Grotesque form. Literary lounge "grotesque in works of Russian literature"

Those who are interested in art will be very interested to learn about such a genre as “grotesque”. This style is quite widespread in architecture, literature, and even music. Let's take a closer look at what the grotesque is.

Grotesque concept

The term "grotesque" is taken from painting. This was the name of the wall paintings found in the “grottoes” - the basements of Titus, during archaeological excavations. These excavations were carried out in Rome (XV-XVI centuries) on the site where the baths of Emperor Titus once were. In rooms covered with earth, known Italian artist Raphael and his students found an unusual painting, which was later called “grotesque” (from Italian word grotta - “grotto”, “dungeon”). Subsequently, the term “grotesque” was extended to other types of art - music, literature. The very definition of “grotesque” sounds like a type of imagery that is based on a bizarre, contrasting combination of fantasy and reality, comic and tragic, beautiful and ugly. In art, the sphere of the grotesque includes multi-valued images that are created by the artist’s imagination; in them, life receives a rather contradictory refraction. Grotesque images do not allow their literal interpretation, retaining the features of mystery. There are other meanings of the term “grotesque”:

1. Grotesque is a type of artistic imagery; an ornament where figurative and decorative motifs (animals, plants, human forms, masks).
2. Serif font (grotesque, sans serif, gothic type) is a sans-serif font.

Let's get back to history. Thus, Raphael used the “grotesque” style as a model for decorating Vatican lodges, and his students used it to paint ceilings and walls of palaces. The famous Italian Renaissance master, Benvenuto Cellini, engraved grotesques on sword blades.

Grotesque in the mythology of the primitive and ancient world quite difficult to understand. If we speak from the point of view of modern aesthetics, then numerous grotesque elements are obvious here. For example, works - an Egyptian fairy tale about a doomed prince, ancient motifs of harpies, sirens. But we can also say with confidence that the impression of the grotesque was not only not the task of the author of such works, but also their grotesqueness was perceived to a lesser extent by the listener.

What is grotesque in literature

In literature, the grotesque is a comic device that combines the terrible and the funny, the sublime and the ugly, that is, it combines the incongruous. The comic grotesque differs from irony and humor in that in it the amusing and funny are inseparable from the sinister and terrible, hyperbole and illogic. What is a hyperbole? Grotesque, as mentioned above, is an exaggerated, contrasting combination of reality and fantasy, and hyperbole is a stylistic figure of deliberate exaggeration (for example, “I told you this a million times” or “we have enough food for a year”). Usually, images of the grotesque carry a tragic meaning. In the grotesque, behind the expressed external improbability and fantasticality, there is hidden a deep artistic generalization of the most important phenomena of life. Examples of literary grotesque include: N. V. Gogol’s story “The Nose”, “Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober” by E. T. A. Hoffman.

Grotesque in music

Now, a little about music: meter and rhythm. In the grotesque they must be present and felt, otherwise nothing will work. Here are some examples musical groups performing songs in this direction:

• Fifth studio album The Golden Age of Grotesque famous singer Marilyn Manson. In his work, the grotesque occupies an important place.
• Band Comatose Vigil (song - Suicide Grotesque).
• Fictional death metal band Detroit Metal City (song Grotesque).

What is grotesque: architecture

Often, grotesques are confused with gargoyles, but stone carvings in the grotesque style were not intended to drain water. This type of sculpture is also called a chimera. The term “gargoyle” referred to creepy carved figures that were specially created to drain rainwater from the walls of a building.

To summarize, I note that as an art direction, the grotesque is necessary. The grotesque fights everyday life and prohibitions. He makes ours inner world much richer and opens up new possibilities for creativity.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. Fiction successfully uses techniques and means that originated in the depths of other forms of art: music, painting, architecture.

What is grotesque and the history of this term

The grotesque is a means artistic expression, uniting in bizarre, striking images the simple and the complex, the high and the low, the comic and the tragic. The basis of the grotesque is contrast.

