Great place in creative biography Astafiev took up work on two prose cycles " Last bow"and" King-fish ". On the one hand, in these books the author searches for the foundations of the moral “independence of a person”, and leads in those directions that seemed very promising in the 70s: in “The Last Bow” it is a “return to the roots of folk life”, and in "Tsar-fish" is a "return to nature." However, unlike many authors who turned these themes into a literary fashion - with a clichéd set of popular prints from legendary antiquity and hysterical lamentations about the advance of asphalt on mother earth, Astafiev, firstly, tries to create the widest possible and a multi-colored panorama of the life of the people (from a variety of plots and a mass of characters), and secondly, even the narrative position proper. His hero, the alter ego of the author, occupies within this world. Such a construction of works resists the “givenness of the author's position and is “fraught” with novelistic dialectics and openness.
The idea of "The Last Bow" was born, as they say - in spite of the numerous writings that appeared in the 50-60s in connection with the Siberian new buildings. “Everyone, as if by agreement, wrote and talked about Siberia as if no one had been here before them, no one had lived. And if he lived, he did not deserve any attention, ”says the writer. “And I had not just a feeling of protest, I had a desire to talk about“ my ”Siberia, initially dictated only by the desire to prove that both I and my fellow countrymen are by no means Ivans who do not remember kinship, moreover, we are kinship here somehow connected, maybe stronger than anywhere else.
The festive tone of the stories that were included in the first book of The Last Bow (1968) is given by the fact that these are not just “pages of childhood”, as the author called them, but that the main subject of speech and consciousness here is a child, Vitka Potylitsyn. Children's perception of the world - naive, spontaneous, trusting - gives a special, smiling and touching flavor to the whole story.
But in the character of Vitka there is a “special feature”. He is emotionally very sensitive, receptive to beauty to tears. This is especially evident in the amazing sensitivity with which his childish heart responds to music. Here is an example: “Grandma sang standing up, quietly, a little hoarsely, and waved her hand to herself. For some reason, my back immediately began to warp. And all over my body in a scattering of prickly cold ran from the enthusiasm that arose inside me. The closer the grandmother brought the singing to the general voice, the more tense her voice became and the paler her face, the thicker the needles pierced me, it seemed that the blood thickened and stopped in the veins.
This means that Vitka himself, the protagonist of the cycle, belongs to the very “song” breed that Astafiev singled out from the family “ ordinary people in their earlier stories.
Such a boy, "songful", wide open to the whole world, looks around him. And the world turns to him only with its good side. It is no coincidence that in the first book of The Last Bow a lot of space is occupied by descriptions of children's games, pranks, and fishing. Here are pictures of joint work, when the village aunts help grandmother Katerina to ferment cabbage (“Autumn Sadness and Joy”), and the famous grandmother’s pancakes on the “musical frying pan” (“Cook’s Joy”), and generous feasts where the whole “birth” gathers, “everyone kisses each other, and exhausted, kind, affectionate, they sing songs in unison” (“Grandmother’s holiday”) ...
And how many songs are there! One can speak of a special song element as one of the essential stylistic layers in the overall emotional palette of The Last Bow. Here is the old folk “A river flows, a fast one flows ...”, and a lamentable “ Evil people, hateful people ... ”, and the comic“ Damned potatoes, why don’t you boil for a long time ... ”, and the frivolous“ Dunya loosened her braids ... ”,“ The monk fell in love with a beauty ... ”, and brought to the Siberian village from somewhere from the port taverns“ Do not love a sailor, the sailors will be ripped off…”, “A sailor sailed across the ocean from Africa…” and so on. This song rainbow creates a special emotional background in The Last Bow, where high and low, fun and sadness, pure earnestness and obscene mockery are mixed. Such a background is "consonant" with the mosaic of characters that pass before Vitka Potylitsyn's eyes.
All the other "coffin trucks", as the inhabitants of their native Vitka Ovsyanka are called, no matter what the figure, the most colorful character. What is at least one uncle Levonty worth with his philosophical question: “What is life?”, which he asks at the highest degree of intoxication and after which everyone rushes in all directions, grabbing dishes and leftover food from the table. Or Aunt Tatyana, a “proletarian”, in the words of her grandmother, an activist and organizer of the collective farm, who “ended all her speeches with a broken exhalation: “Let's merge our enthusiasm with the excited akiyan of the world proletariat!”
All the Ovsyankins, with the possible exception of Grandfather Ilya, from whom they heard no more than three or five words a day, are artists in one way or another. They love to show off, they know how to improvise a scene in front of all honest people, each of them is a public person, more precisely, a "spectacle". He is inflamed by the presence of the public, he wants to walk around the fort in public, show his character, impress with some kind of trick. Here they do not spare colors and do not skimp on gestures. Therefore, many scenes from the life of Ovsyanka's "coffin carriers" acquire the character of performances in Astafiev's description.
Here, for example, is a fragment from the story "Grandma's Holiday". Another "foray" from the distant wanderings of the "eternal wanderer" Uncle Terenty - "in a hat, with a watch." How he “as a “suprise”” rolled a barrel of omul into the yard, and his tortured wife, Aunt Avdotya, “where did the strength come from?”, this barrel tumbled back through the gateway. How “silently she moved towards the radiantly smiling husband, who spread his arms for a hug, silently tore off his hat from his head (...) and began to knead it with her bare feet, trampling it into the dust like a rattlesnake.” How “having trampled down to impotence, squealing to the point of white saliva, (...) Aunt Avdotya silently picked up the reveler from the road, disheveled, like a dried-up cowcake or mushroom-bzdeh, with a sluggish movement, as if on duty, bringing her role to the end, the other slapped her hat on her husband's muzzle, putting it on his head to the ears, banged her fist and went out into the yard.
