Features of the plot and composition of Gogol's poem Dead Souls. Composition and plot of a work of art How this point of view was formed

To analyze a play you need a list characters, and with the author's remarks and comments. We will present it here in full, which will help you enter the world of “The Cherry Orchard”; The action takes place on the estate of Lyubov Andreevna Ranevskaya. So, the characters in the play:

Ranevskaya Lyubov Andreevna, landowner.

Anya, her daughter, 17 years old. Varya, her adopted daughter, 24 years old.

Gaev Leonid Andreevich, brother of Ranevskaya. Lopakhin Ermolai Alekseevich, merchant.. K.S. Stanislavsky at one time (in 1904) staged a tragedy, with which Chekhov did not agree. The play contains tricks of the show, tricks (Charlotte Ivanovna), blows to the head with a stick, pathetic monologues are followed by farcical scenes, then a lyrical note appears again... There is a lot of funny stuff in The Cherry Orchard: Epikhodov is ridiculous, Gaev’s pompous speeches are funny (“respected closet"), funny, inappropriate remarks and inappropriate answers, comic situations arising from the characters’ misunderstanding of each other. Chekhov's play is funny, sad, and even tragic at the same time. There are a lot of people crying in it, but these are not dramatic sobs, and not even tears, but only the mood of the faces. Chekhov emphasizes that the sadness of his heroes is often frivolous, that their tears hide the tearfulness common to weak and nervous people. The combination of the comic and the serious is a distinctive feature of Chekhov's poetics, starting from the first years of his work.

External plot and external conflict. The external plot of “The Cherry Orchard” is a change of owners of the house and garden, the sale of the family estate for debts. At first glance, the play clearly identifies opposing forces that reflect the alignment of social forces in Russia at that time: old, noble Russia (Ranevskaya and Gaev), rising entrepreneurs (Lopakhin), young, future Russia (Petya and Anya). It would seem that the collision of these forces should give rise to main conflict plays. The characters are focused on the most important event in their lives - the sale of the cherry orchard, scheduled for August 22. However, the viewer does not witness the sale of the garden itself: the seemingly culminating event remains off stage. The social conflict in the play is not relevant; the social position of the characters is not the main thing. Lopakhin, this “predatory” entrepreneur, is portrayed not without sympathy (like most of the characters in the play), and the owners of the estate do not resist him. Moreover, the estate, as if by itself, ends up in his hands, against his desire. It would seem that in the third act the fate of the cherry orchard was decided; Lopakhin bought it. Moreover, the outcome of the external plot is even optimistic: “Gaev (cheerfully). In fact, everything is fine now. Before the sale of the cherry orchard, we were all worried, suffering, and then, when the issue was finally, irrevocably resolved, everyone calmed down, even became cheerful... I am a bank employee, now I am a financier... yellow in the middle, and you, Lyuba, are like... no way, you look better, that’s for sure.” But the play does not end; the author writes the fourth act, in which nothing new seems to happen. But the garden motif sounds again here. At the beginning of the play, the garden, which is in danger, attracts the entire family, gathered after five years of separation. But no one can save him, he is no longer there, and in the fourth act everyone leaves again. The death of the garden led to the disintegration of the family and scattered all the former inhabitants of the estate to cities and villages. Silence falls - the play ends, the garden motif ceases. This is the external plot of the play.

CHAPTER TWO - GOGOL'S PLOT

FEATURES OF GOGOL'S PLOT

The peculiarity of Gogol's plot: it does not fit within the limits usually delimited to it; he develops “outside himself”; he is stingy, simple, primitive in plot; for it is detailed and deepened in the details of the imagery, in its colors, in its composition, in syllables, in rhythm; there is not much “meaning” in content, as commonly understood; where they see only a detail of design, additional painting, there Gogol’s plot reveals its special power; composition, colors, words, like keys that unlock the real in the false content; the storyline, expanding in color, becomes “cunning” and pretentious; burdening the plot lines with the luxury of images and the power of sound gives the impression of a secondary growth of the plot plot, after which the primary plot looks like it has been winnowed away; what she seemed to be turned out to be something else.

The impression you get when closely studying the plot is as if you are sitting at a mirror of water; and - you see: clouds, heavens, and shore are reflected in the water with indescribable clarity; everything is exaggerated; the clarity of the outlines is unnatural; suddenly - some cloudy spots and shadows, not related to the reflection, furrow its contour; in the place of the cloud you see: a school of underwater fish crossing the cloud (fish in the sky?); the sketch of nature looks fantastic; or vice versa: the fantastic plot is overturned in everyday explanation; and fantasy is just the situation turned outward by the background. The redrawing of plot contours is now a blot: where are the forests, clouds, skies? Bead dregs! What's happened? One of " fish", having emerged, splashed her tail; what he considered to be a plot was erased by the raised swell.

There are as many of them as you like.

