Which of the domestic prose writers or poets addressed the topic of destination artistic creativity and in what way is their position consonant with the thoughts of the author of "Dead Souls"?
M.Yu. Lermontov in the poem "Prophet" and M.A. Bulgakov in The Master and Margarita.
Bulgakov's hero The Master is an unrecognized writer working on a novel about Pontius Pilate. Like Gogol, Bulgakov's creative process is a huge amount of work, tension, which is not always appreciated by the crowd and leads to misunderstanding between it and the artist.
In Lermontov's poem, the poet is a prophet endowed with a talent from above. Like the artist misunderstood by others, described in a passage by Gogol, the work of the lyrical hero Lermontov leads to loneliness, to his expulsion from society, which also did not want to hear the truth and admit its vices.
Lermontov writes: “I began to proclaim love / And pure teachings of truth: / All my neighbors / Threw stones at me furiously.”
How does the above passage reveal the problem of the relationship between the artist and the crowd (Dead Souls)?
This passage - lyrical digression Gogol, in which he discusses the relationship between the artist and the crowd. One of the poets, praising and idealizing everything lofty, but ignoring the "sad in life", is popular among the people and is considered a genius. The second one, who tells the bitter truth and terrible reality in his works, turns out to be an outcast, because he is not understood and appreciated. Gogol believes that the crowd is unable to distinguish between high, real creativity, which addresses topical issues, from false and hypocritical. He accuses the crowd that they do not want to know the terrible reality, turning a blind eye to it, but only amuse themselves with literature in which the writer admires those around him.
What personality traits of the visitor are revealed in this fragment?
This fragment reveals to us many character traits of a visitor - Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov.
First of all, this is a person who loves to flatter high-ranking people: “In conversations with these rulers, he was very skillfully able to flatter everyone.” He knows the approach to any person: “he casually hinted to the governor that you are entering his province like in paradise”, “he said something very flattering to the police chief”. Chichikov is prudent, he knows that without groveling before the officials he will not win their favor.
In an effort to please the nobles, he takes care of himself: “he rubbed both cheeks with soap for an extremely long time”, “plucked out two hairs that had come out of his nose.”
Undoubtedly, Chichikov knows how to arouse sympathy and keep up a conversation with anyone. However, all his words are saturated with hypocrisy, that character trait that he needs to ensure the success of his enterprise associated with buying dead shower.
Ball at the Governor's. "Dead Souls" by N.V. Gogol.
Artist E.E. Bernard (1818-1889)
- How did N.V. Gogol define the genre of "Dead Souls"?
Answer:________
Answer:_________
3. What is the name of the visual medium used by N. Gogol in this passage in literary criticism?
“Thick people never occupy indirect places, but all direct, and even if they sit down where, then sit down secure and strong…”
Answer:__________
4. Establish a correspondence between quotes from this passage and the types of officials - fat or thin: for each position in the first column, select the corresponding position from the second column.
Write in the table the selected numbers under the corresponding letters.
| A | B | IN |
5. What is the name artistic technique, which the author used when describing the appearance of thick and thin?
Answer:__________
7. What is the name of this passage in which the author expresses his thoughts, feelings, observations?
Answer:___________
8. Which men - fat or thin - did Chichikov join and why?
9. In what works of Russian classics does the theme of “thin and thick”, the theme of servility sound? How do these works relate to N.V. Gogol's "Dead Souls"?
ANSWERS
2.antithesis
3. metaphor
5.portrait
6. diminutive vocabulary
8. Chichikov joined the "thin" for the following reasons:
- This kind of people attracted him, he aspired to be like them: to become rich, wealthy, to have weight in society.
- Chichikov was sure that he already looked like them, considered himself a part of this society
- “Thick and thin” is an allegorical description of people occupying the opposite place in society: some are members of the elite, high society, these are rich, wealthy people holding high and prestigious positions; others belong to the category of people who have not reached such a position. Some of the subtle ones have come to terms with this situation, while others are striving to get out of it with all their might. This is a criticism of servility, cringing.
This topic is reflected in the story of A.P. Chekhov "Thick and Thin". Two heroes, familiar from childhood - a classmate at the gymnasium, met after many years. One is a typical representative of the "thick", the other - "thin". The author showed how the attitude of one of them, Porfiry, changed dramatically when he learned that Mikhail was already a state councilor and still had two stars. The friendly tone changed to an obsequious one, Porfiry and his whole family even changed outwardly - they all seemed to bend in a bow, pulled themselves up, catered, servilely. There are no more classmates left, we have only "fat" and "thin" in front of us.
