Kharitonova Olga Nikolaevna, teacher MBOU gymnasium named after. Bunin of the city of Voronezh

STUDYING THE NOVEL BY M.A. BULGAKOV "WHITE GUARD"

Grade 11

Standard secondary (full) general education in literature, they recommend that high school students read and study one of Mikhail Bulgakov’s works: “The Master and Margarita” or “The White Guard.” The name of Mikhail Bulgakov coexists in the program with the names of M.A. Sholokhova, A.P. Platonov, I. Babel. Having chosen the novel “The White Guard”, the literature writer will thereby create a thematic series: “The Quiet Don”, “The White Guard”, “The Hidden Man”, stories from the “Cavalry” cycle. Students will thus have the opportunity to compare different concepts of a historical era, different approaches to the topic "Man and War".

LESSONS No. 1 – 2

“THE WAS A GREAT YEAR AND A TERRIBLE YEAR AFTER THE NATIVITY OF CHRIST 1918”

“The White Guard,” created in 1922–1924, is the first major work of M.A. Bulgakov. The novel first appeared in incomplete form in 1925 in the private Moscow magazine “Russia”, where two parts out of three were published. The publication was not completed due to the closure of the journal. Then “The White Guard” was published in Russian in Riga in 1927 and in Paris in 1929. Full text was published in Soviet publications in 1966.

“The White Guard” is a largely autobiographical work, which has been repeatedly noted by literary criticism. Thus, researcher of Bulgakov’s creativity V.G. Boborykin wrote in a monograph about the writer: “Turbines are none other than Bulgakov, although, of course, there are some differences. House No. 13 on Andreevsky (in the novel - Alekseevsky) descent to Podol in Kyiv, and the whole situation in it, and first of all the atmosphere about which it is said, is all Bulgakov's... And once you mentally visit the Turbins, you can firmly say, that I visited the very house where the future writer spent his childhood and student youth, and the year and a half that he spent in Kyiv at the height of the civil war.”

Brief message about the history of creation and publication of the work one of the students does at the beginning of the lesson. The main part of the lesson is conversation according to the text of the novel, analysis specific episodes and images.

The focus of this lesson is the novel's depiction of the era of the Revolution and the Civil War. home task– to trace the dynamics of the images of the House and the City, to identify those artistic means with the help of which the writer managed to capture the destructive impact of the war on the peaceful existence of the House and the City.

Guiding questions for the conversation:

Read the first epigraph. What does the symbolic image of a snowstorm provide for understanding the era reflected in the novel?

What do you think explains the “biblical” origin of the work? From what position does the writer look at the events of the Civil War in Russia?

What symbols did the writer use to indicate main conflict era? Why did he choose pagan symbols?

Let's move mentally to the Turbins' house. What in the atmosphere of their home is especially dear to Bulgakov? With the help of what significant details does the writer emphasize the stability of life and existence in this family? (Analysis of chapters 1 and 2, part 1.)

Compare the two “faces” of the City – the former, pre-war one, which Alexey Turbin saw in a dream, and the current one, which has experienced repeated changes of power. Is the tone of the author's narrative different in both accounts? (Chapter 4, part 1.)

What does the writer see as symptoms of the “disease” of the urban organism? Find signs of the death of beauty in the atmosphere of the City, engulfed in the storm of revolution. (Chapters 5, 6, part 1.)

What role in compositional structure Are dreams playing in the novel?

Read Nikolka's dream about the web. How does the symbolism of a dream reflect the dynamics of the images of the House and the City? (Chapter 11, part 1.)

What forces are personified by the mortar that the wounded Alexei Turbin dreamed about? (Chapter 12, part 3.)

How does the content of Vasilisa’s dream about pigs relate to reality, to the reality of the Civil War? (Chapter 20, part 3.)

Consider the episode of the robbery of Vasilisa by the Petliurists. What is the tone of the author's narrative here? Is it possible to call Vasilisa’s apartment a Home? (Chapter 15, part 3.)

What significance do Borodin’s motives have in the novel?

Who is to blame for the fact that the House, the City, the Motherland are on the brink of destruction?

The novel opens with two epigraphs. The first one is from “The Captain’s Daughter” by A.S. Pushkin. This epigraph directly relates to the plot of the work: the action takes place in the frosty and blizzard winter of 1918. “Revenge from the north has long begun, and it sweeps and sweeps,” we read in the novel. It is clear, of course, that the meaning of the phrase is allegorical. Storm, wind, blizzard are immediately associated in the reader’s mind with social cataclysms. “Great was the year and terrible year after the Nativity of Christ 1918...” A terrible era with all the inevitability of stormy and majestic elements is approaching man. The beginning of the novel is truly biblical, if not apocalyptic. Bulgakov views everything that is happening in Russia not from a class position (as, for example, Fadeev in “Destruction”), from cosmic heights the writer looks at the agony of a dying era. “...And two stars stood especially high in the sky: the shepherd star - evening Venus and the red trembling Mars.” The confrontation between Venus and Mars: life and death, love, beauty and war, chaos and harmony – has accompanied the development of civilization from time immemorial. At the height of the Russian Civil War, this confrontation took on especially ominous forms. The writer's use of pagan symbols is intended to emphasize the tragedy of the people, thrown back by bloody horrors to the times of prehistoric barbarism.

Following this, the author’s attention switches to events in private life. The tragedy marked a “time of change” for the Turbin family: there is no longer “mother, the bright queen.” Included in the “general plan” of a dying era is a “close-up plan” of a human funeral. And the reader becomes an involuntary witness of how “the white coffin with the mother’s body was carried down the steep Alekseevsky descent to Podol”, how the deceased was buried in the small church of “Nicholas the Good, which is on Vzvoz”.

All the action in the novel centers around this family. Beauty and tranquility are the main components of the atmosphere of the Turbino house. This is probably why he is so attractive to others. Outside the windows the storm of revolution is raging, but here it is warm and cozy. Describing the unique “aura” of this house, V.G. Boborykin, in the book we have already quoted, very accurately spoke about the “commonwealth of people and things” that reigns here. Here is the black wall clock in the dining room, which has been chiming the minutes in its “native voice” for thirty years: tonk-tank. Here are “old red velvet furniture”, “beds with shiny pine cones”, “a bronze lamp with a lampshade”. You walk through the rooms following the characters and inhale the “mysterious” smell of “antique chocolate” that permeates “the cabinets with Natasha Rostova, the Captain’s Daughter.” Bulgakov writes with a capital letter without quotation marks - after all, it is not the works of famous writers that stand on the shelves of the bookcase; Natasha Rostova, the Captain’s Daughter, and Queen of Spades. And the will of the dying mother, “Live... together,” seems to be addressed not only to the children, but also to the “seven dusty rooms,” and to the “bronze lamp,” and to the “gilded cups,” and to the curtains. And as if fulfilling this covenant, things in the Turbino house are sensitive to changes, even very minor ones, in the rhythm of life and in the mood of the residents. Thus, the guitar, called “Nikolka’s friend,” makes its “tink”, depending on the situation, either “gently and dully” or “vaguely.” “...Because, you see, nothing is really known yet...” the author comments on the instrument’s reaction. At the moment when the state of anxiety in the house reaches its apogee, the guitar is “gloomily silent.” The samovar “sings ominously and spits,” as if warning its owners that “the beauty and strength of life” are under threat of destruction, that the “insidious enemy” “may perhaps break the snowy beautiful city and trample the fragments of peace with his heels.” When the conversation started in the living room about the allies, the samovar began to sing and “coals covered with gray ash fell out onto the tray.” If we remember that the residents of the city called the German troops allied with Hetman Ukraine “gray” because of the color of the pile of “their gray-blue” uniforms, the detail with coals takes on the character of a political prediction: the Germans left the game, leaving the City to defend itself with its own forces. As if having understood the “hint” of the samovar, the Turbin brothers “looked at the stove” questioningly. “The answer is here. Please:

The allies are bastards,” - this inscription on the tile “echoes” the voice of the samovar.

Things treat different people differently. Thus, Myshlaevsky is always greeted by the “loud, thin ringing” of the doorbell. When the hand of Captain Talberg pressed the button, the bell “fluttered”, trying to protect “Yelena the Clear” from the experiences that this “Baltic man”, a stranger to their House, had brought and would still bring her. The black table clock “beat, ticked, and began to shake” at the moment of Elena and her husband’s explanation - and the clock was excited by what was happening: what would happen? When Thalberg hastily packs his things, hastily making excuses to his wife, the watch “chokes contemptuously.” But the “careerist of the General Staff” does not check his life time with his family watch, he has another watch – a pocket watch, which he glances at every now and then, for fear of missing the train. He also has a pocket morality - the morality of a weather vane, thinking about immediate gain. In the scene of Thalberg’s farewell to Elena, the piano bared its white teeth-keys and “showed... the score of Faust...

