The conditional nature of fantasy in Gogol's realistic story "Portrait". Gogol's fantastic story "Portrait" The role of fantasy in the works

"Portrait" is a story organized in a similar way to the "Sorochinsky Fair" and "May Night ...".
Almost the entire second half of the story - the story of the artist's son - plays the role of a fantastic backstory. Some fantastic events are reported in it in the form of rumors. But part of fantasy, and moreover the most important one (about the transformation of the usurer into a portrait), is covered by the introspection of the narrator, who reports miraculous events as if they had actually taken place: “He saw how the wonderful image of the deceased Petromichaly went into the frame of the portrait ...”.
Only this portrait passes into today's time plan, and personified fantastic images are eliminated. All strange events are reported in a tone of some uncertainty. Chertkov, after the appearance of the portrait in his room, began to assure himself that the portrait was sent by the owner, who found out his address, but this version, in turn, is undermined by the narrator's remark: “In short, he began to give all those flat explanations that we use when we want, so that what happened will certainly happen as we think” (but that it did not happen “as” as Chertkov thought, it is definitely not reported).

Chertkov’s vision of a wonderful old man is given in the form of half-awake, half-awake: “<…>he did not fall into a dream, but into some kind of semi-forgetfulness, into that painful state when with one eye we see the approaching dreams of dreams, and with the other - in an obscure cloud of surrounding objects. It would seem that the fact that it was a dream is finally confirmed by the phrase “Chertkov was convinced<…>that fancy it<…>presented to him in a dream the creation of his own indignant thoughts. But here a tangible “remnant” of the dream is discovered - money (as in “May Night ...” - a letter from a lady), which, in turn, is given a real everyday motivation (“there was a box covered with a thin board in the frame”). Along with the dream, such forms of veiled fantasy as coincidences, the hypnotizing effect of one character (here - a portrait) on another, etc. are generously introduced into the narrative.
Simultaneously with the introduction of veiled fantasy, the real-psychological plan of Chertkov the artist emerges. His fatigue, need, bad inclinations, thirst for quick success, etc. are noted. A parallelism is created between the fantastic and real-psychological concepts of the image. Everything that happens can be interpreted both as the fatal influence of the portrait on the artist, and as his personal surrender to forces hostile to art.
For a more complete picture, it must be added that Nevsky Prospekt reveals a further "crowding out" of direct fantasy, since the fantastic plan is limited here by the form of verbal images: comparisons, metaphors and epithets.
In the "Portrait" the epithet "hellish" was applied several times to the actions and plans of Chertkov "<…>in his soul the most infernal intention that a man had ever harbored was revived”; "a hellish thought flashed in the artist's head...". Here, this epithet was correlated with Petromichali, a personified image of an unreal evil force (“The victims of this hellish spirit will be countless,” it is said about him in the second part). However, in Nevsky Prospekt there is no such image, but its verbal stylistic correspondence remains. The beautiful prostitute “was by some terrible will of the infernal spirit ... thrown with laughter into its abyss”; at night on Nevsky Prospekt, “the demon himself lights the lamps only to show everything not in its real form,” etc. So, in his searches in the field of fantasy, Gogol develops the principle of parallelism between the fantastic and the real. Apparently, this was the general law of the evolution of fantastic forms at the end of romanticism, and for the time being Gogol's line developed in many ways parallel to Hoffmann's.
Gogol never has fantastic images (the devil, witches, etc., as well as people who have come into contact with them), that is, personified supernatural forces, do not enter the modern temporal plane, but only in the past. This determines the existence of two types of fantastic works in his work. Gogol pushes the image of the carrier of science fiction into the past, leaving in the subsequent time only his influence.
In "Portrait" (edition of "Arabesques") the religious painter says: "<…>Antichrist has long wanted to be born, but he cannot, because he must be born in a supernatural way; but in our world everything is arranged by the almighty in such a way that everything happens in a natural order ... ". The divine in Gogol's concept is natural, it is a world that develops naturally. On the contrary, the demonic is the supernatural, the world coming out of the knees. By the middle of the 1930s, Gogol especially clearly perceives the demonic not as evil in general, but as alogism, as "a disorder of nature."
Gogol considers the "devilish delusion" not the earthly beginning (including the pagan, sensual in it), but just its destruction - the destruction of the natural full-blooded flow of life, its laws. From this point of view, the emergence of a strange portrait is closely related to the concept of the story. No highest art is able to keep the original on the canvas of life. This could only happen "by the laws of nature." And Chertkov, contemplating the portrait, forms an alternative. "What is this ... art or some kind of supernatural magic that looked past the laws of nature?"
In the second edition of The Portrait, a number of changes were made in the poetics of fantasy. Strengthened the veiled fantasy of the first part; if I may say so, it is made more veiled (there is no mysterious appearance of the portrait in Chartkov's room - the artist simply takes it with him; the old man in Chartkov's dream does not address him with an exhortation speech, he only counts money, etc.). The real-psychological plan of Chartkov's evolution has been strengthened; so even before the disastrous effect of the portrait is discovered, the professor’s warning to the artist is introduced: “Look out so that a fashionable painter does not come out of you.”
The most characteristic change is that the fantastic prehistory (in Part II) is transferred from the form of direct to the form of veiled fantasy. Everything related to the miraculous deeds of the usurer is given strictly in the form of rumors, with an emphasis on the possibility of different interpretations, parallelism (“So, at least, the rumor said ... Was it a human opinion, ridiculous superstitious rumors, or intentionally loose rumors - remains unknown). In a tone of uncertainty, the direct appearance of the devil in the form of a usurer is also reported. Gogol does not eliminate the personified carrier of fantasy in The Portrait, but after what was done in The Nose, he still significantly infringes on his rights.

