Techniques for creating the comic in Mikhail Zoshchenko's satirical stories. Mikhail Zoshchenko - writer, satirist, playwright The twenties through the eyes of the heroes of Mikhail Zoshchenko
Plan
1. The formation of Zoshchenko
2. Reasons for the success of Zoshchenko's works with readers:
a) a rich biography as a source of knowledge of life;
b) the language of the reader is the language of the writer;
c) optimism helps to survive
3. Place of creativity of Mikhail Zoshchenko in Russian literature
There is hardly a person who has not read a single work of Mikhail Zoshchenko. In the 1920s and 1930s, he actively collaborated in satirical magazines (Behemoth, Laugher, Cannon, Inspector General, and others). And already then the reputation of the famous satirist was established behind him. Under the pen of Zoshchenko, all the sad aspects of life, instead of the expected sadness or fear, cause laughter. The author himself claimed that in his stories “there is not a drop of fiction. Everything here is the naked truth.”
Nevertheless, despite the resounding success with readers, the work of this writer turned out to be incompatible with the principles of socialist realism. The infamous resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the late forties, along with other writers, journalists, and composers, accused Zoshchenko of being unprincipled and propagating bourgeois bourgeois ideology.
A letter from Mikhail Mikhailovich to Stalin (“I have never been an anti-Soviet person ... I have never been a literary rogue or low person”) remained unanswered. In 1946, he was expelled from the Writers' Union, and for the next ten years not a single book of his was published!
The good name of Zoshchenko was restored only during the Khrushchev "thaw".
How can one explain the unprecedented glory of this satirist?
You should start with the fact that the writer's biography itself had a huge impact on his work. He did a lot. Battalion commander, post and telegraph chief, border guard, regimental adjutant, criminal investigation agent, rabbit and chicken breeding instructor, shoemaker, accountant's assistant... And this is still an incomplete list of who this person was and what he did before he sat down at the writer's desk.
He saw many people who had to live in an era of great social and political change. He spoke to them in their language, they were his teachers.
Zoshchenko was a conscientious and sensitive person, he was tormented by pain for others, and the writer considered himself called to serve a “poor” (as he would later call him) person. This "poor" person personified the whole human layer of the then Russia. Before his eyes, the revolution was trying to heal the war wounds of the country and realize lofty dreams. And the "poor" person at that time was forced (instead of creative work in the name of the realization of this dream) to spend time and energy on the fight against minor domestic troubles.
Moreover: he is so busy with it that he cannot even throw off the heavy burden of the past. To open the eyes of a "poor" person, to help him - the writer saw his task in this.
It is very important that, in addition to a deep knowledge of the life of his hero, the writer masterfully masters his language. By syllables reading these stories, the novice reader is absolutely sure that the author is his own. And the place where the events unfold is so familiar and familiar (bathhouse, tram, communal kitchen, post office, hospital). And the story itself (a fight in a communal apartment because of a “hedgehog” (“Nervous people”), bath problems with paper numbers (“Bathhouse”), which a naked person has “nowhere to put it straight”, a glass cracked at a wake in the story of the same name and tea that “smells like a mop”) is also close to the audience.
As for the simple, sometimes even primitive language of his works, here is how the satirist himself wrote about it in 1929: Usually they think that I am distorting the “beautiful Russian language”, that for the sake of laughter I take words not in the meaning that life has given them that I deliberately write in broken language in order to make the most respectable public laugh. This is not true. I hardly distort anything. I write in the language that the street now speaks and thinks. I did this not for the sake of curiosities and not in order to more accurately copy our life. I did this in order to fill, at least temporarily, the colossal gap that has occurred between literature and the street.
The stories of Mikhail Zoshchenko are designed in the spirit of the language and character of the hero on behalf of whom the narration is being conducted. This technique helps to naturally penetrate the inner world of the hero, to show the essence of his nature.
And one more significant circumstance that influenced the success of Zoshchenko's satire. This writer seemed to be a very cheerful and never discouraged person. No problems could make his hero a pessimist. Everything doesn't matter to him. And the fact that one citizen with the help of cakes in front of the entire theatrical audience disgraced him (“Aristocrat”). And the fact that “due to the crisis” he had to live in the bathroom with his “young wife”, child and mother-in-law. And the fact that in the company of crazy psychos I had to travel in the same compartment. And again nothing! Despite such constant, numerous and most often unexpected problems, it is written cheerfully.
This laughter brightened up the difficult life of the readers and gave hope that everything would be fine.
But Zoshchenko himself was a follower of the Gogol trend in literature. He believed that one should not laugh at his stories, but cry. Behind the seeming simplicity of the story, its jokes and curiosities, there is always a serious problem. The writer always had a lot of them.
Zoshchenko keenly felt the most important questions of the time. So, his numerous stories about the housing crisis (“Nervous People”, “Kolpak” and others) appeared at the right time. The same can be said about the topics he raised of bureaucracy, bribery, the elimination of illiteracy ... In a word, almost everything that people encountered in everyday life.
The concept of “philistine” is firmly connected with the word “everyday life”. There is an opinion that Zoshchenko's satire ridiculed the layman. That the writer created unsightly images of the townsfolk to help the revolution.
In fact, Zoshchenko ridiculed not the man himself, but the philistine features in him. With his stories, the satirist urged not to fight these people, but to help them get rid of their shortcomings. And also to alleviate their everyday problems and worries, why strictly ask those whose indifference and abuse of power undermine people's faith in a brighter future.
All Zoshchenko's works have another amazing feature: they can be used to study the history of our country. Subtly feeling the time, the writer managed to fix not only the problems that worry contemporaries, but also the very spirit of the era.
This, perhaps, explains the difficulty of translating his stories into other languages. The foreign reader is so unprepared for the perception of life described by Zoshchenko that he often evaluates it as a genre of some kind of social fantasy. Indeed, how to explain to a person unfamiliar with Russian realities the essence of, say, the story “Case History”? Only a compatriot, who knows firsthand about these problems, is able to understand how a sign “Issue of corpses from 3 to 4” can hang in the emergency room. Or comprehend the nurse’s phrase “For nothing that he is sick, but he also notices all sorts of subtleties. Probably, he says, you will not recover, that you are fussing all over your nose. Or to understand the tirade of the lekpom himself (“I, he says, is the first time I see such a fastidious patient. And he, impudent, does not like it, and it’s not good for him ... No, I like it more when patients come to us in an unconscious state. According at least then everything is to their liking, they are satisfied with everything and do not enter into scientific disputes with us”).