Several opposing principles give rise to curious forms and ideas, such as images talking dolls or little freaks, like Little Tsakhes in the fairy tales of E. T. Hoffmann.

There is nothing traditionally puppet-like about these characters. They do not touch, do not evoke a desire to take care of themselves, but on the contrary, they instill horror, disgust or bewilderment, only after a while giving way to warmer feelings.

The word "grotesque" comes from the French "grotesque" (" bizarre, funny"). According to etymological dictionary M. Vasmer, it is based on the Italian “grotta” (“cave”).

In the 15th century, there was a definition of “grotto,” which referred to painting and architecture with bizarre elements of animal and plant patterns. Similar decorative fragments have been discovered in Roman catacombs. It is believed that in terms of the time of their creation they date back to the reign of Emperor Nero.

The amazing painting of underground caves gave rise to a fashion for combining strange characters and figures in the decoration of homes, furniture, dishes, and jewelry. A dragon holding a vine in its teeth, a griffin with an apple in its paw, a two-headed lion entwined with ivy - these are typical images of grotesque art.

Grotesque in literature- this is a comic technique necessary to emphasize the absurdity of what is happening, to draw the reader’s attention to something important hidden behind a phenomenon that is funny at first glance.

Unlike, which is also prone to exaggeration, the grotesque takes the situation to the extreme, making the plot absurd. In this absurdity lies the key to understanding the image.

Literature differs from other forms of art in that its content cannot be seen or touched, but can be imagined. Therefore, grotesque scenes in literary works always “work” to awaken the imagination reader.

Examples of the grotesque in literature

Analyzing experiments from the time of Aristophanes to the present day, we can conclude that the grotesque is a social evil reflected in literature, contained into a shell of laughter.

In the comedy “Frogs,” written by the great Greek playwright, serious things are ridiculed: the fate of the soul after death, politics, poetry, social mores. The characters find themselves in the kingdom of the dead, where they observe a dispute between the great Athenian tragedians: Sophocles and the recently deceased Euripides.

Poets scold each other, criticizing the old and new way composition of poetry, and at the same time the vices of his contemporaries. Instead of the classical ancient choir, which usually accompanied the heroes' remarks, Aristophanes has a chorus of frogs, whose croaking sounds like laughter.

A striking example of the grotesque - N. V. Gogol's story “The Nose”. The olfactory organ separates from its owner and begins independent life: goes to service, to the cathedral, walks along Nevsky Prospekt.

The most interesting thing is that Nose is perceived by those around him as a completely serious gentleman, but Major Kovalev, whom he abandoned, cannot leave the house. It turns out that what is important to society is not the person, but his attributes: rank, status, appearance. Grotesque image of a running nose

Satirical works are built on the grotesque fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. For example, a hero work of the same name The idealist crucian personifies a philosophizing intellectual, divorced from real life. The crucian carp preaches universal love and equality, while predatory fish continue to swallow small fish.

Thinking of dissuading the pike from eating its own kind, the idealist dies. His attempt to go against the laws of nature is comical, but behind it lies a deep sadness from the realization of this truth.

However, not all researchers consider the grotesque to be an exclusively comic device. In works M. A. Bulgakova such powerful and fantastic images collide that it would hardly occur to anyone to laugh at them.

« Fatal eggs " And " dog's heart "are dedicated to human experiments on nature. Are we allowed to interfere in everything? What could be the consequences? scientific experiments? These questions are increasingly relevant in the era of cloning and creonics. Bulgakov's grotesques frighten and warn, reminiscent of Goya's engravings with their ominous authenticity.

Grotesque in foreign literature

In addition to the already mentioned Aristophanes and Hoffmann, among foreign writers The technique of collision of high and low was used by F. Rabelais, S. Brandt, J. Swift. In the twentieth century, a German-language writer became an unsurpassed master of the grotesque F. Kafka.

