Leonid andreev city analysis. L.N.Andreev "Kusaka": description, characters, analysis of the story

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Federal Agency for Education

GOU VPO "Samara State University"

Faculty of Philology

Department of Russian and Foreign Literature

Spesociality "philology"

Course work

Imagecities in the early stories of L. Andreev

Introduction

1. Space and time in literature

2. The space of the city in Russian literature. The image of St. Petersburg

3. The image of the city in L. Andreev's early stories

3.1 "Petka in the country"

3.2 "In the fog"

3.3 "City"

Conclusion

Bibliographic list

Introduction

creative andreev space city

The creative heritage of Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev, which was formed during the turning point of the historical era at the turn of the century, is rich and diverse. The writer is known to us as a feuilletonist, author of short stories, novellas, novels and one of the leading playwrights of his time.

Andreev's literary activity became widely known in the early 1900s, when the first collection of his stories was published. It should be noted that in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, the leading position in Russian literature was taken by the small epic genre, in particular the genre of the story. One of the factors that contributed to the spread of the genre of the story in the era of "timelessness" was that this epic form with its laconic and capacious structure, concentration of pictorial means allowed "To investigate moral problems philosophically in depth and generalized and at the same time at an almost molecular level." Grechnev V.Ya. Russian story of the late 19-20 century. L., 1979.S. 199.

At the turn of the century, epic genres "mix" with each other, their boundaries blurred. Therefore, according to I.I. Moskovkina, most often scientists do not distinguish between Andreev's stories and short stories, they call his stories stories. I. I. Moskovkina "Red Laughter": Apocalypse after Andreev // Andreev L.N. Red laugh. A.M. Releases Cockerel. M., 2001.S. 108-121. This problem of the genre originality of the writer requires special consideration.

In the early works of Andreev, the influence of Pomyalovsky, G. Uspensky, L. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Garshin, Gorky is noticeable. "Andreev writes about the" humiliated and insulted ", about the sucking vulgarity and stupefying influence of the philistine environment on a person, about children crushed by want, deprived of joys, about those who are thrown by fate to the very" bottom "of life, about petty bureaucratic people, about standardization human personality in a bourgeois society. " Sokolov A.G. The history of Russian literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. M., 1999.S. 380-381. L. Andreev awakens the alarm for human souls. In his works, he writes about heroes horrified by the absurdity of life, in a tense, agitated state, in a state of "shock".

The monograph by L. Jesuitova is directly devoted to the writer's early fiction. In this work, according to the sum of substantive and formal features, many of Andreev's stories are divided by the author into three groups.

The first group is made up of stories of "philosophical mood", which are more close to the events of everyday life ("At the Window", "Petka at the Dacha", "Grand Slam", "Once Upon a Time", "In the Fog" and others). The hero is shown here in the stream of everyday life. Andreev focuses on the unconsciously tragic, on the tragic everyday in the life of an ordinary, weak person. The author shows his hero as if from the outside, although often certain aspects of the character's life are given through the prism of his own sensual and emotional reactions.

The second group of stories includes sketches, studies, sketches ("Laughter", "Lies", "Nabat", "Abyss"). They are brought together by an overly expressive language style. The empirical element is completely subordinated to mood, an explosion of feelings (this is a cry, a rhythm, a sound, the extreme degree of something catastrophic).

Finally, the third group is made up of "confessional and worldview" stories ("Story about Sergei Petrovich", "Thought"). The hero here not only exists, goes with the flow, but reflects on his own life. He is shown in the process of realizing himself, his place in the world.

L. Iesuitova singles out the central problem of the entire work of Leonid Andreev. This problem is “man and rock”. "The relationship of a person with" rock "- submissione or disobeying him, clarificationwhat is higher than human forces and what is the person himself, what are the boundaries and possibilities of his "I" - all this becomes the subject of Andreev's artistic analysis "... Jesuitova L.A. The creativity of L. Andreev (1892-1906). L., 1976.C.75. Hence follows the author's reflections on the fatal meaning of death in human life, on the meaning of being.