Two men are talking about the wheel of Chichikov’s carriage: will it make it or won’t it? There is no visible connection to the plot: a trifle of design that the reader will not remember; after six or seven chapters: it popped up the same wheel, and in a decisive moment: Chichikov flees the city, and it, the wheel, refuses to carry: it won't arrive! Chichikov is in fear: he will be captured red-handed; the wheel is not a trifle, but a wheel Fortune: fate; the trifle of design is emphasized by this; the plot of others is soldered into it; it is not soldered into the detail of the exposition; and there it is a form that is not caught up in the plot; here is the content. Another example: a mahogany casket is shown, which Chichikov carries with him everywhere; you stop at it involuntarily; it is presented with photographic precision; nothing has been said yet about Chichikov’s face; You still don’t know anything about the properties of his mental life; a small chest, a trifle, is substituted for a face with an annoying bulge, like apples on blue paper by the artist Petrov-Vodkin. And this is because the casket is not a casket; in it the true face of the not yet shown hero is hidden; it is both a casket and a symbol of Chichikov’s soul; she is a casket concealing both passions and her criminal past; in the scene with Korobochka, a casket is opened; you see that there is a false bottom in it; under it there is money and paper on which judicial acts are written; but that money is not money at all, but a worm gnawing at Chichikov; and those papers are not papers, but a criminal record; Chichikov is caught red-handed by Korobochka; Chichikov's criminal background is revealed to her; she begs for the paper: but is it not she, symbolically speaking, who, in a few chapters, will scribble her denunciation on this paper: after all, her absurd appearance in the city and the rumors she spread is a denunciation against Chichikov.

The “casket,” like the wheel, are demonstrative details soldered into the plot.

The plot “minus” the unread scene above the little box near Korobochka is one thing; plot “plus” understanding the meaning of the scene is completely different; a scene without understanding the whole situation - a technique of presenting a plot line that is simple and clear as day; with an understanding of the symptoms of the situation, the scene is a plot point; with the opening of the casket, the discovery of the true background of Chichikov’s soul begins, which, like a snake, crawls out for the first time: from the casket; Isn’t that why Korobochka’s watch; hissed as if the room was filled with snakes? From now on, through impersonality " quite decent“The personality of Chichikov is a robber rapist: remember the whole conversation between Chichikov and Korobochka; he suddenly becomes rude; he intimidates Korobochka, forcing him to sell. And here the plot is soldered into detail; she deepened it.

All the details of “MD” are as follows: it’s not for nothing that the scarf is shown “ all colors"; It’s not for nothing that a thunderstorm gathers over Chichikov in front of Korobochka’s estate, as a harbinger of Korobochka’s threat; not without reason; Chichikov is dumped in the mud: under the Korobochka estate; It was not without reason that his carriage grappled with the carriage of the governor’s daughter; there is nothing " just"; and meanwhile: everything is presented with a touch of simplicity, like an annoying trifle, supposedly distracting from the real plot; meanwhile: the plot is given in the sum of all distractions; something from which little things distract, a pure plot, the elementary plane of a borrowed anecdote.

But you don’t see the content buried in the details at first; what you see is a reflection of Pushkin’s plot, like the reflection of the shores on the water; the shores are fiction; suddenly: life appears (a school of fish on a cloud): on the faceless face of the “road traveler” appears a robber robbing on the roads: Korobochka’s imagination imprints its myth in the empty circle of the face: about the robber; the myth played out in Captain Kopeikin; suddenly a Napoleonic nose will be stretched through everything (the nose is similar to Napoleon); symbolically (we will prove below) it is so: Chichikov is the embryo of a new “Napoleon”: a future billionaire; it contains the worm of profit, the very energy of capitalism; The “myth” of Napoleon is, in a sense, real; it is the background to the truly understood plot of MD.

Without the details of depiction, usually attributed to “form,” you will not understand the core of Gogol’s plot; Gogol-“ storyteller"more cunning than it seems; he deliberately brings to the fore the reader something that is not at all what his attention is focused on; and therefore in the expression of simplicity " at, how thin" something; he diverts attention from the catch of “fish” presented under a borrowed plot, pointing to the reflections in the river mirror, and repeating: “Forests, mountains”; those forests are not forests, those mountains are not mountains; under them - " fish"; repeats with conviction in “SM”: “Sorcerer, sorcerer: scary!” The point is not that “ witch”, but in the fact that he is an outcast from the clan; " scary"not because" scary", but because life is scary, in which an alien from afar certainly looks like " Antichrist"; “forests” are not forests: “ grandfather's beard"; the grandfather is the “great dead man” who rules the family life; mountains - the outward and already dead depths of patriarchal life; the dead who live inside the dead are terrible; they are the ones who see" sorcerer"in every foreigner; decorative dead people crawling out of their graves in “SM” are an old-father’s legend; the point is not in them.

The gift of the only organic combination of naturalism with symbolism was inherent in Gogol, like no one else; " symbolism“The romantics, in comparison with the natural symbolism of Gogol, are empty allegorics; Gogol's stories, like " centaurs"; they are two-natures: one nature in the usually understood sense; the other is the nature of consciousness; you don’t know where the action actually takes place: whether in the space shown, or in Gogol’s head; you don’t even know the time of action: in historical stories you discover the events of Gogol’s life; No wonder they noted: his history is bad; in showing the details of the story, it is sometimes miscalculated ... century.

What is more real than Akaki Akakievich? Meanwhile: he lives inside his own, inherent universe: not solar, but ... "overcoat"; " overcoat“to him - the world soul, hugging and warming; he calls her " life friend"; in the middle of Nevsky, he experiences himself walking in the middle with a line written on a sheet of paper; this is Hoffmann's character; the being of his consciousness is “fantastic”. On the contrary: the wild fiction of “SM” is a completely real mold that grew out of the backward way of life of the patriarchal collective; it is the perception by a dull head of the higher economic forms that surround and crowd it; and was probably involved with them " witch"during his twenty-year absence: "abroad."