The hero of the story " Transformation Gregor Samsa wakes up to find that he has become a huge insect. Having tried to roll over to the other side, he realizes that he cannot do this anymore.

A loving son and brother, Gregor earned money for the whole family, and now he turns out to be unnecessary. Relatives treat the giant centipede with disgust. They do not go into Gregor's room, only his sister occasionally brings him food.

Gradually disgusted with strange creature increases. No one knows how much “it” suffers, hearing mother and father discuss the problems that have arisen in the evenings. One evening, the sister invites the new residents to play the piano. Attracted by the sounds of music from the living room, the hero crawls out of his hiding place. Funny company shocked, a scandal ensues.

Tormented by hunger, wounds and loneliness, Gregor slowly dies. The family is relieved to throw the dried insect body out of the room. Parents notice that, despite all the hardships, the sister is getting prettier.

Kafka's phantasmagoric fiction continues Gogol's idea of ​​how little a person means when he loses his social functions how little love remains even in the closest people.

A conversation about the grotesque leads into the treasured depths of artistic imagery. This technique is only successful for those artists whose creations are the result of many years of thought. That's why the grotesque is literary work invariably amazes and remains in the memory for a lifetime.

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It's grotesque a type of conventional fantastic imagery that demonstratively violates the principles of verisimilitude, in which figurative plans and images that are incompatible in reality are combined in a bizarre and illogical manner artistic details. The ornaments were called grotesque, discovered at the end of the 15th century. Raphael during the excavations of the ancient Roman baths of Titus. Distinctive feature These images are a free combination of pictorial elements: human forms turned into animals and plants, human figures grew from flower cups, plant shoots intertwined with chimeras and bizarre buildings. These ornaments are mentioned in his book by B. Cellini (“The Life of Benvenuto Cellini,” 1558-65); I. V. Goethe writes about their features, calling them arabesques. The transfer of the term to the field of literature and the real flowering of this type of imagery occurs in the era of romanticism. F. Schlegel in his “Letter on the Novel” (1800) considers the grotesque as an expression of the spirit of the time, its only, along with “personal confessions,” romantic creation. To the grotesque, as to characteristic feature romantic literature, in contrast to the “dead form” - classical literature, is indicated in the “Preface to the drama “Cromwell” (1827) by V. Hugh, which became the manifesto of French romanticism. The problem of the grotesque was addressed by Charles Baudelaire in his article “On the nature of laughter and the comic in plastic arts", contrasting laughter as "merely comic" with grotesquery as "absolutely comic." The term grotesque became especially popular in the 20th century, initially in connection with innovative phenomena in theater arts(V.E. Meyerhold), subsequently in connection with the dissemination of ideas expressed in M.M. Bakhtin’s book about F. Rabelais (1965).

Grotesque could arise in those genres of literature where the implausibility of fiction was obvious to both the author and the reader (listener). These are the comic genres of antiquity (the comedies of Aristophanes, “The Golden Ass” (2nd century), Apuleius, humorous and satirical works of the Renaissance, fables of folklore can be classified as grotesque works. Since the 18th century, the grotesque has been built mainly on violation adopted system reproduction of reality, with which fiction comes into a kind of conflict (grotesque stories by N.V. Gogol, F.M. Dostoevsky, “The History of a City,” 1869-70, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin). Grotesque can be humorous when, with the help of fiction, the discrepancy between what is present and what should be is emphasized, or when qualities that evoke an ironic attitude are literally embodied in the fantastic forms of the appearance and behavior of characters. However, it is in satire, mainly aimed at ridiculing social vices, where fantastic images appear in the most generalized form, that some of the meaningful possibilities of the grotesque, in particular, its allegorical nature, are more fully revealed. Grotesque can also be tragic - in works with tragic situations, when fate and spiritual confusion of the individual are placed at the center. This may be an image of the suppression of personality by instincts biological existence(“Metamorphosis”, 1916, F. Kafka), the motif of a collision with a doll mistaken for a person (“The Sandman”).