Here, every gesture is fashioned by the performers, as in a well-rehearsed mise-en-scène, and fixed by the attentive eye of the observer. At the same time, Astafyev does not forget to mention a very significant detail: “The entire lower end of the village reveled in this picture,” in a word, all the spectators are in their places, the performance is going on with a full house.
Yes, and the hero-narrator himself knows how to play even an ordinary episode in such a way that it turns out to be a pure dramatic scene. Here, for example, is an episode from the story “A Monk in New Pants”: how Vitka pesters his grandmother so that she quickly sews pants for him from a material that they call the outlandish word “treco”. He starts to whimper. “What about you, a belt? Grandma asks. - Pants-s-s ... ”, - pulls Vitka. And then comes his own direction, the turning point:
- Uh-uh...
- Shout at me, shout at me! Grandma exploded, but I blocked her with my roar, and she gradually gave in and began to cajole me:
- I'll sew, I'll sew soon! Father, don't cry. Here's some candy, think about it. Sweet little lamps. Soon, soon you will start walking in new trousers, smart, but handsome, and handsome.
Other characters in dramatic skill do not lag behind Vitka himself. So, in the story "Burn, burn bright" there is such a scene. Grandmother tells how she bought a ball in the city with her last hard-earned money, brought it back, “play, dear little baby!”, And he: “... He looked like that, yes, he would slaughter the ball with a banner!. Banner, my mother, banner! In it, in the ball, something already zachufirkalo! He snorted, godfather, he snorted, exactly in a rattling bonbe! (...) The ball hisses, the pipka fell off ... And this, yaz-zvez, Arkharovets, leaned on the banner, what, they say, is it possible to break it? This heartbreaking monologue is accompanied by sympathetic remarks from grandmother's comrades, complaints "what are our prosperity", complaints about school and clubs - in a word, everything, as it should. But one cannot get rid of the impression of a performance by a superbly improvised performer, who plays out a tragedy for the amusement of herself and her aged listeners.
In essence, in The Last Bow, Astafiev developed a special form of tale - polyphonic in its composition, formed by the interweaving of different voices (Vitka-small, wise narrator, individual hero-narrators, collective village rumor), and carnival in aesthetic pathos, with an amplitude from unbridled laughter to tragic sobs. This narrative form has become a characteristic feature of Astafiev's individual style.
As for the first book of The Last Bow, its speech texture strikes with unimaginable stylistic diversity. And in such a verbal confusion, one way or another, the confusion of the natures of speech speakers also manifests itself. But this quality of the characters of Ovsyanka's "coffin carriers" does not alarm the author yet, the book is dominated by a jubilant, joyful tone. Even beaten by life people here remember the past with joy. And, naturally, Vitka Potylitsin himself carries a joyful and grateful attitude to life. “Such a wave of love for the native and to a groan close person rolled over me. In this impulse, I was grateful to her (grandmother) for the fact that she remained alive, that we both exist in the world and everything, everything around is alive and kind. And more than once he says: “Well, how! You can live in this world! .. "
Starting the "Last bow" Astafiev intended to "write routinely about ordinary low-key life." But in fact, he wrote not ordinary, but festively, and the everyday life of the people appeared in his word very catchy.
The first book of The Last Bow, published in 1968 as a separate edition, caused a lot of enthusiastic responses. Subsequently, in 1974, Astafiev recalled:
Indeed, the second book of The Last Bow is already being built from stories that differ significantly in tone from the first. By the way, each of these books has its own overture stories that set the tone. The first book began with a poignantly bright story “A distant and near fairy tale” - about how Vitka first heard playing the violin, and his heart, “busy with grief and delight, how it started, how it jumped, and how it beats at the throat, wounded on music all my life." But the second book begins with an overture called "The Boy in a White Shirt" - about how the three-year-old Petenka disappeared, got lost among the Siberian ridges and forests. Accordingly, the tone here is completely different - tragic and even mystical.
By inertia, coming from the first book, the second begins with a story about children's village games ("Burn, burn clearly"). But already here, along with cheerful descriptions of the game of bast shoes and grandmas, a description is given of a cruel, almost savage game - the game of "count". And in the next story (“The Chipmunk on the Cross”), when dad and his new family are going to the dispossessed grandfather Pavel to the North, disturbing mystical omens already appear: a chipmunk jumped off the cemetery cross and a fearful bat, a bat, flew into the hut where farewell feast. All this, according to my grandmother, "oh, not good!".
And, indeed, the whole subsequent life turned out to be “oh, not good!”. But the author sees the main source of misfortune in the paternal clan itself, in the characters and behavior of its members. Unlike the Potylitsyn family, grandmother Katerina and grandfather Ilya - eternal workers, people generous soul, in the family of grandfather Pavel "they lived by the proverb: there's no need for a plow in the house, there would be a balalaika." The very theatricality that looked like a carnival decoration in the Ovsyanka "coffin trucks" acquired hyperbolic proportions among the members of the family of grandfather Pavel and their drinking companions, became an end in itself. The author designated this mode of existence with a biting word - "on the click", specifying - "it means, only for show and fit." And then there is a series of portraits of characters living "on the click." Dad, a reveler and a drunkard who, with a drink, caused an accident at a mill. "Papa's bosom friend and drinking buddy", Shimka Vershkov, who considers himself "in power", on the grounds that he has a red-coloured revolver. Or grandfather Pavel himself, a dandy and a “fierce gambler”, who, in excitement, is able to squander the last lopotin. Finally, even a whole collective farm, cobbled together in the village during collectivization, is also, in essence, a concentration of ostentatious idle talk: “We sat a lot, but didn’t work much, and that’s why everything went to the rastatour. The arable lands were overgrown, the mill had been standing since the winter, hay was put up with gulkin's nose.