I pray for your sister,

Have pity, oh, have pity on her!

You protect her,”

which almost moved Talberg, who was by no means prone to sentimentality, to pity.

As we see, things in the Turbino house are humanly worried, worried, interceding, begging, pitying, warning. They are able to listen and give advice. An example of this is Elena’s conversation with her hood after her husband’s departure. The heroine confided her innermost thoughts about her failed marriage to the hood, and the hood “listened with interest, and his cheeks lit up with a bold red light,” “asked: “What kind of person is your husband?” The detail is significant, because Talberg stands outside the “commonwealth of people and things,” although he spent more than a year in the Turbin House from the date of his marriage.

The center of the dwelling is, of course, the “Saardam Carpenter”. One cannot help but feel the heat of its tiles when entering a family abode. “The tiled stove in the dining room warmed and raised little Elenka, senior Alexei and very tiny Nikolka.” On its surface, the stove bears inscriptions and drawings made at different times by family members and Turbino friends. Here are captured humorous messages, declarations of love, and formidable prophecies - everything that was rich in the life of the family at different times.

The inhabitants of the house on Alekseevsky Spusk jealously protect the beauty and comfort of home, the warmth of the family hearth. Despite the anxiety that is increasingly being whipped up in the city atmosphere, “the tablecloth is white and starchy”, “there are cups with delicate flowers on the table”, “the floors are shiny, and in December, now on the table, in a matte, columnar, vase, there are blue hydrangeas and two dark sultry roses, affirming the beauty and strength of life...” You visit, even for a short time, the Turbin family nest - and your soul becomes lighter, and you really begin to think that beauty is indestructible, like “the clock is immortal,” like “the Saardam carpenter is immortal.” , whose “Dutch tile, like a wise rock, is life-giving and hot in the most difficult times.”

So, the image of the House, which was practically absent in Soviet prose of those years, is given one of the main places in the novel “The White Guard”.

Another inanimate but living hero of the book is the City.

“Beautiful in frost and fog...” - this epithet opens the “word” about the City and, ultimately, is dominant in its image. The garden as a symbol of man-made beauty is placed at the center of the description. The image of the City radiates an extraordinary light. At dawn the City wakes up “shining like a pearl in turquoise.” And this divine light - the light of life - is truly unquenchable. “The electric balls shone like precious stones” street lamps at night time. “The City played with light and shimmered, shone, and danced, and shimmered at night until the morning.” What is before us? Is this not the earthly analogue of the city of God, New Jerusalem, which was mentioned in the “Revelation of St. John the Theologian”? We open the Apocalypse and read: “... the city was pure gold, like pure glass. The foundations of the city wall are decorated with precious stones... And the city does not need either the sun or the moon to illuminate it, for the glory of God illuminated it..." The fact that Bulgakov's City is under the protection of God is emphasized by the final lines of the description: "But it shone best of all an electric white cross in the hands of the enormous Vladimir on Vladimirskaya Hill, and was visible far away, and often<…>found by his light<…>the way to the City...” However, let’s not forget that this is how the City was, albeit in the recent, but still past. Now the beautiful face of the former City, the City marked with the seal of heavenly grace, can only be seen in a nostalgic dream.

The New Jerusalem, the “eternal golden City” from Turbino’s dream is opposed to the City of 1918, the unhealthy existence of which makes us recall the biblical legend of Babylon. With the beginning of the war, a diverse audience flocked to the shadow of the Vladimir Cross: aristocrats and bankers who fled from the capital, industrialists and merchants, poets and journalists, actresses and cocottes. The appearance of the City lost its integrity and became shapeless: “The City swelled, expanded, and climbed like sourdough from a pot.” The tone of the author's narration takes on an ironic and even sarcastic tone. The natural course of life was disrupted, the usual order of things fell apart. The townspeople were drawn into a dirty political show. The “operetta”, played around the “toy king” - the hetman, is depicted by Bulgakov with open mockery. The inhabitants of the “non-real kingdom” themselves are having fun making fun of themselves. When the “wooden king” “received checkmate,” no one can laugh: the “operetta” threatens to turn into a terrible mystery performance. “Monsterous” signs follow one after another. The writer talks about some “signs” with epic dispassion: “In broad daylight... they killed none other than the commander-in-chief of the German army in Ukraine...” About others - with undisguised pain: “... torn apart, bloody people ran from the upper City - Pechersk, howling and screaming...", "several houses collapsed..." The third "signs" cause slight ridicule, for example, the "omen" that fell on Vasilisa in the form of a beautiful milkmaid, who announced the rise in price of her goods.

And now the war is on the outskirts of the City, trying to sneak into its core. Deep sorrow can be heard in the author’s voice, telling how peaceful life is crumbling, how beauty is disappearing into oblivion. Everyday sketches receive symbolic meaning from the artist’s pen.

Madame Anjou's salon "Parisian chic", located in the very center of the City, until quite recently served as a center of beauty. Now, with all the unceremoniousness of a rude warrior, Mars has invaded the territory of Venus, and what constituted the guise of Beauty has been turned into “scraps of paper” and “red and green rags.” Next to boxes of ladies' hats are "hand bombs with wooden handles and several circles of machine-gun belts." Next to the sewing machine “a machine gun stuck out its snout.” Both are the creation of human hands, only the first is an instrument of creation, and the second brings destruction and death.

Bulgakov compares the city gymnasium to a giant ship. Once on this ship, “which carried tens of thousands of lives to the open sea,” there was a lot of excitement. Now there is “dead peace” here. The gymnasium garden was turned into an ammunition depot: “... terribly blunt-nosed mortars stick out under a line of chestnuts...” And a little later the “stone box” of the stronghold of enlightenment howls from the sounds of the “terrible march” of the platoon that entered there, and even the rats that “sat in the deep holes” of the basement , “they will be stunned with horror.” We see the garden, the gymnasium, and Madame Anjou’s store through the eyes of Alexei Turbin. The “chaos of the universe” creates confusion in the hero’s soul. Alexey, like many people around him, is unable to understand the reasons for what is happening: “... where did it all go?<…>Why is there a training center at the gymnasium?<…>where did Madame Anjou go and why did the bombs in her store lie next to empty cardboard boxes?” It begins to seem to him that “a black cloud has obscured the sky, that some kind of whirlwind has flown in and washed away all life, like a terrible wave washes away a pier.”

The stronghold of the Turbino House persists with all its might and does not want to surrender to the storm of revolutionary storms. Neither street shooting nor the news of the death of the royal family can at first make its old-timers believe in the reality of the formidable elements. The cold, deathly breath of the blizzard era, both in the literal, literal and figurative sense of the word, first touched the inhabitants of this island with warmth and comfort with the arrival of Myshlaevsky. After Thalberg's escape, the household felt the inevitability of an approaching catastrophe. Suddenly the realization came that “the crack in the vase of Turbino’s life” had formed not now, but much earlier, and all the time while they stubbornly refused to face the truth, life-giving moisture, “good water” “was leaving through it unnoticed,” and now, it turns out, the vessel is almost empty. The dying mother left her children a spiritual will: “Live together.” “And they will have to suffer and die.” “Their life was interrupted at dawn.” “It became more and more terrible all around. In the north the blizzard howls and howls, but here underfoot the disturbed womb of the earth muffles and grumbles dully.” Step by step, the “chaos of the universe” takes over the living space of the House, introducing discord into the “commonwealth of people and things.” The lamp shade is pulled off. There are no sultry roses visible on the table. Elenin’s faded bonnet, like a barometer, indicates that the past cannot be returned, and the present is bleak. Nikolka’s dream about a tight web entangling everything around is permeated with a premonition of trouble threatening the family. It seems so simple: move it away from your face and you will see “the purest snow, as much as you like, entire plains.” But the web entangles tighter and tighter. Will you manage not to suffocate?

With the arrival of Lariosik, a real “poltergeist” begins in the House: the hood is completely torn apart, dishes are falling off the sideboard, and mother’s favorite holiday service is broken. And of course, it’s not about Lariosik, not about this clumsy eccentric. Although to a certain extent Lariosik is a symbolic figure. In a concentrated, “condensed” form, he embodies a quality inherent to varying degrees in all Turbins and, ultimately, in the majority of representatives of the Russian intelligentsia: he lives “in himself,” outside of time and space, not taking into account wars and revolutions, interruptions in delivery of mail and economic troubles: for example, he is sincerely surprised to learn that the Turbins have not yet received a telegram notifying him of his arrival, and he seriously hopes to buy a new one in the store the next day to replace the broken set. But life makes you hear the sound of time, no matter how unpleasant for human hearing, such as the ringing broken dishes, it never happened. So the search for “peace behind the cream curtains” turned out to be in vain for Larion Larionovich Surzhansky.