>Compositions based on the work Portrait

The role of fiction

One of the main features of the works of N.V. Gogol is the vision of the world through fantasy. For the first time, elements of fantasy appeared in his well-known "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", written around 1829-1830. The story "Portrait" was written a few years later with the same elements of inexplicable mysticism. Gogol liked to portray the characters of people from the people and to confront his heroes with fantastic phenomena. In his works, reality intertwined with fiction in some interesting way.

The original version of the story "Portrait" was published in 1835, but after the author's corrections it was printed again in 1842. The protagonist is a young, budding artist named Chartkov, who lives in poverty and tries his best to achieve perfection in his art. Everything changes after the purchase of an unusual portrait, which he met in one of the St. Petersburg art shops. The portrait looked so vivid that it seemed that the sitter was about to come to life and start talking. It was this liveliness that attracted the young Chartkov, as well as the high skill of the artist.

According to the plot, the portrait possessed supernatural power and brought misfortune and misfortune to the lives of its owners. It depicted an old man of Asian appearance with piercing, almost "alive" eyes. The day after the purchase, Chartkov found in the frame of the portrait a bag of gold pieces with which he was able to pay for the apartment and rent luxurious apartments for himself. It should be noted here that a strange dream preceded the happy discovery. The night before, it seemed to him that the portrait came to life, and the old man, coming out of the frame, was holding in his hands just this bag with the inscription "1000 chervonets".

In the second part, the author reveals to us the secret of these mystical phenomena and the picture itself. As it turned out, she was painted by a talented Kolomna master, who once painted temples. Having started work on this portrait, the master did not know that the usurer-neighbor was the real personification of evil, and having learned, he left the picture unfinished and went to the monastery to atone for his sins. The fact is that the evil usurer indirectly brought misfortune to everyone to whom he lent money. These people either went crazy, or became terribly envious and jealous, or committed suicide, or lost loved ones.

Anticipating his imminent death, the usurer wished to remain alive in the portrait, and therefore turned to a self-taught artist living in the neighborhood. According to the author, the now unfinished painting traveled from hand to hand, bringing first wealth and then misfortune to its new owners. In the first edition, at the end of the story, the image of the usurer disappeared from the portrait, leaving those around him in bewilderment. In the second edition, the author decided to make the portrait completely disappear from view and continue to wander around the world.

"Portrait" is an experience of creating a romantic fantasy story based on modern material. Unlike "Evenings" and "Wii", fantasy here does not have a folklore character. And it does not create a beautiful world of dreams, but is directed to social phenomena. In "Portrait" Gogol becomes very close to foreign romantics, especially Hoffmann. It seems fantastic, “supernatural” to Gogol (the power of money, which is increasingly capturing the world. This sinister force encroaches on the highest manifestation and creation of the human spirit - art, creativity. In the story, it is embodied in the image of the usurer Petromichali, his money, his terrible portrait. Fantastic as penetrates into the ordinary, is born out of it.In a shop on Shchukin yard, painted by Gogol with all "naturalness", the young artist Chertkov finds a mysterious portrait in which part of the life of the devil himself is retained, and the image of this usurious devil appears against the backdrop of the real St. Petersburg Kolomna .

Having become the owner of the money that ended up in the frame of the portrait, Chertkov succumbs to their evil charm and betrays art.

He begins to please rich customers, loses moral purity, becomes a prosaic and practical person. His "passion" and "ideal" is gold. But Chertkov's creative gift also perishes because the object of his depiction (secular Petersburg) is monotonous and cannot evoke inspiration. “It seemed that his brush itself acquired, finally, that colorlessness and lack of energy, which signified his originals.”

In the second part of the story, the origin of the terrible portrait is revealed, the image of the artist, its creator, is created. By painting the dying Petromichaly, he was able to “perfectly capture” the fire of his eyes and thereby perpetuate a part of the demonic essence on the canvas. Realizing that “the Antichrist himself” was his original, and having ascertained the destructive effect of the portrait on people, the painter retires to a monastery and surrenders to repentance, all rushes to religion. Having created pictures of ideal content, he atones for his “sin”. The idea of ​​the second part is utopian, religiously colored. But in a peculiar way it expresses Gogol's passionate desire to find ways to fight evil! The main role in this is given to art. In the romantic absolutization of art, the roots of the subsequent ideological errors of the writer are largely hidden. On the other hand, Gogol's romantic position led him to affirm the artist's heroic social mission and was accompanied by great demands on his moral character. Only a beautiful, spiritually pure person can create beautiful and good art) - and hence the sermon of moral purification and asceticism addressed to artists, which is contained in the story.

By including the "Portrait" in the Collected Works of 1842, Gogol significantly revised the story. The fantastic flavor remained in it, but became more complex, the boundaries of the fantastic are blurred, reality completely imperceptibly passes into something wonderful and back. The motives for Chertkov's spiritual fall become more complex: it is not only associated with the fatal role of the portrait, but also psychologically motivated. It is no coincidence that the old professor sees in his student, along with talent and love for art, the frivolity of youth and a tendency to vanity. A real motivation is being created, which testifies to Gogol's deep penetration into the "mechanism" of bourgeois society: the artist creates "advertising" for himself by bribing a corrupt journalist (possibly a hint at Bulgarin).