And then Astafiev draws the cold and hungry life of Igarka, the city of special settlers. The bottom of life opens before the reader, and not the old "bottom" that is shown in Gorky's play, but the contemporary bottom of the people of Soviet origin to the hero-narrator. And this bottom is seen from below, from within, through the eyes of a child mastering the universities of life. And they describe the torments that fall on the little boy who left his father’s new family, because there, even without him, they were dying of hunger, restlessly hanging out, sleeping God knows where, eating up in canteens, ready to “steal” a piece of bread in the store. Everyday, everyday chaos here acquires the features of social chaos.
The most terrible scene in the second part is the episode when the boy meets the insensitivity and cruelty of an official (the story "Without Shelter"). Vitka, almost frozen at night in some kind of stable, comes to school, falls asleep right in the lesson, and, exhausted, dozing, is dragged out from behind his desk by the teacher Sofya Veniaminovna, nicknamed Ronzha. “Dirty, shabby, tattered,” she honors the unfortunate boy. And when one girl, “the daughter of the head of the floating base or supply,” raises her hand and says: “Sofya Veniaminovna, he has lice,” the teacher completely goes into indignation and disgust:
“Ronja was numb for a moment, her eyes turned under her forehead, making a bird’s leap towards me, she grabbed my hair, began to tear it painfully and just as quickly, like a bird’s easily bouncing to the board, blocked her hand, as if from an evil spirit. .
- Horror! Horror! she brushed off her white blouse on a rickety breast with her palm, she whispered with a whistle, all backing away from me, all blocking, all shaking herself off.
“I took a look at the golik, leaning in the corner, a birch, strong golik, with which the attendants were sweeping the floor. Restraining myself with all my might, I wanted the golik to disappear to hell, fly away somewhere, fail, so that Ronzha would stop squeamishly shaking herself off, class laughing. But against my will, I stepped into a corner, took the golik by the ribbed, bird-like neck, and heard the fearful silence that fettered the class at once. A heavy, vicious triumph over all this cowardly silenced smallness seized me, over the teacher, who continued to yell, shout something, but her voice had already begun to fall from inaccessible heights.
“Wh-what?” What's happened? - the teacher stalled, spun in one place.
I whipped my bare, shell-like narrow mouth, which suddenly opened wide so wide that the slimy pulp of a soundless tongue became visible in it, then I whipped it no longer knowing where. (…) Nothing in life is given or passed away for free. Ronja has not seen how rats are burned alive, how pickpockets are trampled under their boots in the bazaar, how husbands kick pregnant wives in the stomach in barracks or a dwelling like an old theater, how gamblers pierce each other's belly with a knife, how a father and a child drink their last kopeck, his child, burns on a state-owned trestle bed from an illness ... I didn’t see it! Does not know! Find out bitch! Penetrate! Then go study! Then shame if you can! For hunger, for loneliness, for fear, for Kolka, for her stepmother, for Tishka Shlomov! - for everything, for everything, I slashed not Ronju, no, but all the soulless, unjust people in the world.
This terrible scene is the culmination of the entire second book: the soul of a child, the center of the world, could not stand not just the callousness and cruelty of some dimwitted teacher, it could not stand the callousness and injustice that exists (or even reigns) in this world. And yet, Astafiev does not judge "indiscriminately." Yes, he can rashly blurt out some "sweeping" formula (for example, about national character- Georgian or Jewish, or Polish, and he also has very cool statements about his native Russian character)27. But abstract images are, in principle, alien to his tenacious artistic vision, and such extremely general concepts as “people”, “society”, are always concretized by him, filled with a mosaic of characters, a chorus of voices that make up this people and this society. And the people in the image of Astafiev, it turns out, is not something uniformly whole, but it has everything and everyone - both good and cruel, and beautiful, and disgusting, and wise, and stupid (moreover, the author takes these poles of folk psychology and morality in their the most extreme limits - from what causes delight and tenderness to what can cause disgust and nausea). So all beginnings and ends - the sources of misfortunes that fall on the head of an individual, and the forces that come to his aid - are in this very people, in this very society.
And Vitka Potylitsyn is saved in this apocalyptic world not by revolutions and not by regular decisions of the party and government, but simply there is an inspector of the district Raisa Vasilievna, who will protect the boy from stupid teachers, the canteen waitress Anya will wink at the hungry boy and quietly feed him. And then Uncle Vasya will appear, and even though the tumbleweed himself, he still can’t stand it and takes at least
for the time of his orphan nephew under guardianship, and at the same time he will become fond of books. And with the head of the railway station, nicknamed Spoiled, Vitka the fazeushnik is lucky - he, who, due to inexperience, caused an accident, actually saved him from court, and then Vitka the rookie will meet the "commander of the erkek" sergeant Fedya Rassokhin, a normal guy, and his sister Ksenia, a sensitive soul, about which Victor will thankfully say - "the girl who lit up my life ..."
The cycle "Last bow" Astafiev can not finish in any way. He writes and writes. One of the last chapters is called "Damn Head" (" New world", 1992. No. 2). This is already a detailed portrait of the pope, who, in his old age, nevertheless came to his son and, apparently, last years life was their guardian. And all the same, no matter what new stories V. Astafyev adds, these are the chapters of a book called “The Last Bow”: it is always a bow to the native world - this is tenderness for all the good that was in this world, and this is grief for that evil, bad, cruel, that there is in this world, because it is still dear, and for everything bad in his native world, his son is even more painful.
