The short story genre is one of the most popular in literature. Many writers have turned to him and are turning to him. After reading this article, you will find out what are the features of the short story genre, examples of the most famous works, as well as popular mistakes that authors make.
The story is one of the small literary forms. It is a small narrative work with a small number of characters. In this case, short-term events are displayed.
Brief history of the short story genre
V. G. Belinsky (his portrait is presented above) as early as 1840 distinguished the essay and the story as small prose genres from the story and the novel as larger ones. Already at this time in Russian literature the predominance of prose over verse was fully indicated.
A little later, in the second half of the 19th century, the essay received the broadest development in the democratic literature of our country. At this time, there was an opinion that it was documentary that distinguished this genre. The story, as it was believed then, is created using creative imagination. According to another opinion, the genre we are interested in differs from the essay in the conflict of the plot. After all, the essay is characterized by the fact that it is basically a descriptive work.
Unity of time
In order to more fully characterize the genre of the story, it is necessary to highlight the patterns inherent in it. The first of these is the unity of time. In a story, the action time is always limited. However, not necessarily only one day, as in the works of the classicists. Although this rule is not always observed, it is rare to find stories in which the plot spans the entire life of the protagonist. Even rarer are works in this genre, the action of which lasts for centuries. Usually the author depicts some episode from the life of his hero. Among the stories in which the whole fate of a character is revealed, one can note "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (author - Leo Tolstoy) and It also happens that not all life is represented, but its long period. For example, Chekhov's "The Jumping Girl" depicts a number of significant events in the fate of the characters, their environment, and the difficult development of relationships between them. However, this is given extremely compacted, compressed. It is the conciseness of the content, greater than in the story, that is a common feature of the story and, perhaps, the only one.
Unity of action and place
There are other features of the short story genre that should be noted. The unity of time is closely connected and conditioned by another unity - action. A story is a genre of literature that should be limited to describing a single event. Sometimes one or two events become the main, meaning-forming, culminating events in it. Hence comes the unity of place. Usually the action takes place in one place. There may be not one, but several, but their number is strictly limited. For example, there may be 2-3 places, but 5 are already rare (they can only be mentioned).
character unity
Another feature of the story is the unity of the character. As a rule, one main character acts in the space of a work of this genre. Occasionally there may be two, and very rarely - several. As for the secondary characters, there can be quite a lot of them, but they are purely functional. The story is a genre of literature in which the task of minor characters is limited to creating a background. They can interfere or help the main character, but no more. In the story "Chelkash" by Gorky, for example, there are only two characters. And in Chekhov's "I want to sleep" there is only one at all, which is impossible either in the story or in the novel.
Unity of the center
Like the genres listed above, one way or another are reduced to the unity of the center. Indeed, a story cannot be imagined without some defining, central sign that "pulls together" all the others. It does not matter at all whether this center will be some static descriptive image, a climactic event, the development of the action itself, or a significant gesture of the character. The main image should be in any story. It is through him that the whole composition is kept. It sets the theme of the work, determines the meaning of the story told.
The basic principle of building a story
It is not difficult to draw a conclusion from reflections on "unities". The idea suggests itself that the main principle of constructing the composition of a story is the expediency and economy of motives. Tomashevsky called the motive the smallest element. It can be an action, a character or an event. This structure can no longer be decomposed into components. This means that the author's biggest sin is excessive detail, oversaturation of the text, a heap of details that can be omitted when developing this genre of work. The story should not go into detail.
It is necessary to describe only the most significant in order to avoid a common mistake. It is very characteristic, oddly enough, for people who are very conscientious about their works. They have a desire to express themselves to the maximum in each text. Young directors often do the same when they stage diploma films and performances. This is especially true for films, since the author's fantasy in this case is not limited to the text of the play.
Imaginative authors love to fill the story with descriptive motifs. For example, they depict how a pack of cannibal wolves is chasing the main character of the work. However, if dawn breaks, they will necessarily stop at the description of long shadows, dimmed stars, reddened clouds. The author seemed to admire nature and only then decided to continue the pursuit. The fantasy story genre gives maximum scope to the imagination, so avoiding this mistake is not at all easy.