And now war reigns in the House. Here are her “signs”: “the heavy smell of iodine, alcohol and ether”, “a military council in the living room”. And a Browning in a caramel box, suspended on a rope by the window - isn’t that Death itself reaching for Home? The wounded Alexey Turbin rushes about in the heat of the fever. “That’s why the clock did not strike twelve times, the hands stood silently and looked like a sparkling sword wrapped in a mourning flag. The fault of mourning, the fault of the discord in the life hours of all persons, firmly tied to the dusty and old Turbino comfort, was a thin column of mercury. At three o’clock in Turbin’s bedroom he showed 39.6.” The image of the mortar that the wounded Alexey imagines, the mortar that filled the entire space of the apartment, is a symbol of the destruction to which the War exposes the House. The House did not die, but ceased to be a House in the highest sense of the word; it is now only a shelter, “like an inn.”

Vasilisa’s dream speaks about the same thing – about the destruction of life. The fanged pigs, who blew up the garden beds with their little snouts, personify the destructive forces whose activities have undone the results of centuries of creative work of the people and brought the country to the brink of disaster. In addition to the fact that Vasilisa’s dream about pigs has a general allegorical meaning, it almost directly correlates with a specific episode from the hero’s life - his robbery by Petlyura’s bandits. The nightmare thus merges with reality. The horrifying picture of the destruction of garden vegetation in Vasilisa’s dream echoes real barbarity - with the desecration committed by the Petliurites against the home of the Lisovich couple: “The giant, in packs, easily, like a toy, threw row after row of books from the shelf<…>From the boxes<…>piles of papers, stamps, signets, cards, pens, cigarette cases jumped out.<…>The freak turned the basket over.<…>There was instant chaos in the bedroom: blankets, sheets were pulled out of the mirrored wardrobe, hunched over, the mattress was upside down...” But - a strange thing! – the writer doesn’t seem to sympathize with the character, the scene is described in frankly comic tones. Vasilisa succumbed to the passion of hoarding and turned the shrine of the House into a repository of acquired goods, literally stuffing the flesh of his fortress apartment with numerous hiding places - for this he suffered punishment. During the search, even the chandelier light bulb, which had previously emitted “a dim reddish light from partially heated filaments,” suddenly “flashed bright white and joyful.” “The electricity, flaring up towards night, scattered a cheerful light,” as if it were helping the newly minted property expropriators find hidden treasures.

This dream also serves as an indirect reminder that, in the words of F.M. Dostoevsky, “everyone is guilty before everyone else for everyone else,” that everyone is responsible for what happens around them. The hero of “The Brothers Karamazov” noted: “... only people don’t know this, but if they knew, now it would be paradise!” In order for Vasilisa to realize this truth, to understand that he too was among those who allowed the pink piglets to grow into fanged monsters, it was necessary to survive a bandit raid. Having just recently welcomed the forces that overthrew the autocracy, Vasilisa now unleashes a stream of abuse on the organizers of the so-called revolution: “That’s how the revolution is... a pretty revolution. They should have all been hanged, but now it’s too late...”

Behind the two main images of the novel - the House and the City - one can see another important concept, without which there is no person - the Motherland. We will not find crackling patriotic phrases in Bulgakov, but we cannot help but feel the writer’s pain for what is happening in his fatherland. That is why motifs that could be called “Borodinsky” sound so persistently in the work. Lermontov’s famous lines: “... after all, there were battles!? Yes, they say some more!!! Not yes-a-a-a-rum remembers all of Russia // About Borodin’s Day!!” - amplified by thundering bass under the arches of the gymnasium. Colonel Malyshev develops variations on Borodin's theme in his patriotic speech before the ranks of artillerymen. Bulgakov's hero is similar to Lermontov's in everything:

Our colonel was born with a grip,

Servant to the king, father to the soldiers...

Malyshev, however, did not have to show heroism on the battlefield, but he became a “father to soldiers” and officers in the full sense of the word. And more about this to come.

Glorious Pages Russian history resurrects the panorama of the Borodino battle on the canvas that hangs in the vestibule of the gymnasium, turned into a training camp in this Time of Troubles. The cadets marching along the corridors imagine that the “sparkling Alexander” from the painting is showing them the way with the tip of a broadsword. Officers, warrant officers, cadets - all the same understand that the glory and valor of their ancestors cannot be put to shame now. But the writer emphasizes that these patriotic impulses are destined to go to waste. Soon the artillerymen of the mortar division, betrayed by their superiors and allies, will be disbanded by Malyshev and, in a panic, tearing off their shoulder straps and other signs of military distinction, they will scatter in all directions. “Oh, my God, my God! We need to protect now...But what? Emptiness? The sound of footsteps? Will you, Alexander, save a dying house with the Borodino regiments? Revive them, take them off the canvas! They would have beaten Petlyura.” This plea of ​​Alexey Turbin will also go in vain.

And the question involuntarily arises: who is to blame for the fact that, in the words of Anna Akhmatova, “everything was stolen, betrayed, sold”? Such as the German Major von Schratt, leading double play? People like Talberg or the hetman, in whose perverted, selfish consciousness the content of the concepts of “homeland” and “patriotism” has been emasculated to the limit? Yes they. But not only them. Bulgakov's heroes are not without a sense of responsibility, guilt for the chaos into which the House, the City, and the Fatherland as a whole have been plunged. “They were sentimentalizing life,” Turbin Sr. sums up his thoughts about the fate of his homeland, about the fate of his family.

LESSON #3

“AND WE WAS EACH JUDGED ACCORDING TO HIS WORKS”

The subject of consideration at this lesson-seminar The theme is “Man and War”. The main question to be answered:

- How does the moral essence of a person manifest itself in extreme situations of the Civil War and what is the meaning of the second epigraph in this regard - a quote from the Revelation of John the Theologian (Apocalypse)?

In preparation for the seminar, high school students analyze at home the episodes proposed by the teacher (the language teacher distributes material for self-preparation among the students in advance). Thus, the “core” of the lesson is the children’s performances. If necessary, the teacher supplements the students' messages. Of course, anyone can also make additions during the seminar. The results of the discussion of the central problem are summed up collectively.

Episodes offered for analysis during the seminar:

1. Thalberg's departure (Part 1, Chapter 2).

2. Myshlaevsky’s story about the events near the Red Tavern (Part 1, Chapter 2).

3. Two speeches by Colonel Malyshev before officers and cadets

(Part 1, Chapter 6,7).

4. The betrayal of Colonel Shchetkin (part 2, chapter 8).

5. The death of Nai-Tours (part 2, chapter 11).

6. Nikolka Turbin helps the Nai-Turs family (Part 3, Chapter 17).

7. Elena’s prayer (part 3, chapter 18).

8. Rusakov reads the Holy Scripture (Part 3, Chapter 20).

9. Alexey Turbin’s dream about God’s paradise (part 1, chapter 5).

War reveals the “wrong side” human souls. The fundamentals of personality are being tested. According to the eternal laws of justice, everyone will be judged “according to their deeds,” the author states, placing lines from the apocalypse in the epigraph. The theme of retribution for what one has done, the theme of moral responsibility for one’s actions, for the choices that a person makes in life, is the leading theme of the novel.

And the actions different people different, as well as theirs life choice. “A careerist of the General Staff” and an opportunist with “double-layered eyes,” Captain Talberg, at the first danger, runs abroad “at a rat’s pace,” most unscrupulously abandoning his wife to the mercy of fate. “He’s a bastard. Nothing else!<…>Oh, damned doll, devoid of the slightest concept of honor! - this is the description Alexey Turbin gives to Elena’s husband. Alexey speaks with contempt and disgust about the “shifters” with a weathervane philosophy: “The day before yesterday I asked this channel, Doctor Kuritsky, he, if you please, has forgotten how to speak Russian since November last year. There was Kuritsky, and now Kuritsky became... Mobilization<…>, it’s a pity that you didn’t see what was happening in the police stations yesterday. All currency traders knew about the mobilization three days before the order. Great? And everyone has a hernia. Everyone has the apex of their right lung, and those who don’t have the apex simply vanished, as if they had fallen through the ground.”

There are quite a few people like Talberg, people who destroyed the beautiful City and betrayed their loved ones on the pages of the novel. This is the hetman, and Colonel Shchetkin, and other, as Myshlaevsky puts it, “staff bastard.” Colonel Shchetkin's behavior is characterized by particular cynicism. While the people entrusted to him are freezing in the chain under the Red Tavern, he is sipping cognac in a warm first-class carriage. The price of his “patriotic” speeches (“Gentlemen officers, all the city’s hope is in you. Justify the trust of the dying mother of Russian cities”) is clearly revealed when Petliura’s army approaches the City. In vain do the officers and cadets wait tensely for orders from headquarters; in vain do they disturb the “telephone bird.” “Colonel Shchetkin had not been at headquarters since the morning...” Secretly changing into a “civilian shaggy coat,” he hastily departed for Lipki, where in the alcove of a “well-furnished apartment” he was embraced by a “plump golden blonde.” The tone of the author’s narration becomes furious: “The cadets of the first squad knew nothing of this. It's a pity! If they had known, then perhaps inspiration would have struck them, and instead of spinning around under the shrapnel sky near Post-Volynsky, they would have gone to a cozy apartment in Lipki, taken the sleepy Colonel Shchetkin out of there and, having taken him out, would have hanged him on the lamppost, just opposite the apartment with the golden lady.”