The same themes are one of the main ones in A.S. Griboyedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit”. - a representative of the "fat", the world of gentlemen, and - a typical "thin" with his flattery, servility, desire to please everyone who can somehow be involved in his promotion.
How close Chichikov is to these heroes - both of them. Eternal theme respect for rank, evaluating people according to their position in society, and not according to what they are - this unites all these works.
Option number 53
Demo version of GIA-2014 in Literature.
When completing tasks with a short answer, enter in the answer field the number that corresponds to the number of the correct answer, or a number, a word, a sequence of letters (words) or numbers. The answer should be written without spaces or any additional characters. Performing tasks 1, 2, give an answer in the approximate volume of 3-5 sentences based on the text. Task 3 involves not only thinking about the proposed text, but also comparing it with another work or fragment, the approximate length of the answer is 5-8 sentences. For task 4, give a detailed reasoned answer in the genre of an essay with a volume of at least 200 words (an essay with a volume of less than 150 words is scored with zero points). Analyze a literary work, based on the position of the author, using the necessary theoretical and literary concepts for the analysis of the work. Write down the answer clearly and legibly, observing the rules of speech.
If the option is set by the teacher, you can enter or upload answers to the tasks with a detailed answer into the system. The teacher will see the results of the short answer assignments and will be able to grade the uploaded answers to the long answer assignments. The points given by the teacher will be displayed in your statistics.
Version for printing and copying in MS Word
1.1.1. What features of Chichikov's nature appeared in his internal monologue?
Read the fragment of the work below and complete tasks 1.1.1-1.1.2.
Chichikov looked very attentively at the young stranger. He tried several times to talk to her, but somehow he didn't have to. And meanwhile the ladies drove off, the pretty head with thin features and a thin waist disappeared, like something like a vision, and again there was left the road, the carriage, the trio of horses familiar to the reader, Selifan, Chichikov, the smoothness and emptiness of the surrounding fields. Everywhere, wherever in life, whether among its callous, rough-poor and untidy-staining base ranks, or among the monotonous-cold and boring-tidy classes of the upper classes, everywhere at least once on the way a person will meet a phenomenon that is not like all that what he had seen until then, which at least once aroused in him a feeling unlike those that he was destined to feel all his life. Everywhere, no matter what the sorrows from which our life is woven, shining joy will merrily rush, as sometimes a brilliant carriage with golden harness, picture horses and sparkling glass of glass will suddenly suddenly rush past some stalled poor village that has seen nothing but village carts, and for a long time the peasants stand, yawning, with their mouths open, without putting on their hats, although the marvelous carriage has long been carried away and disappeared from sight. So the blonde also suddenly appeared in a completely unexpected way in our story and disappeared in the same way. Get caught at that time instead of Chichikov by some twenty-year-old youth, whether he is a hussar, whether he is a student, or just just starting his career, and God! whatever wakes up, stirs, speaks in him! For a long time he would have stood insensibly in one place, staring senselessly into the distance, forgetting the road, and all the reprimands ahead, and scolding for delay, forgetting himself, and the service, and the world, and everything that is in the world.
But our hero was already middle-aged and of a prudently chilled character. He, too, pondered and thought, but more positively, his thoughts were not so unaccountable and even partly very thorough. "Glorious grandmother!" he said, opening his snuff-box and sniffing the snuff. “But what, the main thing, is good in it? The good thing is that she is now only, apparently, released from some boarding school or institute; that in it, as they say, there is still nothing womanish, that is, precisely that they have the most unpleasant thing. She is now like a child, everything in her is simple: she will say what she pleases, laugh where she wants to laugh. Everything can be done from it, it can be a miracle, or it can turn out to be rubbish, and rubbish will come out! Now let only mothers and aunts take care of it now. In one year, it will be filled with all sorts of women so much that the father himself will not recognize it. Where will the puffiness and stiffness come from; he will toss and turn according to his instructions, he will rack his brains and figure out with whom, and how, and how much to say, how to look at whom; every minute will be afraid to
do not say more than necessary; she will finally get confused herself, and end up lying at last all her life, and it will turn out just the devil knows what! Here he was silent for some time and then added: “But it would be interesting to know whose it is? what, like her father? Is it a wealthy landowner of respectable character, or just a well-meaning person with capital acquired in the service? After all, if, let's say, this girl was given two hundred thousand dowry, a very, very tasty morsel could come out of her. This could be, so to speak, the happiness of a decent person. Two hundred thousand dollars began to be drawn so attractively in his head that he began to inwardly become annoyed with himself, why, in continuation of the fuss about the carriages, he did not find out from the postilion or the coachman who the passers-by were. Soon, however, the appearance of Sobakevich's village scattered his thoughts and forced them to turn to their permanent subject.
