Epigraph for the lesson: Humanity cannot exist otherwise than by solving the great mysteries of great artists. And we don't understand own life, as it seems, is far from the Kolyma reality - cannot be understood without solving the riddle of Shalamov’s texts. (Lev Timofeev)
During the classes
Teacher's word
We have an unusual lesson today. It's dedicated to the amazing to a man-writer Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov, who went through the hell of Stalin’s camps. He spent 20 years in the Gulag camps, survived and found the strength to write about it in “Kolyma Stories.” The lesson is dedicated to the victims of Stalin's repressions, as well as Shalamov's stories, which the writer himself called “new prose.”
I want to start the lesson with a letter from Varlam Tikhonovich’s contemporary Frida Vigdorova, in which she addresses the writer with the following words: “I read your stories. They are the most brutal I have ever read. The most merciless. There are people there without a past, without a biography, without memories. It says that trouble does not unite people, that a person thinks only about himself, about surviving. But why do you close the manuscript with faith in honor, goodness and human dignity? It’s mysterious, I can’t explain it, I don’t know how it happens. But it is so".
What is the mystery? Kolyma stories"? This is what we will try to find out today by turning to the analysis of the work. But to understand Shalamov’s prose, you need to have a good understanding of historical events those years. Let's look at the historical background.
(The student’s message follows; the teacher organizes the work using terms and concepts.)
Teacher: Now you see what the situation was in the country in the 1930s, but no one better than an eyewitness and writer can convey the picture of those terrible years. What does V. T. Shalamov himself say about his stories? Here are the words of the writer: ““Kolyma Stories” is an attempt to pose and solve some important moral issues time, questions that cannot be resolved on other material. The question of the meeting of man and the world, the struggle of man with the state machine, the truth of this struggle, the struggle for oneself, within oneself and outside oneself. Is it possible to actively influence one’s destiny, which is being ground by the teeth of the state machine, by the teeth of evil? The illusory nature and heaviness of hope. An opportunity to rely on forces other than hope.”
Was there such an opportunity there in the camp? Where the possibility of looting - taking off a dead man's clothes and exchanging them for bread - was considered good luck? The one in the grave is a dead man, but aren't the marauders dead? Isn’t a person without moral principles, without memory, without will, a dead person? In the story “Two Meetings,” Shalamov writes: “I gave my word a long time ago that if they hit me, that would be the end of my life. I would hit the boss and they would shoot me. Alas, I was a naive boy, when I became weak, so did my will, my reason. I persuaded myself to endure and did not find the mental strength to retaliate, to commit suicide, to protest. I was an ordinary goner and lived according to the laws of the psyche of goons.
What moral questions can be resolved by describing this closed grave space, this stopped time, talking about beatings, about hunger, about dystrophy, about the cold that deprives one of their minds, about people who have forgotten not only the name of their wife, but who have lost their own past, and again about beatings, executions, which are spoken of as liberation - the sooner the better. Why do we need to know all this? Don’t we remember the words of Shalamov himself about the hero of the story “Typhoid Quarantine”: “Andreev was a representative of the dead. And his knowledge, the knowledge of a “dead” person, could not be useful to them, while still alive.”
Shalamov - amazing artist. Instead of showing the reader direct answers, ways out of the abyss of evil, he places us deeper and deeper into this closed world, into this
death and does not promise quick release. But we no longer have life without a solution. Stalin and Beria may no longer be there, but the stories live on, and we live in them along with the characters. Therefore, the epigraph to our lesson is the words of Lev Timofeev “Man cannot exist otherwise than by solving the great mysteries of great artists. And we cannot understand our own life, which seems to be far from the Kolyma reality, without solving the riddle of Shalamov’s texts.” To get closer to this solution, let’s imagine that the writer himself, Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov, came to us. What questions would you ask? asked him?
Question: Why were you arrested and convicted?
Answer: I was arrested for distributing V.I. Lenin’s letter to the congress (the so-called Lenin’s will), in which Vladimir Ilyich named Trotsky, not Stalin, as his successor. I was arrested in 1928 for 3 years, then again in 1937 for 5 years, then the sentence was extended for calling Bunin a Russian classic. In total, I spent about 20 years in the camps (until 1953).
Question: From your biography it is known that you stood up for the prisoner Pyotr Zayets, who was beaten by the guards. Why did you do this, because you could have been killed?
Answer: I realized that if I don’t do this, I will stop respecting myself. I wanted to prove to myself that I was no worse than the heroes from the past of Russian history. The guards forced me to stand barefoot in the cold overnight.
Question: Were there people in the camp who helped you survive this hell?
Answer: Yes, it was a doctor, Andrei Mikhailovich Pantyukhov. He treated me, helped me become a paramedic, thus saving my life. I wrote about this in the story "Domino".
Question: What was your salvation in the camp?
Answer: In a letter to Boris Pasternak, I wrote about it this way: “A stranger to everyone around me, lost in winter, which doesn’t care about people at all, I tried, either timidly or in despair, with poetry to save myself from the overwhelming and soul-corrupting power of this world.” My law in the camps: act only according to your conscience.
Question: Why did you decide to talk about this time in your “Kolyma Stories”?
Answer: People should remember that time. We cannot forget those who died in the camps. The executioners must be condemned. We must ensure that the evil of the Gulag never happens again.