The role of motives in the story
It must be emphasized that in the genre of interest to us, all motives should reveal the theme, work for meaning. For example, the gun described at the beginning of the work must certainly fire in the finale. Motives that lead to the side should not be included in the story. Or you need to look for images that outline the situation, but do not overly detail it.
Composition features
It should be noted that it is not necessary to adhere to traditional methods of constructing a literary text. Their violation can be effective. The story can be created almost on the same descriptions. But it is still impossible to do without action. The hero is simply obliged to at least raise his hand, take a step (in other words, make a significant gesture). Otherwise, it will turn out not a story, but a miniature, a sketch, a poem in prose. Another important feature of the genre we are interested in is a meaningful ending. For example, a novel can last forever, but the story is built differently.
Very often its ending is paradoxical and unexpected. It was with this that he associated the appearance of catharsis in the reader. Modern researchers (in particular, Patrice Pavie) consider catharsis as an emotional pulsation that appears as you read. However, the significance of the ending remains the same. The ending can radically change the meaning of the story, push to rethink what is stated in it. This must be remembered.
The place of the story in world literature
The story - which occupies an important place in world literature. Gorky and Tolstoy turned to him both in the early and in the mature period of creativity. Chekhov's story is the main and favorite genre. Many stories have become classics and, along with major epic works (stories and novels), have entered the treasury of literature. Such, for example, are Tolstoy's stories "Three Deaths" and "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", Turgenev's "Notes of a Hunter", Chekhov's works "Darling" and "The Man in a Case", Gorky's stories "Old Woman Izergil", "Chelkash", etc.
Advantages of the short story over other genres
The genre we are interested in allows us to single out one or another typical case, one or another side of our life, with particular convexity. It makes it possible to depict them in such a way that the reader's attention is completely focused on them. For example, Chekhov, describing Vanka Zhukov with a letter "to the village of grandfather", full of childish despair, dwells in detail on the content of this letter. It will not reach its destination and because of this it becomes especially strong in terms of accusation. In the story "The Birth of a Man" by M. Gorky, the episode with the birth of a child that occurs on the road helps the author in revealing the main idea - affirming the value of life.
Story
Story
STORY. - The term "R." in its genre meaning is usually applied to any small narrative prose. a literary work with a realistic coloring, containing a detailed and complete narrative about any individual event, case, everyday episode, etc. So. arr. this term (as well as any other genre term) actually denotes not one genre of any particular style, but a whole group of close, similar, but not identical genres that take place in the literature of various styles. At the same time, naturally, on the periphery of this group, we find a number of transitional, related forms, which do not make it possible to sharply distinguish the corresponding material from the material of other related genres. However, this cannot prevent distinguishing R. from other literary types, establishing its typical features and the pattern of its addition in its classical form under certain historical conditions and in certain styles, on the one hand, and the pattern of its use and the emergence of modification of R. forms in others. styles on the other.
In Western European literature, the corresponding genre group is denoted by the term "short story" (see), which is essentially a synonym for the term "R.". True, in us the presence of these synonymous terms aroused (among the Formalists especially) the desire to differentiate them. Thus, the short story was often defined as a variety of R., distinguished by a particular sharpness of the plot and denouement and tension in the development of the plot. However, this kind of terminological distinction is nothing more than arbitrary, since in its historical origin and further development, Russian R. is quite similar to the Western European short story. Like the short story there, so here R. stood out from all narrative literature in general at similar historical moments, being determined primarily by the nature of the content aimed at reality. We had it in the XVII-XVIII centuries. in connection with the growth of tendencies opposed to the old feudal order. During this period, R. developed most intensively in the styles of the “third estate”. The aggravation of social contradictions and the cultural and ideological growth of the classes creating literature determine the formation of the R. genre at this stage. brought real, everyday, everyday content into literature, enclosed in clear compositional forms, distinguished by structural completeness, intense dynamism of the plot, and simplicity of language. In contrast to the genre amorphism of a medieval story, the plot structure of which basically follows the natural course of events and is limited by the natural boundaries of the latter (biography of the hero, history of a military campaign, etc.), R. is a form that shows the author's ability to distinguish from the general the flow of reality moments, the most significant, situations, the most conflicting, in which social contradictions appear with the greatest convexity and sharpness, converging in one event that serves as the plot of R. However, the connection of the story of the XVII-XVIII centuries. in the styles of the "third estate" with more traditional genres, it was expressed in the stubborn preservation of the old terms - "story", "fairy tale" - as applied to early R. ("Tales" about Karp Sutulov, about Shemyakin's court, etc., "fairy tale » Chulkov "Annoying Awakening", etc.). As a certain literary term "R." begins to come into use at the beginning of the 19th century, but even in Pushkin and Gogol, the term “story” combines works, some of which we would definitely attribute to R. or a short story ("The Shot", "The Undertaker", "The Carriage", etc.).