If you don’t take into account the peculiarities of Gogol’s plot, it looks double, you’ll look at the book and see nothing.

Gogol's plot, understood in a narrow sense, is devoid of originality, borrowed, exhausted, just as the life of the class that gave birth to it is exhausted; its content is a dim day, set on fire by a flash, as if from a chibouk, of an everyday pun, illuminated, like a lamp, by the legend about the “wonderful old days”: from a shadowy corner; but the pun is general; the plot of the legend is cliched. Let me remind you: the plots of “MD” and “Roar”, the everyday life of literature of the Gogol era (up to ... Bulgarin); “OT” reflects in its own way “ A Tale of Two Ivans"(Narezhny); plot "Sh" - former incident(with the loss of a gun, not an overcoat); “ZS” - inspired by a conversation about the facts of life of mentally ill people; plot "N" - nosological puns that filled the magazines of Gogol's era in connection with the technique of grafting artificial noses ... 19 ; “VNIK” is based on the stencil of a legend, digested in a plot borrowed from Tick.

Don't look for originality in the details of the plot; in comparison with the drama of Dostoevsky, with the cunning of the plot intrigue of the novels of Dickens or even the novels of Walter Scott, in comparison with the exoticism of the plot of Hoffmann - Gogol's plot is general, and from the second phase it is simple to the point of boredom. And where he tries to “uninterest” the plot, as in “P”, he kills “ interestingness"a sluggish story" About“How did the portrait influence Chartkov’s rebirth, bypassing “ that's exactly": the process of rebirth; Dickens and Dostoevsky would have made him the core of an amusing plot.

The plot has grown into color; his " What"three quarters - in " How"; outside " How“- some kind of armless and legless plot; it will be necessary to show how the plot is presented in syllables, with figurativeness, redrawing its general outline into an outline with a non-general expression: this time; Having said something about the tendency of Gogol’s plot, we will have to immediately move on to showing trends in this work; I do not have the opportunity to characterize the plots of all Gogol’s works; we will have to limit ourselves to analyzing only two representative works, in which the features of the techniques were equally clearly revealed “ narrator" - Gogol; I take "SM" and "MD". The purpose of this chapter is to show how social significance Gogol's plot becomes obvious only by taking into account all the colors, words, and little details that are usually missed by the reader; We read Gogol’s plot only when registering: all of them; little things deepen it; in each - " buried dog"; without digging up these buried " dogs"The plot is not a plot.

He's out of luck.

This feature of the plot is significant especially in the works of the first creative phase.

Much has been written about " poetry», « fantastic» Gogol's plot; you might think: except moonlit nights, good-natured gopaks and fairy tales “with fear”, they have no content; fantasy is the fashion of all subjects of Gogol’s time; hopak - general shape attitude towards Ukraine: the reader has “ Great Russian"; link to " poetry- indefinite, general; and one can think (and have thought): the plot of the first phase is devoid of any social content; laughed good-naturedly at the funny situations of “NPR”, “ZM”, “SYA”; the same works where the nerve of the plot is not laughter, but, for example, horror, and where it is not hopak that dominates, but tragedy - those works were seen as unsuccessful; and this is how “V” and “SM” were seen.

We passed by the huge social content of “A Terrible Vengeance”; one of the most amazing works of the beginning of the last century was declared as simply unnecessary; and Belinsky saw nothing in him; Gogol, who later devoted many author’s explanations to the pages of “Rev” and “MD,” did not drop a word to us about what he was thinking when he organized the images of “SM”; an excerpt from SM, “Wonderful Dnieper,” filled the anthologies of the recent past; outside of it one would think: Gogol did not write “SM”. Gogol’s contemporaries (including Pushkin) had nothing to do with “SM”; they looked for the plot where it was supposed to be from time immemorial: in the external flow of the plot; They didn’t see at all that the center of the plot was in the composition of small details.

If we had carried out the plots of “SM” and “B” through the technique of writing, taking into account the details, then in the “empty place” treasures of social content would have been discovered, unique in strength and indescribable originality, in the light of which the view on the plot of the first creative phase would have changed; would understand: hopak, “poetry,” “fantasy” are means to reveal the only powerful interpretation of the relationship between the individual and patriarchal life; the collective is shown by Gogol as never before; and shown in a way that no one has ever seen, the horrors that arise from the fact that a dead and unrealistic form of life asserts itself as the only acceptable one.

The discrepancy between self-statement and reality is the nerve of all plots in the works of Gogol’s first creative phase.