Teacher: Thank you, Varlam Tikhonovich. Guys, now I’ll read a poem by Eduard Golderness, and you can tell me how it relates to the topic of our lesson:
The purpose of life is life. And if you live
You must be a fighter name of life,
Serve love, art or the Fatherland,
You will still come to this path
An example of love between Farhad and Shirin
Who wouldn't get more strength for life?
Immortal graves gave birth to life
The fatherland of those who saved in the days of hard timesThey can give you strength in the struggle for life
Peace and will, strength and perseverance.
But thrice happy is he who is in martial arts
Entered death to conquer
He was given immortality to know,
You can give your life for this happiness!
Students: The writer enters into a duel with death.
Teacher: Guys, let's turn to " Kolyma stories”, which made the writer’s name immortal, and we will try to understand what their secret is. The first story we will talk about is “Berry”. Briefly retell the plot of the story “Berry”.
What is the meaning of the title of the story? Why did the guard kill the prisoner?
Student: Because he was picking berries. Teacher (organizes a conversation on the content of the story “Berry”):
“Like any short story writer, I attach extreme importance to the first and last phrase,” wrote Shaliamov. Reread the first and last sentences of “Berry.” Why does the author close the beginning and the end here?
Has anything changed in the narrator’s position after Rybakov’s death? What is the landscape like in the story? Is this a depiction of nature or death? How do you feel about the narrator’s action in picking up Rybakov’s jar? Which of the guards - Fadeev or Seroshapka - is more unpleasant to the narrator and why? How do you understand the words: “Impunity for beatings - like impunity for murders - corrupts and corrupts the souls of people?” What will destroy a person faster: the position of a prisoner or power over one’s own kind?
(Students give answers to the questions posed.)
Teacher: Guys, let's turn to the next story "To the show"
(The teacher organizes a conversation on the content of the story “To the Show”)
How does the story describe the life of another group of people in the camp - the thieves? What is your attitude towards Sevochka, his servants, and the horse thief Naumov? How is this read into the story? Compare the vocabulary and intonation of the story about the thieves with the story about the engineer Garkunov:
Sevochka:
Thin, white, non-working fingers... Sleek, sticky, dirty blond hair, low forehead, yellow bushy eyebrows, bow-shaped mouth... however, how old is Sevochka - twenty, thirty, forty?..
Sevochka muttered through his teeth with endless contempt.
Sevochka said firmly.
Naumov:
A black-haired fellow with such a pained expression in his black, deeply sunken eyes... that I would have taken him for a wanderer.
Naumov said hoarsely...
Naumov shouted...
He said ingratiatingly...
Teacher: The plot of the story is characterized by the tension of the beginning, its rapid transition to the climax and the terrible denouement that stuns the reader.
How can we explain the metamorphosis that occurred with Naumov, who had just humiliatingly curry favor with Sevochka, and now he is humiliating Garkunov?
Where did a retired textile engineer who ended up in Kolyma under Article 58 as an “enemy of the people” come from so much determination (“I won’t take him down,” Garkunov said hoarsely. “Only with skin”)?
Can we speak of human confrontation in these brief moments of climactic action? What does a sweater mean to him?
What drama is revealed to us behind the words: “his face turned white,” “it was last transmission from his wife before leaving for long journey", "I knew how Garkunov took care of him, never letting him out of his hands for a minute"?
(Students give their answers.)
Teacher: Talking about moral problem in the story, we can draw conclusions about the skill of the writer. In a small paragraph - the fate of a person, the past, present and future compressed into a moment: after all, a sweater is a thread connecting with old life, there is hope in him to survive. The thread turned out to be thin, defenseless and fragile human life, a toy in the hands of non-humans...
Garkunov was killed. But were the killers afraid? Will they be punished? Let's return to the beginning and end of the story. “We played cards at Naumov’s horse-driver’s. The guards on duty never looked into the horsemen’s barracks,” - this is how the story begins. And at the end - Sevochka carefully folds the sweater into her suitcase... The narrator is concerned that he needs to look for another partner for sawing wood.
What is revealed to us behind this? What reality? How does the tomorrow of those Shalamov told us about appear in our imagination? The story “To the Presentation” is about the power of thieves in the camp over the enemies of the people.” The state entrusted the “friends” of the people with the re-education of those who ended up in Kolyma under Article 58.
Teacher: Let's turn to the following story "The Last Battle of Major Pugachev" (The teacher organizes a conversation on the following questions):
- What is this story about?
- Why does the author compare the arrests of the 1930s and 1940s at the beginning of the story? How were former front-line soldiers different from other prisoners?
- How do you understand Shalamov’s words: “The reprisal of millions of people with impunity was a success because they were innocent people, they were martyrs, not heroes.”
Tell us about the fate of Major Pugachev. What is the fate of his comrades? How did the war experience affect them?
How did the prisoners behave during the escape?
Why were there no wounded prisoners in the hospital?
Why was Soldatov treated?
- What was Pugachev thinking about before his death? Find this episode.
- Why does the story end with the death of Pugachev?
- What feeling remains after reading the story? What's it like author's attitude to the heroes? Why did Shalamov, who claimed that there could be no successful escapes, glorify Major Pugachev?