The figure of Mikhail Semenovich Shpolyansky, “a man with snake eyes and black sideburns,” attracts attention. Rusakov calls him the forerunner of the Antichrist. “He's young. But there are abominations in him, like in the thousand-year-old devil. He persuades wives to debauchery, young men to vice...” - Rusakov explains the definition given to Shpolyansky. Onegin's appearance did not prevent the chairman of the Magnetic Triplet from selling his soul to the devil. “He left for the kingdom of the Antichrist in Moscow to give a signal and lead hordes of angels to this City,” says Rusakov, referring to Shpolyansky’s transition to Trotsky’s side.

But, thank God, the world does not rest on people like Talberg, Shchetkin or Shpolyansky. Bulgakov’s favorite heroes, in extreme circumstances, act according to their conscience and courageously fulfill their duty. So, Myshlaevsky, protecting the City, freezes in a light overcoat and boots in the terrible cold with forty officers like him, framed by the “staff bastard.” Almost accused of treason, Colonel Malyshev acts the only honestly in the current situation - he dismisses the cadets to their homes, realizing the pointlessness of resisting the Petliurists. Nai-Tours, like a father, takes care of the corps entrusted to him. The reader cannot help but be touched by the episodes telling how he receives felt boots for the cadets, how he covers the retreat of his charges with machine-gun fire, how he rips off Nikolka’s shoulder straps and shouts in the voice of a “cavalry trumpet”: “Udigai, you stupid mavy!” Govogyu – udigai!” The last thing the commander had time to say was: “...God go to hell…” He dies with a sense of accomplishment, sacrificing himself to save seventeen-year-old boys, stuffed with false patriotic slogans, who dreamed, like Nikolka Turbin, of a high feat on the battlefield. Naya's death is a real feat, a feat in the name of life.

The Turbins themselves turn out to be people of duty, honor and considerable courage. They do not betray their friends or their beliefs. We see their readiness to defend their Motherland, City, Home. Alexey Turbin is now a civilian doctor and could not take part in hostilities, but he enlists in the Malyshev division along with comrades Shervinsky and Myshlaevsky: “Tomorrow, I have already decided, I am going to this very division, and if your Malyshev does not take me as a doctor, I will go as a private." Nikolka did not manage to show the heroism on the battlefield that he dreamed of, but he, in a completely adult way, copes with the duties of a non-commissioned officer superbly in the absence of Staff Captain Bezrukov and the department commander, who shamefully fled. Turbin Jr. led twenty-eight cadets across the entire City to the battle lines and was ready to give his life for his native City. And, probably, I really would have lost my life if it weren’t for Nai-Tours. Then Nikolka, risking herself, finds Nai-Tours’ relatives, steadfastly endures all the horrors of being in the anatomy, helps bury the commander, and visits the mother and sister of the deceased.

In the end, Lariosik also became a worthy member of the Turbino “commonwealth”. An eccentric poultry farmer, he was initially greeted quite warily by the Turbins and was perceived as a nuisance. Having endured all the hardships with his family, he forgot about the Zhitomir drama and learned to look at other people's troubles as his own. Having recovered from his wound, Alexey thinks: “Lariosik is very cute. He doesn't interfere with the family. No, rather needed. We must thank him for leaving...”

Consider also the episode of Helen's prayer. The young woman displays amazing selflessness; she is ready to sacrifice personal happiness so that her brother is alive and well. “Mother Intercessor,” Elena addresses the blackened face of the Mother of God, kneeling in front of the old icon. -<…>Have pity on us.<…>Let Sergei not return... If you take it away, take it away, but don’t punish this with death... We are all guilty of blood. But don’t punish.”

The writer also gave moral insight to such a character as Rusakov. At the end of the novel we find him, in the recent past the author of blasphemous poems, reading the Holy Scriptures. The city dweller, who is a symbol of moral decay (“the star rash” of syphilitic on the poet’s chest is a symptom not only of physical illness, but also of spiritual chaos), turned to God - which means the situation of “this City, which is rotting just like” Rusakov, is by no means not hopeless, which means the Road to the Temple has not yet been covered by the storms of the revolution. The path to salvation is not closed to anyone. Before the Almighty of the Universe there is no division into red and white. The Lord is equally merciful to all the orphans and the lost, whose souls are open to repentance. And we must remember that one day we will have to answer to eternity and that “everyone will be judged according to his deeds.”

LESSON #4

"BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD"

- With the victory of which side does the symbolic duel between Venus and Mars end in the novel?

The search for an answer to this question, fundamental to the artistic concept of the work, forms the “core” of the final lesson. When preparing for a lesson, you can divide students into two groups, relatively speaking, “Martians” and “Venusians”. Each group receives a preliminary task to select textual material and think through arguments in favor of “their” side.

The lesson takes place in the form dispute. Representatives of the disputing parties take turns taking the floor. The teacher, of course, guides the discussion.

Group of students No. 1

Mars: war, chaos, death

1. Funeral of the victims of the Popelyukha massacre (Part 1, Chapter 6).

Read the conversation heard in the crowd by Alexey Turbin. What do witnesses to the event see as symptoms of the end of the world?

Why was Alexei also overcome by a wave of hatred? When did he become ashamed of his actions?

2. Depiction of Jewish pogroms in the novel (Part 2, Chapter 8; Part 3, Chapter 20).

How did these episodes reflect the brutality of war?

With what details does Bulgakov show that human life extremely devalued?

3. “Hunting” people on the streets of the City (using the example of the escape of Alexei Turbin) (Part 3, Chapter 13).

Read the passage, starting with the words: “Point-blank at him, along the Proriznaya sloping street...” and ending with the phrase: “Seventh for yourself.” What comparison does the writer find in order to convey the inner state of a person “running under bullets”?

Why did man turn into a hunted beast?

4. Conversation between Vasilisa and Karas (part 3, chapter 15).

Is Vasilisa right in her assessment of the revolution? Do you think the author agrees with his hero?

5. Church service in St. Sophia Cathedral during the “reign” of Petliura (part 3, chapter 16).

How is the motive of devilry realized in this episode?

What other scenes in the novel depict the rampant “evil spirits” in the City?

6. Arrival of the armored train “Proletary” at the Darnitsa station (part 3, chapter 20).

Can the arrival of the Bolsheviks in the City be considered a victory for Mars?

What details are intended to emphasize the militant, “Martian” nature of proletarian power?

Material for preparing for the lesson

Group of students No. 2

Venus: peace, beauty, life

1. Alexey Turbin and Yulia Reis (part 3, chapter 13).

Tell us about the hero's miraculous rescue. In what symbolic meaning this episode?

2. Three meetings of Nikolka Turbin (part 2, chapter 11).

What feelings did the meeting with “Nero” stir up in the hero’s soul? How did Nikolka manage to suppress her hatred?

Retell the episode where Nikolka acts as a savior.

What struck Nikolka about the yard scene?

3. Lunch at the Turbins (part 3, chapter 19).

How has the situation in the Turbins’ house changed?

Did the “commonwealth of people and things” manage to survive?

4. Elena’s dream and Petka Shcheglov’s dream (part 3, chapter 20).

What does the future promise for Bulgakov's heroes?

What is the significance of dreams for identifying the author’s concept of life and era?

5. “Starry” landscape at the end of the novel.

Read the landscape sketch. As you understand final words author about the stars?