So. arr. R. was formed as a genre, put forward by the growth in the literature of bourgeois trends, bourgeois styles. Further R. wins its place in a variety of styles, in each of them being modified both in ideological significance and formally. The in-depth psychological story of Chekhov, the "simplified", "folk" story of L. Tolstoy, the mystical-symbolist story of F. Sologub, the socially pointed realistic story of M. Gorky - all these are different both in content and in artistic means of R.
The genre forms of poetry, which in the styles of the “third estate” met the needs of a progressively realistic reflection of reality, were later used also for opposite purposes—for the purposes of mystical refraction of real life by writers of the reactionary classes. F. Sologub, for example, referring to the reflection of the everyday reality surrounding him, along with the large epic form - the novel - also gives R., in which there are a number of characteristic features of this narrative type: small size, restriction of the plot to one event taking place in the setting ordinary reality, a prosaic form, etc. However, due to the fact that this author refracts reality in a mystical, surreal way, his stories closely border on other genre groups of a small epic form - a religious legend, a fairy tale - absorbing the signs of these latter (for example . the introduction of elements of the miraculous into the depiction of characters, into the development of the plot), which, however, does not give grounds to identify all these different narrative types.
Hence the profound difference between R. in different styles, in the presence of some structural homogeneity of R. as a certain type of small epic form (a limited number of characters shown around one central event, the absence of a detailed life history of the characters, a limited size, etc.).
So. arr. the content of the term "R." even in its widest use - not only in application to its typical, so to speak, classical form, but also in its further transformations - it retains certain of the above features. They ch. arr. determined by the social conditions that put forward realism as an artistic method. These few signs, however, are sufficient to clarify the relationship of R. with other similar genre forms. Story eg. in contrast, R. sets out not just one case, but unfolds a whole series of events that make up a single line of fate for a particular character or the development of a more or less long process. In accordance with this, if in R. we have an intensive construction of the plot, in which the threads of the life fate of the characters are pulled together into one knot of this event (the so-called "totality" of the novelistic plot), then in the story we see its extensive deployment, with Krom, narrative tension is evenly distributed over a number of moments (events). Thus, the story presents a broader scope of material and usually (but not always) in size form than R. Cf. as examples of R. "Myatel" by Pushkin and the story "Notes of a Marker" by L. Tolstoy, Chekhov's stories "The Steppe", "Men", etc. with his own stories, etc. On the other hand, in the same plane, we delimit R., stating at least one case, but in a number of situations, indicating the circumstances of the case, describing the situation, etc., from an anecdote as the smallest (rudimentary) narrative form, giving only one sharp, comic situation, the essence of which is concluded often in one apt phrase. It is clear that between R. and the story, R. and an anecdote, it is easy to find intermediate forms. Thus, in translated facets we find samples of short anecdotal stories. Adding a moralistically generalizing conclusion to such a short anecdote-story turns it into a fable, which, due to this, acquires a more or less allegorical character, which we see in a number of the same facetia. On a different plane lies the criterion for distinguishing R. from a fairy tale and legend, and R. from an essay: in terms of volume, plot dynamics, R., a fairy tale, a legend are similar forms. But the first differs from the last two in its realism (in typical