The word grotesque comes from French grotesque, Italian grottesco, which means fancy from grotta - grotto.

Grotesque (from Italian grottesco - whimsical from grotta - grotto) is a unique style in literature that emphasizes the distortion or confusion of the norms of reality and the compatibility of contrasts - comic and tragic, fantastic and real, etc. Whole literary trends they denied the grotesque, arguing that there is no fidelity to “nature” in exaggeration and distortion.

Why does the reader need to know that the baby Gargantua, who crawled out of the ear of Gargamel, who ate sixteen large barrels, two small ones and six pots of offal, shouts, as if inviting everyone to drink: “Drink, drink, drink.” And how can one believe that 17,913 cows were allocated to feed the baby, and 1,105 cubits of white woolen material were taken for his pants? And, of course, the prudent reader will not find a single gram of truth in the story about how, having decided to repay the Parisians for a bad reception, “...Gargantua unfastened his beautiful codpiece and poured it on them so abundantly that he drowned 260,418 people, not counting women and children."

The grotesque world is a world of exaggerations taken to extremes, often fantastic. In it, parts of the human body grow threateningly, the scale of phenomena, the size of things and objects change. In this case, phenomena and objects go beyond their qualitative boundaries and cease to be themselves.

The type of grotesque imagery is also inherent in mythology and archaic art. The term itself appeared much later. During excavations in one of the photos Ancient Rome ornaments were found that represented strange, bizarre interweaving of plants, animals, and human faces.

The mixture of human and animal forms is oldest species grotesque. In the language, the word grotesque has been fixed in the meaning of strange, unnatural, bizarre, illogical, and this is a reflection of the most important aspect of the aesthetic phenomenon characteristic of all types of art.

The grotesque in literature can be not only a device, an element of style that colors a work in illogical tones, but also a method of typification. The pinnacles of his Renaissance art were “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by Rabelais and “In Praise of Folly” by Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Aesthetically, the grotesque in literature is a reaction to the “principle of verisimilitude,” to the art of pedantic fidelity to “nature.” Romanticism became such a reaction to the art of classicism. At this time, awareness of the aesthetic essence of the grotesque comes.

After the appearance of the “Preface to Cromwell” (1827) by B. Hugo, the popularity of this term increased. Grotesque is often outwardly unpretentious. Pushkin called Gogol’s “Nose” a “joke” in which “there is so much unexpected, fantastic, funny, original.” Rabelais, in the introduction to the novel, appeals to readers, “good students and other idlers” with a request not to judge by external gaiety, without thinking properly, not to start laughing.

The grotesque image strives for extreme generalization, identifying the quintessence of time, history, phenomenon, human existence. In this, the grotesque image is akin to a symbol. The grotesque “Shagreen Skin” was placed by Balzac above the “bottom layer” of his works - “Scenes of Manners”. Gogol’s “Overcoat” is not only and not so much a defense “ little man”, so much the quintessence of the insignificance of his existence. According to Saltykov-Shchedrin, “The History of a City” arose to absorb the very essence of “those characteristic features of Russian life that make it not entirely comfortable.”

The grotesque in literature is an artistic unity of contrasts: the top and bottom of the human body (in Rabelais), fairy-tale and real (in Hoffmann), fantasy and everyday life (in Gogol). “The grotesque image,” wrote M. Bakhtin, “characterizes a phenomenon in a state of change, an incomplete metamorphosis, in the stage of death and birth, growth and formation.” The scientist showed ambivalence grotesque image folk culture the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, in which he simultaneously ridicules and affirms, in contrast to the denying satire of modern times.