The story is about the essence and specificity of art, about its boundaries. The artist, the author of the portrait, had long dreamed of a strange usurer as a model of the "spirit of darkness", in which he wanted to realize "everything that is heavy, oppressive to a person." Does the artist have the right to depict such phenomena? And Gogol comes to the conclusion: yes, he does. For a true artist, "there is no low object in nature." In order to aspire society to the beautiful, it is necessary to show “the full depth of its real abomination. But the writer is concerned about the question of how to portray the negative. Won't the desire to be adequately faithful to reality lead to the triumph of "evil" truth and the loss of art's ideal, elevating meaning? Therefore, for Gogol, the most important creative principle of romanticism continues to be valuable - the passage of life material, including low, "despicable", through the "purgatory of the soul" of the artist. Hence a great responsibility rests on the artist. Gogol makes maximalist demands on his personality: “Whoever has talent in himself must be the purest of all in soul. Much will be forgiven to another, but he will not be forgiven. The inconsistency of Gogol's aesthetic program lies in putting forward the idea of ​​a "reconciling" meaning of art. Considering that true art “cannot instill murmuring in the soul, but strives eternally towards God with a resounding prayer”, Gogol becomes close to the ideas of passive romanticism and comes into conflict with the pathos of his own creativity. In addition, in the story there is, however, an episodic image of Catherine II, who is shown as a "generous" philanthropist and patron of the arts, supposedly flourishing under the brilliance of monarchical rule. In the second edition, therefore, a movement towards the ideological crisis of Gogol is outlined.

Highly appreciating the first part of the story, including its fantastic motive, Belinsky was very critical of the second, referring to its abstract, rational nature. In 1842, in one of the articles on "Dead Souls", the critic stopped at the newly appeared second edition of the "Portrait". Noting that the first part "has become incomparably better", he condemned the second part even more sharply than before, not accepting its religiously colored fantasy and believing that "the idea of ​​the story would be beautiful if the poet understood it in a modern spirit" and fulfilled would be "simple, without fantastic undertakings."

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a completely unique writer, unlike other masters of the word. In his work there is a lot of amazing, admirable and surprising: the funny is intertwined with the tragic, the fantastic with the real. It has long been established that the basis of the comic in Gogol is carnival, that is, such a situation when the characters, as it were, put on masks, show unusual properties, change places and everything seems confused, mixed up. On this basis, a very peculiar Gogol's fantasy arises, rooted in the depths of folk culture.

Gogol entered Russian literature as the author of the collection Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. The material of the stories is truly inexhaustible: these are oral stories, legends, tales on both modern and historical topics. “If only they listened and read,” says the beekeeper Rudy Panko in the preface to the first part of the collection, “but I, perhaps, are too lazy to rummage through, and there will be ten such books.”

The past in "Evenings ..." appears in a halo of fabulous and wonderful. In it, the writer saw the spontaneous play of good and evil forces, morally healthy people, not affected by the spirit of profit, pragmatism and mental laziness. Here Gogol depicts the Little Russian folk-festive, fair life.

The holiday, with its atmosphere of freedom and fun, the beliefs and adventures associated with it, take people out of the framework of their usual existence, making the impossible possible. Previously impossible marriages are concluded (“Sorochinsky Fair”, “May Night”, “The Night Before Christmas”), all evil spirits are activated: devils and witches tempt people, trying to prevent them.

A holiday in Gogol's stories is all kinds of transformations, disguises, hoaxes, and the revelation of secrets. Gogol's laughter in "Evenings ..." is genuine fun, based on juicy folk humor. It is possible for him to express in words comic contradictions and incongruities, of which there are many in the atmosphere of a holiday, and in ordinary everyday life.

The originality of the artistic world of stories is connected, first of all, with the wide use of folklore traditions: it was in folk tales, semi-pagan legends and traditions that Gogol found themes and plots for his works. He used a belief about a fern that blooms on the night before Ivan Kupala; a legend about mysterious treasures, about selling the soul to the devil, about flights and transformations of witches, and much, much more. In a number of his novels and stories, mythological characters act: sorcerers and witches, werewolves and mermaids, and, of course, the devil, to the tricks of which popular superstition is ready to ascribe any evil deed.

"Evenings ..." is a book of truly fantastic incidents. For Gogol, the fantastic is one of the most important aspects of the people's worldview. Reality and fantasy are bizarrely intertwined in the people's ideas about the past and the present, about good and evil. The writer considered the propensity for legendary-fantastic thinking to be an indicator of the spiritual health of people.

The fantasy in Evenings is ethnographically authentic. Heroes and narrators of incredible stories believe that the whole area of ​​the unknown is inhabited by wickedness, and the “demonological” characters themselves are shown by Gogol in a reduced, everyday appearance. They are also "Little Russians", they just live on their own "territory", from time to time fooling ordinary people, interfering in their life, celebrating and playing with them.

For example, the witches in The Missing Letter play the fool, offering the narrator's grandfather to play with them and return, if they're lucky, their hat. The devil in the story "The Night Before Christmas" looks like "a real provincial attorney in uniform." He grabs a month and burns, blowing on his hand, like a man who accidentally grabbed a hot frying pan. Declaring his love for the "incomparable Solokha", the devil "kissed her hand with such antics, like an assessor at the priest's." Solokha herself is not only a witch, but also a villager, greedy and loving admirers.

Folk fantasy is intertwined with reality, clarifying the relationship between people, sharing good and evil. As a rule, the heroes in Gogol's first collection defeat evil. The triumph of man over evil is a folklore motif. The writer filled it with new content: he affirmed the power and strength of the human spirit, capable of curbing the dark, evil forces that rule in nature and interfere in people's lives.

The second period of Gogol's work opened with a kind of "prologue" - "Petersburg" stories "Nevsky Prospekt", "Notes of a Madman" and "Portrait", which were included in the collection "Arabesques". The author explained the name of this collection as follows: "Muddle, mixture, porridge." Indeed, a variety of material was included here: in addition to novels and short stories, articles and essays on various topics are also placed here.