forms) or at least the focus of the subject matter on reality (albeit fantastically refracted). However, in this respect R. opposes only a literary tale, but not a folk tale, because, according to the accepted traditional terminology, the latter embraces works not only of a mythical and fantastic nature, but also of a realistic, everyday and historical one. The term "R." applies only to literary works, although among oral tales it is easy to find typical examples of a realistic novel. As has already been said more than once, transitional forms can be found for all the indicated relations. Even such a seemingly permanent sign of a story as a prose form is relative - we know examples of R. in verse (Nekrasov - "Philanthropist", Maikov - "Mashenka", etc.). However, in all such cases, in the absence of any feature characteristic of R., others obviously remain, otherwise the very term “R.” would not be applicable to this work. For all that, it must be emphasized that these features of R. by no means represent something immovable, unchanging, on the contrary, their concrete implementation in different styles is extremely diverse and significantly different. So, in some styles, the “totality” of the plot of R. is manifested in the extraordinary event that unexpectedly determines the fate of the characters (“Shot” by Pushkin), in others, on the contrary, in its everyday ordinaryness (Chekhov’s stories), in the third, in its broad social generalization (Gorky's stories). In accordance with this, other aspects of the poetic structure of R. are also modified: the always complete, integral plot of R. in some styles is driven by the power of individual psychological impulses, more or less exceptional (“Shot”) or ordinary (Chekhov’s stories), in others - by social contradictions. (Gorky's stories). The function of the background, the situation, the action, etc., changes (a small share of everyday background in "The Shot" and a large one in Chekhov's stories, a wide social background in Gorky, etc.). Hence - the variety of varieties of the story: R. everyday, satirical, adventurous, psychological, fantastic, etc. The story in general we find in many styles. But each of them gravitates towards a certain type (or a number of types) of R., again giving a peculiar concrete form of this type. It is easy to understand why eg. Saltykov-Shchedrin, a representative of the revolutionary peasant democracy, puts forward the genre of satirical R. - fairy tales with "Aesopian" language, the populist-liberal Korolenko - everyday R., the writer of the decadent petty bourgeoisie F. Sologub - mystical and fantastic, etc. In our Soviet Literature is dominated by R. with broad social themes. This topic is not always given in a truly realistic interpretation: there are frequent examples of superficial everyday life (for example, in the stories of Podyachev), one-sided "biological" psychologism ("The Secret of the Secret" by Vs. Ivanov), etc. Even though Soviet literature has already brought forward a number of rather prominent masters of painting (Babel, Tikhonov, Vs. Ivanov, Zoshchenko, Erdberg, Gabrilovich, and others), painting of the style of socialist realism is still in the process of its formation. Meanwhile, the specific artistic means of R. - conciseness, laconism, dynamism, intensity of perception, relative simplicity and accessibility, etc. - determine its special effectiveness. And if the large canvas of the novel reflects the broad lines of the social process of modernity in a single compositional scope, then in R. the artist focuses on individual moments, episodes, aspects of this process, which also contain the essential features of a changing reality. Therefore, the literature of socialist realism, as the richest and most diverse in terms of genres, assigns a proper place to R. in the general system of its genres, critically mastering the huge short story heritage of the past. Bibliography:
Novella.
Literary encyclopedia. - In 11 tons; M .: publishing house of the Communist Academy, Soviet Encyclopedia, Fiction. Edited by V. M. Friche, A. V. Lunacharsky. 1929-1939 .