The problem of Leonid Andreev's creative method is still controversial. Researchers rank the writer among different literary movements and trends from realistic to decadent. Some of them believe that the leading principle in the writer's work is realistic, that his expression does not turn into expressionism, his symbol is realistic. Others argue that Andreev was the most prominent representative of Russian expressionism. Still others saw in him the forerunner of existentialism. Indeed, the tragedy of man L. Andreev, "As if forever imprisoned in a cell of loneliness", Kolobaeva L.A. Personality in the artistic world of L. Andreev // Kolobaeva L.A. The concept of personality in Russian literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. M., 1990.S. 120. was close to the idea of loneliness, despair in the existentialist philosophy of L. Shestov.

V. Keldysh proposed a concept according to which the writer's artistic system belongs to the “intermediate” phenomena of the “dual aesthetic nature”, combining the principles of realism, symbolism and expressionism. Keldysh V.A. Russian realism of the early 20th century. M., 1975.S. 210-277. Despite the fact that scientists never came to a common opinion about the correlation of literary trends in different periods of the writer's work, in general they speak of the realistic nature of Andreev's early prose and drama and the synthesis of modernist trends in his mature work.

The main theme of Andreev's early stories is the discovery of the humanely human in man, the protest against the suppression of the personality. The writer was interested in the problem of man and civilization, which was actual for the turn of the century. The author touched upon the question of the influence of the city on the consciousness and soul of man in his contemporary society.

The purpose of our research is to reveal the image of the city in the early stories of Leonid Andreev. To achieve this goal, we propose to solve the following tasks:

1 to consider the features of creating the image of the city in Russian literature;

2 to analyze the image of the city in the early stories of L. Andreev using the example of several works.

The analysis will be carried out on the basis of stories written by Andreev from 1898 to 1904 and published in the first volume of the writer's collected works. Andreev L.N. Collected works in 6 volumes. Vol. 1. M., 1990.

In connection with the little study of this aspect in the work of Leonid Andreev, our work seems to be relevant.

1. NSstranglehold and time in literature

The world of a literary work of fiction is often perceived by the reader as really existing. We analyze the actions of fictional characters as if they were actually committed. This is because the author “Unconsciously, without attaching artistic significance to this,sits into the world of phenomena he createsvalidityandor ideas and conceptsof his era ”. Likhachev D.S. The inner world of a work of art // Questions of literature. 1968. No. 8.

However, the world of a work of art is the result not only of reflection, but also of an active transformation of reality, associated with the idea and goals of the writer. This inner world is a single artistic whole, organized in a special way and possessing its own laws of development. The perception of the integral and original “reality” of the work is provided largely due to such categories of literature as artistic time and artistic space.

It should be noted that in the field of art, real, conceptual and perceptual space and time are distinguished. Conceptual space and time reflect the historical space and time in which the events depicted in the book take place. For example, in the novel by IS Turgenev "Fathers and Sons" the main events unfold in Russia in the summer of 1859. Perceptual space and time is, first of all, space - the time of representation and imagination.

“... Within the framework of perceptual space-time, such eeffects like stretching and compression of time intervals, deformation of spatial relations, which are unacceptable at the level of physical (real) space-time. " Zobov R.A. Mostepanenko A.M. On the typology of spatio-temporal relations in the field of art // Rhythm, space and time in literature and art. L., 1974.S. 20. Consequently, the artistic image can be realized only with the help of the perceptual space and time of the subject creating or perceiving the artistic work.

In different genres of literature, space and time are reproduced in different ways. So, in dramatic works, artistic time usually coincides in length with the compositional time of action. In epic and lyro-epic genres, they are not identical.

