The continuum of the text of the story is generally characterized by the continuity of the sequence of events. Varieties of the story have their spatio-temporal parameters. Thus, the spatio-temporal parameters of a science fiction story are defined as "alien" time and "alien" space. The chronotope of a psychological and social story is "ordinary" time and "ordinary" space:

- a certain one-dimensionality of the speech style of the story is noted (a property due to its one-problem nature). It may have elements of typification, a stamp (for example, plot construction, characterization in a science fiction story);

- a single aspect of the epic vision, the predominance of one point of view on the events set forth in the story (monomodality);

- some researchers consider the "cinematic" visual techniques to be one of the properties of the story.

This property is reflected in the changeability of compositional-speech forms (CRF), in the ability to consider this phenomenon from different positions (spatial, temporal), to establish cause-and-effect relationships.

Throughout the period of research on the short story, attempts have been repeatedly made to formulate a definition of the story that would reflect the immanent properties of this genre. However, one cannot but agree with R. West's opinion that "the final definition of a short story will hardly ever be found .... to define a short story means to impose restrictions on it that would destroy its attractiveness in many ways."

2. The development of the short story genre in American literature. Innovation and tradition...

Short story, original American translation. short story, however, in Europe, due to the predominance of the short story, a special genre, a short epic prose intermediate form between the short story, essay and anecdote, characterized by a purposeful, linear, concise and conscious composition aimed at an inevitable resolution (calculated from the end), aiming to shock or bringing ruin to life, or opening a way out. Condensation of an event rounded in itself at one decisive moment with an unforeseen pointe in a narrow space; outcomes of human life, esp. some an outsider animated by the moment; realistic. transmission of facts, provoking knowledge; turn into the surreal or into the impressionistic. the image of the mood form the scale of its possibilities, which must be comprehended in constant expansion.

Like all American literature, the short story is a relatively young genre: its origin dates back to the beginning of the 19th century. Bret Harte called the short story America's "national" genre. For American literature, this genre is special: it was born in the form of a story.

The origins of the American story are in the European romantic novel of the 18th-19th centuries, the oral story (tall-tale) of American trappers, Negro folklore, and Indian legends. Some researchers note the influence of the enlightenment essay and essay of the 18th century. to form the genre of the story. The spread of magazines in the country contributed to the strengthening of the genre of the story. All of the above factors, against the background of national living conditions, the peculiarities of the historical and cultural development of the United States, determined the specifics of the American national story, which B. Garth saw in the presence of a sharp plot, humorous coloring, an unexpected ending, corresponding to the character and temperament of the American, and V.L. Parrington - in an effort to get rid of everything superfluous and love for technology brought to perfection.

W. Irving, E. Poe, N. Hawthorne, G. Melville stood at the origins of the national school in America. The traditions of the story were continued in the works of B. Garth, M. Twain, O'Henry, J. London, who laid the foundation for the "fable" story (on which basis the action genres were formed: detective story, science fiction).

The problem of the articulation of the text and the allocation of units that make it up attracts the attention of many researchers.

As you know, according to the context-variable division in the author's speech, forms are distinguished that are traditionally called compositional speech - narration, description, reasoning. With this type of segmentation, the image of a fragment of artistic reality is carried out in a subjective-authorial refraction: the author describes phenomena from temporal or spatial positions or establishes causal relationships between them. Thus, each compositional-speech form is based on a certain way of knowing reality: following in time (narration), direct observation (description), establishing cause-and-effect relationships (reasoning).

As you know, according to the context-variable division in the author's speech, forms are distinguished that are traditionally called compositional speech - narration, description, reasoning. With this type of segmentation, the image of a fragment of artistic reality is carried out in a subjective - author's refraction: the author describes phenomena from temporal or spatial positions or establishes causal relationships between them. Thus, each compositional-speech form is based on a certain way of knowing reality: following in time (narration), direct observation (description), establishing cause-and-effect relationships (reasoning).

Each of the compositional-speech forms is different and has its own set of language tools. A sign of dynamism is the content of the narrative form of speech, static character is characteristic of the description, reasoning conveys information of an abstract, panchronic nature. Compositional-speech forms presuppose organization and a certain closure of the structure, however, they are rarely found in a "pure" form. When creating a speech work, CRFs undergo all sorts of changes depending on the content of the work, the speech genre, and the author's individual stylistic manner. The composition of the work presents a wide variety of forms in the form of concentrated and dispersed structures (classical, derivative, free and mixed) in a wide variety of combinations.

Differences in the formation of the CRF in the story can affect both the set and the nature of the CRF (their scope, boundaries, structure).

The works of classical prose are characterized by a clear opposition of types of narration, the alternation of the plans of the narrator and the character, dynamic segments and static segments, suspending the course of the narration.

In the stories of writers of the first half of the XIX century. the author's speech dominates, static units predominate: description in its varieties (landscape, portrait, characterization), author's digressions in the form of reasoning, which leads to the length and slowness of the narrative. Personal and improperly direct speech are represented by occasional inclusions. Short prose works in US literature 20-30 years. XIX century, for the most part, was characterized by "a monstrously prolonged exposition, sketchy descriptiveness, poor study of characters, plot sluggishness, openness of structure"

Themes and problems of Edgar PO's stories and O. Henry's short story "Gifts of the Magi".

The social orientation of the novels.

O. Henry is not the first original master of the "short story", he only developed this genre, in its main features already established in the work of T. B. Aldrich (Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 1836-1907). The originality of O. Henry was manifested in the brilliant use of jargon, sharp words and expressions, and in the general colorfulness of the dialogues.

Already during the life of the writer, the "short story" in his style began to degenerate into a scheme, and by the 1920s it turned into a purely commercial phenomenon: the "method" of its production was taught in colleges and universities, numerous manuals were published, etc.

All the work of O. Henry is imbued with attention to the inconspicuous "little" people, whose troubles and joys he so vividly and vividly portrayed in his works. He wants to draw attention to those genuine human values ​​that can always serve as support and comfort in the most difficult life situations. And then something amazing happens: the most seemingly deplorable endings of his short stories begin to be perceived as happy or, in any case, optimistic.

In The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, a husband sells a watch to buy his young wife a set of hair combs. However, she will not be able to use the gift because she sold her hair in order to buy her husband a watch chain in turn. But the gift, alas, will not be useful to him either, since he no longer has a watch. Sad and ridiculous story. And yet, when O. Henry says in the finale that "of all the donors, these two were the wisest", we cannot but agree with him, for the true wisdom of the heroes, according to the author, is not in the "gifts of the Magi", but in their love and selfless devotion to each other.

The joy and warmth of human communication in the full range of its manifestations - love and participation, self-denial, true, disinterested friendship - these are the life guidelines that, according to O. Henry and Chekhov, can brighten up human existence and make it meaningful and happy.

The social nature of O. Henry is primarily manifested in his demonstrative and emphasized democracy. The writer seeks to draw the attention of the privileged part of society to people deprived of benefits in this society. And so he often makes the heroes of his short stories those who, in modern terms, are "near the poverty line."

Another prominent American short story writer is Edgar Allan Poe.

Numerous experiments undertaken by Edgar Allan Poe in the field of the short story led him over time to attempt to create a theory of the genre.

The theory of the Poe novel can best be represented as the sum of the requirements that every writer working in this genre must reckon with. The first of these concerns the volume or length of the work. A novella, Poe argues, should be short. A long story is no longer a story. However, in striving for brevity, the writer must observe a certain measure. A work that is too short is incapable of making a deep and strong impression, for, in his words, "without some stretch, without repetition of the main idea, the soul is rarely touched." The measure of the length of a work is determined by the ability to read it all at once, in its entirety, so to speak, "in one sitting."

It should be noted that in many discussions about the art of prose, Poe does not use literary terminology, but rather architectural and construction. He will never say: "the writer wrote the story," but certainly - "the writer built the story." An architectural structure, a building, are the most organic metaphors for Poe when it comes to a story.

Poe's understanding of the plot and its function is unconventional and has a certain breadth. He repeatedly insisted that the plot cannot be reduced to plot or intrigue. If we put together all Poe's thoughts on the plot, we can conclude that the writer understood the plot as the general formal structure of the work, the chain of actions, events, characters, objects. The plot, as he interprets, rests on the principles of necessity and interdependence. There should not be anything superfluous in it, and all its elements should be interconnected. The plot is like a building in which the removal of one brick can cause a collapse. the indestructible expediency of all elements of the plot is achieved by complete subordination to its general plan. Each episode, each event, each word in the story should serve to implement the plan and achieve a single effect.

It should be emphasized that Poe assigned such an important role to the plot only in the story. He admitted the possibility of the existence of a "plotless" novel or poem. But he perceived the expression "plotless story" as a contradiction in terms.

In The Gold Bug, Poe takes the reader to Sullivan Island near Charleston, where his hero Legrand leads a mysterious and secluded life. In this short story, murder, kidnapping, and similar crimes give way to the specific theme of treasure hunting, which will later spread throughout American literature, also appearing in the works of such masters as Twain and Faulkner.

As a result of a combination of accidents and coincidences, a secret paper about the buried treasures of the famous pirate falls into Legrand's hands. Next comes the technical question of deciphering the cryptogram, which Legrand carries out with convincing clarity.

The author dwells in detail on the details of real American reality, which help him create the impression of the authenticity of the events taking place. So, at the beginning of the story, the writer, describing his hero, says that "he was previously rich, but the failures that followed one after another brought him to poverty." Therefore, "to avoid the humiliation associated with the loss of wealth, he left New Orleans, the city of his ancestors, and settled on ... an island." In this description, the author reveals a typically American outlook on life. A person who has lost his capital suffers humiliation in American society, they treat him with contempt, not even considering him a person. The writer seems to emphasize that the master of American society is the dollar, which has taken possession of the minds and souls of his compatriots. Perhaps that is why the obsession with returning the lost wealth completely absorbs Legrand.

The symbol of the desire to get rich again is in the story the golden bug, which Legrand finds under very mysterious circumstances. Both Legrand and his negro servant constantly say that this beetle is made of pure gold. Although, the description of the beetle shows, it is just a rather rare specimen of the exotic fauna of those places where the hero of the story lives. Jupiter, Legrand's servant, says that the golden bug bit his master, which made him very ill. In these words of the writer, which he puts into the mouth of a Negro, there is a hint of American reality. The citizens of America are all striving by hook or by crook to find the golden beetle, and when they find it, this beetle bites so hard that most of them fall ill with a terrible disease that wears a person like a worm from the inside, aiming him on the path of hoarding and profit. This is probably why the Negro servant does not want to pick up the golden bug, fearing to catch this disease, which in the future can lead him to hardening of the soul. In the meantime, Jup manages not to become infected with a passion for wealth and remain a man who serves his master not for money, but at the behest of his heart (although he is a freed slave).

Legrand's meeting with the beetle reminded him of his lost wealth, and the beetle itself seemed to him a god who would help him get rich again: "This beetle will bring me happiness<…>he will give me back my lost wealth. Is it any wonder that I appreciate him so much? He is sent down by fate itself and will return wealth to me, if only I correctly understand his instructions.

In the burning desire of the hero to find the buried wealth there is also a purely American "invincible premonition of great luck." It does not deceive the hero, and after a series of fascinating episodes, he, together with his companion, who acts as a narrator, compiles a complete list of the found jewelry and calculates their value. “That night we valued the contents of our chest at one and a half million dollars. Later, when we sold precious stones and gold items<…>it turned out that our assessment of the treasure was too modest."

Thus, as you can see, the story ends on an optimistic note, in the spirit of the values ​​of American society. The hero did not just seek to get rich - he managed to do it.

Author-narrator in the narrative structure

In the ideological clashes of characters, if not the bearer of truth, then more than others approaching it, is always not the one whose logic is stricter and the idea is more convincingly justified, but the one whose purely human qualities arouse the author's great sympathy. And O. Henry is full of participation and sympathy for those of his heroes who most of all need help and protection.

Events in the works of Chekhov and O. Henry are not prepared either compositionally or by other stylistic means; they are not distinguished. There is no sign on the reader's path: "Attention: event"!

In the "House with a mezzanine" there is an unexpected and fleeting first meeting of the artist with the Volchaninov sisters: "Once, returning home, I accidentally wandered into some unfamiliar estate<…>at the white stone gates that led from the courtyard into the field, at the old fortress gates with lions, stood two girls. "But the next meeting, which served as the beginning of all further events, was prepared in the narrative no more carefully: one of the holidays, we remembered the Volchaninovs and went to see them in Shelkovka. "Meetings, the beginnings of all events occur as if unintentionally, by themselves," somehow "; the decisive episodes are fundamentally not significant.

To his touching story about the life of the poor ("Gifts of the Magi"), O. Henry gives the character of a literary riddle, and the reader does not know what the outcome of events will be.

The writer enriched the art of creating an unexpected denouement with the introduction of "two denouements - a pre-denouement and a true denouement, which complements, explains or, conversely, completely refutes the first one." And if the first can still be guessed in the course of reading, then the second is not able to foresee the most insightful writer. And this betrays the short stories of O. Henry a truly irresistible charm. This naturalness of presentation was picked up by the writer of another literary era - I. A. Bunin: "The goal of the artist is not to justify any task, but to provide an in-depth and essential reflection of life.<…>The artist must proceed not from the depths of external life data, but from the soil of life, listening not to the noise of party positions and disputes, but to the inner voices of living life, speaking of the layers and layers in it, created against all desires, according to the immutable laws of life itself. Needless to say, intuitive artistic comprehension is more expensive and valuable than all the solemn broadcasts prompted by the journalism of one camp or another!"

More than any other of his contemporaries, Poe cared about the reader's trust in the author. Therefore, the principle of the reliability of the narrative, or, as he said, "the powerful magic of likelihood", is one of the cornerstones of the theory of the story. The peculiarity of Poe's view lies in the fact that he demanded the extension of this principle to the image of obviously improbable, fantastic events and phenomena. The author had to win the absolute trust of the reader, to convince him of the reality of the fantastic and the possibility of the incredible. Without this, according to Poe, an artistically convincing realization of the original idea is impossible.

Most readers and many critics very often identified the narrator of short stories, including the short stories "Golden Beetle", with the author himself, putting an equal sign between him and his character. Their delusion is easy to understand. The narrator in logical stories is an almost abstract figure. He has no name, no biography, and even his appearance is not described. True, the reader can conclude something about his inclinations, interests, way of life, but this information is scarce, they come across by chance, by the way, since he is not talking about himself, but about his hero. The little that we know about him - broad education, love of scientific pursuits, attraction to a solitary lifestyle - fully allows for his identification with the author. However, the similarity here is purely external, not extending to the way of thinking. In this regard, the narrator is the exact opposite of the author.

It is characteristic that the tone of the narration, where the narrator undertakes to talk about Legrand, often takes on a condescending tone. And this happens not because he is smarter than the hero, but just the opposite, because he is unable to understand him to the end. He vaguely senses that there is more to the operations of Legrand's intellect than pure logic unwinding the chains of induction and deduction, but he cannot grasp what it is. The idea of ​​"miracles of intuition" seems to him doubtful. Legrand's amazing success in unraveling the mystery is due to his "analytical abilities" manifesting themselves through impeccably strict and subtle inductive-deductive constructions. Everything else, in his eyes, is nothing more than "a consequence of a sick mind." When he accurately conveys the hero's reasoning, he often tells the reader more than he himself understands. No wonder the "phenomenal" results of the investigation conducted by the hero invariably stun him.

Nevertheless, the role of the narrator in Poe's short story is great, because it is the narrator who helps the reader to reveal the character and psychology of the protagonist, who shares his innermost thoughts and feelings with his friend.

Humorous element of stories.

The humor in the stories reveals the inferiority of life, emphasizing, exaggerating, hyperbolizing it, making it tangible, concrete in the works. Humorous element in A.P. Chekhov and O. Henry is one of the most attractive aspects of their work. The humor of O. Henry is rooted in the tradition of the comic story that existed among the first settlers of America. In O. Henry, humor is often associated with comic situations that underlie many plots. They help the writer to debunk certain negative phenomena of reality. Resorting to parody and paradox, O. Henry reveals the unnatural essence of such phenomena and their incompatibility with the normal practice of human behavior. O. Henry's humor is unusually rich in nuances, impetuous, whimsical, he keeps the author's speech under current, as it were, and does not allow the narrative to go along a predicted channel. It is impossible to separate irony and humor from O. Henry's narration - this is his "element, the natural environment of his talent. The situation of short stories is far from always humorous; and yet, no matter what emotional keys the author presses, the invariably ironic turn of his mind gives a very special shade to everything happening."

O. Henry is a remarkable master of humor in American literature.

The overwhelming majority of O. Henry's stories are, in essence, devoted to the most ordinary phenomena of life. His characters are driven by a feeling of love, friendship, the desire to do good, the ability to sacrifice themselves, while negative personalities act under the influence of hatred, anger, money-grubbing, careerism. Behind the unusual in O. Henry, in the end, there is always the ordinary.

The writer has a mocking or ironic tone in most of his stories. The development of the action and the behavior of the characters, and sometimes very serious phenomena in O. Henry's short stories, always come down to a joke, to a funny denouement.

O. Henry notices the funny in people, in their behavior, in those situations that develop in the process of clashes between the characters. Laughter O. Henry is good-natured, there is no rudeness and cynicism in it. The writer does not laugh at the physical defects of his characters, at their actual misfortunes. He is deeply alien to that cruel gloomy humor, which is sometimes inherent in the writers of the West.

O. Henry's laughter is noble, because the basis of the writer's humor is a deep faith in a person, love for him, hatred for everything that disfigures life and people.

O. Henry has a story called Kindred Souls, which tells that a robber breaks into the house of a rich man in the street at night and finds him lying in bed. The bandit orders the man in the street to put his hands up. The inhabitant explains that due to an acute attack of rheumatism, he cannot do this. The bandit immediately remembers that he, too, suffers from this disease. He asks the patient what means he uses. So they talk, and then they go out to drink together: "Okay," says the thief, "drop it, I invite you. Enough for a drink."

The comical idyll depicting a robber and his possible victim walking arm in arm into a tavern cannot but cause a smile. It's funny, of course, not that in the heroes of O. Henry unexpectedly human is revealed. It's funny that the human shows up in such an unexpected, abnormal form. In O. Henry's humor, therefore, there is a significant amount of irony in relation to the order of life that gives rise to such inconsistencies. Behind this irony lies the sadness that is so characteristic of the humor of humanist writers, depicting the funny grimaces of life.

Here is an example of a humorous story, where the same idea appears in a different version - "The Stockbroker's Romance". Having renounced for a short time the atmosphere of the stock market rush, the broker proposes to his stenographer to marry him. The stenographer behaved very strangely. At first she seemed to be amazed, then tears welled up from her astonished eyes, and then she smiled sunnyly through her tears. "... I get it," she said softly, "it's the stock market that has pushed everything else out of your head." And she tells Harry that they got married yesterday.

It is impossible to say more clearly: the exchange has ousted all natural, normal feelings from a person.

So, we have before us two stories that seem to cause only "light laughter". Meanwhile, as we can see, their humor is based on a deeply humane and democratic outlook on life. Pondering the content of other stories, we find the same view. That's why O. Henry's laugh is a noble laugh.

The inventiveness of O. Henry in creating the endings of novels and stories is simply amazing. Sometimes it seems that all the efforts of the writer are aimed only at surprising us with an unexpected ending. The ending of the stories, like a bright flash of lightning, illuminates everything that used to be hidden in the darkness, and the picture immediately becomes clear.

Although O. Henry constantly laughs in his stories, it happens that he laughs while his soul is shedding tears. But the writer believed in life, in people, and his stories are illuminated by a spark of true humanity.

Lyrical intonations

We celebrate the pathos of the novels. In addition to the satirical and comic, the lyrical beginning, a sincere feeling persistently emerges in the prose under study. This is achieved by the personification of objects and their impact on the narrator and the author. In O. Henry, the lyrical feeling is expressed just as simply, but no less elegantly:

"... I have here told you an unremarkable story below about two stupid children from an eight-dollar apartment who, in the most unfortunate way, sacrificed their greatest treasures for each other"

In O. Henry, along with linguo-stylistic parameters in short stories, the artistic originality of the description of intonation and its reproduction is very important. Intonation is given and determined by the syntactic structure of the sentence and is fixed by punctuation marks. It is, of course, so. But it is far from the only way. In addition to the syntactic construction of the sentence itself, lyrical intonation in a work of art is born and formed depending on many specific conditions, the main point of which is the poetic perception of reality. O. Henry poetically recreates such a situation of utterance, likening it to the atmosphere of live, colloquial speech (dialogization of stories). If the situation of living, colloquial speech is most often spontaneous, unique, inimitable, if intonation lives and is perceived only at the very moment of utterance, then in a work of art "such an ability is organized by the writer."