The caustic grotesque of this work emphasizes the inconsistency of the existing situation: the humiliation of human dignity is becoming common within the walls of the most humane, medical institution! And words, and actions, and attitude towards patients - everything here infringes on human dignity. And this is done mechanically, thoughtlessly - simply because it is so established, it is in the order of things, they are so used to it: “Knowing my character, they no longer began to argue with me and tried to agree on everything. Only after bathing they gave me a huge, not for my height, linen. I thought that out of malice they deliberately threw me such a set that did not fit me, but then I saw that this is a normal phenomenon with them. They had little patients, as a rule, in large shirts, and large ones in small ones. And even my kit turned out to be better than the others. On my shirt, the hospital brand was on the sleeve and did not spoil the general appearance, while on other patients the brands were on someone’s back, and someone on their chest, and this morally humiliated human dignity.
Most often, the satirical works of this writer are built as simple and artless narratives of the hero about a particular episode in his life. The story is similar to an essay, a report in which the author did not invent anything, but simply, noticing this or that episode, pedantically told about it with the diligence of an attentive and ironic journalist. That is why Zoshchenko's stories, unlike the action-packed novels by O'Henry or Arkady Averchenko, are built not on an unexpected turn of events, but on the disclosure of unforeseen aspects of character.
Mikhail Zoshchenko left a rich literary heritage. Over 130 books were published during his lifetime. This is more than a thousand stories, feuilletons, novellas, plays, scripts ... But, in addition to his books, Zoshchenko left behind a more extensive "legacy", laying (along with his contemporaries - Mikhail Bulgakov, Arkady Bukhov, Arkady Averchenko, Mikhail Koltsov and many others) the foundations of the genre of the Russian satirical story. And the broad development of this direction is confirmed even today.
So, "Zoshchenko's hero" found an undoubted continuation in the image of the narrator - "lumpen-intellectual" in "Moscow-Petushki" by Venedikt Erofeev, in the prose of Yuz Aleshkovsky, E. Popov, V. Pietsukh. All these writers in the structure of the narrator face the features of "intellectual" and "hard worker", the language of the cultural layer and the common people.
Continuing the analysis of Zoshchenko's traditions in literature and art, one cannot help but turn to the work of Vladimir Vysotsky (in his songs, the image of the hero-narrator of songs is promising).
Equally obvious analogies can be traced in the analysis of the work of Mikhail Zhvanetsky. It intersects with Zoshchenko's in many respects. First of all, we note the similarity of aphoristic constructions, citing a few phrases as proof: “In general, art is falling.” “Therefore, if anyone wants to be well understood here, he must say goodbye to world fame.” “It’s quite amazing how some people don’t like living.” "We must adequately respond to the well-founded, albeit groundless, complaints of foreigners - why are your people gloomy." “They say money is the most powerful thing in the world. Nonsense. Nonsense". “A person of weak mind can criticize our life.”
The odd phrases belong to Zoshchenko, the even ones to Zhvanetsky (which, as one can see, is not revealed without effort). Zhvanetsky continued Zoshchenko's work on the rehabilitation of the "common man" with his ordinary worldly interests, his natural weaknesses, his common sense, his ability to laugh not only at others, but also at himself.
... Reading the works of Zoshchenko, reflecting on them, we, of course, remember Gogol and Saltykov-Shchedrin. Laughter through tears - in the tradition of Russian classical satire. Behind the cheerful text of his stories, there is always a voice of doubt and anxiety. Zoshchenko always believed in the future of his people, appreciated them and worried about them.
Analysis of the poem by Robert Rozhdestvensky
"The Ballad of Talent, God and the Devil"
Robert Rozhdestvensky entered literature together with a group of talented peers, among whom stood out E. Evtushenko, B. Akhmadulina, A. Voznesensky. First of all, readers were captivated by the civic and moral pathos of this diverse lyric, which affirms the identity of the creative person in the center of the universe.
Analyzing the “Ballad of Talent, God and the Devil”, we see that the very first lines of the work raise an important question: “Everyone says: “His talent is from God!” And if from the devil? What then?..”
The image of talent from the very first stanzas appears before us in two ways. This is both talent - in the sense of unusual human abilities and qualities, and talent as a person himself, endowed with such a gift. Moreover, at the beginning, the poet describes his hero in a completely casual and prosaic way: “... And the talent lived. Sick. Ridiculous. Frowning". These short, jerky sentences, each consisting of a single adjective, have enormous potential for emotional impact on the reader: the power of tension increases more and more as you move from one sentence to another.
In the “everyday” characteristics and description of the everyday life of the talent, there is completely no elevation: “The talent got up, scratching himself sleepily. Lost identity found. And he needed a jar of cucumber pickle more than nectar.” And since all this is clearly happening in the morning, the reader is intrigued: what has the person been doing up to now? It turns out that after listening to the devil’s monologue (“Listen, mediocrity! Who needs your poems now?! After all, you, like everyone else, will drown in the hellish abyss. Relax! ..”), he simply goes “to the tavern. And relaxes!
In the following stanzas, the poet again and again uses a technique already familiar to us, using the word in several meanings and thereby significantly increasing the emotional tension: “He drank with inspiration! He drank so much that the devil looked and was touched. Talent ruined himself with talent!..” This linguistic device, based on a combination of seemingly paradoxically incompatible words in meaning and style (talented ruined), creates vivid and strong images in front of the reader, making them as tragic as possible, to the point of pain.
The tension is growing. The second half of the "Ballad ..." is riddled with bitter pathos and hope. It tells about how the talent worked - “Evil, fiercely. Feather dipping in its own pain. This theme, consistently developing further, sounds on an increasingly piercing note: “Now he was a god! And he was the devil! And that means he was himself.