Speaking of time in literature, they usually mean plot time, that is, the time that is the object of the image and which is recognized due to the cause-and-effect relationships of events. “Events in the plot precede each other and follow each other, are built into a complex series, and thanks to this the reader is able tonto notice time in a work of art, even if nothing is specifically said about time in it ”. Likhachev D.S. Artistic time of a literary work // Likhachev D.S. Poetics of Old Russian Literature. L., 1971. Time can be dynamic in the narration of the actions of the heroes, the transmission of dialogues and static in landscape, portrait characteristics, in the philosophical digressions of the author. Time can flow chronologically in a non-stop way (from beginning to end), or it can be interrupted, unfold in the opposite direction in the hero's "reminiscences". Time can be determined by brevity, when a day in the life of the hero is described, or duration, when it stretches over many years.

In a work of art, not only the plot time is depicted, but also the author's own time (and space). This is described in detail in the monograph by B. Uspensky "The Poetics of Composition". Uspensky B. Poetics of composition. SPb., 2000. The author may not participate in the action, and then the author's time is concentrated at a certain point from which he leads the story (internal or external). But the author's time in a work can develop independently and have its own storyline, as, for example, in "Eugene Onegin" by A.S. Pushkin.

The writer also creates a certain space in which the action of the work is localized. This space can be closed, limited by the framework of one room (for example, in L. Andreev's story "The Grand Slam"), and cover vast territories (almost all of Europe in Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace"). Space can be topographically concrete and abstract, going beyond the limits of the earthly planet; real (as in a chronicle or a historical novel) or imaginary (as in a fairy tale). Likhachev D.S. Artistic time of a literary work // Likhachev D.S. Poetics of Old Russian Literature. L., 1971.

It is important to note that the considered categories of literature are closely related to each other. This connection was pointed out by M.M. Bakhtin back in the 30s of the 20th century. In his work "Epic and Novel" Bakhtin calls the interconnection of temporal and spatial relations, artistically mastered in literature, a special term - chronotope (which literally means "time-space"). The literary critic emphasizes the inseparability of space and time and defines time as the fourth dimension of space. In the chronotope “Time… thickens, becomes denser, becomes artistically visible; space is intensified, drawn into the movement of time, plot, history ”. Bakhtin M.M. Epic and novel. SPb., 2000. According to Bakhtin, it is the chronotope that determines the genre variety and image of a person in literature.

It must be remembered that the image and comprehension of space and time has changed, just as the genres themselves have changed in different historical epochs.

2. The space of the city in Russian literature. ImagePetersburg

In an empirically given reality, a city is a physical (geographical) space of human existence, transformed by him, and therefore interconnected with social space. Social space is a space of communication between people, in which their specific behavior is found. V. A. Konev Spatial feature of the human world // Konev V.A. Social philosophy. Samara, 2006. S. 55. And the city, of course, affects the life of a person, determines and organizes his life.

In the reality around us, the space of the city is characterized by locality, volume, concreteness, isolation and fullness. These features of the city space can be reflected to one degree or another in the artistic world of a literary work. They can and be modified in accordance with the writer's intention, method and style.

Initially, the city appears in Russia as a fortification, a fortress, that is, as a populated place, fenced off by a wall to protect it from the enemy. Gradually, the city turns into a relatively large settlement, commercial, industrial, administrative and cultural center.

In medieval chronicle vaults, in historical stories, there are references to such cities of the Russian land as Kiev, Novgorod, Vladimir, Suzdal, Yaroslavl and others. In these works of Old Russian literature, cities are only a background for action, events telling about the life and exploits of a particular prince. The cities themselves are not individualized and do not carry any additional semantic load in the text.

In Russian literature, starting from the 18th century, the image of the city was directly created (which was largely due to the increase in its role in human social life). In "Poor Liza" by N.M. Karamzin the image of "noble" Moscow and its environs appears, in "Gypsies" by A.S. Pushkin - the captivity of the stuffy city from which Aleko flees.