Speaking about lyrical motifs in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, it is necessary to emphasize their presence in almost all of his works. Let's turn to the stories The Mask of the Red Death and The Oval Portrait and examine them for lyrical intonations. In the examples given, we observe the author's lyrical digressions and lyrics in the descriptions.

That the right and left, the middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which It opend.	In every room, to the right and to the left, in the middle of the wall, there was a tall narrow window in the Gothic style, opening onto a covered gallery, which repeated the zigzags of the enfilade. These windows were of colored glass, and their color was in harmony with all the decoration of the room.
There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now to deeply feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave.	There are strings in the most reckless heart that cannot be touched without making them tremble. The most desperate people, who are ready to joke with life and death, have something that they do not allow themselves to laugh at. It seemed that at that moment each of those present felt how unfunny and out of place the alien's outfit and manners were. The guest was tall, emaciated, and wrapped in a shroud from head to toe.
His plans were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with barbaric luster. There are some who would have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not.	Each of his ideas was bold and unusual and embodied with barbaric luxury. Many would consider the prince insane, but his minions were of a different opinion.
She was a maiden of rare beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rare beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee: all light and smiles, and frolicksome as the young fawn: loving and cherishing all things: hating only the Art which was her rival: dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover.	She was a maiden of the rarest beauty, and her gaiety equaled her charms. And the hour was marked by evil fate when she saw the painter and fell in love with him and became his wife. He, obsessed, stubborn, stern, was already betrothed - to Painting; she, a maiden of the rarest beauty, whose gaiety equaled her charm, all light, all smile, playful as a young doe, hated only Painting, her rival; she was afraid only of palettes, brushes and other powerful tools that deprived her of the contemplation of her lover.
That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to startle me at once into waking life.	Now I could not and did not want to doubt that I was seeing correctly, for the first ray that fell on the canvas, as it were, drove away the sleepy stupor that had taken possession of my feelings, and at once returned me to wakefulness.

Edgar Allan Poe Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe - Moscow: Literature in Foreign Languages ​​2009

According to E. Collected works in three volumes. T. 2. - M.: Milestones 1997.

Edgar Allan Poe Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe - Moscow: Literature in Foreign Languages ​​2009

The lyrical intonation sounds especially distinct in the images of the heroine of the short story "Gifts of the Magi" by O. Henry - Della. To reveal the lyrical feeling, we compiled a table of examples where we encounter them.

Linguistic aspect in the analysis of literary texts.

A feature of the work of Edgar Allan Poe is symbolism. In all his works, it is heterogeneous and is expressed with varying degrees of abstractness. So, if in most fantastic works the symbols are general cultural and very abstract, in psychological short stories, without losing their general cultural character, they express the instability of a frustrated consciousness, then in detective short stories the degree of abstractness is minimal, and the symbols acquire the status of authorial and close to specifics.

The theme of momentary, perishable life is evident in the short story "The Red Mask of Death", which emphasizes and further deepens the meaning of death as something incomprehensible and controlled not by a person, but by another, powerful force. The novel is literally filled with symbolism: these are the colors of the rooms (blue, red, green, orange, white, purple, black), and the orchestra, and the clock in the seventh, black room, and the image of the Death Mask itself.

In many of his short stories, Poe attaches great importance to color, which helps to reveal the psychologism of his works more deeply. For example, in the story "The Mask of the Red Death", which tells about the epidemic that hit the country, Poe describes the palace of the prince of this country, who decided to escape death by closing himself in his castle. E. Po takes one episode from the life of the castle as the basis of the story. On the evening described by the writer, the prince holds a masquerade ball in the castle, which was attended by many guests. The name "Red Death" is not accidental, because red is the color of blood. Bloody death is identified with the plague. "The "Red Death" had long devastated the country." The color of the rooms, in our opinion, symbolizes the very life of a person, the periods of his growing up, formation and aging. That is why the white room is next to the black one: “gray-haired” old age at the same time has chastity. Their lighting is also interesting, when the light falls from the lanterns outside the window: this echoes Plato's concept of the world, where our world is just a shadow. Discarded by the ideal world.

And if the rooms are human existence in reality, then the author describes this existence as follows: “All this seemed to be the product of some crazy hot delirium. visions of our dreams roamed all over the seven rooms, they - these visions - writhing and wriggling, flickered here and there, changing their color in each new room, and it seemed as if the wild sounds of an orchestra - all only the echo of their footsteps." Let us pay attention to the meaning of shadows - these are our delusions and judgments, and the sounds of the orchestra are likened to our wild and clumsy dance of life. And so life passes - at a wild pace, immersed in the phantoms of reason and feeling. And only the battle of the black clock makes everyone freeze in fright before Eternity and inevitability.

The mask of the Red Death also includes the semantics of Eternity and Inevitability, a fate from which one cannot escape. Interestingly, Prince Prospero finds the news about the Mask in the blue room, located at the opposite end from the black one. The author calls the room an oriental-style room. Blue is the color of serenity and dreams.

In many of his short stories, Poe attaches great importance to color, which helps to reveal the psychologism of his works more deeply. For example, in the story "The Mask of the Red Death", which tells about the epidemic that hit the country, Poe describes the palace of the prince of this country, who decided to escape death by closing himself in his castle. Egar Poe takes one episode from the life of the castle as the basis of the story. On the evening described by the writer, the prince holds a masquerade ball in the castle, which was attended by many guests. The name "Red Death" is not accidental, because red is the color of blood. Bloody death is identified with the plague. "The Red Death had long devastated the country."

The high degree of abstractness of the symbol in Poe's fantastic short stories often coincides with the fact that the symbols themselves can be considered at the general cultural level. So, in the short story "In death - life" the writer uses the symbol of the portrait as a symbol of the transition from one world to another. The theme of reflection, the imprinted image of a person, is an old one and gives rise to symbols close to this system: a mirror, a reflection in water, etc. The semantic meaning of this symbol is not only the meaning of the transition to another world, but also the loss of the soul. It is worth remembering in this context that so far in the tribes that have survived untouched by civilization (at least in many of them), photographing oneself is considered theft of the soul. In the literature, this topic is also not new and continues to develop. The most famous in this regard is "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde.

The composition of the short story - a story within a story - allows the author to introduce the reader into a romantic worldview. First, we learn that the character is addicted to opium and, in order to relieve pain, takes an unreasonably large dose of the drug. This introduces both him and the readers into a transitional, foggy, strange world. And already in this state, the character finds a portrait that stuns him with its liveliness.

Then, in the story of the portrait, we meet the artist and his wife. The artist is also a romantic hero. His strangeness and gloom frighten many, but this strangeness is just a sign of being chosen.

The work ends with the fact that, having completed the portrait and looking at it, the artist exclaims: “But this is life itself!”. And then, looking back at the dead wife, whose life, as it were, turned into a portrait, he says: "But is this really death?"

All modern detective genres originate from the classic form of detective storytelling that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was then that certain laws of the genre arose on the basis of extensive literary material. in the late 1920s the first attempt was made to formulate them. This was done by the writer S. Van Dyne. The patterns of the genre that he outlined are the result of observations on the specific features of detective literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (they are derived from the writings of Gaborio and Conan Doyle). But nevertheless, despite the fact that the merits of Gaboriau and Conan Doyle in the development of detective literature are great, many researchers still consider Edgar Poe to be the discoverer of the detective genre, who developed the main aesthetic parameters of the genre.

The glory of Edgar Poe as the founder of the detective genre relies on just four stories: "Murder on the Rue Morgue", "The Secret of Marie Roger", "The Gold Bug" and "The Stolen Letter". Three of them are aimed at solving a crime, the fourth one is about deciphering an old manuscript, which contains information about the location of a treasure buried by pirates in ancient times.

He transferred the action of his stories to Paris, and made the Frenchman Dupin a hero. And even in the case when the narrative was based on real events that took place in the United States (the murder of the saleswoman Mary Rogers), he did not violate the principle by renaming the main character Marie Roger, and moved all the events to the banks of the Seine.

Edgar Allan Poe called his stories about Dupin "logical". He did not use the term "detective genre", because, firstly, this term did not yet exist, and secondly, his stories were not detective stories in the sense that had developed by the end of the 19th century.

In some stories by E. Poe ("The Stolen Letter", "Golden Bug" there is no corpse and there is no talk of murder at all (which means that, based on Van Dyne's rules, it is difficult to call them detectives). All Poe's logical stories are replete with "long descriptions" , "subtle analysis", "general reasoning, which, from the point of view of Van Dyne, is contraindicated in the detective genre.

The concept of a logical story is broader than the concept of a detective story. From a logical story to a detective story, the main, and sometimes the only plot motif has passed: the disclosure of a secret or a crime. The type of narration has also been preserved: a story-task subject to a logical solution.

One of the most important features of Poe's logical stories is that the main subject on which the author's attention is focused is not the investigation, but the person conducting it. The character is at the center of the story, but the character is rather romantic. His Dupin has a romantic character, and in this capacity he approaches the heroes of psychological stories. But Dupin's reclusiveness, his penchant for solitude, his urgent need for solitude, has origins that do not directly correlate with psychological novels. They go back to some moral and philosophical ideas of a general nature. Characteristic of the American romantic consciousness of the middle of the 19th century.

When reading logical short stories, the almost complete absence of external action attracts attention. Their plot structure has two layers - superficial and deep. On the surface - the actions of Dupin, in the depths - the work of his thought. Edgar Allan Poe does not just talk about the intellectual activity of the hero, but shows it in detail and in detail, revealing the process of thinking. its principles and logic.

The deep psychologism of the narrative also refers to the main stylistic features of Edgar Allan Poe's stories. One of the classic examples of the psychological story of Edgar Poe is considered to be "The Fall of the House of Usher" - a semi-fantastic story about the last visit of the narrator to the old estate of his friend, about the strange illness of Lady Madeleine, about the mysterious inner connection between brother and sister and the super-mysterious connection between the house and its inhabitants , about a premature funeral, about the death of a brother and sister, and, finally, about the fall of the House of Usher into the gloomy waters of the lake and about the flight of the narrator, who barely escaped at the moment of the catastrophe.

The Fall of the House of Usher is a relatively short work of deceptive simplicity and clarity that hides depth and complexity. The artistic world of this work does not coincide with the world of everyday life. This story is psychological and scary. On the one hand, the main subject of the image in it is the painful state of the human psyche, consciousness on the verge of insanity, on the other hand, the soul is shown here, trembling with fear of the coming and inevitable horror.

The House of Usher, taken in its symbolic meaning, is a kind of world that is in a state of deep decay, fading, dying, on the verge of complete disappearance. Once it was a beautiful world, where human life flowed in an atmosphere of creativity, where painting, music, poetry flourished, where Reason was the law, and Thought was the ruler. Now this house is depopulated, desolate and has acquired the features of a semi-reality. Life has gone from him, leaving only embodied memories. The tragedy of the last inhabitants of this world stems from the irresistible power that the House has over them, over their consciousness and actions. They are unable to leave him and are doomed to die, imprisoned in the memories of the ideal.

Stylistic devices in short stories

The stylistic device, being a generalization, typification, and condensation of means objectively existing in the language, is not a naturalistic reproduction of these means, but qualitatively transforms them. So, for example, improperly direct speech (see below) as a stylistic device is a generalization and typification of the characteristic features of inner speech. However, this technique qualitatively transforms inner speech. This latter, as is well known, has no communicative function; improperly direct (depicted) speech has this function.

It is necessary to distinguish between the use of the facts of the language (both neutral and expressive) for stylistic purposes and the already crystallized stylistic device. Not every stylistic use of language means creates a stylistic device. So, for example, in the examples above from Norris's novel, the author repeats the words I and you in order to create the desired effect. But this repetition, possible in the mouths of the heroes of the novel, only reproduces their emotional state.

In other words, in emotionally excited speech, the repetition of words, expressing a certain mental state of the speaker, is not designed for any effect. The repetition of words in the author's speech is not a consequence of such a mental state of the speaker and aims at a certain stylistic effect. This is a stylistic means of emotional impact on the reader. On the other hand, the use of repetition as a stylistic device must be distinguished from repetitions, which serve as one of the means of stylization.

Thus, it is known that oral folk poetry widely uses the repetition of words for various purposes: slowing down the narration, giving a song character to the tale, etc.

Such repetitions of folk poetry are expressive means of a living folk language. Stylization is the direct reproduction of the facts of folk art, its expressive possibilities. The stylistic device is only indirectly connected with the most characteristic features of colloquial speech or with the forms of oral creativity of the people.

Interestingly, A. A. Potebnya also distinguishes between the use of folklore traditions in the repetition of words and phrases, on the one hand, and repetition as a stylistic device, on the other. "As in a folk epic," he writes, instead of references and indications of the above - a literal repetition of it (which is more figurative and poetic); so Gogol - within the period when speech becomes more animated, (then, as a manner) ... " .

Here the opposition of "animated speech" and "manner" attracts attention. Under "animated speech", obviously, one must understand the emotional function of this linguistic means of expression; under "manner" - the individual use of this stylistic device.

Thus, many facts of language can underlie the formation of a stylistic device.

Unfortunately, not all language means that have an expressive function have been subjected to scientific consideration. Therefore, a number of turns of live colloquial speech are not yet distinguished by grammarians as normalized forms of logical or emotional emphasis.

In this regard, we return to the ellipsis. It seems more appropriate to consider the ellipsis as a stylistic category. In fact, we have already said that in dialogic speech we have not the omission of any member of the sentence, but its natural absence. In other words, in live colloquial dialogic speech there is no conscious literary processing of the facts of the language. But, being transferred to another environment, from the oral-colloquial type of speech to the literary-bookish, written type of speech, such an absence of any member of the sentence is a conscious act, and therefore becomes a fact of stylistics. This is not an absence, but an omission. This technique was typified in written speech as a means of concise, emotionally colored speech.

This stylistic device typifies, enhances the features of oral speech, applying them in another type of speech - written.

It is known that in the language some categories of words, especially qualitative adjectives and qualitative adverbs, can lose their main, subject-logical meaning in the process of use and appear only in the emotional meaning of enhancing the quality, for example: awfully nice, terribly sorry, dreadfully tired, etc. e. In such combinations, when restoring the internal form of the word, attention is drawn to the logically excluding each other concepts contained in the components of the combination. It was this feature in a typified form that brought to life a stylistic device called an oxymoron.

Combinations such as:

a pleasantly ugly face (S. Maugham) and others are already stylistic devices.

In the analysis of the stylistic devices of the English language, where possible, we will try to show their relationship with the expressive and neutral means of the language, at the same time pointing out the linguistic nature of these devices and their stylistic functions.

Lexical means of expressive speech

In American short stories, all kinds of expressive means are widely used. Let's dwell on expressive means in the stories of O. Henry and Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Poe and O. Henry use antonyms in their stories. Antonyms are different words related to the same part of speech, but opposite in meaning. The opposition of antonyms in speech is a bright source of speech expression, which establishes the emotionality of speech.

In stories, hyperbole is also often used - a figurative expression that exaggerates any action, object, phenomenon. Hyperbole is used to enhance the artistic impression.:

Short stories make extensive use of metaphor. Metaphor is a hidden comparison based on the similarity between distant phenomena and objects. At the heart of any metaphor is an unnamed comparison of some objects with others that have a common feature.

In a metaphor, the author creates an image - an artistic representation of the objects, phenomena that he describes, and the reader understands exactly what similarity the semantic relationship between the figurative and direct meaning of the word is based on: There were, are, and, I hope, always will be more good people in the world, than bad and evil ones, otherwise disharmony would have set in in the world, it would have warped ... capsized and sank. Epithet, personification, oxymoron, antithesis can be considered as a kind of metaphor.

A detailed metaphor is a detailed transfer of the properties of one object, phenomenon or aspect of being to another according to the principle of similarity or contrast. Metaphor is particularly expressive. Possessing unlimited possibilities in bringing together a wide variety of objects or phenomena, metaphor allows you to rethink an object in a new way, reveal, expose its inner nature. Sometimes it is an expression of the individual author's vision of the world.

Thus, in Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart," the hero-narrator tells how he kills an old man and exposes himself in the presence of policemen, with the metaphor of a clockwork. For seven nights in a row, the hero spies on the sleeping old man, silently pushing a secret lantern through the door. "On the eighth night, I opened the door even more cautiously than usual. The minute hand on the clock moves faster than my hand sneaked)".

The old man wakes up, and the narrator watches as he, sitting on the bed, listens to the fuss of the grinder beetle - "just like I used to, night after night." The original is a play on words: hearkening to the death watches in the wall; death watch means the vigil of the dead; moreover, it is a mechanical combination of the two keywords of the story "death" and "hours". “It was then that I heard some kind of quiet, indistinct, hurriedly chattering sound, as if a clock wrapped in cotton was ticking ... It was the old man’s heart that was beating ... It was beating more and more, I tell you that not a moment, louder and louder! are you following?" The hero-narrator bursts into the room "with a deafening scream" and kills his victim: "The old man's hour has struck!" The hero acts like a perfectly coordinated mechanism: the movement of the hand-arrow, the murder at the appointed hour.

Metonymy is the transfer of meanings (renaming) according to the adjacency of phenomena. The most common cases of transferring meaning from a person to his any external signs:

Are you alive? - asked James looking at the portrait

Are you alive? James asked, looking at the portrait.

An oxymoron is a combination of contrasting words that create a new concept or idea. This is a combination of logically incompatible concepts, sharply contradictory in meaning and mutually exclusive. This technique sets the reader to the perception of contradictory, complex phenomena, often - the struggle of opposites. Most often, an oxymoron conveys the author's attitude to an object or phenomenon: Sad fun continued ...

In "Premature Burial" through the metaphor of the mechanism, the state of catalepsy is described - a complete, deep loss of consciousness. "It is known that in some diseases the appearance of a complete cessation of vital activity is created, although this is not the end yet, but only a delay. Just a pause in the course of an incomprehensible mechanism (incomprehensible mechanism). A certain period passes - and, obeying some mysterious law, the magic pinions and the wizard wheels start up again." If the body is a mechanism, then it is "incomprehensible", "mysterious", unwilling to submit to the control of the mind and treacherously changing it.

Now we note the global metaphorization in the work. This phenomenon is observed in a short story by Edgar Poe. Another example is the "Red Death" ("Mask of the Red Death"), a disease that seems to have a specific name and well-defined symptoms (although not really existing) and, nevertheless, is far from common. References to several real (recognizable by the modern reader) ailments at once make it a mysterious super-disease, an absolute, metaphysical evil. In terms of symptoms, destructive power, and metaphor, the Red Death is closest to the plague.

Personification is one of the types of metaphor, when the transfer of a sign is carried out from a living object to an inanimate one. When personified, the described object is externally used by a person: Trees, bending down towards me, extended their thin arms. Even more often, actions that are permissible only to people are attributed to an inanimate object: Rain splashed bare feet along the paths of the garden.

In the stories of O. Henry, inanimate objects are often endowed with the properties of living animate objects, for example:

	smart book
	gentle wind

In short stories, so-called evaluative vocabulary is often used. Evaluative vocabulary is a direct author's assessment of events, phenomena, objects.

Comparison is one of the means of expressiveness of the language, helping the author to express his point of view, create whole artistic pictures, and give a description of objects. In comparison, one phenomenon is shown and evaluated by comparing it with another phenomenon. Comparison is usually joined by unions: like, as if, as if, exactly, etc. but it serves for a figurative description of the most diverse features of objects, qualities, and actions.

Phraseologisms are almost always vivid expressions. Therefore, they are an important expressive means of language used by writers as ready-made figurative definitions, comparisons, as emotional and pictorial characteristics of heroes, the surrounding reality, etc.

An epithet is a word that highlights in an object or phenomenon any of its properties, qualities or signs. An epithet is an artistic definition, i.e. colorful, figurative, which emphasizes some of its distinctive properties in the word being defined. Any meaningful word can serve as an epithet, if it acts as an artistic, figurative definition for another:

Edgar Allan Poe Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe - Moscow: Literature in Foreign Languages ​​2009

O. Henry Short stories - M.: Literature in foreign languages ​​2005

Edgar Allan Poe Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe - Moscow: Literature in Foreign Languages ​​2009

Aesthetics of works of art

In order to understand how it is possible to think of an artistic and aesthetic event in relation to a work of art, it is necessary to understand the question of what an event is in general and an artistic and aesthetic event in particular, and then to determine the constitutive moments of a work of art. Let's start with the event.

