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Features of Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales

In the fairy tales of this writer one can find allegory, grotesque, and hyperbole. There are features characteristic of an Aesopian narrative. The interactions between the characters reflect the relationships that prevailed in 19th century society. What satirical techniques did the writer use? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to briefly talk about the life of the author, who so mercilessly exposed the inert world of landowners.

about the author

Saltykov-Shchedrin combined literary activity with public service. The future writer was born in the Tver province, but after graduating from the lyceum he left for St. Petersburg, where he received a position in the Ministry of War. Already in the first years of work in the capital, the young official began to languish with the bureaucracy, lies, and boredom that reigned in the institutions. With great pleasure, Saltykov-Shchedrin attended various literary evenings, where anti-serfdom sentiments prevailed. He informed St. Petersburg residents about his views in the stories “A Confused Affair” and “Contradiction.” For which he was exiled to Vyatka.

Life in the provinces gave the writer the opportunity to observe in all details the bureaucratic world, the life of landowners and the peasants oppressed by them. This experience became the material for works written later, as well as the formation of special satirical techniques. One of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin’s contemporaries once said about him: “He knows Russia like no one else.”

Satirical techniques of Saltykov-Shchedrin

His work is quite diverse. But perhaps the most popular among Saltykov-Shchedrin’s works are fairy tales. We can highlight several special satirical techniques with the help of which the writer tried to convey to readers the inertia and deceit of the landowner world. And above all, in a veiled form, the author reveals deep political and social problems and expresses his own point of view.

Another technique is the use of fantastic motifs. For example, in “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” they serve as a means of expressing dissatisfaction with the landowners. And finally, when naming Shchedrin’s satirical techniques, one cannot fail to mention symbolism. After all, the heroes of fairy tales often point to one of the social phenomena of the 19th century. Thus, the main character of the work “Horse” reflects all the pain of the Russian people, oppressed for centuries. Below is an analysis of individual works by Saltykov-Shchedrin. What satirical techniques are used in them?

"Crucian idealist"

In this tale, the views of representatives of the intelligentsia are expressed by Saltykov-Shchedrin. Satirical techniques that can be found in the work “Crucian the Idealist” is symbolism, the use of folk sayings and proverbs. Each of the heroes is a collective image of representatives of one or another social class.

The plot of the tale centers on a discussion between Karas and Ruff. The first, as is already clear from the title of the work, gravitates towards an idealistic worldview, belief in the best. Ruff, on the contrary, is a skeptic who mocks the theories of his opponent. There is also a third character in the tale - Pike. This unsafe fish symbolizes the powers that be in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work. Pike are known to feed on crucian carp. The latter, driven by the best feelings, goes to the predator. Karas does not believe in the cruel law of nature (or the established hierarchy in society for centuries). He hopes to bring Pike to reason with stories about possible equality, universal happiness, and virtue. And that’s why he dies. Pike, as the author notes, is not familiar with the word “virtue”.

Satirical techniques are used here not only to expose the rigidity of representatives of certain sections of society. With the help of them, the author tries to convey the futility of moralistic debates that were common among the intelligentsia of the 19th century.

"Wild Landowner"

The theme of serfdom is given a lot of space in the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin. He had something to say to readers about this. However, writing a journalistic article about the relationship of landowners to peasants or publishing a work of art in the genre of realism on this topic was fraught for the writer unpleasant consequences. Therefore, we had to resort to allegories, easy humorous stories. In “The Wild Landowner” we are talking about a typical Russian usurper, not distinguished by education and worldly wisdom.

He hates “men” and dreams of killing them. At the same time, the stupid landowner does not understand that without the peasants he will die. After all, he doesn’t want to do anything, and he doesn’t know how. One might think that the prototype of the fairy tale hero is a certain landowner whom the writer perhaps met in real life. But no. We are not talking about any particular gentleman. Oh social stratum generally.

Saltykov-Shchedrin fully explored this theme, without allegories, in “The Golovlev Gentlemen.” The heroes of the novel - representatives of a provincial landowner family - die one after another. The reason for their death is stupidity, ignorance, laziness. The character in the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” faces the same fate. After all, he got rid of the peasants, which he was glad about at first, but he was not ready for life without them.

"Eagle Patron"

The heroes of this tale are eagles and crows. The first symbolize the landowners. The second are peasants. The writer again resorts to the technique of allegory, with the help of which he ridicules the vices of the powerful. The tale also includes the Nightingale, Magpie, Owl and Woodpecker. Each of the birds is an allegory for a type of people or social class. The characters in "The Eagle the Patron" are more humanized than, for example, the heroes of the fairy tale "Crucian the Idealist." Thus, the Woodpecker, who has the habit of reasoning, at the end of the bird's story does not become a victim of a predator, but ends up behind bars.

"The Wise Minnow"

As in the works described above, in this tale the author raises questions relevant to that time. And here this becomes clear from the very first lines. But Saltykov-Shchedrin’s satirical techniques are the use of artistic means to critically depict not only social, but also universal, vices. The author narrates the narration in “The Wise Minnow” in a typical fairy-tale style: “Once upon a time...”. The author characterizes his hero in this way: “enlightened, moderately liberal.”

Cowardice and passivity are ridiculed in this tale by the great master of satire. After all, these were precisely the vices that were characteristic of most representatives of the intelligentsia in the eighties of the 19th century. The gudgeon never leaves its shelter. He lives a long life, avoiding encounters with dangerous inhabitants water world. But only before his death does he realize how much he missed during his long and worthless life.

A satirical depiction of reality in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” and “The Wild Landowner.”

Lesson objectives: show students the social orientation of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s satire, help them understand the character traits of the main characters of the fairy tales “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” and “The Wild Landowner”, and continue to study the poetics of satirical fairy tales; develop students' creative abilities, oral and written monologue speech, improve the skills of comparative analysis of fairy tale episodes; to cultivate respect for people, for work, and a sensitive attitude to the artistic word.

Equipment: presentation for the lesson, fairy tale texts for each student, workbooks, handouts - printed tables for comparative analysis, a dictionary of literary terms.

During the classes.

I. Organizational moment.(Slide 1)

II. Updating knowledge. (Quiz.)

We continue our conversation about the works of the amazing writer M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. We know his wonderful fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals.” At home you read his work “The Wild Landowner”. Let's remember them. To do this, we will conduct a quiz “Recognize the work by the passage and its illustration.”

(Slide 2-13)

Guys, the quiz helped us remember two works and compare them. A problematic question arises. Which?(What do the fairy tales “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” and “The Wild Landowner” have in common and what is the difference?)

How would you answer this question?(The works are similar in characters. In “The Tale...” the generals are looking for a peasant and forcing him to work for themselves, but in the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” it’s the other way around: the Russian landowner, Prince Urus-Kuchum-Kildebaev, expels the peasants from the estate)

These common features and differences are striking at a superficial glance at the works. I propose to engage in a more detailed comparative analysis of the two fairy tales.

What should we call our lesson?(A satirical depiction of reality in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” and “The Wild Landowner”).(Slide 14)

What goals will we set for ourselves?(Compare fairy tales, find common and distinctive features, determine what means of satire the author uses in the compared works)(Slide 15)

III. Comparative analysis of the fairy tales “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” and “The Wild Landowner.”

1. History of creation of works.

A table will help us compare two works, which will present the stages of comparison. As the analysis progresses, completed columns will appear on the screen. You can make notes in your blank worksheets so you can use them later to write your essay.

To make our work go faster, we will divide into two teams. The first team will defend the fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man...”, the second - “The Wild Landowner”.

Let's start comparing the two fairy tales with the history of creation.

Using the diagram, tell us about the history of the creation of the works.(Slide 16)

2. The plot of fairy tales. (Competition “Who can retell the funniest story?”)

And now we need to remember the plot of fairy tales. A competition is announced: “Who can retell the funniest story?” One participant from each team is invited to participate in it.(Slide 17)

Who did it funnier and more interesting?

3. Images of the main characters. (Group work. Dispute.)

- Name the heroes of the works.

To find out how the author treated his characters, let’s complete the following task. Using a quotation book, characterize the author’s attitude towards his characters. The first group analyzes the images of generals in “The Tale...”, the second - the image of the landowner in the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner”(Discussion in groups).

Images of generals(Speech by the first group. Filling out the right side of the table.)(Slide 18)

Landowner image (Speech by the second group. Filling out the right side of the table.)(Slide 19)

Dispute. (Slide 20)

- Who would you call the main character of the works: the generals, the landowner or the Russian peasant? Why? (A man is a breadwinner and creator of life's values. So, he is the main character. This idea is reflected in the title of the works. The man fed the generals. Without it, the landowner turns into a “wild” beast).

- Let’s work in groups again: the first group gives examples from the text that prove the author’s admiration and sympathy, the second group gives examples of irony and indignation.(Slide 21)

What qualities of a man’s character does M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin particularly highlight?(On the one hand - hard work, ingenuity, resourcefulness, skill; on the other - slavish obedience, lack of rights).

What does a satirist make fun of in a man?(The satirist makes fun of ignorance, downtroddenness, the desire for submission. A man is not able to defeat the slave in himself, he is even proud of the fact that he skillfully serves the generals)

5. Means of artistic representation in works. (Literary duel).

Laughing at the comical situation, we noted that the writer simultaneously shows how sad Russia is. Tell me, how did Shchedrin manage to publish his fairy tales, since the censorship was so strict?(He used Aesopian language, or allegory).

Let's listen to the writer himself.(Speech by a trained student in the image of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin)(Slide 22)

I - I am a Russian writer and therefore I have two slavish habits: firstly, to write allegorically and, secondly, to tremble.

I owe my habit of writing allegorically... to the censorship department. It tormented Russian literature to such an extent that it seemed to vow to wipe it off the face of the earth. But literature persisted in its desire to live and therefore resorted to deceptive means. She herself was filled with a slave spirit and infected her readers with the same spirit. On the one hand, allegories appeared, on the other- the art of understanding these allegories, the art of reading between the lines. A special slavish manner of writing was created, which can be called Esopian,- a manner that revealed remarkable resourcefulness in the invention of reservations, omissions, allegories and other deceptive means. The censorship department gnashed its teeth, but, in view of the general mystification, felt powerless and made continuous lapses in the service. The audience laughed slavishly and enthusiastically, laughing even when the censors were put in the guardhouse and when they were replaced. And this manner existed for a long time, and still exists to this day, so that the announcement of the will of book printing in 1866 had almost no effect on it at all. Allegorical slave language continues to enjoy the right of citizenship, although justice requires that modern young writers try to avoid it. I do not undertake to determine whether they act well or badly, but I think that due to the general slavish mentality, an allegory still has a chance of being more understandable and convincing and, most importantly, attractive than the most understandable and convincing speech...

Teacher. Now the power of Shchedrin’s talent is finally clear. Indeed, fairy tales are similar in form; the real is intertwined with the fantastic, fairy-tale elements with clerical and colloquial language. Both tales use satirical means of artistic expression. Let's see this by plunging into the writer's creative laboratory. After all, you and I know how to read and see between the lines (and this is exactly what Saltykov-Shchedrin sought).