The first three of the "Petersburg" stories that appeared in this collection seem to link different periods of the writer's work: "Arabesques" came out in 1835, and the last story, completing the cycle of "Petersburg" stories, "The Overcoat" was written already in 1842.

All these stories, different in plot, themes, heroes, are united by the place of action - St. Petersburg. With him, the theme of a big city and the life of a person in it enters the writer's work. But for the writer, St. Petersburg is not just a geographical space. He created a bright image-symbol of the city, both real and ghostly, fantastic. In the fates of the heroes, in the ordinary and incredible incidents of their lives, in the rumors, rumors and legends that fill the very air of the city, Gogol finds a mirror image of the St. Petersburg "phantasmagoria". In St. Petersburg, reality and fantasy easily change places. Everyday life and the fate of the inhabitants of the city - on the verge of believable and wonderful. The unbelievable suddenly becomes so real that a person cannot stand it - he goes crazy, gets sick and even dies.

Gogol's Petersburg is a city of incredible events, ghostly absurd life, fantastic events and ideals. Any metamorphoses are possible in it. The living turns into a thing, a puppet (such are the inhabitants of the aristocratic Nevsky Prospekt). A thing, object or part of the body becomes a “face”, an important person, sometimes even with a high rank (for example, the nose that disappeared from a collegiate assessor Kovalev has the rank of state councilor). The city depersonalizes people, distorts their good qualities, sticks out the bad, changing their appearance beyond recognition.

The stories "The Nose" and "The Overcoat" depict two poles of Petersburg life: absurd phantasmagoria and everyday reality. These poles, however, are not as far apart as it might seem at first glance. The plot of "The Nose" is based on the most fantastic of all urban "stories". Gogol's fantasy in this work is fundamentally different from the folk-poetic fantasy in "Evenings ...". There is no fantastic source here: the nose is part of St. Petersburg mythology that arose without the intervention of otherworldly forces. This is a special mythology - bureaucratic, generated by the almighty invisible - the "electricity" of the rank.

The nose behaves as befits a "significant person" with the rank of state councilor: he prays in the Kazan Cathedral, walks along Nevsky Prospekt, calls in the department, makes visits, is going to leave for Riga on someone else's passport. Where it came from, no one, including the author, is interested. It can even be assumed that he "fell from the moon", because according to Poprishchin the madman from the Notes of a Madman, "the moon is usually made in Hamburg", but is inhabited by noses. Any, even the most delusional, assumption is not excluded. The main thing is different - in the "two-facedness" of the nose. According to some signs, this is definitely the real nose of Major Kovalev, but the second “face” of the nose is social, which is higher in rank than its owner, because they see the rank, but not the person. Fantasy in The Nose is a mystery that is nowhere to be found and which is everywhere. This is a strange unreality of Petersburg life, in which any delusional vision is indistinguishable from reality.

In The Overcoat, the "little man", "eternal titular adviser" Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin becomes part of St. Petersburg mythology, a ghost, a fantastic avenger who terrifies "significant persons". It would seem that a completely ordinary, everyday story - about how a new overcoat was stolen - grows not only into a vividly social story about the relationship in the bureaucratic system of St. which raises the question: what is a person, how and why does he live, what does he encounter in the world around him.

This question remains open, as does the fantastic ending of the story. Who is the ghost who finally found "his" general and disappeared forever after tearing off his overcoat? This is a dead man avenging the insult of a living person; the sick conscience of a general who creates in his brain the image of a person offended by him, who died as a result of this person? Or maybe this is just an artistic device, “a bizarre paradox”, as Vladimir Nabokov believed, arguing that “the person who was mistaken for the overcoatless ghost of Akaky Akakievich is the man who stole his overcoat”?

Be that as it may, along with the mustachioed ghost, all the fantastic grotesque disappears into the darkness of the city, resolving in laughter. But a very real and very serious question remains: how in this absurd world, the world of alogism, bizarre interweaving, fantastic stories that claim to be quite real situations of ordinary life, how in this world can a person defend his true face, save a living soul? Gogol will search for the answer to this question until the end of his life, using completely different artistic means for this.

But Gogol's fantasy forever became the property of not only Russian, but also world literature, entered its golden fund. Contemporary art openly recognizes Gogol as its mentor. Capacity, the crushing power of laughter are paradoxically combined in his work with a tragic shock. Gogol, as it were, discovered the common root of the tragic and the comic. The echo of Gogol in art is heard in the novels of Bulgakov, and in the plays of Mayakovsky, and in the phantasmagories of Kafka. Years will pass, but the mystery of Gogol's laughter will remain for new generations of his readers and followers.

INTRODUCTION:

“In every great literature there is a writer who constitutes a separate Great Literature: Shakespeare in England, Goethe in Germany, Cervantes in Spain, Petrarch and Dante in Italy. In Russian literature, the pinnacle rises, which does not overshadow anyone, but in itself is a separate Great Literature - Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol.

When studying the work of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, I was interested in the fact that the world-famous realist writer invariably used the fantastic principle in his works to achieve his goals.

N. V. Gogol is the first major Russian prose writer. In this capacity, according to many contemporaries, he stood above A.S. Pushkin himself, who was recognized primarily as a poet. For example, V. G. Belinsky, praising Pushkin's "History of the village of Goryukhino", made a reservation: "... If there were no Gogol's stories in our literature, then we would not know anything better."