Event and eventfulness in ordinary language mean an incident, a case. We learn about such events-incidents every day from television news or from the mouth of an interlocutor. Sometimes we ourselves become participants or witnesses of an incident. Such events usually make our daily life dynamic or simply create the illusion of dynamics. One way or another, they do not affect us in our very being and do not transform all our ordinary connections and relationships to the world and to ourselves.

The philosophical discourse of the 20th century sharply contrasted such an event-incident, sometimes without an ontological basis, with the event of being, i.e., the fulfillment of being itself within our existence, returning us to ourselves. M. Heidegger and M. M. Bakhtin were the first to follow this path. And if for Heidegger the problem of the event became decisive in finding the meaning of being, then for Bakhtin it is the problem of a "responsible act" of an eternally "living life" that does not know its completion within this event. One way or another, both thinkers proceeded from the ontology of human existence, that is, from the position that a person is initially immersed in being, is involved in being.

However, Bakhtin reveals the principle of eventfulness only within the framework of ethics as a philosophy of action and does not extend it to aesthetic issues. In his opinion, eventfulness, if we proceed from itself, does not know its end, cannot finally take shape, come true. The aesthetic, according to Bakhtin, cannot be eventful at all levels. In order for a work of art to become artistic, a "position of being outside" is necessary in relation to the hero and the artistic world, from which only aesthetic vision is possible as the completion and design of the integrity of the work.

Later, working on the problematics and poetics of Dostoevsky's novels, Bakhtin departs from the traditional view of a work of art as necessarily complete and integral. Having put forward the principle of dialogic relations between the author, the hero and the reader, Bakhtin substantiates the aesthetic (in the genre form of the novel) not as completed and become, but as striving for completion in the endless perspective of dialogue. It is important for us here to point out that Bakhtin, in fact, re-constitutes the eventfulness in the infinity of dialogue. However, neither in Bakhtin himself, nor among the researchers of his concept, and even more so his Western interpreters (Yu. Kristeva and others), we do not find further thinking and deployment of the problem of eventfulness, which refers not to actions, not to dialogical relations, but to the very artistic and aesthetic phenomenon.

And only M. Heidegger at the late stage of his work brought together being, language and poetry, shifting the ontological center from man to the sphere of aesthetics. Language, according to Heidegger, is the soil in which man is ontologically rooted. Language is the possibility of being to testify to itself. The way in which being testifies to itself (reveals itself) is, according to Heidegger, art (poetry). The poet speaks, listening to the silence, to the call of being. Genesis speaks through the poet about itself. The essence of poetry is to give voice to being, to create conditions for its self-disclosure. Following Heidegger's thought, we can say that art (a work of art is a revelation of being in a perfective, eventful way. "Truth as enlightenment and shutting up of beings is accomplished, being composed poetically," says Heidegger.

Based on the conceptual message of these two thinkers, as well as taking into account modern theories of the construction of ontological aesthetics, we continue to think through the eventful way of being a work of art and offer further development of the ontology of the artistic and aesthetic phenomenon. For this, it seems necessary to introduce the concept of "artistic and aesthetic event", with the help of which it is possible to overcome the shortcomings of the epistemological (subject-object) model of research. The concept of "artistic and aesthetic event" allows, on the one hand, to preserve the meaning of "event" as an "event of being", as "sympathetic thinking" (Bakhtin), "thinking being", "event of self-disclosure of being" (Heidegger), and on the other – to specify it as the field of aesthetics and art.

In our understanding, an artistic and aesthetic event is based on the event of being, that is, the accomplishment of "my" existence as "mine". An artistic and aesthetic event is a mode of the event of being, the way in which I am accomplished in my authenticity, being involved in the accomplishment of the discovery of aesthetic phenomena, "for creation is only valid when we ourselves tear ourselves away from all our everyday life, intruding into the open creation, and when we thus we affirm our essence in the truth of being."

The concept of the artistic and aesthetic event that we introduce allows us to embrace (cover) the process of the event as the co-presence of the author, the work of art and the recipient. A work of art (artifact) becomes a work of art only when it is involved

into an artistic and aesthetic event. An artistic and aesthetic event is indecomposable into separate elements and is a combination (but not a merger) of the author, work and recipient in an ongoing aesthetic phenomenon. Under the aesthetic phenomenon, it is necessary to understand self-disclosure, self-discovery of various aesthetic modifications (beautiful, sublime, terrible, tragic, etc.) in an eventful way.

An artistic and aesthetic event is characterized by spontaneity, probability, suddenness. Within the artistic and aesthetic event there is no distinction between the subject and the object of perception, there is no reflection in the sense of clear self-awareness and opposition to the artistic world, the spatio-temporal coordinates of the artistic and real worlds are mixed, transformed into the pure duration of what is happening, the boundary between them is blurred, the external and internal distance between author, work, and recipient dissipates and loses its existential and ontological significance.

An artistic and aesthetic event is the realization of the energy of creation through the disclosure of its sources in an aesthetic phenomenon. An artistic and aesthetic event is not given as a phenomenon and is not reducible to artistic activity, since its source, driving force is the energy of being.

"Thinking" of a work of art as an event is possible only on the basis of the very eventfulness (capture, involvement in what is happening), being soulfully filled with the energy of accomplishment, rediscovering and problematizing one's authenticity and the authenticity of the world in the light of aesthetic phenomena.

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25. According to E.A. Poems. Novels. The Tale of the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym. : Per. from English. / E.A. By. - M .: "Publishing house ACT", 2003.

26. Sokolova I.V. Modern English short story (On the question of the poetics of the genre): Abstract of the thesis. dis... cand. philol. Sciences. M., 1979.

27. Timofeev L.I., Turaev S.V. Brief dictionary of literary terms. M.: Education, 1985.

28. Tynyanov Yu. Archaisms and innovators. M., 1929, p.8. Cit. according to the book: Fed N. Genres in a changing world. M.: Sov. Russia, 1989

The short story is the most concise form of fiction. The story is difficult precisely because of its small volume. The story requires especially serious, in-depth work on the content, plot, composition, language, because in small forms, flaws are more clearly visible than in large ones.

A story is not a simple description of a case from life, not a sketch from nature.

The story, like the novel, shows significant moral conflicts. The plot of a story is often as important as in other genres of fiction. The author's position, the importance of the topic is also significant.

The story is a one-dimensional work, it has one storyline. One incident from the life of heroes, one bright, significant scene can become the content of the story, or a comparison of several episodes covering a more or less long period of time. Too slow development of the plot, prolonged exposition, unnecessary details harm the perception of the story. Sometimes, with excessive brevity of presentation, new shortcomings arise: the lack of psychological motivation for the actions of the characters, unjustified failures in the development of the action, the sketchiness of characters devoid of memorable features. The story should not just be short, it should have a truly artistic conciseness. And here the artistic detail plays a special role in the story.

The story usually does not have a large number of characters and many storylines. Overloading with characters, scenes, dialogues are the most common shortcomings of the stories of novice authors.

So, the story is a small prose work and its components are: unity of time, unity of action and event unity, unity of place, unity of character, unity of center, significant ending and catharsis.

Under UNITY OF TIME it is understood that the time of action in the story is limited. Usually the basis of the story is one event or incident that occurred in a specific and fairly short period of time.

Stories that span a character's entire life are not very common. However, aiming at the global, the author must be aware that in this case he will have to sacrifice many details.

The unity of time determines UNITY OF ACTION. The story, as a rule, is devoted to the development of one conflict. Often the authors try to cram a bunch of characters into the volume of 20 thousand, and even each with their own life story (conflict). Well, if their stories have at least some points of contact with the history of the protagonist, then such a narrative can be drawn out. The author needs to set a limiter for himself: one story - one story. That is, to concentrate on a single event that happened / is happening in the life of a particular hero.

Unlike a novel or short story, a short story gives the author a setting for the utmost brevity, including in the description of actions.

Unity of action is associated with EVENT UNITY. That is, the story is either limited to a description of a single event, or one or two events become meaningful.

UNITY OF PLACE. In the story, meaningful events take place in one place, well, in two. Maximum three. More for the story is unrealistic. Pay attention, we are talking about places that determine the development of the conflict of the story, which is one! If the author wants to describe the whole world in detail, then he risks getting not a story, but a novel.

UNITY OF THE CHARACTER. As a rule, there is one main character in the story. Let me remind you that the main character is the one who plays the main role and is the spokesman for the plot action. Sometimes there are two. Very, very rarely - several (main characters), but then they act as a bunch and differ little from each other - like, for example, seven kids.

There can be as many secondary characters as you like, even a division. But why so many? If you say a few words about each, just 20 thousand characters will come out. And there is not enough space for the main character. The task of secondary characters is to help or hinder the main character, to create a background. Therefore, the author must strictly dose out the descriptions of the characters. The main - more, the secondary - a little bit. Describe only what is directly related to the conflict, what serves to resolve it. The rest is out. The secondary character should not obscure the main character.

All of the aforementioned unities are reduced to UNITY OF THE CENTER.

A story cannot exist without a center of crystallization. It can be the culminating event, the development of the action, and even some descriptive image - it doesn't matter. The main thing is to have a core, due to which the entire compositional structure will be held.

SIGNIFICANT ENDING AND CATARSIS The story must have an end. The action must complete and, preferably, logically. Throughout the story, the characters walked towards each other and, finally, reunited. Or, on the contrary, they did not meet, which is why they died on the same day.

But this is not the whole ending - the story also has an ideological component. The author intended to tell the world an important thought in an artistic form, and in the finale this thought should find its maximum expression. If found - the story took place.

Ideally, when reading a story, the reader should have some kind of emotional pulsation, and the ending should cause catharsis. That is, to act purifying and ennobling, to elevate and educate. Literature is needed for this, so that the reader through the hero better understands himself.

Plot . It is probably not worth steaming over its originality. In the end, everything has long been written before us. The maximum that we can is to present the story, as old as the world, with style and grace inherent only to us.

There is only one storyline in the story. The hero wants/doesn't want to do something. He is opposed / helped by minor characters, natural phenomena or the social environment. The hero lives\fights\sometimes suffers and finally does/does not do what he/she must/shouldn't.

Here is a diagram of any literary conflict - the core on which the author strings fictional episodes. All episodes should be tailored to a single goal - the disclosure of the main conflict of the work. Everything else is on the side.

Intrigue is a must. The main character has to do something. At least yawn - loudly and lingeringly. Otherwise, the story turns into a very long mood miniature. Writing plotless stories is a very great art. As well as reading. The composition of the story should be proportionate: 20% of the volume for the introduction, 50% for the main action, 10% for the climax and 20% for the denouement. Once again, let's go through the terms and connect them with the invoice.

exposition- the image of time, space, actors.

“Once upon a time there were three little pigs in the world. Three brothers. All of the same height, round, pink, with the same cheerful ponytails.

Even their names were similar. The piglets were called: Nif-Nif, Nuf-Nuf and

Naf-Naf. All summer they tumbled in the green grass, basked in the sun, basked in the puddles.

Tie - the beginning of the conflict, the imbalance in the relationship between the characters.

“But now autumn has come.

The sun was no longer so hot, gray clouds stretched over

yellowed forest.

It's time for us to think about winter, - Naf-Naf once said to his brothers,

waking up early in the morning. - I'm shivering from the cold. We may catch a cold.

Let's build a house and winter together under one warm roof.

But his brothers did not want to take the job. Much nicer in

the last warm days to walk and jump in the meadow than to dig the ground and drag

heavy stones"

Main action- the growth of the conflict, the strengthening of the confrontation between the heroes.

“- It will succeed! Winter is still far away. We'll take a walk, - said Nif-Nif and

rolled over his head.

When it is necessary, I will build myself a house, - said Nuf-Nuf and lay down in

Well, whatever you want. Then I will build my own house, - said Naf-Naf.

I won't wait for you.

Every day it got colder and colder.”

climax- the highest point of the struggle, the pinnacle of the conflict, when its outcome becomes clear.

“He carefully climbed onto the roof and listened. The house was quiet.

"I'm still going to have a bite of fresh pig today!" thought the wolf and

licking his lips, climbed into the pipe.

But, as soon as he began to descend the pipe, the piglets heard a rustle. BUT

when soot began to pour on the lid of the boiler, smart Naf-Naf immediately guessed that

than the case.

He quickly rushed to the cauldron, in which water was boiling on the fire, and tore off

cover it.

Welcome! - said Naf-Naf and winked at his brothers.

Nif-Nif and Nuf-Nuf have already completely calmed down and, smiling happily,

looked at their smart and brave brother.

The piglets didn't have to wait long. Black as a chimney sweep, wolf

splashed right into the boiling water.

He had never been in such pain before!

His eyes popped out on his forehead, all his hair stood on end.

With a wild roar, the scalded wolf flew up the chimney back to the roof,

rolled down it to the ground, rolled over four times over his head, rode

on his tail past the locked door and rushed into the forest.

Interchange - the new state of the environment and heroes after the conflict is resolved.

“And three brothers, three little pigs, looked after him and rejoiced,

that they so cleverly taught the evil robber a lesson.

And then they sang their cheerful song.

Since then, the brothers began to live together, under the same roof.

That's all we know about the three little pigs - Nif-Nifa, Nuf-Nufa

and Naf-Nafa"

The absence of any part or a strong distortion in proportions spoils the story unambiguously.

The Three Little Pigs, by the way, has a very balanced composition! That is why we remember this story to this day.

A sluggish and drawn-out opening leads the reader to stop reading the story after the third paragraph.

Deviations from the plot in the form of descriptions of nature and citing scientific articles are allowed, but ask yourself the question - why is this for the reader? If absolutely necessary, let them stay, but if there is even the slightest doubt, all retreats out!

The scope of the story is limited and involves the exclusion of what is not related to the plot. In the story (compared to the novel), the significance of a single episode increases, and the details acquire a symbolic character. The main author's forces should be thrown on the description of the protagonist. The main character can be described head-on, or it can be more sophisticated, by using a variety of artistic details.

The story, written in clumsy language, will be read only by the closest relatives of the author. The biggest sin of the author is a heap of unnecessary details. Also, stories are spoiled by excessive detail in the description of actions, the so-called. "caterpillar".

The only way to develop style is to read good literature. Fix - write yourself. To hone and improve style means to listen to criticism. Well, in conclusion, as recommended, a paradoxical denouement.

There are no rules without exceptions. Sometimes the violation of the laws of the construction of the story leads to stunning effects.

Genre is a type of literary work. There are epic, lyrical, dramatic genres. Lyroepic genres are also distinguished. Genres are also divided by volume into large (including rum and epic novel), medium (literary works of “medium size” - novels and poems), small (story, short story, essay). They have genres and thematic divisions: adventure novel, psychological novel, sentimental, philosophical, etc. The main division is connected with the genres of literature. We present to your attention the genres of literature in the table.

Thematic division of genres is rather conditional. There is no strict classification of genres by topic. For example, if they talk about the genre-thematic diversity of lyrics, they usually single out love, philosophical, landscape lyrics. But, as you understand, the variety of lyrics is not exhausted by this set.

If you set out to study the theory of literature, it is worth mastering the groups of genres:

• epic, that is, genres of prose (epic novel, novel, story, short story, short story, parable, fairy tale);
• lyrical, that is, poetic genres (lyric poem, elegy, message, ode, epigram, epitaph),
• dramatic - types of plays (comedy, tragedy, drama, tragicomedy),
• lyrical epic (ballad, poem).

Literary genres in tables

epic genres

• epic novel

  epic novel- a novel depicting folk life in critical historical eras. "War and Peace" by Tolstoy, "Quiet Flows the Don" by Sholokhov.

• Novel

  Novel- a multi-problem work depicting a person in the process of his formation and development. The action in the novel is full of external or internal conflicts. By subject, there are: historical, satirical, fantastic, philosophical, etc. By structure: a novel in verse, an epistolary novel, etc.

• Tale

  Tale- an epic work of medium or large form, built in the form of a narrative of events in their natural sequence. In contrast to the novel, in P. the material is chronicled, there is no sharp plot, there is no blue analysis of the feelings of the characters. P. does not pose problems of a global historical nature.

• Story

  Story- a small epic form, a small work with a limited number of characters. R. most often poses one problem or describes one event. The short story differs from R. in an unexpected ending.

• Parable

  Parable- moral teaching in allegorical form. A parable differs from a fable in that it draws its artistic material from human life. Example: Gospel parables, the parable of the righteous land, told by Luke in the play "At the Bottom".

Lyric genres

• lyric poem

  lyric poem- a small form of lyrics written either on behalf of the author, or on behalf of a fictional lyrical hero. Description of the inner world of the lyric hero, his feelings, emotions.

• Elegy

  Elegy- a poem imbued with moods of sadness and sadness. As a rule, the content of elegies is philosophical reflections, sad reflections, grief.

• Message

  Message- a letter of poetry addressed to a person. According to the content of the message, there are friendly, lyrical, satirical, etc. The message can be. addressed to one person or group of people.

• Epigram

  Epigram- a poem that makes fun of a specific person. Characteristic features are wit and brevity.

• Oh yeah

  Oh yeah- a poem, distinguished by the solemnity of style and sublimity of content. Praise in verse.

• Sonnet

  Sonnet- a solid poetic form, usually consisting of 14 verses (lines): 2 quatrains-quatrains (for 2 rhymes) and 2 three-line tercetes

Dramatic genres

• Comedy

  Comedy- a type of drama in which characters, situations and actions are presented in funny forms or imbued with the comic. There are satirical comedies (“Undergrowth”, “Inspector General”), high (“Woe from Wit”) and lyrical (“The Cherry Orchard”).

• Tragedy

  Tragedy- a work based on an irreconcilable life conflict, leading to the suffering and death of heroes. William Shakespeare's play Hamlet.

• Drama

  Drama- a play with a sharp conflict, which, unlike the tragic, is not so elevated, more mundane, ordinary and somehow resolved. The drama is built on modern rather than ancient material and establishes a new hero who rebelled against circumstances.

Lyric epic genres

(intermediate between epic and lyric)

• Poem

  Poem- the average lyrical-epic form, a work with a plot-narrative organization, in which not one, but a whole series of experiences is embodied. Features: the presence of a detailed plot and at the same time close attention to the inner world of the lyrical hero - or an abundance of lyrical digressions. The poem "Dead Souls" by N.V. Gogol

• Ballad

  Ballad- an average lyrical-epic form, a work with an unusual, tense plot. This is a story in verse. A story told in poetic form, historical, mythical, or heroic. The plot of the ballad is usually borrowed from folklore. Ballads "Svetlana", "Lyudmila" V.A. Zhukovsky

The story is an epic genre of small volume. Let's define its features and, using the example of A.P. Chekhov's story "Chameleon", consider them.

Story Features

• small volume
• Limited number of actors
• One storyline, often - is the fate of the protagonist.
• The story tells about several, but more often one, important episode from a person's life.

• Secondary and episodic characters in one way or another reveal the character of the main character, the problem associated with this main character.
• By the number of pages, the story can be voluminous, but the main thing is that all the action is subject to one problem, connected with one hero, one storyline.
• Details play a big role in the story. Sometimes one detail is enough to understand the character of the hero.
• The story is told from one person. It can be the narrator, the hero, or the author himself.
• The stories have an apt, memorable title that already contains part of the answer to the question raised. .
• The stories were written by the authors in a certain era, so, of course, they reflect the peculiarities of the literature of a particular era. It is known that until the 19th century, stories were close to short stories, in the 19th century subtext appeared in the stories, which could not have been in an earlier era.

Example.

Illustrations by Gerasimov S.V. to the story of Chekhov A.P.
"Chameleon". 1945

The story of A.P. Chekhov "Chameleon"

• Small in volume. Chekhov is generally a master of the short story.

• The main character is the police overseer Ochumelov. All other characters help to understand the character of the main character, including the artisan Khryukin.
• The plot is built around one episode - the dog biting the finger of the goldsmith Khryukin.
• The main problem is the ridicule of servility, sycophancy, servility, the assessment of a person according to the place in society that he occupies, the lawlessness of people in power. Everything in the story is subject to the disclosure of this problem - all the changes in Ochumelov's behavior in relation to this dog - from the desire to restore order so that there are no stray dogs, to the tenderness of the dog, which, as it turned out, belonged to the general's brother.
• Detail plays an important role in the story. In this case, this is Ochumelov's overcoat, which he then takes off, then throws it over his shoulders again (at this time, his attitude to the current situation changes).
• The story is told from the perspective of the author. In a small work, Chekhov managed to express his indignation, satirical, even sarcastic attitude towards the order in Russia, in which a person is valued not by his character, deeds and deeds, but by the rank he occupies.
• The name of the story - "Chameleon" - very accurately reflects the behavior of the protagonist, who changes his "color", that is, his attitude to what is happening, in connection with who owns the dog. Chameleonism as a social phenomenon is ridiculed by the author in the story.
• The story was written in 1884, during the heyday of critical realism in Russian literature of the 19th century. Therefore, the work has all the features of this method: ridiculing the vices of society, a critical reflection of reality.