Let's carry out literary duel.Each team takes turns making a “lunge” - reading an excerpt from their fairy tale containing the trope. The opposing team must guess the technique of creating a comic and receive a token. In case of difficulty, please refer to the “Glossary of Literary Terms”

Means of artistic expression in the fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”(Slide 23)

Means of artistic expression in the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner”

(Slide 24)

For what purpose does Saltykov-Shchedrin use these techniques?(To contrast the nobles who are unadapted to life and the working peasant, to show that at the expense of the peasant who smells of chaff and sheepskin, there is also a “cultured” landowner).

IV. Lesson summary. Reflection. (Working with a cluster).(Slide 25)

Guys, our lesson is coming to an end. What goals did we set for ourselves at the beginning of the lesson?(Compare two fairy tales)

- Continue the sentences.(Slide 26)

(It was interesting…

It was difficult…

Gave me a lesson for life...)

– Do we need Shchedrin today? What human character traits does Shchedrin condemn?(Unfortunately, his works are still relevant today.The writer denounced not only the foundations of a society based on exploitation, but also human vices.His satire is directed both at those in power and at those who meekly submit or suffer humiliation. The writer opposes the unreasonable, predatory attitude towards the people, towards the country's wealth, against violence and rudeness, against the slavish, servile consciousness. It is important that the basis of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s caustic, sharply satirical works is love for the people, true patriotism, which involves a critical attitude towards the shortcomings of society).

V. Homework.(Slide 27)

Using a comparative table, write an essay “A satirical depiction of reality in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” and “The Wild Landowner”.

Application

Working materials for writing an essay

“A satirical depiction of reality in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” and “The Wild Landowner”.

List of used methodological literature.

1. F. E. Solovyova. Thematic planning for the textbook “Literature. 7th grade" (author - compiler G.S. Merkin) edited by G.S. Merkina., Moscow, “Russian Word”, 2010.

2. Solovyova F.E. Literature lessons. To the textbook “Literature. 7th grade” (author-compiler G.S. Merkin): methodological manual / ed. G.S. Merkina. – M.: LLC TID “Russkoe Slovo – RS”, 2010.

3. Workbook for the textbook “Literature.7th grade” (author-compiler G.S. Merkin): methodological manual / ed. G.S. Merkina. – M.: LLC TID “Russkoe Slovo – RS”, 2010.

4. Literature program for grades 5-11 secondary school(Authors-compilers G.S. Merkin, S.A. Zinin, V.A. Chalmaev.-M.: TID “Russkoe Slovo - RS” LLC, 2009)

Plan:

Introduction

Chapter 1. Mastery of psychological analysis in the works of M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin

Chapter 2. Ideological and thematic content of fairy tales by M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

The constant subject of my literary activity has always been a protest against arbitrariness, double-mindedness, lies, predation, betrayal, idle thinking, etc. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov (pseudonym - N. Shchedrin) is one of the greatest satirical writers in world literature. A defender of the oppressed and disadvantaged, he chose satire as the most militant genre of literature and with his angry words accurately struck the enemies of the people. Shchedrin directed his main efforts to exposing the lies and hypocrisy of the ruling classes and their servants, who covered up the exploitation of the people with false “concern” for their “good.”

Saltykov-Shchedrin was called by his contemporaries “the prosecutor of Russian public life and the defender of Russia from internal enemies.” And indeed, every new government atrocity found an immediate response in Shchedrin’s satire.

In the history of Russian literature, the satirical genre occupies an important place. Expressing the indignation of the people against tyranny and serfdom, Russian writers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries caustically ridiculed the vices of the ruling classes.

In his work, the writer continued and developed the traditions of the great Russian satirists. Following Fonvizin, Griboyedov, Pushkin and Gogol, Shchedrin uses laughter as the sharpest weapon.

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, relying on the experience of his predecessors, especially A.S. Griboyedov and N.V. Gogol, created satirical works of unprecedented political acuteness. Using satire, the writer gave a deep analysis of contemporary social life, surprisingly accurately and succinctly characterized various social phenomena and types of figures.

Literary activity of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin covers the period from the late 40s to the late 80s of the 19th century, but most of his works were written in the 70s and 80s. This was the time in which, according to V.I. Lenin, there was a “quick, heavy, sharp breakdown of all the old “foundations” of old Russia.” The complex processes of “breaking”, which covered all aspects of Russian life, were captured and reflected with the greatest insight in his works by Saltykov-Shchedrin. Exposing the inhumanity of Russian antiquity, praised by the Slavophiles, without regretting the collapse of the patriarchal order, the writer noted with bitterness. that in new social relations, along with the brazen activities of predatory capitalists, the “vilest features” of the old, feudal system appeared at every step.

Most of Shchedrin's activities took place in conditions of ferocious reaction. One after another, the writer lost his fighting comrades, but even when left completely alone, until the end of his life he did not let go of the banner of revolutionary democracy from his hands, and did not retreat a single step in the fight for the interests of the people. The conditions of an unequal struggle against political reaction, predation, meanness and betrayal left a stamp of sorrow and anger on all of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s work. This grief filled the penetrating gaze of the kind eyes looking at us from the writer’s portrait with burning pain. “...How gloomy, how motionless this man looks, who gave birth to so much laughter on earth, maybe more than anyone else who lived on it,” said M.S. about the portrait of Shchedrin. Olminsky.

Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov and reality was born on January 27 (January 15) - 1526 in the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazin district, Tver province. His parents were wealthy landowners. Their possessions, although located on inconvenient lands, among forests and swamps, brought significant income. “The peasant’s back abundantly compensated for the lack of valuable land,” the satirist wrote in the novel “Poshekhon Antiquity,” based on autobiographical material. The writer expressed the feeling of the unpaid debt of his class to the oppressed people, his connection with the serf environment that raised him in the series of essays “Little Things in Life” (1887): “I grew up in the bosom of serfdom, was fed with the milk of a serf nurse, raised by serf mothers and, finally, educated literate serf literate. I saw all the horrors of this age-old bondage in their nakedness.”

In the provincial “bear corner” where the future writer was born and raised, serfdom manifested itself in the most savage and cruel forms. Unlimited exploitation of peasants was combined with tyranny, violence, and abuse not only of serf servants, but also of family members. “I saw eyes that could express nothing but fear; I heard screams that tore my heart,” the writer recalled about his childhood.

The writer’s mother, Olga Mikhailovna, ruled the estate; his father, Evgraf Vasilyevich, a retired collegiate adviser, was an impractical person. All the mother's concerns were aimed at increasing wealth. For this reason, not only the courtyard people, but also their own children were fed from hand to mouth. There was no pleasure or entertainment in the house. “We did not know parental affection,” the writer recalled. Continuous enmity reigned in the house: between parents, between children, whom the mother, without hiding, divided into “favorites and hateful ones,” between masters and servants.

A smart and impressionable boy grew up amid this home hell. Left to his own devices, at the age of eight he came across the gospel and was struck by the sharp contradiction between the words about love, goodness and the life around him. The boy realized for the first time that he was a man and that there were people around him too. His heart was filled with sympathy for these abused and tortured human beings, deprived of the right to independent participation in life.

At ten years old, Saltykov entered the third grade of the Moscow Noble Institute, and two years later, among its best students, he was sent to St. Petersburg - to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. “Generals, equestrians... children who were fully aware of the high position that their fathers occupied in society were brought up here,” Saltykov recalled about his spiritual loneliness in his early youth. Not a trace remained of the atmosphere of brotherhood and love of freedom that distinguished the Lyceum under Pushkin: everything was suppressed by the harsh barracks regime. The Lyceum gave Saltykov the necessary amount of knowledge, and the worldview of the future writer was formed mainly under the influence of the articles of V.G. Belinsky, the work of early Herzen, the circle of the utopian socialist Butashevich-Petrashevsky. In the summer of 1844 M.E. Saltykov graduated from the Lyceum and entered service in the Chancellery of the War Ministry.

In 1847, Saltykov wrote his first story, “Contradictions,” and the following year, “A Confused Affair.” The works of the young writer responded to topical socio-political issues; their heroes were looking for a way out of the contradictions between ideals and the life around them. Stories by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, which appeared during the revolutionary events in the West, made a great impression on Russian society. According to the denunciation of the Third Section, the tsar made a remark to the Minister of War Chernyshev that he had an official who had published an essay, “in which there turned out to be a harmful direction and a desire to spread ideas that shook the whole Western Europe" The writer was arrested and exiled by order of the tsar to Vyatka.

After life in St. Petersburg among friends and like-minded people, the young man felt uncomfortable in the alien world of “slander and slander” of provincial officials, nobility and merchants; I was afraid of the threat of gradually being drawn into this vulgar and dirty life, filled with useless service, dinner parties, picnics, cards. But Saltykov resisted. Constantly faced with the arbitrariness and lawlessness of the authorities for almost eight years of exile, he takes the side of the offended peasants. However, all attempts to stand up for the rights of men were met only with bewilderment and displeasure from the authorities. The writer's love for the daughter of Vice-Governor E.A. Boltina (he married her in the summer of 1856) brightened up the last years of Saltykov’s stay in Vyatka.

In November 1855, having received permission to return from exile, M.E. Saltykov moved to St. Petersburg, and in August 1856, Shchedrin’s “Provincial Sketches” began to be published in the magazine “Russian Bulletin”. The name of Saltykov-Shchedrin is becoming widely known. They started talking about him as Gogol's heir, who boldly exposed the ulcers of society. Imitation of the “Provincial Sketches” created a whole accusatory trend in literature. But there was a fundamental difference between Shchedrin’s satire and subsequent denunciations, which was pointed out by N.G. Chernyshevsky and N.A. Dobrolyubov. Liberal denouncers portrayed bad officials, embezzlers and bribe-takers as isolated exceptions that must be fought to strengthen the system. Shchedrin showed that the problem is not in individuals, but in the entire autocratic-serf system, which inevitably gives rise to embezzlement and bribery, arbitrariness and violence.

Assessing the significance of “Provincial Sketches”, N.G. Chernyshevsky noted that Shchedrin went further than Gogol, who was “struck by the ugliness of the facts,” but who lacked an explanation of life. Shchedrin “understands very well where bribery comes from, what facts it is supported by, what facts it could be eliminated.” The critic comes to the conclusion that people's bad habits are caused by the circumstances of their lives, and calls for a “change in circumstances,” that is, for a revolutionary transformation of society.

In 1868, the satirist joined the updated edition of Otechestvennye zapiski. For 16 years he has headed this magazine, first together with N.A. Nekrasov, and after the poet’s death he becomes the executive editor of the magazine. In 1868-1869, he published programmatic articles “Vain Fears” and “Street Philosophy,” in which he developed the views of revolutionary democrats on the social significance of art. Shchedrin saw the main content of literary activity in illuminating the “unknown life of the masses”; he argued that only people’s life “can be called social in the true and actual meaning of the word.”

