"Belkin's Tales". Experimental – polemical in nature. Plot sources and the image of Belkin, the images of the storytellers.
Belkin's stories (!830) are Pushkin's first completed prose works, consisting of five: “The Shot”, “The Station Agent”, “The Blizzard”, “The Undertaker”, “The Young Lady - Peasant”. They are preceded by a preface “From the publisher”, internally connected with “The History of the Village of Goryukhino”. In the preface, Pushkin took on the role of publisher and publisher of the Tales, signing his initials “A.P.” He attributed the authorship of the ideas for the stories to the provincial landowner Ivan Petrovich Belkin. Beokin, in turn, put on paper the stories that other people told him - “The Caretaker” was told to him by the titular adviser, “The Shot” by the lieutenant colonel, “The Undertaker” by the clerk, and “Blizzard” and “Peasant Woman” by the girl K .I.T. Pushkin creates the illusion of the reality of the events taking place, documenting that the stories are not the fruit of Belkin’s own invention, but actually happened. Having outlined the connection between the narrators and the content of the stories (the girl told two love stories, the lieutenant colonel about military life), Pushkin motivated the nature of the narrative and its style. However, the figure of Belkin, which unites all the stories, unites them all. Belkin himself was once a military man, retired, settled in the village, occasionally traveling to the city on business and stopping at post stations. Belkin is generally a characteristic face of Russian life. Ivan Petrovich's horizons are limited; by nature he is a meek and unsociable person. Like any village old-timer, Belkin develops boredom by hearing about incidents that bring something poetic into his monotonously prosaic existence. That is why the events that Belkin narrates look truly romantic in his eyes - they have everything: duels, secret love, passions. Belkin is attracted by a bright, varied life. Extraordinary events occurred in the destinies of the heroes; Belkin himself did not experience anything similar, but this does not negate his desire for romance. Trusting, however, the role of the main narrator to Belkin, Pushkin is not removed from the narrative. Due to the fact that the presence of both Pushkin and Belkin is revealed in the stories, their diversity clearly appears. The stories can be considered a “Belkin” cycle, because it is impossible to read them without taking into account the figure of Belkin. This allowed Tyupe, following Bakhtin, to put forward the idea of “double authorship.” This idea also appears in the work “Belkin’s Stories, published by A.P.” itself. However, according to other researchers, Shklovsky and Bocharov, Belkin’s “voice” is not in the stories. Apparently, Pushkin simply did not need the individual voices of Belkin and the narrators. Belkin speaks for the entire province, without any individual subtleties. With the help of this technique, Pushkin solves all stylization problems. The author, as it were, “hides behind” the figure of Belkin, but never gives him a word. If Belkin's role is to romanticize characters and situations, then the author, on the contrary, reveals the real content and dual meaning of events. So Silvio in the mouth of one is a romantic devil, and for the other he is a low avenger. For the sake of an insignificant goal, for the sake of humiliating another and his own self-affirmation, Silvio ruins his own life.
Slyly refusing authorship, Pushkin created a multi-stage stylistic structure, two opposing stylistic layers - going back to sentimentalism, moral description, romanticism and a refuting, parodying layer. At the same time, Pushkin remains a supporter of objectivism - the hero is known from his words, from the words of his antagonist and from the observer-narrator.
In connection with the combination of stories into one cycle, as well as with “small tragedies,” the question of genre originality arises here. Researchers are inclined to believe that the genre is close to the novel; some consider it to be a story genre. However, the stories themselves represent 5 unique short stories. The difference between Pushkin's and the traditional Western short story is that in the first the folk-epic tendency prevailed, while in the latter the epic and the European short story are little consistent with each other.
The genre core of short stories consists of tradition (legend), parable and anecdote. The nature of the mixture of these genres in each short story determines its originality.
18. The originality of the interpretation of the historical conflict between the nobility and the people in the novel by A.S. Pushkin "The Captain's Daughter". The image of the narrator-memoirist Grinev. The problem of honor in the novel.
In The Captain's Daughter, the history of the Pugachev rebellion or the details about it are somehow more vivid than in the story itself. In this story you briefly get acquainted with the situation in Russia in this strange and terrible time. Pugachev himself is depicted aptly and impressionably. You see him, you hear him. Perhaps in some ways the author is somewhat idealized his. In his - it’s strange to say, but there’s no other way to say it - the simplicity that sometimes turns out to be in him, in his sincerity Regarding Grinev, before whom he is ready not to pretend to be Peter III, there is something reminiscent of an essay by Dmitry the Pretender, drawn by the same Pushkin. But if you meet some details with bewilderment, then the basis of the whole and the fable set out on it are correct. Let us say again: if it was not so, it could have been so. From the Belogorskaya fortress all the way to Tsarskoe Selo, the picture is compressed, but complete and masterfully reproduced. Empress Catherine is just as successfully and faithfully captured by the master’s brush as is Commandant Vasilisa Yegorovna. – Vyazemsky spoke
The aristocracy was an “elite” that set a high moral “standard” for society. Its influence had a particularly strong impact on the formation of a complex of honor and dignity among officers. In the relevant literature one can read that “a sense of honor requires that an officer in all cases be able to maintain the dignity of his rank... He must refrain from any hobbies and, in general, from all actions that could cast even the slightest shadow even on him personally, and even more so on the corps officers.<...>An officer's word must always be a guarantee of truth, and therefore lies, boasting, failure to fulfill obligations - vices that undermine faith in the officer's truthfulness, generally dishonor his rank and cannot be tolerated.<…>Honor is the shrine of an officer, it is the highest good, which he is obliged to preserve and keep clean. Honor is his reward in happiness and consolation in grief. Honor tempers courage and ennobles courage. Honor does not tolerate and cannot bear any stain.” In Pushkin’s novel, mercy is the result of a single event: a direct meeting between the empress and a provincial petitioner. The merciful ending, while formally removing the tragedy of a man of honor, does not remove it in essence. The intervention of the empress cannot be frequent, while the court that convicted Grinev is a regularly functioning institution, within the scope of which every violation of the law (military oath) falls. Therefore, the real fate of the Grinevs is tragic.
One of the main characters of the novel is Grinev the memoirist, who, many years after the events described, considered it necessary to present to the reader the events of two years of his youthful life. These two years of his life were remembered for a long time by Grinev, first of all, for his “strange” friendly relations with Pugachev. Moreover, during this short period of time he noticeably matured, became mentally enriched, retained his honor, showed courage and courage, and was able to defend and defend his happiness in difficult trials.
When creating the image of a hero-memoirist, Pushkin thought through everything thoroughly. The narrator Grinev is a nobleman. It is natural for him to reject and condemn the uprising of Pugachev and his persecutors. He is kind, honest, noble. Pushkin considered it very important and necessary to give his hero precisely such moral qualities: it is easier for the reader to believe in the veracity of the events described. It is no coincidence that the age of Grinev the witness is seventeen years old. This age of happy youth, according to Pushkin, seemed to make his hero free from social morality, capable of “rebellion,” of fighting for his happiness, of protesting against the despotic will of his parents.
The social stereotype of thinking is still alien to the young noble officer. Social instinct told Grinev that he should treat rebels and “rebels” negatively, but in real situations he trusted his personal impressions more. Believing, from the point of view of a nobleman, that Pugachev was an enemy and a robber, Grinev still considered it his duty to tell the truth about the behavior of this man. The truth, whatever it may be, regardless of the fact that this truth contradicts the one that has developed in the official opinion about Pugachev.
Memoirist Grinev is a real nobleman; he does not accept any “violent upheavals.” Honor helped him to be sincere in his rejection of the armed struggle of the people: “... the leaders of individual detachments autocratically punished and pardoned; The condition of the entire vast region, where the fire was raging, was terrible... God forbid that we see a Russian rebellion, senseless and merciless!”
The image of Grinev is given in the story in two time dimensions - Grinev at seventeen years old and Grinev the memoirist, a man wise with experience and who has seen a lot in his life. Grinev the memoirist describes his past, especially his childhood, with humor. Take, for example, the episode that tells us about the French teacher: “He was a kind fellow, but flighty and dissolute to the extreme” or: “We immediately got along, and although according to the contract he was obliged to teach me French, German and everything sciences, but he preferred to quickly learn from me how to chat in Russian - and then each of us went about our own business. We lived in perfect harmony...” The irony related to oneself in the words of Grinev the memoirist is very important. With it, Pushkin sought to emphasize the objectivity of his narrator, to show the character of the hero as positive, devoid of vanity, selfishness and pride.
19. The problem of imposture and the features of the conflict in the tragedy of A.S. Pushkin "Boris Godunov". Historical and legendary in the plot. The controversial role of “popular opinion” in the play. Genre-style innovation of tragedy.
And Boris is well aware of the significance of this force: Godunov is trying to win over the people, he “opened their granaries”, “found work”, but, making sure that the people still do not love him, Boris finds an explanation for this:
Living power is hateful to the mob; They only know how to love the dead.
Throughout the tragedy, Godunov contemptuously calls the people “rabble”; often (this was especially clearly manifested in the monologue “I have reached the highest power”) he speaks of the people: “they”, “them”, “their”, contrasting the singular first person pronoun with third person plural pronoun: “they cursed me in a rage,” “they reproached me with fire,” “I scattered gold for them.” The author emphasizes the loneliness of the tsar: Boris is abandoned by the boyars, dying, he advises his son to trust Basmanov and Shuisky, not knowing that these are the people who will betray him.
The poet pays main attention to the moral torment of Boris - the tragedy of the “unhappy conscience”. In Godunov, two people are fighting: the regicide and the just, the “good sovereign,” the affectionate father and the child killer.
Boris gets into an argument with his honor. In the climactic scene of the tragedy, Boris makes the final choice: the tsar does not allow the discovery of the holy, according to the patriarch, relics of the murdered Tsarevich Dimitri in order to save the Russian land from interventionists, in order to protect himself, not to give another reason to blame himself. In addition to the social conflict, the tragedy clearly shows the conflict of two cultures: the original Russian and the Western, brought by the interventionists. A. S. Pushkin contrasts the pure, high feeling of Ksenia with Marina’s calculating love; Theodore's sincere thirst for knowledge and the education of the impostor flaunting his knowledge of Latin; the modest Pimen of the Polish priest, advising False Dmitry to lie to the people; and to the whole patriarchal structure of Russian life there are luxurious balls in Mniszczek’s house.
Thus, the tragedy of A. S. Pushkin “Boris Godunov” reflected not only the problem of the people and power that occupied the author, but also the conflict of two cultures, two elements, two civilizations.
A distinctive feature of the composition of “Boris Godunov” is a decisive break with the rules of classicism. Pushkin boldly violates the three unities typical of the tragedy of the classicists; the duration of the action covers a period of more than eight years, the scene of action is not only the palace, but also the square, and the monastery cell, and the tavern, and the battlefield; not even only Rus', but also Poland; the action is not united around a central character and a single intrigue, which violates the unity of action, as it was understood by the classicists.
The main clash in the tragedy is the struggle for the throne of Boris and the Pretender, a struggle in which various social forces are drawn. Pushkin himself puts it this way: “I was seduced by the thought of a tragedy without a love affair, but, not to mention the fact that love is very suitable for the romantic and passionate character of my adventurer, I made Dmitry fall in love with Marina in order to better highlight her extraordinary character.” .
Love in tragedy is only one of the means of characterizing the heroes, but not the spring driving events. In the tragedy there is a wide coverage of the life of the depicted era, the result of which was an unusually large number of characters (about sixty), moreover, from the most diverse social strata: the tsar, boyars, nobles, patriarch, monks, Cossacks, people of different nationalities: Russians, Poles, Germans , French people.
Instead of the usual division into actions (according to the rules of classicism - five), Pushkin's tragedy is divided into scenes (23), constantly changing the scene of action. This alternation of scenes is given in order of sequence or contrast. So, for example, in the first three scenes there are conversations about Boris: in the first - two boyars in the palace, in the second - the people on Red Square, in the third - “all of Moscow” on the Maiden Field. The fourth scene is a contrast and at the same time, as it were, a summary of the previous ones: Boris, elected by the people, makes a solemn speech to the patriarch and boyars, and then a short conversation between Shuisky and Vorotynsky again returns us to their conversation in the first scene and expressively characterizes both of them and Boris .
The novelty in the construction, due to the ideological content, is the introduction of the people as the main character. That is why, in contrast to the tragedies of the classicists, Pushkin’s tragedy begins and ends without Boris and the Pretender, seemingly the main characters. It should be noted that, true to the truth of life, Pushkin also violated another rule of classicism - the purity of the genre: in his tragedy he combined tragic, everyday, and comic scenes.