Creativity V.P. Astafiev is mainly studied in the ideological and thematic terms: the theme of war, the theme of childhood and the theme of nature.
In The Last Bow, two main themes for the writer are conjugated: rural and military. In the center of the autobiographical story is the fate of a boy who was left without a mother early and is raised by his grandmother. Decency, a reverent attitude to bread, a careful attitude to money - all this, combined with tangible poverty and modesty, combined with hard work, helps the family survive even in the most difficult moments.
With love, V.P. Astafiev draws in the story pictures of children's pranks and fun, simple household conversations, everyday worries (among which the lion's share of time and effort is devoted to gardening, as well as simple peasant food). Even the first new trousers become a great joy for the boy, as they constantly alter them from junk.
In the figurative structure of the story, the image of the hero's grandmother is central. She is a respected person in the village. Her large working hands in the veins once again emphasize the hard work of the heroine. “In any case, not a word, but hands are the head of everything. You don't have to feel sorry for your hands. Hands, they make everything look and taste, ”says the grandmother. The most ordinary things (cleaning the hut, a pie with cabbage) performed by a grandmother give people around them so much warmth and care that they are perceived as a holiday. In difficult years, an old sewing machine helps the family survive and have a piece of bread, on which the grandmother manages to sheathe half the village. The most penetrating and poetic fragments of the story are devoted to Russian nature.
The author notices the finest details of the landscape: the scraped roots of a tree, along which a plow tried to pass, flowers and berries, describes a picture of the confluence of two rivers (Manna and Yenisei), freezing on the Yenisei. The majestic Yenisei is one of central images story. The whole life of people passes on its shore. And the panorama of this majestic river, and the taste of its icy water from childhood and for life is imprinted in the memory of every villager. In this very Yenisei, the mother of the protagonist once drowned. And many years later, on the pages of his autobiographical story, the writer courageously told the world about the last tragic minutes of her life.
V.P. Astafiev emphasizes the breadth of his native expanses. The writer often uses images of the sounding world in landscape sketches (the rustle of shavings, the rumble of carts, the sound of hooves, the song of a shepherd's pipe), conveys characteristic smells (forests, grass, rancid grain). The element of lyricism now and then invades the unhurried narrative: “And the fog spread over the meadow, and the grass was wet from it, the flowers of night blindness drooped down, daisies wrinkled their white eyelashes on yellow pupils.”
In these landscape sketches there are such poetic finds that can serve as a basis for naming individual fragments of the story as poems in prose. These are personifications (“The fogs were dying quietly over the river”), metaphors (“In the dewy grass, red strawberry lights lit up from the sun”), comparisons (“We broke through the fog that had settled in the decay with our heads and, floating up, wandered through it, as if along a soft, malleable water, slowly and silently"), In the selfless admiration of the beauties of his native nature, the hero of the work sees, first of all, a moral support.
V.P. Astafiev emphasizes how pagan and Christian traditions are deeply rooted in the life of a simple Russian person. When the hero falls ill with malaria, the grandmother treats him with all the means available for that: these are herbs, and conspiracies for aspen, and prayers. Through the childhood memories of the boy, a difficult era emerges, when there were no desks, no textbooks, no notebooks in schools. Only one primer and one red pencil for the whole first class. And in such difficult conditions, the teacher manages to conduct lessons. Like every village writer, V.P. Astafiev does not ignore the topic of confrontation between the city and the countryside. It is especially intensified in famine years. The city was hospitable as long as it consumed rural produce. And with empty hands he met the peasants reluctantly.
With pain V.P. Astafiev writes about how men and women with knapsacks carried things and gold to "Torgsina". Gradually, the boy's grandmother handed over there both knitted festive tablecloths, and clothes stored for the hour of death, and on the blackest day - the earrings of the boy's deceased mother (the last memento).
It is important for us that V.P. Astafiev creates colorful images in the story villagers: Vasya the Pole, who plays the violin in the evenings, craftsman Kesha, who makes sleds and collars, and others. It is in the village, where the whole life of a person passes before the eyes of fellow villagers, that every unsightly act, every wrong step is visible.
Note that V.P. Astafiev emphasizes and sings of the humane principle in a person. For example, in the chapter “Geese in the polynya”, the writer tells how the guys, risking their lives, save the geese left during the freeze-up on the Yenisei in the polynya. For the boys, this is not just another childish desperate trick, but a small feat, a test of humanity. And although further fate the geese still turned out sadly (some were poisoned by dogs, others were eaten by fellow villagers in times of famine), the guys nevertheless passed the test for courage and a caring heart with honor. Picking berries, children learn patience and accuracy. “Grandma said: the main thing in berries is to close the bottom of the vessel,” notes V.P. Astafiev.
In a simple life with its simple joys (fishing, bast shoes, ordinary village food from his own garden, walks in the forest) V.P. Astafiev sees the happiest and most organic ideal of human existence on earth. V.P. Astafiev argues that a person should not feel like an orphan in his homeland. He also teaches a philosophical attitude to the change of generations on earth. However, the writer emphasizes that people need to carefully communicate with each other, because each person is inimitable and unique. The work "The Last Bow" thus carries a life-affirming pathos. One of the key scenes of the story is the scene in which the boy Vitya plants a larch tree with his grandmother. The hero thinks that the tree will soon grow, be big and beautiful, and bring a lot of joy to the birds, the sun, people, and the river.