Thus, using the example of A. P. Chekhov's story "Chameleon", we examined the features of this genre of literature.

The short story genre is one of the most popular in literature. Many writers have turned to him and are turning to him. After reading this article, you will find out what are the features of the short story genre, examples of the most famous works, as well as popular mistakes that authors make.

The story is one of the small literary forms. It is a small narrative work with a small number of characters. In this case, short-term events are displayed.

Brief history of the short story genre

V. G. Belinsky (his portrait is presented above) as early as 1840 distinguished the essay and the story as small prose genres from the story and the novel as larger ones. Already at this time in Russian literature the predominance of prose over verse was fully indicated.

A little later, in the second half of the 19th century, the essay received the broadest development in the democratic literature of our country. At this time, there was an opinion that it was documentary that distinguished this genre. The story, as it was believed then, is created using creative imagination. According to another opinion, the genre we are interested in differs from the essay in the conflict of the plot. After all, the essay is characterized by the fact that it is basically a descriptive work.

Unity of time

In order to more fully characterize the genre of the story, it is necessary to highlight the patterns inherent in it. The first of these is the unity of time. In a story, the action time is always limited. However, not necessarily only one day, as in the works of the classicists. Although this rule is not always observed, it is rare to find stories in which the plot spans the entire life of the protagonist. Even rarer are works in this genre, the action of which lasts for centuries. Usually the author depicts some episode from the life of his hero. Among the stories in which the whole fate of a character is revealed, one can note "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (author - Leo Tolstoy) and It also happens that not all life is represented, but its long period. For example, Chekhov's "The Jumping Girl" depicts a number of significant events in the fate of the characters, their environment, and the difficult development of relationships between them. However, this is given extremely compacted, compressed. It is the conciseness of the content, greater than in the story, that is a common feature of the story and, perhaps, the only one.

Unity of action and place

There are other features of the short story genre that should be noted. The unity of time is closely connected and conditioned by another unity - action. A story is one that should be limited to a description of a single event. Sometimes one or two events become the main, meaning-forming, culminating events in it. Hence comes the unity of place. Usually the action takes place in one place. There may be not one, but several, but their number is strictly limited. For example, there may be 2-3 places, but 5 are already rare (they can only be mentioned).

character unity

Another feature of the story is the unity of the character. As a rule, one protagonist acts in the space of a work of this genre. Occasionally there may be two, and very rarely - several. As for the secondary characters, there can be quite a lot of them, but they are purely functional. The story is a genre of literature in which the task of minor characters is limited to creating a background. They can interfere or help the main character, but no more. In the story "Chelkash" by Gorky, for example, there are only two characters. And in Chekhov's "I want to sleep" there is only one at all, which is impossible either in the story or in the novel.

Unity of the center

The features of the story as a genre, listed above, one way or another are reduced to the unity of the center. Indeed, a story cannot be imagined without some defining, central sign that "pulls together" all the others. It does not matter at all whether this center will be some static descriptive image, a climactic event, the development of the action itself, or a significant gesture of the character. The main image should be in any story. It is through him that the whole composition is kept. It sets the theme of the work, determines the meaning of the story told.

The basic principle of building a story

It is not difficult to draw a conclusion from reflections on "unities". The idea suggests itself that the main principle of constructing the composition of a story is the expediency and economy of motives. Tomashevsky called the motive the smallest element. It can be an action, a character or an event. This structure can no longer be decomposed into components. This means that the biggest sin of the author is excessive detail, oversaturation of the text, a heap of details that can be omitted when developing this genre of work. The story should not go into detail.

It is necessary to describe only the most significant in order to avoid a common mistake. It is very characteristic, oddly enough, for people who are very conscientious about their works. They have a desire to express themselves to the maximum in each text. Young directors often do the same when they stage diploma films and performances. This is especially true for films, since the author's fantasy in this case is not limited to the text of the play.

Imaginative authors love to fill the story with descriptive motifs. For example, they depict how a pack of cannibal wolves is chasing the main character of the work. However, if dawn breaks, they will necessarily stop at the description of long shadows, dimmed stars, reddened clouds. The author seemed to admire nature and only then decided to continue the pursuit. The fantasy story genre gives maximum scope to the imagination, so avoiding this mistake is not at all easy.

The role of motives in the story

It must be emphasized that in the genre of interest to us, all motives should reveal the theme, work for meaning. For example, the gun described at the beginning of the work must certainly fire in the finale. Motives that lead to the side should not be included in the story. Or you need to look for images that outline the situation, but do not overly detail it.

Composition features

It should be noted that it is not necessary to adhere to traditional methods of constructing a literary text. Their violation can be effective. The story can be created almost on the same descriptions. But it is still impossible to do without action. The hero is simply obliged to at least raise his hand, take a step (in other words, make a meaningful gesture). Otherwise, it will turn out not a story, but a miniature, a sketch, a poem in prose. Another important feature of the genre we are interested in is a meaningful ending. For example, a novel can last forever, but the story is built differently.

Very often its ending is paradoxical and unexpected. It was with this that he associated the appearance of catharsis in the reader. Modern researchers (in particular, Patrice Pavie) consider catharsis as an emotional pulsation that appears as you read. However, the significance of the ending remains the same. The ending can radically change the meaning of the story, push to rethink what is stated in it. This must be remembered.

The place of the story in world literature

The story - which occupies an important place in world literature. Gorky and Tolstoy turned to him both in the early and in the mature period of creativity. Chekhov's story is the main and favorite genre. Many stories have become classics and, along with major epic works (stories and novels), have entered the treasury of literature. Such, for example, are Tolstoy's stories "Three Deaths" and "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", Turgenev's "Notes of a Hunter", Chekhov's works "Darling" and "The Man in a Case", Gorky's stories "Old Woman Izergil", "Chelkash", etc.

Advantages of the short story over other genres

The genre that interests us allows us to single out one or another typical case, one or another side of our life, with particular convexity. It makes it possible to depict them in such a way that the reader's attention is completely focused on them. For example, Chekhov, describing Vanka Zhukov with a letter "to the village of grandfather", full of childish despair, dwells in detail on the content of this letter. It will not reach its destination and because of this it becomes especially strong in terms of accusation. In the story "The Birth of a Man" by M. Gorky, the episode with the birth of a child that occurs on the road helps the author in revealing the main idea - affirming the value of life.

The story is a large literary form of written information in literary and artistic design. When recording oral retellings, the story stood apart as an independent genre in written literature.

The story as an epic genre

Distinctive features of the story are a small number of characters, little content, one storyline. The story does not have interweaving in events and it cannot contain the diversity of artistic colors.

Thus, the story is a narrative work, which is characterized by a small volume, a small number of characters and the short duration of the events depicted. This type of epic genre goes back to folklore genres of oral retelling, to allegories and parables.

In the 18th century, the difference between essays and stories was not yet defined, but over time, the story began to be distinguished from the essay by the conflict of the plot. There is a difference between the story of "large forms" and the story of "small forms", but this distinction is often arbitrary.

There are stories in which the characteristic features of the novel are traced, and there are also small-scale works with one storyline, which are still called a novel, not a story, despite the fact that all signs point to this type of genre.

The novel as an epic genre

Many people think that a short story is a certain kind of short story. But still, the definition of a short story sounds like a kind of small prose work. The short story differs from the story in the plot, which is often sharp and centripetal, in the severity of the composition and volume.

The novel most often reveals an acute problem or question through one event. As a model, the short story originated in the Renaissance - the most famous example is Boccaccio's Decameron. Over time, the short story began to depict paradoxical and unusual incidents.

The heyday of the short story, as a genre, is considered the period of romanticism. Famous writers P. Merimee, E.T.A. Hoffman, Gogol wrote short stories, the central line of which was to destroy the impression of familiar everyday life.

Novels that depicted fateful events and the game of fate with a person appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Such writers as O. Henry, S. Zweig, A. Chekhov, I. Bunin paid considerable attention to the short story genre in their work.

The story as an epic genre

Such a prose genre as a story is an intermediate place between a short story and a novel. Initially, the story was a source of narration about any real, historical events ("The Tale of Bygone Years", "The Tale of the Battle of Kalka"), but later it became a separate genre for reproducing the natural course of life.

A feature of the story is that the main character and his life are always in the center of her plot - the disclosure of his personality and the path of his fate. The story is characterized by a sequence of events in which the harsh reality is revealed.

And such a theme is extremely relevant for such an epic genre. Famous stories are "The Stationmaster" by A. Pushkin, "Poor Liza" by N. Karamzin, "The Life of Arseniev" by I. Bunin, "The Steppe" by A. Chekhov.

The value of artistic detail in the story

For the full disclosure of the writer's intention and for a complete understanding of the meaning of a literary work, an artistic detail is very important. It can be a detail of an interior, landscape or portrait, the key here is that the writer emphasizes this detail, thereby drawing the attention of readers to it.

This serves as a way to highlight some kind of psychological trait of the protagonist or mood that is characteristic of the work. It is noteworthy that the important role of the artistic detail lies in the fact that it alone can replace many narrative details. Thus, the author of the work emphasizes his attitude to the situation or to the person.

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Introduction

This course work provides an opportunity in general terms to get acquainted with the work of W.S. Maugham. In foreign literary criticism, interest in Maugham's work has not faded throughout the entire 20th century.

The object of the study is Maugham's stories. What can they have in common, and also what is their uniqueness. The first chapter does not refer to the writer's work, it describes the signs of a story, what can be considered a story, the genre and stylistic features of the story, whether the short story can be attributed to the story. In the second chapter, you can generally get acquainted with the biography of the prose writer. The third chapter is devoted to the stories of W.S. Maugham, a summary of some of the stories and analysis are given. How do periods of creativity differ, and on what basis can stories be ungrouped.

The subject of analysis is the genre and stylistic features of Maugham's stories and the elements of narration.

The relevance of this work lies in the pronounced individuality of the style of W.S. Maugham. The goal is to prove it, analyze the stories and tell about Maugham's personality.

> Short story as a genre

> Genre features of a short story

Literary genres, like all social phenomena, are subject to the laws of evolution. Therefore, the genres of literature will never be completely completed: they are in constant dialectical change, while maintaining certain genre features. Genre is a phenomenon so complex that it is impossible to define it even with a detailed definition. Genres merge, intersect, and in any genre there comes a turning point, the so-called "crisis of the genre", then involuntary changes occur. These changes are inevitable, they are caused by various reasons - historical, socio-political, artistic and others. These reasons determine the formation and development of each genre.

The story is a small form of epic prose, correlated with the story as a more detailed form of narration. Goes back to folklore genres (fairy tale, parable); how the genre became isolated in written literature; often indistinguishable from the novel, and from the 18th century. -- and an essay. Sometimes the short story and the essay are considered as polar varieties of the story.

First of all, we are interested in the question of the story as a holistic phenomenon, always changing in time, but at the same time stable. What are the characteristics that distinguish the story from other types of literature? Literary scholars have been searching for an answer to this question for a long time. The problem of the genre specifics of the story was posed and solved in the works of I.A. Vinogradova, B.N. Eikhenbaum, V.B. Shklovsky, V. Goffenscheffer, and other critics back in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century.

Some literary critics classify the short story as a short story, while others classify the short story and the short story as genre varieties of short prose. I lean towards the latter opinion, because the novel is characterized by tension and drama, the main character struggles with something throughout the story. So the short story is a small novel. In a story, there can only be a narrative, a description, and at the end of it some idea, a philosophical thought is heard, or the exclusivity of the hero or events is simply shown, while tension is not the goal, and the plot is not confused.

Thus, a story (especially a shorter one) is a modification of the genres of fable, fairy tale, legend, which are already outdated in style, and they were replaced by the so-called story. For example, from a historical point of view, Krylov's fables contain philosophical thoughts. In the fable "The Crow and the Fox" one can trace the idea of ​​flattery and the idea that flattery is deceitful and deceptive, that one should beware of it and not fall into its net, because. a person flatters for profit. In this case, the author uses the technique of allegory.

The roots of the story lie in folklore. Legend, anecdote, satire, song, proverbs and other types of folk art led to the emergence of the narrative (telling) genre in fiction.

It was from folklore that writers also drew ways of realistic depiction of people, pictures of nature, images, themes and plots for their works. The story arose on the basis of the genres of oral folk art, became a convenient form of artistic reflection of reality and became widespread. Elements of the story were observed in ancient literature (II - IV century AD), but as a separate genre, the story was finally formed in the Renaissance. The Canterbury Tales by J. Chaucer in England were examples of the first works of the narrated genre, and Boccaccio's Decameron in Italy.

In the story, the material for ups and downs is the actions, actions of the characters. The elements of the composition are almost always located in a causal-logical sequence. Details are carefully selected, mostly the most striking characteristic ones, this creates laconicism. Its task is to show the object, the image in its uniqueness. The denouement of the story is a logical conclusion, which is the idea of ​​it all.

According to most literary critics, the main characteristic features of the story are as follows:

Small volume;

Image of one or more events;

clear conflict;

Brevity of presentation;

The law of selection of the protagonist from the environment of characters;

Disclosure of one dominant character trait;

One problem and the resulting unity of construction;

Limited number of characters;

Completeness and completeness of the story;

The presence of a dramatic structure.

Based on these features, we can derive a definition of the story.

A story is a short narrative work of fiction about one or more events in the life of a person or a group of people, which depicts typical pictures of life. Thus, the story isolates a particular case from life, a separate situation and gives them a high meaning. The main task of the narrator is to convey the event, the image, in its authentic uniqueness. A number of researchers see the genre difference of the story in the features of the image of the character: in the story it is static, that is, it does not change in actions and actions, but only reveals itself. Jack London, for example, said that "development is not inherent in the story, it is a feature of the novel."

The small size of the work entails the need to create material that is strictly limited in volume, ”the story keeps the author in strictness both compositional and stylistic.

A special role in creating a picture in a story is played by an artistic detail, i.e. particularly meaningful detail. It helps the author achieve maximum compression of the image.

Ø epic – a kind of narrative literature, which is characterized by the depiction of events and human characters external to the author (the personality of the author remains outside the text).

Ø Lyrics – a kind of literature, which is characterized by the embodiment of thoughts, feelings, experiences of the author. In the center of lyrical works is a description of the inner world of the author himself.

Ø Drama – a kind of literature, the basis of which is live action, which is unfolding before the eyes of the audience at the moment. The characters' characters are revealed through sharp conflicts in the form of dialogues and monologues.

EPIC GENRES

· Story- a small form of epic prose, a prose work that depicts one, less often - several events with a small number of characters.

· Tale- a genre of narrative literature, most often the story of one human life, connected with the fate of other people, told on behalf of the hero or the author himself. By the nature of the development of the action is more complicated than the story.

· Novella- a genre of narrative literature, approaching a story or short story, with a sharp, exciting plot. A short narrative story with an unusual and strict plot, with a clear composition.

· Feature article- a genre close in volume to a story or a story, based on reliable events.

· Novel- a genre of narrative literature that reveals the history of several, sometimes many human destinies over a long time, sometimes entire generations. Transmits the most profound and complex processes.

· epic or epic novel- a special kind of novel, monumental in terms of the breadth and time of the events depicted, especially significant not only for the life of an individual, but also for a nation. A characteristic feature of the epic is the presence of multiple relationships between the characters. The epic tells about significant, heroic, historical events.

LYRICAL GENRES

· Oh yeah- a lyrical work of glorifying content, which is expressed in a pathetic and solemn verse. An ode is dedicated to some historical event or hero.

· Song- a small lyrical work intended for singing or imitating features of vocal performance.

· Romance- a lyrical work of love content, which differs from the song in greater refinement of emotions, some sentimentality.

· Elegy- a lyrical genre in which mainly philosophical reflections, sad reflections, longing for the past are expressed.

A sonnet is a 14-line poem. The classical (Italian) scheme of a sonnet is two quatrains (quatrains) and two three-line verses (tercina). Shakespearean sonnet- three quatrains and a couplet.

· Message- a lyrical work in the form of an appeal to a real or fictional person or a group of people.

· Satire- a work of art depicting the negative phenomena of reality in a funny, grotesque way.

· Epigram- a short satirical poem ridiculing a certain person.

LYRICAL-EPIC GENRES

· Fable- a small satirical work of an allegorical (allegorical) nature with moralizing purposes.

· Ballad- a small plot poem, which is based on some unusual case.

· Poem- a poetic work, which is characterized by the presence of a detailed plot and the wide development of the image of a lyrical hero.

DRAMA GENRES

A work that is staged on the stage of a drama theater is called drama[ancient Greek. drama - "action", "action"] or play[fr.piece - "piece"]. In the XVI-XVII centuries. the word "play" was called any fragment that was presented by actors or performed by musicians, in the 18th century. - text written specifically for the scene.

In the XVIII century. "Drama" was called not only a kind of literature, but also a genre of dramaturgy.

· Tragedy(Greek "tragoda" and a") is a dramatic genre, which is based on a particularly tense, irreconcilable conflict, fraught with catastrophic consequences and most often ending in the death of the hero. Tragedy imitates or portrays the tragic, but necessarily the significant.

§ Comedy(Greek "chest of drawers" and a") is a dramatic genre depicting such life situations and characters that cause laughter. The core of comedy is ridiculous events, funny and funny actions of people, their characters.

§ Drama. The concept of "drama" has two meanings: a type of literature (epos, lyrics, drama) and a genre within the genus of the same name. Formed in the 18th century. The drama combines genre features of tragedy and comedy. Drama (in the narrow sense of the word) is a dramatic genre, characterized by the presence of an acute conflict, which, in comparison with the tragic, is not so elevated, more mundane and one way or another resolved.

§ Mime ( from Greek. m and mesis"- "imitation"). Moms are short skits of comic content that combine impromptu dialogue, singing and dancing. Mimes - also called actors who played without words, with the help of body plasticity and facial expressions. Appeared in the era of Antiquity.

§ Tragicomedy(from the connection - "tragedy" and "comedy") - a dramatic work built on the basis of a tragic conflict, the resolution of which is associated with comic, awkward situations and does not require the obligatory death of the hero. Formed during the Renaissance. In the tragedy of the event, the characters are considered dually: good-evil, generosity-stinginess, black-white, etc.

§ Melodrama ( from the Greek "melos" - "song", "melody" and "drama"). Formed in the 18th century. Initially, such performances were accompanied by music. Later, plays began to be called melodramas, where dramatic events were depicted, but everything ended happily. The characters of the melodrama speak to each other in raised tones, their speech is accompanied by sharp gestures, they cry or sob.

§ Vaudeville(fr . Vaudeville, presumably, the term comes from the name of the French city songs - French voix de ville - "voice of the city"). Receives development in European theaters at the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. The text in vaudeville - prosaic or poetic - alternated with funny couplets, anecdotes, moralizing.

§ Monodrama(from the Greek "monos" - "one", "only" and "drama") - a stage work for one actor. Gets development at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries.

The specificity of the short story genre in the work of M. Gorky and A.P. Chekhov

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. THE PLACE OF THE SHORT STORY GENRE IN THE SYSTEM OF PROSE FORMS

1.1 Genre features of a short story

2 The emergence and specifics of the short story genre

CHAPTER 2. FEATURES OF THE SHORT STORY GENRE IN A.P. CHEKHOV

2.1 The problem of periodization of Chekhov's work

2 "Notebooks" - a reflection of objective reality

2.3 Genre specificity of short stories by A.P. Chekhov (on the example of early stories: "Daddy", "Thick and Thin", "Chameleon", "Volodya", "Ariadne")

CHAPTER 3. FEATURES OF THE GENRE OF A SHORT STORY IN THE WORKS OF M. GORKY

3.1 Social and philosophical position of the writer

3.2 Architectonics and artistic conflict of Gorky's short stories

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

A short story originates in folklore - it arises on the basis of genres of oral art. As an independent genre, the story became isolated in written literature in the 17th - 18th centuries; its development falls on the XIX-XX centuries. - the story comes to replace the novel, also at this time there are writers who work mainly in this genre form. Researchers have repeatedly made attempts to formulate a definition of the story, which would reflect the immanent properties of this genre. In literary criticism, there are various definitions of a story:

“Dictionary of Literary Terms” L. I. Timofeev and S. V. Turaev: “A story is a small form of epic prose literature (although, as a kind of exception to the rule, there are also stories in verse). The term "R." does not have a strictly defined meaning and, in particular, is in a complex, unsettled relationship with the terms "novella" and "essay". YES. Belyaev defines the story as a small form of epic prose, correlated with the story as a more expanded form of narration [Belyaev 2010: 81].