Notes

19 V. Vinogradov. "Gogol's Nosology".

1 PLOT AND COMPOSITION

Features of a fairy tale plot The fairy tale is one of the most important genres of folklore. It, like all folklore in general, reflected the life of the people, their worldview. The cognitive and educational significance of fairy tales is undeniable and enormous. But fairy tales are of great interest both artistically and, in particular, as a manifestation of folk talent in the field of plotting. The main feature of all epic genres of folklore (as well as literature) is their plot. However, the plot in each genre has its own specifics, which is determined by the peculiarities of the content, creative principles and purpose of the genre. What are these features of the content and purpose of the fairy tale? What is its genre specificity? “Fairy tales,” wrote the famous folklorist A.I. Nikiforov, “are oral stories that exist among the people for the purpose of entertainment, containing events that are unusual in the everyday sense (fantastic, miraculous or everyday) and are distinguished by a special compositional and stylistic structure.” A.I. Nikiforov, in our opinion, although briefly, quite accurately defined the genre features of the fairy tale, emphasizing that it exists “for the purpose of entertainment.” Entertaining and entertaining was considered distinctive features fairy tales and famous folklorists the Sokolov brothers. In their collection “Fairy Tales and Songs of the Belozersky Territory” they wrote: “We use the term fairy tale here in the broadest sense - we use it to designate any oral story told to listeners for the purpose of entertainment.” No one, of course, will deny the significance of the content and the great educational value fairy tales Pushkin also said: “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it! fairy tales, features of its plot. In J. Propp wrote: “A fairy tale is a deliberate and poetic fiction. It is never presented as reality." All this was reflected in the fairy-tale plot, and in a rather unique way in various genre varieties fairy tales: in fairy tales about animals, social and everyday (novelistic) and magical (wonderful). : The goat and her babies have human qualities. On the other hand, this technique makes it possible to bring together and juxtapose any animals in the plot, rewarding them with the appropriate qualities and actions, thus conveying the most incredible, surreal and fantastic. Let us first dwell on the features of the plot of fairy tales about animals. The plot of some of them has a little exposition. For example, the fairy tale “The Wolf and the Goat” begins with the following exposition: “Once upon a time there was a goat, she made herself a hut in the forest and gave birth to children. The goat often went into the forest to look for food; As soon as she leaves, the little goats will lock the hut behind her, and they themselves won’t go out. The goat comes back, knocks on the door and sings: “Little goats, little kids! Open up, open up!..” And the little goats unlock the door.” The above exposition characterizes the situation preceding the development of the action and provides some motivation for a certain plot. However, it already contains fabulousness, it draws very amazing picture Distinctive feature, i.e. those in which “links can follow one after another according to the principle of stringing, or agglutination.” For example: “Kolobok”, “Death of a Cockerel”, “Tower of a Fly”, “Goat”, etc. (Af., 1, pp. 53-54, 99-100, 125-127, 86-88). . Consider the fairy tale “The Tower of the Flies.” Here is its beginning: “The fly built a tower; a creeping louse came: “Who, who, who is in the mansion? Who, who, who's on high?- “Honey fly, who are you?” - “I am a creeping louse” (Af., 1, 125). A fly lets a louse into the mansion. Then one by one a flea, a mosquito, a mouse, a lizard, a fox, a hare and a wolf ask to come into the house. And the fly lets them all into the tower. Finally, a bear approaches the mansion and answers the question: “Who, who, who is in the mansion? Who, who, who's on high? hears the answer: “I, a burning fly, I, a crawling louse, I, a spinning flea, I, a long-legged mosquito, I, a small mouse, I, a rough-haired lizard, I, a fox Patrikeevna, I, a snatch from under bush, I, wolf, gray tail" (Af., 1, 125). The bear did not ask to see the fly, but stepped on it with its paw and crushed it. The sequence of appearance of animals in a fairy tale (louse, flea, etc.) is not vitally motivated in any way. “The appearance of these animals is determined by artistic logic, not cause-and-effect thinking.” And the artistic logic of a fairy tale is to surprise the listener with the unexpected and extraordinary: “... the more implausible and absurd the fairy tale, the better and more entertaining it is.” Everyday fairy tales themselves are also devoted to everyday themes. Their action takes place in an ordinary setting - in a village, in a field, in a forest, etc. Their heroes are a man, a soldier, a worker, etc. However, they do not have animal characters, animal heroes. And if animals end up in such a fairy tale, then only in their real form, without possessing any qualities and signs of a person. get an unusual, fairy-tale plot realization. The amazing thing is in the plot itself, in the behavior of the characters. The unusualness and fabulousness of such a fairy tale begins from the very beginning of the plot, in which ordinary people enter into unusual, exceptional relationships, begin to act in unusual, and therefore surprising, circumstances. So, for example, the fairy tale “The Priest’s Worker” begins with the message that the priest sends a worker into the field to plow on a dog. But our surprise intensifies even more when we learn that the priest gives bread to the worker in the field and says at the same time: “Here, brother, be well fed, and so that the bitch is well-fed, and so that the rug is whole” (Af., 3 , 61). We also find an amazing beginning in the everyday fairy tale “Pop and the Sexton.” The priest and sexton of one parish, having spent all their wealth, decided to make money on fortune telling. “And the sexton comes to the priest and begins to tell him: “Come on,” he says, priest, I will steal, and you will do magic. And bring, he says, an old book from the church, as if this book shows you this witchcraft” (Sokolovs, 289)., sew a tanned sheepskin coat, give him a scarf, a sash and warm boots, give him excellent water and food for three weeks, and then pay him fifty rubles and give him a month’s vacation. And the lady agrees to all these conditions. Surprising, of course, is the old man’s desire to bury his beloved goat with all Christian honors, but no less surprising is the fact that the priest, sexton and bell-ringer agree to do this for a decent bribe and do so. We see amazing developments in the plot in other everyday fairy tales. However, the endings of everyday fairy tales contain the most amazing and incredible things. Their endings are usually unexpected and very interesting. I will give just a few examples. The coachman, in order to avoid answering, sets fire to the bathhouse in which he was hatching chickens (Andreev, 482); the man proves to the master that he and his wife are fools (Andreev, 485); an angry lady taught by a shoemaker becomes kind (Sokolovs, 69-70), etc. Especially a lot comic situations The plot of this tale is as follows. The old man and the old woman had three sons: two smart, the third Ivanushka the fool. One day the old woman sent Ivan the Fool to take dumplings to the brothers who were in the field. The day was sunny. A fool walks along and, seeing his shadow and thinking that someone is chasing him, he throws all the dumplings into this shadow. The brothers beat the fool for this, went home to dinner, and left the fool in the field to graze sheep. They also wanted to have good horses and asked the fool to throw them into the river. Ivanushka complied with this request and went home in a troika “to finish his beer and remember his brothers” (Af., 3, 197). contain everyday tales of