- Let us turn to the story that concludes the collection “Kolyma Stories”. This is “Sentence”. The story “Sentence” is one of the most mysterious works of Varlam Shalamov. By the will of the author himself, it was placed last in the corpus of books “Left Bank”, which, in turn, generally completes the trilogy of “Kolyma Tales”. This story is, in fact, the ending. As happens in a symphony or novel, where only the finale finally harmonizes the whole previous text, so here too only last story gives final meaning to the entire story.
- What is a maxim? Why is the story named this way? A maxim is a moralizing saying, a word that the hero of the story remembered.
- -Match the beginning and ending of the story. What is unusual about the ending?
- -Choose synonyms for the word “non-existence.” What is its significance in the story?
How does the narrator feel about his own and other people’s death, which seems inevitable for a goner who exists beyond the boundaries of the human world?
Follow the stages of the process of awakening the narrator's memory: from "anger - the last of human feelings", through half-consciousness, to fear that the delay of death will be short, and envy of the dead, finally to pity for animals, but not for
to people. This whole range of feelings is connected with the physical state of the hero. This is not a spiritual awakening, but a physical awakening. And only after a person again, as if in the process of evolution, goes through the path from the simplest emotions to more complex experiences, does reason awaken in him.
How does this happen?
How does this affect the meaning of the story?
Teacher: The tragedy of “Kolyma Tales” ends not with an accusatory maxim, not with a call for revenge, not with a formulation of the historical meaning of the horror experienced, but with hoarse music, a random gramophone on a larch stump; a gramophone that “... played, overcoming the hiss of a needle, played some kind of symphonic music. And everyone stood around - murderers and horse thieves, thieves, foremen and hard workers. And the boss stood nearby. And his face looked as if he had written this music himself| for us, for our remote taiga business trip. The shellac record was spinning and hissing, the stump itself was spinning, wound up in all its three hundred circles, like a tight spring, twisted for three hundred years...”
- What is emphasized by this ending: an accident or a pattern of returning to life?
- Why does the harmony of music arise in the world of death?
- Has the writer himself returned to life?
- What is the relationship between the logic of life and the harmony of the world?
- The basis of the harmony of the world includes such eternal concepts as TRUTH, GOOD, BEAUTY. They are inseparable. Can we talk about them while reading “Kolyma Tales”?
Teacher: Try to express your thoughts on the topic of our lesson in a short poem - a cinquain. Topics: V. Shalamov. Kolyma. Kolyma stories. Human. (Work in groups.)
KOLYMA.
Cold, scary.
Tortures, freezes, kills.
Kolyma is a scary place.
DEATH.
KOLYMA STORIES.
Cruel, truthful.
They tell, remind, shout.
Kolyma stories - pages of history.
TRUE.
HUMAN.
Strong, strong-willed.
He fights, he works, he doesn’t give up.
Man is not afraid of death.
GOOD.
VARLAM SHALAMOV.
Wise, strong.
Works, struggles, writes.
Shalamov is a talented writer.
SKILLED MASTER (BEAUTY).
Your syncwines contain keywords our lesson. So we came to the conclusion about the immortality of art, about the power of harmony in the human world. And they saw what a violation of this harmony could lead to - death. This is what Shalamov strives to tell in his stories, this is their secret. The life and work of the writer Shalamov is his atoning sacrifice. And he was close to the truth when he wrote: “In the world there are thousands of truths and truths, and there is only one truth of talent. Just as there is one kind of immortality - art." This is the solution to the mystery of Shalamov’s creativity. The mystery to which the writer introduces us is art. Vigdorova, whose letter we read at the beginning of the lesson, was right: no one can fully comprehend this art. But the reader is given something else: when joining the sacrament, he strives to understand himself. And this is possible, since not only the events of history, but also all of us are characters in Shalamov’s stories, inhabitants of his mysterious world. Let's take a closer look at ourselves there. Where are we there? Where is our place? Finding a simple person his I in the radiance of art it looks like materialization sunlight. This miracle is given to us by V. Shalamov’s books - the spiritual treasure of Russia...
(The teacher sums up the lesson and discusses grades with the students.)
Homework: Essay “What is the mystery of V. Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales?”
Varlam Shalamov
Maxim
Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam
People emerged from oblivion - one after another. stranger he lay down next to me on the bunk, leaned against my bony shoulder at night, giving away his warmth - drops of warmth - and receiving mine in return. There were nights when no warmth reached me through the scraps of a pea coat or padded jacket, and in the morning I looked at my neighbor as if he were a dead man, and was a little surprised that the dead man was alive, stood up when called, got dressed and obediently followed the command. I had little warmth. Not much meat left on my bones. This meat was only enough for anger - the last of human feelings. Not indifference, but anger was the last human feeling - the one that is closer to the bones. A man who emerged from oblivion disappeared during the day - there were many coal exploration sites - and disappeared forever. I don't know the people who slept next to me. I never asked them questions, and not because I followed the Arabic proverb: don’t ask and they won’t lie to you. I didn’t care whether they would lie to me or not, I was beyond the truth, beyond lies. The thieves have a tough, bright, rude saying on this subject, permeated with deep contempt for the person asking the question: if you don’t believe it, take it for a fairy tale. I didn’t ask questions or listen to fairy tales.