The relevance of this topic is that among the vast heritage of Saltykov-Shchedrin, his fairy tales are perhaps the most popular. The form of folk tale was used by many before Shchedrin. Literary tales in verse or prose recreated the world of folk ideas, and sometimes contained satirical elements.

Purpose of the work: to determine the task of the writer, the main elements of the poetics of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s works, to identify Gogolian and folklore traditions in fairy tales, to understand the basic techniques of the writer when creating these works, to understand their artistic ideological content.

Scientific content of the dissertation work: M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, an incomparable master of the generalized satirical image, shows the powerful gift of comedy and tragedy in the works of the brilliant satirist, who enriched the realistic method with a truthful depiction of reality.

Shchedrin's great strength lies in the nationality of his work. The writer saw only the people as a source of social and state strength. All of Shchedrin’s work is imbued with a feeling of “longing love” for the people.

According to A.P. Chekhov, no one knew how to persecute cowardice, hypocrisy, and servility like Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Chapter 1. Mastery of psychological analysis in the works of M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin

Shchedrin's essays show various types of pompadours. Each of them revels in his power and in his soul is completely indifferent to the true interests of the state. Liberal reformers like to use the word “freedom”, but by this they mean unlimited freedom of self-government. Even the most empty of pompadours, Mitenka Kozelkov, declares: “... It is necessary that the head of the region be the master of his own home and free in his movements. Napoleon understood this. He realized that passions would only subside when the prefects received complete freedom to tame them.” The “freedom of taming” of pompadours was not limited either before or after the reform.

In 1869-1870, “The History of a City” appeared in “Notes of the Fatherland” - a bold and evil satire on the administrative arbitrariness and tyranny that reigned in Russia. The book took the form of a historical chronicle.

Contemporaries called M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “prosecutor of Russian public life and defender of Russia from internal enemies.” The writer responded to various events in the state and angrily castigated shortcomings. In his work, he consistently developed the traditions of domestic satire: I.A. Krylova, A.S. Griboyedova, N.V. Gogol. However, Saltykov-Shchedrin's satirical works were particularly politically acute. You can say that anger breaks through this author's laughter. The writer was forced to resort to a unique method of presentation, the so-called “Aesopian language.” Shchedrin noted that this language is “not useless” because, by inventing allegories, metaphors, images-symbols, and turning to other means of expressiveness, the writer briefly but very succinctly reveals the essence of the phenomena that he exposes. This author’s favorite technique was a combination of reality and fantasy, grotesque, and allegory. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote that “there are miracles in which, upon careful examination, one can notice a fairly real basis.” All these features are reflected in “The History of a City.”

Shchedrin masterfully uses the grotesque technique in his famous “The History of a City.” This is “a story whose content is continuous fear,” a story that boils down to the fact that “the mayors flog, and the townsfolk tremble.” This is "a life under the yoke of madness." Turgenev noted how the grotesque helps Shchedrin expose the social and moral vices of Russian society. “The History of a City” demonstrates that the writer “knows his native country better than anyone else.”

Individual characters can be recognized as specific historical figures. For example, Gloomy-Burcheev with his ideal: “straight line, absence of diversity” - reminded Arakcheev. Intercept-Zalikhvatsky, who “entered Foolov on a white horse, burned the gymnasiums and abolished the sciences,” was easily recognized as Nicholas I. But the historical form of the book was also a convenient way of satirically depicting modernity. Another feature of the work is grotesque exaggeration, an extraordinary interweaving of the real and the fantastic in it. In “The Story of a City,” grotesque moments are found at every turn. One mayor had a mechanism resembling an “organ” in his head, another had a stuffed head, a third flew around the city, etc. Thanks to fantasy and grotesquery, Shchedrin managed to pass through censorship a work with the most acute criticism of autocracy. The chronicle of the city of Foolov is “a story whose content is continuous fear.” Although the author resorted to the method of stylization, so to speak, “hidden authorship,” already known in Russian literature, he attributed the action of the work to the 18th century, but he noted that his work is not “an experience in historical satire.”

He argued: “I don’t care about history, and I only mean the present. The historical form of the story was convenient for me because it allowed me to more freely address known phenomena of life.” Possessing the gift of stylization, the author deliberately mixes incompatible phenomena. For example, in the chapter “On the Roots of the Origin of the Foolovites,” the beginning of which is in form an imitation of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin mentions in the text the names of his contemporaries-historians: “I don’t want, like Kostomarov, to scour the earth like a gray wolf, nor, like Solovyov, to spread into the clouds like a crazy eagle...” The author exposes the essence of the autocratic system, the bureaucratic state machine. This is precisely the topicality of his satire. It is enough to turn to the “Inventory of City Governors” to see that the author’s goal was to cause not only laughter, but also disgust for the system of which such city governors were a part. It seems that the mention in brief biographical information of the unsightly circumstances of their death prepares the necessary emotional state of the reader. One was torn to pieces by dogs, another was eaten by bedbugs, the third died from gluttony, etc. Behind general characteristic follows a detailed picture of the activities of the especially “famous” rulers of the city of Foolov.

In “The Story of a City” two narrative lines can be distinguished. The first is an denunciation of the authorities, the other is a kind of opposition between the mayors and the people, a satirical description of the life of the inhabitants of Foolov.

Grotesque exaggerations were only an artistic means of deeper knowledge of reality. The artist, as it were, examines life through a magnifying glass and thanks to this sees the true meaning of social phenomena that are incomprehensible to ordinary eyes. The reign of Ugryum-Burcheev in Foolov was characterized by inhumanity. The ideal of the sullen idiot was the barracks. But wasn’t all of St. Petersburg (and all of Russia too) turned into a terrible barracks during the reign of Nicholas I? In response to critics' attempts to interpret literally artistic images Shchedrin wrote: “It’s not that Brudasty had an organ in his head that played romances: “I won’t tolerate it!” and “I’ll ruin you!”, but the fact is that there are people whose entire existence is exhausted by these two romances.”

The scenes of the struggle for power of successive mayors are very expressive. Amalka Stockfish overthrew Clémentine de Bourbon and put her in a cage. Then Nelka Lyadokhovskaya overthrew Amalka Stockfish and locked her in the same cage with Clemantine de Bourbon. “It was terrible to see how these two dissolute girls, from the third, even more dissolute, were given to each other to be devoured! Suffice it to say that by the next morning there was nothing in the cage except their stinking bones!” This is how the writer plays on the meaning of the figurative expression “ready to eat each other.” This grotesque picture reveals the bestial essence of the rulers of the city of Foolov.

The city of Foolov is a grotesque image of all of Russia. The history of the formation of the city parodies the well-known legend about the invitation of the Varangians, promoted by official historians. “There was,” says the writer, “in ancient times a people called bunglers...” No matter what the bunglers did, they could not “achieve any order.” Then they came up with an equally stupid idea - to look for a prince. “He will provide us with everything in an instant... He will give us soldiers and build a proper prison!” They found a prince who agreed to send them a ruler, but at the same time set them the following conditions:

“And you will pay me many tributes... whoever brings a bright sheep, sign the sheep to me, and keep the bright one for yourself; Whoever happens to have a penny, break it in four: give one part to me, the other to me, the third to me again, and keep the fourth for yourself. When I go to war, you go too! And you don’t care about anything else!..

And I will have mercy on those of you who don’t care about anything, but I will execute the rest of you... And since you did not know how to live on your own free will and you, stupid ones, wished for bondage for yourself, then you will no longer be called bunglers, but Foolovites." This satirical picture, and the whole book, clearly shows that autocracy is built on the obedience of the people and brings them nothing but misfortune. In “The History of a City,” Shchedrin predicted the death of the autocracy: “either a downpour or a tornado” sweeps Ugryum-Burcheev and his wild orders. Let us dwell, for example, on the images of mayors Brudasty and Ugryum-Burcheev. They are the ones who personify the cruelty, callousness, and stupidity of power. The busty one rules the city by uttering only two phrases; “I won’t tolerate it!” and “Raz-dawn!” Under him, “unheard-of activity suddenly began to boil in all parts of the city: private bailiffs galloped, police officers galloped, assessors galloped: “they grab and catch, flog and flog, describe and sell...” In the end, it became known that in the head of the mayor there was a small organ that played only those two phrases. When this instrument became damaged and a new one was not delivered from the capital in a timely manner, “Foolov was left without a boss, and riots began in the city.

Gloomy-Burcheev was even more cruel: “Having drawn a straight line, he planned to squeeze the entire visible and invisible world into it, and, moreover, with such an indispensable calculation that it was impossible to turn either back or forward, or to the right or to the left.” This man had “a gaze as bright as steel, a gaze completely free from thought.” The ideal for him was a military barracks; he sincerely wished that all work in the city being created would be carried out on command. At the same time, “near each working platoon a soldier with a gun walks at measured steps and shoots at the sun every five minutes.” The author deliberately brings the activities of mayors to the point of absurdity. For example, Ugryum-Burcheev is trying to regulate marriage unions, allowing them only between young people of the same height and build. Basilisk Wartkin paved the market square and, having been refused permission to establish an academy, built a house for rent. Onufriy Negodyaev paved the streets and built monuments from the quarried stone. Intercept-Zalikhvatsky, riding into Foolov on a white horse, burned the gymnasium and abolished the sciences. And Benevolensky issued a lot of laws. It is enough to remember some of them to realize their grotesqueness and absurdity: “Let everyone eat,” “Everyone who needs to wipe his nose, let him wipe it,” etc.

In “The History of a City,” Saltykov-Shchedrin for the first time gives a satirical depiction of the people. He had previously spoken the bitter truth about the habit of obedience among the peasant masses, but the author did this not satirically, but with deep sympathy. In the chapters “Straw City” and “Hungry City” this motif is continued. But next to this is a satire on the peasant. Slavish obedience, faith in the coming of good bosses - these are the traits that the author exposes in the image of the Foolovites. But also in “History...” M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin emphasizes that these are not the original properties of Russian backgammon, but “alluvial atoms,” traits that were developed over centuries of serfdom. Thus, this work is a satire not only on the government, the state system, but also on the people.