With N.V. Gogol and the "Gogolian trend" (a later term of Russian criticism introduced by N.G. Chernyshevsky) are usually associated with the flourishing of realism in Russian prose. It is characterized by special attention to social issues, depiction (often satirical) of the social vices of Nikolaev Russia, careful reproduction of socially and culturally significant details in portraits, interiors, landscapes and other descriptions; appeal to the themes of Petersburg life, the image of the fate of a petty official. V.G. Belinsky believed that in the works of N.V. Gogol reflects the spirit of the "ghostly" reality of the then Russia. V.G. Belinsky also emphasized that the work of N.V. Gogol cannot be reduced to social satire (as for N.V. Gogol himself, he never considered himself a satirist).

At the same time, the realism of N.V. Gogol is of a very special kind. Some researchers (for example, the writer V.V. Nabokov) do not consider Gogol a realist at all, others call his style "fantastic realism." The fact is that Gogol is a master of phantasmagoria. In many of his stories there is a fantastic element. There is a feeling of a "displaced", "curved" reality, reminiscent of a distorted mirror. This is due to hyperbole and grotesque - the most important elements of N.V. Gogol.

Therefore, the topic of the essay “Fiction in the works of N.V. Gogol” is relevant for me due to my interest in the creative style of N.V. Gogol, which received its continuation in the work of such writers of the 20th century as, for example, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Mikhail Bulgakov.

Purpose of the study – reveal the role of science fiction in individual works of N.V. Gogol and the ways of its "existence" in a literary text.

As p research subjectI chose the stories of N.V. Gogol "Viy", "Portrait", "Nose".

Research objectives:

• give an idea of ​​the evolution of the fantastic in the works of N.V. Gogol;
• to characterize the features of the fantastic in the stories of N.V. Gogol: "Wii", "Nose", "Portrait".

In connection with the tasksThe main part of the abstract consists of two parts.

The source base of the study came monographic studies (Annensky I.F. "On the Forms of the Fantastic in Gogol", Mann Yu. "Gogol's Poetics", Merezhkovsky D.S. "Gogol and the devil"), a book of educational and methodical nature (Lion P.E., Lokhova N.M. "Literature"), works of art (N.V. Gogol's stories "Viy", "Portrait", "Nose").

Scientific and practical significance of the worklies in the possibility of using its materials for reports, lectures at literature lessons and scientific and practical conferences on Russian literature of the 19th century.

In the St. Petersburg stories, the fantastic element is sharply relegated to the background of the plot, fantasy, as it were, dissolves into reality. The supernatural is present in the plot not directly, but indirectly, indirectly, for example, as a dream ("The Nose"), delirium ("Notes of a Madman"), implausible rumors ("The Overcoat"). Only in the story "Portrait" really supernatural events occur. It is no coincidence that VG Belinsky did not like the first edition of the story "Portrait" precisely because of the excessive presence of a mystical element in it.

As noted above, in the early works of N.V. Gogol, a kind of magical space is formed where the fantastic and real worlds meet, and when you meet the fantastic world, you can notice a certain curvature of everyday space: stacks move from place to place, the character cannot get a fork in his mouth.

But St. Petersburg stories are already “breaking out” of this tradition: here the grotesque is partly social, reality itself requires such a form of depiction.

The devilish power in the story "Viy" is truly terrible. This is either “a huge monster in his tangled hair, in the forest: through a network of hair, two eyes looked terribly, raising a little eyebrow. Above us was something in the air in the form of a huge bubble with a thousand pincers and scorpion stingers stretched out from the middle. Black earth hung on them in tufts. Or is it Viy himself - “a squat, hefty, clumsy man. He was all black. Like sinewy, strong roots, his legs and arms, covered with earth, stood out. He walked heavily, stumbling every minute. Long eyelids were lowered to the ground. Foma noticed with horror that his face was iron... "Lift up my eyelids: I can't see!" - Viy said in an underground voice, - and everyone rushed to raise his eyelids. Viy pointed his iron finger at Khoma, the philosopher fell to the ground lifeless.

As E. Baratynsky writes in the same years in the poem "The Last Poet":

Age walks along its iron path...

Viy is an image born at the time of "obscuration". He is no less than Pechorin or Onegin, the hero of the time, and more than them - a symbol that has absorbed all the fears, anxiety and pain of this time. At such times, from the dark corners of consciousness, from lullaby fears, from the cave depths of the soul, ghosts and monsters come into the light, acquiring real features.

In the story of N.V. Gogol, the unclean spirits never left the church: “So the church remained forever, with monsters stuck in the doors and windows, overgrown with forest, roots, weeds, wild thorns, and no one will find a way to it now.”

The road to the temple is overgrown with weeds, the temple itself is filled with evil spirits.

I.F. Annensky pointed out that the seriousness of the depiction of supernatural reality in "Viya" also determines the tragic ending of the story, which is necessary to complete the plot: "Khoma's death is the necessary end of the story - make him wake up from a drunken sleep, you will destroy all the artistic significance of the story."

2.2. The “strange” incident with Major Kovalev (based on the novel by N.V. Gogol “The Nose”).

In the story "The Nose" N.V. Gogol completely removes the carrier of fantasy - "the personified embodiment of unreal power." But the fantasy itself remains. Moreover, Gogol's fantasy grows out of a mundane, prosaic basis.

Before us is the real Petersburg of the times of Gogol. This is the center of the city - the Admiralty parts with Nevsky, with the proximity of palaces and the Neva - and Gorokhovaya, and Meshchansky streets, St. Petersburg churches and cathedrals, barbers, restaurants and shops. These are the Tauride Garden, where Major Kovalev's nose walked, and Sadovaya, where Kovalev lives, and the editorial office of the newspaper, and the department, and Gostiny Dvor, and Kazan Cathedral, and Admiralteyskaya Square.

Relationships among department officials are real, as are the details of clothing, everyday life, communication…

But at the same time, everything is absolutely unrealistic!