Story
Small form of epic kind of literature; a small piece of prose. Unlike essay the story has plot and conflict and is less documentary, i.e. contains fiction. Novella differs from the story in the dynamism of the construction and, as a rule, in the unexpected denouement of the plot. Depending on the content, two types of stories are distinguished: short stories and essay types. The story of the novelistic type is based on a certain case that reveals the formation of the character of the protagonist. Such stories record either a moment that changed the hero’s worldview, or several events that led to this moment: “Belkin’s Tales” by A.S. Pushkin, "The Bride" and "Ionych" A.P. Chekhov, "tramp" stories by M. Gorky. This type of story goes back to literature. Renaissance, where many stories of the novelistic type were combined into a larger work: this is how Don Quixote by M. Cervantes, "Gille Blas" by A. R. Lesage, "Til Ulenspiegel" by S. de Costera. A story of an essay type captures a certain state of the world or society, its task is to show not a key moment, but the ordinary, normal life of a group of people or one person, choosing the most typical moment for this: “Notes of a hunter” by I.S. Turgenev, "Antonov apples" I. A. Bunin, Cavalry by I. E. Babel. Such stories are often part of a larger work that unfolds a moralistic picture, often with satirical pathos; for example, J. Swift, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The story can combine both tendencies: the author uses the novelistic form for moralistic content; for example, “Mumu” by I. S. Turgenev, “The Death of an Official” by A. P. Chekhov, etc.
Among the stories are detective and fantastic. Detective stories describe a criminal incident, their plot is based on the search for a criminal. Often writers create cycles of detective stories united by a cross-cutting hero: for example, Sherlock Holmes in A.K. Doyle or Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple at A. Christie. Fantasy stories set the action in a fictional world (the future or another planet), showing the life of the characters among technological innovations in conditions of almost unlimited possibilities, for example. fantastic stories R. bradbury.
In Russian literature, the short story is one of the most widespread genres of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 20th century a genre of the so-called. "female" story (V.S. Tokarev, D. Rubin), which is an episode from the life of a hero, revealing his psychology, and through it - the psychology of all modern people. In terms of content, it gravitates towards the novel, but in terms of volume and form it remains a story.
Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. - M.: Rosman. Under the editorship of prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006 .
Story
STORY. In Russian literature, the designation of a more or less definite narrative genre under the subtitle "story" is approved relatively late. N. Gogol and Pushkin prefer the name "story", where we could say "story", and only from the 50s does a clearer distinction begin. Tolstoy has the least hesitation and the greatest precision in his subtitles of the 1950s, which can be studied as an example of sensitivity to literary terminology. (Thus, "Snowstorm" is called a "story", "Marker's Notes" a "tale" - both of them are eminently accurate).
Of course, the main fluctuations can only be between two genres: a story and a short story, sometimes adjoining in their assignments and very indefinite in their terminological meaning. Indeed, while the Italian short story of the Renaissance is a completely concrete concept, which has become historical in its concreteness and formed a solid literary genre (hence the ease and explainability of stylization specifically for the Italian short story) - this cannot be said at all about the "story". A variety of composition techniques, motives, interests, the very manner of presentation (Turgenev, for example, has a story in 9 letters - "Faust") - is associated with the story of the 19th century. To him belong both the works of E. Poe (one of the greatest masters of the story), honed in the spirit of the Italian short story, and the “stories” of early Chekhov that developed from the techniques of the so-called “scene”. All these considerations make it necessary to begin the definition of the term "story" not from its theoretically and abstractly established type, but rather from a general manner, which we will designate as special tone of the story giving it the features of a "story". This tonality, which is quite difficult to define in abstract terms, is sometimes given immediately in the efficiency of the message begun, in the fact that the story is very often conducted in the first person, in the fact that it is given the features of something really former (hence the characteristic technique for the story is the creation special illusion of chance, for example, a found manuscript, a meeting, episodes during a trip, etc.). So, the tone of the story is immediately caught in Tolstoy's exemplary construction of Master and Worker: “It was in the 70s, the day after the winter Nikola. There was a holiday in the parish, and the village janitor, merchant of the second guild, Vasily Andreevich Brekhunov, could not be absent. This factuality and efficiency of the started message immediately sets you up for waiting. story about some event (“It was”), underlined by a detailed mention of the time (70s). Further, according to the beginning, it is completely restrained tone specific story. It is not superfluous to add that the elements of the story permeate all of Tolstoy's work: certain parts of his novels, with appropriate roundness, can be singled out as separate stories). Quite a different tone of the beginning of Faust. The very first letters create a feeling of narrative lyrics, with a very detailed transfer of feelings and various, rather vague, memories. The tone of narration presupposes something else - strict factuality, economy (sometimes consciously calculated) of visual means, immediate preparation of the main essence of what is being told.