In the grotesque of the Renaissance, the contrast of the top and bottom of the human body, their mutual substitution, was of paramount importance. In the realistic grotesque, the contrast is social. In Dostoevsky's story "Bobok" the social top and bottom come together. “The lady” Avdotya Ignatievna is irritated by the close proximity of the shopkeeper. What is comical in the story is the memory of the grave “society” about the past real, “pre-grave” hierarchy. The grotesque contrast penetrates into the very fabric of the work, expressed in sharp interruptions between the author’s speech and the speech of the characters.

Realistic art brings a previously unprecedented “psychologization of the grotesque” (J. Mann). In the realistic grotesque, not only phenomena are split outside world, but also human consciousness itself, the theme of duality arises in literature, begun by Gogol’s “The Nose” (after all, the state councilor Nose is the double of the stupid, vulgar Major Kovalev). The theme is developed by Dostoevsky in the story “The Double” and in the scene of Ivan Karamazov’s “meeting” with the devil.

In a grotesque work, the writer in a variety of ways “convinces” the reader of the possibility of coexistence of the most incredible, fantastic with the real, familiar. The fantastic in it is the most acute reality. Hence the emphasized plastic authenticity in the description of the nose and the interweaving of the incredible with scenes of everyday vulgarity in Gogol’s story. In the story “Bobok”, His Excellency the late Major General Pervoedov plays preference with the late court councilor Lebezyatnikov. The fantastic fragments and enlarges reality, changes proportions. Science fiction is not an end in itself for the author. It is often “removed” by the writer: in Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” - with a precise, comically pedantic description of the place and time of action, scrupulously citing names and dates, in Dostoevsky’s “Double” - by denying the illusory, fantastic nature of what is happening, which each time accompanies the appearance of a double - Golyadkin -Jr. The fantastic is exposed by the writer as an artistic device, which in due time can be abandoned as no longer necessary. Often the realistic grotesque, examples of which we have given, is based entirely on the play of different image planes. Sometimes a grotesque work is a parody, such as “The History of a City” by Saltykov-Shchedrin.

The grotesque can be based not only on extreme magnification - hyperbole, but also on metaphor. The nature of the grotesque scenes in T. Shevchenko’s poem “The Dream” is metaphorical, during which, from the cry of the king, strictly maintaining the hierarchy - from the most “pot-bellied” to the “small”, his henchmen fall into the ground. The satirical grotesque of T. Shevchenko's political poetry, going back to folklore traditions, the traditions of Gogol, Mitskevich, was an innovative phenomenon; it preceded the satirical grotesque of Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Art developed the traditions of romantic and realistic grotesque. Thus, under the influence of the traditions of Hoffman, Gogol, and Dostoevsky, the grotesque style of F. Kafka was born. Kafka is characterized by a combination in his work of fabulous, fantastic, nightmarish events with a plausible depiction of the details of everyday life and the “normal” behavior of people in unusual situations. The hero of Kafka's story "The Metamorphosis", a traveling salesman, wakes up and sees himself transformed into an insect.

Grotesque forms were used by A. France in satirical novels"Penguin Island" “Rise of the Angels”, K. Chapek, T. Mann, I. Ehrenburg (“Julio Jurenito”), M. Bulgakov in satirical stories(collection "Diaboliad"), the play Running, the novel "The Master and Margarita".

In poetry and drama, the grotesque is less common than in prose. Among the dramatic grotesques one can name plays by D. Pirandello, B. Brecht, E. Ionesco, fairy tale plays by E. Schwartz.

Signs of the grotesque have " scary picture" in V. Mayakovsky's poem "The Seated": "Half the people are sitting at the meeting." The poetics of the grotesque is characteristic of many of the poems of “City Columns” by N. Zabolotsky.

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In conversation the word grotesque usually means "strange", "fantastic", "eccentric" or "ugly", and is thus often used to describe strange or distorted forms, such as masks at a carnival or gargoyles at cathedrals.

Also, the concept of grotesque can refer to a specific type of ornament that combines figurative and decorative motifs. Such combinations, as a rule, have a bizarre or fantastic character.