The image of a city in a work of art is often understood as an urban landscape that has emotional and psychological significance. This urban landscape was formed in the realistic direction of 19th century literature (for example, in "Dead Souls" by N.V. Gogol, in the lyrics by N.A. Nekrasov).

Landscape, including urban, as an element of artistic space, participates in the creation of the image of the chronotope. For example, in the stories of A.P. Chekhov "Ionych", "Lady with a Dog", descriptions of provincial towns with gray fences and the smell of fried onions form the chronotope of the province. Literature: Basic terms and concepts // School student reference book. M., 2002.S. 209.

In Russian literature, the city's landscape is most vividly reflected in the image of St. Petersburg, a city that from 1712 to 1918 was the capital of the Russian Empire.

Since the founding of St. Petersburg, myths and legends about this city began to take shape. On the one hand, the northern capital personified a new Russia, associated with a cultural, civilized, European city that the country can be proud of. On the other hand, Petersburg was built on a swamp by the hands of workers who lived in difficult conditions, starving, dying in thousands. The city, crowded with foreigners and designed by foreign architects, had a non-Russian look. Thus, Petersburg in the minds of the people became the embodiment of the idea of good in the first case and the idea of evil in the second.

V.N. Toporov wrote that "thisbipolarity Peterburg and based on it honeycombthe rhyological myth (the "Petersburg" idea) is most fully and adequately reflected in the Petersburg text of literature ... " Toporov V.N. Petersburg and the "Petersburg text of Russian literature" // Toporov V.N. Myth. Ritual. Symbol. Image: Research in the field of mythopoetic: Selected works. M., 1995.S. 261. . Toporov classifies the text about St. Petersburg as one of the "super-saturated realities" that are inseparable from the sphere of the symbolic.

In the literature of the 18th century, the image of a magnificent and ceremonial city is created in solemn odes, laudable words and speeches (F. Prokopovich, M.V. Lomonosov, V.K. Trediakovsky, A.P. Sumarokov). A.S. Pushkin in "The Bronze Horseman" shows two faces of the northern capital: the city of Petrov in the introduction and the city of the unfortunate Eugene in the main part of the poem. Pushkin, according to L. Dolgopolov, "Acts as the last singer of the bright, majestic side of St. Petersburg and the first representative of written literature, who embodied in real artistic features its fatal and tragic role in the fate of man." Dolgopolov L. The myth about St. Petersburg and its transformation at the beginning of the century // Dolgopolov L. At the turn of the century: On Russian literature of the late 19th - early 20th century. L., 1985.S. 156. In the future, the image of the gloomy, ghostly and soulless Petersburg came to the fore. In "Petersburg Tales" by NV Gogol, poems by NA Nekrasov, novels by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and IA Goncharov, Petersburg becomes a city that has a destructive effect on a person. In the 20th century, the "Petersburg text" is formed and completed in the works of A. Bely, A. Blok, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, Vaginov.

The description of St. Petersburg in Russian literature is not limited to its topographic, climatic, ethnographic, everyday, cultural characteristics. The "Petersburg text" is determined by the unity and integrity of the meanings and ideas that are laid down in it by its creators.

3. The image of the city in the early stories of L. Andreev

Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev was born in the city of Orel. He spent his childhood and adolescence in his parents' house on the 2nd Pushkarnaya Street of the Oryol settlement, inhabited by the poor. After graduating from a classical gymnasium, Andreev entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, but continued his studies at Moscow University. After receiving his diploma, he works as an assistant to the attorney at law and publishes in newspapers, writes court reports, feuilletons, essays.