N.V. Gogol "Dead Souls"
1.2.1. What mood is imbued with the poem "There is in the autumn of the original ..."?
1.2.2. What role do epithets play in the poem "There is in the original autumn ..."?
1.2.3. What is the difference between the pictures of autumn nature in the poems of F.I. Tyutchev “There is in the original autumn ...” and N.A. Nekrasov "Before the rain"
Read the following texts and complete the task. ***
Is in the autumn of the original
Short but wonderful time -
The whole day stands as if crystal,
And radiant evenings ...
Where a peppy sickle walked and an ear fell,
Now everything is empty - space is everywhere,
Only cobwebs of thin hair
Shines on an idle furrow.
The air is empty, the birds are no longer heard,
But far from the first winter storms -
And pure and warm azure pours
To the resting field...
F. I. Tyutchev, 1857 Before the rain
A mournful wind drives
I flock clouds to the edge of heaven,
Broken spruce groans,
The dark forest whispers dully.
On the stream, pockmarked and motley,
A leaf flies after a leaf,
And a stream dry and sharp
The cold is coming.
Twilight falls on everything;
Flying from all sides,
Whirling in the air with a cry
A flock of jackdaws and crows.
Above the roadway
The top is lowered, the front is closed;
And went! "- standing up with a whip,
The gendarme shouts to the driver...
ON THE. Nekrasov, 1846
Solutions to tasks with a detailed answer are not checked automatically.
On the next page, you will be asked to check them yourself.
1.1.3. Compare fragments of N. V. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls" and D. I. Fonvizin's comedy "Undergrowth". In what way is Skotinin similar to Chichikov, who thought about the "young stranger"?
Skotinin. Why can't I see my bride? Where is she? In the evening there will be an agreement, so isn't it time for her to say that she is being married off?
Ms. Prostakova. We'll make it, brother. If she is told this ahead of time, then she may still think that we are reporting to her. Although by my husband, however, I am a relative of hers; And I love that strangers listen to me.
Prostakov ( Skotinin) . To tell the truth, we treated Sofyushka like a real orphan. After her father, she remained a baby. Tom, with six months, as her mother, and my fiancé, had a stroke ...
Ms. Prostakova ( shows as if baptizing the heart). The power of the cross is with us.
Prostakov. From which she went into the next world. Her uncle, Mr. Starodum, went to Siberia; and since for several years now there has been neither a rumor nor news about him, we consider him dead. We, seeing that she was left alone, took her to our village and oversee her estate as if it were our own.
Ms. Prostakova. Why are you so upset today, my father? Another brother might think that we took her to us for the sake of interest.
Prostakov. Well, mother, how can he think it? After all, Sofyushkino's real estate cannot be moved to us.
Skotinin. And although the movable has been put forward, I am not a petitioner. I don't like to bother, and I'm afraid. No matter how much the neighbors offended me, no matter how much damage they did, I didn’t hit anyone with my forehead, and any loss, than to go after him, I’ll tear off my own peasants, and the ends are in the water.
Prostakov. That's true, brother: the whole neighborhood says that you are a masterful collector of dues.
Ms. Prostakova. If only you would teach us, brother father; and we can't. Since we took away everything that the peasants had, we can no longer tear anything off. Such trouble!
Skotinin. If you please, sister, I will teach you, I will teach you, just marry me to Sofyushka.
Ms. Prostakova. Do you really like this girl?
Skotinin. No, I don't like a girl. Choose only ONE of the suggested essay topics (2.1–2.4). In the answer sheet, indicate the number of the topic you have chosen, and then write an essay of at least 200 words (if the essay is less than 150 words, then it is estimated at 0 points).
Rely on the author's position (in the essay on lyrics, consider the author's intention), formulate your point of view. Argument your thesis based on literary works(in an essay on lyrics, it is necessary to analyze at least two poems). Use literary-theoretical concepts to analyze the work. Consider the composition of the essay. Write your essay clearly and legibly, following the rules of speech.
2.1. Satirical denunciation of officials in the poem by N.V. Gogol's Dead Souls.
2.2. What philosophical questions does F.I. Tyutchev in his poems?
2.3. Why V.G. Belinsky called Eugene Onegin "willy-nilly selfish"? (Based on the novel by A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin")
2.4. War in the lyrics of Russian poets of the second half of the 20th century. (On the example of poems by one of the poets of the student's choice)
2.5. What plots from the works of domestic and foreign literature are relevant to you and why? (Based on the analysis of one or two works.)