Tension reaches its climax. Here is the answer to the eternal question: talent from God or from the devil? True talent is both a god and a devil in itself. Again, the combination of opposites gives us the opportunity to look at the world with different eyes, to see it not in the unambiguous categories of "white - black", but in all its multicolor.
After this climax, the author again "descends" to the ground, to the images of the audience watching the process of creation. Both God and the devil are here attributed to completely human, moreover, unexpected actions. Here is how they reacted to the success of talent: “God was baptized. And god cursed. “But how could he write such a thing?!” ... And he still couldn’t do that. ”
How casual and simple the last line sounds! No stylistic excesses, the vocabulary is the most colloquial. But in this simplicity lies the strength with which the poet expresses the main idea of the work: everything is subject to true talent. The phrase is said as if in a quiet voice, but he is so sure of the justice of what was said that there is no need for pathos, loudness, recitation. Everything seems to go without saying, and this is the great truth ...
The truth of war in the works of Y. Bondarev
The theme of war is inexhaustible. More and more new works appear, which again and again make us return to the fiery events of more than fifty years ago and see in the heroes of the Great Patriotic War what we have not yet understood and appreciated enough. At the turn of the fifties and sixties, a whole galaxy of names well-known to readers today appeared: V. Bogomolov, A. Ananiev, V. Bykov, A. Adamovich, Yu. Bondarev ...
The work of Yuri Bondarev has always been dramatic and dramatic. The most tragic event of the twentieth century - the war against fascism, the inescapable memory of it - permeates his books: "Battalions ask for fire", "Silence", "Hot snow", "Coast". Yuri Vasilyevich belongs to the generation for which the Great Patriotic War became the first life baptism, the harsh school of youth.
The basis of Yuri Bondarev's work was the theme of the high humanism of the Soviet soldier, his vital responsibility for our present day. The story "Battalions ask for fire" was published in 1957. This book, as well as subsequent ones, as if logically continuing it ("The Last Volleys", "Silence" and "Two") brought the author wide popularity and recognition of readers.
In "Battalions ..." Yuri Bondarev managed to find his own trend in a wide literary stream. The author does not strive for a comprehensive description of the picture of the war - he bases the work on a specific combat episode, one of many on the battlefield, and populates his story with completely specific people, privates and officers of the great army.
Bondarev's image of war is formidable and cruel. And the events described in the story "Battalions ask for fire" are deeply tragic. The pages of the story are full of high humanism, love and trust in man. Even here, Yuri Bondarev began to develop the theme of the mass heroism of the Soviet people, later it was most fully embodied in the story "Hot Snow". Here the author spoke about the last days of the Battle of Stalingrad, about the people who stood in the way of the Nazis to death.
In 1962, Bondarev's new novel, Silence, was published, and soon its continuation, the novel Two, was published. The hero of "Silence" Sergei Vokhmintsev has just returned from the front. But he cannot erase from his memory the echoes of recent battles. He judges the actions and words of people by the highest measure - the measure of front-line friendship, military partnership. In these difficult circumstances, in the struggle for the establishment of justice, the civic position of the hero is getting stronger. Recall the works of Western authors (Remarque, Hemingway) - in this literature, the motive of the alienation of yesterday's soldier from the life of today's society, the motive of the destruction of ideals is constantly heard. Bondarev's position on this issue leaves no room for doubt. At first, it is also not easy for his hero to enter into a peaceful rut. But it was not in vain that Vokhmintsev went through the harsh school of life. He again and again, like the heroes of other books of this writer, asserts: the truth, no matter how bitter it may be, is always alone.
As you wish, comrades, I sympathize with Nikolai Ivanovich very much.
This nice man suffered for all six hryvnias, and he did not see anything particularly outstanding for this money.
Only that his character turned out to be soft and compliant. Another person in his place would have scattered all the movies and smoked the audience out of the hall. Therefore, six hryvnias do not lie on the floor every day. Need to understand.
And on Saturday, our darling, Nikolai Ivanovich, drank a little, of course. After pay.
And this man was highly conscious. Another drunk person began to buzz and get upset, and Nikolai Ivanovich decorously and nobly walked along the avenue. Sang something there.
Suddenly he looks - in front of him is a movie.
“Give it to me, I think it’s all the same - I’ll go to the cinema. A man, he thinks, I am cultured, semi-intelligent, why should I talk drunkenly on the panels and hurt passers-by? Give, he thinks, I'll watch the tape in a drunken state. I never did".
He bought for his pure ticket. And sat in the front row.
He sat down in the front row and looked decorously and nobly.
Only, maybe, he looked at one inscription, suddenly he went to Riga. Therefore, it is very warm in the hall, the audience breathes and the darkness has a positive effect on the psyche.
Our Nikolai Ivanovich went to Riga, everything is decorous and noble - he does not touch anyone, the screen is not enough with his hands, he does not unscrew the light bulbs, but sits for himself and quietly goes to Riga.
Suddenly, the sober public began to express dissatisfaction with, therefore, Riga.
- Could, - they say, - comrade, for this purpose, take a walk in the foyer, only, they say, you distract those watching the drama with other ideas.
Nikolai Ivanovich - a man of culture, conscious - did not, of course, argue and get excited in vain. And he got up and went quietly.
“What, he thinks, to mess with the sober? You can't avoid scandal from them."
He went to the exit. Returns to the cashier.
“Just now,” he says, “lady, I bought a ticket from you, I ask you to return the money back.” Because I can’t look at the picture - it drives me in the dark.
Cashier says:
“We can’t give the money back, if you are being driven around, go to sleep quietly.”
There was an uproar and an uproar. Another would have been in the place of Nikolai Ivanych by the hair would have dragged the cashier out of the cash register and returned his most pure ones. And Nikolai Ivanovich, a quiet and cultured man, only once shoved the cashier:
“You,” he says, “understand, infection, I haven’t looked at your tape yet. Give, he says, my pure ones.
And everything is so decorous and noble, without scandal, - he asks to return his own money in general. This is where the manager comes in.