The images of the tragedy are also constructed according to the principles of realism. Instead of a one-sided depiction of human character, characteristic of classicist writers, Pushkin gives a broad and versatile sketch of the inner world of his heroes.
Pushkin often turned to Russian history, its most poignant and dramatic pages. In the tragedy, Boris Godunov the poet resurrected the past century in all its truth. The author managed to reach unprecedented heights in the art of drama... His characters are historically accurate, they act and reason in accordance with their time and characters.
Boris Godunov is depicted by Pushkin comprehensively. He is a wonderful father who wants happiness for his children, a fair and caring ruler who thinks about the good of the people, but why does he fail everywhere? There is no happiness for his children:
I may have angered the heavens
I could not arrange your happiness.
Innocent, why are you suffering, he says to his daughter.
And you, my son, what are you doing? It’s that there are a lot of dissatisfied people in the state. Boris comes to the conclusion that the people hate any king.
Living power is hateful to the mob,
They only know how to love the dead.
There is an accusation in the very air that Godunov is the murderer of Tsarevich Dmitry. The boyars do not dare to express this to the tsar, they have something to lose, they want to save their privileges, localism, and proximity to the throne by any means necessary.
The people are constantly dissatisfied with their humiliated position, their subordination to everything and everyone. Sometimes it results in riots that end in nothing. The rulers know how to stop the people in time, to cajole them not so much with effective measures as with momentary handouts and promises. Shuisky very well explains to Boris the essence of the people.
Pushkin in the tragedy Boris Godunov very accurately defined and showed the people's character. Eternally dissatisfied with the existing government, people are ready to rise up to destroy it and rebel, instilling terror in the rulers, and nothing more. And as a result, they themselves remain offended, since the fruits of their victory are enjoyed by the boyars and high-born nobles standing at the throne of the sovereign.
Wise from experience, Boris understands that a ruler should not seek love from the masses. He must only be fair, caring about the good of the state, and it is impossible to please everyone; there will always be those offended and dissatisfied.
This is the main idea of the tragedy Boris Godunov. Russia needs strong power, but not one that is implicated in blood, otherwise everything will crumble to dust; this is the inexorable law of life.
Pushkin shows that the driving force of history is the people, and they always remain the losers. The fruits of his labor are enjoyed by rulers, upstarts and rogues. They emerge from oblivion and leave, and the people are silent, because they are unable to change anything on their own, and there are no true heroes, selfless fighters for universal happiness, they may appear later. For now, the people can only wait, endure, and now hope... for False Dmitry.
“Belkin's Tales” (1830) includes five works: “Shot”, “Blizzard”, “Undertaker”, “Station Warden”, “Peasant Young Lady”. Adjacent to them is “The History of the Village of Goryukhin”.
The stories widely cover Pushkin's contemporary reality. They give pictures of social relations and life of the local nobility (“Blizzard”, “The Young Lady-Peasant”), and army officers (“Shot”), and city artisans (“Undertaker”), and petty officials (“Station Warden”). , and the serf peasantry (“History of the village of Goryukhin”).
Pushkin published the story anonymously, attributing the authorship to a fictitious person - Ivan Petrovich Belkin.
The most significant story is “The Station Agent”.
The truth of life, the warm, sympathetic attitude of the author towards the “little man”, a petty official, insulted at every step by people of higher rank and social status - this is what we find when reading the story.
Telling the tragic story of a station superintendent, from whom the hussar Minsky took away the old man’s dearly beloved daughter, the only joy in his difficult life, Pushkin reveals the injustice of social relations that developed under the autocratic-serf system. Here a person is assessed according to his position in society; lack of rights and constant humiliation of human dignity is the fate of the poor and unofficial. With caustic ridicule, Pushkin points out the rigidity of such orders in landowner-bureaucratic Rus':
“In fact,” he writes, “what would happen to us if, instead of the generally convenient rule: honor the rank of rank, something else was put into use, for example: honor the mind of the mind? What kind of disputes would arise, and who would the servants start serving food from?”
This story is imbued with democracy and humanity, so realistically depicting the life and spiritual world of ordinary people.
“Simply, briefly and clearly,” in the words of Pushkin, this story was written.
The story “The Station Warden,” with its focus, attention and sympathy for the “little man,” had a strong influence on subsequent Russian prose, and above all on Gogol’s “The Overcoat.”
“The History of the Village of Goryukhin” is a sharp political satire on serfdom, despite the fact that at first glance it seems so naive and ingenuous. Consider, for example, the chronicle kept by great-grandfather Yves. P. Belkina: “May 4th. Snow. Trishka for roughness. 6 - the brown cow died. Senka beats me for drunkenness... 9 - rain and snow. Trishka bit according to the weather.”
The clerk’s reign was even worse: “In three years, Goryukhino became completely impoverished. Goryukhino became despondent, the bazaar was deserted, Arkhip the Bald’s songs fell silent, the children went around the world.”
From “The History of the Village of Goryukhin” a direct path leads to “The History of One City” by the great satirist Saltykov-Shchedrin and to the works of Nekrasov (“Who Lives Well in Rus'”, etc.).
The 30s of the 19th century became the era of the real heyday of Pushkin’s prose. Pushkin's first completed prose work was Belkin's Tales, in which the writer described the life of representatives of different classes and estates. This cycle had a great influence on the development of Russian literature. We offer for your information an analysis of the work according to a plan that will be useful for 6th grade students when writing essays on this topic and preparing for a literature lesson.
Brief Analysis
Year of writing– 1830.
History of creation– The cycle was written in the village of Boldino, along with many other works by Pushkin. He took the pseudonym Ivan Belkin to avoid possible problems with censorship or literary critics.
Composition– All stories are distinguished by the simplicity of the plot line, the absence of unnecessary details, omissions and intrigue of the plot.
Genre- A story.
Direction- Romanticism (“The Shot”), sentimentalism (“The Station Agent”, “Blizzard”, “The Young Lady-Peasant”), “The Undertaker” contains elements of a Gothic story.
History of creation
Alexander Sergeevich spent the autumn of 1830 in the village of Boldino, and due to an outbreak of cholera he was forced to stay here. The autumn season has always inspired the poet and given him a surge of creative strength. According to him, he always wrote best in the village in the fall.
The three months Pushkin spent in Boldino turned out to be very fruitful: he finished the novel “Eugene Onegin”, wrote the poem “The House in Kolomna”, several dramatic scenes, and more than 30 poems. During the same period, Pushkin wrote a cycle called “Belkin’s Stories,” which included five small works: “Shot,” “Blizzard,” “Station Warden,” “Undertaker,” and “Peasant Young Lady.”
The material for the stories was the writer’s memories, legends, and everyday episodes that he noticed from the lives of friends and complete strangers.
Meaning of the name The collection is quite simple - for his first prose work, Pushkin decided to take a pseudonym, choosing for this the image of the non-existent landowner Ivan Petrovich Belkin. Thanks to this decision, Alexander Sergeevich managed to avoid unnecessary hassle with criticism and censorship.
Subject
All five works from Pushkin’s cycle “Belkin’s Tales” are dedicated to one topic- the lives of ordinary people, with their big and small problems, hopes and dreams. This life is beautiful in its simplicity and artlessness, and fully reflects the realities of the surrounding world, infinitely far from the sublime ideals of romanticism.
In short works, the writer talentedly revealed issues the position in society of the “little man” (“The Station Agent”), morality and social contradictions (“The Shot”), love (“The Young Lady-Peasant,” “Blizzard”), the desires and aspirations of simple artisans (“The Undertaker”).
It is noteworthy that in all his works the writer abandoned the division of heroes into sharply negative and positive characters. He shows each of them from all sides, in all the versatility and ambiguity of their characters.
Main thought cycle is to show without embellishment the life of representatives of various strata of Russian society, from the very bottom to the top. Pushkin does not explain the actions of his heroes, leaving readers the right to draw their own conclusions. Living according to your conscience, not doing evil to your neighbors, rejoicing in what you have is what the cycle “Belkin's Tale” teaches.
Composition
When analyzing the works in “Belkin’s Tales”, it should be noted that all of them, despite the variety of themes, have a similar compositional structure.
The writer focuses the reader's attention on key episodes, without boring him with secondary plot lines, long digressions and overly detailed descriptions.
The general characteristic of all the stories included in the Pushkin cycle should include, first of all, the element of understatement. Wherever possible, the writer leaves things unsaid, giving the reader the opportunity to use his own imagination.
There are other similar motives in the construction of the stories. Thus, they are united by changes in narrators, unexpected turns in the destinies of the main characters, changes in attention to one or another hero. Such techniques add tension and speed to the works, maintaining the intrigue to the end. At the same time, the stories remain clear and simple in plot.
Main characters
Genre
The cycle consists of five stories following each other. They are united by internal motives and perfectly complement each other.
Each story has its own literary direction. Thus, “The Shot” represents romanticism, “The Peasant Young Lady,” “The Blizzard” and “The Station Agent” represent sentimentalism, and “The Undertaker” represents gothic prose.
Library
materials
INTRODUCTION
V. Nepomnyashchy in his work “Holding Now” wrote about the uniqueness of the possessive formula “My Pushkin” as a cultural phenomenon. “We have not heard about “my” Shakespeare or Cervantes, nor about “my” Gogol or Dostoevsky. Many researchers of Pushkin’s work, according to Nepomniachtchi, try to translate the poet into a “language” close to them. “My Pushkin” is not just my view, my opinion, or a scientific concept..., “my Pushkin” is my self-portrait, my value system in practical application, as it really is; “my Pushkin” is the gateway to my spiritual world, this is my faith. And all any serious debates on Pushkin’s themes are ultimately axiological disputes, confrontations between different images of the world, life positions and faiths.”
“It’s incredible, therefore, every generation, and indeed every generation - every person - has its own understanding of Pushkin, depending on its image of the world, life situation and faith.
And the deeper we comprehend the secrets of existence, the closer we become to the Truth embodied in Pushkin’s creations. It is not for nothing that Pushkin is called the Sun of Russian literature. The sun has always been revered as the main deity in any pagan pantheon. And the point is not at all whether Pushkin was an exemplary Christian or not.”
The main thing is that the pen of a genius was guided by inspiration from above. That is why the elusive, hidden power, simple and majestic, of people of so many generations. How, when talking about Pushkin, can one avoid subjectivity if “my Pushkin” is “my faith”?
Nepomnyashchy writes, “that in the spiritual, in a broad sense, religious sphere lies precisely that key and fundamental thing that is necessary for a more or less adequate, independent of tastes, understanding of Pushkin as a text and as a phenomenon.”
It is from the point of view of the values of the cultural system that we will try to look at some of Pushkin’s works.
We are trying to consider "Belkin's Tale" from the point of view of the philosophy of chance. The theme of the incident was always important for Pushkin. But in the last years of creativity it becomes, one might say, central.
The Pushkin case is a powerful force:
Oh, how many wonderful discoveries we have
They are preparing the spirit of enlightenment,
And experience, the son of difficult mistakes,
And genius, friend of paradoxes,
And chance, God the inventor.
One of the most important touches on this topic is “Belkin’s Tales”. The presented work is devoted to the consideration of the theme of the case in this writer’s creation.
Relevance The aim of the work is to use the example of “Belkin’s Tales” to show that chance decides a lot in our lives.
Problem lies in the patterns of chance, in the lives of the heroes of the stories.
Goal of the work: consider the case in “Belkin’s Tales” by A.S. Pushkin, what role he plays in the lives of the heroes.
Tasks:
1. Study material on the chosen topic.
2. Identify the features of the use of randomness in “Tales of Belkin” by A.S. Pushkin.
3. Consider the plot, the characters of the heroes of the stories.
An object:"Belkin's Tales".
Item: The incident in Belkin's Tales.
There is nothing simpler than what is written, and at the same time there is nothing more complex than Pushkin’s “Belkin’s Tales”. It is surprising that a century and a half after they were written, debates do not subside that we have before us a good-natured, humane “world of Russian life” depicted under the cover of irony.
The more we reread Belkin's Tales, the more complex they seem to us. Nothing remains of the original simplicity. That’s why we have to look at “Belkin’s Tale” in order to understand the random pattern that the author used.