The motif of the end of the world runs through the entire work. "- God… last times. What is this, people are being slaughtered?..” Alexey Turbin hears on the street. Civil and property rights of a person are trampled upon, the inviolability of the home is forgotten, and human life itself is devalued to the limit. The episodes of Feldman's murder and the reprisal against an unknown street passer-by are horrifying. Why, for example, did they hit the head of “civilian” Yakov Feldman, who was running to the midwife, with a saber? For hastily presenting the “wrong” document to the new authorities? For supplying a strategically important product to the city garrison - lard? Or because the centurion Galanba wanted to “go wild” in reconnaissance? “Jewish…” was heard addressed to Yakov Grigorievich, as soon as his “cat pie” appeared on the deserted street. Bah, this is the beginning of the Jewish pogrom. Feldman never made it to the midwife. The reader will not know what happened to Feldman’s wife. The ways of the Lord are inscrutable, especially the paths swept away by the storm of “internecine warfare.” A man was in a hurry to help the birth of a new life, but he found death. The scene of the massacre of an unknown street passer-by, which completes the depiction of Jewish pogroms, can cause nothing but horror and shudder. Unjustified cruelty. Under the pen of the writer, this episode outgrows the framework of a private tragic incident and acquires a global symbolic meaning. Bulgakov forces the reader to look death itself in the face. And think about the cost of life. “Will anyone pay for the blood?” - asks the writer. The conclusion he draws is not very comforting: “No. Nobody... Blood is cheap on the fields of hearts, and no one will buy it back. Nobody". The formidable apocalyptic prophecy truly came true: “The third angel poured out his cup into the rivers and springs of water; and there was blood." Father Alexander read these words to Turbin Sr. and he turned out to be right a hundredfold. It is clear that Bulgakov does not see the revolution as a struggle for the lofty idea of ​​people's happiness. Chaos and senseless bloodshed - that’s what revolution is, in the eyes of the writer. “The revolution has already degenerated into Pugachevism,” says engineer Lisovich Karasyu. It seems that Bulgakov himself could subscribe to these words. Here they are, the deeds of the newly-minted Pugachev: “Yes, sir, death did not slow down.<…>She herself was not visible, but, clearly visible, she was preceded by a certain clumsy peasant anger. He ran through the snowstorm and cold in holey bast shoes<…>and howled. In his hands he carried a great club, without which not a single undertaking in Rus' can be completed. Light red cockerels fluttered..." But Bulgakov’s Vasilisa sees the main danger of the revolution for society not so much in political turmoil, in the destruction of material values, but in spiritual turmoil, in the fact that the system of moral taboos has been destroyed: “But the point, my dear, is not one alarm! No signal can stop the collapse and decay that has made its nest in human souls.” However, only Pugachevism would be good, otherwise it’s demonism. Evil spirits are swaggering on the streets of the city. There is no more New Jerusalem. There is no Babylon either. Sodom, real Sodom. It is no coincidence that Turbines read “Demons” by F.M. Dostoevsky. Under the arches of the gymnasium, Alexei Turbin imagines squeaking and rustling, “as if demons have woken up.” The writer associates the apotheosis of demonism with the arrival of the Petliurists in the city. "Peturra", a former prisoner of the cell with the mystical number 666 - is this not Satan? During the period of his “reign”, even a festive church service turns into a cathedral sin: “Through all the aisles, in a rustle, a roar, a half-suffocated crowd, intoxicated with carbon dioxide, was carried. Painful cries of women broke out every now and then. Pickpockets with black mufflers worked hard with concentration, moving scientific virtuoso hands through the clumped lumps of crushed human meat. Thousands of legs crunched...

And I'm not glad I went. What is this being done?

May you be crushed, you bastard...”

The church gospel does not bring enlightenment either: “The heavy Sofia bell on the main bell tower hummed, trying to cover up all this terrible chaos. The small bells were yapping, blaring, out of tune and rhythmically, side by side, as if Satan had climbed up the bell tower, the devil himself in a cassock and, amusingly, was raising a hubbub... The little bells were rushing and screaming, like furious dogs on a chain.” The religious procession turns into devilry as soon as Petliura’s forces stage a military “parade” on the old Sofia Square. The elders on the porch say nasally: “Oh, when the end of the century ends, // And then the Last Judgment approaches...” It is extremely important to note that both the religious procession and the parade of Petlyura’s gangs close in, finding a single conclusion in the roundup of those “who are in uniform” , in the shooting of white officers in the front garden of a church. The blood of the victims literally cries out... no, not even from the ground - from heaven, from the dome of the St. Sophia Cathedral: “Completely suddenly burst in the gap between the domes Gray background, and the sudden sun appeared in the muddy darkness. It was... completely red, like pure blood. From the ball... streaks of dried blood and ichor stretched out. The sun stained the main dome of Sofia with blood, and a strange shadow fell on the square...” This bloody glow falls a little later on both the speaker agitating the soviets gathered for power, and the crowd leading the “Bolshevik provocateur” to reprisal. The end of Petlyura does not, however, become the end of devilry. Next to Shpolyansky, who in the novel is called an agent of the devil-Trotsky, “Peturra” is just a minor demon. It was Shpolyansky who led the subversive operation to disable the military equipment of the Petliurites. Presumably, he did this on instructions from Moscow, where he left, according to Rusakov, to prepare for the offensive of the “kingdom of the Antichrist.” At the end of the novel, Shervinsky reports over dinner that a new army is moving towards the City:

“- Small, like cockades, five-pointed... on hats. They say they are coming like a cloud... In a word, they will be here at midnight...

Why such precision: at midnight..."

As you know, midnight is the favorite time for the “pranks” of evil spirits. Are these not the same “hordes of angels” sent at the signal of the satanic henchman Shpolyansky? Is it really the end of the world?

The final 20th chapter opens with the words: “Great was the year and terrible was the year after the Nativity of Christ, 1918, but 1919 was worse than it.” The scene of the murder of a passerby by the Haidamak division is followed by a meaningful landscape sketch: “And at that moment, when the lying man gave up the ghost, the star Mars above the settlement near the City suddenly exploded in the frozen heights, sprayed fire and struck a deafening blow.” Mars celebrates victory. “Beyond the windows, the icy night blossomed more and more victoriously... The stars played, contracting and expanding, and the red and five-pointed star - Mars - was especially high.” Even the blue, beautiful Venus gets a reddish tint. “Five-pointed Mars” reigning in the starry firmament - is this not a hint of Bolshevik terror? And the Bolsheviks were not slow to appear: the armored train “Proletary” arrived at the Darnitsa station. And here is the proletarian himself: “And near the armored train... a man in a long overcoat, torn felt boots and a pointed doll-head walked like a pendulum.” The Bolshevik sentry feels a blood connection with the warlike planet: “An unprecedented firmament grew in a dream. All red, sparkling and all dressed by Mars in their living sparkle. The man’s soul was instantly filled with happiness... and from the blue moon of the lantern, from time to time a response star sparkled on the man’s chest. It was small and also five-pointed.” What did the servant come to the City of Mars with? He brought the peoples not peace, but a sword: “He tenderly cherished the rifle in his hand, like a tired mother of a child, and next to him walked between the rails, under a meager lantern, in the snow, a sharp sliver of black shadow and a shadowy silent bayonet.” He would probably have frozen at his post, this hungry, brutally tired sentry, if he had not been awakened by a shout. So did he really stay alive only to sow death around himself, fueled by the cruel energy of Mars?

And yet the author’s concept of life and the historical era does not end in pessimism. Neither wars nor revolutions can destroy beauty, for it forms the basis of universal human existence. Taking refuge in Madame Anjou's store, Alexey Turbin notes that, despite the chaos and bombs, there "still smells of perfume... faintly, but it smells."

Indicative in this regard are the pictures of the flight of both Turbins: the elder, Alexey, and the younger, Nikolka. There is a real “hunt” for people. The writer compares a man running “under gunfire” to a hunted animal. As he runs, Alexey Turbin squints his eyes “quite like a wolf” and bares his teeth as he shoots back. The mind, which is unnecessary in such cases, is replaced by, as the author puts it, “a wise animal instinct.” Nikolka, “fighting” with Nero (as the cadet silently dubbed the red-bearded janitor who locked the gate), Bulgakov compares either to a wolf cub or to a fighting cock. For a long time afterwards, the heroes will be haunted both in their dreams and in reality by cries: “Try! Try! However, these paintings mark a person’s breakthrough through chaos and death to life and love. Salvation appears to Alexei in the form of a woman of “extraordinary beauty” - Julia Reis. It’s as if Venus herself descended from heaven to shield the hero from death. True, based on the text, a comparison of Julia with Ariadne rather suggests itself, who leads Theseus-Turbin out of the corridor of city gateways, bypassing the numerous tiers of some “fairy-tale white garden” (“Look at the labyrinth... as if on purpose,” Turbin thought very vaguely...” ) to a “strange and quiet house”, where the howl of revolutionary whirlwinds is not heard.

Nikolka, having escaped from the clutches of the bloodthirsty Nero, not only saves himself, but also helps out the foolish young cadet. So Nikolka continued the relay of life, the relay of goodness. To top it all off, Nikolka witnesses a street scene: kids are playing peacefully in the courtyard of house No. 7 (lucky number!). Surely a day earlier the hero would not have found anything remarkable in this. But the fiery marathon through the city streets made him look at a similar backyard incident differently. “They ride peacefully like that,” Nikolka thought in surprise. Life is life, it goes on. And the kids slide down the slide on sleds, laughing merrily, in their childish naivety not understanding “why they’re shooting up there.” However, the war left its ugly mark on children's souls. The boy who stood aside from the kids and picked his nose answered Nikolka’s question with calm confidence: “They’re beating the officers.” The phrase sounded like a sentence, and Nikolka shuddered at what was said: at the crudely colloquial “officer” and especially at the word “ours” - evidence that even in children’s perceptions, reality was split by the revolution into “us” and “strangers.”