Solutions to tasks with a detailed answer are not checked automatically.
On the next page, you will be asked to check them yourself.
Finish testing, check answers, see solutions.
At the time of the creation of The Inspector General, Gogol had already begun work on Dead souls". According to the original plan, they were supposed to differ from The Inspector General, in addition to the genre, by a greater and, in principle, all-encompassing breadth of the critical depiction of serf morals. The plot suggested by Pushkin dead souls"That was what was attractive to Gogol because it gave him the opportunity, together with their hero, the future Chichikov, to" travel "throughout Russia and show, although "from one side", negative, but "all of Rus'." But soon this creative task gave way to another, immeasurably more voluminous and complex - along with everything bad, “to expose to the eyes of the people” and all the good that lurked in the depths of Russian life and promised the possibility of its national revival.
Such a significant restructuring of the concept of "Dead Souls" did not at all mean a fundamental ideological and creative reorientation of Gogol. On the contrary, it should be seen as a logically natural and mature result of the writer's initial inclination towards the utmost breadth of artistic generalization, towards the artistic integration of objective contradictions. public life in their world historical perspective. But the social “disorders” of Russian feudal reality and Western European bourgeois reality, so acutely felt by the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls, both before and now seemed to him the product of the spiritual mortification of mankind. Hence the Dead Souls. Respectively social issues"Dead Souls", as well as "The Government Inspector", is integrated in their figurative fabric by the problem of the spiritual state, or rather the lack of spirituality of the "modern" and, above all, "Russian man". In letters to various people, Gogol repeatedly and insistently explained that “it is not at all the province, and not a few ugly landowners, and not what is attributed to them, is the subject of Dead Souls”, that the real and only subject of their author’s “art” is "man and the soul of man", and " modern man' and the 'current state' of his 'soul'.
All the social vices of feudal reality are related in Dead Souls to temporary, painful distortions of the true and good qualities of the Russian character and, thus, in the idea, they are dialectically combined with them as their own opposite. But there are other characters in “Dead Souls” that reflect the “superficial” features of the time that are unusual for Russian nature, alien to it at the root: for example, Colonel Koshkarev is an undoubted and angry satire on bureaucracy.
The concept of the Russian character receives its artistic embodiment in socially concrete images of ruling and bureaucratic existences, this time already of the provincial scale, but, like their district predecessors from the Inspector General, characterizing various “shades” of the moral pathology of serfdom at all its social levels .
The social problems of "Dead Souls" cannot be understood outside of their moral and psychological problems, just like the latter - outside of its specific social content. But in order to discover the point of their combination, it is necessary to take into account Gogol's fundamental philosophical and aesthetic conviction, formulated in his statements about Pushkin and Herder, - the conviction that the "reality" of socio-historical life is made up of "little things", that in the little things, in their contradictory diversity and both positive and negative tendencies of social existence and development, its ideal “straight road” and all temporary “deviations” from it are realized.
A striking and one-of-a-kind combination of fragmentation, detail, and hence concreteness artistic analysis with the philosophical and historical "ideality" of artistic synthesis is a unique originality creative method Gogol, the unified basis of his realistic essence and often romantic attire.
"Dead Souls" - the first and only work of Gogol, or rather, the first and only artistic intent a writer in whom the principle of the contradiction between the “reality” of Russian life and its “fertile grain” was combined with the task of discovering this grain no longer in history, but in the most contemporary reality for the writer, in its own potentialities. The realistic character of this grandiose plan is obvious. But its historical limitations are just as obvious. It is expressed in the fact that the "fertile grain" of Russian life for Gogol was hidden not in the social, democratic tendencies of its development, but in the national specificity of the spiritual "nature" of the Russian person.
For the author of Dead Souls, the artistic analysis of specific phenomena of social life and consciousness is not an end in itself, but a means of revealing their national essence, its “distortions” and good opportunities, as well as the figurative embodiment of both in accordance with the real conditions of contemporary Russian life. Here Gogol's realistic plan reveals its utopian side, which prevented its full implementation. The positive tendencies of national development sought by Gogol were not yet ripe enough for their full-blooded artistic embodiment. But for Gogol they were not only national tendencies, but also purely spiritual, psychological, and therefore their self-purification and self-rebirth seemed to the writer the only possible way to national revival. For Gogol, the historical youth of the Russian people, which was just entering the mature age of its national development and called upon to take over from the no less great, but already “aging” peoples of Western European countries, the baton of historical progress served as an objective guarantee of it.