What stayed with me until the end? Anger. And keeping this anger, I expected to die. But death, so close just recently, began to gradually move away. Death was not replaced by life, but by half-consciousness, an existence for which there are no formulas and which cannot be called life. Every day, every sunrise brought the danger of a new, deadly shock. But there was no push. I worked as a boiler operator - the easiest of all jobs, easier than being a watchman, but I did not have time to chop wood for the titanium, the boiler of the Titan system. I could have been kicked out - but where? Taiga is far away, our village, “business trip” in Kolyma, is like an island in the taiga world. I could barely drag my feet, the distance of two hundred meters from the tent to work seemed endless to me, and I sat down to rest more than once. Even now I remember all the potholes, all the holes, all the ruts on this mortal path; a stream in front of which I lay down on my stomach and lapped up the cold, tasty, healing water. The two-handed saw, which I carried either on my shoulder or dragged, holding it by one handle, seemed to me like a load of incredible weight.
I could never boil water on time, get the titanium to boil by lunchtime.
But none of the free workers, all of them yesterday’s prisoners, paid attention to whether the water was boiling or not. Kolyma taught us all to distinguish drinking water only by temperature. Hot, cold, not boiled and raw.
We did not care about the dialectical leap in the transition from quantity to quality. We were not philosophers. We were hard workers, and our hot drinking water the leap did not have these important qualities.
I ate, indifferently trying to eat everything that caught my eye - scraps, fragments of food, last year's berries in the swamp. Yesterday's or the day before yesterday's soup from a “free” cauldron. No, our freewomen didn’t have any soup left from yesterday.
In our tent there were two rifles, two shotguns. The partridges were not afraid of people, and at first the bird was beaten right from the threshold of the tent. The prey was baked whole in the ashes of the fire or boiled after being carefully plucked. Down and feather - for the pillow, also commerce, sure money - extra income for the free owners of guns and taiga birds. Gutted and plucked partridges were boiled in three-liter cans, hung from fires. I have never found any remains of these mysterious birds. Hungry free stomachs crushed, ground, and sucked up all the bird bones without a trace. This was also one of the wonders of the taiga.
End of introductory fragment.
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Varlam Shalamov
Maxim
Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam
People emerged from oblivion - one after another. A stranger lay down next to me on the bunk, leaned against my bony shoulder at night, giving away his warmth - drops of warmth - and receiving mine in return. There were nights when no warmth reached me through the scraps of a pea coat or padded jacket, and in the morning I looked at my neighbor as if he were a dead man, and was a little surprised that the dead man was alive, stood up when called, got dressed and obediently followed the command. I had little warmth. Not much meat left on my bones. This meat was only enough for anger - the last of human feelings. Not indifference, but anger was the last human feeling - the one that is closer to the bones. A man who emerged from oblivion disappeared during the day - there were many coal exploration sites - and disappeared forever. I don't know the people who slept next to me. I never asked them questions, and not because I followed the Arabic proverb: don’t ask and they won’t lie to you. I didn’t care whether they would lie to me or not, I was beyond the truth, beyond lies. The thieves have a tough, bright, rude saying on this subject, permeated with deep contempt for the person asking the question: if you don’t believe it, take it for a fairy tale. I didn’t ask questions or listen to fairy tales.
What stayed with me until the end? Anger. And keeping this anger, I expected to die. But death, so close just recently, began to gradually move away. Death was not replaced by life, but by half-consciousness, an existence for which there are no formulas and which cannot be called life. Every day, every sunrise brought the danger of a new, deadly shock. But there was no push. I worked as a boiler operator - the easiest of all jobs, easier than being a watchman, but I did not have time to chop wood for the titanium, the boiler of the Titan system. I could have been kicked out - but where? Taiga is far away, our village, “business trip” in Kolyma, is like an island in the taiga world. I could barely drag my feet, the distance of two hundred meters from the tent to work seemed endless to me, and I sat down to rest more than once. Even now I remember all the potholes, all the holes, all the ruts on this mortal path; a stream in front of which I lay down on my stomach and lapped up the cold, tasty, healing water. The two-handed saw, which I carried either on my shoulder or dragged, holding it by one handle, seemed to me like a load of incredible weight.
I could never boil water on time, get the titanium to boil by lunchtime.
But none of the free workers, all of them yesterday’s prisoners, paid attention to whether the water was boiling or not. Kolyma taught us all to distinguish drinking water only by temperature. Hot, cold, not boiled and raw.
We did not care about the dialectical leap in the transition from quantity to quality. We were not philosophers. We were hard workers, and our hot drinking water did not have these important qualities of a jump.
I ate, indifferently trying to eat everything that caught my eye - scraps, fragments of food, last year's berries in the swamp. Yesterday's or the day before yesterday's soup from a “free” cauldron. No, our freewomen didn’t have any soup left from yesterday.
In our tent there were two rifles, two shotguns. The partridges were not afraid of people, and at first the bird was beaten right from the threshold of the tent. The prey was baked whole in the ashes of the fire or boiled after being carefully plucked. Down and feather - for the pillow, also commerce, sure money - extra income for the free owners of guns and taiga birds. Gutted and plucked partridges were boiled in three-liter cans, hung from fires. I have never found any remains of these mysterious birds. Hungry free stomachs crushed, ground, and sucked up all the bird bones without a trace. This was also one of the wonders of the taiga.
End of introductory fragment.
Text provided by LitRes LLC.