There are many such definitions, but they are all of a general nature, and do not reveal the specifics of the genre. Also, some literary critics attribute the short story to stories, while others - to genre varieties of short prose. obvious

"non-strictness", approximateness of these definitions. They are more an attempt to convey an inner sense of the determinant than an attempt to find strict criteria. In this study, we are interested in the story from the point of view of a holistic phenomenon.

They have been looking for answers to these questions for a long time: the problem of the genre specificity of the story was posed in the works of V.B. Shklovsky, I.A. Vinogradov; the problems of this genre were studied by such researchers as B.V. Tomashevsky, V.P. Vompersky, T.M. Kolyadich; the problem of various aspects of artistic style is raised in the works of L.A. Trubina, P.V. Basinsky, Yu.I and I.G. Mineral.

RelevanceThe topic we have chosen lies in the fact that at present literature tends to laconize content, clip thinking is becoming fashionable, there is a tendency towards the “minimum”, towards the aesthetics of the small. One of these manifestations is the flourishing of the short story genre, i.e. small prose. Therefore, the study of the theory and main characteristics of the short story genre is currently relevant - it can help present and future writers.

Noveltywork is determined by the practical orientation in the application and analysis of the story in the implementation of curricula and new literary theories.

Object of study- The genre of the short story.

Subjectstudies are the genre features of the short story by A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky.

Targetwork consists in the analysis of the short story genre in the works of A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky. Taking into account the special literature and on the basis of the data obtained, we can supplement our understanding of the specifics of the story genre in fiction.

Taskswork is determined by its target setting:

· to determine the main features of the short story as a genre of fiction;

· identify the features of short stories in the work of A.P. Chekhov and A.M. Gorky;

· note the author's position and state the literary and aesthetic views of A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky.

To solve the tasks set, the following research methods: analysis and synthesis, biographical and cultural-historical methods.

The textological basis of the study is the texts of the stories of A.P. Chekhov and A.M. Gorky, because “the text, being an artificially organized structure, a materialized fragment of a specific epistemological and national culture of an ethnic group, conveys a certain picture of the world and has a high power of social impact. The text as an idiostyle implements, on the one hand, the immanent features of a certain system of language, on the other hand, it is the result of an individual selection of language resources that correspond to the aesthetic or pragmatic goals of the writer" [Bazalina, 2000: 75-76].

Practical significancework is that its content and results can be used in the study of the literary heritage of M. Gorky and A.P. Chekhov, and the short story genre in philological research, in general educational institutions and higher education.

The work consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

CHAPTER 1. THE PLACE OF THE SHORT STORY GENRE IN THE SYSTEM OF PROSE FORMS

When studying short stories, it is necessary to build on the idea of ​​M.M. Bakhtin on the dependence of compositional construction on the genre specifics of the work.

The problem of genre is significant in literary criticism, because this is one of the fundamental categories. The modern literary period is characterized by a significant complication of the genre structure of works. Genre is a universal category - it reflects a variety of artistic methods, but at the same time it is extremely specific - a direct expression. The term "genre" is polysemantic: it denotes a literary genre, type, and genre form. Having arisen at a certain time and being conditioned by its aesthetic guidelines, the genre is corrected by the settings of the current cultural and historical era, the genre is shifting. Genres do not function separately from each other and are considered systematically - for this it is important to know the specifics of each genre.

Thinking about the genre from the point of view of the literary concept, one can see that the literature of the last two centuries encourages us to talk about the presence of works devoid of genre definition. This is confirmed by the work of V.D. Skvoznikov, who noted that since the time of Lermontov, a tendency towards synthetic expression has appeared in the genre system [Skvoznikov, 1975: 208]. The most significant problem is the classification of genres - the traditional system is conditional. So, for example, L.I. Timofeev divides all genres into three forms (large, medium and small) [Timofeev 1966: 342]. A distinctive feature is the vision of a person in a certain episode, i.e. division by volume is inherent, however, forms different in volume can embody the same type of artistic content - a mixture of genres is possible. Genres can also move into each other, new genres can appear, for example, tragicomedy. Also, it is not always possible to see the difference between a story and a novella, or a story and a novella. Genres are transformed, changed, mixed, and therefore it is important to study them holistically and systematically. Experiments with the invariant contribute to the demand for genre education. And vice versa, if one variant of a genre is not replaced by another, the genre disappears. Most researchers agree that the genre is a system that is constantly in interaction with each other.

Genre - from the French genre - means genus, species. For example, M.M. Bakhtin defined genre as "creative memory in the process of literary development", which makes it possible to consider the category continuously [Bakhtin 1997: 159].

V. Zhirmunsky understood "genre" as a system of interrelated compositional and thematic elements [Zhirmunsky 1924: 200].

Yu. Tynyanov understood the genre as a mobile phenomenon [Tynyanov 1929: 7].

In modern literary criticism, “genre” is defined as “a historically established type of stable structure of a work that organizes all its components into a system that generates an integral figurative and artistic world that expresses a certain aesthetic concept of reality” [Leiderman, Lipovetsky, 2003: 180].

A single term denoting the genre does not yet exist. We are closest to the point of view of M.M. Bakhtin, M.N. Lipovetsky and N.L. Leiderman. Based on their representation, the genre is a differentiated category and includes such ways of expressing genre content as: extra-textual signals, leitmotifs, chronotope. It should also be remembered that the genre is the embodiment of the author's concept.

1.1 Genre features of a short story

In our study, we are interested in the story as a holistic phenomenon. To do this, it is necessary to highlight the characteristic features of a short story that will help distinguish this genre from invariant forms. It is worth noting that researchers have been dealing with the problem of “boundary” genres for a long time: the problem of genre specificity was posed in the works of V.B. Shklovsky, I.A. Vinogradov; genre problems were studied by such researchers as B.V. Tomashevsky, V.P. Vompersky, T.M. Kolyadich; the problem of various aspects of style is raised in the works of L.A. Trubina, P.V. Basinsky, Yu.I and I.G. Mineral.

The short story is one of the young small epic genres. As an independent genre, the story became isolated in written literature in the 17th - 18th centuries, and the period of its development falls on the 19th - 20th centuries. The debate over the definition of the story as a genre category does not subside. The boundaries between novel and short story, short story and short story, short story and short story, so well understood on an intuitive level, almost defy clear definition on a verbal level. In conditions of uncertainty, the volume criterion becomes especially popular, as the only one that has a specific (countable) expression.

According to Yu.B. Orlitsky, "... almost every author who has written at least a few works of short prose creates his own genre and structural model of this form..." [Orlitsky 1998: 275]. Among short stories, a special place is occupied by works that recreate the personal experience of writers, capturing their memories. The lyrical tone and humor, conveying the warm attitude of the author, determine the tone of this type of story. A distinctive feature of a short story is its individuality. A short story is a reflection of the subjective vision of the world in the highest degree: the works of each author represent a special artistic phenomenon.

The narration of the story is focused on the disclosure of ordinary, private things, but of great importance for comprehending the high meaning, the main idea. Researchers see the genre difference in the features of the depiction of the psychologism of the hero's character. The story tells about one episode, which allows you to understand the worldview of the characters and their environment.

The chronotope factor plays an important role - the time of action in the story is limited, stories that cover the entire life of the character are extremely rare, but even if the story covers a long period of time, it is devoted to one action, one conflict. The story takes place in a limited space. All the motives of the story work on the theme and meaning, there are no phrases or details that do not carry any subtext.

It is noteworthy that each writer has his own style - the artistic organization is extremely individual, since the author, who has written several similar stories, creates his own genre model.

Researcher V. E. Khalizev distinguishes two types of genre structures: complete canonical genres, he refers to them as a sonnet and non-canonical forms - open to the manifestation of the author's individuality, for example, an elegy. These genre structures interact and pass into each other. Taking into account the fact that there are no strict norms in the short story genre and there is a variety of individual models, it can be assumed that the short story genre belongs to non-canonical formations.

Exploring the story as a holistic phenomenon, we highlight the characteristic features of a short story that will help distinguish this genre from invariant forms.

According to most literary critics, it is possible to single out the main characteristic genre features of a short story that distinguish it from other short stories:

ü Small volume;

ü capacity and conciseness;

ü A special compositional construction - the beginning is almost always absent, the ending remains open, the suddenness of the action;

ü A special case is taken as a basis;

ü The author's position is most often hidden - the narration is conducted in the first or third person;

ü There are no evaluative categories - the reader himself evaluates the events;

ü Objective reality;

ü The main characters are ordinary people;

ü Most often, a short event is described;

ü Small number of characters;

ü Time is linear;

ü Unity of construction.

Based on all of the above:

A short story is a small form of epic prose of fiction that consistently and succinctly tells about a limited number of events that are arranged linearly and most often chronologically, with constant temporal and spatial plans, with a special compositional structure that creates the impression of integrity.

Such a detailed and somewhat contradictory definition of the short story genre is due to the fact that the story provides great opportunities for expressing the author's individuality. When studying a short story as a genre, all of the above features should be considered not separately, but in combination - this leads to an understanding of the typological and innovative, traditional and individual in any work. For a more complete presentation of the short story genre, let's turn to the history of its origin.

1.2 The emergence and specifics of the short story genre

Understanding the features of a short story is impossible without studying the history of the origin of the genre, its transformation over the centuries.

YES. Belyaev defines the story as a small form of epic prose, correlated with the story as a more expanded form of narration [Belyaev 2010: 81].

According to L.I. Timofeev, the story as “a small work of art, usually dedicated to a separate event in a person’s life, without a detailed depiction of what happened to him before and after this event. A story differs from a story, in which not one, but a series of events are usually depicted, illuminating a whole period in a person’s life, and not one, but several characters take part in these events” [Timofeev 1963: 123].

There are many such definitions, but all of them are of a general nature, or they mark only individual features, and do not reveal the specifics of the genre, the “non-strictness”, the approximateness of these definitions is also obvious. They are more an attempt to convey an inner sense of the determinant than an attempt to find strict criteria. And the assertion that there is always only one event in the story is not indisputable.

So, the researcher N.P. Utekhin argues that the story “can display not only one episode from a person’s life, but also his whole life (as, for example, in A.P. Chekhov’s story “Ionych”) or several episodes of it, but it will be taken only under some certain angle, in some one ratio” [Utekhin 1982:45].

A.V. Luzhanovsky, on the contrary, speaks of the obligatory presence in the story of two events - the initial and the interpreting (denouement).

“The denouement is, in essence, a leap in the development of action, when a single event receives its interpretation through another. Thus, the story must contain at least two organically interconnected events” [Luzhanovsky 1988: 8].

V. G. Belinsky makes one more addition to the definition - the story is not able to include the private life of a person in a wide historical stream. The story begins with a conflict, not a root cause. The source is the analysis of life collisions that have happened.

It is obvious that the above definitions, although they point to some essential elements of the story, still do not give a formally complete description of its essential elements.

One of the trends in the development of the story is the study of a single event of the phenomenon of reality. Unlike the story, the short story strives for conciseness and plot capacity. The difficulty in identifying a short story is due to the influence of tradition and the tendency to interpenetrate genres and styles - there is a problem of invariant, "boundary" genres, which are essay and short story. This, in turn, leads to variability of opinions: some literary critics attribute the short story to stories, and others to genre varieties of short prose. The difference between a story and a short story and an essay is that the essay is documentary and in modern literature it is customary to refer to it as journalism, and the short story does not always tell about life's realities and may differ in unreality, and the absence of psychologism is also inherent.

Increasingly, researchers are talking about the mobility and intensity of the interaction of genres; the problem of semantic crossing of the boundaries of genres is being put forward. Due to its lability and interconnection with many genres, such genre modifications as a story-scene, a story-parable, a story-tale, a story-feuilleton, a story-anecdote, etc. have become possible. Such a detailed definition is explained by the fact that the story provides great opportunities for the author's individuality, is an artistic laboratory and a kind of individual "creative workshop". The story can raise the same issues as the novel, in connection with which its genre boundaries are expanded.

Literary science knows several classifications of the story. The traditional typology is based on the subject of research; by the 60-70s, such a typology is no longer sufficient and is not applicable to the works of a new direction - lyrical prose. The appearance of lyrical prose is due to significant historical events, a rethinking of the individuality of a person, there is an increase in the personal in prose.

In the second half of the twentieth century, almost all genres of prose were covered by lyricism: confessions, diaries, travel essays. Since the mid-1970s, the leading place among narrative prose has been occupied by the novel, which has a great influence on the story and short story, there is a romanticization of small genres, in particular the short story.

A characteristic feature is the volume of the text, conciseness and "a heightened sense of modernity, often polemically sharpened, appealing to the moral consciousness of society" [Gorbunova, 1989: 399]. There is an in-depth knowledge of individual psychology, partly due to the historical changes that took place in public life - a new understanding of personality, uniqueness, individuality.

A distinctive feature is the psychologism of stories, subtext, attention is paid to the role of the subject, as well as the emphasis on a detail or word. The subject of the narration is the compositional center of the work, the special significance of the leitmotif, the brevity of the narration stand out. Thus, a picture of creative freedom, polyphony, variegation and depth of the artistic word is created.

The above definitions of a short story are not exhaustive, but they determine the main meaning given to them in this work, which is necessary for the perception of further reasoning.

Thus, a short story should be understood as a text relating to a small form of epic prose, having a small number of characters, telling about one or more events from a person’s life, suggesting the correlation of actions with the chronotope, and having the sign of eventfulness.

CHAPTER 2. FEATURES OF THE SHORT STORY GENRE IN A.P. CHEKHOV

“One can revere the mind of Tolstoy. Admire the elegance of Pushkin. Appreciate Dostoevsky's moral quest. Humor Gogol. And so on. However, I only want to be like Chekhov, ”such a description in his notebook“ Solo on the Underwood » left Dovlatov on the work of Chekhov.

Chekhov was not only the breadwinner of his family, he also became her moral liberator. As Gorky notes, Anton Pavlovich was free both in body and soul. He constantly improved his language, and if his early works sin with various southern petty-bourgeois phrases (his physiognomy nodded his lips), then after several years of daily work he becomes the master of Russian speech and a teacher for novice writers, Bunin and Gorky try to equal him, he was not afraid to resist external elements. Despite this, he was often accused of buffoonery, frivolity, weakness of character, immorality and lack of spirituality, and then the writer was completely dubbed a tearful, pure mourner. So what is Chekhov really like?

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on January 17, 157 years ago, in Taganrog. Pavel Yegorovich, Anton Pavlovich's father, was a shop assistant, but over time, having saved money, he opened his own shop. Evgenia Yakovlevna, Chekhov's mother, raised six children. Undoubtedly, their childhood was difficult and differs significantly from the childhood of modern children, but it is thanks to what Chekhov had to go through and see that we know Anton Pavlovich just like that. Little Chekhov often helped his father in the shop, in winter it was so cold there that the ink froze, which affected homework, and the children were very often punished. The father was very strict with the children. Although the severity of the father towards children is relative, as the writer himself sometimes notices, for example, Pavel Yegorovich treated Maria Pavlovna, the writer's sister, with tenderness and care. In 1876, trade became unprofitable and the Chekhov family moved to Moscow. Anton stayed in Taganrog until the end of the gymnasium and earned money by private lessons. The first three years in Moscow were very difficult. In 1879, Anton came to Moscow and immediately entered the Faculty of Medicine, and a year later his first story, a parody of the pseudoscientific article "A Letter to a Scientific Neighbor", was published in the Dragonfly magazine. Collaborates with such magazines as “Alarm Clock”, “Spectator”, “Shards”, writes mainly in the genre of a short story, humoresques and feuilletons are sent to print from his pen. After graduating from the university, he began the practice of a county doctor, at one time he even temporarily managed a hospital. In 1885, the Chekhov family moved to the Babkino estate, which had a positive effect on the writer's work. In 1887, first in the Moscow, and then in the St. Petersburg theater, the play "Ivanov" was staged, which was a "motley" success. After that, many newspapers wrote about Chekhov as a recognized and talented master. The writer asked not to single him out, he believed that the best advertisement was modesty. Chukovsky notes that he was always surprised by the great hospitality to guests in the character of the writer, he accepted everyone he knew and did not know, and this despite the fact that often, the very next day after a big reception, the family did not have money left. Even in the last years of his life, when the illness had already come close to the writer, he still received guests: the piano always sounded in the house, friends and acquaintances came, many stayed for weeks, several people slept on the same sofa, someone even spent the night in shed. In 1892 Chekhov bought an estate in Melikhovo. The house was in a terrible state, but the whole family moves there and over time the estate acquires a noble appearance. The writer always wanted to not only describe life, but change it: in the village of Melikhovo, Chekhov opens a zemstvo hospital, works as a county doctor for 25 villages, organizes the planting of cherry trees, decides to create a public library and for this purpose buys about two hundred volumes of French classics, in total complexity sends about 2000 books from his collection and then throughout his life he makes lists of books that must be in the Taganrog library. All this happens thanks to the great will of the writer, his indefatigable energy. In 1897 he went to the hospital due to illness, in 1898 he bought an estate in Yalta and moved there. In October 1898, his father died. After the death of his father, life in Melikhovo can no longer be the same and the estate is for sale. In 1900, he was elected to the honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, but two years later the writer refuses this title due to the exclusion of M. Gorky. In the spring of 1900, the Moscow theater arrived in the Crimea and Chekhov traveled to Sevastopol, where the theater staged Uncle Vanya especially for him. After a while, the theater goes to Yalta and almost the entire theater troupe often visits Chekhov's house, at the same time he meets his future wife, actress O. K nipper. The writer's illness progresses - in January 1990 he goes to Nice for treatment. In May, the wedding with Knipper takes place. Chekhov really wanted to leave a legacy behind, but the long separation from his wife, partly because of doctors who advise the writer to live in Yalta, partly because of Knipper's great love for art, does not allow Chekhov to realize this dream of Chekhov. In 1904, the writer's last play, The Cherry Orchard, was staged. On July 15, at the famous resort in Germany, the great everyday writer dies, having managed to call a doctor and drink a glass of champagne.

.1 The problem of periodization of Chekhov's work

"Light and shadows", "Sputnik" [Byaly 1977: 555]. In the early period, humorous stories prevailed in Chekhov, however, over time, the problems become more complicated, the drama of everyday life comes to the fore.

In Czech studies, there is still no consensus on the issue of periodization of the writer's work. So, G. A. Byaly distinguishes three stages: early, middle and last years [Byaly 1977: 556]. E. Polotskaya, analyzing the changes in Chekhov's artistic method, divides his creative path into two periods: early and mature [Polotskaya 2001]. In some works there is no periodization at all [Kataev 2002]. Chekhov himself treated the attempts to divide his work into stages not without irony. Having once read a critical article, he noticed that now, thanks to the critic, he knows that he is in the third stage.

As already mentioned, Chekhov was first published in humorous magazines. He wrote quickly and mainly to earn money. Undoubtedly, at that time his talent could not be fully revealed. The most striking feature of the poetics of the early period is, of course, humor and irony, which are born not only from the needs of readers and publishers, but also from the very nature of the writer. Since childhood, he loved to joke, portray funny stories in his faces, for which he received the pseudonym Antonsha Chekhonte from his teacher. But not only the public's need for an entertaining genre, not only natural gaiety determined the humorous tone of the early stories, but also another feature of Chekhov's character - emotional restraint. Humor and irony made it possible not to reveal their immediate feelings and experiences to the reader.

Analyzing the features of irony at different stages of the writer's work, E. Polotskaya comes to the conclusion that the irony of early Chekhov is "frank, direct, unambiguous" [Polotskaya 2001:22]. Such irony mixes a serious plan with a frivolous one, produces a contradiction between the significance of tone and the insignificance of the subject, and is created by the means of language. The mature period is characterized by “internal” irony, which evokes not ridicule, but pity and sympathy in the reader; one can say that it comes “from life itself” [Polotskaya 2001:18]. The “internal” hidden irony of the mature Chekhov is embedded in the very structure of the work and is revealed only after reading, understanding it as a single artistic whole.

Already in Chekhov's early works, one can feel the insight of a young writer, "capable of noticing many by no means harmless grimaces of petty-bourgeois life, many deformities and ugliness of society" [Zhegalov 1975:22]. And although in his youth, according to Gorky, “the great dramas and tragedies of her (life) were hidden for him under a thick layer of the ordinary,” in many humorous stories of the 80s, Chekhov managed to reveal to us the ugly essence of everyday relationships. It is not surprising, therefore, that in 1886 Chekhov received from D.V. Grigorovich's letter, in which he enthusiastically speaks of his stories. This review pleasantly struck Chekhov, he replied: “Up to now I have treated my literary work extremely frivolously, carelessly ... I don’t remember a single story of mine on which I would have worked for more than a day ...” [Chekhov 1983: 218].