The story, on the contrary, uses the means of slow tonality - it is all filled with detailed motivation, secondary accessories, and its essence can be distributed at all points of the narrative itself with almost uniform tension. This is done in Marker's Notes, where the tragic end of the book. Nekhlyudov is not perceived tragically, thanks to the uniform tension and uniform distribution. Thus, a special specific tone of the story is created by quite definite means. A good storyteller knows that he must focus on a relatively easily observable case or event, quickly, i.e. immediately, explain all his motives and give appropriate permission (end). The concentration of attention, the center advanced in tension, and the connectedness of motives by this center are the hallmarks of the story. Its relatively small volume, which they tried to legitimize as one of the signs, is entirely due to these basic properties.
K. Loks. Literary encyclopedia: Dictionary of literary terms: In 2 volumes / Edited by N. Brodsky, A. Lavretsky, E. Lunin, V. Lvov-Rogachevsky, M. Rozanov, V. Cheshikhin-Vetrinsky. - M.; L.: Publishing house L. D. Frenkel, 1925
Synonyms:
See what "Story" is in other dictionaries:
Story- STORY. In Russian literature, the designation of a more or less definite narrative genre under the subtitle "story" is approved relatively late. N. Gogol and Pushkin prefer the name "story", where we could say ... ... Dictionary of literary terms
See an anecdote, a book, a fairy tale based on stories ... Dictionary of Russian synonyms and expressions similar in meaning. under. ed. N. Abramova, M .: Russian dictionaries, 1999. anecdote story, book, fairy tale; narrative, description, history, epic, story, essay; parable ... Synonym dictionary
a small form of epic literature; a small piece of prose. Unlike the essay, the story has a plot and conflict and is less documentary, that is, it contains fiction. The short story differs from the story in its dynamic construction and, as a rule, in the unexpected outcome of the plot. Depending on the content, two types of stories are distinguished: short stories and essay types. The story of the novelistic type is based on a certain case that reveals the formation of the character of the protagonist. Such stories record either a moment that changed the hero’s worldview, or several events that led to this moment: Belkin’s Tales by A. S. Pushkin, The Bride and Ionych by A. P. Chekhov, and M. Gorky’s “tramps” stories. A story of this type goes back to the literature of the Renaissance, where many short stories of the short story type were combined into a larger work: this is how Don Quixote by M. Cervantes, Gil Blas by A. R. Lesage, Til Ulenspiegel by C. de Coster. A story of an essay type captures a certain state of the world or society, its task is to show not a key moment, but the ordinary, normal life of a group of people or one person, choosing the most typical moment for this: “Notes of a hunter” by I. S. Turgenev, “ Antonov apples” by I. A. Bunin, “Cavalry” by I. E. Babel. Such stories are often part of a larger work that unfolds a moralistic picture, often with satirical pathos; for example, J. Swift, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The story can combine both tendencies: the author uses the novelistic form for moralistic content; for example, “Mumu” by I. S. Turgenev, “The Death of an Official” by A. P. Chekhov, etc.
Among the stories are detective and fantastic. Detective stories describe a criminal incident, their plot is based on the search for a criminal. Often writers create cycles of detective stories united by a cross-cutting hero: for example, Sherlock Holmes in A. K. Doyle or Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple in A. Christie. Fantasy stories set the action in a fictional world (the future or another planet), showing the life of the characters among technological innovations in conditions of almost unlimited possibilities, for example. fantasy stories by R. Bradbury.
In Russian literature, the short story is one of the most widespread genres of the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 20th century a genre of the so-called. "women's" story (V. S. Tokarev, D. Rubin), which is an episode from the life of the hero, revealing his psychology, and through it - the psychology of all modern people. In content, it gravitates toward the novel, but in volume and form it remains a story.
STORY- a narrative epic genre with an emphasis on a small volume and on the unity of an artistic event.