Etymology

Word grotesque came into Russian from French. Primary meaning of French grotesque- literally grotto, pertaining to the grotto or grottoed, from grott - grotto(i.e. small cave or depression), goes back to Latin crypto - hidden, underground, dungeon. The expression appeared in the 15th century after, as a result of archaeological research, ancient Roman decorations, wall paintings with fancy patterns, which used motifs from plant and animal life (which is why distorted images were originally called grotesque). These rooms were the rooms and corridors of Nero's Golden House, an unfinished palace complex founded by Nero after a great fire in 64 AD. e.

In literature

Grotesque in literature is one of the varieties comic device, which combines the terrible and the funny, the ugly and the sublime in a fantastic form, and also brings together the distant, combines the incongruous, interweaves the unreal with the real, the present with the future, reveals the contradictions of reality. As a form of the comic, the grotesque differs from humor and irony in that in it the funny and amusing are inseparable from the terrible and sinister; As a rule, images of the grotesque carry a tragic meaning. In the grotesque, behind the external improbability and fantasticness, lies a deep artistic generalization of important phenomena of life.

How artistic image The grotesque is distinguished by its two-dimensionality and contrast. Grotesque is always a deviation from the norm, a convention, an exaggeration, an intentional caricature, therefore it is widely used for satirical purposes. In Soviet literature there was an opinion that grotesque and satire are almost identical concepts: grotesque is “form satirical image“There is no satire without the grotesque.” However, G. Abromovich, A. Bushmin, B. Dzemidok, D. Nikolaev and V. Frolov refute this point of view.

Examples of literary grotesque are N.V. Gogol’s story “The Nose” or “Little Tsakhes, nicknamed Zinnober” by E. T. A. Hoffman.

see also

• Rigoletto, Giuseppe Verdi, opera in three acts.

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Notes

Literature

• Sheinberg Esti.. - UK: Ashgate. - P. 378. - ISBN ISBN 0-7546-0226-5.
• Kayser, Wolfgang (1957) The grotesque in Art and Literature, New York, Columbia University Press
• Lee Byron Jennings (1963) The ludicrous demon: aspects of the grotesque in German post-Romantic prose, Berkeley, University of California Press
• Bakhtin Mikhail. Rabelais and his world. - Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1941.
• by Philip Thomson, The Grotesque, Methuen Critical Idiom Series, 1972.
• Dacos, N. La découverte de la Domus Aurea et la formation des grotesques à la Renaissance(London) 1969.
• Kort Pamela.. - PRESTEL. - P. 208. - ISBN ISBN 9783791331959.
• FS Connelly "Modern art and the grotesque" 2003 assets.cambridge.org
• (inaccessible link from 05/26/2013 (2101 days) - story , copy)

Links

An excerpt characterizing Grotesque

The screams and fires in the enemy army occurred because while Napoleon's order was being read among the troops, the emperor himself was riding around his bivouacs on horseback. The soldiers, seeing the emperor, lit bunches of straw and, shouting: vive l "empereur! ran after him. Napoleon's order was as follows:
“Soldiers! The Russian army comes out against you to avenge the Austrian, Ulm army. These are the same battalions that you defeated at Gollabrunn and which you have since constantly pursued to this place. The positions we occupy are powerful, and while they move to flank me on the right, they will expose my flank! Soldiers! I myself will lead your battalions. I will stay far from the fire if you, with your usual courage, bring disorder and confusion into the enemy’s ranks; but if victory is doubtful for even one minute, you will see your emperor exposed to the first blows of the enemy, because there can be no doubt about victory, especially on the day on which we're talking about about the honor of the French infantry, which is so necessary for the honor of its nation.
Under the pretext of removing the wounded, do not upset the ranks! Let everyone be fully imbued with the thought that it is necessary to defeat these mercenaries of England, inspired by such hatred against our nation. This victory will end our campaign, and we can return to winter quarters, where new French troops that are forming in France will find us; and then the peace that I will make will be worthy of my people, you and me.
Napoleon."