The writer's literary activity began, as he himself admitted, in 1898, when his first story "Bargamot and Garaska" was published. It reflected the vivid impressions of Leonid Andreev about the provincial city of Orel, and the heroes of the story had real prototypes. “Inhabited by shoemakers, hemp shredders, handicraftsmen, tailors and other representatives of the free profession, possessing two taverns, Sundays and Mondays, Pushkanaya devoted all her leisure hours to a Homeric fight, in which wives, disheveled, simple-haired, took away their husbands, and little children directly took part, those who gazed with delight at the courage of the aunt. " Andreev L. Bargamot and Garaska // Andreev L.N. Collected works in 6 volumes. M., 1990.T.1. P.44.

Andreev almost never invented plots for his works. He wrote “About the little that life in Orel, Petersburg and Moscow showed him, about people and events that objectively do not rise above and do not fall below the average routine and boring everyday life. And in all this it was necessary to see something hidden from other eyes, to say about the usual with special, "strange" words in order to make the reader start talking about himself - in response. " Bogdanov A. Between the wall and the abyss // Andreev L.N. Collected works in 6 volumes. M., 1990.T.1. C.11.

The image of the city is created explicitly or in separate strokes in almost all of Leonid Andreev's early stories. Many of his heroes are residents of provincial towns, Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the description of cities, both a realistically objective way of depicting reality and an extremely expressive one can be traced. The stories reproduce the urban landscape, the appearance of cities and the life of people in city apartments and houses. The inner space of urban buildings can completely isolate a person from the outside world ("At the window"), it can be socially hierarchical ("In the basement"). Topographically reliable distinctive features of cities are mentioned in the works, for example, Vorobyovy Gory and the Tretyakov Gallery in "The Story of Sergei Petrovich" or the embankment of the Neva in the story "In the Fog". Usually, the city is not concretized, characterized in general terms.

The image of the city of Leonid Andreev can be different. But it is always a city that perniciously affects the consciousness and soul of an ordinary person. A person feels disharmony in him, dies in the conditions of a rapidly growing bourgeois civilization. In creating the image of the city, Andreev's inclination to perceive the gloomy and tragic sides of life was reflected.

Let's take a closer look at the image of the city in such stories by Leonid Andreev as "Petka at the Dacha", "In the Fog" and "The City".

3.1 "Petka in the country"

The story "Petka at the dacha" can definitely be attributed to the early realistic works of L. Andreev, awakening a humane attitude towards a person. This person in the story becomes a little boy of ten years. The child of a lonely and poor cook is deprived of a carefree childhood. From an early age he was forced to serve in a hairdresser, where he heard only an angry shout - "Boy, water!" and the threat - "Wait a minute!"... Petka was punished for spilling water, but he did not complain. A hard and monotonous existence dulled the feelings in the child, physically exhausted the boy and turned him into an apathetic old man. He was losing weight, but "There were wrinkles around his eyes and under his nose, as if drawn by a sharp needle, and made him look like a dwarf."

Petka was born and raised in one of the impoverished districts of Moscow. Here he worked in a dirty hairdresser, not far from which "There was a quarteral, filled with houses of cheapdebauchery ". And Petka got used to this rough and unsightly human life, where thefts and robberies were commonplace. On the streets of the city, he met the indifferent and angry faces of dirty-dressed people, saw a drunk man beat a drunk woman, but none of the crowd that ran away stood up for her. It was a city of impersonal, homeless, socially disadvantaged people.

Petka, not consciously, but intuitively, could not accept his life as a norm. It seemed to the boy that "Everything around him is not true, but a long unpleasant dream", and he really wanted to go somewhere else. The problem of personality alienation is presented in the story as an innate sense of protest that arises in a child in conditions of oppressive everyday life.

The symbol of another life for Petka turned out to be a dacha in Tsaritsyno, where the boy, his mother, Nadezhda, was invited. "He did not know what a dacha was, but he believed that it was the very place he was striving for."

Petka lived in an extremely confined space of the city. This space was bounded by a dark hairdresser, shops, stalls and pubs located next to it, as well as the boulevard with its "sunken" inhabitants. Everyday fighting and drinking was a characteristic part of human life here. The child did not know another life.