- We, - he says, - do not return money back - once, he says, it's taken, be kind enough to watch the tape.
Another would have spat in Nikolai Ivanovich's place and would have gone to inspect for his purest ones. A Nikolay
Ivanovich became very sad about the money, he began to explain himself fervently and went back to Riga.
Here, of course, they grabbed Nikolai Ivanovich like a dog, dragged him to the police. They kept it until the morning. And in the morning they took a three-ruble fine from him and released him.
I feel very sorry for Nikolai Ivanovich now. Such, you know, an unfortunate case: a person, one might say, did not even look at the tape, he just held on to a ticket - and, please, drive three-six hryvnias for this petty pleasure. And for what, one wonders, three six hryvnia?
Composition
Mikhail Zoshchenko, satirist and humorist, a writer unlike anyone else, with a special view of the world, the system of social and human relations, culture, morality, and, finally, with his own special Zoshchenko language, strikingly different from the language of everyone before him and after him writers working in the genre of satire. But the main discovery of Zoshchenko's prose is his heroes, the most ordinary, inconspicuous people who do not play, according to the writer's sadly ironic remark, "a role in the complex mechanism of our days." These people are far from understanding the causes and meaning of the ongoing changes; they cannot, due to habits, attitudes, and intellect, adapt to the emerging relations in society. They cannot get used to the new state laws and regulations, so they end up in ridiculous, stupid, sometimes dead-end everyday situations from which they cannot get out on their own, and if they do succeed, then with great moral and physical losses.
In literary criticism, the opinion has taken root to consider Zoshchenko's heroes as philistines, narrow-minded, vulgar people whom the satirist castigates, ridicules, subjected to "sharp, annihilating" criticism, helping a person "get rid of morally obsolete, but not yet lost their power, remnants of the past swept away by the revolution." Unfortunately, the writer's sympathy for his heroes, the anxiety for their fate hidden behind irony, that same Gogol's "laughter through tears" that is inherent in most of Zoshchenko's short stories, and especially his, as he called them, sentimental stories, were not noticed at all.
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato, demonstrating to his students how a person behaves under the influence of certain life circumstances, took a puppet and pulled one or the other thread, and it took unnatural poses, became ugly, pitiful, funny, deformed, turned into a pile of ridiculously combined parts and limbs. Zoshchenko's characters are like this puppet, and rapidly changing circumstances (laws, orders, social relations, etc.), to which they cannot get used and adapt, are like threads that make them defenseless or stupid, miserable or ugly, insignificant or arrogant. All this creates a comic effect, and in combination with colloquial words, jargon, verbal puns and blunders, specific Zoshchenko phrases and expressions (“what did you fight for?”, “an aristocrat is not a woman at all for me, but a smooth place”, “we there are no holes behind them”, “sorry, then sorry”, etc.) causes, depending on their concentration, a smile or laughter, which, according to the writer’s intention, should help a person understand what is “good, what is bad, and what "mediocre". What are these circumstances (“threads”) that are so merciless to those who did not play any significant “role in the complex mechanism of our days”?
In the "Banya" - these are the orders in the city communal services, based on a dismissive attitude towards the common man, who can only afford to go to the "ordinary" bathhouse, where they take a dime for entry. In such a bath “they give two numbers. One for underwear, the other for a coat with a hat. And for a naked person, where to put the numbers? So the visitor has to tie "a number to his feet so as not to lose it at once." And it is inconvenient for the visitor, and he looks ridiculous and stupid, but what remains to be done ... - "do not go to America." In the stories "Nervous People", "Crisis" and "The Restless Old Man" it is the economic backwardness that has paralyzed civil construction. And as a result - “not just a fight, but a whole fight” in a communal apartment, during which the disabled Gavrilov “almost chopped off his last head” (“Nervous People”), the flight of the head of a young family, who “lived in a master’s bath” , rented for thirty rubles in, again, a communal apartment, seemed like a living hell, and, finally, the impossibility of finding a place for a coffin with the deceased, all because of the same housing disorder ("Restless Old Man"). Zoshchenko's characters can only cheer themselves up with hope: “In maybe twenty years, or even less, every citizen, I suppose, will have a whole room. And if the population does not increase rapidly and, for example, abortions are allowed for everyone, then two at a time. And then three per snout. With a bath” (“Crisis”).
In a nutshell, "Product Quality" is a thriving manufacturing hack and a shortage of basic commodities, forcing people to rush to "foreign products." In the stories "Medic" and "History of the disease" - this is a low level of medical care. What remains for the patient to do, how not to turn to a healer if he is threatened by a meeting with a doctor who “performed an operation with filthy hands”, “he dropped his glasses from his nose into the intestines and cannot find” (“Medic”)? And isn’t it better to “get sick at home” than to be treated in a hospital where, at the reception and registration point for patients, a poster “Issue of corpses from 3 to 4” hangs on the wall, and they offer to wash in the bath with an old woman (“History disease")? And what objections can there be from the patient, when the nurse still has “weighty” arguments: “Yes, this is one sick old woman sitting here. You don't pay attention to her. She has a high temperature and is not responding to anything. So you undress without embarrassment.
Zoshchenko's characters, like obedient puppets, resignedly submit to circumstances. And if someone “extremely cocky” suddenly appears, like an old peasant from the story “City Lights”, who arrived from an unknown collective farm, in bast shoes, with a bag behind his back and a stick, who is trying to protest and defend his human dignity, then the authorities develop the opinion that he is “not exactly a counter-revolutionary,” but is distinguished by “exceptional backwardness in the political sense,” and administrative measures must be applied to him. Suppose, "report to the place of residence." It’s good that at least not to be sent to places not as remote as it was in the Stalin years.
Being an optimist by nature, Zoshchenko hoped that his stories would make people better, and those, in turn, would improve social relations. The "threads" that make a person look like a disenfranchised, pitiful, spiritually wretched "puppet" will break. “Brothers, the main difficulties are behind us,” exclaims a character from the story “The Sufferings of Young Werther”. “Soon we will live like fonbarons.” There should be only one central thread that controls human behavior - "the golden thread of reason and law," as the philosopher Plato said. Then the person will not be an obedient doll, but will be a harmonious personality. In the story “City Lights”, which has elements of a sentimental utopia, Zoshchenko, through the mouth of one of the characters, proclaims his formula for a moral panacea: “I have always defended the point of view that respect for the individual, praise and reverence bring exceptional results. And many characters from this are revealed, literally like roses at dawn. The writer associated the spiritual renewal of man and society with the familiarization of people with culture.