an anecdotal nature. This can be confirmed by the fairy tale “Ivan the Fool” (Af., 3, 195-197). IN in essence, of course, he is no fool. He commits various stupid things only for purely artistic reasons of the fairy-tale genre in order to achieve entertainment and create amazing, funny plot situations. d. All these characters have incredible strength and look very scary. Thus, it is said about Baba Yaga that she has “a sinewy muzzle and a clay leg” (Af., 6, 185). In the fairy tale "Ivan Bykovich" a portrait of a terrible giant is drawn - the husband of a witch, who is so huge that when he wakes up, his eyelashes raise twelve summary fairy tale hero mighty heroes(Aph., 1, 283). In the magical fairy-tale world, scary, simply creepy pictures are often drawn. For example, in the fairy tale “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” the house of the cannibal Baba Yaga is described in this way, into which the hero of the fairy tale must certainly enter: “A fence around the hut is made of human bones, human skulls with eyes stick out on the fence; instead of doors at the gates there are human legs, instead of locks there are hands, instead of a lock there is a mouth with open teeth” (Aph., 1, 161). All these scary monsters In the fairy tale, all kinds of animals, beasts and birds appear: the good horse “Sivka-Burka”, “duck with the golden egg”, “wonderful chicken”, dog, cat, cat, wolf, falcon, eagle, raven, pike, etc. Unlike fairy tales about animals, in fairy tales all these animals have miraculous powers. They are the ones who often control the course of events. A striking example is the fairy tale “Emelya the Fool,” where such power is possessed by a pike that he caught and then released into the Emelya River. After Emelya’s words: “At the behest of the pike, and at my request,” the buckets of water went home on their own, the ax itself chopped the wood, and they went to the hut and laid in the oven, the sleigh without a horse went into the forest for firewood, the batons beat the officer and The soldiers whom the king sent for Emelei, the stove takes him to the king in the city. Emelya turns into a handsome man and marries the royal daughter (Af., 1, pp. 401-408). In addition to living creatures, the heroes of the fairy tale are helped in the most difficult moment by various objects: a self-assembled tablecloth, boots, a flying carpet, a harp, a samogud, a baton, an axe, a buzzer, a horn, a gold ring, a ring, a mirror, comb, brush, towel, living and dead water, etc. All these objects in fairy tales have miraculous powers. Thus, a fairy tale is very attractive with its extraordinary world. This wonderful world, its fantastic images and paintings, surprise and amaze. However, it should be noted that the most effective means of creating something amazing in a fairy tale is its plot. Defining the specifics of a fairy tale, Yu. M. Sokolov rightly wrote: “No matter how characteristic a fairy tale is of its heroes and objects, living and animated bearers of fairy-tale action, the most important and characteristic of a fairy tale as a genre is the action itself. For wonderful fairy tale, - he goes up and sings a song, and down he goes and tells fairy tales. That would be interesting and entertaining to watch. This is not a fairy tale, but there is still a saying, and the whole fairy tale lies ahead” (Sokolovs, 249). And ahead, indeed, there was a fairy tale in which it was told how the tsar first sent his eldest son Fyodor, then the middle one - Vasily and, finally, the youngest - Ivan “far away lands, to the tenth kingdom” to the girl Sineglazka to bring from her living water. The brothers experience various adventures in which their characters and relationships between them are manifested differently. As one might expect, the hero of the fairy tale becomes younger son Tsar - Ivan Tsarevich. However, sayings are not often found in fairy tales. As a rule, the plot of a fairy tale begins with an intriguing plot, with an extraordinary event in which the main role is played by some magical creature with miraculous powers. So, for example, “The Tale of Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf” begins with the message that the firebird began to fly into the royal garden at night and pick golden apples from the apple tree (Af., 1, 415). The fairy tale “Three Kingdoms” opens with an episode that tells how one day a whirlwind “grabbed the queen and carried her away to an unknown place” (Af., 1, 231). The fairy tale “Nikita Kozhemyaka” begins not only surprisingly, but also scary. Here is her first phrase: “A serpent appeared near Kyiv, he took considerable extortions from the people: from each courtyard a red girl; He will take the girl and eat her. The time has come for the king’s daughter to go to this serpent” (Af., 1, 327). The purpose of the above beginnings is obvious. They immediately say that the fairy tale will talk about the miraculous. The plot in each fairy tale develops in its own unique way and is entertaining in its own way. However, for all fairy tales it is a pattern that sooner or later its heroes, in an open or hidden form, will necessarily enter into certain relationships with magical, miraculous forces. This provides the basis for the development of an extraordinary, fantastic plot. In that tasks, which plays a big role in creating images of heroes, enhancing the drama of a fairy tale, and increasing its psychological tension. The drama of a fairy tale is especially enhanced by the fact that the hero sometimes has several of these tasks. Before the hero has time to complete one thing, he is immediately given another, a third. Moreover, each subsequent task is necessarily much more difficult than the previous one. Let's give an example from the fairy tale “The Frog Princess”. It so happened, like a fairy tale, that the eldest son of the king marries the prince's daughter, the middle one - the general's daughter, and the youngest - the frog. Already at the very beginning of the story, the main character of the fairy tale, the frog princess, has to go through three tests, from which she emerges victorious. , 2, 176). The technique of transformations further enhances the entertaining nature of the fairy tale. main interest plausible plot." However, this general feature of a fairy tale plot, as we see, manifests itself in different genre varieties of fairy tales in its own, rather specific way. peasant, soldier, priest, merchant, landowner, etc. The action of everyday fairy tales unfolds in ordinary life conditions. Elements of the real can also be noted in fairy tales about animals. Their plot always has a life motivation to one degree or another. Of course, it is incredible and surprising that the bear is talking to the old man, but there is nothing incredible in the fact that the old man met the bear in the forest. It is surprising that the wolf asks the man to put him in a sack and thereby save him from the hunters who were chasing him. But it is not surprising that the man met him on the road along which he was returning home from the field. to the real Earth. The red maidens are pulled out of the dungeon with the help of belts by the Ivashki brothers. And Ivashka flies out from there on the Eagle Bird. As we remember, the Serpent lowered Ivashka on belts into the underworld through a hole. The eagle “pulled him into the same hole in Rus'” (Af., 1, p. 230). And the fairy tale ends with this, in a certain sense, real picture. “Ivashka came home, took a maiden from the golden kingdom from his brothers, and they began to live and be, and now they live” (Af., 1, p. 230). Thus, in all types of fairy tales we find a peculiar combination of the real and the unreal, the ordinary and the unusual, the vitally plausible, quite probable and completely implausible, incredible. It is as a result of the collision of these two worlds (real and unreal), two types of plot situations (probable and incredible) that what makes the story a fairy tale arises. This is precisely the beauty of it. Based on all that has been said, we can conclude that fairy tale plot