The genre has two historically established varieties: short story (in a narrower sense) and short story. “The difference between a short story and a short story does not seem to me fundamental,” wrote the researcher of the European short story E. Melitinsky. B. Tomashevsky believed that a story is a Russian term for a short story. This opinion is shared by most (though not all) other literary scholars. The small epic form in European literatures, at least until the 19th century, is usually called a short story. What is a novella? The theoretical definition of a short story “does not exist, most likely because… the short story appears in reality in the form of quite diverse variants due to cultural and historical differences… It is quite obvious that brevity itself is an essential feature of the short story. Brevity separates the short story from the big epic genres, in particular from the novel and story, but unites it with a fairy tale, bylichka, fable, anecdote. (E. Meletinsky).
The genetic origins of the novel are in a fairy tale, a fable, an anecdote. What distinguishes it from an anecdote is the possibility not of a comic, but of a tragic or sentimental plot. From the fable - the absence of allegories and edification. From a fairy tale - the absence of a magical element. If magic still takes place (mainly in an oriental short story), then it is perceived as something amazing.
The classic novella originated in the Renaissance. It was then that her specific features were fully determined, such as a sharp, dramatic conflict, unusual incidents and turns of events, and in the life of the hero - unexpected twists of fate. Goethe wrote: "The novella is nothing but an unheard-of incident." These are Boccaccio's short stories from the collection Deccameron. Here, for example, is the plot of the fourth short story of the second day: “Landolfo Ruffolo, impoverished, becomes a corsair; taken by the Genoese, wrecked at sea, escaped on a chest full of jewels, sheltered by a woman from Corfu, and returned home as a rich man.
Each literary era left its mark on the genre of the short story. So, in the era of romanticism, the content of the short story often becomes mystical, the line between real events and their refraction in the mind of the hero is erased ( Sandman Hoffmann).
Until the establishment of realism in the literature, the short story avoided psychologism and philosophy, the inner world of the hero was transmitted through his actions and deeds. She was alien to any kind of descriptiveness, the author did not interfere in the narrative, did not express his assessments.
With the development of realism, the short story, as it was in its classical models, almost disappears. Realism 19th century unthinkable without descriptiveness, psychologism. The short story is supplanted by other types of short story, among which the first place, especially in Russia, is taken by the story, which for a long time existed as a kind of short story (by A. Marlinsky, Odoevsky, Pushkin, Gogol, etc.). In the prospectus Educational book of literature for Russian youth Gogol gave a definition of the story, which includes the story as a private variety ("masterfully and vividly told picture case"). And this refers to an ordinary "case" that can happen to every person.
Since the late 1940s, in Russian literature, the short story has been recognized as a special genre both in relation to the short story and in comparison with the “physiological essay”. The essay is dominated by direct description, research, it is always publicistic. The story, as a rule, is dedicated to a specific fate, speaks of a separate event in a person’s life, and is grouped around a specific episode. This is its difference from the story, as a more detailed form, which usually describes several episodes, a segment of the hero's life. In Chekhov's story I want to sleep it is about a girl who has been driven to a crime by sleepless nights: she strangles a baby that prevents her from falling asleep. About what happened to this girl before, the reader learns only from her dream, about what will happen to her after the crime is committed, it is generally unknown. All the characters, except for the girl Varka, are outlined very briefly. All the described events prepare the central one - the murder of a baby. The story is short.
But the point is not in the number of pages (there are short stories and relatively long stories), and not even in the number of plot events, but in the author's attitude to the utmost brevity. Yes, Chekhov's story Ionych in terms of content, it is not even close to a story, but to a novel (almost the entire life of the hero is traced). But all the episodes are presented as briefly as possible, the author's goal is the same - to show the spiritual degradation of Dr. Startsev. In the words of Jack London, "a story is ... a unity of mood, situation, action."
The extreme brevity of the narrative requires special attention to detail. Sometimes one or two masterfully found details replace a lengthy characterization of a hero. So, in Turgenev's story Khor and Kalinich Khory's boots, which seemed to be made of marble leather, or a bunch of strawberries presented by Kalinych to his friend, reveal the essence of both peasants - Khory's thriftiness and Kalinych's poetry.