Zoshchenko, an intelligent man who received an excellent upbringing, it was painful to watch the manifestation of ignorance, rudeness and spiritual emptiness. It is no coincidence that the events in the stories devoted to this topic often take place in the theater. Let us recall his stories “The Aristocrat”, “The Charms of Culture”, etc. The theater serves as a symbol of spiritual culture, which was so lacking in society and without which, the writer believed, it is impossible to improve society.
Finally, the good name of the writer has been completely restored. The works of the satirist are of great interest to modern readers. Zoshchenko's laughter is still relevant today.
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Zoshchenko, Mikhail Mikhailovich (1894-1958), Russian writer. Born July 29 (August 9), 1894 in St. Petersburg in the artist's family. Childhood impressions - including those of complex relationships between parents - were later reflected in Zoshchenko's stories for children ( Christmas tree, Galoshes and ice cream, Grandma's gift, Do not lie etc.), and in his story Before sunrise(1943). The first literary experiences relate to childhood. In one of his notebooks, he noted that in 1902-1906 he already tried to write poetry, and in 1907 he wrote a story Coat.
In 1913 Zoshchenko entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. His first surviving stories date back to this time - Vanity(1914) and Two hryvnia(1914). The study was interrupted by the First World War. In 1915, Zoshchenko volunteered for the front, commanded a battalion, and became a Knight of St. George. Literary work did not stop during these years. Zoshchenko tried his hand at short stories, in the epistolary and satirical genres (composing letters to fictitious addressees and epigrams for fellow soldiers). In 1917 he was demobilized due to heart disease that arose after gas poisoning.
Upon their return to Petrograd, they wrote Marusya, petty bourgeois, Neighbour and other unpublished stories in which the influence of G. Maupassant was felt. In 1918, despite his illness, Zoshchenko volunteered for the Red Army and fought on the fronts of the Civil War until 1919. Returning to Petrograd, he earned his living, as before the war, in various professions: a shoemaker, a carpenter, a carpenter, an actor, an instructor in rabbit breeding, policeman, criminal investigation officer, etc. In the humorous Orders for the railway police and criminal supervision Art. Ligovo and other unpublished works, the style of the future satirist is already felt.
In 1919, Zoshchenko studied at the Creative Studio, organized by the publishing house World Literature. Led by K.I. Chukovsky, who highly appreciated the work of Zoshchenko. Recalling his stories and parodies, written during the period of studio studies, Chukovsky wrote: “It was strange to see that such a sad person was endowed with this wondrous ability to force his neighbors to laugh.” In addition to prose, during his studies, Zoshchenko wrote articles about the work of A. Blok, V. Mayakovsky, N. Teffi, and others. In the Studio he met writers V. Kaverin, Vs. Ivanov, L. Lunts, K. Fedin, E. Polonskaya, and others, who in 1921 united in the literary group Serapion Brothers, which advocated the freedom of creativity from political tutelage. Creative communication was facilitated by the life of Zoshchenko and other "serapions" in the famous Petrograd House of Arts, described by O. Forsh in the novel crazy ship.
In 1920-1921 Zoshchenko wrote the first stories of those that were subsequently published: Love, War, Old Woman Wrangel, female fish. Cycle Stories of Nazar Ilyich, Mr. Sinebryukhov(1921-1922) was published as a separate book by the Erato publishing house. This event marked Zoshchenko's transition to professional literary activity. The very first publication made him famous. Phrases from his stories acquired the character of popular expressions: “Why are you disturbing the mess?”; "Second Lieutenant wow, but - a bastard", etc. From 1922 to 1946, his books withstood about 100 editions, including collected works in six volumes (1928-1932).
By the mid-1920s, Zoshchenko had become one of the most popular writers. His stories Bath, aristocrat, Disease history and others, which he often himself read to numerous audiences, were known and loved in all walks of life. In a letter to Zoshchenko A.M. Gorky noted: “I don’t know such a ratio of irony and lyricism in anyone’s literature.” Chukovsky believed that the center of Zoshchenko's work was the struggle against callousness in human relations.
In 1920s storybooks humorous stories (1923), Dear citizens(1926) and others. Zoshchenko created a new type of hero for Russian literature - a Soviet person who has not received an education, does not have the skills of spiritual work, does not have cultural baggage, but strives to become a full participant in life, to catch up with the "rest of humanity". The reflection of such a hero produced a strikingly funny impression. The fact that the story was told on behalf of a highly individualized narrator gave literary critics grounds to define Zoshchenko's creative style as "skazovogo". Academician V.V. Vinogradov in the study Zoshchenko's language analyzed in detail the writer's narrative techniques, noted the artistic transformation of various speech layers in his lexicon. Chukovsky noted that Zoshchenko introduced into literature "a new, not yet fully formed, but victoriously spread throughout the country, non-literary speech and began to freely use it as his own speech." Zoshchenko's work was highly appreciated by many of his outstanding contemporaries - A. Tolstoy, Yu. Olesha, S. Marshak, Yu. Tynyanov and others.
In 1929, known in Soviet history as "the year of the great turning point," Zoshchenko published a book Letters to the writer- a kind of sociological research. It was made up of several dozen letters from the huge reader's mail that the writer received, and his commentary on them. In the preface to the book, Zoshchenko wrote that he wanted to "show a genuine and undisguised life, genuine living people with their desires, taste, thoughts." The book caused bewilderment among many readers, who expected only regular funny stories from Zoshchenko. After its release, director V. Meyerhold was forbidden to stage Zoshchenko's play Dear comrade (1930).