Let's turn to the work of researchers. A.N. Makarov in the book "In the depths of Russia" was one of the first to say that "Astafiev writes the history of his contemporary", indicating by this a certain connection between all his works, characterized the nature of his talent as lyrical-epic.
A. Lanshchikov focused on the autobiography that pervades the writer's works. I. Dedkov calls the main subject of V. Astafiev's prose folk life. B. Kurbatov touches on the issues of plot addition in the works of V.P. Astafiev, thus outlining his creative evolution, a change in genre thinking, poetics.
In literary works, the question was raised about the connection between V.P. Astafiev with the classical tradition of Russian literature:
- - Tolstoy tradition (R.Yu. Satymova, A.I. Smirnova);
- - Turgenev tradition (N.A. Molchanova).
The work is written in the form of a short story. Note that the form emphasizes the biographical nature of the narrative: the memories of an adult about his childhood. Memories, as a rule, are vivid, but do not line up in a single line, but describe individual cases from life.
Note that the work is about the Motherland, in the sense that Viktor Astafiev understands it. Homeland for him:
- - this is a Russian village, hardworking, not spoiled by prosperity;
- - this is nature, harsh, unusually beautiful - the powerful Yenisei, taiga, mountains.
Each separate story of the "Bow" reveals a separate feature of this common theme, whether it is a description of nature in the chapter "Zorka's song" or children's games in the chapter "Burn, burn brightly."
The story is told in the first person - the boy Vitya Potylitsyn, an orphan who lives with his grandmother. Vitya's father is a reveler and a drunkard, he left his family. Vitya's mother died tragically - she drowned in the Yenisei. Viti's life proceeded like all the other village boys - helping the elders with the housework, picking berries, mushrooms, fishing and playing. main character"Bow" - Vitka's grandmother Katerina Petrovna becomes for the reader of Astafiev's work, as it were, "our common Russian grandmother", because she collects in herself in a rare, living fullness everything that is still left on native land strong, hereditary, primordially native, that we recognize ourselves by some kind of non-verbal instinct as our own, as if it shone to all of us and was given in advance and forever from somewhere given. The writer did not embellish anything in her, leaving both a thunderstorm of character, and her grouchiness, and an indispensable desire to be the first to find out everything and to dispose of everything - everything in the village (one word - “general”). And she fights and suffers for her children and grandchildren, and breaks into anger and tears, but she begins to talk about life, and now, it turns out, there are no hardships for her grandmother: “Children were born - joy. Children got sick, she saved them with herbs and roots, and not a single one died - also a joy ... Once she put her hand on arable land, she herself set it right, there was just suffering, they harvested bread, she stinged with one hand and did not become a kosoruchka - is it not joy? This is a common feature of old Russian women, and it is a Christian trait, a feature that, when faith is depleted, is also inevitably depleted, and a person increasingly counts fate, measuring evil and good on the unreliable scales of "public opinion", counting his own suffering and jealously emphasizing his mercy. .
In "The Last Bow" everything around is still ancient - dear, lullaby, grateful to life, and this is all around life-giving. Life-giving, original beginning.
It should be noted that such an image of a grandmother is not the only one in domestic literature. For example, he is found in Maxim Gorky's "Childhood". And his Akulina Ivanovna is very, very similar to Viktor Petrovich Astafiev's grandmother Katerina Petrovna.
But in Vitka's life comes crucial moment. He is sent to his father and stepmother in the city to study at school, since there was no school in the village. Then the grandmother leaves the story, new everyday life begins, everything gets dark, and in childhood such a cruel, terrible side appears that the writer for a long time avoided writing the second part of the "Bow", a terrible turn of his fate, his inevitable "in people". It is no coincidence that the last chapters of "Bow" were completed by Astafiev only in 1992.
The second part of "The Last Bow" was sometimes reproached for cruelty. But it was not a supposedly vindictive note that was truly effective. What revenge is there? What does it have to do with it? The writer recalls his bitter orphanhood, his exile and homelessness, his general rejection, his uselessness in the world. “When it seemed that it would sometimes be better for everyone if he died,” as he himself wrote as an adult. And this was not said to them in order to now triumph victoriously: what, they took it! - or to evoke a sympathetic sigh, or once again imprint that inhuman time. All these tasks would be too alien to Astafiev's confessional and loving literary gift. It is probably possible to reckon and take revenge when you realize that you live unbearably due to someone's obvious fault, remember this evidence and look for resistance. But was the small, tenacious hero of "The Last Bow" Vitka Potylitsyn something prudently aware? He only lived as best he could, and dodged death, and even in some moments managed to be happy, not to miss the beauty. If anyone broke loose, it was not Vitka Potylitsyn, but Viktor Petrovich Astafyev, who, from the distance of the years already lived and from the height of his understanding of life, asked the world in dismay: how could it happen that innocent children were placed in such terrible, inhuman conditions of existence?
He does not feel sorry for himself, but for Vitka, as his child, who now can only be protected by compassion, and only by the desire to share with him the last potato, and the last drop of warmth, and every moment of his bitter loneliness.
If Vitka got out then, then we must thank his grandmother Katerina Petrovna for this, the grandmother who prayed for him, reached his suffering with her heart and thus, from a distant distance, inaudibly for Vitka, but salutarily softened him at least by the fact that she managed to teach forgiveness and patience, and the ability to see in complete darkness even a small grain of goodness, and hold on to this very grain, and give thanks for it.
Astafiev dedicated a number of works to the theme of the Russian village, among which I would especially like to mention the stories "The Last Bow" and "Ode to the Russian Garden".