"The Nose" belongs to those works that put the reader in front of a mystery literally from the first phrase. On the 25th of March, an unusually strange incident happened in Petersburg. One morning, Major Kovalev "woke up quite early" and, "to his great amazement, saw that instead of his nose he had a completely smooth place!" “I woke up pretty early” and the barber Ivan Yakovlevich found in the bun that he cut, it was Major Kovalev’s nose. From the hands of the barber, the nose went to the Neva from St. Isaac's Bridge.

The incident is really fantastic, but (and this is much more strange than what happened) the characters of "The Nose" quite soon forget about the "failure" of the story and begin to behave in it in accordance with their characters.

A list of attempts to find the cause of the mysterious disappearance of Kovalev's nose could make a long and curious list.

I.F. Annensky once wrote that the culprit of the events was Kovalev himself. One of the modern researchers writes that the nose ran away from Kovalev, as he lifted it too high. Perhaps there is more truth in the words of Kovalev himself: “And even if they were cut off in the war or in a duel, or I myself was the cause, but I disappeared for nothing, for nothing, wasted in vain, not for a penny! ..”

And the strangeness of the incident is growing. Instead of floating in the Neva, the nose ends up in a carriage in the center of St. Petersburg: “He was in a uniform embroidered with gold, with a large standing collar; he was wearing suede trousers; by the side of the sword. Kovalev "almost lost his mind at such a spectacle." His own nose travels around St. Petersburg in the rank of state councilor (which is much higher than the rank of Kovalev himself), he prays in the Kazan Cathedral, travels on visits, and even answers Kovalev’s statements that he (the nose) “absolutely does not understand anything.” Kovalev "did not know how to think about such a strange incident."

Of course, everyone involved in this “story” is surprised at what is happening, but, firstly, this surprise is strangely ordinary: the hairdresser, having “recognized” the nose, thinks more about how to get rid of it; Kovalev takes measures to return the nose, turning to the chief of police, to a newspaper expedition, to a private bailiff; the doctor recommends leaving everything as it is, and the policeman, “who at the beginning of the story stood at the end of St. Isaac’s Bridge” (that is, when the nose wrapped in a rag was thrown into the water), returning the loss, says that he “at first took it mister. But, fortunately, I had glasses with me, and I immediately saw that it was a nose, ”and does not look at all surprised.

And secondly, they are not at all surprised at what should be surprised. It seems that no one cares at all about the question:

how could a nose become a man at all, and if it did, then how can others perceive it both as a man and as a nose at the same time?

Even more forcing the fantastic nature of the situation, N.V. Gogol deliberately excludes the possibility of explaining "history" as a misunderstanding or deception of the character's feelings, prevents it by introducing a similar perception of the fact by other characters, or, for example, replacing "the supernatural reason for the disappearance of part of his hero's being by the anecdotal awkwardness of a hairdresser", i.e. reason is clearly absurd.

In this regard, the function of the form of rumors also changes in the story. The form of the rumors is "set" in an unusual context. It does not serve as a means of veiled (implicit) fantasy. Rumors appear against the backdrop of a fantastic incident, filed as reliable. Thus, Gogol discovered in the life around him something even more wrong and fantastic than what any version or any rumor could offer.

Probably, the success of Pushkin's "Queen of Spades" prompted N.V. Gogol to tell a story about a man who was killed by the thirst for gold. The author called his story "Portrait". Is it because the portrait of the usurer played a fatal role in the fate of his heroes-artists, whose fates are compared in two parts of the story? Or because N.V. Gogol wanted to give a portrait of modern society and a talented person who perishes or is saved despite hostile circumstances and the humiliating properties of nature? Or is it a portrait of the art and soul of the writer himself, who is trying to escape from the temptation of success and prosperity and purify his soul by high service to art?

Probably, there is a social, moral, and aesthetic meaning in this strange story by Gogol, there is a reflection on what a person, society, and art are. Modernity and eternity are intertwined here so inseparably that the life of the Russian capital in the 30s of the 19th century goes back to biblical reflections about good and evil, about their endless struggle in the human soul.

We first meet the artist Chartkov at that moment in his life when, with youthful ardor, he loves the height of the genius of Raphael, Michelangelo and despises handicraft fakes that replace art for the layman. Seeing in the shop a strange portrait of an old man with piercing eyes, Chartkov is ready to give the last two kopecks for him. Poverty did not take away from him the ability to see the beauty of life and work with enthusiasm on his sketches. He reaches for the light and does not want to turn art into an anatomical theater, to expose the “disgusting person” with a knife-brush. He rejects artists whose "nature itself ... seems low, dirty," so that "there is nothing illuminating in it." Chartkov, according to his art teacher, is talented, but impatient and prone to worldly pleasures and fuss. But as soon as the money, which miraculously fell out of the frame of the portrait, gives Chartkov the opportunity to lead a scattered secular life and enjoy prosperity, wealth and fame, and not art, become his idols. Chartkov owes his success to the fact that, drawing a portrait of a secular young lady, which turned out to be bad for him, he was able to rely on a disinterested work of talent - a drawing of Psyche, where a dream of an ideal being was heard. But the ideal was not alive, and only by uniting with the impressions of real life did it become attractive, and real life acquired the significance of the ideal. However, Chartkov lied, giving the insignificant girl the appearance of Psyche. Flattering for the sake of success, he betrayed the purity of art. And the talent began to leave Chartkov, betrayed him. “Whoever has a talent in himself must be purer than anyone else in soul,” the father says to his son in the second part of the story. And this is an almost verbatim repetition of Mozart's words in Pushkin's tragedy: "Genius and villainy are two incompatible things." But for A.S. Pushkin's goodness is in the nature of genius. N.V. Gogol, on the other hand, writes a story that the artist, like all people, is subject to the temptation of evil and destroys himself and his talent more terrible and faster than ordinary people. Talent that is not realized in true art, talent that parted with good, becomes destructive for the individual.