The anti-human Soviet reality could not but affect the emotional state of the receptive writer, prone to depression from childhood. A trip along the White Sea Canal, organized in the 1930s for propaganda purposes for a large group of Soviet writers, made a depressing impression on him. No less difficult was the need for Zoshchenko to write after this trip that criminals were supposedly re-educated in the Stalinist camps ( One life story, 1934). An attempt to get rid of the oppressed state, to correct their own painful psyche was a kind of psychological study - a story Returned youth(1933). The story evoked an interested reaction in the scientific community, unexpected for the writer: the book was discussed at numerous academic meetings, reviewed in scientific publications; Academician I. Pavlov began to invite Zoshchenko to his famous Wednesdays.
Like a sequel Returned youth a collection of short stories was conceived blue book(1935). Zoshchenko believed blue book according to the inner content of the novel, defined it as "a brief history of human relations" and wrote that it "is not driven by a short story, but by the philosophical idea that makes it." Stories about the present were interspersed in this work with stories set in the past - in different periods of history. Both the present and the past were given in the perception of the typical hero Zoshchenko, who was not burdened with cultural baggage and understood history as a set of everyday episodes.
After publication blue book, which caused devastating reviews in party publications, Zoshchenko was actually forbidden to print works that went beyond "positive satire on individual shortcomings." Despite his high literary activity (custom feuilletons for the press, plays, film scripts, etc.), Zoshchenko's true talent manifested itself only in stories for children, which he wrote for the Chizh and Ezh magazines.
In the 1930s, the writer worked on a book that he considered the main one in his life. Work continued during World War II in Alma-Ata, in evacuation, since Zoshchenko could not go to the front due to a severe heart disease. In 1943, the initial chapters of this scientific and artistic study of the subconscious were published in the October magazine under the title Before sunrise. Zoshchenko studied cases from life that gave impetus to a severe mental illness, from which doctors could not save him. The modern scientific world notes that in this book the writer anticipated many discoveries of the science of the unconscious for decades.
The magazine publication caused such a scandal, such a flurry of critical abuse fell upon the writer that printing Before sunrise was interrupted. Zoshchenko sent a letter to Stalin, asking him to familiarize himself with the book "or give an order to check it in more detail than is done by critics." The answer was another stream of abuse in the press, the book was called "nonsense, needed only by the enemies of our country" (Bolshevik magazine). In 1946, after the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad”, the party leader of Leningrad A. Zhdanov recalled in his report about the book Before sunrise, calling it "a disgusting thing."
The decree of 1946, with the rudeness inherent in Soviet ideology, "criticized" Zoshchenko and A. Akhmatova, led to their public persecution and a ban on the publication of their works. The reason was the publication of Zoshchenko's children's story monkey adventure(1945), in which the authorities saw a hint that monkeys live better than people in the Soviet country. At a writers' meeting, Zoshchenko declared that the honor of an officer and a writer did not allow him to accept the fact that in the resolution of the Central Committee he was called a "coward" and "a bastard of literature." In the future, Zoshchenko also refused to come out with the expected repentance from him and the recognition of "mistakes." In 1954, at a meeting with English students, Zoshchenko again tried to state his attitude to the 1946 resolution, after which the persecution began in a second round.
The saddest consequence of this ideological campaign was the exacerbation of mental illness, which did not allow the writer to work fully. His restoration in the Writers' Union after Stalin's death (1953) and the publication of his first book after a long break (1956) brought only temporary relief to his condition.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko was born in St. Petersburg in the family of an artist. Childhood impressions - including those of difficult relationships between parents - were subsequently reflected both in Zoshchenko's stories for children (Galoshes and ice cream, Christmas tree, Grandma's gift, No need to lie, etc.), and in his story Before Sunrise (1943). The first literary experiences relate to childhood. In one of his notebooks, he noted that in 1902-1906 he had already tried to write poetry, and in 1907 he wrote the story Coat.
In 1913 Zoshchenko entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. By this time, his first surviving stories, Vanity (1914) and Two-kopeck piece (1914), date back. The study was interrupted by the First World War. In 1915, Zoshchenko volunteered for the front, commanded a battalion, and became a Knight of St. George. Literary work did not stop during these years. Zoshchenko tried his hand at short stories, in the epistolary and satirical genres (composing letters to fictitious addressees and epigrams for fellow soldiers). In 1917 he was demobilized due to heart disease that arose after gas poisoning.
MichaelZoshchenko participated in the First World War, and by 1916 he was promoted to the rank of staff captain. He was awarded many orders, including the Order of St. Stanislaus of the 3rd degree, the Order of St. Anna of the 4th degree "For Courage", the Order of St. Anna of the 3rd degree. In 1917, due to heart disease caused by gas poisoning, Zoshchenko was demobilized.
Upon returning to Petrograd, Marusya, the Meshchanochka, the Neighbor and other unpublished stories were written, in which the influence of G. Maupassant was felt. In 1918, despite his illness, Zoshchenko volunteered for the Red Army and fought on the fronts of the Civil War until 1919. Returning to Petrograd, he earned his living, as before the war, in various professions: a shoemaker, a carpenter, a carpenter, an actor, an instructor in rabbit breeding, a policeman, a criminal investigation officer, etc. In the humorous Orders on the railway police and criminal supervision written at that time, Art. Ligovo and other unpublished works already feel the style of the future satirist.
In 1919, Mikhail Zoshchenko studied at the Creative Studio, organized by the publishing house World Literature. Chukovsky supervised the classes, highly appreciating Zoshchenko's work. Recalling his stories and parodies, written during the period of studio studies, Chukovsky wrote: “It was strange to see that such a sad person was endowed with this wondrous ability to force his neighbors to laugh.” In addition to prose, during his studies, Zoshchenko wrote articles about the work of Blok, Mayakovsky, Teffi ... In the Studio he met the writers Kaverin, Vs. Ivanov, Lunts, Fedin, Polonskaya, who in 1921 united in the literary group Serapion Brothers, which advocated the freedom of creativity from political tutelage. Creative communication was facilitated by the life of Zoshchenko and other "serapions" in the famous Petrograd House of Arts, described by O. Forsh in the novel Crazy Ship.