Thus, the question of the future of the Russian people is combined in Dead Souls with the question of the future of all civilized mankind and the overcoming of the deepest contradictions and negative aspects of bourgeois civilization. In the national aspect, this most important question for Russian literature was posed by Pushkin:
Where are you galloping, proud horse.
And where will you lower your hooves?
The same question ends the first volume of "Dead Souls": "Rus, where are you rushing?". But it is no longer addressed to the “proud horse” - a symbol of Russian statehood, Europeanized (“reared”) by Peter, but to the “bird troika” - a symbol of the national element of Russian life, its future and world-historical self-determination. Certainly the entire nation as a certain historical individuality, or a person who has not yet spoken, but is called upon to tell the world his new word for him, to introduce his line into the "biography" of mankind.
The democratic and objectively revolutionary meaning of this philosophical and historical framing of the concept of Dead Souls, dating back to Herder, consisted in the idea of historical amateur performance, the moral awakening of the Russian “national spirit”, and thereby the masses of the people, through criticism and self-criticism of the public, according to Gogol, moral consciousness. Being far from the idealization of the enslaved peasantry, as evidenced in the first and second volumes of "Dead Souls" by Selifan and Petrushka, Uncles Minyay and Mityai and much more, Gogol at the same time in Chichikov's lyrical thoughts about the "souls" of the dead peasants he had just bought very transparently hinted at their mental and moral superiority over those who sell and buy them, and who previously had sole control over their destinies.
The "Bird Troika" and its swift flight are a direct antithesis of Chichikov's britzka and its monotonous, monotonous circling along the provincial impassability from one landowner to another. But after all, the “bird troika” is the same Chichikov’s britzka, only “ideally” transformed, breaking out in the author’s imagination from its tedious wanderings in a circle onto a straight, largely mysterious, but majestic road of world historical scale and significance. The miraculous transformation exposes, and demonstratively, the symbolic ambiguity of the whole artistic structure of the idea and its embodiment in the first volume of "Dead Souls" as an epic of the national spirit, its movement from dead sleep to a new and beautiful life. Hence - not a novel, but a “poem”, which, by design, encompasses all the essential properties and historically heterogeneous states of the “Russian man” and, in this sense, is focused on the epic of Homer, and at the same time on the “Divine Comedy” of Dante. The latter is suggested by the three-part construction of Gogol's "poem", conceived in the form of an epic trilogy. Its first part (the first and only completed volume) is devoted to the analytical image modern writer dead state of the "Russian man", painful and ugly growths on the "body" of Russian life. Each of these outgrowths is analyzed separately and, as if under a microscope, and in such an enlarged form, striking "indifferent eyes", is personified in one of the "strange heroes" of the story. Strange not only because they are depicted “from one side”, a purely negative one, but also because each of them “exposes to the eyes of the people” only one of the many ugly growths on the national body of Russian life.
Prompted by The Divine Comedy, the understanding of everything depicted in the first volume as the “hell” of feudal reality, and in the second volume as its “purgatory” and the intention to depict its future “paradise” in the third volume is beyond doubt and has been noted more than once by critics and researchers. But the deep and still not fully clarified meaning of this undoubted fact lies in a much more complex assimilation of the existing national existence and its historical prospects to the national soul that has become lost and finds its true path, which in turn is likened to the human soul. The human soul in all its three dimensions - individual, national and universal - is the true hero of Gogol's "poem", the philosophical and aesthetic indicator of all the phenomena and processes of Russian and Western European reality reflected in the "poem", the artistic form of their understanding, mainly psychological.
The innovation of "Dead Souls", their realistic quality, the enormous power of social influence on contemporaries and paramount importance for the subsequent development and self-determination of Russian realism, and finally, their artistic imperishability - all this taken together is due to the social acuteness and universal capacity of the psychological discoveries of their author, the psychologism of his artistic method. But this is a psychologism of a special kind, a special transitional property from romanticism to realism, which has as its subject matter not social psychology in its individual, personal expression, but national psychology in its socially typical manifestations.
The psychologism of the artistic method of the creator of "Dead Souls" has not yet been appreciated and even resolutely denied by some - and very authoritative - researchers, but only because it is measured by the principles of the socio-psychological method of mature Russian realism, which really are not yet applicable to him.