But in the second case, the purpose of exposure was the correction of morals, enlightenment, including political education. In Foolov, the mayors were rampant, and “the Foolovites were also on their own. They contrasted with great clarity the energy of action with the energy of inaction.” As Shchedrin writes, it was a kind of “rebellion on wheels”: “They knew that they were rebelling, but they could not help but kneel.” The author notes that there were moments when “the belly begins to speak, against which all sorts of reasons and tricks turn out to be powerless.” But even this indignation, caused by the threat of starvation, ends with the choice of the “walker” Yevseich. He went to the mayor Ferdyshchenko three times to seek the truth for the peasants, but all he achieved was that he “disappeared without a trace, as only the “miners” of the Russian land know how not to know. The author explains that the system, in which one mayor commands a mass of people, is supported only by the thread of “love of authority” and asks the question “how to break this thread” - it is necessary for people to begin to act. This idea is expressed especially clearly on the pages depicting the last days of the reign of Ugryum-Burcheev. He tried to establish “universal equality before the spitsruten,” destroyed the city, drove all the inhabitants into the river, planning to “eliminate it,” but “the Foolovites still continued to live.” Shchedrin masterfully shows the emergence of spontaneous indignation of the people. Irritation grew, the residents suddenly saw their oppressor - “this is a real idiot - and nothing more.” The collapse of this despot occurs suddenly, “... something was rushing towards the city. It has arrived. There was a crash, and the seasoned scoundrel instantly disappeared, as if he had melted into thin air.” This symbolic picture of a tornado sweeping away a gloomy tyrant has given rise to different interpretations. Most likely, we are talking about “angry movements of history,” as defined by Saltykov-Shchedrin, that is, about mass spontaneous uprisings. But the author himself was looking for “those precious framework in which the good could abolish the bad without suppression,” the revolutionary path of transforming society was not Shchedrin’s choice. “The History of a City” is “a call not only for an active fight against bureaucratic state system, but also a warning against the destructive consequences of spontaneous uprisings.

The ideological content required special means of artistic expression. Allegory, grotesque, sarcasm allow the author to clearly show the vices of society. Elements of fantasy are incorporated into realistic narratives. Saltykov-Shchedrin also uses techniques that are already traditional for social satire, such as parody, stylization, and “telling” names. But we can say that their author also creatively transforms them. “Talking” surnames - Grustilov, Negodyaev, Intercept-Zalikhvatsky, Ugryum-Burcheev and others carry a double meaning. They not only indicate certain character traits of the characters, but also allow the thoughtful reader, by correlating them with the actions of the heroes, to draw some historical parallels and recognize prototypes. So, in Negodyaev it is quite easy to guess the features of Paul I, in Grustilov - Alexander I, in Perekvat-Zalikhvatsky - Nicholas I, etc.

The creation of “The History of a City” put M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin among the great satirists. It signified important stage creative evolution of the author.

In the 70s, Saltykov-Shchedrin created a number of literary cycles in which he widely covered all aspects of life in post-reform Russia. The writer shows the unscrupulous robbery of the people by a “new cultural layer” consisting of “tavern owners, pawnbrokers... and other embezzlers and world eaters.” The names of the heroes of capitalist predation - the Razuvaevs, the Derunovs, the Kolupaevs - have become household names; They are often found in articles by V.I. Lenin.

The satirist also directs his well-aimed blows against liberal figures and writers who grovel before the authorities. He mercilessly castigates literary slaves like M.N. Katkov, who voluntarily defended the reactionary “foundations”. “We will not renounce our share of police duties in literature,” the reactionary journalist frankly wrote. Shchedrin called Katkov a “literary police box” (the striped police box during these years became a symbol of Russian life under autocratic oppression). Shchedrin often called his “Aesopian” style of writing “slave” because of its forced nature of allegories, but there were no compromises with the authorities in it. The writer sharply distinguished it from the “servile language” of “literary vigilantes,” which represented “a mixture of arrogance, flattery and lies.”

With the coming to power of the “grimy”, the army of bourgeois public figures also grew, glorifying the new masters of life. He depicted these “foam skimmers,” as the satirist called them, the Prelesnovs, Balalaikins and the like, in “The Diary of a Provincial in St. Petersburg” (1882) and “Modern Idyll” (1877-1883). “The predator,” writes Shchedrin, “carries out the principle of predation in life; the skimmer elevates it into a dogma and composes rules for the best production of predation.” Shchedrin showed how the principle of predation is implemented in practice in the cycle “Gentlemen of Tashkent” (1869-1872).

The activities of the “Tashkent people” - noble administrators, financiers, lawyers, businessmen-entrepreneurs and other “civilizers” and “enlighteners” - are depicted against the backdrop of the rule of Russian tsarism in Central Asia, but the satirist emphasizes that Tashkent is not a geographical concept: “If you you are in a city about which the statistical tables say: so many inhabitants, so many parish churches, no schools, no libraries, no charitable institutions, only one prison, etc. - you can say without error that you are in the very the heart of Tashkent." “Tashkent” is an arrogant, insatiable predator who lives off a man who eats quinoa.

Anticipating Chekhov's beginnings in literature, Saltykov-Shchedrin creates the cycle “Little Things in Life”. The main thing in “Little Things in Life” is a reflection of the diversity of modern Russian reality, broad coverage of everyday life ordinary people with her ordinary everyday worries: the short, sad story of a rural teacher, the invisible drama of an intelligent family struggling in the grip of poverty, the restless fate of a Russian writer. The dramatic underside of the everyday evokes the quiet and sympathetic, sad-humorous intonations of the author’s voice.

In the cycle “In an Environment of Moderation and Accuracy” (1874-1880), Shchedrin continued the biography of Griboyedov’s hero, Molchalin. This name is used by the satirist to call selfish ordinary people, among whom clever careerists and informers thrive, fishing in the waters muddied by police persecution. Meanness is so ingrained in society that parents report to their own children: “Your Excellency, my son is occupied with wrong ideas - would you order him to be tricked?”

Russian reality evokes pain and anger in the writer. In response to accusations of “lack of patriotism,” he writes: “I love Russia to the point of heartache and cannot even imagine myself anywhere other than Russia.” This is Love true patriot, inseparable from hatred of all oppressors and robbers of the Russian people. These feelings became especially acute when Shchedrin found himself abroad.

In April 1875, doctors sent the seriously ill Saltykov-Shchedrin abroad for treatment. The writer is irritated by the “Russian well-fed idiots” with whom foreign resorts were full: “This boundless bliss of sons of bitches, their luxury, carriages, ladies’ dresses - spoils a lot of blood.” Having become more closely acquainted with life abroad, Shchedrin saw behind the cultural appearance of Western European capitalists, statesmen and public figures the same familiar features of predation and betrayal. The result of the writer’s trips abroad was the series of essays “Abroad” (1881), about which V.I. Lenin wrote: “Shchedrin once classically ridiculed France, which shot the Communards, the France of bankers groveling before the Russian tyrants, as a republic without republicans.” Shchedrin condemned both German militarism and the lackeyness of the German bourgeois intelligentsia in front of the Prussian generals.

Recognizing that culture in the West is incomparably higher than in Russia, the writer was far from blind admiration for Western culture. He looked at the perfectly cultivated German fields and thought that these fields belonged not to the people, but to wealthy bourgeoisie, on whom dozens of farm laborers worked. He speaks with pain about the Russian people, accustomed to the whip, but he also does not like the drilling of the German people. The dialogue between the “boy in pants” - the son of a German peasant and the “boy without pants” - the son of a Russian peasant is interesting. The “boy in pants” personifies bourgeois morality with its admiration for property and order. “The boy without pants” is poorer than him, less cultured, he is mercilessly exploited by Kolupaev, for whom he works not “under contract”, but “for nothing,” but, unlike the German boy, he has not come to terms with his situation and is going to pay off Kolupaev. “Wait, German, there will be a holiday on our street!” - he says meaningfully. These words showed Shchedrin’s faith in the bright future of his native people.

In the meantime, a gloomy, hopeless night hangs over Russia. A violent reaction raged. The ranks of the people's defenders became increasingly rarer, and there were more and more defectors to the camp of the “jubilant, chattering idly.”

And a lonely writer in Paris has a nightmare dream: an impudent pig “slurps” the Truth to the approving roar of the crowd.

Exploring the phenomena of social life, social ills and vices, the realist writer gives his images a fantastic character, often resorting to the grotesque. Ghostliness and Madness real world reflected in grotesque images.

Shchedrin's satire is imbued with longing for truth and freedom. The writer understood how far his contemporary society was from these ideals, how disgusting and ugly the surrounding reality was. Therefore, in his works the comic is combined with the ugly and strange. Satire often turns into tragedy.

"Messrs. Golovlevs"

With inexorable truthfulness, Shchedrin paints a picture of the destruction of the noble family, reflecting the decline, decay, and doom of the class of exploiting serfs. The whole meaning of the Golovlevs’ life was to acquire, accumulate wealth, and fight for this wealth. Mutual hatred, suspicion, callous cruelty, and hypocrisy reign in the family.

Arina Petrovna's acquisition activities, based on squeezing the last juice out of a man, are carried out under the pretext of increasing the family's wealth, but in fact - only to assert personal power. Even her own children are “extra mouths” for her, who need to be fed, on whom part of her fortune needs to be spent. Arina Petrovna calmly and mercilessly watches as her children go bankrupt and die in poverty. And only at the end of her life a bitter question arose before her: “And for whom did I save it? I didn’t get enough sleep at night, I didn’t have enough to eat... for whom?”

The despotic power of Arina Petrovna, the financial dependence of the children on the arbitrariness of “mama” instilled in them deceit and servility. Porfiry Golovlev was especially distinguished by these qualities, who received the nicknames “Judas” and “bloodsucker” from other family members.

From childhood, Judas managed to entangle his “good friend Mama” in a web of lies and sycophancy, and during her lifetime he took possession of all the wealth.

Judushka Golovlev acts only “according to the law, because the laws that existed both before the reform and in the post-reform era allow him to suck the blood from powerless peasants with impunity, drive his own children to suicide, rob and ruin relatives. With shameless hypocrisy, he commits vile acts, accompanying them with sickly sweet words. To his stripped-down brother Stepan, whom his mother fed with rotten corned beef, he affectionately says in parting: “If only you had behaved modestly and well, you would have eaten veal instead of beef, otherwise you would have ordered sauce.” And you would have enough of everything: potatoes, cabbage, and peas...”

Like a dark shadow, the figure of Judas appears at the bedside of the dying brother Paul to entangle another victim in a sticky verbal web. In the pursuit of wealth, Porfiry Golovlev, like Arina Petrovna, is mercilessly cruel even to his own children. Refusing to help his son, who finds himself in a hopeless situation, he says touchingly: “Now let’s go and drink tea. Let's sit and talk, then we'll eat, have a farewell drink - and God bless you. See how merciful God is to you! And the weather calmed down, and the path became smoother. Little by little, little by little, little by little, little by little, and you won’t see how you get to the station!”

Persistently, methodically carrying out the robbery of his relatives, Judushka Golovlev brings the whole family to death and ends his life in terrible loneliness.

The history of the Golovlev family testified to the historical pattern of degeneration of the nobility. But the image of Judushka Golovlev had a broader meaning. IN AND. Lenin was the first to show what deep meaning the writer invested in the image of Judas. This is a symbol of all exploitation and oppression, misanthropy and reaction, idle talk and lies.

Judas for V.I. Lenin is a feudal landowner, a capitalist, a liberal idle talker, and a renegade politician. V.I. wrote with hatred and contempt. Lenin in the article “Triumphing vulgarity or the cadet Socialist-Revolutionaries” (1907) about the cadet Judushka Golovlev, who calmed a flogged, beaten, hungry, enslaved peasant. V.I. was branded with the name of Judas. Lenin of the double-dealer Trotsky and other traitors to the labor movement.