The line of depicting "deformities and ugliness of society" continues in the mature period of creativity. But this image has its own specifics, characteristic of Chekhov's creative thinking. Researchers note that what is scary in Chekhov's stories is not what happened, but the fact that "nothing happened"; life is terrible, which does not change at all, in which nothing happens, in which a person is always equal to himself [Byaly 1977:551]. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the image of everyday life in the writer's work occupies a significant place. It is through everyday life that Chekhov shows the tragedy of everyday life; from his point of view, the immutability of life inevitably changes people: in a motionless life, people gradually submit to the force of the external course of events and lose their internal - spiritual and moral - guidelines. In the stories "Ionych" (1898), "Gooseberry" (1898) it is shown how the characters eventually lose their "soul", their life turns into an unconscious existence.

Everyday vulgarity is opposed by the worldview of the child.

"Illuminating the world with the light of a child's consciousness, Chekhov transforms it, making it cute, cheerful, funny and pure... Sometimes in Chekhov's children's stories the familiar world becomes strange, incomprehensible, unnatural" [Byaly 1977:568]. Reality for children is a great mystery, they observe everything around with pure eyes. The inner world of the child is depicted in contrast to reality.

A special group in Chekhov's work is made up of works in which the characters come to realize the tragedy of life. In stories like

"The Lady with the Dog" (1899), "The Teacher of Literature" (1889), the characters feel the vulgarity of the reality around them, they understand that it is no longer possible to endure, but it is impossible and there is nowhere to run. This theme arises and develops in the work of Chekhov of the mature period.

“In general, the fate of a person with high concepts and high culture, as a rule, is painted in Chekhov in tragic tones” [Zhegalov 1975:387]. But at the same time, not only positive characters are painted with tragic tones, but in general most of Chekhov's works, this is felt even in some comic stories. By the way, Chekhov prefers not to divide people into positive and negative, because no one is perfect in this world. He sympathizes with all people who suffer under the painful pressure of society.

In the 1990s, intensive searches were carried out in Russia for a common idea, the path of the future of Russia. At that time, Chekhov also “strived to find out how the idea of ​​truth and untruth is born in people, how the first impetus to reassess life arises, ... how a person ... emerges from a state of mental and spiritual passivity” [Zhegalov 1975: 567]. Moreover, it is more important for Chekhov to show the process of reassessment than its result. “His goal is not to completely expose good and evil from everyday veils and to put a person before an inevitable choice between one and the other, as L. Tolstoy does” [Kotelnikov 1987:458].

In Chekhov's story, the main thing is the attitude of the individual to truth and untruth, to beauty and ugliness, to morality and immorality. It is curious that all this is mixed together, as in ordinary life. Chekhov never becomes a judge of his heroes, and this is the principled position of the writer. For example, in one of his letters he wrote:

“You are confusing two concepts: the solution of the problem and the correct formulation of the question. Only the second is obligatory for the artist” [Chekhov 1983:58], i.e. Chekhov does not set himself the task of giving a concrete answer to the question that he raises in the work.

One of the highest values ​​of life was for Chekhov nature. This is evidenced by many letters in which he expresses his joy at moving to Melikhovo. In 1892, he wrote to L. A. Avilova: “... I reason like this: not the one who has a lot of money is rich, but the one who now has the means to live now in luxurious surroundings, which the early spring gives” [Chekhov 1983: 58]. Therefore, Chekhov's landscape performs an important semantic function. Often it is a kind of expression of the philosophy of life.

“The movements of the human soul awaken a distant echo in nature, and the more alive the soul, the stronger the impulse to will, the louder this symphonic echo resounds” [Gromov 1993:338].

In the process of reviving the soul, truth and beauty often go hand in hand with Chekhov. Nature appears eternal and beautiful in the story "The Lady with the Dog". The sea awakens in Gusev's soul unusual "existential" thoughts about the beauty and ugliness of life; in The Fit (1889), pure snow falls on the ugly world of men. The image of snow creates a sharp contrast between the beautiful nature and the ugliness of human mores.

In addition, Chekhov's nature can reflect the psychological state of the characters. So, in the story "In the native corner" (1897), through the details of the landscape - an old ugly garden, an endless, monotonous plain - we learn that disappointment and boredom reign in the soul of the heroine. The role of the landscape in Chekhov was very accurately noticed by his younger contemporary writer L. Andreev: Chekhov’s landscape “is no less psychological than people, his people are no more psychological than clouds ... He paints his hero with a landscape, tells his past with clouds, depicts him with rain tears...” [Gromov 1993:338].

Byaly notes that in his mature period, Chekhov often writes about "near happiness." The expectation of happiness is especially characteristic of those heroes who feel the abnormality of life, unable to escape. K. S. Stanislavsky said about Chekhov of that time: “As the atmosphere thickened and things approached the revolution, he became more and more decisive,” meaning that Chekhov says more and more insistently: “It’s impossible to live like this anymore.” The intention to change life becomes more definite [Byaly 1977:586]. But how to do that? What will it be and when will it arrive? The writer does not give us a specific answer.

For Sonya in "Uncle Vanya" happiness is possible only "after death". It appears to her as a deliverance from a long monotonous work, heavy, soul-exhausting relationships between people: "We will rest, we will rest ...". The hero of the story "A Case Study" believes that life will be bright and joyful, like this "Sunday morning", and this, perhaps, is already close. Gurov in "The Lady with the Dog" in an agonizing search for a way out, it seems that a little more and "a solution will be found, and then a new, wonderful life will begin." But, as a rule, for Chekhov, the distance between reality and happiness is great, so it seems appropriate to replace Byaloy's concept of "near happiness" with "future happiness."

Perhaps, only in one - the last - work "The Bride" (1903) we find the possibility of "close happiness". The heroine Nadia runs away from home, from the fate of a provincial wife, in order to start another life. Even the tone of the story is no longer so tragic; on the contrary, at the end of The Bride, one can clearly feel the farewell to the old and the expectation of a new life. For all that, it cannot be said that the older Chekhov is, the closer this happiness is in his understanding, because

The Bride is his only and last work in which there is such an optimistic and quite definite image of the future life.

Thus, in the work of the writer of the 1990s, the search for an idea, thoughts about nature and man, a sense of future happiness become the main motives, "even when they are not expressed directly" [Bialy 1977: 572].

Tracing the path of Chekhov from early stories to the last - "The Bride", we see the development of the creative personality of the writer. As Zhegalov notes, over time, in the writer's works, “psychological analysis deepens, criticism in relation to petty-bourgeois psychology intensifies, in relation to all the dark forces that suppress the human personality. The poetic, lyrical beginning is intensifying, ”which contrasts strongly with the pictures from early stories such as

"Chameleon" (1884), "Death of an official" (1883). And, finally, "the tragedy of ordinary, ... ordinary life is intensifying" [Zhegalov 1975:384].

The fundamental principles of Chekhov's poetics, which he repeatedly declared, are objectivity, brevity, and simplicity. In the process of creation, one must be as objective as possible. As already mentioned, in his youth, Chekhov wrote stories for humorous magazines, and therefore had to be limited to a certain amount. In adulthood, brevity became a conscious artistic principle, fixed in Chekhov's famous aphorism: "Brevity is the sister of talent" [Chekhov 1983:188]. If one sentence can convey information, then there is no need to spend a whole paragraph. He often advises novice writers to remove everything unnecessary from the work. So, in a letter of 1895, he writes: "The bookcase against the wall was full of books." Why not just say: “a bookcase with books”? [Chekhov 1983:58] In another letter: “Write a novel for a whole year, then shorten it for half a year, and then print it. You don’t do much, and the writer should not write, but embroider on paper, so that the work is painstaking, slow” [Chekhov 1983: 25].

Another fundamental principle of Chekhov's poetics is simplicity. Once he said this about the literary landscape: colorfulness and expressiveness in the descriptions of nature are achieved only by simplicity. He does not like such images of M. Gorky as “the sea breathes”, “the sky looks”, “the steppe basks”, he considers them obscure, monotonous, even sugary. Simplicity is always better than pretentiousness, why not say about sunset: “the sun has set”, “it has become dark”; about the weather: “it started to rain”, etc. [Chekhov 1983:11] According to the memoirs of I. A. Bunin, Chekhov once read such a description of the sea in a student's notebook: "the sea was big" - and was delighted" [Bunin 1996: 188].

At the same time, Chekhov's works contain not only "life-like" but also "conditional" forms of description [Esin 2003:33]. Conventionality does not copy reality, but artistically recreates it; it manifests itself “in the introduction of allegorical or symbolic characters, events” [Esin 2003:35], in transferring the action to a conventional time or place. For example, in The Death of an Official, the very fact of death caused by an insignificant cause is a plot hyperbole and produces an ironic effect; in The Black Monk (1894), the image-hallucination of the "black monk" is a reflection of the disturbed psyche of the hero, obsessed with "megalomania".

Chekhov's unique creative biography has long attracted the attention of scientists. Already Chekhov's contemporaries, and later researchers of his early work, noted the compositional thoughtfulness of his humorous stories. It can be said that in his best early texts, Chekhov combined the features of different genres of short fiction to create an artistically complete text. The story acquired a new sound in Chekhov's work and established itself in the "big" literature.

2.2 "Notebooks" - a reflection of objective reality

The genre of a short story in the work of A.P. Chekhov occupies a special place. In order to better understand the creativity and intention of the writer, one needs to look into his sacred place, into his creative laboratory, i.e. refer to Notebooks.

Notebooks give us a broader overview and understanding of how the writer relates to life, they are a book about books that is filled with the most intimate, personal. These are notes to remember.

As an independent genre, notebooks are not accepted by science. This is most likely due to the fact that notebooks are based on the impressions of writers and in many cases resemble a diary that is kept without any specific prerequisites. “In the existing scientific literature, notebooks are referred to as autobiographical writing, pure documentary genres, ego-text or even small prose of writers” [Efimova, 2012: 45]. According to Anna Zaliznyak, everything that a writer writes in one way or another is part of his professional activity, and thus the notebook becomes a “pretext”, a material from which a “text” is then made [Zaliznyak, 2010: 25].

In notebooks, the narrator becomes the chronicler, the one who tells. It's like an artist's workshop, where visitors can enter, it's a kind of creative laboratory, a workshop - imaginative thinking in action. Reading notebooks, we can restore the author's thought, we can see how it changed, how various options, epithets, witticisms were sorted out, how one phrase or word turned into a whole plot.

Chekhov's notebooks cover the last 14 years of his life. The academic collected works of Chekhov are placed in thirty volumes, but only one 17th volume is devoted to the creative workshop of the writer. This volume includes notebooks, letters, diary entries, notes on the backs of manuscripts, and entries on separate sheets.

The surviving notebooks are maintained from 1891 to 1904. A. B. Derman believes that “it is more likely that Chekhov began using notebooks from 1891, from the time of his first trip to Western Europe, until then he relied on memory.” It is impossible to confirm for sure whether Chekhov entered the notes earlier. Some researchers argue that Chekhov began to keep notebooks only from 1891, while others insist that Chekhov turned to notebooks earlier. Here you can refer to the memoirs of the artist K.A. Korovin, who mentioned that the writer used a small book during their trip to Sokolniki in the spring of 1883. and to the memoirs of Gilyarovsky, who said that he often saw Anton Pavlovich writing down something and that the writer advised everyone to do so. Remembering Chekhov's special love for destroying unfinished work, notebooks remain the only observation that allows us to understand the writer's train of thought.

In his first book, researchers call it "creative", the writer brought jokes, witticisms, aphorisms, observations - everything that could be useful for future works. This book covers all the last 14 years of the writer's life. Anton Pavlovich began writing this book in March 1891 before leaving for Italy. Merezhkovsky says:

“During a trip to Italy, Chekhov’s companions enthusiastically admired the old buildings, disappeared into museums, and Chekhov was engaged in trifles, as it seemed to his companions, completely incurious. His attention was attracted by a guide with a special bald head, the voice of a violet saleswoman in St. Mark, the gentleman who cut his beard at the barbershop for an hour, continuous calls on Italian stations. However, the writer did not treat his notebook as a sanctuary - almost from the first pages, business records and cash settlements appear in the book.

The second notebook covers the period from 1892 to 1897. was created, like the third book (1897-1904), more for business records, however, here, everyday records coexist with creative notes.

The fourth book appeared the latest, in which the writer selected all the material that remained unrealized. It is something like a list of future works.

Chekhov also has an address book, a book with prescriptions for patients; a book entitled "Garden", where the names of plants for the Yalta Garden were recorded; business book, business book

"Guardian's" with notes of monetary settlements. He also compiled bibliographic lists - for sending books to the city library of Taganrog; There are also diary entries.

In connection with such an abundance of notebooks, a reasonable question may arise - why did creative notes interfere with business ones in the books? It is assumed that Chekhov constantly carried books 1,2 and 3 with him at different times, and he kept all the other books (gardening, medical) at home and when he came home carefully and in even handwriting transferred non-creative notes from books to places. It also happens with creative entries in books 2 and 3. For example, in May 1901, Chekhov wrote in the third book:

“The gentleman owns a villa near Menton, which he bought with the proceeds from the sale of the estate in the Tula province. I saw how he was in Kharkov, where he came on business, lost this villa at cards, then served on the railway, then died.

From the third book, Chekhov transferred the note to the first, but since this entry was not realized in his work, Chekhov copied it into the 4th book.

Chekhov looks at life like an artist - studies and correlates. The perception of events is characterized by peculiarities of worldview and psyche - records make it possible to see a person or an incident as the writer saw them. The study of vital material begins with the individual - with a random replica, with a characteristic of speech or behavior. The center is the realities of the world, any particular case, any little thing noticed. His main requirement was the requirement of simplicity, that the case be natural, and not invented, so that what is written could actually happen. In his notes, the writer talks about modern life, which has reached a dead end and lost its true meaning, but despite this, he also speaks about the value of life, about its possibilities:

“A person needs only 3 arsh. earth.

Not a person, but a corpse. Man needs the whole globe." He writes about the need for a person to be just a person:

“If you want to become an optimist and understand life, then stop believing what they say and write, but observe for yourself and delve into it.”

Notebooks contain many potential plots from various areas of life: notes were made in them about life on Sakhalin and in the center of Russia, about public and personal life, the life of the intelligentsia and the life of peasants and workers. “The writer took these notes, created by the eye, ear and brain, and expanded them to the limits of a small story, in which, however, the exposition, the setting of the theme, its development and cadence are clearly indicated,” notes Krzhizhanovsky, referring notebooks to the archetype of humoresques, displays the paradigm of Chekhov's genres: notebooks - humoresques - short stories - novels. Along with the genre, the hero grows, and laughter turns into a smile.

Paperny Z.S. wrote that Chekhov's notebooks were not frozen, but alive. are constantly in motion [Paperny, 1976: 210]. And this is true, notebooks are the laboratory of the writer's creativity - the notes are constantly reviewed, corrected, corrected and rewritten. Chekhov entered into his books his observations and reflections on life, any particular case. With their help, you can see how the author's thought has changed.

2.3 Genre specificity of short stories by A.P. Chekhov (on the example of early stories: "Daddy", "Thick and Thin", "Chameleon", "Volodya", "Ariadne")

Anton Pavlovich became the creator of a new type of literature - a short story that absorbs, in terms of depth and completeness of ideological and artistic content, a story and a novel. In this, the writer was helped not only by his ability to notice details, but also by his work in the Moscow Observer - twice a month Anton Pavlovich was obliged to write notes of no more than a hundred lines. Topics varied:

1.The life and customs of Moscow - Chekhov describes the bureau of funeral processions, their arrogance, rudeness and greed, describes the seasonal demand for suitors, the vagaries of nature, cases of poisoning with spoiled provisions, curious, obscene signs:

“To see a dead person in your house is easier than to die yourself. In Moscow, it’s the other way around: it’s easier to die yourself than to see a dead person in your house”;

“Speaking in conscience, suitors should not wag and break. Where there are no marriages, science says, there is no population. This must be remembered. We have not yet inhabited Siberia”;

2.Theatre, arts and entertainment - this includes reports on outstanding performances, characteristics of individual theaters and actors, notes about theater life:

“The end has come for our Pushkin Theater ... and what an end! It was rented out as a cafe-chantant to some St. Petersburg Frenchmen.

3.The theme of the court - this includes curious and sensational cases, for example, “the process of the figurine shown to the police officer” or the court case about an employee of a St. Petersburg magazine who borrowed bills from a monk and refused to give back because monks do not have the right to take and give bills .

4.The theme of literature - here Chekhov writes about cases of plagiarism or fisticuffs of authors with reviewers.

The subject of Chekhov's feuilletons and humorous stories is extensive - already from his first undertakings, short anecdotes and humoresques, he sought to enrich comic situations, psychologically reveal the characters. From the writer's correspondence it is known that he published works until 1880 (stories

“Fatherlessness”, “Found a scythe on a stone”, “It was not for nothing that the chicken sang”), but the stories were not preserved and therefore the countdown is from the Dragonfly magazine, where, under the pseudonym “Young Elder”, a parody “Letter to a learned neighbor” was printed on pseudoscientific article.

Although V.I. Kuleshov and notes that A.P. Chekhov managed to achieve high professionalism in revealing the serious in a small form, it is worth noting that at first Chekhov faced serious difficulties on his way - they were afraid to read Anton Pavlovich, or rather they were even “ashamed” to read because of brevity, because the work could not be read for one night or several evenings. A new time has come - the time of "phrases in a few words," as Mayakovsky wrote. This is the innovation of Chekhov.

As A.B. Esin, “the need of a modern person to find stable reference points in a complex and changing world” [Esin, 2003: 38]. Anton Pavlovich looks at life like an artist. This was his goal - to define life "which is" and life "which should be."

One of his main principles was the requirement to study the whole of Russian life, and not its individual narrow areas. The center is the realities of the world, any particular case, any trifle noticed, but it should be noted that in all the stories and feuilletons the writer does not have a socio-political theme, the only exception is "The Death of an Official".

Chekhov was not associated with any parties, ideologies, he believed that any despotism was criminal. He was not interested in the Marxist doctrine, he did not see the labor movement, he was ironic about the peasant community. All his stories - funny and bitter - are true.

Involuntarily, when making a story, you first of all worry about its framework: from the mass of heroes and half-heroes you take only one person - a wife or husband - you put this face on the background and draw only it, and emphasize it, and scatter the rest around the background, like a small one. a coin it turns out something like the vault of heaven: one big moon and around it a mass of small stars. The moon, on the other hand, fails, because it can only be understood if other stars are also understood, and the stars are not finished. And what comes out is not literature, but something like sewing Trishka's caftan. What to do? I don't know and I don't know. I'll rely on the healing time."

Maxim Gorky said that Chekhov kills realism - elevated to spiritualized meaning. Vladimir Danchenko noted that Chekhov's realism was honed to the point of a symbol, while Grigory Byaly called the realism of the simplest case [Byaly, 1981: 130]. In our opinion, the realism of Anton Pavlovich is the quintessence of real life. In the mosaic of his works, all strata of society at the turn of the late 19th - early 20th centuries are represented, his stories transformed domestic humor and dozens of other writers followed his path.

“When I write, I fully rely on the reader, believing that he himself will add the subjective elements missing in the story.” Chekhov characterized the contemporary reader as sluggish and impassive, therefore he taught the reader to make all allusions himself, to see all literary associations. Every sentence, every phrase, and even more so every word of the writer is in its place. Chekhov is called the master of the short story, his stories are "shorter than a sparrow's nose." Parody, story-sketch, miniature, sketch, essay, anecdote, humoresque, sketch, and finally "little thing" and "mosquitoes and flies" - genres invented by Chekhov himself. The writer repeatedly repeated that he had tried everything except novels and denunciations.

In the prose of Anton Pavlovich there are about 500 stories and novels and more than 8000 characters. Not a single character is repeated, not a single one is parodied. It is always different, without repetition. Only brevity remains unchanged. Even the titles of his works in a compressed form contain the content ("Chameleon" - unscrupulousness, "Death of an official" - emphasizes that an official, not a person).

Despite the fact that the writer uses conditional forms: exaggeration, hyperbolization - they do not violate the impression of plausibility, but rather increase the understanding of real human feelings and relationships.

The writer for the first time portrayed an ordinary person. Chekhov repeatedly told young authors that after writing a story, it is necessary to throw out the beginning and the end from it, because it is there that the novelists lie most of all. Once, one young author asked the writer for advice and Chekhov told him to describe that class of people that you know well, but the young author was offended and complained that it was not interesting to describe workers, there was no interest in it, you need to describe princesses, but princes. The young author left with nothing and Anton Pavlovich never heard from him again.