CHAPTERI The world of Belkin's Tales
§ 1. History of the creation of “Belkin’s Tales”
“For the first time, Lermontov, who said about the deceased Pushkin - “like that unknown but dear singer,” brought the fate of the slave of honor closer to Vladimir Lensky. Many people picked up on the idea that the creator of the novel anticipated his own fate in poetry. In pendant to the romantic parallel, we note another, very real and equally significant analogy, which is illustrated by very remarkable texts from different times. Along with the manuscript of stories that have not yet seen the light, Ivan Petrovich Belkin left many other “manuscripts, which are partly in my possession, partly used by his housekeeper for various household needs.” And it turns out that “last winter, all the windows of her wing were sealed with the first part of the novel, which he did not finish,” - this is from the section that opens “Belkin’s Stories” and is called businesslike - “From the publisher”, the words belong to Nenaradov’s landowner, neighbor and friend Belkin, but written in his own hand by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
An unexpected roll call of facts from the lives of Pushkin and Belkin, from the life of the author and his character. And what’s especially fantastic is in the long term, as if from the era of a grandson - in the time of a grandfather.”
“Belkin's Tales” is a creation of the Boldin autumn of 1830, masterpieces of the highest standard. The cycle consists of five stories, essentially short stories with sharp, dynamically developing plots; their author is allegedly the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin - a simple, unremarkable man, “born of honest and noble parents.” Pushkin “acts” only as a publisher of stories.
To add to the illusion of the verisimilitude of this version, the stories are accompanied by a preface “from the publisher,” which tells about Belkin.
Moreover, it turns out that Belkin himself only wrote down the stories that he heard from different people: “Shot” - from Colonel I.L.P.; “Stationmaster” - from titular councilor A.G.N.; “Undertaker” - from clerk B.V.; “Blizzard” and “Peasant Young Lady” - from the girl K.I.T.
Why was such a hoax needed? Only in order to hide your authorship, thereby avoiding persecution by ill-wishers
(“It won’t be possible under my name, because Bulgarin will scold me,” Pushkin explained in a letter to Pletnev)? Of course no.
Everything expressed Pushkin’s desire to emphasize the maximum objectivity of the depiction of reality, shown through the perception of various individuals.
The need to fight the prevailing principles of sentimental-romantic and morally descriptive prose at that time determined the clearly polemical nature of Belkin's Tales, in which Pushkin ironizes conventional literary cliches that are alien to the truth of life. Pushkin shows that in life everything happens completely differently from how it is usually depicted in sentimental and romantic works. Therefore, in “Belkin’s Tales” traditional romantic plots and images are constantly being rethought.”
The author's creative will to understand the prosaic whole, nevertheless, by the fatal “non-reading” of the text of the work in its fixed inviolability, was not respected in literary critical and publishing practice, in the flow of cursory reviews, and, of course, in the ideological polemics behind all this. The cycle turned out to be split and “pulled apart” into its component parts. Almost all the critics and Pushkin scholars writing about him approached each story separately, accidentally ending up next to those standing with it.
And those of them who tried to talk about all of Belkin’s Stories, as a rule, limited themselves again to the material of one or two stories as characteristic representatives, essentially exhausting the meaning of the whole.
And in the role of such leading exemplary examples, at the will of the writer (up to the present day), either “The Station Agent”, or “The Shot”, or less often “Blizzard” appeared. Oddly enough, but “The Undertaker” and “The Young Lady-Peasant”, with the exception of one or two cases, avoided the fate of being in the spotlight. The year 1830 became fatal, a turning point in the fate of Pushkin. Along with many other things, created only in prose: “The Undertaker” (September 9); "The Station Agent" (14th); “The Young Lady-Peasant” (20th); in October - “Shot” (12-14th) and “Blizzard” (20th).
§ 2. Plot simplicity of “Belkin’s Tales”
Behind the apparent simplicity of Belkin's Tales lies a very complex plot structure. Eikhenbaum B. wrote about this. “Pushkin does not analyze the psychology of the heroes, does not make the hero’s soul an object of analysis. We will not find in “Belkin’s Tales” long, internal monologues revealing painful internal thoughts and experiences. But the psychological portrayal of the characters does not suffer from this. The complex inner world manifests itself through the actions of the heroes, which are sometimes very contradictory.”
V. Nepomnyashchiy, in the article “About Pushkin and his artistic world,” points out the reasons for the lack of a direct psychological analysis of the soul of the heroes in A.S. Pushkin.
The general point of view sees the reason for this in the fact that literature was able to master the method of psychological analysis only by the middle of the 19th century in the person of Dostoevsky, and during Pushkin’s life this technique was not yet available to literature.
But V. Nepomniachtchi sees the reason in the poet’s creative manner, in the peculiarities of his artistic world: “Humbling before the mystery of the human soul, he peered into that obvious and simple thing that is accessible to the ordinary “everyday” look. He observes in a person what is on the surface, ... what expresses the inner in a person in an external way ...; he does not look for traits in the hero that lie deep, but pays attention to what makes this person comparable and common, and also the most obvious thing in every person is his actions and deeds, that is, his behavior, accessible to us in external expression , - be it an action of a practical nature, or embodied in words, or the manifestation of a feeling in some way, and so on.”
Man is a mystery. We will not explain why the heroes acted one way or another, bad or good. Pushkin represents his heroes through behavior and speech. The object of our attention will be the actions of the heroes.
The heroes of "Belkin's Tales" one way or another violate certain moral laws or, more often, moral laws.
V. Nepomnyashchy notes that in Pushkin’s works “the role of conscience is extremely important - not only as a constant theme of one of the central problems, but as a creative element that allows one to illuminate the fallen world with the light of Truth without the help of “moral” assessments.”
Pushkin's stories brilliantly combine literary parody of well-known literary subjects - cliches and deep reflections on human life, and the interaction in it of the random and the natural, human will and Fate, reflections on the conventionality of moral laws, the concept of honor and the eternal moral choice that arises early or late in front of your loved one.
§ 3. Laughter and tears in “Belkin’s Tales”
“Baratynsky, as you know, laughed and fought over Belkin’s Tales. For one and a half hundred years the reader has been struggling with the solution to the poet’s exuberant gaiety. Meanwhile, the laughter plan and the nature of the comic in “Belkin’s Tales” still remain unclear. Research into the historical, literary and secular background of the 1820s and 1830s. helped to discover in the “Tales” numerous parodic allusions to literary plots, stories and anecdotes well known to contemporaries. However, neither witty interpretations nor funny allusions could balance the little man’s tears in the reader’s mind. The tears of the poor caretaker, although caused “in part” by the punch willingly poured by his simple-minded listener solely to enliven the story, gave the entire cycle of far from idyllic stories a sentimental tearful tone, the purity of which, after everything that has been said about the little man and the primordial values of simple life, can no longer be doubted will come in handy.
Since “Belkin’s Tales” are sad and sentimental, since only echoes of parodic laughter are discernible in them, mediated and reduced laughter, not entirely understood by contemporaries and today accessible exclusively to literary historians, then we must admit that “Tales” are really not funny, at least with the laughter that their author spoke about, referring to Baratynsky. And yet, it is somewhat premature to add yet another hoax to Pushkin’s collection of brilliant tricks. The humorous subtext of Belkin's Tales, which does not require anything other than Belkin's Tales to be read, definitely exists. The comic side of sad stories is predetermined by the very way they are told.
It has long been noted that not only analysis, but also a simple retelling of stories told by Belkin correspondents reveals numerous contradictions, ambiguities and overlaps. The strangeness and even absurdity of some plot collisions are usually explained by the conventions of the genre or the innocence of the dummy author.
Meanwhile, it would be more productive to consider them as the result of a combination of narrative techniques: omissions, slips and euphemistic designations, indicating that not everything or not quite everything is said in the stories about the events described.
It is known that the plots of each of the five stories include the motive of substitution (reality is replaced by a dream, a real groom is replaced by an imaginary one, a young lady is replaced by a peasant woman, etc.) and the subsequent exposure of illusion or deception. Moreover, all the stories are told as if from the point of view of an uninitiated person who believed in an illusion and therefore is able to witness only the appearance of events. The author's slips and significant omissions, hinting at the actual background of the heroes' actions, remain, as a rule, unnoticed in the fabric of the narrative, but become obvious when the story is re-examined, be it its analysis or a simple retelling - then, superimposed on the narrator's version, they contradict it and , externalizing hidden plot inconsistencies, makes one doubt its authenticity.
The author’s skillful balancing on the line between the word of the uninitiated and the silence of the knowledgeable allows us to see two versions of the events presented, not only the one that the simple-minded narrator spoke about, but also the one that the author kept silent about. Moreover, the combination of verbal tricks, omissions, substitutions, hints and slips of the tongue is structured in such a way that the second (comic) version of the story is read, like the first, quite definitely.”
§ 4. The abyss of space in “Belkin’s Tales”
“There is an abyss of space in every word; every word is immense, like a poet.”
This textbook judgment of Gogol about Pushkin stands at the source of future theories of artistic space. The poet’s word is presented here as a window into space - but “behind the window” the inner space of the word itself opens, what is it? The word opens up into some kind of hyperbolically immeasurable Gogolian (not Pushkinian) space. But the same word released “into space” with all its immensity seems to return in reverse, becoming likened to the poet himself. Fantastic “spatial talent” distinguished Gogol, and we see the metaphorical chaos of spatial vision of everything in the world at every step, including in this statement.
The language of space Gogol translated non-spatial concepts and ideal contents, which in the present case are the word of the poet and - in the same article about Pushkin - the Russian language (“He more than anyone else, he further expanded his boundaries and showed more of his entire space.”
Yu. Tynyanov put next to Gogol’s “abyss of space” and Tolstoy’s famous letter about “Belkin’s Tales” as two “most weighty words”, one about Pushkin’s poetry, the other about prose. However, it is unlikely that the fact that Gogol’s judgment directly related to Pushkin’s “small poems” can prevent us from understanding what he said about Pushkin’s word more broadly. Of course, the scale of judgment he chose is not accidental: the “abyss of space” is on such a scale in which the deployment of any external space is, if not excluded, then certainly minimal. Thus, the natural idea of space was replaced by some new intensive understanding of it; it will then be formalized as the concept of artistic space.
It is the minimum scale that is important to Gogol for the formulation of his grandiose thoughts. And Gogol is interested in the property of Pushkin’s poetic intensity, which he took from the example of “small poems,” but which was equally evident in small tragedies (“Shakespeare’s five acts become Pushkin’s three scenes”) and in Belkin’s short stories (as they were originally named in the manuscript).
As for Tolstoy’s letter to P.D. Golokhvastov dated April 9-10, 1873, then this is, indeed, the most weighty word that we have almost not yet thought through. The ideal level at which “Belkin’s Tales” is read here has not been thought through. They are read beyond their plot specificity as a harmonious model of both poetry itself and existence itself. Tolstoy seems to contemplate the “noumenon” of Pushkin’s stories, completely abstracting from their phenomenal features, from the “material.” And so, if you look closely at Tolstoy’s description of this ideal world, you will notice that this is a description of a certain space. “The field of poetry is endless, like life; but all subjects of poetry are pre-eternally distributed according to a certain hierarchy...” Reading other, non-harmonic writers “seems to encourage work and expand the field; but this is wrong; and reading Homer and Pushkin compresses the area and, if it excites you to work, then unmistakably.” The very vocabulary of the description of this even recalls Heidegger's future theme of “art and space”, built on the relationship of three key concepts - “thing”, “place” and “area”. Tolstoy turned out to be such an ideal reader of “Belkin’s Tales” that they never had anything else. But what is it in the stories, if they still remain, as is typical for a normal reader and as befits a normal philologist, at the phenomenal level of their perception and analysis, that corresponds to the spatial intuition that determines Tolstoy’s view of them? In the literature about stories, the requirement to see a complex structure behind their simple plot, formulated three quarters of a century ago by B. M. Eikhenbaum, has become a commonplace. In some recent works, “construction” is specified as “volume” and “space”.
In the last fundamental book we read: “When reading poetry, we move not from beginning to end, as in linear space, but as in volumetric space, that is, crossing it, perceiving all its parts simultaneously, like a picture, the way you can move in three-dimensional space, in different directions, guided by associations caused by one or another thematic and formal feature of the text.”
We fully accept this theoretical premise; All that remains is to carry out the poetic reading itself. The book quoted offers it to us; we will use for our own purposes the questions that are presented on the first pages of the book and form the beginning of the study here: “Why doesn’t Silvio shoot the count? Why did Dunya cry all the way from the post station to the city, although, according to the coachman, she, apparently, set off on her own accord?
We will turn to Silvio a little later, but now we will not deny ourselves the pleasure of once again reading into one phrase from “The Station Agent,” about which we have already happened to write. In fact, just like Gogol, there is an abyss of space in the small size of this one Pushkin phrase. But what kind of space, what does this word have to do with it, after all, not the number of miles that Dunya traveled with Minsky and the coachman in the wagon?
“The coachman who was driving him said that Dunya cried all the way, although it seemed that she was driving of her own accord.”