You can safely pay for the book with a Visa, MasterCard, Maestro bank card, from a mobile phone account, from a payment terminal, in an MTS or Svyaznoy store, via PayPal, WebMoney, Yandex.Money, QIWI Wallet, bonus cards or another method convenient for you.
Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam
People emerged from oblivion - one after another. A stranger lay down next to me on the bunk, leaned against my bony shoulder at night, giving away his warmth - drops of warmth - and receiving mine in return. There were nights when no warmth reached me through the scraps of a pea coat or padded jacket, and in the morning I looked at my neighbor as if he were a dead man, and was a little surprised that the dead man was alive, stood up when called, got dressed and obediently followed the command. I had little warmth. Not much meat left on my bones. This meat was only enough for anger - the last of human feelings. Not indifference, but anger was the last human feeling - the one that is closer to the bones. A man who emerged from oblivion disappeared during the day - there were many coal exploration sites - and disappeared forever. I don't know the people who slept next to me. I never asked them questions, and not because I followed the Arabic proverb: don’t ask and they won’t lie to you. I didn’t care whether they would lie to me or not, I was beyond the truth, beyond lies. The thieves have a tough, bright, rude saying on this subject, permeated with deep contempt for the person asking the question: if you don’t believe it, take it for a fairy tale. I didn’t ask questions or listen to fairy tales.
What stayed with me until the end? Anger. And keeping this anger, I expected to die. But death, so close just recently, began to gradually move away. Death was not replaced by life, but by half-consciousness, an existence for which there are no formulas and which cannot be called life. Every day, every sunrise brought the danger of a new, deadly shock. But there was no push. I worked as a boiler operator - the easiest of all jobs, easier than being a watchman, but I did not have time to chop wood for the titanium, the boiler of the Titan system. I could have been kicked out - but where? Taiga is far away, our village, “business trip” in Kolyma, is like an island in the taiga world. I could barely drag my feet, the distance of two hundred meters from the tent to work seemed endless to me, and I sat down to rest more than once. Even now I remember all the potholes, all the holes, all the ruts on this mortal path; a stream in front of which I lay down on my stomach and lapped up the cold, tasty, healing water. The two-handed saw, which I carried either on my shoulder or dragged, holding it by one handle, seemed to me like a load of incredible weight.
I could never boil water on time, get the titanium to boil by lunchtime.
But none of the free workers, all of them yesterday’s prisoners, paid attention to whether the water was boiling or not. Kolyma taught us all to distinguish drinking water only by temperature. Hot, cold, not boiled and raw.
We did not care about the dialectical leap in the transition from quantity to quality. We were not philosophers. We were hard workers, and our hot drinking water did not have these important qualities of a jump.
I ate, indifferently trying to eat everything that caught my eye - scraps, fragments of food, last year's berries in the swamp. Yesterday's or the day before yesterday's soup from a “free” cauldron. No, our freewomen didn’t have any soup left from yesterday.
In our tent there were two rifles, two shotguns. The partridges were not afraid of people, and at first the bird was beaten right from the threshold of the tent. The prey was baked whole in the ashes of the fire or boiled after being carefully plucked. Down and feathers - for the pillow, also commerce, sure money - extra income for the free owners of guns and taiga birds. Gutted and plucked partridges were boiled in three-liter cans, hung from fires. I have never found any remains of these mysterious birds. Hungry free stomachs crushed, ground, and sucked up all the bird bones without a trace. This was also one of the wonders of the taiga.
I have never tasted a single piece of these partridges. Mine - there were berries, grass roots, rations. And I didn’t die. I began to look more and more indifferently, without malice, at the cold red sun, at the mountains, the loaches, where everything: rocks, turns of the stream, larch, poplars - was angular and unfriendly. In the evenings, a cold fog rose from the river - and there was not an hour in the taiga day when I felt warm.
Frostbitten fingers and toes ached and buzzed with pain. The bright pink skin of the fingers remained pink, easily vulnerable. The fingers were always wrapped in some kind of dirty rags, protecting the hand from a new wound, from pain, but not from infection. From thumbs pus was oozing out on both legs, and there was no end to the pus.
They woke me up with a blow to the rail. They were fired from work by hitting the rail. After eating, I immediately lay down on the bunk, without undressing, of course, and fell asleep. The tent in which I slept and lived seemed to me as if through a fog - people were moving somewhere, loud swearing arose, fights broke out, there was instant silence before a dangerous blow. The fights quickly died out - on their own, no one held back, did not separate, the engines of the fight simply stalled - and the cold silence of the night set in with a pale high sky through the holes in the canvas ceiling, with snoring, wheezing, moaning, coughing and unconscious cursing of the sleeping people.
One night I felt that I heard these moans and wheezes. The feeling was sudden, like an epiphany, and did not make me happy. Later, remembering this moment of surprise, I realized that the need for sleep, oblivion, unconsciousness became less - I got enough sleep, as Moisey Moiseevich Kuznetsov, our blacksmith, said, the smartest of smartest people.