In 1899, Chekhov advised Gorky to cross out the definitions of nouns and verbs: “It is clear when I write “a man sat on the grass.” On the contrary, it is incomprehensible and hard for the brain if I write:

“A tall, narrow-chested, medium-sized man with a red beard sat down on the green grass, already trampled by pedestrians, sat down, silently, timidly and fearfully looking around.” It does not immediately fit in the brain, and fiction should fit immediately, in a second. Perhaps that is why we believe in the classics so much.

Chekhov lived at the turn of time, at the turn of the centuries. In his little sketch stories, he left a significant and impressive legacy that shows and exposes the whole life of this time. The hero of Chekhov's stories becomes an ordinary inhabitant, with ordinary, daily worries, and the plot is an internal conflict. Starting his activity with humoresques, Chekhov put something more into them, he exposed the narrow-minded vulgarity, "search". Truth and objectivity were its main principles.

So, for example, in the "Gooseberry" Nikolai Ivanovich's obsession is described. All his life he lived for the sake of this idea and even married the hero only for the sake of profit, but when he reached his goal, it turned out that there was nothing more to live for, and he "aged, put on weight, flabby." However, along with this, one can see not only an obsession, but also a great desire for one's goal, for one's idea. Instincts mixed with feelings.

Unlike Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Saltykov-Shchedrin, the writer did not consider himself entitled to act as an accuser or a moralist. In Chekhov it is impossible to meet straightforward characteristics. L.N. Tolstoy compared Chekhov's style with the Impressionists - as if he was waving paints indiscriminately, but it turns out whole. Such details play an important role in the writer's artistic workshop - the world is presented in its entirety, in all its diversity. The action unfolds against the background of details - smells, sounds, colors - all this is compared with the characters, with their quests, dreams.

Chekhov considered the ideal of a moral, thinking, integral, multifaceted, seeking, developed person. And he showed how far a person is from this ideal.

Chekhov shows a comedy of manners in a society where a person is completely enslaved by fetishes: capital, rank, position. Chekhov embodied his author's position in the organization of artistic space. Before readers there is a picture of life where it is difficult to draw the line between slavery and despotism, where there is no friendship, love, family ties, there are only relationships that correspond to the hierarchy. The writer appears before us not as a teacher, but as an artisan, a worker who knows his job well, he becomes a writer of everyday life, a witness to life, he teaches us to think, to pay attention to minor details. Preference is given to simple sentences. Many entries are presented in the form of aphorisms, replacing extensive reasoning. The perception of events is characterized by features of the worldview and psyche - stories make it possible to see a person or an incident as the writer saw them - objectively.

In order to show the features of Chekhov's short story genre, one can refer to such stories as: "Daddy", "Thick and Thin", "Chameleon", "Volodya", "Ariadne".

One of the first stories is the story "Daddy", published in 1880 in the magazine "Dragonfly". Chekhov shows the image of a teacher - weak-willed, weak-willed, unprincipled. The teacher knows that the boy is not studying and has a lot of bad grades, but still agrees to change the grade on the condition that other teachers also change grades. The teacher thinks that this is a brilliant solution. This is how the theme of education appears in Chekhov's stories. The writer focuses on the contradiction - knowledge of education and the real state of affairs.

Contradiction between the role of the teacher and his incarnation. Along with this theme comes the cross-cutting theme of indifference. Anton Pavlovich was not satisfied with the fact that the school brought up fear, enmity, disunity, indifference.

The story "Thick and Thin" was written in 1883, published in the humorous magazine "Shards". Signed "A. Chekhonte". The story is only one printed page. What can be said in such a small volume? No not like this. What can be told on one page so that it leaves a mark and that not only contemporaries, but also future generations return to it? How to implement it?

“Two friends met at the station of the Nikolaev railway: one is fat, the other is thin” -This is the beginning of the story. The very first sentence, which already says a lot.

The story begins immediately with action, without unnecessary lyrics. And this sentence says everything that could be conveyed: the place, the situation, the characters. In this story, we will not find descriptions of the appearance of the heroes, however, we recognize the portraits of the heroes, their character very well. So, for example, Tolstoy is a fairly wealthy citizen, important and contented with life.

“The fat one had just dined at the station, and his lips, covered with oil, were shiny like ripe cherries. He smelled of sherry and orange blossom.

The fourth sentence introduces us to another main character - Thin. Events unfold very quickly and incrementally. We already know not only about the character of the characters, but also about how their lives turned out, although this is only the sixth sentence of the story. So we learn that Thin has a wife and a child, that they are not very rich - they carry their own things, they don’t even have money for a porter.

“Behind him, a thin woman with a long chin peeked out - his wife, and a tall schoolboy with a narrowed eye - his son.”short story prose writer fiction

The further narration of the story is built in the form of a dialogue. It would seem that here it is necessary to pay attention to the very conversation of the characters, but it is worth paying attention to the artistic construction of the text. So, the sentences that refer to Tolstoy are short, there are many diminutive suffixes, the speech itself is colloquial; the sentences that refer to Thin are simple, not loaded with anything, there are no epithets, the frequent use of verbs, these are mostly short exclamatory sentences. The denouement comes almost simultaneously with the climax, when the action is brought to the point of absurdity. A fatal phrase is uttered that puts everything in its place. Tolstoy says that he "reached the ranks of the secret" and it is this phrase that changes the friendly atmosphere, changes the vector of relations. Thin can no longer call his friend, since he called him just a couple of seconds ago, now he is not just a friend, but "your excellency." And it is so noticeable, so cloying that "the Privy Councilor vomited."

The tragicomic meaning of this story is that Thin considers the first part of their meeting a reprehensible misunderstanding, and the end of the meeting, unnatural from a human point of view, normal and natural.

This story is interesting, vital, sharp, topical. It turns out this way not only because of the theme (vices, servility, exposing sycophancy are ridiculed), but also because of the construction. Each proposal is verified and is strictly in its place. Everything plays a role here: the construction of sentences, the depiction of the image of heroes, details, surnames - all this together shows us a picture of the whole world. The text works for itself. The author's position is hidden, not emphasized.

“Everything is the same for Chekhov - what is a man, what is his shadow, what is a bell, what is a suicide ... they strangled a man, they drink champagne,” wrote N.K. Mikhailovsky about the author's position of Chekhov [Mikhailovsky, 1900: 122]. But the fact is that Chekhov is a writer of everyday life and this lack of interest is only an illusion. Anton Pavlovich writes only about what could actually happen, he writes objectively and because of this is strong and impressive. He is not a judge, he is an impartial and objective witness, and the reader adds everything subjective himself. The characters are revealed in the action itself, without unnecessary prefaces. Perhaps that is why S.N. Bulgakov comes up with a Latin term to define Chekhov's worldview - optimism - a call for an active fight against evil, and a firm belief in the coming victory of good [Bulgakov, 1991].

The story "Chameleon" was written in 1884, published in the humorous magazine "Shards". Signed "A. Chekhonte". Just like the story "Thick and Thin" is short, concise and capacious. Written based on real events. The story shows ordinary, ordinary people. The title is speaking. It is based on the idea of ​​chameleonism, which unfolds in a metaphorical sense. Those. like a lizard that changes its color, a person who changes his views depending on the situation. Ochumelov, as well as Khryakin and the crowd, changes so quickly that the reader can hardly keep up with the train of thought. The essence of Ochumelov's transformations is from a slave to a despot and vice versa. There is no positive hero, the author's position is hidden. Adaptation is ridiculed, the desire to judge not according to the law, but according to the rank. The symbol of duality. It is important for the writer to show the relativity of opinion, its relationship and dependence on the situation.

The story "Volodya" was first published in 1887 in the Petersburg newspaper. The story describes the suicide of a high school student, corrupted by a mature, idle woman. Anton Pavlovich resorts to comparing two realities: the real, dirty, vulgar and imaginary Volodya. The author's position is hidden, revealed gradually. The task of the researcher is to find, understand and reveal it.

The theme of love is also revealed in the story "Ariadne", written in 1895. The story is written in the form of a confession and discussions about the upbringing of women, marriage, love, and beauty. Shamokhin's story-monologue about the love of a beautiful and young girl, about her world of feelings, thoughts, actions. The heroine of a story within a story. The name of the heroine is Greek, meaning - the thread of life. The name is given contrary to the character of the heroine and contrasts with the inner essence of the image. Love can create and create, or it can destroy. Chekhov penetrates deeply into the psychology of love. Shamokhin is a romantic and idealist, the son of a poor landowner, perceived life in iridescent colors, considered love

a great blessing, a high state of mind. Shamokhin's story is the result of a great life shock, a story about love ruined by vulgarity. Love is conquered by mankind in the process of its historical development. Shamokhin argues that for thousands of years the human genius, who fought with nature, also fought with physiology, carnal love as an enemy. Aversion to animal instinct has been brought up for centuries, and the fact that we now poeticize love is also natural that we are not covered with wool. Complete equality between men and women.

The comic in Chekhov's works lies not in comic scenes or replicas, but in the fact that his characters do not know where the truth is, what it is. Lev Shestov notes that for almost twenty-five years Chekhov did nothing but kill hopes, V.B. Kataev says that "not hopes, but illusions." Chekhov's heroes seem to be playing a circus reprise, each of which has its own truth, but the reader sees that none of the heroes knows the truth, the heroes do not listen and do not hear each other - this is Chekhov's comedy. Psychological deafness. The stories are short but fold like novels.

Chekhov uses a special form of composition: there are no extensive introductions, no backstories of the characters, the reader immediately finds himself in the thick of things, in the middle of the plot, and there is no motivation for the characters' actions. What the author leaves out of the text is felt by the reader as implied. A.P. Chudakov called this approach "mimic": it is not important to describe the state of mind of the characters, it is important to indicate the detail, to describe the action. Things are not in contrast to the world, but in contrast to the hero.

Gorky wrote about Chekhov's stories: "Hating everything vulgar and dirty, he described the abominations of life in the noble language of a poet, with a soft smile of a humorist, and their inner meaning full of bitter reproach is hardly noticeable behind the beautiful appearance of his stories."

Although Chekhov did not say a word about God, but leaving his book in your soul you take away beauty and tenderness. Perhaps this is the tragedy of Chekhov's heroes - no one has come to spiritual harmony. However, Chekhov himself was accused of this. Merezhkovsky believed that the writer "forgotten by Christ." Anton Pavlovich was not a religious writer, because in Christianity he accepted only morality, ethics, and rejected everything else as superstition. Chekhov called “religion” the religion of death, and in this Merezhkovsky finds similarities with A.M. Gorky - in their attitude to religion. “They wanted to show that a man without God is God, but they showed that he is a beast, worse than a beast is cattle, worse than cattle is a corpse, worse than a corpse is nothing.”

However, there are researchers who do not agree with this opinion, Alexander Izmailov notes that Chekhov was never tormented by the idea of ​​God, but he was not indifferent to it either: “The non-believer Chekhov dreamed of a miracle, as sometimes other believers do not dream.” Chekhov believes in his own way, and his heroes also believe in their own way. All the writer's work is imbued with love and sympathy for a person, the reader joins morality and his soul is cleansed.

According to Bitsilli, the warm and even light of everyday Russian Orthodoxy emanates from Chekhov's works. The most important issues in the work of Anton Pavlovich are questions about death, the meaning of life, the norm, morality and value orientations, power and servility, fear, the absurdity of existence ... and how this should be overcome. All this can be characterized more succinctly - the meaning of being. Usually, next to the eventful serious, the writer side by side with the petty and random, which enhances the effect of curiosity and helps to more clearly see the tragedy of the hero.

From the stories considered, we can conclude that the existence of Chekhov's heroes is materialistic. The chosen genre of short stories allows Chekhov to create a large canvas of his time - he describes small stories in which all private life is shown. Chekhov's hero is an ordinary person, an "average" person involved in everyday life and perceiving it as a norm and a given, who does not seek to stand out from the background of the majority. A person who avoids the reputation of an elected personality, the only exception is those heroes who are mentally unhealthy (Kovrin - "Black Monk" - a man with megalomania).

Summing up, we can highlight the distinctive features of the Chekhov short story genre:

· Conciseness - there is no need to describe the poverty of the petitioner, it is enough just to say that she was in a red talma;

· Capacity - the final must be open;

· Brevity and accuracy - the works are most often based on anecdotes;

· Features of the composition - the story must begin from the middle, throw away the beginning and end;

· Rapid development of the plot;

· Objectivity in relation to the characters;

· Psychologism - you need to write only about what you know well.

A large-scale plan is the principle of Chekhov's hidden psychologism, the implementation of the ideas of the "undercurrent", the disclosure of the most complex world problems. Not mythology, but ordinary life with its philistine dramas was so accurately described by the writer. It was always not enough for Chekhov to simply describe life, he wanted to remake it, the writer in his stories showed the awakening of truth over lies and its triumph. Naturally, the appearance of the truth sometimes destroys a person.

The extraordinary friendship between Gorky and Chekhov is widely known in its own way. No connoisseur of the books of the masters of Russian literature can do without getting to know these writers. A vivid visual talent allowed M. Gorky to create significant works not only in large, but also in small form, and therefore, within the framework of our study, it is impossible to ignore the features of the short story genre in the work of M. Gorky.

CHAPTER 3. FEATURES OF THE GENRE OF A SHORT STORY IN THE WORKS OF M. GORKY

“Bitter as a forest,” writes Yuri Trifonov, there is an animal, a bird, berries, and mushrooms. And we bring only mushrooms from the forest” [Trifonov, 1968: 16]. The bitter image is versatile, has not yet been fully explored and has not yet been truly read. Gleb Struve believes that international bitter studies should take the gloss off the writer's face. Make it real. The writer's entire work has not been published. This confirms the fact that in the vaults (both in Russia and in the West) there are many letters that have not yet become the property of researchers, and we do not yet have a complete and scientific biography of the writer. There is a serious and urgent task to discover a new Gorky, to rethink his attitude to all the phenomena of life: social, educational, literary and humanistic (it is known that the writer raised the international community to fight the natural disaster that broke out in 1921). In Russian literature there were many humanists Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, Tolstoy.

So what is Gorky really? The creative path begins with the publication of the story "Makar Chudra" in 1892 under the pseudonym M. Gorky (Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov). In 1895, "Old Woman Izergil" was published. Critics immediately noticed the new name. The pseudonym reflects the writer's childhood experiences. Born in 1868, he lost his father early, was brought up by his maternal grandfather, became an orphan at the age of 11 and began to work. In 1886, the Kazan period begins, he gets a job at a bakery, gets acquainted with Marxist ideas. In 1888 he went on his first trip around his homeland, after he stopped in Nizhny Novgorod, where he worked as a clerk, in 1891 he went on a second trip. The experience of wandering is reflected in the cycle "Across Russia". At the beginning of the century, the first plays "Petty bourgeois", "At the Bottom", "Children of the Sun" were created. In 1905, an acquaintance with Lenin takes place. In 1906, the first emigration - to the United States, and then to Capri. In exile he met A.A. Bogdanov, A.V. Lunacharsky - together they open a school in Capri, where Gorky holds readings on the history of Russian literature. The main task was to combine god-building with revolutionary ideas, which was reflected in the story "Confession". Materials for creativity have always been drawn from pre-revolutionary reality. Gorky does not write about life after the revolution or about foreign countries. The revolution of 1917 was accepted by the writer ambiguously - he was afraid of distorting the ideals of the revolution, believing that the peasantry was a frozen mass. After that, he comes to the conclusion that the revolution is destruction. In 1921 the second emigration.

According to the memoirs of V. Khodasevich, he was a very kind and open person, in whose house there were always many friends, but there were even more unfamiliar or completely unfamiliar people - everyone came to him with requests. Gorky helped in any way he could. This was before emigration, so it is difficult to reconcile the words of the 1930s with such an idea: “if the enemy does not surrender, he is destroyed” - how can this be explained? Gorky is controversial. Such contradictions exist in the work of the writer and artist. One of the main contradictions is the inability to combine the idea and real life. Also, Gorky's contradiction is the irreducibility to any one idea, even Dostoevsky drew attention to this Russian feature, a certain resonance, the imposition of impressions. However, this turn of his personal biography had almost no effect on his creative biography (here speeches or journalistic articles are not considered). In his artistic work, Gorky practically did not refer to this time. Political views and should not leave an imprint on creativity, so, for example, in the prose of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov there is no socio-political theme. The task of discovering a new Gorky is gaining more and more urgency.

3.1 Social and philosophical position of the writer

Work with Gorky's texts suggests the perspective of the study of literary facts of the 20th century. Starting with the development of history as a subject of study, he went to comprehend history in himself, therefore it is not accidental that in the last years of his life the writer acted not only as an author, but also as a historian, it is also not accidental that he was the first to fall in love with a book was "The Tradition of How the Soldier Saved Peter."

Gorky always felt himself in the service of mankind, and already in 1880 the writer was faced with a question that he would address for the rest of his life: history is made up of the action of an individual, how does the “struggle for happiness” correlate with love for humanity. "Walking among the people" and numerous wanderings in Russia convince the writer that the people are not quite the same as they are portrayed. He sees dark people who have been driven into slavery, but he also sees a few who are drawn to enlightenment.

In the early years of the 20th century, the writer departed from populism and moved closer to Marxism, but this does not mean that Gorky's historical consciousness became politicized. “I am not a Marxist and I will not be,” writes the writer A.M. Skabichevsky.

In 1910, Gorky refers to the term "nation", which is due to the rethinking of values ​​after the first Russian revolution. The writer still believes in the new man as the creator of a new story.

The writer's program in the journal "Literary Studies" is of great interest - the journal was a platform on which this canon was tested even before the very appearance of "socialist realism". Here Gorky's article "On Sociological Realism" first appeared [Gorky, 1933: 11]. The magazine encouraged aspiring writers to seriously study writing. The ideal literature is "pure" literature, without any impurities, philosophical views and beliefs. In such literature, the writer should write only about what he is well versed in. Literature must be clear and true.

Gorky is repelled by examples of realism of the 19th century. - clarity and simplicity are the main criteria of true art. The story requires clarity, liveliness, and not the far-fetchedness of the characters, but if the writer does not write simply enough, it means that he himself is not well versed in this. Simplicity is a taboo on the specific configuration of words and the uncertainty of meanings hidden behind it, unacceptable for socialist realism. Young authors need to be taught perseverance, love for art should not be taught, it must be achieved.

In the article “The Destruction of the Personality,” Gorky criticizes writers for whom art is “higher than the fate of the motherland”: “It is difficult to imagine that such art is possible.” Gorky thinks so because he does not believe that somewhere there is a person who would not gravitate towards any social group.

The formation of Gorky's social position is a complex and contradictory process. The concept of a populist heroic personality was replaced by the recognition of the masses of the people, and then completely changed to the idea of ​​a “god-folk” [Lunacharsky, 1908: 58]. The attitude towards the intelligentsia also changed, at one time he considered it a “draft horse” of progress, at another he crushed it to an “enemy of the people”. The writer turned his attention to the problem of faith, reason, individual and collective. Taken together, all this is the basis of the public consciousness of the writer.

3.2 Architectonics and artistic conflict of Gorky's short stories

The study of the ideological-philosophical, aesthetic basis of the means of poetic expressiveness of short stories seems to be relevant due to the fact that through these stories the vision of M. Gorky's spiritual drama, and understanding of the evolutionary logic of creativity, and the general cultural and historical context of the development of civilization are revealed.

Gorky's inconsistency is due to the fact that two people lived in the writer, as it were: one is an artist, and the other is just a private person, with his doubts, joys and mistakes. The artist, unlike the person, was not mistaken. Unlike Tolstoy, who portrayed the plasticity of character, Gorky portrayed the ambiguity of a person, whose paradox is that, being capable of the highest deeds, he is also capable of low ones. The inconsistency of the human character, the complexity of a person, "human diversity" - a principle inherent in Gorky's work.

Most often, the characters come into conflict with the writer, as if they come to life and act on their own or even dictate their own, possibly opposite, will to the author, utter the truth. Gorky has repeatedly said that a writer should pay attention to every event, even if it seems small and insignificant - this phenomenon can be a fragment of the old world or a sprout of a new one. It is necessary to write in such a way, according to Gorky, that the writer sees what the author writes about, and this, again, can be achieved only when the writer himself knows what he is depicting. A.P. also spoke about this more than once. Chekhov.