Chartkov, who for the sake of success conceded truth to goodness, ceases to feel life in its multicoloredness, variability, and trembling. His portraits comfort customers, but do not live, they do not reveal, but close the personality, nature. And, despite the fame of a fashionable painter, Chartkov feels that he has nothing to do with real art. A wonderful painting by an artist who had perfected himself in Italy caused a shock in Chartkow. Probably, in the admiring outline of this picture, Gogol gave a generalized image of the famous painting by Karl Bryullov “The Last Day of Pompeii”. But the shock experienced by Chartkov does not awaken him to a new life, because for this it is necessary to give up the pursuit of wealth and fame, to kill the evil in himself. Chartkov chooses a different path: he begins to expel talented art from the world, to buy up and cut magnificent canvases, to kill good. And this path leads him to madness and death.

What was the cause of these terrible transformations: the weakness of a person in the face of temptations or the mystical sorcery of a portrait of a usurer who gathered the evil of the world in his burning gaze? N.V. Gogol answered this question ambiguously. A real explanation of Chartkov's fate is as possible as a mystical one. The dream that leads Chartkov to gold can be both the fulfillment of his subconscious desires, and the aggression of evil spirits, which is remembered whenever it comes to the portrait of a usurer. The words "devil", "devil", "darkness", "demon" turn out to be the speech frame of the portrait in the story.

“A.S. Pushkin in The Queen of Spades essentially refutes the mystical interpretation of events. A story written by N.V. Gogol in the year of the emergence and universal success of The Queen of Spades, is a response and objection to A.S. Pushkin. Evil offends not only Chartkov, who is subject to the temptations of success, but also the father of the artist B., who painted a portrait of a usurer who looks like the devil and who himself has become an evil spirit. And "a firm character, an honest straight person", having painted a portrait of evil, feels "incomprehensible anxiety", disgust for life and envy for the success of his talented students.

An artist who has touched evil, painted the usurer's eyes, which "looked demonically crushing", can no longer paint good, his brush is driven by "an impure feeling", and in the picture intended for the temple, "there is no holiness in the faces."

All people associated with the usurer in real life perish, betraying the best properties of their nature. The artist who reproduced evil expanded its influence. The portrait of a usurer robs people of the joy of life and awakens "such longing ... just as if he wanted to kill someone." Stylistically, this combination is characteristic: “just as if ...”

Of course, "exactly" is used in the sense of "as" to avoid tautology. At the same time, the combination “exactly” and “as if” conveys the characteristic of N.V. Gogol's style of detailed realistic description and ghostly, fantastic sense of events.

The story "Portrait" does not bring reassurance, showing how all people, regardless of the properties of their character and the height of their convictions, are subject to evil. N.V. Gogol, having altered the ending of the story, takes away the hope of eradicating evil. In the first edition, the appearance of the usurer mysteriously evaporated from the canvas, leaving the canvas blank. In the final text of the story, the portrait of the usurer disappears: evil again began to roam the world.

CONCLUSION:

“Fiction is a special form of displaying reality, logically incompatible with the real idea of ​​the surrounding world, freeing the writer from any restrictive rules, giving him freedom in realizing his creative abilities and abilities. Apparently, this attracted N.V. Gogol, who actively used fantastic elements in his works. The combination of fantastic and realistic becomes the most important feature of the works of N.V. Gogol.

In Gogol's early works, the fantastic is conceived as a consequence of the influence of specific "carriers of fantasy", is associated with folklore (Little Russian fairy tales and legends), with the carnival tradition and with romantic literature, which also borrowed such motifs from folklore.

Fantasy can appear in an explicit form. Then the "carriers of fantasy" are directly involved in the development of the plot, but the action belongs to the past, and fantastic events are reported either by the author-narrator or by the character acting as the main narrator. In this case, the fantastic "mixes" with the real. According to V.G. Belinsky, a special world of “poetic reality arises, in which you never know what is true and what is a fairy tale, but you involuntarily take everything for true”.

In a work in which fantasy appears in a veiled form (implicit fantasy), there is no direct indication of the unreality of the event, the action takes place in the present, it seems that the author is trying to obscure this unreality, to smooth out the reader's feeling of the unreality of the event. Fiction is most often concentrated in the preface, epilogue, inserts, where legends are told.

The "carriers of science fiction" themselves are not visible, but traces of their activities remain. In this case, the real line develops parallel to the fantastic one, and each action can be explained from two points of view.

In the St. Petersburg stories N.V. Gogol's "bearer of fantasy" is eliminated. It is replaced by an irrational impersonal beginning, present in the entire work. The fantastic element here is sharply relegated to the background of the plot, fantasy, as it were, dissolves into reality.

The connection between fantasy and reality during this period of creativity becomes much more complicated. The contradictions of the era are brought by the writer to the level of absurdity that pervades all Russian life. N.V. Gogol knows how to see and show the ordinary from a completely new angle, from an unexpected perspective. An ordinary event takes on an ominous, strange coloring, but a fantastic event is almost inseparable from reality.

The paradox of Gogol's stories of this period is that the fantastic in them is as close as possible to reality, but reality itself is illogical and fantastic in its very essence. Consequently, the role of fantasy is to reveal the unnaturalness of Gogol's contemporary reality.