Chapter 2. Ideological and thematic content of fairy tales by M.E. Saltykova-Shchedrin

“Fairy Tales” is one of the most striking creations and the most widely read of the books of the great Russian satirist. With few exceptions, they were created over four years (1882-1886) at the final stage of the writer’s creative path.

Simultaneously with Saltykov in the 80s, his outstanding contemporaries - Lev Tolstoy, Gorshin, Leskov, Korolenko - performed fairy tales and literary adaptations of folk legends. Artists of the word went to meet that new circle of readers, which, as Leo Tolstoy noted in December 1885 in a letter to Saltykov, “should be counted in hundreds of thousands, almost millions.” A year later, Saltykov, in turn, wrote about the “underground hum” of the masses awakening to conscious life.

Russia was on the eve of a new proletarian stage of the liberation movement. Sensitively perceiving the shift in the mood of the people, major Russian writers showed increased interest in literary forms, designed directly for the general reader.

On the path of democratization of literature, Shchedrin achieved great examples with his “Fairy Tales”. And this is no coincidence. The fairy tale, although it represents only one of the genres of Shchedrin’s creativity, was organically close artistic method satirical The fairy-tale form is not an unexpected creative find or a consequence of the writer’s passion for folklore or literary tradition in the field of this genre. It was prepared gradually, as if spontaneously maturing in the depths of his satire, and gradually grew out of some essential features of his work. Shchedrin's fairy tales are ripe fruits, the ovaries of which are found already in the earliest works of the satirist.

For satire in general and, in particular, for Shchedrin’s satire, the usual techniques are artistic exaggeration, fantasy, allegory, bringing together those denounced social phenomena with phenomena of the animal world. These techniques in their development led to the appearance of individual fairy tale episodes and “inserted fairy tales within works, then to the first isolated fairy tales and, finally, to the creation of a large fairy tale cycle, including thirty-two works. The writing of an entire book of fairy tales in the first half of the 80s is explained, of course, not only by the fact that by this time the satirist had creatively mastered the fairy tale genre. In an atmosphere of fierce government reaction, fairy-tale fiction to some extent served as a means of artistic conspiracy of the most acute ideological and political plans of the satirist. Approaching the form of satirical works to folk tale also opened the way for the writer to a wider readership. Therefore, for several years Shchedrin has been working enthusiastically on fairy tales. In this form, the most accessible to the masses and loved by them, he pours all the ideological and thematic richness of his satire and, thus, creates a kind of small satirical encyclopedia for the people.

“Fairy Tales,” representing the result of many years of work by the satirist, vividly synthesizes Shchedrin’s ideological and artistic principles, his original style of writing, and the diversity of his visual arts and techniques, his achievements in the field of satirical typification, portrait painting, dialogue, landscape, they demonstrate the power and richness of his humor, his skill in the use of hyperbole, fantasy, and allegory to realistically reproduce life. Therefore, “Fairy Tales” is precisely the book by Saltykov-Shchedrin that best reveals to the reader the rich spiritual world and multifaceted creative individuality of the Russian artist-thinker, who was at the forefront of the socio-literary movement of his time.

The creative history of the fairy tale cycle also allows us to conclude that the satirist’s direct intentions included the desire to summarize the most important results of his many years of literary activity in a genre aimed at a general reader. The large and small censorship disasters that Shchedrin experienced during the period of writing fairy tales disrupted both the sequence of work on the implementation of the plan, as well as the order of publication of fairy tales and the composition of the final set in lifetime confessions. For all that, “Fairy Tales” really acquired the meaning of a bright conclusion in Shchedrin’s satirical work. Saltykov Shchedrin satire fairy tale

In terms of the breadth of its overview of social types, the book of fairy tales takes first place in the legacy of Saltykov-Shchedrin and represents, as it were, an artistic synthesis of the satirist’s work.

The life of Russian society in the second half of the 19th century is captured in Shchedrin’s tales in many paintings, miniature in volume, but huge in their ideological content. In the richest gallery of typical images, filled with high artistic perfection and deep meaning, Shchedrin touched upon all the main classes and social groups - the nobility, bourgeoisie, bureaucracy, intelligentsia, rural and city workers, touched upon many social, political, ideological and moral problems, widely presented and deeply illuminated all kinds of currents of social thought - from reactionary to socialist.

The works of Shchedrin's fairy tale cycle are united not only by genre, but also by some common ideas and themes. These general ideas and themes, penetrating into individual works and connecting them with each other, give a certain unity to the entire cycle and allow us to consider it as a somewhat holistic work, covered by a common ideological and artistic concept.

The most general and basic meaning of the work of the fairy tale cycle is to develop the idea of ​​​​the irreconcilability of class interests in an exploitative society, to debunk all kinds of illusory hopes for achieving social harmony in addition to the active struggle against the ruling regime, in an effort to raise the self-awareness of the oppressed and induce in them faith in their own strengths, in promoting socialist ideals and the need for a nationwide struggle for their future triumph.

In the tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship,” autocratic Russia is symbolized in the image of a forest, day and night, “thundering with millions of voices, some of which represented an agonized cry, others a victorious cry.” These words could be an epigraph to the entire fairy tale cycle and serve as an ideological exposition to pictures depicting the life of classes and social groups in a state of incessant internecine war.

In the complex ideological content of Shchedrin’s fairy tales, four main themes can be distinguished:

1.satire on the government leaders of the autocracy and on the exploiting classes;

2.the appearance of behavior and psychology of the philistine intelligentsia;

.depiction of the life of the masses in Tsarist Russia;

.exposing the morality of predatory owners and promoting the socialist ideal and new morality.

But, of course, it is impossible to draw a strict thematic distinction between Shchedrin’s tales; there is no need for this. Usually, the same fairy tale, along with its main theme, is also touched upon by others. Thus, in almost every fairy tale, the writer touches on the life of the people, contrasting it with the life of the privileged strata of society.

In the genre of fairy tales, ideological and artistic features Shchedrin's satire: its political sharpness and purposefulness, the realism of its fiction, the ruthlessness and depth of the grotesque, the sly sparkle of humor.

Shchedrin's "Fairy Tales" in miniature contain the problems and images of the entire work of the great satirist. If Shchedrin had not written anything other than “Fairy Tales,” then they alone would have given him the right to immortality.

The writer often resorted to the fairy tale genre in his work. There are also elements of fairy-tale fantasy in “The Story of a City.” It is no coincidence that the blossoming fairy tale genre Shchedrin falls in the 80s. It was during this period of rampant political reaction in Russia that the satirist had to look for a form that was most convenient for circumventing censorship and at the same time the closest and most understandable to the common people. And the people understood the political acuteness of Shchedrin’s generalized conclusions, hidden behind Aesopian speech and zoological masks.

When creating his fairy tales, the writer relied not only on the experience of folk art, but also on the satirical fables of the great Krylov, on the traditions of Western European fairy tales. He created a new, original genre of political fairy tale, which combines fantasy with real, topical political reality.

Shchedrin's fairy tales depict not just evil and good people, the struggle between good and evil; like most folk tales of those years, they reveal the class struggle in Russia in the second half of the 19th century, during the era of the formation of the bourgeois system. In Shchedrin's fairy tales, as in all of his work, two social forces confront each other: the working people and their exploiters. The people act under the masks of kind and defenseless animals and birds (and often without a mask, under the name “man”), the exploiters act in the guise of predators. The symbol of peasant Russia is the image of Konyaga from the fairy tale of the same name. Horse is a peasant, a worker, a source of life for everyone. Thanks to him, bread grows in the vast fields of Russia, but he himself has no right to eat this bread. His destiny is eternal hard labor. “No end to work! Work exhausts the whole meaning of his existence...” exclaims the satirist.

Konyaga is tortured and beaten to the limit, but only he is able to liberate his native country. “From century to century, the menacing, motionless bulk of the fields stands numb, guarding itself as if a fairy-tale force is in captivity. Who will free this force from captivity? Who will bring her into the world? Two creatures fell to this task: the peasant and the horse.” This tale is a hymn to the working people of Russia, and it is no coincidence that it had such a great influence on Shchedrin’s contemporary democratic literature.

Showing the hard labor life of the working people, Shchedrin mourns the obedience of the people, their humility before the oppressors. He laughs bitterly at the fact that the man, on the orders of the generals, himself weaves the rope with which they then tie him.

In almost all fairy tales, the image of the peasant people, depicted by Shchedrin with love, breathes indestructible power and nobility. The man is honest, straightforward, kind, unusually sharp and smart. He can do everything: get food, sew clothes; he conquers the elemental forces of nature, jokingly swimming across the “ocean-sea”. And the man treats his enslavers mockingly, without losing his sense of self-esteem. The generals from the fairy tale “How one man fed two generals” look like pitiful pygmies compared to the giant man. To depict them, the satirist uses completely different colors. They “understand nothing,” they are dirty physically and spiritually, they are cowardly and helpless, greedy and stupid. If you are looking for animal masks, then a pig mask is just right for them.

Meanwhile, these pigs imagine themselves to be noble people, they push the man around “like an animal”: “You’re sleeping, couch potato!.. now go to work!” Having escaped death and become rich thanks to the peasant, the generals send him a pathetic sop to the kitchen: “... a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver: have fun, peasant!” The author's sarcastic exclamation is full of deep meaning. The satirist emphasizes what people can expect from exploiters better life useless. The people can achieve their happiness only by throwing off the yoke of parasites.

Representatives of the people in Shchedrin's tales bitterly reflect on the very system of social relations in Russia. They all clearly see that the existing system provides happiness only to the rich. That is why the plot of most fairy tales is built on the vicissitudes of brutal class struggle. This struggle is the main driving force of a proprietary society. There can be no harmony, no peace where one class lives at the expense of another and keeps the people in bondage.

Shchedrin's tales awakened the political consciousness of the people.

The same idea is embedded in the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner,” written in 1869. In the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner,” Shchedrin seemed to summarize his thoughts on the reform of the “liberation” of the peasants, contained in all his works of the 60s. He poses here an unusually acute problem of the post-reform relationship between the serf-owning nobles and the peasantry completely ruined by the reform: “The cattle will go out to water - the landowner shouts: my water! A chicken wanders into the outskirts - the landowner shouts: my land! And the earth, and the water, and the air - everything became his! There was no torch to light the peasant's light, there was no rod to sweep out the hut with. So the peasants prayed to the Lord God all over the world: - Lord! It’s easier for us to perish with our children than to suffer like this all our lives!”

The wild landowner, like her generals from the tale of two generals, had no idea about labor. Asked by his peasants, he immediately turns into a dirty and wild animal, becomes a forest predator. And this life, in essence, is a continuation of his previous predatory existence in more naked forms. The outward human appearance of the wild landowner, like the generals, acquires words only after his peasants return.