Having reached the house and waited for some time, Nikolka goes “on reconnaissance.” He, of course, did not learn anything new about what was happening in the City, but upon his return he saw through the window of the outbuilding adjacent to the house how neighbor Marya Petrovna was washing Petka. The mother squeezed the sponge on the boy’s head, “the soap got into his eyes,” and he whimpered. Nikolka, chilled in the cold, felt with all his being the peaceful warmth of this home. It also warms the reader’s soul, who, together with Bulgakov’s hero, thinks about how wonderful it is, in essence, when a child cries just because soap got into his eyes.

The Turbins had to endure a lot during the winter of 1918-1919. But, despite the adversity, at the end of the novel, everyone gathers again in their house for a common meal (except, of course, for the escaped Talberg). “And everything was as before, except for one thing - the gloomy, sultry roses did not stand on the table, for the Marquise’s destroyed candy bowl, which had gone into an unknown distance, apparently to where Madame Anjou also rests, no longer existed for a long time. There were no shoulder straps on any of those sitting at the table, and the shoulder straps floated away somewhere and disappeared into the snowstorm outside the windows.” In the warm House you can hear laughter and music. The piano belts out the “Double Headed Eagle” march. The “Commonwealth of People and Things” survived, and that’s the main thing.

The outcome of the novel’s action is summed up by a whole “cavalcade” of dreams. The writer sends a prophetic dream to Elena about the fate of her relatives and friends. In the compositional structure of the novel, this dream plays the role of a kind of epilogue. And Petka Shcheglov, who lives next door to the Turbins in the outbuilding, runs in his sleep across a green meadow, stretching out his arms towards the shining ball of the sun. And I would like to hope that the child’s future will be as “simple and joyful” as his dream, which affirms the indestructibility of the beauty of the earthly world. Petka “laughed with pleasure in his sleep.” And the cricket “chirped merrily behind the stove,” echoing the child’s laughter.

The novel is crowned with a picture of a starry night. Above the “sinful and bloody land” rises the “midnight cross of Vladimir”, from a distance reminiscent of a “threatening sharp sword" “But he’s not scary,” the artist assures. - All will pass. Suffering, torment, blood, famine and pestilence. The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain.< >So why don't we want to turn our gaze to them? Why?" The writer calls on each of us to look at our earthly existence from a different perspective and, having felt the breath of eternity, to measure our behavior in life with its steps.

The result of studying the topic “Literature of the 20s” - paperwork.

Indicative essay topics

The image of the City as the semantic center of the novel “The White Guard”.

“Whoever has not built a house is not worthy of land.” (M. Tsvetaeva.)

The fate of the Russian intelligentsia in the era of revolution.

The symbolism of dreams in the novel "The White Guard".

A man in the whirlwind of war.

“Beauty will save the world” (F. Dostoevsky).

“...Only love holds and moves life.” (I. Turgenev.)

Boborykin V.G. Michael Bulgakov. A book for high school students. – M.: Education, 1991. – P. 6.

Boborykin V.G. Michael Bulgakov. A book for high school students. – M.: Education, 1991. – P. 68.

A work of art always resists analysis: you often don’t know which side to approach. And yet the author leaves us the opportunity to penetrate into the depth of the text. The main thing is to see the tip of the thread, pulling which will unwind the entire ball. One of these author’s “clues” is the title of the work.

In the 20th century, titles with a “complicated” meaning became widespread. They, according to the modern writer Umberte Eco, serve as a means for the author to “disorient” the reader. The White Guard was no exception. The traditional perception of the epithet “white” is associated with its political meaning. But let's think about it. In the city (it is clearly read: in Kyiv) we will see glimpses of German soldiers, the troops of Hetman Skoropadsky, Petlyura’s detachments, Red Army soldiers... But no “White Guards”, i.e. officers of the Volunteer (“White”) Army, which was then just being formed in the distance from Kyiv, not in the novel. There are cadets and former officers of the tsarist army who know from whom to defend themselves, but do not know whom to defend. And yet the novel is called “The White Guard”.

Additional meanings of the word “white” are introduced by both epigraphs. The line of the Apocalypse (“And the dead were judged according to what was written in the books according to their deeds”) makes one read the title differently, as “Heavenly Host,” “the host of Christ in white robes,” seems to completely exclude political themes. Suffice it to recall the words heard in the novel: “... all of you, Zhilin, are the same to me - killed on the battlefield.”

The meaning of the name "White Guard" will be further clarified if we turn to the second epigraph - Pushkin's. On the one hand, he actualizes the image of a historical catastrophe as a natural catastrophe (remember, by the way, Blok’s “The Twelve”), on the other hand, a similar situation is a blizzard, a desert plain, a lost traveler in Pushkin’s familiar poem “Demons.”

Color in art and the color scheme of the novel "The White Guard"

Once upon a time, color in art had an allegorical meaning. Evil was designated black, virtue and purity of thoughts - white, hope - blue, joy - scarlet. In the era of classicism, each color also had a special meaning: a certain quality, feeling, phenomenon. A unique and sophisticated “language of flowers” ​​emerged. Powdered wigs were sophisticated in the names of each shade; Ippolit Kuragin from Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” was proud of the cloth the color of “the thighs of a frightened nymph.” The color scheme of the outfit or the bouquet in the lady’s hands contained a whole message that the gentleman could understand.

In the era of romanticism, color becomes an iconic phenomenon. Pale face and dark clothing are signs of a romantic hero. Dr. Werner from A Hero of Our Time is always dressed in black, and his limp and charming ugliness emphasize the character's attractive demonism. Refusal from bright to coarse cosmetics is typical for appearance romantic young lady. The pompous variegation of the 18th century is replaced by simple, “natural” colors.

In realistic art, color conveys the richness of the palette of the world, the task of color detail is the accuracy of description. Bulgakov inherits the traditions of realism, but lives in an era when poetry has become “dark” and is built on distant associations, when painting began to depict not “as in life”, but as one sees it (a red horse bathes in a blue river). Color created a stable emotional motive, the melody of the image.

The color scheme of the novel “The White Guard” is white, black, red, gray, green, gold, blue. It is not at all necessary that each color has one specific meaning. For example, green is the color of the lampshade, the color of the schoolgirls’ aprons, and this color is the color of the door of the morgue in which Nikolka is looking for Nai-Tours’ body... And yet the main images of the novel have their own, unique flavor.

M. Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard” was written in 1923-1925. At that time, the writer considered this book to be the main one in his destiny, he said that this novel “will make the sky hot.” Years later he called him "a failure." Perhaps the writer meant that that epic in the spirit of L.N. Tolstoy, which he wanted to create, did not work out.

Bulgakov was a witness revolutionary events in Ukraine. He outlined his view of his experience in the stories “The Red Crown” (1922), “The Extraordinary Adventures of the Doctor” (1922), “Chinese History” (1923), “The Raid” (1923). Bulgakov’s first novel with the bold title “The White Guard” became, perhaps, the only work at that time in which the writer was interested in the experiences of a person in a raging world, when the foundation of the world order is collapsing.

One of the most important motives of M. Bulgakov’s work is the value of home, family, and simple human affections. The heroes of The White Guard are losing the warmth of their home, although they are desperately trying to preserve it. In her prayer to the Mother of God, Elena says: “You are sending too much grief at once, intercessor mother. So in one year you end your family. For what?.. My mother took it from us, I don’t have a husband and never will, I understand that. Now I understand very clearly. And now you’re taking away the older one too. For what?.. How will we be together with Nikol?.. Look what is happening around, look... Intercessor Mother, won’t you have mercy?.. Maybe we are bad people, but why punish like that? -That?"

The novel begins with the words: “The year after the Nativity of Christ 1918 was a great and terrible year, the second from the beginning of the revolution.” Thus, as it were, two systems of counting time, chronology, two systems of values ​​are proposed: traditional and new, revolutionary.

Remember how at the beginning of the 20th century A.I. Kuprin depicted the Russian army in the story “The Duel” - decayed, rotten. In 1918, the same people who made up the pre-revolutionary army, and Russian society in general, found themselves on the battlefields of the Civil War. But on the pages of Bulgakov’s novel we see not Kuprin’s heroes, but rather Chekhov’s ones. Intellectuals, who even before the revolution were yearning for a bygone world and understood that something needed to be changed, found themselves in the epicenter of the Civil War. They, like the author, are not politicized, they live their own lives. And now we find ourselves in a world in which there is no place for neutral people. The Turbins and their friends desperately defend what is dear to them, singing “God Save the Tsar,” tearing off the fabric hiding the portrait of Alexander I. Like Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, they do not adapt. But, like him, they are doomed. Only Chekhov's intellectuals were doomed to vegetation, and Bulgakov's intellectuals were doomed to defeat.