This phrase contains a contradictory impression, which we can easily explain. However, it is not without reason that it was preserved from the participants’ stories as a contradictory, undecipherable impression. We see and understand its meaning through the misunderstanding of the first storytellers, the coachman and the father: after all, what happened will remain a mystery to him. However, our clear understanding does not completely cancel out the mystery, and this is the whole question of understanding “Belkin’s Tales” and what Tolstoy saw in them.
If only for the old man’s lack of understanding, then one could repeat what has already been said more than once from M. Gershenzon to Wolf Schmid about his blindness and enslavement to moral schemes. The coachman told the caretaker, who told the titular adviser A.G.N., for whom Belkin wrote down. “From the coachman to the first poet” is the Pushkin echo that formed this phrase. Echo, air, atmosphere of a volatile spoken word, transparently enveloping the reported fact. Already through this atmosphere, in the distance, we “see” how Dunya was leaving. Or rather, we actually hear about it. But why is this atmosphere in Pushkin’s story if it is so transparent? What distinguishes this story from impersonal information, “naked fact”? As Tolstoy said in that very letter, “this cannot be analyzed, but it is felt and assimilated.” This quality of transparency of our phrase is felt and assimilated as a living space in which an echo echoes, in which both protagonists and their fate, from which there is no protection, and a “choir” of witnesses and storytellers telling us our fate. Pushkin's first prose insensitively surrounded and imbued itself with this chorus, with which researchers do not know what to do. This host of storytellers, who to varying degrees leave their traces in Pushkin’s text. Storytellers, precisely by this insensitivity and transparency, they differ in principle from the denser tale figures or “masks” that Gogol almost simultaneously began to introduce into our prose. And yet, truly and artistically present precisely as a living space of “reality” self-revealing in its voices; as a single image of reality along with all stages of the story about it. And with all levels of “internal” understanding and interpretation by participants, witnesses and storytellers. With this bewilderment of the telling father, which was passed on to him from his daughter, who stood in bewilderment, and which will never be removed in our last reader’s impression, despite all the understandable explanations and the tragic-harmonious, albeit sad, “correctness of the distribution of objects” in overall result, which, like the participants, we can only accept.
The author seeks direct answers to mysterious questions. He reads our phrase as information that irrefutably indicates that Dunya has already made a conscious decision and in the situation of this phrase “knows about the final separation from her father and is deliberately dooming him to unhappiness for the sake of her happiness in the big world.” Psychological concretization proceeds from start to finish, and if the beginning of this conclusion is still in a certain accordance with Pushkin’s text, then the continuation already seriously exceeds it and looks, despite the plausibility of the facts, in essence, their interpretation is a gross untruth.
V. Schmid formulates a paradox: poetic reading in his understanding does not mean poetic in the subject, in Belkin’s stories; poetic here is a professional methodological and almost technological term, implying mastery of modern technology of poetological research; and leads such a poetic reading to a sober exposure of an unexpectedly prosaic plot. “Pushkin’s prose in a poetic reading” in the language of this book can be translated as - the poetry of Pushkin’s prose in a prosaic reading.
“Unconcealment does not eliminate concealment. And it does not cancel it so much that disclosure always needs concealment. Isn’t the creation as such obliged to point out that which is not put at the disposal of people and does not allow itself to be disposed of, to point into what is self-concealing, so that the creation does not simply repeat what is known, familiar and familiar to everyone? Isn’t a work of art obliged to constantly remain silent - to remain silent about what is hiding, about what, hiding, awakens timidity in a person in front of everything that does not allow one to plan oneself, nor manage oneself, nor calculate oneself, nor calculate it?”
It seems that these Heraclitian “dark” sayings (Heidegger comes directly from Heraclitus: “Nature loves to hide”) are relevant to the discussed issue of the poetic reading of Pushkin’s prose, and specifically “Belkin’s Tales”.
Isn’t such a reading, following the most widely read work, obliged to “keep silent about what is hidden” in the folds of a simple story about the stationmaster’s daughter? Does it have the philosophical right to “calculate” and “calculate” the depth of her life left in “concealment”, the “independence” of this life, “objectifying” it in psychological decodings and at the same time arriving at poetically unreliable decisions? The interpreter and successor of Heidegger’s thought speaks about “independence” and “objectification”: “The dispute between discovery and concealment is not only the truth of creation, but the truth of all things. For truth as unconcealment is always such a confrontation between disclosure and concealment. One is unthinkable without the other. Truth, as unconcealment, also contains the reverse movement. As Heidegger says, being contains something like “hostility to Dasein.” Existence provides us not only with its surface with familiar and recognizable outlines, it also has an inner depth of self-sufficiency, as Heidegger calls it. The complete unconcealment of existence, the complete objectification of everything... would mean that the self-state of existence was interrupted - everything was leveled, everything turned into its surface. If such complete objectification had occurred, no being would stand in its own being.”
Pushkin and world movements of thought - this topic has not yet been raised. “On the airways” Pushkin responds to Heraclitus and echoes the future incomprehensible Heidegger, and this latter - with Tolstoy and his cosmic contemplation of “Belkin’s Tales”, and with Gogol, who speaks of the “abyss of space” opening up in Pushkin’s word.
The mentioned thesis of B.M. Eikhenbaum’s idea of a simple plot and a complex structure most closely related to “The Shot”: “With a simple plot, a complex plot structure is obtained. “The Shot” can be drawn out in one straight line - the story of Silvio’s duel with the Count.”
“Construction” is emphasized in “The Shot” by its formal two-part structure, behind which the mysterious history of the text is hidden.
About it we will only note that it is impossible to believe that the first part, rounded off with the remark “The ending is lost,” was really, at least at that moment, a completed work for Pushkin. Nevertheless, this textual caesura corresponded to an internal break in the body of the story, which took shape in the form of its two-part structure, and it revealed the “personalism” of this story, unusual for the world of Boldino’s prose. This means that here we have two intense, self-sufficient personal centers, isolated from each other and connected by struggle; their break is the break in the body of the story. But the story tells how the forces of interhuman gravity bridge the gap. “The Shot” has its own voice: not a chorus, but a counterpoint of two voices-monologues, projected onto the apperceptive background of the framing story and in it acquiring that third dimension, which constitutes the poetic space of the story “The Shot”; and it is already the “area” that Tolstoy contemplated and the level of its organization at which the restoration of the value order and the correct hierarchy of objects occurs.”
“Thus I learned the end of the story, the beginning of which had once so amazed me.” This phrase from the narrator brings together the end and the beginning of the story of the shot, the end and the beginning of the event. But the end and beginning of the story “The Shot” do not coincide with them; the story is summarized differently. Why, in fact, is it not “stretched out in one straight line”? And how to determine the transformation of a straight line that occurs here? M.A. Petrovsky then commented on Eikhenbaum’s observation as a restructuring of the “straight line” of the plot into a “broken line” of the plot. But the picture of transformation will change greatly if we introduce the image of space into it and see it as a transformation of the narrative plane into narrative space.
Eikhenbaum's observation recorded the restructuring of the classical law of the short story into the world of Pushkin's story. The story is dominated by an event that subjugates and encloses the participants within its framework. Here, in the story, the roles change: the event grows out of the existence of two different people, from the intersection of the lines of their lives.
In turn, these lives at other times and at different points intersect with the life of the third, main narrator: he learns the beginning of the story from Silvio, and the end from the Count. It is not the event that absorbs these existences, but the event that arises from them and distributes its parts and aspects in the lives of the participants. The event is thus realized etymologically as the event of these three people.
The event itself is the internal stories of Silvio and the Count. Both tell from the depths of their own lives, which feel like a wide field around the event-episode. Both stories are very complete in themselves. Both tell “from afar”, already whole years later, from a clear and objective distance, generalizing and formulating their former feelings and states: “he was joking, and I was angry” (Silvio); “I owe this house the best moments of my life and one of the most difficult memories” (Count). They thus report already objectively completed and summarized episodes, “parts” of the event. The story surrounds the event and divides it in the middle, isolating the end and the beginning and placing them in the lives of the participating characters.
At the same time, the internal narratives of the characters have a special feature of objectivity: as noted by D.D. Good, Silvio’s story about the first duel is painted in the serene, cloudless tone of the count (“The spring sun has risen, and the heat has already ripened”), on the contrary, the second story of the count is kept in Silvio’s coloring. Contrary to the usual statements about the stylistic homogeneity of the speeches of the heroes of the story, the two central stories are not completely homogeneous, but they are colored not by the narrator, not by himself, as one would expect, but by another person in my story, my opponent and his style. In Silvio’s story, the image of the Count dominates, just as the image of Silvio overwhelmingly dominates in the Count’s story and gives it its illumination from within. “I regret,” he said, that the pistol was not loaded with cherry pits... the bullet is heavy.” Here are the defining images of the first and second stories.
Thus, in the internal structure of their stories, opponents are imbued with the objective truth of the other. Both narrators, for their part, make you feel the other side, both tell “in the flavor of the other.” This knightly objectivity, of course, is associated with the completeness of the memory, already far from the elements of that moment. Each of the subjective sides of the event sees the other side and thus, one might say, from its side, it sees the event as a whole. From their ends and sides, the stories meet each other halfway, forming the general point of view of the story. The two stories converge on their sides and converge at the invisible inner center of the event. The unidirectional linear plot of the event turns into its volumetric composition.
The enveloping third story forms this volume. Two participants report their episodes to a third, non-participant and non-witness, neutral and distant person. From him we learn everything, as if empirically, in the order and to the extent that it became available to him. But this random, empirical composition of episodes is transformed into a fairly holistic and harmonious composition of the world in its ends and beginnings and human events in this world. The stories of Silvio and the Count accidentally become part of an experience that is alien and distant to them; addressed to the narrator, the third, they seem to be addressed through him and directed towards each other; what happened between the two begins and ends, originates and resolves, closes between them in these stories. That is why, despite its transparent clarity, the story remains mysterious, unexplained for a neutral narrator, a third. He is not allowed to “penetrate” her. Narration only surrounds and frames these stories, this event. Yet it is in this neutral narrative environment, in this third dimension, that the event between the two is truly completed.
This third dimension is represented in the story by its prose narrator, whose entire existence is not at all intended to be the fulfillment of such a significant function.
On the contrary, his story performs functions that seem to be secondary and auxiliary - but at the same time occupying the overwhelming majority of the entire text of the story. Between the two central episodes there is a prosaic difference, a long pause. This is an unusual phenomenon in the poetics of the short story, notes N.Ya. Berkovsky: “A pause... weakens the hero, expands the field...” It weakens the spring of a single action and takes us beyond the limits of the event. And before our eyes, this expanding descriptive prose space of the story leads us into the poetic space of the story. The event emerges again from the depths of the eventless pause - emerges naturally, freely, accidentally:“I’m not an expert in paintings, but one attracted my attention... but it wasn’t the painting that struck me...” The narrower the horizons and special interest of an army officer, the closer the exit from a new side into a mysterious alien story with its vast and dark a non-special meaning that far exceeds his horizons. “Chance, God the inventor” plays in the broad, unintentional course of life, and it is also an instant instrument of Providence, which we must talk about in the situation of our story, if we remember the level of understanding given to us by Tolstoy. Providence brings together the ends of history in order to bring it to a not only plot, not formal, but moral conclusion.
The end and beginning of the story of the shot converge beyond the boundaries of the story itself, beyond the boundaries of the event itself, in the life of a third person not involved in it. Only here, on the screen of his perception, does the true tale of two end and the final account is summed up. Here both can be so completely objective. Therefore, their stories, seemingly facing each other and closing on each other, are at the same time addressed to an alien, neutral third, an “addressee” in the Bakhtinian sense, without whom they cannot do without. In this outward turn, they are freed from being closed to each other in their rivalry and life dispute. Outside of their event, Silvio and the Count meet “ideally” in the life of the narrator - in an objective environment, in the spiritual space of Pushkin’s story.
The ends meet in the third dimension, which objectively completes the history of the two. The two ends of the “one straight line” of the plot are brought together on the third life line, and from the mutual intersection and overlap of the lines, a “region” is formed.
“The field of poetry is endless, like life,” but Pushkin “compresses the field.” What do these mysterious words mean? It seems that an interpretation of the cosmic plan of Tolstoy’s “Tales of Belkin” has not yet been proposed in terms of a “phenomenological description” of their internal structure. In Boldino’s stories, two movements are balanced: the narration of an event expands the “area,” and it, with its narrative hoop circles, organizes, defines, and “compresses” it. As stated in a recent article: “when retelling history, be it analysis or simple retelling...”