There was persistent pain in the muscles. I don’t know what kind of muscles I had then, but there was pain in them, it made me angry, it didn’t allow me to distract myself from my body. Then something appeared in me other than anger or malice, which exists along with anger. Indifference appeared - fearlessness. I realized that I didn’t care whether they beat me or not, whether they gave me lunch and rations or not. And although in reconnaissance, on an unescorted business trip, I was not beaten - they only beat me in the mines - when I remembered the mine, I measured my courage by the measure of the mine. This indifference, this fearlessness, built some kind of bridge from death. The consciousness that they would not beat here, did not beat and would not beat, gave birth to new strength, new feelings.
For indifference came fear - not very much strong fear- fear of losing this saving life, this saving work of the boiler, the high cold sky and the aching pain in worn-out muscles. I realized that I was afraid to leave here for the mine. I'm afraid, that's all. I have never sought the best from the good throughout my life. The meat on my bones grew day by day. Envy was the name of the next feeling that returned to me. I envied my dead comrades - the people who died in '38. I also envied the living neighbors who chew something, the neighbors who light something. I didn’t envy the boss, the foreman, the foreman - it was a different world.
Love didn't come back to me. Oh, how far love is from envy, from fear, from anger. How little love people need. Love comes when all human feelings have already returned. Love comes last, returns last, and does it return? But it was not only indifference, envy and fear that witnessed my return to life. Pity for animals returned earlier than pity for people.
As the weakest in this world of pits and exploratory ditches, I worked with a topographer - I carried a staff and theodolite behind the topographer. It happened that in order to speed up the movement, the topographer would fit the theodolite straps behind his back, and I would only get the lightest rod, painted with numbers. The topographer was one of the prisoners. For courage - that summer there were many fugitives in the taiga - the topographer carried a small-caliber rifle, begging the weapon from his superiors. But the rifle only got in our way. And not only because she was an extra thing on our difficult journey. We sat down to rest in a clearing, and the topographer, playing with a small-caliber rifle, took aim at a red-breasted bullfinch, which flew up to take a closer look at the danger and lead it to the side. If necessary, sacrifice your life. The female bullfinch was sitting somewhere on her eggs - this was the only explanation for the bird’s insane courage. The topographer raised his rifle, and I moved the barrel to the side.
Put the gun away!
- What are you talking about? Crazy?
- Leave the bird, that's all.
- I'll report to the boss.
- To hell with you and your boss.
But the topographer did not want to quarrel and did not say anything to the boss. I realized that something important had returned to me.
I have not seen newspapers or books for many years and have long taught myself not to regret this loss. All fifty of my neighbors in the tent, in the torn tarpaulin tent, felt the same way - not a single newspaper, not a single book appeared in our barracks. The highest authorities - the foreman, the head of intelligence, the foreman - descended into our world without books.
My language, the rough language of a mine, was poor, just as poor were the feelings still living near the bones. Getting up, divorce for work, lunch, end of work, lights out, citizen boss, allow me to address you, shovel, pit, I obey, drill, pick, it’s cold outside, rain, cold soup, hot soup, bread, rations, leave me to smoke - two dozen It’s not the first year I’ve made do with words. Half of these words were curse words. In my youth, in childhood, there was an anecdote about how a Russian used just one word in different intonation combinations in a story about traveling abroad. The richness of Russian swearing, its inexhaustible offensiveness, was revealed to me not in childhood or youth. An anecdote with a curse word here looked like the language of some college girl. But I didn't look for other words. I was happy that I didn't have to look for any other words. Whether these other words existed, I did not know. I couldn't answer this question.
I was frightened, stunned, when in my brain, right here - I remember it clearly - under the right parietal bone - a word was born that was completely unsuitable for the taiga, a word that I myself did not understand, not only my comrades. I shouted this word, standing on the bunk, turning to the sky, to infinity:
- Sentence! Maxim!
And he started laughing.
Maxim! - I yelled straight into the northern sky, into the double dawn, I yelled, not yet understanding the meaning of this word that was born in me. And if this word has returned, been found again, so much the better, so much the better! Great joy filled my entire being.
- Sentence!
- What a psycho!
- There is a psycho! Are you a foreigner or what? - the mining engineer Vronsky, the same Vronsky, asked sarcastically. "Three tobaccos."
- Vronsky, let me light a cigarette.
- No, I do not have.
- Well, at least three tobaccos.
- Three pieces of tobacco? Please.
From a pouch full of shag, three pieces of tobacco were extracted with a dirty fingernail.
- Foreigner? - The question transferred our fate into the world of provocations and denunciations, consequences and extensions of time.
But I didn’t care about Vronsky’s provocative question. The find was too huge.
- Sentence!
- There is a psycho.
The feeling of anger is the last feeling with which a person goes into oblivion, into a dead world. Is he dead? Even the stone did not seem dead to me, not to mention the grass, trees, and river. The river was not only the embodiment of life, not only a symbol of life, but life itself. Its eternal movement, incessant rumble, its own conversation, its own business, which makes the water run downstream through the headwind, breaking through rocks, crossing steppes and meadows. The river, which changed the sun-dried, naked bed and made its way as a barely visible thread of water somewhere in the stones, obeying its eternal duty, was a stream that had lost hope for the help of the sky - for the saving rain. The first thunderstorm, the first downpour - and the water changed banks, broke rocks, threw trees up and madly rushed down the same eternal path...
Maxim! I didn’t believe myself, I was afraid, falling asleep, that this word that had returned to me would disappear overnight. But the word did not disappear.