In 1920-1921 Zoshchenko wrote the first stories of those that were subsequently published: Love, War, Old Woman Wrangel, Fish female. The cycle Stories of Nazar Ilyich, Mr. Sinebryukhov (1921-1922) was published as a separate book by the Erato publishing house. This event marked Zoshchenko's transition to professional literary activity. The very first publication made him famous. Phrases from his stories acquired the character of popular expressions: “Why are you disturbing the mess?”; "Second Lieutenant wow, but a bastard"... From 1922 to 1946, his books went through about 100 editions, including collected works in six volumes (1928-1932).
By the mid-1920s, Zoshchenko had become one of the most popular writers. His stories Bath, Aristocrat, Case History, which he himself often read to numerous audiences, were known and loved by everyone. In a letter to Zoshchenko, Gorky noted: “I don’t know such a ratio of irony and lyricism in literature anywhere.” Chukovsky believed that the center of Zoshchenko's work was the struggle against callousness in human relations.
In the collections of short stories of the 1920s: Humorous Stories (1923), Dear Citizens (1926), Zoshchenko created a new type of hero for Russian literature - a Soviet person who did not receive an education, did not have the skills of spiritual work, did not have cultural baggage, but strived to become full-fledged participant in life, to be equal to "the rest of humanity." The reflection of such a hero produced a strikingly funny impression. The fact that the story was told on behalf of a highly individualized narrator gave literary critics grounds to define Zoshchenko's creative style as "skazovogo". Academician Vinogradov in the study "Zoshchenko's Language" analyzed in detail the writer's narrative techniques, noted the artistic transformation of various speech layers in his vocabulary. Chukovsky noted that Zoshchenko introduced into literature "a new, not yet fully formed, but victoriously spread throughout the country, non-literary speech and began to freely use it as his own speech."
In 1929, known in Soviet history as "the year of the great turning point", Zoshchenko published the book "Letters to a Writer" - a kind of sociological study. It was made up of several dozen letters from the huge reader's mail that the writer received, and his commentary on them. In the preface to the book, Zoshchenko wrote that he wanted to "show a genuine and undisguised life, genuine living people with their desires, taste, thoughts." The book caused bewilderment among many readers, who expected only regular funny stories from Zoshchenko. After its release, Meyerhold was forbidden to stage Zoshchenko's play "Dear Comrade" (1930).
Soviet reality could not but affect the emotional state of the receptive writer prone to depression from childhood. A trip along the White Sea Canal, organized in the 1930s for propaganda purposes for a large group of Soviet writers, made a depressing impression on him. No less difficult was the need for Zoshchenko to write after this trip thatcriminalallegedly re-educatedin Stalin's camps(History of one life, 1934). An attempt to get rid of the oppressed state, to correct his painful psyche was a kind of psychological study - the story "Returned Youth" (1933). The story evoked an interested reaction in the scientific community, unexpected for the writer: the book was discussed at many academic meetings, reviewed in scientific publications; Academician I. Pavlov began to invite Zoshchenko to his famous Wednesdays.
As a continuation of "Returned Youth" was conceived a collection of short stories "The Blue Book" (1935).According to the contentMikhail Zoshchenko considered The Blue Book a novel, defined it as "a brief history of human relations" and wrote that it "is driven not by a short story, but by the philosophical idea that makes it". Stories about the present were interspersed in it with stories set in the past - in different periods of history. Both the present and the past were given in the perception of the typical hero Zoshchenko, who was not burdened with cultural baggage and understood history as a set of everyday episodes.
After the publication of the "Blue Book", which caused devastating reviews in party publications, Mikhail Zoshchenko was actually forbidden to print works that go beyond "positive satire on individual shortcomings." Despite his high writing activity (custom feuilletons for the press, plays, film scripts), his true talent was manifested only in stories for children, which he wrote for the magazines "Chizh" and "Ezh".
In the 1930s, the writer worked on a book that he considered the main one. Work continued during the Patriotic War in Alma-Ata, in evacuation, Zoshchenko could not go to the front due to severe heart disease. The initial chapters of this science fiction study of the subconscious have been published byin 1943in the magazine "October" under the title "Before Sunrise". Zoshchenko studied cases from life that gave impetus to a severe mental illness, from which doctors could not save him. Modern scientists note that the writer anticipated many discoveries of the science of the unconscious for decades.
The magazine publication caused a scandal, and such a flurry of critical abuse was brought down on Zoshchenko that the publication of "Before Sunrise" was interrupted. He sent a letter to Stalin, asking him to familiarize himself with the book "or give an order to check it in more detail than is done by the critics." The answer was another stream of abuse in the press, the book was called "nonsense, needed only by the enemies of our country" (Bolshevik magazine).In 1944-1946 Zoshchenko worked a lot for theaters. Two of his comedies were staged at the Leningrad Drama Theatre, one of which - Canvas Briefcase - withstood 200 performances in a year.
In 1946, after the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad”, the party leader of Leningrad Zhdanov recalled the book Before Sunrise in a report, calling it “a disgusting thing”.The decree of 1946, with the rudeness inherent in Soviet ideology, "criticized" Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, led to public persecution and a ban on the publication of their works. The reason was the publication of Zoshchenko's children's story "The Adventures of a Monkey" (1945), in which the authorities saw a hint that monkeys live better than people in the Soviet country. At a writers' meeting, Zoshchenko declared that the honor of an officer and a writer did not allow him to accept the fact that in the resolution of the Central Committee he was called a "coward" and "a bastard of literature." In the future, Zoshchenko also refused to come out with the expected repentance from him and the recognition of "mistakes." In 1954, at a meeting with English students, Zoshchenko again tried to state his attitude to the 1946 resolution, after which the persecution began in a second round.The saddest consequence of the ideological campaign was the exacerbation of mental illness, which did not allow the writer to work fully. His restoration in the Writers' Union after Stalin's death (1953) and the publication of his first book after a long break (1956) brought only temporary relief to his condition.