The "mastery" of the writer becomes one level with the act of cognition. Clearly and clearly, according to Gorky, means devoid of semantic interpretations. So, for example, one novice writer sent Gorky a manuscript of his story, in which there was a line:

“It has been drizzling since morning. In the sky - autumn, in the face of Grishka - spring.

The anger and sarcasm with which the writer responded to the young author can be quite understood and explained, the young author tried to “make” the text, and as a result there is a complete confusion. For this reason, social realism requires psychologism - descriptions of a person's character must go along with a story about the motives of his behavior. The person must be visible and tangible for the reader, the characters must act in accordance with their experience and character, not far-fetched, there is no need to "pull out the facts."

Style is a contrasting structure of a phrase that does not look like the generally accepted one. Style lies in the order of words, in the repetition of words, in the repetition of thought. The writer must convey clear impressions.

Realism was born along with photography and attracts not because it accurately describes life, but because it is difficult to write in this genre. The plot in realism is overcoming the event of enslavement by some difficulty. Heroes go through such trials that 19th-century fiction writers could not even imagine. Realism is an attempt to deceive people with the veracity of the image, but all this art and fantasy cannot be ruled out, however, romanticism generally passed everything off as fantasy.

In the early 20s, M. Gorky wrote a number of stories (“The Hermit”,

"Explorer", "Karamora" and others), creates a series of literary portraits. Gorky's life was very rich in meetings with various interesting people, and the writer decided to capture their features in small essays. His literary portraits form a whole art gallery. The reader meets in it with outstanding figures of the revolution: V. I. Lenin, L. B. Krasin, I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov; Sciences: I. P. Pavlov; art: L. A. Sulerzhitsky - and many others. Most of all in this gallery of writers' portraits: V. G. Korolenko, N. E. Karonin-Petropavlovsky, N. G. Garin-Mikhailovsky, L. N. Andreev.

The canon of the short story genre in Gorky is made up of such concepts as: the requirement of real motivations, psychologism, the presence of a common thought. The story should be true, not plausible, for example, it is difficult to imagine workers who will ridicule a comrade for a dirty uniform or if suddenly a worker turns out to be too sentimental. Socialist realism cannot do without character. A historical event must be described from the correct sources, it is not worth interrogating eyewitnesses, the specifics must be replaced by abstract judgments, from which it will not be possible to accurately understand whether this is fiction or truth. Gorky allows common speech in literature only when the author has a phrase that, with its unusualness, immediately rivets the reader to the story, but there is a caveat - it is better to start stories with a description, you should not start stories with unusual speech. So it is better for the worker to say "rat". Total comprehensibility of the text.

In Gorky's "romantic" stories, descriptions of nature and weather require the reader's close attention. The sun is equated with the heart. Clear weather and the sun are the desired ideal in everyday life. Gorky's minimalism in relation to nature worried artists who tried to interpret the writer with the help of other art forms.

Gorky refuses a detailed description. Early Soviet literature sympathized with symbolist literature. Such texts made it possible to include mythopoetics, religious topics. With the approval of the new system, the need for a complex symbolist cover disappeared and the symbol began to work in the likeness of a reflex, in which "storm" means "revolution".

Gorky says that Russian literature is the most pessimistic in the world. The writer studies life and sees a life that is not being, it is petty, gloomy and terrible. Need to "elevate life"? But then it turns out that you are teaching life, and this contradicts Gorky, life must be understood, not taught. Also, many reproach Gorky for being fragmentary. But fragmentation is an external impression. The author must be able to convey fragments of the purely external history of the era, to make a direct connection with the course of the general spiritual development of the people and his own development as an artist and citizen. Fragmentation is the state when the continuity of the presentation is broken and it is difficult for the reader to make a connection between the episodes. Realism becomes the connection of the hero with the outside world.

In the second half of the 19th century, Chekhov said that “it is impossible to live like this,” but he thought that any changes would occur only after 200 or 300 years. Gorky, in the 20th century, exacerbates the Chekhov problem and displays the image of a tramp hero. The reader discovers new heroes, new characters, and the reader is amazed that a man from the people turns out to be the bearer of morality, he has a strong thirst for freedom and lack of fear. The opinions of critics on this score were divided: some believed that the writer was wasting his talent, while others believed that the subject of the image was distorted. That is why Merezhkovsky speaks of the anti-Christian position of Gorky and Chekhov:

“They wanted to show that a man without God is God, but they showed that he is a beast, worse than a beast is cattle, worse than cattle is a corpse, worse than a corpse is nothing.” But both can be disputed. The writer shows the extraordinary in an ordinary person. Gorky, like Chekhov, has a wide scope of life, he describes a large panorama, a mosaic. His work is characterized by a cinematographic vision of life. “Probably, I saw and experienced more than I should have, hence the haste, carelessness of my work,” the writer himself notes. His characters do not seem to be running from need, but on the contrary, they themselves climb on the rampage, although they are looking for freedom. The idea of ​​the author does not merge with observations, but is prepared by the hero.

In Gorky's early work, historical plots are projected onto the present, which is a stage in the process of the development of the world. There is a confrontation between the hero and reality. This is the old gypsy Makar Chudra. In the story of the same name, from the very beginning, the infinity of the steppe and the sea is revealed to us, this is followed by the logical question about the freedom of man: “Does he know the will?” It was in such a landscape - mysterious and nocturnal - that such a question could arise. The hero is in the center of the story and gets the maximum opportunity for development. Heroes have the right to express their opinion, the hero carries within himself the desire for freedom. There is also an unresolvable contradiction that can only be resolved by death, which seems completely natural to the Wonder. The hero is sure that love and pride cannot be reconciled and a compromise is not possible. A romantic cannot compromise on either. Telling the legends of his people, Chudra expresses the idea of ​​his system of values. Throughout the story, the author persistently used the word "will", only once replacing "freedom". In Dahl's dictionary will - is an arbitrariness of action, and freedom means being able to do things your way. Thus, ordinary people turn out to be the arbiters of destinies. The connection of times is interpreted with the help of the problem of freedom and happiness, from the point of view of morality and relationships in the team. Gorky wrote that a person remains a person “in order to”, and not “because”. This problem tormented the writer throughout his work. Coming to literature with the conviction that a person is great, that his creativity and happiness are the highest values ​​on earth, the writer was faced with the fact that he could not prove it. In the fairy tale of 1893 "About Chizh, who lied, and about the Woodpecker, the lover of truth", Chizh, inspiring birds with the ghost of a beautiful land, calls to the ideal. But facts and logic refute Chizh's ideas, and Woodpecker's position is logically justified. Chizh is forced to admit that he lied and does not know what is beyond the grove, but believing is so wonderful, and the woodpecker may be right, why do we need such a truth that “falls like a stone on the wings?” This contradiction can be traced along the entire path of the writer's work. Thus, Gorky, on the one hand, admits his intention to embellish the life of both people and their characters, and on the other hand, he also admits that the characters of Russian people are incredibly complex and fabulously rich, that he lacks colors, not only to embellish, and even capture. That is why at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. in the writer's work, the language of the new logic of humanism was only beginning to take shape, where Man would be taken as the starting point, Gorky had not yet written openly and therefore created a fictional world of legends, where heroes live and act from themselves, determined by their own will, and not by the will of circumstances. But gradually the new attitude enters into a dispute with the logic of things.

The big step is to define the plot as the story of the character shown in the event system. The focus is on the characters of strong people who are able to control not only their own fate, but also someone else's. A bridge is being thrown between the concepts of "truth" and "human". For example, the story "On the rafts." The story was written in 1895, published in the Samara newspaper. The tangled relationships of the main characters reflect a love triangle, but at the same time, the systems of everyday ties in a peasant family - the measure of values ​​was not the category “morally - not morally”, but participation in hard and common work. The main characters are Silan, strong as an anvil, Marya with a blush all over her cheek, in contrast to them, Mitry is shown - stunted and frail. The owner, Sergei, as well as Silan, treat Mitriy as a worker who is useless in the household. There is no social conflict in the story, the problem of "sin" is at the center. For Mitrius the law is in the soul, but for Silanus it is in the flesh. However, Silan is subject to both remorse and doubt, he asserts the right to happiness and comes to the conclusion: "Man is the truth!" Behind this statement is that the truth does not have an independent existence, it relies on something and therefore the truth is on the side of Silan. “Only man exists, everything else is the work of his hands and his brain” (Satin). The basis of truth, according to Gorky, is a person. It turns out that a person must define himself. In this story, Gorky debunks the sentimental image of a humble peasant, reveals the problem of self-consciousness among the people. There is a need for a new type of being.

Narrating the times of "strong" people, Gorky tries to know his time. The historical motifs of early works served as a form for expressing the romantic ideal, the dream of a free and strong personality. He designated moral and moral problems on this material, the heroes of these stories live according to the laws of individuality. They think about the right of the strong, about selfishness and the ability to sacrifice oneself. Such stories include « The Tale of Earl Ethelwood de Comignes and the Monk Tom Asher" and "The Return of the Normans from England" - the stories serve as an occasion for reflection on the right of the strong, on cruelty, on the morality of the weak. These plots served to find a new hero, to determine his character and position in life.

In the works of Gorky in the 1900s, the figure of the hero, who is closely connected with reality, is already coming to the fore. It is worth noting the story "Konovalov". The story begins with a note in the newspaper about the suicide due to the melancholy of Alexander Ivanovich Konovalov. "Why do I live on earth"? The author of the story is trying to understand the origins of this melancholy of this tramp, because he is well built and knows how to work, but he feels unnecessary, he blames only himself for all his troubles and failures: “Who is to blame that I drink? Pavelka, my brother, does not drink - he has his own bakery in Perm. And here I work better than him - however, a tramp and a drunkard, and I no longer have either a title or a thing .... But we are children of the same mother! He is even younger than me. It turns out that something is wrong with me.” [Gorky 1950:21]. He embodies the features of the Russian people, and in his portrait the resemblance to a hero is emphasized: big, with light blond hair, a powerful figure, with large blue eyes. This is almost the first realistic image of a working man. “He is a sad victim of conditions, a creature, by nature, with all equal rights and a long series of historical injustices, reduced to the degree of social zero” [Gorky 1950: 20]. The historical figure of Stepan Razin becomes a "foothold" for the hero and is a key detail of the story. Stepan Razin is not so much a historical figure as the personification of freedom, the people's dream of freedom. What was important to Gorky was not the historical fidelity of the details, but the very idea of ​​Konovalov's "freedom of the falcon" and "thoughtful tramp". As we have already said, M. Gorky endows his hero with the ability to introspect. Analyzing his life, the hero “singled himself out of life into the category of people who are not needed for it and therefore subject to eradication” [Gorky 1950: 21]. Konovalov agrees that every vagabond and tramp is prone to deceit, exaggeration and writing various unprecedented stories and explains this by the fact that it is easier to live this way. If a person did not have anything good in his life, and he came up with some interesting, entertaining story and tells it like a true story, then he will not harm anyone.

The climax is the description of the Kazan bakery, where Peshkov worked in a deep half-damp basement as a baker's assistant. Reading the monograph prompts the tramp baker to be reborn. “Every person is his own master,” says Konovalov, refuting the Marxist thesis about the dependence of man on the environment. Under the influence of Gorky, the workers soon went on strike. Turning to a historical figure allowed Gorky to pose the problem of destruction and creation in the reorganization of life.

Summing up the results of the first Russian revolution, Gorky returns to the problems of destroying the personality, the problems of nihilism and anarchism, to the question of the man of the future. These questions are raised in the "Russian Fairy Tales" of 1912-1917. One of the main characters is Ivanych, a Russian liberal intellectual. Gorky recreates social life, talks about Stolypin's "pacification", about military field courts. In this situation, the “wisest inhabitants” are trying to create a new person: “they spit on the ground and stir, they immediately got dirty up to their ears in the mud, but the results

Thin ones." The new man becomes either a grated merchant who sells the fatherland piece by piece, or a bureaucrat. Gorky, on the other hand, ironically tries to fashion a new person: "No matter how much you spit, nothing will come of it." In "Russian Tales" the image of History repeatedly appears - a book from which you can pull evidence for any lie. In the sixth tale, Egor's lackey, on the orders of the master, obediently brings facts to prove that the people want freedom. But, when the peasants offer the master to get off the ground, the master calls in the troops to pacify.

The theme of popular retribution is also raised in the story "The Town". The calm tone of the narration contrasts with the reality depicted. The bald hills are in fact the graves of the Razintsy. Pacifying the rebels, Dolgoruky savagely cracked down on the people. The inventory with which people were tormented is still kept in the city, it was left for memory so that the people would no longer rebel. The storytelling is multifaceted. Gorky's memoirs of life in exile in 1902 create a backdrop against which a picture of a calm county life unfolds. In the town, mothers maim their children out of boredom and anger. “Why do we need this city?”, - the writer argues. The first plan of the story is real life impressions about the meaning of being. The second plan is created with the help of a historical perspective - the connection of times connects Razin's peasants with Pugachev's. Gorky talks about the nature of the protest and is indignant at seeing how the people fall to their knees.

The theme of marginality is one of the main ones in the literature of the twenties. In this literature there were many heroes whose destinies were tragically cut short or broken, thanks to people belonging to the highest echelons of power of the same totalitarian warehouse: strong-willed, cruel, pragmatic, conceited, “who built a new social system in an extremely short time, feverishly sought to imprint their names on its facade” [Chudakova 1988:252].

It is not surprising that the heroes of the works of the 1920s are people with a marginal consciousness. Let us turn to one of these characters in M. Gorky's story "Karamor". One of the most "painful points" of late M. Gorky's reflections is the consciousness and freedom of yesterday's slaves. He wanted to understand how the mass man realizes himself in the force field of the non-religious ideas of the century - Nietzsche, Marxist - and how he acts, either guided by them, or obeying them, or indifferently turning into their tool. M. Gorky thought about how new ideas influenced the "psyche of the Russian primitive man", whose sense of social justice is not supported by spirituality and rationality.

There were many such among the "social affairs masters." Being diligent students of revolutionary theorists, they seriously believed that the truth was in their hands, and recklessly, without understanding the means, rushed to spread it. Among them, a marginal person turned out to be especially interesting for M. Gorky, because he always liked those who were adapted for rebellion and mischief, and crime.

Gradually, he singles out those who become criminals out of a desire to be a hero and those who go to crime, testing an idea. It is hardly possible to separate these motives, since they arise in the subconscious, feed on instincts and mature in such labyrinths of the spiritual wasteland, where logical tools do not work. But M. Gorky could not retreat before difficult material. This is how the story "Karamora" appeared, marked by the overcoming of previous illusions: revolutionary romanticism, idealization of primitive consciousness, admiration for a strong personality.

Gorky was tormented all his life by the thought of the price of historical progress. Alienated and not alienated hero from historical time - two magnets created by Gorky. On the one hand, there are heroes who could not accept their time, and on the other hand, they are capable of internal development, interaction with the era. The humanistic concept that underlay his work in the 1930s is undergoing changes.

In 1932, the critic M. Holgin writes that Gorky is one of the most humane writers, despite the fact that the harsh era of wars deprived him of social romanticism. The world changed painfully. The fact is that calling for revolution all his life, he saw it only in a romantic halo and did not recognize it when faced with violence and was afraid that this could lead to war with his own people. He sincerely believed in the achievements of social realism, which he spoke about.

Summing up the consideration of the genre of short stories in the work of M. Gorky, we can draw the following conclusions.

The contradictions of Russian reality left an imprint on the worldview and worldview of M. Gorky, the formation of views continued under the influence of Russian and European philosophical thought of the era, which were transformed in the mind of the writer into his own ideas about the essence of man and historical time, which left an imprint on the manner of narration of prose texts. M. Gorky, continuing the traditions of his predecessors, not only consolidated the principle of romanticizing the novelistic genre, but sought to expand the options and mechanisms of this process, achieving a significant effect by complicating the structure of the story - strengthening the dramatic beginning in it through the objectified image of the narrator, reserving the right of subjective copyright storytelling.

CONCLUSION

Thus, the study made it possible to draw the following conclusions:

The genre of the story has its roots in folklore, it began with the oral retelling of stories in the form of a parable. In written literature, it separated into an independent genre in the 17th - 18th centuries, and the period of its development falls on the 19th - 20th centuries. - the story comes to replace the novel, writers appear who work mainly in the genre of the story. The modern literary period is characterized by a significant complication of the genre structure of works. Having arisen at a certain time and being conditioned by its aesthetic guidelines, the genre is corrected by the settings of the current cultural and historical era, and the genre is re-accentuated.

A short story is a text related to a small form of epic prose, which has a small number of characters, tells about one or more events from a person's life, suggests the correlation of actions with the chronotope, and has the sign of an eventfulness.

In our study, the short story genre was considered in the work of Russian writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. A.P. Chekhov and M. Gorky.

Chekhov's unique creative biography has long attracted the attention of scientists. Already Chekhov's contemporaries, and later researchers of his early work, noted the compositional thoughtfulness of his humorous stories. The most striking feature of the poetics of Chekhov's early period was humor and irony, which were born not only from the needs of readers and publishers, but also from the very nature of the writer. It was found that the fundamental principles of Chekhov's poetics, which he repeatedly declared, were objectivity, brevity, and simplicity.

In the stories about the little man: "Fat and Thin", "The Death of an Official", "Chameleon", etc. - Chekhov portrays his heroes as people who do not inspire any sympathy. They are distinguished by a slave psychology: cowardice, passivity, lack of protest. Their most important property is chivalry. The stories are very skillfully constructed. The story "Thick and Thin" is built on the contrast of two recognitions. "Chameleon" - on a dynamic change of behavior and intonation by the quarter warden Ochumelov, depending on who owns the little dog that bit Khryukin: a common man or General Zhigalov. It is based on the idea of ​​chameleonism, which unfolds in a metaphorical sense. Methods of zoomorphism and anthropomorphism: endowing people with "animal" qualities and "humanization" of animals.

It can be said that in his early texts Chekhov combined the features of different genres of short prose to create an artistically complete text. The story acquired a new sound in Chekhov's work and established itself in the "big" literature.

The model of Gorky's world in the story capaciously covers the multidimensionality of life. In it, one single episode is capable of capturing the emerging contradictions of reality, depicting an episode of epochal significance. And therefore, the story of M. Gorky, gaining strength during the break of epochs, when ideological and artistic stereotypes are rejected or destroyed, is able to show the complex, dynamic connections of a person with the outside world or their break. The writer, when recreating a specific human character, his state of mind, manages to present a holistic picture of the world, society, and, conversely, through the mosaic image of the phenomena of life, it is paradoxical to know a person, his inner world.

The canon of the short story genre in Gorky is made up of such concepts as: the requirement of real motivations, psychologism, the presence of a common thought. In Gorky's early work, historical plots are projected onto the present, which is a stage in the process of the development of the world. There is a confrontation between the hero and reality. This is the old gypsy Makar Chudra.

The connection of times is interpreted with the help of the problem of freedom and happiness, from the point of view of morality and relationships. in a collective. The focus is on the characters of strong people who are able to control not only their own fate, but also someone else's. For example, the story "On the rafts."

The model of Gorky's world in the story capaciously covers the multidimensionality of life. In it, one single episode is capable of capturing the emerging contradictions of reality, depicting an episode of epochal significance. And therefore, the story of M. Gorky, gaining strength during the break of epochs, when ideological and artistic stereotypes are rejected and destroyed, is able to show the complex, dynamic connections of a person with the outside world or their break. The writer, when recreating a specific human character, his state of mind, manages to present a holistic picture of the world, society, and, conversely, through the mosaic image of the phenomena of life, it is paradoxical to know a person, his inner world.

The method of contrasts, parallels, juxtapositions, associative links of characters, fragments of thoughts and judgments used by M. Gorky not only deepened and expanded the genre boundaries of prose, but allowed a deeper insight into the meaning of human life. The discovery of M. Gorky was the interpenetration within the limits of small forms of new phenomena of reality, largely incomprehensible to contemporaries, of a new worldview. And, accordingly, a person of this era does not have a familiar, well-established view of the era. He, a Gorky man, is uncomfortable in a world where there is no logic.

Various forms of narration allowed the writer to objectify the vision of the past and present, to see life from several angles. Personal searches in the prose of M. Gorky as a biographical author were reflected in the relationship with the era. The introduction of objective details into a subjective story or the synthesis of both in the narrative has become a stable technique in M. Gorky's prose and is perceived as an organic feature of the writer's artistic method in comprehending a person and an era.

Thus, the study of genre and ideological and artistic features of small prose at the turn of the century is still relevant today. It was the writers of the late XIX-early XX centuries. clearly demonstrated that the story in Russian literature, in the words of M.M. Bakhtin about the novel - "a emerging and not yet ready genre", that this is a developing form, striving for renewal.

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