Maxim. Let them rename the river on which our village stood, our business trip “Rio-Rita”. How is this better than "Sententia"? The bad taste of the owner of the earth, the cartographer, introduced Rio Rita onto world maps. And it can't be fixed.
Sentence - there was something Roman, solid, Latin in this word. Ancient Rome was history for my childhood political struggle, struggles of people, and Ancient Greece was a kingdom of art. Although in Ancient Greece there were politicians and murderers, and in Ancient Rome there were a lot of artists. But my childhood sharpened, simplified, narrowed and separated these two very different worlds. Sentence is a Roman word. For a week I didn’t understand what the word “maximum” meant. I whispered this word, shouted it, scared and made my neighbors laugh with this word. I demanded from the world, from the sky, a solution, an explanation, a translation. And a week later I understood - and shuddered with fear and joy. Fear - because I was afraid of returning to that world where I had no return. Joy - because I saw that life was returning to me against my own will.
Many days passed until I learned to summon more and more new words from the depths of my brain, one after another. Each came with difficulty, each arose suddenly and separately. Thoughts and words did not return in a stream. Each returned alone, without the escort of other familiar words, and appeared first in the tongue, and then in the brain.
And then the day came when everyone, all fifty workers, quit their jobs and ran to the village, to the river, getting out of their pits, ditches, throwing half-cut trees, half-cooked soup in the cauldron. Everyone ran faster than me, but I also hobbled on time, helping myself in this run down the mountain with my hands.
The boss arrived from Magadan. The day was clear, hot and dry. On a huge larch stump at the entrance to the tent, there was a gramophone. The gramophone played, overcoming the hiss of the needle, playing some kind of symphonic music.
And everyone stood around - murderers and horse thieves, thieves and fraers, foremen and hard workers. And the boss stood nearby. And the expression on his face was as if he himself had written this music for us, for our remote taiga business trip. The shellac record was spinning and hissing, the stump itself was spinning, wound up in all its three hundred circles, like a tight spring twisted for three hundred years...
Shalamov V.T. Collected works in four volumes. T.1. - M.: Fiction, Vagrius, 1998. - P. 357 - 364
Preview:
Abstract open lesson in literature in 11th grade
Subject
Problematics and poetics of the works of Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov
Goal: 1) Acquaintance with the personality and work of V.T. Shalamov using the example of his poems and the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev”
2) Development of skills in analytical reading of the works of a poet, writer
3) Arouse in students the desire to independently contact
Works by V.T. Shalamova
Methodical techniques: individual message from the student, conversation, work on the texts of poems by V.T. Shalamov, analysis of poems and work on the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev”
Lesson type – formation and improvement of knowledge
Form (type) – research with elements of mutual learning
Equipment: interactive whiteboard, presentation “V. Shalamov", documentary“Islands. Shalamov", songs based on poems by V.T. Shalamova: “I forgot the weather of childhood...”, “So I walk...”, “I’ll break the ring of bushes...”, “Hold on, my white swan...”. Texts of the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev”, texts of poems for students.
During the classes
An excerpt from the story “The Resurrection of the Larch” performed by the teacher is heard. All those present are given envelopes with the inscription “Personally and confidentially”, in the envelopes there are poems by V.T. Shalamov and larch branches.
On interactive whiteboard slide with the image of V.T. Shalamov and the topic voiced by the teacher: “Problematics and poetics of the works of V.T. Shalamov." Let's think about the words problematic and poetics.
Please give a lexical interpretation of the word problematic.
Sample answer: Complex issue, problem requiring solution, research
Poetics: 1. Theory of literature, the doctrine of poetic creativity
- Poetic manner characteristic of a given poet, movement, era.
Try, guys, to formulate the goals of today's lesson.
The epigraph for the lesson is taken from the words of V.T. Shalamova:
I don't live by bread alone
And in the morning in the cold,
A piece of dry sky
I soak it in the river.
This is the poetic credo of a man, the poet Shalamov.
On the tables in front of you are poems by V.T. Shalamov. Choose your favorites, read them and try to comment on them.
We give the floor to literary critic Svetlana Trofimova. A pre-prepared student talks about the life and fate of V.T. Shalamov.
Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov was born in Vologda into the family of priest Tikhon Nikolaevich Shalamov. He received his secondary education at the Vologda gymnasium. Left at 17 hometown and went to Moscow. In the capital, the young man first got a job as a tanner at a tannery, and in 1926 he entered the Moscow State University at the Faculty of Soviet Law. The independently thinking young man, like all people with such a character, had a hard time. Quite rightly fearing the Stalinist regime and what it might entail, Varlam Shalamov began distributing the “Letter to the Congress” by V.I. Lenin. For this, the young man was arrested and sentenced to 3 years in prison.
Ivan Filippov reads the poem “I Forgot the Weather of My Childhood.” Then he comments on what he read according to the diagram:
2.The idea of the poem?
Let's listen to how this poem sounds in musical settings. (the song “I forgot the weather of childhood…” plays)
Having fully served his prison term, the aspiring writer returned to Moscow, where he continued literary activity: worked in small trade union magazines. In 1936, one of his first stories, “The Three Deaths of Doctor Austino,” was published in the magazine “October.”