The poetic status of space in Belkin's Tales is a fairly new topic in Pushkin criticism. While fantasizing about this topic, we almost did not touch upon the traditional issues of interpretation, which are especially active in criticism regarding the story “The Shot.” Traditionally, these questions consist of a psychological decoding of Silvio's character; At the same time, for the most part, interpretations have very little contact - if they come into contact at all - with the level of understanding of the stories that Tolstoy gave us. But Tolstoy’s letter about “Belkin’s Tales” is also their interpretation, deserving the title of “higher hermeneutics” about which as a method the author of this term wrote that in the pursuit of a “philosophical interpretation” of its phenomenon “consistently loses something of the positive reliability of the results” obtained at the level of “lower” criticism and hermeneutics it also assumes, and that in it “the intuitive element, beginning little by little to prevail over the positive, is not always able to incontestably justify its claims, and the form of the conclusions inevitably takes on the character of a more or less hypothetical".
The last phrase of the story, announcing the death in the battle of Skulany, continues to build space: “They say that Silvio...” And this last phrase leaves room for interpretation. For example: “even Silvio, seemingly worthy of a hopeless ending to life, is tragically elevated by the message of his death for the freedom of the Greeks and thereby mercifully likened to Byron.” Let's say with doubt that Pushkin's mercy looks unjustified here if the hero deserves it; but on sufficient grounds did the interpreters condemn him to a hopeless ending in life, from which only the royal mercy of the author can save him (“And Duk forgave him”)?
Let’s imagine the phrase without this “They say. . ." - a completely objective message that Silvio was killed in the battle of Skulany: the reduction of one word will have a destructive effect on the entire structure of the story “The Shot”. “Worldly rumor is a sea wave,” reads the epigraph to one of the chapters of “The Captain’s Daughter.” Pushkin captured this structure of the world (the speaking “world”) in his first prose. The waves of the sea of life bring us Belkin's stories.
CHAPTER II Case in “Tales of Belkin” by A.S. Pushkin
§ 1. “Shot”
The debate about the main character of "The Shot" - the first of "Belkin's Stories" - still continues. Many critics interpret Silvio's behavior as revenge on the offender. Makogonenko G.P. writes: “The goal that Silvio had after the duel was both unworthy - he was seeking revenge on the hated count and noble, because he sought to respond to the offender.”
As we read, we see that Silvio himself was the first to offend the count, thereby provoking a duel. Goldfain is absolutely right when he draws our attention to what caused the duel between Silvio and the count: “And the story clearly states that before the count entered service in the hussar regiment, Silvio was undoubtedly the leader in it. And he was simply unable to bear the fact that this championship was transferred to the count, in a dispute with whom Silvio was solely to blame. As he himself said: “I was looking for a quarrel with him.”
Serving in a hussar regiment, he lived according to the laws of his environment: “In our time, rioting was in fashion: I was the first rowdy in the army...” (VI, p. 62)
Silvio admits that the desire to excel was a passion for him from a young age. He was the first in any matter that was considered a matter of honor in the regiment for a real hussar: “I calmly enjoyed my glory...”
(VI, p. 62)
And, probably, it was not only poverty, as Makogonenko claimed, that forced Silvio to seek first place in the regiment; the hero himself explains this desire by his character, and not by his financial situation.
When a new, rich count appeared in the regiment, who was smart, handsome, cheerful, brave, Silvio’s primacy was shaken, and he began to hate the count. Silvio is looking for a quarrel with the count, not friendship. The count's successes drove Silvio into despair; he was jealous. Envy is a feeling that always accompanies the desire to be first. Even in a duel, Silvio envies the calmness, indifference, and willpower of his opponent.
Silvio was expecting a duel, but not relying on the fidelity of his hand, he gave himself time to cool down and conceded the first shot to the count. Silvio is torn apart by low passions, and he is a slave to them, just as before he was a slave to the thirst for glory. He has to concede the first shot. Horror, devilish appearance - this is how Pushkin characterizes his hero. When a person thinks about the same thing every day for several years in a row, it looks like madness. It is no coincidence that the hero is compared to a tiger who walks back and forth around the cage. We don’t know whether Silvio shot or not, “suddenly” Masha appears. But even with her, Silvio takes aim. The woman throws herself at her feet. And now it’s the count’s turn, now he “screamed in rage,” now he shows impatience: “Are you going to shoot or not?” (VI, p.68) But Silvio is pleased: he saw the count’s “confusion,” his “timidity,” and most importantly, he forced the count to shoot, thereby winning a victory over the count, humiliated by her own weakness. One cannot but agree with Petrunina’s idea that the heroes of “Belkin’s Tales” are “raised differently by life.” The Count is changing: from a reckless man to a husband who is responsible for the life and peace of his wife. His own life is now not indifferent to him, because the happiness of a loved one depends on him.He is aware of his moral duty to another person, and this is the main truth for him. He is enraged only by his wife's humiliation, and not by fear of a duel.
The story “The Shot” causes the greatest bewilderment: what caused Silvio’s infernal hatred of the lucky count, his obsessive desire to take revenge for the shaken championship and the six-year wait for a suitable opportunity, which became the reason for the second duel - what other insult did Count Silvio manage to inflict during their short meeting - and why the duel takes place in the house, so that the unfortunate Masha almost inevitably had to witness it: the count is in a hurry, and Silvio, against the right of the duel, seems to be deliberately delaying.
He did not give in to the count's persuasion to shoot before his wife returned; why did the countess, bursting through the locked doors, throw herself first at her husband’s neck, and then at Silvio’s feet, which made Silvio not shoot at his sworn enemy?
Interesting questions to consider; you need to think about their solutions.
“The mystery of the story lies in the tragic discrepancy between the fatal seriousness of Silvio’s actions, serious passions that threaten irreparable consequences, and the insignificance of the circumstances that served as the cause. According to Silvio, the reason for the duel and the six-year wait for a suitable opportunity for revenge was a slap in the face received in a quarrel with Count B*** over the wife of a Polish landowner. And if so, then the answer to “The Shot” should be contained in the character of Silvio, or in the exceptional circumstances that led to the duel: either Silvio is so cruel and bloodthirsty by nature, or the circumstances of the duel were not exactly as he described them. The underground man imagines serious motives for revenge: career, happiness, art, science, the woman he loves - everything is lost due to the fault of the offender. Silvio, going to a far from imaginary court battle, mentions only the slap in the face, which he also received six years ago, in a quarrel over the wife of a Polish landowner. Therefore, he is forced to explain his unwillingness to reconcile with the offender even after the end of the duel not by the severity of the insult, which is still not sufficient for a mortal duel, but solely by his own malice and passion to excel.
Meanwhile, the fact that Silvio intended to use the delayed shot according to the right of a duel - retaliation, is beyond doubt: Silvio is going to kill the count. This is confirmed by the farewell conversation with I.L.P. "We may never see each other again."
The dueling behavior of Silvio and the Count is full of other mysteries.
Although its individual and most effective elements are easily recognizable and correlated with the dueling practice of the author of the story, this recognition is deceptive and adds no more to the understanding of the meaning of “The Shot” than information about the Goncharovs’ neighbor, the undertaker Adrian, adds to the understanding of the meaning of “The Undertaker.”
As structured and consistent as Silvio’s story about the beginning of the duel was, so confused and dark was the count’s story about its end. And the most mysterious circumstance of his story is certainly the reason why a second duel took place between him and Silvio six years later. The story is structured in such a way that the transition from one duel to another is not indicated in the count’s story: the count skips the moment of challenge, starting the story of a new duel with a lot, and the two duels, due to the same conditions, merge into one duel, which is greatly facilitated by the fact that the shot, which remained for Silvio by right of the first duel, never sounded.
Having a sure chance to shoot the count - there is no doubt about Silvio’s intentions or his accuracy - and without exposing himself to the slightest danger, he chose to cast lots again. That is, he could not kill the count without receiving satisfaction for another insult, so the very fact of the second duel for him from the very beginning was more important than the outcome of the fight. Silvio did not care why he killed the count. He longed for retribution for a mortal insult.
The reason for the second duel, which both the Count and Silvio, due to the extreme delicacy of the matter, chose to remain silent about, is apparently the main and only mystery of the story, an accident. Moments earlier, Silvio had given up the shot.
And, by right of the insulted, he admitted that he was satisfied with the fight: “...Will you shoot?” - “I won’t,” Silvio answered, I’m satisfied...” It is this circumstance that does not allow Silvio’s shot to be interpreted as a symbolic shot in the air, as a demonstrative reluctance to shoot at the enemy, indicating moral superiority.
To be such, the shot must sound before the end of the duel, but Silvio fired after the duel.
According to the rules of a duel, shooting at an opponent after the end of the fight is considered not only unacceptable, but also dishonorable. However, Silvio did not shoot at the count, but, by a strange coincidence, where he himself had just stood, and shot through a bullet with the count aiming at him - a picture with a view of Switzerland. Therefore, Silvio’s only shot, which gave the story its title, was fired after the duel was over, was not aimed at the count and had nothing to do with the duel. The hero's shot, due to its obvious uselessness and ineffectiveness, is usually interpreted as an adventure, as a gesture of despair and empty malice.
The duel was suspended with the appearance of the Countess. Masha, running into the office and seeing Silvio aiming in front of her, threw herself on her husband’s neck with a squeal. Silvio lowered the pistol, but after a short conversation, which clearly angered him, he took aim again.
Then Masha threw herself at Silvio’s feet - the duel was over. Silvio refused the shot and quickly left the room, but, turning around at the door, in front of the frightened people crowding outside the door, he shot at the painting, as it seemed to the count, “almost without aiming.” That is, Silvio shot where he himself had just stood. But where Silvio had just stood - which is confirmed by the emphasized swiftness of his departure - poor Masha still remained, and it was Silvio’s pistol that was aimed in her direction, aiming from less than twelve steps away. Maybe it wasn't an accident? We can only guess what Countess B*** felt when she saw the gun pointed in her direction and how long the split seconds lasted for her while Silvio took aim.
§ 2. On the role of chance in a secret wedding with a neighbor “Blizzard”
The blizzard, which gave the title of the story and played a major role in the fate of the heroes, does not feel like the terrible and hostile force to man that was depicted by Pushkin.
It was the blizzard that separated the heroine from her fiance. She “helped” to reveal the character of each of them. And she disappeared, calmed down, leaving behind a calm, beautiful plain, covered with a white wavy carpet. This white, frozen plain is like a harbinger of the fate of the poor army ensign, who will be mortally wounded at Borodino and will rest forever.
Considering this story, we pay attention to the title, which is that the elements took control of the lives of the heroes, punished them for frivolity, forced them to go through suffering, and rewarded them for what they had experienced.
Let us turn to Belkin’s point of view: “Everything in life happens, of course, not according to literary models (Epigraph from Zhukovsky’s Svetlana) immediately reveals literary models in the behavior of the characters:
Horses rush over the hills
Trampling deep snow...
There's a temple of God on the side
Seen alone
……………………………….
Suddenly there is a snowstorm all around;
The snow is falling in clumps;
The black corvid, whistling with its wing,
Hovering over the sleigh;
A prophetic dream says sadness!
The horses are in a hurry
They look sensitively into the dark distance,
Raising their manes...
We see that this is not accidental. The epigraph from the ballad “Svetlana” connects to this story Zhukovsky’s ideas about the existence of a mysterious, unrevealed pattern of our destiny and life.”
The two main events of “The Blizzard,” another story told by the girl K.I.T., are the wedding of Marya Gavrilovna with the first person she met and her happy finding of her unexpected husband three years later, although they confirm the truth of the saying that once consoled her parents that the betrothed is not if you go around, they still seem absolutely fantastic. The incredibleness of the story did not go unnoticed. “In this Tale, every step is implausible. Who would agree to marry in passing, without knowing whom? How could the bride not see her groom under the aisle? How did the witnesses not recognize him? How did the priest go wrong? - the reviewer of “Northern Bee” was perplexed in his review of the second (1834) edition of “Belkin’s Tales”. Later, these questions gained a reputation as simple-minded and even idle, contrary not only to the poetics, but also to the metaphysics of Boldino’s stories. However, the bewilderment did not disappear, although its nature remained unclear: the metaphysics of chance and its poetic embodiment did not become the subject of special study.
“Meanwhile, V.K. Kuchelbecker, who spoke sparingly about “The Blizzard,” noticed the difference in the poetic structure of the two parts of the story: “In the Blizzard,” he wrote, “the intricacy of the plot alone is entertaining, but the denouement is impossibly incredible, neither in the Prosaic nor in the Poetic sense.” The paradox of “The Blizzard” lies in the fact that the events described in the first and second parts, called by Kuchelbecker “commencement” and “denouement”, are subject to different laws, eventual and poetic.