Zoshchenko the satirist
The first victory of Mikhail Mikhailovich was "The Stories of Nazar Ilyich, Mr. Sinebryukhov" (1921-1922). The loyalty of the hero, the "little man" who had been in the German war, was told ironically, but without malice; the writer, it seems, is rather amused than upset by the humility of Sinebryukhov, who “understands, of course, his rank and position”, and his “boasting”, and what comes out to him from time to time is “a mishap and a regrettable incident”. The case takes place after the February Revolution, the slave in Sinebryukhov still seems justified, but it already acts as an alarming symptom: a revolution has taken place, but the psyche of people remains the same. The narrative is colored by the word of the hero - a tongue-tied person, a simpleton who finds himself in various curious situations. The author's word is folded. The center of artistic vision is moved to the mind of the narrator.
In the context of the main artistic problem of the time, when all writers were solving the question “How to emerge victorious from the constant, exhausting struggle of the artist with the interpreter” (Konstantin Alexandrovich Fedin), Zoshchenko was the winner: the ratio of image and meaning in his satirical stories was extremely harmonious. The main element of the narrative was linguistic comedy, the form of the author's assessment - irony, the genre - the comic tale. This artistic structure has become canonical for Zoshchenko's satirical stories.
The gap between the scale of revolutionary events and the conservatism of the human psyche, which struck Zoshchenko, made the writer especially attentive to that area of life where, as he believed, lofty ideas and epoch-making events are deformed. The writer's phrase, which made a lot of noise, "And we are quietly, and we are little by little, and we are on a par with Russian reality," grew out of a feeling of an alarming gap between the "rapidity of fantasy" and "Russian reality." Without questioning the revolution as an idea, M. Zoshchenko believed, however, that, passing through "Russian reality", the idea encounters on its way obstacles that deform it, rooted in the age-old psychology of yesterday's slave. He created a special - and new - type of hero, where ignorance was fused with readiness for mimicry, natural grasp with aggressiveness, and old instincts and skills were hidden behind the new phraseology. Such stories as "Victim of the Revolution", "Grimace of NEP", "Brake of Westinghouse", "Aristocrat" can serve as a model. The heroes are passive until they understand “what is what and who is not shown to be beaten”, but when it is “shown” they stop at nothing, and their destructive potential is inexhaustible: they mock their own mother, a quarrel over a brush turns into "solid battle" ("Nervous people"), and the pursuit of an innocent person turns into a vicious pursuit ("Terrible Night").
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The new type was the discovery of Mikhail Zoshchenko. He was often compared with the "little man" of Gogol and Dostoevsky, and later with the hero of Charlie Chaplin. But Zoshchenko's type - the further, the more - deviated from all models. Linguistic comedy, which became an imprint of the absurdity of his hero's consciousness, became a form of his self-disclosure. He no longer considers himself a small person. “You never know what the average person has to do in the world!” - exclaims the hero of the story "Wonderful Rest". A proud attitude to the "cause" - from the demagogy of the era; but Zoshchenko parodies her: “You understand yourself: either you drink a little, then the guests will come, then you need to glue the leg to the sofa ... The wife, too, will sometimes begin to express complaints.” So in the literature of the 1920s, Zoshchenko's satire formed a special, "negative world", as he said, so that he would be "ridiculed and repelled from himself."
Starting from the middle of 1920, Mikhail Zoshchenko published "sentimental stories". Their origins were the story "The Goat" (1922). Then appeared the novels "Apollo and Tamara" (1923), "People" (1924), "Wisdom" (1924), "A Terrible Night" (1925), "What the Nightingale Sang About" (1925), "Merry Adventure" (1926). ) and Lilac Blooms (1929). In the preface to them, Zoshchenko for the first time openly spoke sarcastically about the "planetary missions", heroic pathos and "high ideology" that were expected of him. In a deliberately simple form, he posed the question: how does the death of the human in a person begin, what predetermines it and what can prevent it. This question appeared in the form of a reflective intonation.
The heroes of "sentimental stories" continued to debunk the supposedly passive consciousness. The evolution of Bylinkin (“What the nightingale sang about”), who at the beginning walked in the new city “timidly, looking around and dragging his feet”, and, having received “a strong social position, public service and a salary of the seventh category plus for the load”, turned into a despot and a boor, convinced that the moral passivity of the Zoshchensky hero is still illusory. His activity revealed itself in the rebirth of the spiritual structure: it clearly showed signs of aggressiveness. “I really like,” Gorky wrote in 1926, “that the hero of Zoshchenko’s story “What the Nightingale Sang About” — the former hero of The Overcoat, in any case, a close relative of Akaki, arouses my hatred thanks to the clever irony of the author” .
But, as Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky noted in the late 1920s and early 1930s, another type of hero appears.Zoshchenko- a person who "lost his human appearance", "the righteous" ("Goat", "Terrible Night"). These heroes do not accept the morality of the environment, they have other ethical standards, they would like to live by high morality. But their rebellion ends in failure. However, unlike Chaplin’s “victim” rebellion, which is always fanned with compassion, Zoshchenko’s hero’s rebellion is devoid of tragedy: the personality is faced with the need for spiritual resistance to the mores and ideas of his environment, and the writer’s harsh demands do not forgive her compromise and capitulation.
The appeal to the type of righteous heroes betrayed the eternal uncertainty of the Russian satirist in the self-sufficiency of art and was a kind of attempt to continue Gogol's search for a positive hero, a "living soul". However, it is impossible not to notice: in the "sentimental stories" the writer's artistic world has become bipolar; the harmony of meaning and image was broken, philosophical reflections revealed a preaching intention, the pictorial fabric became less dense. The word fused with the author's mask dominated; it was similar in style to stories; meanwhile, the character (type), stylistically motivating the narrative, has changed: this is an average intellectual. The former mask turned out to be attached to the writer.
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Mikhail Zoshchenko at a meeting of the Serapion Brothers literary circle.
Zoshchenko and Olesha: a double portrait in the interior of the era
Mikhail Zoshchenko and Yuri Olesha - twothe most popular writer of Soviet Russia in the 1920s, who largely determined the appearance of Russian literature of the 20th century. They were both born into impoverished noble families, experienced phenomenal success and oblivion. They were both broken by power. They also had a choice in common: to exchange their talent for day labor or write something that no one will see.