The fairy tale “The Wise Minnow,” written during the years of political reaction in Russia, hit the townsfolk who were hiding from the social struggle without fail. And it is no coincidence that the theme of the fairy tale “The Wise Minnow” appeared in Shchedrin during the three years of its appearance in the satirical chronicle “Abroad”, exposing the Western European reaction in the person of corrupt parliamentarians and evil ordinary people - property owners.

In many of his works of the 70s and 80s, Shchedrin sarcastically castigated the bourgeois and noble liberals of those years, who wore masks of people's defenders.

In the tale “The Liberal” he concentrated this hatred and contempt with utmost passion. It shows the evolution of liberalism from demands “as far as possible” to shameless actions “in relation to meanness.”

A number of Shchedrin’s most brilliant tales are devoted to revealing the anti-people character of the autocracy, showing the doom of an exploitative society. Such are the fairy tales “The Bear in the Voivodeship”, “The Poor Wolf”, “The Eagle Patron”, “The Hyena”, “The Bogatyr”.

The Toptygins from the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship,” sent by Leo to the voivodeship, set as their goal to commit as many “bloodsheds” as possible. And for this they suffered the “fate of all fur-bearing animals”: ​​they were killed by men. The Wolf from the fairy tale “Poor Wolf” suffered the same death, who also “robbered day and night” all his life. In this tale, the satirist again raises the question of the irreconcilability of class contradictions in a society based on exploitation. She again and again inspires the reader with the idea that the exploiters cannot create a tolerable life for the people, just as “a wolf cannot live in the world without losing his stomach.” Only by destroying the unjust social order, the people will find their happiness.

The fairy tale “The Eagle Patron” provides a devastating parody of autocracy and the classes that protect it. For some time, the Eagle, due to circumstances, pretended that he loved art and science, but soon showed his true predatory appearance. The Eagle destroyed the nightingale for his free songs, the literate Woodpecker “dressed ... in shackles and imprisoned in a hollow forever,” the Raven ruined the men. It ended with the crows rebelling, “instinctively the whole herd took off from their place and flew away,” leaving the Eagle to die of starvation. “Let this serve as a lesson to the eagles!” the satirist meaningfully concludes the tale.

With particular courage and directness, the question of the inevitable death of the autocracy was raised by Shchedrin in the fairy tale “The Bogatyr”. This tale could only see the light of day after the Great October Socialist Revolution. In the image of Bogatyr, the satirist depicted the Russian autocracy, which doomed the people of their country to many years of hopeless hard life.

It seems to me that the exaggeration of the role of literature as a platform and arena for political struggle also harmed Saltykov-Shchedrin. After all, the writer was convinced that “literature and propaganda are one and the same thing.”

Saltykov-Shchedrin is the successor of Russian satire by D.I. Fonvizina, N.A., Radishcheva, A.S. Griboyedov, N.V., Gogol and others. But it's not effort artistic medium, giving it the character of a political weapon. This made his books sharp and topical. However, today they are perhaps less popular works than Gogol's works.

And yet it is difficult to imagine our classical literature without Saltykov-Shchedrin. This is in many ways a completely unique writer. “A diagnostician of our social evils and illnesses,” this is how his contemporaries spoke of him. He didn’t know life from books. Young, exiled to Vyatka for his early works Obliged to serve, Mikhail Efgrafovich thoroughly studied the bureaucracy, the injustice of the system, and the life of different strata of society. As vice-governor, he became convinced that the Russian state primarily cares about the nobles, and not about the people, for whom he himself came to respect.

The liberation of the oppressed masses from all types of slavery was the cherished goal of all the activities of Saltykov-Shchedrin.

Saltykov’s love for the people was generated not only by his advanced ideological worldview, which helped him understand the role of the people in history. His love of the people has deep roots. It was awakened in childhood by direct contact with the facts of serf life on the estate. Shchedrin was looking for love for the people - this love coming not only from consciousness, but also from the heart, based on the original motive of pity for the oppressed masses. This motif colors all the pictures of people’s life in Shchedrin’s first book, “Provincial Sketches,” and later, at the time of the writer’s full ideological maturity, it remains a highly beneficial and effective principle, giving love for humanity from the height of the ideal all the features of earthly love for the concrete poor people, with all its joys and sorrows.

“Nothing evokes love so naturally,” Shchedrin wrote in the last years of his life, “as poverty, oppression, sorrow and misfortune in general.” Love in itself is a joyful and bright feeling, but in most applications it includes desire as a huge element. It makes love active and inspires in it feats of high self-sacrifice, it fills human life with poison, and at the same time, makes a person strive for this poison, crave it, see in it the most cherished goal of the best thoughts of the soul.”

The organic unity of humane feeling, compassion and the advanced democratic ideal, which is a measure of critical assessment of the people, distinguishes Shchedrin’s love for the people from conservative Slavophil idealization dark sides peasant life, and then sentimental love for the “little brother” of the repentant nobleman, and from humanism, which idealized the traits of humility and obedience among the people, which we encounter in Dostoevsky, and from the false populist understanding of the peasant as the original bearer of the rudiments of socialism, and from that moral admiration for the patriarchal man, which is characteristic of Leo Tolstoy.

Shchedrin was a great lover of the people, but not in the Slavophile or populist sense. He loved the people without blind admiration for them, without idolatry: he deeply understood the strengths of the masses, but no less vigilantly saw their glorious sides: “And no matter how devoted I am to the masses,” he said, no matter how much my heart ached all the pains of the crowd, but I cannot follow him in her short-sighted service, unreasonably and arbitrarily.” And this two-way attitude towards the people - catching and critical - runs like a red thread through the entire work of the writer.

The source of Saltykov’s sympathy for people’s life, even with its dark sides, lies not in the recognition of its absolute infallibility and normality, but in the fact that he saw in it the only basis, apart from which no fruitful human activity is possible and the implementation of the ideals of the future is unthinkable. The mass of the people alone, he said, can legitimately be called “the ruler of our souls.” He considered the attitude of the masses towards a known idea to be the only measure by which one can judge the degree of its vitality. He defined bitter thoughts about the fate of the people as the “highest” motive of melancholy and in serving the interests of the people he saw one of those rich life ideals that can fill the entire content of human thought and activity.

When Shchedrin speaks about the masses, the people, he, first of all, means the peasantry. But the latter, in Shchedrin’s understanding, embraces the entire oppressed working mass, including its urban worker. Shchedrin, of course, knew about the existence of the proletariat both abroad and in Russia. But in Shchedrin’s interpretation, a worker is simply a type of peasantry, like a peasant in a latrine trade. This worker, cut off from his village nest, usually serves in Shchedrin’s works as the personification of the most extreme need, and this is the only difference between him and the indigenous peasant masses. But if Shchedrin did not have a clear, formed idea of ​​the working class, if he did not rise to the understanding of the advanced historical role of the proletariat, then he did not sink to the level of those “muzhikovsky” writers who either did not notice the emergence of the working class in Russia, or treated disdainfully towards him. Shchedrin is characterized not by the narrow point of view of a defender of only peasant interests, but by the point of view of a sociological thinker who broadly embraces the issues of people's life and sees the essence of everything in solving them social progress. He considered the liberation of the oppressed masses the most important universal task. He said that the unmet needs that plague human development.

In “Fairy Tales,” Saltykova embodied his many years of observations on the life of the enslaved Russian peasantry, his bitter thoughts about the fate of the oppressed masses, his deep sympathy for working humanity and his bright hopes for people’s strength.

Numerous episodes and images of fairy tales related to the characteristics of the masses provide a multifaceted, deep and full of drama picture of the life of post-reform peasant Russia.

It tells about hopeless work, suffering, the innermost thoughts of the people (“Horse”, “Village Fire”, “Neighbors”, “The Way and Way”), about their age-old slavish obedience (“The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” ), about his futile attempts to find truth and protection in the ruling elite (“The Raven Petitioner”), about the spontaneous outbursts of his class indignation against the oppressors (“Bear in the Voivodeship,” “Poor Wolf”), etc. Through all these sketches of peasant life, amazing in their truthfulness, locality and brightness, runs the motive of the truly suffering love of the humanist writer for the people. And even the picture of nature captured the great sorrow for peasant Russia, crushed by the formidable bondage.

The source of the writer’s constant and painful thoughts was the striking contrast between the strengths and weaknesses of the Russian peasantry. Representing enormous strength, demonstrating unparalleled heroism in work and the ability to overcome any difficulties in life, the peasantry, at the same time, resignedly, submissively, patiently with their oppressors, passively endured oppression, fatalistically hoping for some kind of external help, nurturing a naive faith in the coming of good leaders. The spectacle of the passivity of the peasant masses was dictated to Shchedrin for pages full of lyrical sadness, sometimes painful melancholy, sometimes mournful humor, sometimes bitter indignation.

The main reason Shchedrin rightly considered the long-suffering of the oppressed masses to be their lack of political consciousness and understanding of their importance as the main social force. The writer liked to repeat that the Russian peasant is poor in all respects and, above all, poor in the consciousness of his poverty.

Shchedrin consistently conveys in fairy tales the idea of ​​the need to contrast the exploiter with people's power. He persistently instilled in the oppressed classes that they were oppressed - cruel, but not as powerful as it seems to the eliminated consciousness (“Bogatyr”). He sought to raise the consciousness of the masses to their level historical vocation, arm them with courage and faith in their dormant powers, awaken their enormous potential energy for collective self-defense and active liberation struggle.

The fairy tale “The Horse” (1865) is Shchedrin’s outstanding work about the plight of the Russian peasantry in Tsarist Russia. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s never-ending pain for the Russian peasant, all the bitterness of his thoughts about the fate of his people, home country concentrated within the narrow confines of a fairy tale and expressed themselves in burning words, exciting images and filled with high poetry in paintings.”

On the endless field, day after day, from century to century, the horse and the man work - this is epic picture in the spirit of the epic epic. And on the other hand, this picture, created with the epic sweep of the great artist’s brush, is not dispassionate; she is lyrical through and through, her images and colors capture the complex experiences and thoughts of a revolutionary humanist, excited by the fate of the people, alarmed by the salvation for their future, for their lives. The identity of the author's suffering and the suffering of the people gave the tale of Konyaga a unique lyrical-epic character.

As the story progresses, “The Horse” is like a lyrical monologue of the author and in this respect resembles a fairy tale - the elegy “Adventures with Kramolnikov”, the essay “Name” (from the “little things in life”) and the dying page of the unfinished “Forgotten Words”. And today it is obvious that such an artistic tone of these works is due to the fact that they talk about the most secret ideals of the writer, about the main object of his love, about the meaning and goals of his entire life and literary activity. In the entire fairy tale, from beginning to end, a tragic note sounds; the entire fairy tale is imbued with a feeling of anxiety for the fate of the forced laborer.

It is noteworthy that in the fairy tale the peasant is presented directly in the image of a peasant and in the image of his double - Konyaga.