Gogol did not reach the point of understanding and portraying the individual as a bunch of social contradictions. The "strange heroes" of Gogol's poem do not and cannot claim the value of individualized, in the words of Balzac, social types according to their programmed psychological one-linearity and immobility. But the deliberate mask-like immobility and unambiguity of the internal and external appearance of each of the characters is colored with a multitude of the finest, life-reliant shades, which characterize the psychological dominant of each, his “ardor”, in a variety of ways, volumetrically, - primarily by means of speech characteristics, its basically dialogic form, which gives most of the episodes a stage character, brings them closer to the structure of The Inspector General and other Gogol comedies. But in addition, the physical characteristics and everyday, material surroundings are of great importance - the condition of peasant huts and outbuildings, the atmosphere of a manor house, the appearance and clothes of its owner. As a result, from the pages of the first volume of Dead Souls, an image of serfdom reality that shocked contemporaries with its vulgarity and authenticity, represented not only by its landlord and bureaucratic layers, but also by serf and tavern servants, barefoot girls and a number of similar characters, emerges that shocked contemporaries.
Episodic characters differ from the main ones only by a significantly smaller amount of characterization, but, despite their social polarity, they are described close-up the heroes of the story, like them, are individual strokes of the "vulgarity" of feudal reality. Her major character traits, depicted separately in one or another character, interact with the equally one-line "excitement" of other characters as details of a single portrait of a certain historical figure, her fallen into a dream national soul.
Everything converges to this center, including stillness. plot composition village heads of the first volume. There is essentially no development of action as such. There is only a monotonous repetition of the same situation - Chichikov's visits to one landowner after another in order to purchase the revision "souls" of the dead peasants, and the conversation (dialogue) on this topic again proceeds completely monotonously in terms of plot, with the exception of visiting Nozdryov. The “subtle” hints of Chichikov that begin it at first cause bewilderment in his interlocutor, sometimes suspicions and fears, and in the end everything ends with the same thing: a scam profitable for both. What then is the "interest" of the story?
In what has already been said - in the infinite variety of psychological shades and everyday details of the same monotonously repetitive action. The strength of its artistic effect lies in the symbolic ambiguity of its psychological pattern.
If the chaise of Chichikov, from the entrance of which the narration begins to the provincial town of N., is not just an ordinary “road projectile”, but at the same time a symbol of the monotonous whirling of the “soul” of the “Russian man” that has gone astray from the straight path, then the country roads along which this chaise travels, is also not only a realistic picture of the actual Russian off-road, but also a symbol of the crooked path of national development, again associated with a false path, a false purposefulness of the life of each of the existences, especially Chichikov. This is directly and directly stated in the second volume in the words of Murazov, addressed to Khlobuev and Chichikov.
The road - in all its meanings - is the compositional core of the narrative, combining its spatial coordinates (the Russian provincial city, i.e., the administrative center and its local district) with the temporal (movement of the britzka) into a symbol of "all Rus'" and its path from feudal death to great future.
The very name of the poem is symbolic - "Dead Souls". Its literal meaning, connected with the plot, is the dead peasants, who are not deleted from the audit (tax) lists, and are called “souls” in the language of official documents. But in addition, these are the dead souls of the owners of living and dead peasant souls, concealing, however, the possibility of their awakening.
In the third volume, some of them were to be resurrected and turned into statesmen full of wisdom and virtue. First of all - Plyushkin and Chichikov. The ultimate goal of the poem - to show the "heroes of virtue" - logically corresponded to the image and interpretation of the "heroes of shortcomings" as carriers of the falsely directed good properties of the Russian national character. With regard to Chichikov, this is perseverance, indomitable energy, willpower, although aimed at achieving an unworthy goal by unworthy means. In relation to Plyushkin - wise economic thrift, inherent in him earlier and turned into a monstrous stinginess in old age.
The age characteristic of the landlords, the existence of the first volume and Chichikov, also has a symbolic subtext. Pointless daydreaming is characteristic of youth. But it is unforgivable to a person and people who have reached the age of "fierce courage." The coming time of the historical maturity of the Russian people is symbolized by average age all the close-ups of the heroes of the first volume, including Chichikov and excluding Plyushkin. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the narrative begins with the empty dreamer Manilov, a symbol of the youthful good-heartedness of a person and people who have been delayed in their development, and ends with Plyushkin, again with a symbolic warning about the danger of an irreversible spiritual ossification of a nation that has plunged into a deathly sleep in the most crucial age period of its existence.
The author's direct evidence of the parable-like symbolism of the concept, title, and entire artistic structure of Dead Souls is Gogol's following rough working note for their first volume, for its second, urban part: “The idea of a city. Emptiness that has arisen to the highest degree. Empty talk. Gossip that has crossed the limits, how it all arose from idleness and took on the expression of the ridiculous in the highest degree. And then: “How the emptiness and powerless idleness of life are replaced by a muddy, meaningless death. How this terrible event is committed senselessly. They don't touch. Death strikes the untouched world. “In the meantime, a dead, insensible life must present itself to the reader even more strongly.”