“But the selection of details is not the whole difficulty,” wrote the master of the story Nagibin. - The story, by its genre nature, should be assimilated immediately and in its entirety, as if "in one gulp"; also all the "private" figurative material of the story. This makes special demands on the details in the story. They should be arranged in such a way that they instantly, “with the speed of reading”, form an image, give the reader a lively, pictorial representation…”. So, in Bunin's story Antonov apples practically nothing happens, but masterfully selected details give the reader a "live, picturesque idea" of the passing past.
The small volume of the story also determines its stylistic unity. The story is usually told from one person. It can be the author, and the narrator, and the hero. But in the story, much more often than in the "major" genres, the pen is, as it were, transferred to the hero, who himself tells his story. Often we have a tale in front of us: a story of a fictional person with his own, pronounced speech style (Leskov's stories, in the 20th century - Remizov, Zoshchenko, Bazhov, etc.).
The story, like the short story, bears the features of the literary era in which it was created. Yes, stories
Story it designation of a small prose epic genre. So called "lyrical stories" approaching "poems in prose" ("First Love", 1930, I.A. Bunina), but they can be larger in volume and express broader issues. The words "story", "story", "narrative" initially had no genre meaning and were mostly synonymous. The word "story" retains the meaning of "narrative" or in general "the history of some event" later. With the growth in the volume of Russian short stories in the 1830s, the prerequisites for the genre separation of stories appeared. In the 1840s, V. G. Belinsky already separated the short story and essay as small genres from the novel and short story. But the difference between a story and a story was based not so much on the sign of the volume of the text, but on the degree of literary processing of the plot: the story was considered closer to a reality that had not been creatively transformed. Since the 1830s, and especially since the second half of the 19th century, “stories from Russian history” have been circulating - a fictionalized presentation of historical episodes or biographies of famous people. Such are the historical stories for the children of A.O. Ishimova, which deserved the approval of A.S. Pushkin, later - similar essays, also called stories, by A.N. Maikov A.S. Suvorin, N.S. Leskov, historians S.M. Solovyov, N.I. Kostomarova. But there were also stories that were only a stylization of an artless narrative, as a rule, with a narrator who verbally recounts some incident that actually took place or was presented by the author as such.
Belinsky saw in M.Yu. Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time three stories, obviously written by Pechorin, and two stories, i.e. the story of Bela, allegedly told orally by Maksim Maksimych and only then written down by an officer-traveler, and the psychological study "Maxim Maksimych" with a relatively undeveloped plot. A typical short story of the second half of the 19th century is Leskov's "Dumb Artist" (1883), subtitled "The Story at the Grave". The sign of volume was finally approved as a genre only by A.P. Chekhov, in whom the small and medium genres outwardly differ clearly, although not in terms of the volume of the plot: his story often covers, like stories, in fact, the story of a whole life (“The Man in the Case”, 1898, "Ionych", 1898, "Darling", 1899, "Bishop", 1902). The boundary between the story and the story is sometimes quite vague even among the writers of the Silver Age (L.N. Andreev). In Soviet literature, there were works of a small volume with a setting for a very broad content: stories or a short story by A.G. Malyshkin "The Fall of the Daire" (1923) - the same attempt to revive the heroic epic, like A.S. Serafimovich's story "Iron Stream" ( 1924). The story “The Fate of a Man” (1956) by M.A. Sholokhov was called by literary critic L.G. Yakimenko “an epic story”. In the 20th century, the classic of short stories was Bunin; I.E.Babel, K.G.Paustovsky, V.M.Shukshin, Yu.P.Kazakov, satirists and humorists Teffi, A.T.Averchenko, M.M.Zoshchenko showed themselves mainly in the genre of stories.
In the West, the story corresponds to the short story. It is considered a kind of story, characterized by a sharp, often paradoxical plot, compositional refinement, and lack of descriptiveness. The genre took shape in Italy during the Renaissance. One hundred short stories include "The Decameron" (1350-53) by G. Boccaccio. Short stories were written by Margarita of Navarre, M. Cervantes and others. Recognized masters of the genre in the 19th century - E.T.A. , Bret Hart, J. London, S. Zweig. In English, the term "story" is synonymous with the concept of "short story".