At 5 o'clock in the morning it was still completely dark. The troops of the center, reserves and Bagration’s right flank still stood motionless; but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry and artillery, which were supposed to be the first to descend from the heights in order to attack the French right flank and throw it back, according to disposition, into the Bohemian Mountains, had already begun to stir and began to rise from their overnight positions. The smoke from the fires into which they threw everything unnecessary ate my eyes. It was cold and dark. The officers hurriedly drank tea and had breakfast, the soldiers chewed crackers, beat a shot with their feet, warming up, and flocked against the fires, throwing into the firewood the remains of booths, chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, everything unnecessary that could not be taken with them. Austrian column leaders scurried between the Russian troops and served as harbingers of the attack. As soon as an Austrian officer appeared near the regimental commander’s camp, the regiment began to move: the soldiers ran from the fires, hid tubes in their boots, bags in the carts, dismantled their guns and lined up. The officers buttoned up, put on their swords and knapsacks and walked around the ranks, shouting; The wagon trains and orderlies harnessed, packed and tied up the carts. Adjutants, battalion and regimental commanders sat on horseback, crossed themselves, gave the last orders, instructions and instructions to the remaining convoys, and the monotonous tramp of a thousand feet sounded. The columns moved, not knowing where and not seeing from the people around them, from the smoke and from the increasing fog, either the area from which they were leaving or the one into which they were entering.
A soldier on the move is as surrounded, limited, and drawn by his regiment as a sailor by the ship on which he is located. No matter how far he goes, no matter what strange, unknown and dangerous latitudes he enters, around him - as for a sailor, there are always and everywhere the same decks, masts, ropes of his ship - always and everywhere the same comrades, the same rows, the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the same company dog ​​Zhuchka, the same superiors. A soldier rarely wants to know the latitudes in which his entire ship is located; but on the day of battle, God knows how and from where, in the moral world of the army, one stern note is heard for everyone, which sounds like the approach of something decisive and solemn and arouses them to an unusual curiosity. During the days of battle, soldiers excitedly try to get out of the interests of their regiment, listen, look closely and eagerly ask about what is happening around them.
The fog became so strong that, despite the fact that it was dawn, it was impossible to see ten steps in front of you. The bushes seemed like huge trees, the flat places looked like cliffs and slopes. Everywhere, from all sides, one could encounter an enemy invisible ten steps away. But the columns walked for a long time in the same fog, going down and up the mountains, passing gardens and fences, through new, incomprehensible terrain, never encountering the enemy. On the contrary, now in front, now behind, from all sides, the soldiers learned that our Russian columns were moving in the same direction. Every soldier felt good in his soul because he knew that in the same place where he was going, that is, unknown where, many, many more of ours were going.
“Look, the Kursk soldiers have passed,” they said in the ranks.
- Passion, my brother, that our troops have gathered! In the evening I looked at how the lights were laid out, there was no end in sight. Moscow - one word!
Although none of the column commanders approached the ranks or spoke to the soldiers (the column commanders, as we saw at the military council, were not in a good mood and dissatisfied with the undertaking and therefore only carried out orders and did not care about amusing the soldiers), despite However, the soldiers walked cheerfully, as always, going into action, especially offensively. But, after walking for about an hour in thick fog, most of the army had to stop, and an unpleasant consciousness of the ongoing disorder and confusion swept through the ranks. How this consciousness is transmitted is very difficult to determine; but what is certain is that it is transmitted unusually faithfully and spreads quickly, imperceptibly and uncontrollably, like water through a ravine. If the Russian army had been alone, without allies, then perhaps a lot of time would have passed before this consciousness of disorder would have become a general confidence; but now, with special pleasure and naturalness attributing the cause of the unrest to the stupid Germans, everyone was convinced that there was a harmful confusion caused by the sausage makers.