both in its organization and in its ideological and artistic functions it is distinguished by its bright genre specifics. Its main purpose is to create something amazing. Infinite variety literary plots more than once they tried to classify. If this was possible at least partially (at the level of repeating plot patterns), then only within the boundaries of folklore (the works of Academician A. N. Veselovsky, the book of V. Ya. Propp “The Morphology of Fairy Tales,” etc.). Beyond this point, within the limits of individual creativity, such classifications did not prove anything other than the arbitrary imagination of their authors. This is the only thing that convinces us, for example, of the classification of plots undertaken at one time by Georges Polti. Even the so-called eternal stories

It is obvious that the Faust of the folk legend, the Faust of Christopher Marlowe and the Faust of Goethe and Pushkin are far from the same, just like Don Juan by Moliere, Mozart’s opera, Pushkin’s “The Stone Guest”, and A. K. Tolstoy’s poem. The suppression of the above-mentioned plots in some general mythical and legendary situations (the situation of Faust’s conspiracy with the devil, the situation of retribution that befell Don Juan) does not dampen the individual originality of the plot design. That is why we can talk about the typology of plots in the world of individual creativity only by keeping in mind the most general trends, which largely depend on the genre.

In the vast variety of subjects, two aspirations have long made themselves felt (however, rarely presented in a pure, unalloyed form): to the epically calm and smooth flow of the event and to the escalation of events, to diversity and rapid change of situations. The differences between them are not unconditional: declines and increases in tension are characteristic of any plot. And yet, in world literature there are many plots marked by an accelerated pace of events, a variety of positions, frequent transfers of action in space, and an abundance of surprises.

An adventure novel, a novel of travel, adventure literature, and detective prose gravitate toward precisely this kind of eventful depiction. Such a plot keeps the reader’s attention in unremitting tension, sometimes seeing its main goal in maintaining it. In the latter case, interest in the characters clearly weakens and decreases in value in the name of interest in the plot. And the more all-consuming this interest becomes, the more obviously such prose shifts from the realm of great art to the realm of fiction.

Action fiction itself is heterogeneous: most often without rising to the true heights of creativity, it, however, has its peaks in the adventure or detective genre or in the field of fantasy. However, it is fantastic prose that is least homogeneous in terms of artistic value: it has its own masterpieces. Such, for example, are the romantic fantasies of Hoffmann. His whimsical plot, marked by all the violence and inexhaustibility of fantasy, does not in the least distract from the characters of his romantic madmen. Both of them, both the characters and the plot, carry within themselves Hoffmann’s special vision of the world: they contain the daring of soaring above the vulgar prose of measured philistine reality, they contain a mockery of the apparent strength of burgher society with its deification of utility, rank and wealth. And finally (and this is most important) Hoffmann’s plot insists that it is in human spirit a source of beauty, diversity and poetry, although it is also a receptacle for satanic temptation, ugliness and evil. Hamlet’s words “There are many things in the world, friend Horatio, that our wise men never dreamed of” could be an epigraph to the fantasies of Hoffmann, who always felt painfully acutely the flow of the secret strings of existence. The struggle between God and the devil takes place in the souls of Hoffmann’s heroes and in his plots, and this is so serious (especially in the novel “The Elixir of Satan”) that it fully explains F. M. Dostoevsky’s interest in Hoffmann. Hoffmann's prose convinces us that even a fantastic plot can contain depth and philosophical content.