The writer's love of freedom, read between the lines of his works, haunted the authorities, and in January 1937 he was arrested again. Now Shalamov has been sentenced to 5 years in the camps. Freed, he began writing again. But his stay at liberty did not last long: after all, he attracted the closest attention of the relevant authorities. And after in 1943 the writer called I.A. Bunin, a Russian classic, was sentenced to another 10 years.
Volodin Yuri reads the poem “I will break the ring of bushes...” Then he comments on what he read according to the diagram:
1.What is the theme of the poem?
2.The idea of the poem?
Let's listen to how this poem sounds in musical settings. (the song “I’ll break the ring of bushes…” plays and the presentation is shown)
In total, Varlam Tikhonovich Shalamov spent 17 years in the camps, and most of this time in Kolyma, in the harshest conditions of the North. The prisoners, exhausted and suffering from illness, worked in the gold mines even in 40-degree frost.
Which poem fits the meaning?
Alena Israfilova reads the poem “White Sky. White snow...” Then he comments on what he read according to the diagram:
1.What is the theme of the poem?
2.The idea of the poem?
In 1951, Varlam Shalamov was released, but was not allowed to leave Kolyma immediately: he had to work as a paramedic for another 3 years. Finally, he settled in the Kalinin region, and after rehabilitation in 1956 he moved to Moscow. Immediately upon returning from prison, the series “Kolyma Stories” was born, which the writer himself called “ artistic research terrible reality." Work on them continued from 1954 to 1973. The works created during this period were divided by the author into 6 books: “Kolyma Tales”, “Left Bank”, “Shovel Artist”, “Sketches of the Underworld”, “Resurrection of Larch” and “The Glove, or KR-2”.
Shalamov's prose is based on scary experience camps: numerous deaths, the pangs of hunger and cold, endless humiliation. Unlike A.I. Solzhenitsyn, who argued that such an experience can be positive, ennobling, Varlam Tikhonovich is convinced of the opposite: he argues that the camp turns a person into an animal, into a downtrodden, despicable creature. In the story “Dry Rations,” a prisoner who, due to illness, was transferred to more light work, cuts off his fingers - if only he would be returned to the mine. The writer is trying to show that moral and physical strength people are not limitless. In his opinion, one of the main characteristics of the camp is molestation. Dehumanization, says Shalamov, begins precisely with physical torment - this idea runs like a red thread through his stories.
Oksana Israfilova reads the poem “You will fall on the snow in a blizzard...” Then she comments on what she read according to the diagram:
1.What is the theme of the poem?
2.The idea of the poem?
The consequences of extreme conditions of a person turn him into a beast-like creature. The writer superbly shows how camp conditions influence different people: creatures with a low soul sink even more, but those who love freedom do not lose their presence of mind. In the story " Shock therapy“The central image is of a fanatical doctor, a former prisoner, who makes every effort and knowledge in medicine to expose the prisoner, who, in his opinion, is a malingerer. At the same time, he is absolutely indifferent to future fate unfortunate man, he is pleased to demonstrate his professional qualifications. A completely different character in spirit is depicted in the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev.” It is about a prisoner who gathers around him freedom-loving people and dies while trying to escape.
On your desks are the texts of the story “The Last Battle of Major Pugachev.” On the board there are slides with questions: the theme of the story? Story idea? The originality of the story?
Conversation on questions:
Why are Pugachev and his comrades preparing to escape?
(They don’t want to replace the living dead. These are a different type of people - fighters who were taught by war and captivity how to act in exceptional circumstances. They fight for freedom)
These people are capable of intervening in their destiny, but only in their own?
(They kill duty officers, soldiers, the authorities are punished for escaping)
All Pugachevites die. What kind of freedom are we talking about?
(They made their choice, before death they sleep in a free soldier's sleep. Pugachev promised them freedom, they received freedom)
What is the meaning of struggle, resistance?
(They fought for freedom and died free. Hope settled in the souls of the fugitives, and they gained freedom before death)
Another theme of V.T. Shalamov’s idea is to make the camp similar to the rest of the world. “Camp” ideas only repeat the ideas of will transmitted by order of the authorities... The camp reflects not only the struggle of political cliques succeeding each other in power, but the culture of these people, their secret aspirations, tastes, habits, suppressed desires.”
Unfortunately, during his lifetime the writer was not destined to publish these works in his homeland. Even during Khrushchev's thaw, they were too bold to be published. But since 1966, Shalamov’s stories began to be published in emigrant publications.
Alina Emelyanova reads the poem “So I walk…” Then she comments on what she read according to the diagram:
1.What is the theme of the poem?
2.The idea of the poem?
The writer himself in May 1979 moved to a nursing home, from where in January 1982 he was sent to a boarding school for psychochronic patients - his final exile. But he failed to reach his destination: having caught a cold, the writer dies on the way.
“Kolyma Tales” first saw the light in our country only 5 years after the author’s death, in 1987.
Alexander Yakovlev reads the poem “Poems are destiny, not a craft.” Then he comments on what he read according to the diagram:
1.What is the theme of the poem?
2.The idea of the poem?
Of course, it is impossible to put an end to today’s conversation. After all, many questions and problems were posed by the author Shalamov in his works.
But I hope no one will leave indifferent after today’s lesson. Please listen to another song based on poems by V.T. Shalamov “Hold on, my white swan...” (the teacher performs a song to the accompaniment of a guitar).
Summing up the lesson.