That's what a huge symbolic load has a seemingly insignificant, passing episode of the sudden death of the prosecutor. And here is the broadest symbolic implication of the ball itself:
“- The whole city with all the whirlwind of gossip - the transformation of the idleness of the life of all mankind in the mass. The ball and all connections are born. Party home and ballroom society.
The opposite transformation in II<части?>busy with torn idleness.
How to reduce all the worlds of idleness in all kinds to resemblance to urban idleness? and how to raise urban idleness to the point of transforming the idleness of the world?
“To bring down” means to express, to concentrate “many in one”. "Elevate" - to give the image of "one" (ball) the meaning of a symbol not only of the emptiness and idleness of the Russian secular society, but also "the idleness of the life of all mankind in the mass."
According to the same principle of symbolic "transformation" of the psychological springs of feudal "morality", the characters of the "ugly landlords" in the first volume of "Dead Souls" personifying them are built. In this respect, they are identical to the characters of The Inspector General. And if in his autocomments to the comedy Gogol repeatedly pointed out the moral necessity and at the same time the unwillingness of every Russian person to discover Khlestakov in himself, then the similar universal significance of the characters of the “ugly landlords” is repeatedly emphasized in the very text of “Dead Souls”. It is said about Sobakevich that he sits in many high-ranking Petersburg persons; about Korobochka - that she actually turns out to be “another respectable and stately even person”; about Nozdryov - that "he is everywhere between us, only in a different caftan." About Chichikov, in the form of an appeal to readers, what was said earlier about Khlestakov is repeated: “And which of you ... in moments of solitary conversations with yourself, will deepen this heavy inquiry into the inside of your own soul:“ Is there any part of Chichikov in me? ?“ Yes, no matter how! But if at that time some acquaintance of his, who has a rank neither too high nor too small, passes by him at that moment, he will immediately push his neighbor by the arm and say to him, almost snorting with laughter: “Look, look, out Chichikov, Chichikov went!
Chichikov, like Khlestakov, sits in every person and that is why he is the main character of Dead Souls. He is the only character that has an exact verbal definition: "Master, acquirer." The acquirer of a new, bourgeois formation, active, inventive, purposeful, and by this he stands out sharply against the general background of the living beings inhabiting the "Dead Souls". Chichikov is by no means a being, but a businessman, moreover, a commoner who knows the value of a penny. All this, combined with indefatigable cheating, expresses the infection of the “Russian man” with the senile vices of bourgeois civilization, from the danger of which the image of Plyushkin also warns. But at the same time, Chichikov's shameless and indefatigable cheating is a distortion, a false orientation of one of the most life-giving features of the Russian national character - his practical intelligence and hidden energy. That is why the raznochintsy Chichikov, and not the governor general, and not the “millionaire” Murazov, and the not prosperous landowner, again of the new bourgeois formation Kostanzhoglo, was assigned by Gogol the role of a man who turned from a rogue and rogue into an exemplary figure of national revival. But before that, he had to go through a thorny path of various kinds of crimes committed in the name of personal prosperity, and experience the full severity of the punishment for them, up to exile in Siberia. In the symbolism of all these supposed transformations, the contours of the problematics of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment are cut through, although still very approximately.
The new characters appearing in the second volume of Dead Souls, with the exception of Colonel Koshkarev, differ significantly in their structure from the characters in the first volume. They are much more voluminous, dynamic, but at the same time much less expressive. Remaining "heroes of shortcomings", they are not without positive traits and, each striving for good in his own way, they do not find the strength in themselves to approach it (Tentetnikov, Khlobuev), or they misunderstand good. The most obvious example of the latter is Costanjoglo. In early editions of the second volume, he is called Skudronzhoglo. And one of Gogol's etymological notes reads: “Skaldyrnik is a person who wants to take advantage of everything; spit with g<…>rip off." The ability of Costanjoglo from everything, even from fish scales, to “grab” or “rip off” the benefit is distinguishing feature his character - active, economic and in this respect positive. But the desire for profit for the sake of profit is not a virtue, but a vice, the same acquisition.
Kostanjoglo is opposed by Murazov, whose millions, on the one hand, are real millions, but "honestly" acquired and used for "doing good", and on the other hand, a symbol of spiritual goodness, which multiplies itself.