Tension dynamic plot is not always steady and does not always develop upward. Here, a combination of braking (retardation) and increasing dynamics is much more often used. Braking, accumulating reader anticipation, only intensifies the affect of tense plot twists. In such a story special meaning acquires chance: chance meetings of characters, random changes in fate, the hero’s unexpected discovery of his true origin, the accidental acquisition of wealth or, conversely, an accidental disaster. All life is here (especially, of course, in adventure novel and in the novel “high roads”) sometimes appears as a play of chance. It would be in vain to look for any profound artistic “philosophy” of the accidental in this. Its abundance in such stories is largely explained by the fact that chance makes it easier for the author to worry about motivations: chance doesn’t need them.

If the accidental in such plots acquires ideological significance, then only in the historically early forms of the picaresque novel. Here, a favorable event is perceived as a kind of reward for the strong-willed determination of a private person, an adventurer and a predator, who justifies his predatory inclinations by the depravity of the human world order. The unreasoning onslaught of such a personality, who perceives everything around only as an object of application of a predatory instinct, in such stories seems to sanctify its base goals with the favor of chance.

Epicly calm types of plots, of course, do not avoid tension and dynamism. They just have a different tempo and rhythm of the event, which does not distract attention to itself, allowing the artistic fabric of the characters to be spaciously developed. Here the artist’s attention is often transferred from the external world to the internal world. In this context, the event becomes the point of application of the hero’s internal forces, highlighting the outline of his soul. So sometimes the smallest events turn out to be more eloquent than the large ones and are presented in all their multidimensionality. Psychologized dialogue, various confessional-monological forms of revealing the soul, naturally weaken the dynamics of the action.

Epicly balanced, slow types of plots are most noticeable against the backdrop of the turbulent eras that decline literary creativity to a dramatized and dynamic depiction of reality. Just by their appearance against this background, they sometimes pursue a special goal: to remind of the deeply harmonious, calm flow of the world, in relation to which the strife and chaos of modernity, all this vanity of vanities are depicted only as a tragic falling away from the eternal foundations of life and nature or from traditional foundations national existence. Such are, for example, “Family Chronicle” and “Childhood of Bagrov the Grandson” by S. T. Aksakov, “Oblomov” and “Cliff” by I. A. Goncharov, “Childhood, Adolescence and Youth” by L. N. Tolstoy, “Steppe "A.P. Chekhov. To the highest degree, these artists are characterized by the precious gift of contemplation, loving dissolution in the subject of the image, a sense of the significance of the small in human existence and its connection with the eternal mystery of life. In the plot frame of such works, a small event is enveloped in such a richness of perception and such a freshness of it, which are accessible, perhaps, only to the spiritual vision of childhood.

Finally, there are types of plots in literature in which the temporal duration of an event is either “compressed” or reversed. In both cases, this is accompanied by a slowdown in the pace of events: the event is, as it were, recorded through "slow motion" Images. Seemingly homogeneous and whole, in such an image it reveals many “atomic” details, which themselves sometimes grow to the size of an event. L.N. Tolstoy has an unfinished sketch called “Stories of Yesterday,” which the writer intended to reproduce not only in the full scope of what happened, but also in the abundance of its contacts with the fleeting “breaths” of the soul. He was forced to leave this plan unfinished: one day of life, caught under the “microscope” of such an image, turned out to be inexhaustible. Tolstoy’s unfinished experience is an early harbinger of the literature that in the 20th century will be aimed at the “stream of consciousness” and in which events, falling into the psychological environment of memory and slowing down their real pace in this environment, bring to life a demonstratively slow flow of the plot (for example, “In Joyce's Search for Lost Time).

Again, keeping in mind only trends plot construction, one could distinguish between centrifugal and centripetal forms of plot. Centrifugal plot unfolds like a tape, unfolds steadily and often in one temporal direction, from event to event. His energy is extensive and aimed at increasing the diversity of positions. In travel literature, in the novel of wanderings, in morally descriptive prose, in the adventure genre, this type of plot appears to us in its most distinct incarnations. But even beyond these limits, for example, in novels based on a detailed biography of the hero, we encounter a similar plot structure. Its chain includes many links, and not one of them grows so large that it can dominate the world. big picture. The wandering hero in such stories easily moves in space, his fate lies precisely in this tireless mobility, in moving from one living environment to another: Melmoth is a wanderer in Maturin’s novel, Dickens’ David Copperfield, Byron’s Childe Harold, Medard in Satan’s Elixir "Hoffman, Ivan Flyagin in Leskov's The Enchanted Wanderer, etc.

One life situation here easily and naturally flows into another. Meetings along the life path of a wandering hero provide an opportunity to develop a wide panorama of morals. Transfers of action from one environment to another present no difficulties for the author's imagination. Such a centrifugal plot, in essence, has no internal limit: the patterns of its events can be multiplied as much as desired. And only the exhaustion of fate in the hero’s life movement, his “stop” (and this “stop” most often means either marriage, or acquisition of wealth, or death) put the final touch on such a picture of the plot.