The human image seemed to Shchedrin insufficient to reproduce the whole mournful picture of hard labor and unrequited suffering that was the life of the peasantry under tsarism. The artist was looking for a more expressive image - and found it in Konyaga, “tortured, beaten, narrow-chested, with protruding ribs and burnt shoulders, with broken legs.” This artistic allegory makes a huge impression and gives rise to multifaceted associations. It evokes a feeling of deep compassion for a person - a worker, placed in the position of a slave, and a feeling of indignation for those who turned a person into an exhausted working animal. The dumb hard worker Konyaga is a symbol of people's strength and at the same time a symbol of downtroddenness and age-old ignorance. The horse, like the man in the tale of two generals, is a giant who has not realized his power and the reasons for his suffering situation, he is a captive fairy-tale hero.

“The Horse,” as is largely the case, is an autobiographical tale-elegy. “The Adventure with Kramolchikov” bears clear traces of the ideological crisis experienced by Saltykov-Shchedrin in the 80s. At this time, Shchedrin not only remained as before a socialist and revolutionary thinker, but spoke with even greater insistence about the need for revolutionary and socialist changes in society. However, under the influence of the entire course of the social struggle in Russia, his faith in the possibility of a peasant revolution dimmed, and his critical attitude towards the theories of utopian socialism, of which he himself was a representative, intensified. The writer’s new ideological quests remained unfinished; he did not reach an understanding of the historical role of the working class, ending his literary activity on the eve of the proletarian stage of the liberation movement. The absence of a near prospect of freeing the peasant from eternal “captivity” was the reason for those deep ideological experiences and mournful moods of the writer, which were reflected in the tale of the significant Horse.

The tales of Saltykov and Shchedrin are full of sorrowful complaints about the long-suffering of the people, about their naive political illusions. And at the same time they are warmed by genuine love for the suffering worker.

Gluttonous pikes, eagles - patrons of the arts, bears in the province - everything is a predatory force. It is impossible for a man to get along with her, to get along in the world. Saltykov - Shchedrin strives to explain to the oppressed people, to whom his fairy tales could reach, that they, the people, are a force, and an extremely powerful and formidable force. The satirist wants to arm the long-suffering and long-suffering man with courage, to awaken in him enormous energy to repel the reigning predators, to fight them.

The oppressors of the people are a cruel, but not so terrible force. His imagination pictures him of a certain Bogatyr (the fairy tale “The Bogatyr”), nurtured by Baba Yaga, who was worshiped by ordinary people for a thousand years. From time immemorial, the hero slept in a hollow oak tree, and only “sent rolling snores all around for a hundred miles.”

People's patience knows its limits. The indignation of the masses must certainly break through. Saltykov-Shchedrin firmly believed so.

He pinned his hopes on the peasants, but was aware that the peasant was not ready for revolution. This was the source of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s deep tragic experiences, this was the dramatic pathos of his famous fairy tale “The Horse”

The closeness of Shchedrin's fairy tales to folk art is expressed, first of all, in the author's ideas about good and evil, about poverty and wealth, about right and wrong, about the decisive predominance of forces hostile to the people and at the same time about the inevitable triumph of reason and justice.

The satirist maintains faith in the socialist ideal. He develops and artistically propagates democratic and socialist principles. At the same time, he often turns to the form of religious parables understood by the people (“Christ’s Night” and “The Christmas Tale”).

In the elegy fairy tale “The Adventure with Kromolnikov,” Shchedrin sincerely sympathizes with people of honest, fearless thought. His hero, the Poshekhonsky writer, passionately loves his country and knows its past and present very well. But knowing this turns out to be a source of suffering for him. But for now Kromolnikov has been deprived of communication with readers.

Even during the life of the satirist, Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales became part of the arsenal of means of revolutionary agitation in Russia. They were read at work and student meetings. Some of them, prohibited by censorship, appeared in underground and foreign revolutionary publications.

The people are a great force, but who will free it, who will allow it to manifest itself freely? Russia is a great country, but who will liberate it and show it the way to open space? Saltykov and Shchedrin struggled with these questions all their lives and still could not answer them. “From century to century, the formidable, motionless bulk of the fields freezes,” he wrote, “as if it were guarding a fairy-tale power in captivity. Who will free this force from captivity? Who will bring her into the world? Two creatures fell to this task: the peasant and the Horse. And both of them struggle with this task from birth to grave, they shed bloody sweat, but the field did not even give up its fabulous power, the power that would loosen the bonds of a peasant, and Konyaga would heal sore shoulders.”

In “Fairy Tales,” Shchedrin, painting a picture of popular misfortune, revealing to the oppressed masses the cruel truth of the irreconcilable struggle of classes, exposed the futility of popular appeals to the ruling elite of the autocracy, called on the people to put an end to their patience and instilled in the exhausted Konyaga and the “fainted crow” faith in their own strength and optimistic hopes for the triumph of socialist truth.

The rich ideological content of Shchedrin's fairy tales is expressed in a publicly accessible and vibrant artistic form, which has adopted the best folk-political traditions.

The satirist overheard the words and images for all his wonderful tales in folk tales and legends, in proverbs and sayings, in the picturesque talk of the crowd, in all the poetic elements of the living folk language. The connection between Shchedrin’s fairy tales and folklore was manifested in traditional beginnings using the form of a long-past tense (“Once upon a time…”), and in the use of sayings (“at the command of a pike, according to my desire”, “neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen” etc.), and in the satirist’s frequent appeal to folk sayings, always presented in a witty socio-political interpretation.

And yet, despite the abundance of folklore elements, Shchedrin’s tale, taken as a whole, is not similar to folk tales; it does not repeat traditional folklore schemes either in composition or in plot.

The satirist did not imitate folklore models, but freely created on their basis and in spirit, creatively revealed and developed their deep meaning, took them from the people in order to return them to the people ideologically and artistically enriched. Therefore, even in those cases where the themes or individual images of Shchedrin’s fairy tales find a close correspondence in the early known folklore stories, they are superior to the latter in their ideological significance and artistic perfection. Here, as in the fairy tales of Pushkin and Andersen, the artist’s enriching influence on the genres of folk poetic literature is clearly demonstrated.

Relying on the rich imagery of a satirical folk tale, Shchedrin gave unsurpassed examples of laconicism in the artistic interpretation of complex social phenomena. Every word, epithet, metaphor, comparison, every image in his fairy tales has a high ideological and artistic significance and concentrates in itself, like a charge, enormous satirical power. In this regard, especially noteworthy are those fairy tales in which representatives of the zoological world act.

Images of the animal kingdom have long been inherent in fables and satirical tale about animals, which was, as a rule, the work of the lower social classes. Under the guise of a story about animals, the people gained some freedom to attack their oppressors and the opportunity to talk in an intelligible, funny, witty manner about serious things. This popular form artistic storytelling found wide application in Shchedrin's fairy tales.

The masterful embodiment of denounced social types in the images of animals achieves a bright satirical effect with extreme brevity and speed of artistic motivation. The very fact of likening the representatives of the ruling classes and the ruling caste of the autocracy to predatory animals. The satirist declared his deepest contempt for them; social allegories in the form of tales about animals provided the writer with some advantages in terms of censorship, allowing him to use harsher satirical assessments and expressions. In the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship” Shchedrin calls Toptygin a brute, a rotten block of wood, a scoundrel, etc. - all this use of an animal mask would be impossible to do in relation to the royal dignitaries, whom the satirist has in mind in this case.

Shchedrin carries out the “humanization” of the animal figures of his fairy tales with great artistic tact, which allows preserving the “nature” of the images. Of course, no social allegory is possible if the actions of the beast in a fairy tale or fable are limited only to what nature allows it to do. Not a single fable, even the most “consistent” one, will satisfy this requirement. It is important that the choice of images for allegories is not random, that the artist is witty and resourceful in the distribution of roles, and that the direct meaning and implied meaning of the image are poetically consistent.

Yes, in Shchedrin’s fairy tales the hares study “statistical tables published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs” and write correspondence to newspapers; bears go on business trips, receive money for travel and strive to get into the “tablets of history”; the birds are talking about the capitalist railway worker Gubonelepov; Pisces talk about the constitution and even debates about socialism. But this is precisely the poetic charm and irresistible artistic persuasiveness of Shchedrin’s fairy tales, that no matter how much the satirist “humanizes” his zoological pictures, no matter what complex social roles he assigns to his “tailed” heroes, the latter always retain their basic natural properties.

The horse is a truly faithful image of a slaughtered peasant horse; bear, wolf, fox, hare, pike, ruff, crucian carp, eagle, hawk, raven, siskin - all these are not just symbols, not external illustrations, but poetic images that vividly reproduce the appearance, habits, properties of representatives of the animal world, called by the will the artist to give a caustic parody of social relations. As a result, what we see is not naked, not straightforwardly tendentious, not breaking with the reality of those images that are brought in for the purpose of allegory.

One can, of course, admit that in their fairy-tale paintings Shchedrin did not achieve that organic combination of zoological and social plans that was inherent in Krylov’s fables. However, Shchedrin’s ideological plans are incomparably complex than Krylov’s. In his tales, Shchedrin embodied not only everyday manifestations of the social thought of his time. And if we take into account all this complexity of the tasks posed by the satirist, then one can only be amazed at the skill with which Shchedrin presented the great collisions of the era in miniature pictures of fairy tales, with which he forced his unlucky heroes - wolves and hares, pikes and crucian carp - to play out on this limited stage complex plots of social comedies and tragedies.

It was hardly possible, for example, to convey the idea of ​​class antagonism and the despotic essence of autocracy more intelligibly, brightly, and wittily than in the fairy tales “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals,” “The Wild Landowner,” and “The Bear in the Voivodeship.” " With the same classical clarity and inimitable imagery, all the onion twists and metamorphoses of liberalism are presented in the fairy tales “Dried Roach” and “Liberal”.

The opposition of the disenfranchised masses of the people to the ruling elite of society is one of the most important ideological and aesthetic principles Shchedrin.

In his tale, representatives of antagonistic classes act face to face, in direct and sharp conflict. In general, the book of Shchedrin's fairy tales is a living picture of a society torn apart by internal contradictions. Next to the deep drama of the life of the working people, Shchedrin showed the most shameful comedy of the life of the noble-bourgeois strata of society. Hence the constant interweaving of the tragic and the comic in Shchedrin’s fairy tales, the continuous alternation of feelings of sympathy with feelings of anger, the severity of conflicts and the sharpness of ideological polemics.

There is neither the opportunity nor the need to talk here about many other features that characterize Shchedrin’s tales as original creations of the art of words. Shchedrin's tales most fully demonstrate Shchedrin's humor in all the richness of its emotional shades and artistic forms, Shchedrin's intelligent laughter - revealing and castigating, ennobling and educating, causing hatred and confusion among enemies, admiration and joy among champions of truth, goodness, and justice. This most powerful weapon in the satirist’s arsenal will be discussed later.

The small volume, the nationality of the artistic form, the acuteness of the interpretation of life's social problems, the rich ideological content expressed in bright, impressive images - all this gave Shchedrin's tales, so to speak, an operational character and ensured their wide circulation among readers.