Murazov and the governor general are conventional figures, well-intentioned in terms of censorship, mouthpieces of the author's thoughts that are most unintentional in the same sense. The speech of the governor general to his subordinates, which should have ended the second volume, is a rather frank "lesson to the kings", a frank denunciation of the complete decay of the entire governmental system of the autocratic bureaucratic regime. This was understood and appreciated by Chernyshevsky. According to him, "who does not bow before a man, last words[who] had this speech to us, he is not worthy of being a reader of Gogol.
The same "lesson to the kings" was taught by the author of Dead Souls and The Tale of Captain Kopeikin. The time of its action is precisely indicated: “six years after the French”, that is, 1819. This is the time of the height of the Alexander reaction, the time of Arakcheev and the birth of the Decembrist movement. Captain Kopeikin is one of those participants in the war of 1812, whom the reaction that followed turned him from a defender of the Fatherland into a robber chieftain. An echo of "Dubrovsky" is clearly heard in the story.
The action of the first two volumes of "Dead Souls" is attributed to the post-war and pre-Decembrist times, just like "Eugene Onegin"! It is enough to compare these two equally large encyclopedias of Russian life to understand what Chernyshevsky had in mind when he called Gogol "the founder of the critical trend in Russian literature," despite the fact that Dead Souls remained unfinished. What prevented Gogol from finishing them? There were many reasons for this. Among them is Gogol's undoubted and severe nervous breakdown, which lasted for years and intensified from year to year. It caused a sharp, painful for the writer decline in his creative activity, which manifested itself in the late 30s. But it is undoubtedly connected with something else: with the objective impossibility of a full-fledged artistic embodiment of the idea of "Dead Souls" in the full extent of its internal inconsistency. The uncompromising denunciation of the autocratic serf system, of everything that constituted its real reality, the reality of Russian life of that time as a whole, is combined in the idea of the “poem”, as well as in Gogol’s mind, with an unshakable confidence that only this system corresponds to the national spirit of the Russian people and save Russia from the threat of revolutionary explosions shaking Western Europe. The Tale of Kopeikin recalls the threat of a revolutionary "revolt" in Russia. There are reasons to think that it was written as an independent work and only then was inserted into Dead Souls.
31.12.2020 - On the site's forum, work on writing essays 9.3 on the collection of tests for the OGE 2020, edited by I.P. Tsybulko, has ended.
10.11.2019 - On the site's forum, work on writing essays on the collection of tests for the Unified State Examination in 2020, edited by I.P. Tsybulko, has ended.
20.10.2019 - On the site's forum, work has begun on writing essays 9.3 on the collection of tests for the OGE 2020, edited by I.P. Tsybulko.
20.10.2019 - On the site's forum, work has begun on writing essays on the collection of tests for the USE in 2020, edited by I.P. Tsybulko.
20.10.2019 - Friends, many of the materials on our website are borrowed from the books of the Samara methodologist Svetlana Yurievna Ivanova. Starting this year, all her books can be ordered and received by mail. She sends collections to all parts of the country. All you have to do is call 89198030991.
29.09.2019 - For all the years of operation of our site, the most popular material from the Forum, dedicated to the essays based on the collection of I.P. Tsybulko in 2019, has become the most popular. More than 183 thousand people watched it. Link >>
22.09.2019 - Friends, please note that the texts of the presentations at the OGE 2020 will remain the same
15.09.2019 - A master class on preparing for the Final Essay in the direction of "Pride and Humility" has started working on the forum site
10.03.2019 - On the site's forum, work on writing essays on the collection of tests for the Unified State Examination by I.P. Tsybulko has been completed.
07.01.2019 - Dear visitors! In the VIP section of the site, we have opened a new subsection that will be of interest to those of you who are in a hurry to check (add, clean up) your essay. We will try to check quickly (within 3-4 hours).
16.09.2017 - A collection of short stories by I. Kuramshina "Filial Duty", which also includes the stories presented on the bookshelf of the Unified State Examination Traps website, can be purchased both in electronic and paper form at the link \u003e\u003e
09.05.2017 - Today Russia celebrates the 72nd anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic war! Personally, we have one more reason to be proud: it was on Victory Day, 5 years ago, that our website was launched! And this is our first anniversary!
16.04.2017 - In the VIP section of the site, an experienced expert will check and correct your work: 1. All types of essays on the exam in literature. 2. Essays on the exam in the Russian language. P.S. The most profitable subscription for a month!
16.04.2017 - On the site, the work on writing a new block of essays on the texts of the OBZ has ENDED.
25.02 2017 - The site began work on writing essays on the texts of OB Z. Essays on the topic “What is good?” you can already watch.
28.01.2017 - Ready-made condensed statements on the texts of the FIPI OBZ appeared on the site,