Centripetal plot highlights supporting positions and turning points in the flow of events, trying to emphasize them in detail, presenting close-up. These are usually nerve nodes, energy centers plot, are by no means identical to what is called the climax. There is only one climax, but there may be several such macro-situations. While drawing the dramatic energy of the plot to themselves, they simultaneously radiate it with redoubled force. In the poetics of drama, such situations are called catastrophes (in Freytag's terminology). The action that takes place between them (at least in the epic) is much less detailed, its pace is accelerated, and much of it is omitted from the author's description. Such a plot perceives human destiny as a series of crises or few, but “stellar” moments of existence, in which its essential principles are revealed. Such are the “first meeting, last meeting” of the hero and heroine in “Eugene Onegin”, in Turgenev’s novels “Rudin” and “On the Eve”, etc.

Sometimes such situations in the plot acquire stability beyond the boundaries of a specific writing style, the ability to vary. This means that literature has found in them some general meaning, affecting the life perception of the era or the nature of the national character. This is a situation that can be defined as “a Russian man on rendez-vous,” using the title of Chernyshevsky’s article (this is A. S. Pushkin, I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov), or another, persistently repeated in the literature of the second half of the 19th century century (in the works of N. A. Nekrasov, A. Grigoriev, Y. Polonsky, F. M. Dostoevsky), most eloquently indicated by Nekrasov’s lines:

When from the darkness of delusion
I raised a fallen soul...

A centripetal plot tends to more often stop the flight of time, peer into the stable principles of existence, pushing the boundaries of the fleeting and discovering a whole world in it. For him, life and fate are not an unstoppable movement forward, but a series of states that contain, as it were, the possibility of a breakthrough into eternity.

“The Enchanted Wanderer” is a story with a fantastic form of narration. The form of a tale - oral speech in the first person - is necessary for the author to create the image of the hero-storyteller. The story is told on behalf of several storytellers - the narrator and Ivan Flyagin himself, who talks about himself while sailing from Valaam to the Solovetsky Islands. The speech of the narrator, on whose behalf the introduction and conclusion are conducted, is literary, in contrast to Flyagin’s tale speech, characterized by the reproduction of oral, conversational intonation. skaz is not the only form of storytelling. It is a means of expressing the character of the main character.

At the same time, the tale form determines the plot and composition of the work. “The Enchanted Wanderer” is a chronicle of the life of one hero, where there is no central event to which all the others are drawn, but where various episodes freely follow each other. The introduction to the story is an exposition in which the reader, with the help of the narrator, gets acquainted with the scene and the characters. The main part is Ivan Flyagin’s story about his life. The work ends with the conclusion of the narrator: “Having said this, the enchanted wanderer seemed to again feel the influx of the broadcasting spirit and fell into quiet concentration, which none of the interlocutors allowed themselves to be interrupted by a single new question. And what else was there to ask him about? He confessed the narratives of his past with all the frankness of his simple soul, and his prophecies remain until time in the hand of one who hides his destinies from the smart and reasonable and only sometimes reveals them to babies.” Thus the composition is a story within a story. The plot of the story is structured as a storytelling process, in which listeners traveling around Lake Ladoga participate, and Ivan Flyagin tells them about his life. The hero's story about his life has its own plot, consisting of various life episodes. 1. Flyagin’s rescue of the count’s family. 2. Punishment, escape from the count. 3. Babysitting and running away with the child's mother and her lover. 4. Battle with Savakirei and departure to the steppe. 5. Return to Russia. 6. Service under the prince, relationship with Grushenka. 7. Soldier's service. 8. Wanderings and coming to the monastery. 9. Life in a monastery.

The plot of “The Enchanted Wanderer” is varied: adventures follow adventures. “Promised” by his mother to God, Ivan Flyagin was supposed to become a monk according to her vow, but he deviated from his destiny, and therefore is punished, accepts severe trials. Apparently, the mother’s behest will be fulfilled: the hero will come to the monastery at a certain stage of his life. The tale structure of the story is significant for the author. Firstly, Flyagin’s story is given credibility. Secondly, this form allows the author to hide behind the hero and not impose his own interpretation and assessment of events on the reader. Thirdly, it becomes possible to deeply reveal the complex inner world hero: the narrator expresses himself in words. The tale form determines the stylistic originality of the story. The story from the narrator’s point of view is characterized by a literary style of speech, in contrast to Flyagin’s speech, filled with colloquial intonation, vernacular, and dialectisms. The meaning of the so-called frame - the story that frames Flyagin's narrative - is also ambiguous. This is a gradual overcoming of the distance between the hero and his listeners, who at first expect only funny and interesting stories. In addition, the story about the trip on the ship gives symbolic meaning life path Flyagina: he travels around Russia and, together with Russia, sails to a goal unknown to him or her. In literary criticism, the concept of skaz has another meaning: skaz as a genre. The tale-genre is a form of fiction, constructed mainly as a monologue narrative using the characteristic features of colloquial-narrative speech. The narration is not conducted on behalf of a neutral and objective author; it is led by a narrator, usually a participant in the reported events. Speech work of art as if imitating the living speech of an oral story. Moreover, in a tale, the narrator is usually a person of a different social circle and cultural layer than the writer and the intended reader of the work.