At the very beginning of 1812, Marya Gavrilovna R** was supposed to secretly get married to her neighbor, army ensign Vladimir Nikolaevich, but the groom got lost in a snowstorm, and the bride went to a passing hussar.
Three years later, when the spouses met again, it turned out, however, that the imaginary groom was not just the first person he met, but, like poor Vladimir Nikolaevich, a neighbor of Marya Gavrilovna, only not at Nenaradov, but at the *** estate.
Burmin, as the story says, “came on vacation to his estates, located next to the village of Marya Gavrilovna.” By an incredible coincidence, Marya Gavrilovna herself moved there.
Departure from Nenaradov seemed to separate her forever from both her unhappy fiancé and her unknown husband. However, the last circumstance, already noted more than once, needs a little clarification. Departure from Nenaradov deprived Marya Gavrilovna of her last hope of meeting her husband, only if the husband, years later, intended to find his unfortunate wife in the vicinity of Zhadrin. If the wife, not harboring vain illusions, decided to seek a meeting with him, then she should have moved to the *** estate, closer to his estates. Marya Gavrilovna did just that. And, as it later turned out, she was right - Burmin himself, as follows from his confession, would never have found her.
Living in a *** village, the virgin Artemisa did not give the slightest hope to any of the suitors circling around her. An exception was made for the wounded hussar colonel. Getting to know Burmin and hostilities, which accelerated the explanation and, consequently, the denouement, were undertaken by Marya Gavrilovna, despite the fact that she could only become the wife of her husband. And Burmin really turned out to be her husband, so the difficult situation was resolved as if by itself.
The reason for such a frivolous act, which, contrary to expectations, predetermined the best outcome, the reason for incredible luck, fantastic coincidences and a fabulously happy ending could be one: Marya Gavrilovna knew exactly who she was married to and in which province she should wait for her unexpected husband to return from the war.
In the semi-darkness of the Zhadrin church, for the first time looking at the one with whom she was already married, and crying out: “Oh, not him! not him! - she saw next to her, instead of the expected Vladimir Nikolaevich, her other neighbor - Burmin.
It’s not hard to guess, his name was also Vladimir, otherwise the wedding ceremony of Vladimir and Mary, performed over him and Marya Gavrilovna by the Zhadrinsky priest, simply would not have had force.
Since both grooms had the same name, you should once again re-read that part of the story that talks about the circumstances preceding Marya Gavrilovna’s move from Nenaradov to the *** estate: “She never mentioned Vladimir. A few months later, having found his name among those who distinguished themselves and were seriously wounded near Borodino, she fainted, and they were afraid that her fever would return.” Reading the story for the first time, that is, not yet suspecting either the role of Burmin or his very existence, it is absolutely clear that among those who distinguished themselves and were seriously wounded at Borodin, Marya Gavrilovna discovered the name of her fiancé, poor Vladimir Nikolaevich, even more so, but that it is important that after the announcement of the move to the *** estate, it is said about his death “in Moscow, on the eve of the entry of the French.” However, the appearance, albeit three years later, in the *** estate wounded Hussar Colonel Burmin with George in his buttonhole suggests that on that list Marya Gavrilovna found not only Vladimir Nikolaevich, but also Vladimir Burmin. Apparently, only concern for her husband could force her to move to the *** province so hastily, without waiting for news of the fate of the unfortunate groom, whose memory subsequently seemed sacred to her.
The voices of skeptics will certainly be heard here: is it not possible to read the story simply, accepting all the events and all the actions of the characters as they are told. And this would be fair if the authorship and targeting of the word were not essential for the poetics of “Belkin’s Tales”.
In a book oversaturated with references to different narrators, it is important not only What said, but also by whom said and to whom. Burmin talks about the events in the Zhadrin church - the way he wanted to tell Marya Gavrilovna about them.
Nothing is said in the story about what Marya Gavrilovna saw, felt and thought about. During Burmin’s explanation, she seemed to want to tell (“...I’ll tell you after...”), but, due to the happy ending, this was not necessary.
However, the dramaturgy of the explanation of Burmin and Marya Gavrilovna is structured in such a way that an attentive reader cannot help but succumb to bewilderment. “I acted carelessly, indulging in a sweet habit, the habit of seeing and hearing you every day...” Burmin is just beginning, when Marya Gavrilovna already remembers the first letter to St.-Rheu x. This place has always been a stumbling block for commentators. Since the beginning of the explanation does not in any way resemble the first letter of St.-Préu x, and the cliché “sweet habit” (“Ia d oise h ab itud e”) actually contained in it goes back to the eighteenth letter of the third part of “New Heloise,” it is generally accepted that that Pushkin simply made a mistake, forcing the heroine to remember Saint-Preux's first letter instead of Julia's eighteenth letter. Perhaps Pushkin really made a mistake, just as in his letter to P.A. Pletnev was named as the source of the second epigraph to “The Shot” instead of Marlinsky’s “Evening at the Bivouac” in his “Novel in Seven Letters.” However, if this is not a mistake, then it should be recognized that the dramaturgy of the explanation of Burmin and Marya Gavrilovna is built extremely skillfully. In the first letter of St.-Pr eu x we are talking about an insurmountable barrier separating the lovers, and Burmin actually says further that such a barrier exists between them, but Marya Gavrilovna thinks about the first letter of St.-Pr eu x before Burmin begins his explanation remind him, as if she probably knows what Burmin will tell her. It’s time, however, to return to the first part of the story and reflect on how it happened that Marya Gavrilovna was married to the first person she met?
What prevented more than half a dozen conspirators from seeing the military man who arrived at the church in time? Why was neither the Zhadrin priest, nor the three witnesses, nor the coachman Tereshka able to distinguish Burmin from Vladimir Nikolaevich, and why did Marya Gavrilovna decide to look at her betrothed only after the ceremony had already been completed? Of course, it was dark in the church, the witnesses and the priest did not remember the groom’s face well, and there was a snowstorm outside, and faithful Tereshka, who is difficult to suspect of not knowing what the master looked like, could not see the arriving military man and at the same time mixed up the sleigh into one horse without a coachman with Burmin’s mail sleigh, and Marya Gavrilovna was unconscious, but where in that case was the girl who was “in conspiracy” with her looking? Such an incredible coincidence of circumstances in a literary work must have its own genre support.
Indeed, a lot can become clearer if we take into account the time of action of the first part of the story. The wedding of Marya Gavrilovna and Burmin took place, as they say, “at the beginning of 1812.” Apparently, on Christmastide. This is not stated directly, but the plot and style of the story: a plan for a secret marriage by abduction, the substitution and death of the groom, a wedding with the first person he meets, reminiscent yuletide wedding game, a blizzard, confusion bordering on madness and death, finally, the epigraph from Zhukovsky’s Yuletide ballad and the choice of the narrator, the girl K.I.T. - everything in “Blizzard” reveals a Yuletide story so popular in the first half of the century.
However, despite the fact that “The Snowstorm” seems to be oversaturated with signs of Christmastide (for another story, one epigraph from Zhukovsky’s ballad would be enough - according to the researcher of the Russian Christmastide story, the lines of “Svetlana” have a high degree of epigraphy, that is, they quite definitely indicate the yuletide theme of the work.), it was not read as a yuletide story. However, the same fate befell Pushkin’s other Christmas story, “The Little House in Kolomna.”
Unlike “The Blizzard,” its action is directly timed to coincide with Christmas time: the cook, who was replaced by Mavrusha, died on the night before Christmas.
In addition, the appearance of the groom in a woman’s dress and under a woman’s name to the girl was one of the most common motifs of the Yuletide story, starting with “The Tale of Frol Skobeev” and Yuletide stories published in M.D.’s magazines. Chulkova. Pushkin's stories, the plot of which is dedicated to Christmastide, really differ from the contemporary Christmastime stories, be it "Christmas Stories" by N.A. Polevoy (1826), “Narrowed” by M.P. Pogodin (1828) or “The Night Before Christmas” by N.V. Gogol (1830-31). The essence of this difference lies primarily in the fact that Pushkin’s stories are devoid of an ethnographic background. Christmastide is not so much a calendar holiday with its characteristic rituals, but rather a special time when the border between reality and illusion, destiny and arbitrariness ceases to be insurmountable. As you know, weddings are not celebrated on Christmastide. Apparently, this was another obstacle that Vladimir had to overcome in negotiations with the Zhadrinsky priest. How Vladimir came to an agreement with him remained a mystery, which is only partially clarified by the indication that the priest was a retired cornet. As for the witnesses, it was not difficult to obtain their consent. Vladimir met the young uhlan and land surveyor Shmit at his neighbor, another retired cornet, Dravin, over a glass of punch, as was said in the draft version. Subsequently, this direct indication of the cause of many later troubles disappeared. It was indeed superfluous, and it is already clear under what circumstances a Russian person, even if he were land surveyor Shmit “in mustaches and spurs,” is ready to swear his readiness to sacrifice his life for the first person he meets for no apparent reason. Is this why, a few hours later in the church, three men, as it seemed to Burmin, “supported the bride and were busy only with her.”
Vladimir Nikolaevich, having entrusted Marya Gavrilovna to “the care of Fate and the art of Tereshka the coachman,” no matter how much he “thought,” or “remembered,” or “reasoned,” but still could not cover the twenty-minute journey without outside help in either two hours or the entire night.
Trusted by Fate, Marya Gavrilovna did not resist her, and is it possible to resist Fate on Christmas Eve? After the wedding, in delirium, she constantly expressed her secret, but her secret seemed incongruous with anything, and mother only understood that her daughter was “deadly in love with Vladimir Nikolaevich, and that love was probably the cause of her illness.” But did the kind Praskovya Petrovna correctly understand her daughter’s words: which of the two Vladimirs was Marya Gavrilovna mortally in love with?
So, the two parts of the story, called “commencement” and “denouement” in Kuchelbecker’s letter, are really built according to different laws. Chance plays a fundamental and, in a literary sense, plot-forming role in the first part of “The Blizzard,” but after Christmas Eve, contrary to the obvious, there is nothing accidental anymore. Chance, “God the inventor,” married Marya Gavrilovna and Burmin on Christmastide in 1812, but further history was entirely in their own hands, depending on their will and enterprise. No wonder Pushkin, in the words of V.V. Veresaev, treated “with great, incomprehensible approval” to M.P.’s Christmas stories. Pogodin, whose heroes resorted to many tricks in order to “accidentally” meet their betrothed.
The two parts of “The Blizzard,” the event of the fateful night and everything that followed it: Marya Gavrilovna’s illness, Vladimir’s death and the happy meeting with Burmin four years later, are separated by a short phrase that makes up a separate paragraph: Nothing. When Vladimir, having reached the Zhadrinsky church in the morning, learns about the terrible incident, and the reader still has no idea what happened to Marya Gavrilovna, the narrator returns to the house of the Nenaradovsky landowners, where absolutely nothing has changed.
The climax of the story, the tension of which is resolved by a simple nothing, brings us to the deep meaning of the story, hidden behind the parody of the external content.
The metaphysics of chance, dressed in the form of a Christmas tale, includes “The Blizzard” in the broader context of not only Pushkin’s literary, but also historical reflections. The problem of historical accident became a cross-cutting issue in his work, starting from the mid-1820s. On December 13 and 14, 1825, he wrote “Count Nulin,” and in 1830in<Заметке о “Графе Нулине”>, ironically correlating an episode of Roman history with an anecdote from the life of provincial landowners, formulates the idea that a major historical event, like an event in private life, may not occur due to an absurd comic accident.
“Pushkin said that when he served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.<остранных>business, he happened to be on duty with one very old official. Wanting to extract at least something from him, Pushkin asked him about his service and heard the following from him.
One day he was on duty in this very room, at this very table. This was a few days before Paul's death. It was already past midnight. Suddenly the door opened with a noise. The watchman ran in in a hurry, announcing that the sovereign was coming for him. Pavel entered and began to walk around the room in great excitement; then he ordered the official to take a sheet of paper and began to dictate with great fervor. The official began with the title: decree e.<го>And.<мператорского>V.<еличества>” and dripped ink. He hastily grabbed another sheet and began to write the title again, while the Emperor continued to walk around the room and continued to dictate. The official was so confused that he could not remember the beginning of the order and was afraid to start from the middle; he sat neither alive nor dead in front of the paper.
Pavel suddenly stopped and demanded a decree to be signed. The trembling official handed him a sheet of paper on which was written the heading and nothing else.
- What about the sovereign? - asked Pushkin.
- Nothing, sir. He only deigned to hit me in the face and left.