In essence, in "The Last Bow" Astafiev developed a special form of tale - polyphonic in its composition, formed by the interweaving of different voices (Vitka-small, wise author-narrator, individual hero-narrators, collective village rumor), and carnival in aesthetic pathos, with an amplitude from unbridled laughter to tragic sobs. This narrative form has become a characteristic feature of Astafiev's individual style.
As for the first book of The Last Bow, its speech texture strikes with unimaginable stylistic diversity.
The first book of The Last Bow, published in 1968 as a separate edition, caused a lot of enthusiastic responses. Subsequently, in 1974, Astafiev recalled:
Full name: Liliya Ilmurzovna KulaginaPosition: teacher of Russian language and literature
Place of employment: secondary school No. 18 of the Kirovsky district of Ufa
Pedagogical experience: 32 years
LESSON TOPIC: “Bow kind people”(Based on the story by V. Astafiev“ The Last Bow ”)
Grade: 9th
Number of hours: 2 hours
EPIGRAPH:"I will never forget that happy morning." (V.P. Astafiev)
LESSON OBJECTIVES:
To acquaint students with the life and work of V.P. Astafiev.
Raising in students a sense of love for the Motherland, the world around, people.
DURING THE CLASSES
1st hour
INTRODUCTION
I. introduction teachers about V.P. Astafiev.
I would like to start the lesson with the words of the writer's grandfather on his father's side, Pavel Yakovlevich Astafiev.
Once a grandfather will say about his grandson:
“You are happy, however ... Not with the fate of shares, happy with your soul. Beautiful and good to see, maybe this is what happiness is.”
Grandfather looked into the water. It was precisely such a person, vigilant, attentive, noticing the beauty of human relations, the beauty of the world around him, that the writer V.P. Astafiev was.
II. Biography of the writer (message of the student).
The name of V.P. Astafiev is known throughout the world. He was born in May 1924 in the village of Ovsyanka, on the banks of the mighty Yenisei, not far from Krasnoyarsk, “in a working, huge, sedate and melodious family.” He lost his mother early - she drowned, in the river catching a scythe on a floating boom. He was given to the care of his grandparents - Siberian peasants.
In 1934, he was forced to leave his native village along with his father's new family, and was soon abandoned to the will of fate. Having gone through orphanhood, homelessness, at the age of 15 he ended up in an orphanage in the polar city of Igarka. Before the war, he worked as a train compiler near the city of Krasnoyarsk. In the fall of 1942, he volunteered for the front. He served as a driver, artillery reconnaissance officer, signalman. He received a severe wound.
Demobilized in 1945, he lived for 18 years in the Urals, in Chusovoy. He worked as a loader, a locksmith, a foundry worker, at the same time he studied at an evening school.
I began to write out of a feeling of protest, I wanted to write about the war what I saw myself, “I cared most of all that everything was accurate, that everything was as it was.”
In 1958 he was accepted into the Writers' Union, and in 1959 he was sent to the Higher Literary Courses in Moscow, where he studied until 1961.
The writer’s Peru owns such wonderful works as the story in the stories “The Last Bow”, the narration in the stories “The King-Fish”, the novel “The Sad Detective”, tragic theme war sounds in the story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” (the author defines it as a modern pastoral). About the war - a novel written in the 90s - “Cursed and Killed”, the story “So I want to live”.
Leading themes of the writer's work: childhood; nature and man; war and love.
In 1968, the first book of the story in the stories “The Last Bow” was published. In subsequent years, books II and III were published.
MAIN PART
Work on the story "The Last Bow".
From whom is the story being told?
Who is the main character of the story?
Think about the title of the piece. "Last bow".
Last bow to whom?
What 2 themes run through the entire piece?
These themes are very closely intertwined in the story, which opens the memories of childhood - "Far and Near Tale".
1). "Far and Near Tale"
Tell us about Vasya, a Pole.
Selective reading by the teacher of an excerpt from the words “But because of the ridge, from the deep interior of the earth, music arose ...” to the words “wounded for life by music.”
What was the music about? Why is Vitka so anxious and bitter? Why do you want to cry like he's never cried before?
What trace did Vasya the Pole leave in the soul of the boy, his violin playing?
How did the fellow villagers treat Vasya the Pole?
Can Vasya the Pole be called a teacher of life for Vitka Potylitsyn? Why do you think the chapter “Far and Near Tale” is the first in the book “The Last Bow”.
Who left Vitka the most precious childhood memory?
Tell me about your grandmother.
What role did she play in the formation of character and in the fate of her grandson?
Grandmother teaches her grandson to love and understand nature, passed on her worldly and moral experience to him, taught him to love the earth and all living things around.
Which chapters tell about how a grandmother teaches her grandson to see the beautiful, teaches a careful and reverent attitude towards the earth, gives the first lessons of labor.
What other lessons given by the grandmother did Vitka remember?
2nd hour
What new did we learn about the grandmother in the chapter “Guardian Angel”? How did Grandma teach her family to endure hardships?
Grandma's Wise Thoughts.
The chapter is called “Guardian Angel” – why?
What interesting things did we learn about the life of peasants, about folk traditions, rituals?
b). Stop on stage, as grandparents gather children to show the newly born calf and come up with a name for the newborn together.
V). Evening milking of cows.
G). “What a good evening is coming! I would like to share bread, milk, salt and heart with neighbors and all people in the world.”
e). Grandmother's evening prayer.
8). - What is said in the story "Autumn sorrows and joys"?
Why did grandmother Katerina Petrovna make the most delicious cabbage?