Bulgakov likes the cozy Turbino apartment, but everyday life is not valuable for a writer in itself. Life in the “White Guard” is a symbol of the strength of existence. Bulgakov leaves the reader no illusions about the future of the Turbin family. Inscriptions from the tiled stove are washed away, cups are broken, and the inviolability of everyday life and, therefore, existence is slowly but irreversibly destroyed. The Turbins' house behind the cream curtains is their fortress, a refuge from the blizzard, blizzard raging outside, but it is still impossible to protect yourself from it.

Bulgakov's novel includes the symbol of a blizzard as a sign of the times. For the author of The White Guard, the blizzard is a symbol not of the transformation of the world, not of the sweeping away of everything that has become obsolete, but of the evil principle, violence. “Well, I think it will stop, the life that is written about in chocolate books will begin, but not only does it not begin, but all around it becomes more and more terrible. In the north the blizzard howls and howls, but here underfoot the disturbed womb of the earth muffles and grumbles dully.” The blizzard force destroys the life of the Turbin family, the life of the City. White snow in Bulgakov it does not become a symbol of purification.

“The provocative novelty of Bulgakov’s novel was that five years after the end of the Civil War, when the pain and heat of mutual hatred had not yet subsided, he dared to show the officers of the White Guard not in the poster guise of the “enemy,” but as ordinary, good and bad, tormented and deluded, smart and limited people, showed them from the inside, and the best in this environment - with obvious sympathy. What does Bulgakov like about these stepsons of history who lost their battle? And in Alexey, and in Malyshev, and in Nai-Turs, and in Nikolka, he most of all values ​​​​courageous straightforwardness, loyalty to honor,” notes literary critic V.Ya. Lakshin. The concept of honor is the starting point that determines Bulgakov’s attitude towards his heroes and which can be taken as a basis in a conversation about the system of images.

But despite all the sympathy of the author of “The White Guard” for his heroes, his task is not to decide who is right and who is wrong. Even Petliura and his henchmen, in his opinion, are not the culprits of the horrors taking place. This is a product of the elements of rebellion, doomed to quickly disappear from the historical arena. Kozyr, who was a bad school teacher, would never have become an executioner and would not have known about himself that his calling was war, if this war had not begun. Many of the heroes’ actions were brought to life by the Civil War. “War is a native mother” for Kozyr, Bolbotun and other Petliurists, who take pleasure in killing defenseless people. The horror of war is that it creates a situation of permissiveness and undermines the foundations of human life.

Therefore, for Bulgakov it does not matter whose side his heroes are on. In Alexey Turbin’s dream, the Lord says to Zhilin: “One believes, the other doesn’t believe, but you all have the same actions: now each other is at each other’s throats, and as for the barracks, Zhilin, then you have to understand this, I have you all, Zhilin, identical - killed on the battlefield. This, Zhilin, must be understood, and not everyone will understand it.” And it seems that this view is very close to the writer.

V. Lakshin noted: “Artistic vision, the mindset of the creative mind always embraces a broader spiritual reality than can be verified by evidence of simple class interest. There is a biased class truth that has its own right. But there is a universal, classless morality and humanism, smelted by the experience of mankind.” M. Bulgakov stood in the position of such universal humanism.

Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (1891–1940) - a writer with a difficult, tragic fate that influenced his work. Coming from an intelligent family, he did not accept revolutionary changes and the reaction that followed them. The ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity imposed by the authoritarian state did not inspire him, because for him, a person with education and high level intelligence, the contrast between the demagoguery in the squares and the wave of red terror that swept Russia was obvious. He deeply felt the tragedy of the people and dedicated the novel “The White Guard” to it.

In the winter of 1923, Bulgakov began work on the novel “The White Guard,” which describes the events of the Ukrainian Civil War at the end of 1918, when Kyiv was occupied by the troops of the Directory, which overthrew the power of Hetman Pavel Skoropadsky. In December 1918, officers tried to defend the hetman's power, where Bulgakov was either enrolled as a volunteer or, according to other sources, was mobilized. Thus, the novel contains autobiographical features - even the number of the house in which the Bulgakov family lived during the capture of Kyiv by Petlyura is preserved - 13. In the novel, this number takes on a symbolic meaning. Andreevsky Descent, where the house is located, is called Alekseevsky in the novel, and Kyiv is simply called the City. The prototypes of the characters are the writer’s relatives, friends and acquaintances:

• Nikolka Turbin, for example, is Bulgakov’s younger brother Nikolai
• Dr. Alexey Turbin is a writer himself,
• Elena Turbina-Talberg - younger sister Varvara
• Sergei Ivanovich Talberg - officer Leonid Sergeevich Karum (1888 - 1968), who, however, did not go abroad like Talberg, but was ultimately exiled to Novosibirsk.
• The prototype of Larion Surzhansky (Lariosik) is a distant relative of the Bulgakovs, Nikolai Vasilyevich Sudzilovsky.
• The prototype of Myshlaevsky, according to one version - Bulgakov's childhood friend, Nikolai Nikolaevich Syngaevsky
• The prototype of Lieutenant Shervinsky is another friend of Bulgakov, who served in the hetman’s troops - Yuri Leonidovich Gladyrevsky (1898 - 1968).
• Colonel Felix Feliksovich Nai-Tours is a collective image. It consists of several prototypes - firstly, this is the white general Fyodor Arturovich Keller (1857 - 1918), who was killed by the Petliurists during the resistance and ordered the cadets to run and tear off their shoulder straps, realizing the meaninglessness of the battle, and secondly, this is Major General Nikolai of the Volunteer Army Vsevolodovich Shinkarenko (1890 – 1968).
• There was also a prototype from the cowardly engineer Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich (Vasilisa), from whom the Turbins rented the second floor of the house - architect Vasily Pavlovich Listovnichy (1876 - 1919).
• The prototype of the futurist Mikhail Shpolyansky is a major Soviet literary scholar and critic Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky (1893 – 1984).
• The surname Turbina is the maiden name of Bulgakov’s grandmother.

However, it should also be noted that “The White Guard” is not a completely autobiographical novel. Some things are fictitious - for example, that the Turbins’ mother died. In fact, at that time, the Bulgakovs’ mother, who is the prototype of the heroine, lived in another house with her second husband. And there are fewer family members in the novel than the Bulgakovs actually had. The entire novel was first published in 1927–1929. in France.

About what?

The novel “The White Guard” is about the tragic fate of the intelligentsia during the difficult times of the revolution, after the assassination of Emperor Nicholas II. The book also tells about the difficult situation of officers who are ready to fulfill their duty to the fatherland in conditions of shaky, unstable political situation in the country. The White Guard officers were ready to defend the hetman's power, but the author poses the question: does this make sense if the hetman fled, leaving the country and its defenders to the mercy of fate?

Alexey and Nikolka Turbins are officers ready to defend their homeland and the former government, but in front of a cruel mechanism political system they (and people like them) find themselves powerless. Alexei is seriously wounded, and he is forced to fight not for his homeland or for the occupied city, but for his life, in which he is helped by the woman who saved him from death. And Nikolka runs away at the last moment, saved by Nai-Tours, who is killed. With all their desire to defend the fatherland, the heroes do not forget about family and home, about the sister left by her husband. The antagonist character in the novel is Captain Talberg, who, unlike the Turbin brothers, leaves his homeland and his wife in difficult times and goes to Germany.

In addition, “The White Guard” is a novel about the horrors, lawlessness and devastation that are happening in the city occupied by Petliura. Bandits with forged documents break into the house of engineer Lisovich and rob him, there is shooting in the streets, and the master of the kurennoy with his assistants - the “lads” - commit a cruel, bloody reprisal against the Jew, suspecting him of espionage.

In the finale, the city, captured by the Petliurists, is recaptured by the Bolsheviks. The White Guard clearly expresses a negative, negative attitude towards Bolshevism - as destructive force, which will ultimately wipe out everything holy and human from the face of the earth, and a terrible time will come. The novel ends with this thought.