-What did the sovereign dictate to you? - Pushkin asked again.
- Even if you kill me, I can’t tell. I was so scared that
I can’t remember a single word.”
The logic of “strange encounters” outlined in<Заметке о “Графе Нулине”>, allows us to correlate “Blizzard” with a historical anecdote about a failed event that could change the course of Russian history. The last days of Paul's reign were fraught with changes that were expected from minute to minute; The emperor's decree could change the course of domestic and foreign policy, affect the succession to the throne, and destroy an already ripening conspiracy with random arrests, but none of this happened because of the ink written by an official on the sheet with the title of the decree. The climax of the anecdote, indicated by two short remarks: ““What about the sovereign?” - asked Pushkin. - “nothing, sir...”, with a sufficient degree of probability indicates not only the typological, but also the structural similarity of the story of the failed decree of Paul I with the last Boldino story.”
The unexpected union of husband and wife, Burmin and Marya Gavrilovna, separated by chance, is happy for both. But the author, with irony, makes us understand how prosaic, how shallow, how primitive this happiness is defined. The fate of Marya Gavrilovna is determined by the laws of her environment; Having gotten married, she will repeat the cycle of life of the Nenaradov landowners.
§ 3. From paradox to absurdity “The Undertaker”
Pushkin wrote “The Undertaker” just six days after his arrival in Boldino. “The Undertaker”, the shortest story in the cycle, depicts, presenting to us the bourgeois urban world, the undertaker Adrian Prokhorov and his neighbors - German artisans, the most prosaic reality and at the same time reveals the most clearly expressed poetic structure. As we see from the manuscript, the plan for the entire cycle arose from Pushkin only after the completion of The Undertaker. This story is an artistic reflection of the paradox that Pushkin realized extremely clearly at the end of the summer of 1830. When, shortly before the wedding, he arrived at the family estate of Boldino. In a more expanded form, we find the paradox about the undertaker cheerfully dealing with death during a cholera epidemic in a letter to V.F. Odoevsky: “On the streets there are coffin carts and on them the cheerful faces of undertakers counting money on coffin pillows - all this was Walter Scott’s novel in the faces.”
“The paradox of the undertaker, who profits from the loss of life, lives by the fact that his clients die - this is the formula of the plot of the story. Already in the initial words of the first sentence, they speak of a peculiar intertwining of death and life, which constitutes the paradox of the undertaker’s profession.
The paradox that defines the undertaker's life serves as the initial formula for the plot. As soon as we enter the world of Adriyan Prokhorov, we find ourselves faced with a semantic shift. The undertaker translates a paradox, a seemingly meaningless combination of concepts that, upon closer examination, turns out to be true, into an absurdity, into nonsense. The true paradox of his life remains unaffected; in itself it does not reduce to absurdity. It is not the paradox that is responsible for the nonsense, but Prokhorov himself. But the paradox leads a person into the temptation of absurd thinking.
And when the undertaker transports his belongings on the funeral cart to a new home - to the “yellow house”, which evokes an association with a madhouse - he crosses the line between the true paradox of his life and the false absurdity.
The shift from paradox to absurdity is clearly represented by the sign decorating Prokhorov’s new house: “Above the gate stood a sign depicting a portly Cupid with an overturned torch in his hand, with the caption: “Here simple and painted coffins are sold and upholstered, old ones are also rented and old ones are repaired.”
The sign literally brings to the point of absurdity the purely commercial thinking of the undertaker, who is not aware of the uniqueness of his craft. The selfish undertaker turns the paradox of his profession into absurdity through a series of complex transformations, which the plot itself unfolds. Prokhorov sits at the window of his new house, finishing his seventh cup of tea. As usual, he is immersed in “sad thoughts.” Last week, an unexpected rainstorm ruined robes and hats. There are “inevitable expenses” ahead; the old stock of mourning dresses has become almost completely unusable. He hopes to “recover the loss” on the old merchant’s wife Tryukhina, who has been dying for about a year now. But what if the heirs, despite their promise, do not send for him to such a distance, but come to an agreement with the nearest contractor?
These reflections, in which the undertaker’s commercial thinking and his prudence in business are revealed to us, are interrupted by the arrival of the shoemaker Gottlieb Schultz, who lives across the street, in the house opposite; a neighbor comes to invite the undertaker to his silver wedding.
What Schulz meant, his speech in any case states a new paradox to the form of a comic oxymoron.
Drinking to the health of his dead - this would in fact be for Adrian a logical consequence of his view of the dead as his clients. Wishing the health of his clients, any trader is not completely disinterested, because only a healthy client is good.
If Adrian, following the baker, raised a toast, meaning commercial gain, while thinking, like other artisans, about increasing his profits, he would have to drink not to the health, but to the imminent death of everyone present.
In the dream, two wishes are fulfilled that haunted Adriyan in his daytime life: they send for him to bury the old woman Tryukhina, and the dead prove that they live.
The first part of the dream, which gives no indication of its oneiric status, shows the undertaker at work. A messenger from the clerk of the merchant Tryukhina brings him the long-awaited news, and Adrian immediately sets off on the journey to Razgulay, where the “yellow as wax” deceased lies (the same yellow color, the color of the dead, in which the undertaker’s house is also painted). At the gates of the deceased, merchants are already pacing “like crows, sensing a dead body.” This comparison is given from Adrian’s point of view and characterizes, first of all, his own thirst for profit. Having settled all matters by the evening, Adrian returns home on foot.
At the Church of the Ascension - there is some irony in this - the one who is heading to the underworld calls out to him “our friend Yurko”, which now does not cause us any surprise, and wishes him, when he finds out who is in front of him, “good night” . The guide of souls, the mediator between sleep and reality, Hermes - and Pushkin, of course, knew about this - is also in charge of human dreams, which he sends with the help of his magic wand.
In the second part, the “night” part, Adrian’s dream imperceptibly takes on a factual character. The housewarming party, to which the drunken and angry undertaker invited, is carried out both in the literal sense of the word, i.e. in the sense of a holiday. However, there is no connection between reality and sleep for the hero.
The dreaming undertaker no longer knows about his blasphemous invitation that is now coming true. Therefore, the hero returning home is surprised by an unfamiliar figure approaching his gate and hiding in the gate. He thinks he is a thief or his daughters' lover.
It doesn’t even occur to him to shout to his friend Yurka. It seems to Prokhorov that people are walking around his rooms, the Orthodox hero is thinking about the devil, and when a company of dead people appears before his eyes, his legs give way.
The dream reflects reality. Each dream motif echoes a certain motif of the day. Awakened by the bright sun, the undertaker, unlike many of his literary predecessors, does not feel relief at all. He rises from the dead, saving himself not only from the death that almost overtook him in a dream, but also from that death-like state that means his life in the coffin.
The reality of the dream has been removed, but everything that the undertaker saw in his dream cannot remain without consequences for him.
Having barely avoided death in a dream, he will begin to value life more in the future, even if it is associated with losses. Having lived like a dead man who wanted to be on friendly terms with the dead, he will henceforth act according to the motto of his literary predecessor Onufrich, who commanded his money-greedy wife: “Leave the dead alone.”
With horror and mortal fear, Adrian paid his debt, his debt to life. Debt is worth paying, as the central proverb of the novel says. We cannot know what conclusions Adrian will draw from his dream, whether he will understand how deeply the descent into the underworld has forced him into the depths of his own soul, but the final scene allows us to at least assume that he will carry the coffins from the kitchen and living room to the back room, he will call his daughters for tea more often, and he will be more honest in business.”
Bocharov S.G. analyzed the story “The Undertaker”, examined it from the point of view of eternal moral laws, the awareness of which Adrian Prokhorov involuntarily comes to realize.
The literary critic points out the duality of the undertaker’s character: “The undertaker’s holiday is determined by the death of a living person, and wishing health to the dead is wishing death to the living.
This is the hidden semantics of the existence of an undertaker. It is interesting to note the objectivity of self-awareness. It does not linger in Adrian’s soul: just as it comes to him apart from him, it leaves him apart from him.”
We again feel the influence of the accident of fate. At the end of the story, the hero changes: “... the undertaker is delighted, not gloomy as usual, calling his daughters, probably not in order to scold them, as usual,” and even Tryukhina’s never ending death turns out to be a positive fact. This means that detente is not as simple as it is usually imagined. At the end of the story, the sun shines and the hero feels a joy that he did not feel at the beginning of the story.
This joyfulness of the undertaker not only removes the horrors of the dream, it also contrasts his usual gloominess.
The story does not resolve into nothing: something did not clearly happen in the life of its hero and the shock of the dream made him feel that, indeed, a living person has a place among living people.
§ 4. “Stationmaster”
The saddest of Pushkin’s five stories is “The Station Agent.” I’m very sorry for both the caretaker and Dunya.
The heroes of the story find themselves in a difficult situation, everyone has to make a choice. In “The Station Agent,” each of the three main characters faces the problem of another person, which becomes a measure of the internal aesthetic dignity of Vyrin, Dunya, and Minsky.”
According to E.N. Kupriyanova, Samson Vyrin exhibits an extreme degree of parental egoism. But at the same time he is afraid that his daughter faces the usual fate of a girl who is seduced. But we see Dunya is happy: “In a beautifully decorated room, Minsky sat thoughtfully” (VI, p.96).
Let's ask ourselves, why is her father unhappy? Why does he become more bitter? Firstly, because he does not believe in the strength of her accidental happiness, despite Minsky’s assurances that he will not leave Dunya and will fulfill his duty.
Secondly, Vyrin is unhappy not only because of fear for the fate of his daughter, we have before us the tragedy of a person’s betrayed trust, about which Lezhnev A.Z writes: “Vyrin invested too much in his love for his daughter. Now this love is betrayed. Vyrin cannot live his old life. He must drink himself to death and die. Life has lost its meaning and taste for him.”
All researchers note the semantic load of the depiction in the paintings of the plot of the biblical parable of the prodigal son. It can be considered that it is no coincidence that this idea of the “prodigal daughter” can be traced in the story. The story is tragic. It is no coincidence that Vyrin makes the reservation: “you will inevitably sin.” He chooses his cross. The daughter returns, she lives prosperously, but she will never be happy, realizing her unforgiven guilt.
The plot of “The Station Agent” was based on the outline of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and the story about the daughter’s life in St. Petersburg belonged entirely to the father, which made the connection between their destinies become clearer and more obvious.
The caretaker’s sadness, it seems, really had no more reason: his daughter escaped a worse fate, but the fact that her daughter considered happiness could not calm him down. This plot paradox, noted by M.O. Gershenzon, was and remains the main stumbling block for interpreters of the story." “Gershenzon himself believed that everything was to blame for pious deception, that is, the desire to live according to Scripture, testing the “living truth” of one’s own and others’ lives by the canonical order of things and events: “But the caretaker did not die from a significant misfortune; the important thing is that he died because of those German pictures. Just as these pictures tell the story of the prodigal son, so the caretaker believes, and because he believes this way, he already sees all things in the wrong light. But we must admit that the story has adopted not only the plot outline of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but also the structural features of the parable as a genre.” “The interest in the events themselves, which distinguishes Pushkin’s prose from the classic Russian novel, as it developed in the era of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, is not limited to observing the intricacies of the plot. Although many works on the theory of plot were based not least on the material of Belkin’s Tales, this was only the first step, which did not exhaust not only the architectonics, but also the morphology of the event in Pushkin’s prose. The event here is not reducible to motive, to action as such. The events of Pushkin's story are not limited to the story of Samson Vyrin and poor Dunya; The caretaker’s story is inscribed in the story of the narrator’s life and only in the perspective of this other life acquires a parable character and meaning.” “The story “The Station Agent” stands somewhat apart from other stories in the cycle.
This, however, does not mean that the story looks random or even more alien in the cycle. “The Station Agent” was written in the spirit of the best stories of a sentimental direction: A. Grigoriev considered it the embryo of that literary school, which he called “sentimental naturalism.”
§ 5. “The young lady is a peasant”
The heroes of the story “The Young Lady-Peasant” go through a complex game of chance and are brought up by life. Love for the “peasant woman” helps Alexei Berestov to recover from the fact that he is used to chasing courtyard girls. Love for a dark-skinned beauty awakens the best sides of his nature in a young man; he is ready to abandon the laws of his life in order to connect his fate with a peasant woman. “There are no social conventions before the free play of young forces, before the truth of natural feeling. This is the essence of the extraordinary incident that forms the basis of the story.”