9). Chapter "Grandma's holiday".
What holiday is this chapter talking about?
How is this holiday celebrated?
How did the grandfather remember the grandson Ilya Evgrafovich?
"Last Bow" - Treasury folk thoughts. Let's listen to them.
In what tone are all the stories from this work written?
The leitmotif of book I is the words: "I will never forget that happy morning."
CONCLUSION
“The Last Bow” is a conversation about childhood and about those people who warmed this childhood with the warmth of their hearts and the caress of their laboring hands. The meaning of this work is in the emotional and moral charge that can awaken the brightest feelings in readers: the joy of life, love for the motherland, native land, work, people living next to you.
The last chapter of the work is “The Last Bow”. It is here that the author conveys main idea works.
(An expressive reading by the teacher of the scene of the last meeting of the grandson with his grandmother).
HOMEWORK:
Write an essay on the topic: “The lessons of kindness from grandmother Katerina Petrovna.”
One of the works related to Russian classical literature was the story of V.P. Astafiev “The Last Bow”. Summary of this artwork quite small. However, it will be presented in this article as fully as possible.
Summary of Astafiev's "Last Bow"
Despite the fact that even in the original the work is read in just a few minutes, the plot can still be said in a nutshell.
Main character a summary of "The Last Bow" Astafiev is a young guy who spent several years in the war. From his own face, the narration is conducted in the text.
In order for everyone to understand what and how, we will divide this work into several separate parts, which will be described below.
Homecoming
First of all, he decides to visit his grandmother, with whom he spent a lot of time as a child. He does not want her to notice him, so he went around the back of the house to enter through another door. While the main character walks around the house, he sees how much it needs repair, how everything around is neglected and needs attention. The roof of the bath completely collapsed, the garden was completely overgrown with weeds, and the house itself squinted on its side. Grandmother did not even keep cats, because of this, all corners are in small house mice gnawed. He is surprised that everything fell apart during his absence.
Meeting with grandma
Entering the house, the protagonist sees that everything in it remains the same. For several years the whole world was shrouded in war, some states disappeared from the face of the Earth, some appeared, and in this small house everything was the same as the young military man remembered. The same tablecloth, the same curtains. Even the smell - and it was the same as the main character remembered as a child.
As soon as the main character steps over the threshold, he sees a grandmother, who, just like many years ago, is sitting by the window and winding yarn. The old woman immediately recognizes her beloved grandson. Seeing the grandmother's face, the main character immediately notices that the years have left their imprint on her - she has aged very much during this time. Grandmother does not take her eyes off the guy for a long time, on whose chest the Red Star glitters. She sees how mature he has become, how he has matured in the war. Soon she says that she is very tired, that she feels the approach of death. She asks the protagonist to bury her when she passes away.
Death of a beloved grandmother
Grandma dies very soon. At this time, the main character found a job at a factory in the Urals. He asks to be released for only a few days, but he is told that they are only released from work if it is necessary to bury his parents. The main character has no choice but to continue to work.
Guilt of the protagonist
He learns from the neighbors of the deceased grandmother that the old woman could not carry water home for a long time - her legs hurt badly. She washed the potatoes in the dew. In addition, he learns that she went to pray for him in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, so that he would return from the war alive and healthy, so that he would create his family and live happily, without knowing any trouble.
Many such trifles are told to the main character in the village. But all this cannot satisfy the young guy, because life, even if it consists of little things, includes something more. The only thing that the main character understands well is that the grandmother was very lonely. She lived alone, her health was fragile, her whole body ached, and there was no one to help. So the old woman coped somehow by herself, until on the eve of her death she saw her grown and matured grandson.
Awareness of the loss of a loved one
The protagonist wants to know as much as possible about the time when he was at war. How did the old grandmother cope here alone? But there was no one to tell, and what he heard from his fellow villagers could not really tell anything about all the difficulties that the old woman had.
The main character is trying to convey to every reader the importance of the love of grandparents, all their love and affection for the young, whom they raised from an early age. The protagonist is not able to express his love for the deceased in words, he was left with only bitterness and guilt for the fact that she had been waiting for him for so long, and he could not even bury her, as she asked.
The main character catches himself thinking that the grandmother - she would forgive him anything. But the grandmother is no more, which means there is no one to forgive.
Viktor Petrovich Astafiev is a famous Russian writer, prose writer, who lived from 1924 to 2001. The main theme in his work was the preservation of the national dignity of the Russian people. Notable works Astafiev: "Starfall", "Theft", "War is thundering somewhere", "Shepherdess and Shepherd", "Tsar-Fish", "Sighted Staff", "Sad Detective", "Merry Soldier" and "Last Bow", which, in fact, will be discussed further. In everything that he described, one felt love and longing for the past, for his native village, for those people, for that nature, in a word, for the Motherland. Astafiev's works also told about the war, which ordinary village people saw with their own eyes.
Astafiev, "The Last Bow". Analysis
Astafiev devoted many of his works to the theme of the village, as well as to the theme of war, and The Last Bow is one of them. It is written in the form of a long story, composed of separate stories, of a biographical nature, where Viktor Petrovich Astafyev described his childhood and life. These memories are not built in a sequential chain, they are captured in separate episodes. However, it is difficult to call this book a collection of short stories, since everything there is united by one theme.
Viktor Astafiev dedicates "The Last Bow" to the Motherland in his own understanding. This is his village motherland with wild nature, harsh climate, powerful Yenisei, beautiful mountains and dense taiga. And he describes all this in a very original and touching way, in fact, this is what the book is about. Astafiev created "The Last Bow" as a landmark work, which addresses the problems of ordinary people of more than one generation in very difficult critical periods.