After doing a little research on "Fantasy in the works of N.V. Gogol", I can conclude that Gogol's fiction is built on the idea of ​​two opposite principles - good and evil, divine and diabolical (as in folk art), but actually good there is no fiction, it is all intertwined with "evil spirits". On the example of his works, the evolution of science fiction is traced, the ways of introducing it into the narrative are being improved.

N.V. Gogol is still a mystery to us. In his work there is some special attraction of mystery. As a child, it is interesting to read fairy tales about ghouls and devils.

In adulthood, thoughts come to a person about the essence of being, about the meaning of life, about the need to fight evil in oneself, people. This evil has different faces, its name is vice! It takes strength to deal with it.

Literary material N.V. Gogol is very good for film adaptation, but difficult to stage. You need special effects, you need big expenses to be convincing in your work. But this does not frighten film and theater artists. Big projects are being made, horror films are being made. They are successful with millions of viewers not only abroad, but also here in Russia. This indicates that N.V. Gogol is still popular and his work is still relevant.

LIST OF USED LITERATURE:

1. Annensky I.F. On the forms of the fantastic in Gogol // Annensky I.F. Books of reflections - M., 1979.
2. Gogol N.V. Tales. Dead Souls: A Book for a Student and a Teacher - M .: AST Publishing House LLC: Olympus, 2002.
3. Lion P.E., Lokhova N.M. Literature: For high school students and those entering universities: Proc. allowance. – M.: Bustard, 2000.
4. Mann Yu. Poetics of Gogol - M .: "Fiction", 1988.
5. Merezhkovsky D.S. Gogol and the devil // In a still whirlpool. Articles and studies of different years - M., 1991.
6. Encyclopedic Dictionary of a Young Literary Critic / Comp. V.I. Novikov. - M .: Pedagogy, 1987.

In every literature there is a writer who constitutes a separate Great Literature: Shakespeare in England, Goethe in Germany, and Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol in Russia. When studying his work, I was interested in the fact that the world-famous realist writer invariably used the fantastic beginning in his works to achieve his goals. N.V. Gogol is the first major Russian prose writer. In this capacity, according to many contemporaries, he stood above A.S. Pushkin himself, who was recognized primarily as a poet. For example, V. G. Belinsky, praising Pushkin's "History of the village of Goryukhino", made a reservation: "... If there were no Gogol's stories in our literature, then we would not know anything better." Nikolai Vasilyevich and the "Gogol trend" are usually associated with the flourishing of realism in Russian prose. Belinsky believed that Gogol's works reflected the spirit of the "ghostly" reality of the then Russia. He also emphasized that his work cannot be attributed to social satire, as for the writer himself, he never considered himself a satirist. At the same time, Gogol's realism is of a very special kind. Some researchers do not consider him a realist at all, others call his style "fantastic realism". The fact is that in many plots of the writer there is a fantastic element. This creates the feeling of a crooked mirror. That's whytopic of my essay“Fiction in the works of N.V. Gogol” is relevant for me due to my interest in his creative style, which was continued in the work of such writers of the 20th century as, for example, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Mikhail Bulgakov.Purpose of my research This reveal the role of fantasy in individual works of Gogol and the ways of its "existence" in a literary text. As a pr research subject I chose such stories as "Viy", "Portrait" and "The Nose". But first, I would like to give a brief definition of the word fantasy. So, fantasy is a special form of displaying reality, logically incompatible with the real idea of ​​the world around it, it, as it were, freed the writer from any restrictive rules, gave him freedom to realize his creative abilities and abilities. Apparently, this attracted Gogol, who actively used fantastic elements in his works. The combination of fantastic and realistic becomes the most important feature of his works. According to Belinsky, this is where a special world of “poetic reality arises, in which you never know what is true and what is a fairy tale, but you involuntarily take everything for true”. The real in Gogol's stories coexists with the fantastic throughout his entire work. But some evolution takes place with this phenomenon, i.e. the role, place and ways of including the fantastic element do not always remain the same. So, for example, in the early works of the writer, such as "Wii" and "Evenings on a farm near Dikanka", the fantastic comes to the fore of the plot, because Viy is an image born in the time of "clouding". He is no less than Pechorin or Onegin, the hero of the time, and more than them, a symbol that absorbed all the fears, anxiety and pain of that time. At such times, from the dark corners of consciousness, from lullaby fears, from the cave depths of the soul, ghosts emerge into the light, acquiring real features. But already in St. Petersburg stories, such as "The Nose", "Notes of a Madman", as well as "The Overcoat", the fantastic element is sharply relegated to the background and fantasy, as it were, dissolves into reality. The paradox of Gogol's stories of this particular period is that the fantastic in them is as close as possible to reality, but reality itself is fantastic in its very essence. And finally, in the works of the last period, such as The Inspector General and Dead Souls, the fantastic element in the plot is practically absent. They depict events that are not supernatural, but rather strange and unusual, although in principle possible. Based on all of the above, I can conclude that Gogol's fantasy is built on the idea of ​​good and evil. On the example of his works, the evolution of science fiction can be traced, as well as the ways of introducing it into the narrative are being improved. N.V. Gogol is still a mystery to us. In his work there is some special attraction of mystery. As a child, it is interesting to read fairy tales about ghouls and devils. In adulthood, thoughts come to a person about the essence of being, about the meaning of life, about the need to fight evil in oneself and in people. This evil has different faces and it takes strength to deal with them. Gogol's literary material is very good for film adaptation, but difficult to stage. You need special effects, as well as high costs, to be convincing in your work. But this does not frighten film and theater artists, because. big projects are being made, horror films are being made. They are successful with millions of viewers not only abroad, but also here in Russia. This indicates that N.V. Gogol is still popular and his work is still relevant.