The history of the “Peasant Young Lady” in criticism and literary criticism is primarily a story of bewilderment caused by the implausibility, artificiality and even absurdity of the story told to the girl K.I.T. The most improbable circumstance of the story is unanimously considered to be the fact that Alexey Berestov did not recognize Liza at the Muromsky dinner party, even though under a fair layer of whitewashing Miss Jackson, his dark-skinned Akulina.
Indeed, by an extraordinary coincidence, Lisa’s makeup was appreciated only by those at home. The thick layer of whitewash amused and seriously made Grigory Ivanovich Muromsky laugh and, on the contrary, angered Miss Jacqueline: “Grigory Ivanovich remembered his promise and tried not to show any appearance of surprise; but his daughter’s prank seemed so funny to him that he could hardly restrain himself. The prim Englishwoman was not amused. She guessed that the antimony and white had been stolen from her chest of drawers, and a crimson blush of annoyance made its way through the artificial whiteness of her face.” The guests, oddly enough, did not notice anything. Alexey Berestov, “in the simplicity of his heart,” did not notice the whiteness on Liza’s face at first, nor did he suspect it later, and in a conversation with the imaginary daughter of a blacksmith during a new meeting in the grove, he not only denied her resemblance to the “little white” young lady.
He recognized the undoubted advantage of the “dark beauty” over “all kinds of white young ladies: “Is it true that they say that I look like a young lady? - What nonsense! She's a freak in front of you! -Oh, master, it’s a sin to tell you this; Our young lady is so white, such a dandy! How can I compare with her! Alexei swore to her that she was better than all kinds of little white ladies...”
So, Alexey Berestov did not notice the whitewash in the “simplicity of his heart.” But why were the whitewashes, remaining unnoticed, able to change Liza Muromskaya beyond recognition? There could be only one reason for the strange metamorphosis: Lisa was not naturally white, that is, she was dark-skinned, as stated in the story. Therefore, in order not to be recognized, and at the same time not to appear in front of the guests as “such a black one,” she had, according to her father’s apt remark, to become white up to her ears, that is, all over and pretty much. Apparently, a thick layer of white hid not only her face, but also Lisa’s slightly trembling (“little white”) fingers, which were touched in turn by the Berestovs’ father and son.
The fact that Lisa was not white, of course, was not a secret to her father and Miss Jackson, but the Berestovs, who had never been to the Muromsky house before, could not be completely sure of this. Accordingly, at the dinner party in Priluchin, everyone saw their own: the elder Berestov was simply the daughter of his neighbor, Muromsky was the whitened mulatto daughter, and Alexey Berestov was the white Liza of Muromskaya, like two peas in a pod like his dark-skinned Akulina. One can only guess what young Berestov, who had heard about Muromsky’s pranks, was thinking when he compared the features of the white daughter of the owner of the estate with the features of the dark-skinned daughter of the blacksmith and discovered their undoubted similarity. In accordance with the truly girlish modesty of Ivan Petrovich Belkin, noted by his non-Narodov neighbor, the author is silent about the content of the frank explanation through which Alexey Berestov hoped to win over the alleged father of two daughters, if the far-sighted Muromsky had not avoided the meeting in time.
The younger Berestov was not deluded for long, but his father, it seems, who matched his son, was unaware of the joke of his future daughter-in-law.
After a memorable dinner, Lisa avoided meeting with her Tugilov neighbor, who was visiting Priluchino. It is also possible that the obedient daughter by that time had already followed her father’s advice “not too much, but lightly” to use white in the future, especially since a jar of English white was given to her by Miss Jackson right there, “as a pledge of reconciliation.” Only Grigory Ivanovich Muromsky calculated everything and ended up winning. He equipped the scanty filly in time and directed her towards the neighbor’s property (he, of course, could not help but meet Berestov, the chance meeting of the fathers happened as accidentally as the acquaintance of their children: Grigory Ivanovich went the same road that Lisa and Ivan went on a date Petrovich, like his son, went hunting, “just in case” taking with him greyhounds, a stirrup and boys with rattles), fell from his filly in time and reconciled with his neighbor, in general, by accident, but still not before his date daughters with the richest groom in the area became regular, showed up in time for his absence and appeared at the right time at the decisive moment of Alexei and Lisa’s explanation.
It was not without reason that Ivan Petrovich Berestov, reflecting on the many merits of his future relative, noted one and no small thing - rare resourcefulness, which was so necessary for the squandered parent of an adult daughter when settling her in the best possible way.
Reading the comic plan of the story will remain only a version until it is supported by appropriate evidence. It is unlikely, however, that any other indisputable evidence of the authenticity of the comic subtext can be presented other than the laughter itself. One can only show what such a reading follows from and why it is not obvious, thereby confirming the correctness of the choice of the key word and the comic collism hidden behind it.
Having re-read the well-known story again, it is easy to see that the author is not at all hiding Lisa’s dark complexion.
On the contrary, apart from two mentions of black eyes (“Black eyes enlivened her dark and very pleasant face...”, “my black-eyed minx”) and one hint of dark hair color (2 fake curls, much lighter than her own hair, were whipped up like Louis XIV's wig..."), this is the only feature of her appearance, first noted by the narrator, at the first mention of Lisa of Muromskaya ("Black eyes enlivened her dark and very pleasant face...") and when describing the feelings of Alexei Berestov after the first date in the grove (" the image of a dark-skinned beauty haunted his imagination in his dreams"), then Muromsky, at the sight of Liza in makeup (“Liza, his dark-skinned Lisa, was whitewashed to her ears...”), and Alexei Berestov, at the sight of Akulina without makeup (“Liza... no Akulina, sweet dark Akulina, not in a sundress, but in a white morning dress, sat in front of the window and read his letter."
From the text of the story we see that Liza Muromskaya was dark-skinned and thus different from all sorts of “little white ladies,” but also that Alexei Berestov was deceived not by Liza’s costume, but by her makeup. After the departure of the guests, discussing his daughter’s masquerade, Muromsky speaks only of whitewash: “Why did you want to fool them? He asked Lisa. Do you know what? The whitewash is right for you; I don’t go into the secrets of the ladies’ toilet, but if I were you, I would start whitening myself; Of course, not too much, but slightly. Lisa was delighted with the success of her invention.” Alexey Berestov, as is clear from the final scene, only had to see the Priluchinsky young lady without makeup once to recognize her, despite her white morning dress, as the dark-skinned daughter of a blacksmith.
To match the plot and the epigraph to the story:
You, Darling, look good in all your outfits.
From the poem by I.F. Bogdanovich, which tells about the transformation of a white beauty into a “beautiful African woman,” the author chose a line about outfits.
The story of the replacement of a dark-skinned peasant young lady with a white young lady, hidden in the subtext of the story of changing costumes and imaginary metamorphoses.
Liza Muromskaya has changed beyond recognition only because she has become white. But even here, understanding the subtext of the story is made difficult by the author’s silence about the true reason for the hero’s delusion. There are two narrative plans in this story: one - visible to everyone and the other - known only to Lisa and partly to her confidante Nastya; the entire narrative is built on the combination of these plans.
A rare case of simultaneous collision and the resulting vibration of difficult situations in life, which cover the relationship of the younger and older generations, the enmity of neighbors - fathers and the love of their children.
Traditionally, the analysis of “Belkin’s Tales” comes from the side of Belkin himself.
It is imperative to pay attention not so much to the sequence of composing the stories, but to the sequence of the final arrangement. Maybe Pushkin did this not by accident? It turns out that the three stories are noble in their themes and were written later than the two democratic ones. The cycle is headed by “Shot” and “Blizzard”, and the most cheerful in spirit and vaudeville-fun “Peasant Young Lady” closes it.
CONCLUSION
To summarize, I would like to note that we tried to consider Pushkin’s case in “Belkin’s Tales” as a natural phenomenon.
We are convinced that it is a case of “God is the inventor.” That sometimes only one incident can change our lives, and whether we manage to control what happened depends only on ourselves. A.S. Pushkin in “Belkin's Tales” changed the lives of the heroes with the help of an incident. Probably, if this had not happened, the stories would have seemed “dry” and boring to us. In “Belkin's Tales” it is precisely the case of how the inventor “kindles the fire” that gives life and interest to each story. This work can serve as additional material for teachers in literature lessons when studying “Belkin’s Tales”, because we tried to reflect in it the meaning of using the pattern of chance. As mentioned above, “Pushkin’s case is a powerful force,” which is contained in the very meaning of the word, that in life everything does not happen for nothing, we have to pay for everything. “Belkin's Tales,” with their characteristic abundance of gaps, allow for various interpretations, and each reader can find something of their own in them, regardless of whether he wants to read only entertaining anecdotes and stories, as Bulgarin and Belinsky did.
Nevertheless, the life of the heroes of each story was influenced by the incident: it brought joy and love to someone; someone's loss, disappointment. Researchers who derive the misfortunes of the stationmaster from oppression, explain Silvio’s refusal to shoot as the hero’s nobility or vindictiveness, see in “The Blizzard” only a capricious play of chance or consider the reasons for the happiness of the young peasant girl to be a successful deception, not only do not reveal the secret motives of the heroes’ behavior, but also deprive the work of its meaning.
Chance appears in the world of Pushkin’s stories as an important motivating factor, but a person must not miss the chance provided by fate. Nothing is punished more harshly in Pushkin’s world than blindness and the inability to strive from stereotypes to experience living life, which always amazes with the unexpectedness of its manifestations.
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Theme of the case in “Tales of Belkin” by A.S. Pushkin
Introduction
Chapter I World of Belkin's Tales
§ 1 History of the creation of “Belkin’s Tales”………………………….. 6
§ 2 Plot simplicity of “Belkin’s Tales”………………………... 9
§ 3 Laughter and tears in “Belkin’s Tales”…………………………….. 11
Find material for any lesson,
Story by A.S. Pushkin’s “Shot” is included in the collection. This work is distinguished by its compactness and conciseness, characteristic of Pushkin’s manner of writing prose works. The narration is told on behalf of a certain Lieutenant Colonel I. L. P, who at the time of the events was a young officer in the Russian tsarist army. But there are two more narrators in the story - Silvio and the count, who was supposed to shoot with Silvio. This is a compositional feature of the work, which gives the reader the opportunity to see the events described in the story and its main characters from different angles.
First, Colonel I. L. P. introduces the reader to Silvio, not a military man, but a man who loves to shoot, and riddled all the walls in his house. The description of Silvio and his house is an exposition. Silvio once served in a hussar regiment, but retired. Therefore, one can understand his friendship with the officers who served in that place, organizing dinners for them. But none of his guests knew who he was or where he was from. And what happened in his past.
Written in a romantic style. Silvio is quite a remarkable romantic personality. It was typical for a literary romantic hero to have a secret that weighed on his soul. The narrator introduces the main character as a mysterious, demonic person, on whose conscience is “some unfortunate victim.” The officers often started talking about fights among themselves, but Silvio did not support such conversations. Even if they asked him, he preferred to remain silent.
If you take a closer look at Silvio, the reader appears before the reader as a kind and decent person, for whom honor is not an empty phrase. He is not a killer. He can squash a fly into a wall, but he always finds a reason not to shoot a person.
Card games were also organized here as entertainment. The conflict that breaks out during such a game serves as the beginning of the plot. The episode when Silvio refused to shoot with R. is the culmination of the chapter. The denouement is Silvio’s departure and his story about the count.
The events of the second part take place in a different time and place. I.L.P. retired for family reasons and led the life of an ordinary landowner, doing household chores during the day and missing his former life in the evenings. He did not make friends with landowners and lived alone. The exposition is a description of the life of I. L. P.
In the N district there was a rumor about the arrival of a new landowner and his wife. The plot begins. I. L. P. decided to meet his new neighbors and went to them to pay his respects. Here the lieutenant colonel heard the continuation of the story that Silvio told him before leaving.
The storyline of the story is based on the conflict between Silvio and the Count. Once upon a time, the count greatly hurt the pride of Silvio, who was accustomed to excel in everything, and a duel took place between them. The Count fired his shot. But Silvio saw that the count was indifferent to what was happening and did not value his own life. And Silvio, realizing that even if he kills his offender, he won’t care now. He postponed his shot indefinitely. 6 years have passed. Silvio learned that the count was married and happy. He realized that now the count would not be so careless about his own life. Then he got ready and left the town where he met I.L.P.
Silvio came to the count and saw fear in his eyes. The Count loved his wife and was afraid of hurting her. It can be assumed that Silvio, seeing a beautiful young woman, also did not want to take her happiness away. He enjoyed the anxiety and fear of his offender, put a bullet into the picture, in the same place where the count shot, and left. With his shot he made it clear that the count's life was in his hands. The count's story about Silvio's arrival to him serves as the culmination of the 2nd chapter and the entire story as a whole.