Fairy tales are the result of many years of observation, the result of the writer’s entire creative journey. They intertwine the fantastic and the real, the comic and the tragic, the grotesque and hyperbole are widely used, and the amazing art of “Aesopian” language is revealed (Aesopian language is an allegorical, allegorical way of expressing artistic thought).

The great satirist wrote his works in Aesopian language. Saltykov-Shchedrin resorted to it under direct pressure from censorship conditions, following the example of the Russian publicists who committed him. Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov were great masters of Aesopian language.

In exposing the vices of society, the writer creates a special language. “I am an Aesop and a graduate of the censorship department,” Shchedrin said about himself. The satirist becomes an unsurpassed master of “Aesopian speeches.” Shchedrin’s images of fish, animals, and birds created by means of this language have become household names.

Saltykov-Shchedrin transferred Aesopian language into fiction, turning it from a forced means into a kind of weapon of satire.

The master of Aesopian speeches in his fairy tales, written mainly during the years of cruel censorship, widely uses the technique of allegory. Allegory allows the satirist not only to encrypt and hide the true meaning of his satire, but also to reveal the most important, most characteristic things in his characters. As in the fable, representatives of various social classes and groups are depicted under the guise of animals and birds.

One of the techniques of Aesopian language was allegory. Fairy tales provide examples of popular and amazing allegories. The satirist, who knew Russian folklore and world fairy-tale literature well, took advantage of the lessons revealed to him in folk tales and created masterpieces in the fairy-tale genre.

A master of Aesopian speeches, in fairy tales written mainly during the years of cruel censorship, he widely uses the technique of allegory. Under the guise of animals and birds, he depicts representatives of various social classes and groups. Allegory allows the satirist not only to encrypt and hide the true meaning of his satire, but also to exaggerate something most characteristic in his characters.

The work of Saltykov-Shchedrin is clearly national in its flavor, which, of course, does not prevent his works from being included in the international treasury of world literature. National identity Shchedrin's satire greatly facilitated the transition to the form of the national Russian fairy tale with its vocabulary and typology.

Conclusion

Saltykov-Shchedrin expected literature to have a powerful influence on the minds and hearts of readers; he believed that communication with literature should make the reader more insightful and honest. He wanted, he dreamed, he believed - and he was bitterly convinced and barely noticeable. He understood that literature is the same as propaganda, and he continued to work with maximalist tenacity.

The last years of the writer’s life were difficult. Government persecution made it difficult to publish his works; former friends changed their beliefs; he also felt like a stranger in the family; Numerous illnesses made him suffer painfully. But until the last days of his life, Shchedrin did not give up literary work. Three months before his death, he completed one of his best works, “Poshekhon Antiquity.”

In contrast to the idyllic pictures of noble nests, Shchedrin resurrected in his chronicle the true atmosphere of serfdom, which drew people “into the pool of humiliating lawlessness, all sorts of twists of deceit and fear of the prospect of being crushed every hour.” Pictures of the wild tyranny of the landowners are complemented by scenes of retribution befalling individual tyrants: the tormentor Anfisa Porfiryevna was strangled by her own servants, and another villain, the landowner Gribkov, was burned by the peasants along with the estate.

Until the minute of his life, the angry voice of the great Russian satirist did not stop; His powerful word made its way through the censorship to the reader. Shchedrin's vivid images were extraordinary, fantastic, and at the same time they exceptionally aptly and accurately reflected the very essence of the phenomena of reality; his metaphors burned into the reader's memory with such force that the most accurate descriptions could not achieve.

For example, the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” is absolutely fantastic in content. Are there really landowners who run around on all fours like wild animals? Is everything possible? the peasant population instantly carried away somewhere? But these fantastic exaggerations allowed the writer to more clearly imagine the actual extent of the robbery of the people by landowners and authorities. It would seem that “The History of a City” is filled with completely unnatural events, but it is in this book that such a strict connoisseur as I.S. Turgenev, noted “realism, sober and clear in the midst of the most unbridled play of imagination” and added that Shchedrin “knows his country better than anyone else.”

It may seem that the “unbridled play of the imagination” is incompatible with realism, which consists in a truthful depiction of reality. But the fact is that Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fantasies are realistic at their core. Shchedrin was a great realist writer, he was an innovator who enriched the realistic method. In order to deeply understand reality, Shchedrin said, it is necessary to show not only what is visible, but also what is hidden behind it: not only the actions that a person freely commits, but also those that he would undoubtedly have accomplished if he had been able or brave.

Saltykov-Shchedrin is an incomparable master of the generalized satirical image. This is the image of the city of Foolov - a symbol of senseless power and any despotic regime.

Shchedrin had a powerful gift for comedy; he mastered all its forms perfectly. He also had many deeply tragic pages, and his laughter was mostly full of bitterness.

Shchedrin's tales are both a magnificent satirical monument to a bygone era and an effective means of our today's struggle against the remnants of the past and modern bourgeois ideology. That is why Saltykov-Shchedrin’s “Fairy Tales” has not lost its vitality in our time; they continue to be a highly useful and entertaining book for millions of readers.

Shchedrin's "Fairy Tales" is a magnificent artistic monument of a bygone era, an example of condemnation of all forms of social evil. In the name of goodness, beauty, equality and justice.

Shchedrin's great strength lies in the nationality of his work. Only in the people did the writer see the source of social and state strength; only in serving their interests lies the meaning of political and social activity, including literary ones. All of Shchedrin’s work is imbued with the feeling of that “longing love” for the people that V.I. wrote about. Lenin in his article “On the National Pride of the Great Russians.”

Saltykov-Shchedrin firmly and unswervingly pursued the ideas of revolutionary democracy. He did not recognize dispassionate art, indifferent to the problems facing the country. “The praised creative dispassion, which out of politeness is called impartiality,” he wrote, “is a humanly impossible thing, and a person who can look at lies and evil with indifferent eyes not only does not deserve the name of a servant of art, but, in the strict sense, cannot to be called even a man." Saltykov-Shchedrin died on May 10 (April 28), 1889. Shortly before the writer's death, a delegation of students visited him; among them were brother and sister V.I. Lenin - Alexander and Anna Ulyanov. The young people carried in their hearts the mournful gaze of the dying man. “It seemed that he gave us an infinite amount with his unforgettable gaze, as if he introduced us to his melancholy, as if he bequeathed to us his irreconcilable anger,” recalled one of the participants in the meeting.

Death prevented the writer from completing his last creative idea - a series of essays “ Forgotten words", in which he wanted to once again remind his contemporaries of Chernyshevsky’s ideas, forgotten by the intelligentsia of the 80s; to contrast revolutionary socialist ideals with betrayal, cowardice, humility, opportunism - that “bastard spirit” that, according to A.P. Chekhov, no one knew how to pursue him like Saltykov-Shchedrin.

The apt phrases, nicknames and nicknames with which the satirist branded the enemies of the people and the revolution are still alive today. In a letter to the editor of Pravda, V.I. Lenin wrote: “It would be good from time to time to remember, quote and explain Shchedrin in Pravda...” The works of Saltykov-Shchedrin instill in Soviet people hatred of any kind of exploitation, servility, cowardice, hypocrisy, reveal vivid pictures of the past and help to better understand the history of our Motherland.

The reactionaries accused Saltykov-Shchedrin of mocking the Russian people. Objecting to them, the satirist wrote: “I love Russia to the point of heartache...” This pain was caused by the downtroddenness, darkness and obedience of the masses, the passivity of a society that suffered the oppression of the autocracy. The hearts of all the best Russian people were full of this pain. This pain was the highest manifestation of their patriotism.

Relying on folk wisdom, using the riches of folk speech and images created by the people, Shchedrin creates works whose goal is to awaken the people and educate them in the spirit of revolutionary ideology. The great satirist strives to ensure that “children of a fair age” mature and cease to be children.

List of used literature

1.Bushmin A.S. Saltykov-Shchedrin. The art of satire. M., 1959

2.Bushmin A.S. Mikhail Efgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin. Leningrad, 1970

.Goryachkina M.S. Satire by Saltykov-Shchedrin. M., 1976.

..Kirpotin.M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Life and art. Moscow, 1955.

.Nikolaev D. Shchedrin’s satire and realistic grotesque. M., 1977

.Olminsky M. Articles about Saltykov-Shchedrin. M., 1959. - M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin in the memoirs of contemporaries. M. 1975, vol. 1-2.

.V.V. Prozorov. Saltykov-Shchedrin Moscow, 1988

.E.I. Pokusaev, V.V. Prozorov, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Biography of the writer. Leningrad. 1977

.Turkov A. Saltykov-Shchedrin. 2nd ed. M., 1965. Series “Life wonderful people"

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How do humor, satire, and sarcasm interact in the fairy tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin?

A fairy tale is originally a folklore genre, the basis of the plot is fiction, which maintains a connection with reality at the level of moral teaching, reflection of social realities in a conventional, fantastic form. Saltykov-Shchedrin first of all used the satirical potential of the fairy tale. His tales organically combine various types of comics: humor, satire, sarcasm.

Comic - an image of the funny, absurd, incongruous, strange in life. The comic can arise with different authorial intonations. Humor is a positive manifestation of the comic, a kind, cheerful laugh, a manifestation of cheerfulness, an assistant in the creation of life. Satire - comic image social types and phenomena in literature with the aim of debunking and destroying them. The satirist shows what is unworthy in life, what is internally bankrupt. Sarcasm is a judgment containing caustic, caustic ridicule of the person being depicted. Sarcasm is distinguished by a tone of indignation and indignation.

Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are thematically diverse. The fairy tales “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals,” “The Wild Landowner,” and “The Bear in the Voivodeship” satirically depict government and social elites and the exploiting classes. The two techniques most often used in folklore form the basis of the plot of these works. “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” places people in a conditional, fictional world to more accurately indicate their characteristic features and relationships. In “The Bear in the Voivodeship,” humanized animals become the heroes.

The wild landowner from the fairy tale of the same name dreamed of liberating his own lands from the men who irritate him with their lives, activities, and appearance. The dream has come true, but with its implementation, people and all the means by which a comfortable and outwardly “cultural” existence was maintained disappear. The landowner gradually runs wild, turns into a half-beast. It is interesting that even in this state he stubbornly adheres to his strange choice to live without men. This shows the depth of hatred and alienation from the life of the people of a significant part of the landowners.

The twists and turns of the plot of the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship” transport readers to the top of the social pyramid. Very often, the satirical charge of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales is directed against the social position and behavior of various layers of the Russian intelligentsia. The fairy tales “The Selfless Hare” and “The Idealist Crucian” are dedicated to this. The grotesque, common image of a cowardly person who fears life has become the image of the main character of the fairy tale “The Wise Piskar.” Mockery is replaced by irony, irony - bitter sarcastic laughter at a creature who took his own life, “trembling” throughout his long, but absolutely barren and meaningless century.