Plot
The protagonist Vitya Potylitsyn is an orphan boy raised by his grandmother. His father drank a lot and walked, eventually left his family and left for the city. And Viti's mother drowned in the Yenisei. The life of a boy, in principle, did not differ from the life of other village children. He helped the elders with the housework, went for mushrooms and berries, went fishing, well, he had fun, like all his peers. So you can start summary. Astafiev's “last bow”, I must say, embodied in Katerina Petrovna a collective image of Russian grandmothers, in whom everything is primordially native, hereditary, forever given. The author does not embellish anything in it, he makes her a little formidable, grouchy, with a constant desire to know everything first and dispose of everything at his own discretion. In a word, "general in a skirt." She loves everyone, takes care of everyone, wants to be useful to everyone.
She constantly worries and suffers for her children, then for her grandchildren, because of this, anger and tears alternately break out. But if the grandmother begins to talk about life, it turns out that there were no adversities for her at all. The children were always happy. Even when they were sick, she skillfully treated them with various decoctions and roots. And none of them died, well, isn't that happiness? Once, on arable land, she dislocated her arm and immediately set it back, but she could have remained a kosoruchka, but she didn’t, and this is also a joy.
This is the common feature of Russian grandmothers. And lives in this image something fertile for life, native, lullaby and life-giving.
Twist in fate
Then it becomes not as fun as it first describes. village life main character summary. Astafiev's "last bow" continues with the fact that Vitka suddenly has an unkind streak in life. Since there was no school in the village, he was sent to the city to his father and stepmother. And here Astafiev Viktor Petrovich recalls his torment, exile, hunger, orphanhood and homelessness.
How could Vitka Potylitsyn then realize something or blame someone for his misfortunes? He lived as best he could, escaping from death, and even managed in some moments. The author here pities not only himself, but all the then younger generation, who were forced to survive in suffering.
Vitka later realized that he got out of all this only thanks to the saving prayers of his grandmother, who at a distance felt his pain and loneliness with all her heart. She also softened his soul, teaching patience, forgiveness and the ability to see even a small grain of goodness in the black haze and be grateful for it.
School of survival
In the post-revolutionary period, Siberian villages were dispossessed. Ruin was all around. Thousands of families turned out to be homeless, many were driven to hard labor. Having moved to his father and stepmother, who lived on casual income and drank a lot, Vitka immediately realizes that no one needs him. Soon he experiences conflicts at school, the betrayal of his father and the oblivion of relatives. This is the summary. Astafiev’s “Last bow” goes on to say that after the village and the grandmother’s house, where, perhaps, there was no prosperity, but comfort and love always reigned, the boy finds himself in a world of loneliness and heartlessness. He becomes rude, and his actions are cruel, but still, his grandmother's upbringing and love of books will later bear fruit.
And while he waits Orphanage, and this is just a nutshell describing the summary. Astafyev's "Last Bow" illustrates in great detail all the hardships of the life of a poor teenager, including his studies at a factory course school, going to war and, finally, returning.
Return
After the war, Victor immediately went to the village to his grandmother. He really wanted to meet her, because she became for him the only and most dear person in the whole world. He walked through the vegetable gardens, catching burdocks, his heart clenched strongly in his chest with excitement. Victor made his way to the bathhouse, on which the roof had already collapsed, everything had long been without the master's attention, and then he saw a small pile of firewood under the kitchen window. This indicated that someone was living in the house.
Before entering the hut, he suddenly stopped. Victor's throat went dry. Gathering his courage, the guy quietly, timidly, literally on tiptoe, went into his hut and saw how his grandmother, just like in the old days, was sitting on a bench near the window and winding threads into a ball.
Minutes of oblivion
The protagonist thought to himself that during this time a whole storm flew over the whole world, millions human destinies got mixed up, there was a deadly struggle with the hated fascism, new states were formed, and here everything is as always, as if time had stopped. The same mottled calico curtain, a neat wooden wall cabinet, cast-iron stoves, etc. Only it no longer smelled of the usual cow swill, boiled potatoes and sauerkraut.
Grandmother Ekaterina Petrovna, seeing her long-awaited grandson, was very happy and asked him to come closer to hug and cross him. Her voice remained the same kind and gentle, as if the grandson did not return from the war, but from fishing or from the forest, where he could linger with his grandfather.
Long-awaited meeting
A soldier returning from the war thought that perhaps his grandmother might not recognize him, but that was not the case. Seeing him, the old woman wanted to get up abruptly, but her weakened legs did not allow her to do this, and she began to hold her hands to the table.
Grandma is very old. However, she was very glad to see her beloved grandson. And I was glad that, finally, I waited. She looked at him for a long time and could not believe her eyes. And then she let slip that she prayed for him day and night, and in order to meet her beloved granddaughter, she lived. Only now, having waited for him, grandmother could die in peace. She was already 86 years old, so she asked her grandson to come to her funeral.
Oppressive melancholy
That's all the summary. Astafiev's "last bow" ends with Viktor leaving to work in the Urals. The hero received a telegram about the death of his grandmother, but he was not released from work, citing that at that time they were only allowed to go to the funeral of his father or mother. The management did not want to know that his grandmother replaced both of his parents. Viktor Petrovich never went to the funeral, which he later regretted very much all his life. He thought that if this happened now, he would simply run away or crawl from the Urals to Siberia just to close her eyes. So all the time this guilt lived in him, quiet, oppressive, eternal. However, he understood that his grandmother forgave him, because she loved her grandson very much.