The main characters and their characteristics

• Alexey Vasilievich Turbin- a twenty-eight-year-old doctor, a division doctor, who, paying a debt of honor to the fatherland, enters into a battle with the Petliurites when his unit was disbanded, since the fight was already pointless, but is seriously wounded and forced to flee. He falls ill with typhus, is on the verge of life and death, but ultimately survives.
• Nikolai Vasilievich Turbin(Nikolka) - a seventeen-year-old non-commissioned officer, Alexei’s younger brother, ready to fight to the last with the Petliurists for the fatherland and hetman’s power, but at the insistence of the colonel he runs away, tearing off his insignia, since the battle no longer makes sense (the Petliurists captured the City, and the hetman escaped). Nikolka then helps her sister care for the wounded Alexei.
• Elena Vasilievna Turbina-Talberg(Elena the redhead) is a twenty-four-year-old married woman who was left by her husband. She worries and prays for both brothers participating in hostilities, waits for her husband and secretly hopes that he will return.
• Sergei Ivanovich Talberg- captain, husband of Elena the Red, unstable in his political views, who changes them depending on the situation in the city (acts on the principle of a weather vane), for which the Turbins, true to their views, do not respect him. As a result, he leaves his home, his wife and leaves for Germany by night train.
• Leonid Yurievich Shervinsky- lieutenant of the guard, a dapper lancer, admirer of Elena the Red, friend of the Turbins, believes in the support of the allies and says that he himself saw the sovereign.
• Victor Viktorovich Myshlaevsky- lieutenant, another friend of the Turbins, loyal to the fatherland, honor and duty. In the novel, one of the first harbingers of the Petliura occupation, a participant in the battle a few kilometers from the City. When the Petliurists break into the City, Myshlaevsky takes the side of those who want to disband the mortar division so as not to destroy the lives of the cadets, and wants to set fire to the building of the cadet gymnasium so that it does not fall to the enemy.
• crucian carp- a friend of the Turbins, a reserved, honest officer, who, during the dissolution of the mortar division, joins those who disband the cadets, takes the side of Myshlaevsky and Colonel Malyshev, who proposed such a way out.
• Felix Feliksovich Nai-Tours- a colonel who is not afraid to defy the general and disbands the cadets at the moment of the capture of the City by Petliura. He himself dies heroically in front of Nikolka Turbina. For him, more valuable than the power of the deposed hetman is the life of the cadets - young people who were almost sent to the last senseless battle with the Petliurists, but he hastily disbands them, forcing them to tear off their insignia and destroy documents. Nai-Tours in the novel is the image of an ideal officer, for whom not only the fighting qualities and honor of his brothers in arms are valuable, but also their lives.
• Lariosik (Larion Surzhansky)- a distant relative of the Turbins, who came to them from the provinces, going through a divorce from his wife. Clumsy, a bungler, but good-natured, he loves to be in the library and keeps a canary in a cage.
• Yulia Alexandrovna Reiss- a woman who saves the wounded Alexei Turbin, and he begins an affair with her.
• Vasily Ivanovich Lisovich (Vasilisa)- a cowardly engineer, a housewife from whom the Turbins rent the second floor of his house. He is a hoarder, lives with his greedy wife Wanda, hides valuables in secret places. As a result, he is robbed by bandits. He got his nickname, Vasilisa, because due to the unrest in the city in 1918, he began to sign documents in a different handwriting, abbreviating his first and last name as follows: “You. Fox."
• Petliurists in the novel - only gears in a global political upheaval, which entails irreversible consequences.

Subjects

1. Theme of moral choice. The central theme is the situation of the White Guards, who are forced to choose whether to participate in meaningless battles for the power of the escaped hetman or still save their lives. The Allies do not come to the rescue, and the city is captured by the Petliurists, and, ultimately, the Bolsheviks are the real force threatening the old way of life and political system.
2. Political instability. Events unfold after the events of the October Revolution and the execution of Nicholas II, when the Bolsheviks seized power in St. Petersburg and continued to strengthen their positions. The Petliurists who captured Kyiv (in the novel - the City) are weak in front of the Bolsheviks, as are the White Guards. “The White Guard” is a tragic novel about how the intelligentsia and everything connected with them perish.
3. The novel contains biblical motifs, and in order to enhance their sound, the author introduces the image of a patient obsessed with the Christian religion who comes to doctor Alexei Turbin for treatment. The novel begins with a countdown from the Nativity of Christ, and just before the end, lines from the Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian. That is, the fate of the City, captured by the Petliurists and Bolsheviks, is compared in the novel with the Apocalypse.

Christian symbols

• A crazy patient who came to Turbin for an appointment calls the Bolsheviks “angels,” and Petliura was released from cell No. 666 (in the Revelation of John the Theologian - the number of the Beast, the Antichrist).
• The house on Alekseevsky Spusk is No. 13, and this number, as is known in popular superstitions, is the “devil’s dozen”, an unlucky number, and various misfortunes befall the Turbins’ house - the parents die, the older brother receives a mortal wound and barely survives, and Elena is abandoned and the husband betrays (and betrayal is a trait of Judas Iscariot).
• The novel contains the image of the Mother of God, to whom Elena prays and asks to save Alexei from death. In the terrible time described in the novel, Elena experiences similar experiences as the Virgin Mary, but not for her son, but for her brother, who ultimately overcomes death like Christ.
• Also in the novel there is a theme of equality before God's court. Everyone is equal before him - both the White Guards and the soldiers of the Red Army. Alexey Turbin has a dream about heaven - how Colonel Nai-Tours, white officers and Red Army soldiers get there: they are all destined to go to heaven as those who fell on the battlefield, but God doesn’t care whether they believe in him or not. Justice, according to the novel, exists only in heaven, and on the sinful earth atheism, blood, and violence reign under red five-pointed stars.

Issues

The problematic of the novel “The White Guard” is the hopeless, plight of the intelligentsia, as a class alien to the winners. Their tragedy is the drama of the entire country, because without the intellectual and cultural elite, Russia will not be able to develop harmoniously.

• Dishonor and cowardice. If the Turbins, Myshlaevsky, Shervinsky, Karas, Nai-Tours are unanimous and are going to defend the fatherland to the last drop of blood, then Talberg and the hetman prefer to flee like rats from a sinking ship, and individuals like Vasily Lisovich are cowardly, cunning and adapt to existing conditions.
• Also, one of the main problems of the novel is the choice between moral duty and life. The question is posed bluntly - is there any point in honorably defending a government that dishonorably leaves the fatherland in the most difficult times for it, and there is an answer to this very question: there is no point, in this case life is put in first place.
• The split of Russian society. In addition, the problem in the work “The White Guard” lies in the attitude of the people to what is happening. The people do not support the officers and White Guards and, in general, take the side of the Petliurists, because on the other side there is lawlessness and permissiveness.
• Civil War. The novel contrasts three forces - the White Guards, Petliurists and Bolsheviks, and one of them is only intermediate, temporary - the Petliurists. The fight against the Petliurists will not be able to have such a strong impact on the course of history as the fight between the White Guards and the Bolsheviks - two real forces, one of which will lose and sink into oblivion forever - this is the White Guard.

Meaning

In general, the meaning of the novel “The White Guard” is struggle. The struggle between courage and cowardice, honor and dishonor, good and evil, God and the devil. Courage and honor are the Turbins and their friends, Nai-Tours, Colonel Malyshev, who disbanded the cadets and did not allow them to die. Cowardice and dishonor, opposed to them, are the hetman, Talberg, staff captain Studzinsky, who, afraid to violate the order, was going to arrest Colonel Malyshev because he wants to disband the cadets.

Ordinary citizens who do not participate in hostilities are also assessed in the novel according to the same criteria: honor, courage - cowardice, dishonor. For example, female characters - Elena, waiting for her husband who left her, Irina Nai-Tours, who was not afraid to go with Nikolka to the anatomical theater for the body of her murdered brother, Yulia Aleksandrovna Reiss - this is the personification of honor, courage, determination - and Wanda, the wife of engineer Lisovich, stingy, greedy for things - personifies cowardice, baseness. And engineer Lisovich himself is petty, cowardly and stingy. Lariosik, despite all his clumsiness and absurdity, is humane and gentle, this is a character who personifies, if not courage and determination, then simply kindness and kindness - qualities that are so lacking in people at that cruel time described in the novel.

Another meaning of the novel “The White Guard” is that those who are close to God are not those who officially serve him - not churchmen, but those who, even in a bloody and merciless time, when evil descended to earth, retained the grains of humanity in themselves, and even if they are Red Army soldiers. This is told in the dream of Alexei Turbin - a parable from the novel “The White Guard”, in which God explains that the White Guards will go to their paradise, with church floors, and the Red Army soldiers will go to theirs, with red stars, because both of them believed in the offensive good for the fatherland, albeit in different ways. But the essence of both is the same, despite the fact that they are on different sides. But the churchmen, “servants of God,” according to this parable, will not go to heaven, since many of them departed from the truth. Thus, the essence of the novel “The White Guard” is that humanity (goodness, honor, God, courage) and inhumanity (evil, devil, dishonor, cowardice) will always fight for power over this world. And it doesn’t matter under what banners this struggle will take place - white or red, but on the side of evil there will always be violence, cruelty and base qualities, which must be opposed by goodness, mercy, and honesty. In this eternal struggle, it is important to choose not the convenient, but the right side.

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Novel "The White Guard" (1925)