Outside the city limits, a wonderful world opened for Petka, the existence of which he did not even suspect. It was a world of fields, plains, mountains, forests, rivers and a wide clear sky. It was a world of freedom and space, which appeared before the boy's eyes as something new and strange. “In contrast to the savages of past centuries, who were lost in the transition from desert to city, this modern savage, snatched from the stone embrace of urban masses, felt weak and helpless in the face of nature... Everything here was alive for him, feeling and having a will. "

The cityscape is depicted in dark and sad colors: a dirty hairdresser's, black with soot, trees gray with dust, grass reddened by the sun. Petka, living in this city, could not even realize whether he was bored or fun. He mechanically carried out the orders of the owner Osip Abramovich or someone from the apprentices.

The beauty of nature awakened the soul of a child. Petka seemed to have learned to understand his feelings and express his feelings. In the boy's perception, now white joyful clouds are floating across the sky, and green and light meadows with bright flowers are becoming cheerful. When Petka was asked if he liked living in the country, he "He smiled embarrassedly and answered: Good! .."

At the dacha, Petka finally found a real childhood. He fished, swam in the pond, climbed the ruins of the palace, ran barefoot, played "classics". Petka's wrinkles on his face smoothed out, and he himself became noticeably younger in the fresh air (and this is ten years old ?!).

But a week later, a letter came to the dacha "kufarka Nadezhda", in which the owner of the hairdresser demanded that Petka return to the city. When the boy was told this terrible news, he did not immediately understand where he needed to go. The dacha became his home, but he completely forgot about the city. Realizing what had happened, Petka did not just cry - he screamed. A child in hysterics with all his being expressed protest and disagreement, because he did not want to lose his newfound happiness and return to the city, where no one cares about his suffering.

Petka and his mother arrived by train to Moscow ... "Pushing among the hurrying passengers, they went out into the rumbling street, and the big greedy city indifferently devoured its little victim."

The composition of the work is a circle: the story ends at the same place from which it began. The city did not let go and pursued the child like an evil fate. And the little man of Leonid Andreev could not resist this force, which stood above him. Once again, finding himself in a stuffy barbershop, Petka unquestioningly obeyed orders. And only at night, with a sinking heart, he recalled the dacha and told Nikolka about "Which does not happen, which no one has ever seen or heard."

In the story, the natural, natural environment, which gives inner freedom, is opposed to the city space, which is closed, fetters and enslaves man. This antithesis was significant in the work of Andreev. She is found in such stories of the writer as "From the life of the captain Kablukov", "Hotel", "City", "Story about Sergei Petrovich".

3.2 "In the fog"

The story of Leonid Andreev reflects the mental state of a 17-year-old boy, who is acutely experiencing his own moral insignificance. Gymnasium student Pavel Rybakov was close to corrupt women and fell ill with a shameful disease, "Which cannot be thought of without horror and self-loathing"... In the hero's soul there is a struggle between two principles: dreams of light love for the pure and innocent Katya Reimer coexist with his repeated "falls". Paul feels himself a bad, lost person, hides his illness from his family and suffers alone.

Leonid Andreev reveals in the work the phenomenon of the "disintegration" of the bourgeois intellectual environment. Sergei Andreevich, Pavel's father, thought he knew his son, because he always discussed many issues of life with him seriously and frankly, as with an adult. But it turned out that Pavel "In some mysterious moods, in some disgusting drawings ..."... Even in this relatively prosperous family in terms of upbringing, one of the acute problems of morality - the preservation of cleanliness by the young generation, not only spiritual, but also physical - remains unresolved.

L. Andreev is interested in the cardinal problems of the disadvantage of human life. The writer, according to V. Grechnev, says that society cannot answer an important question: how to deal with the fact that a person has long lived a double life - an obvious one that he is proud of, and a secret that he despises and tries to hide. Explicit life is described in clever and useful books: music, theater, exhibitions ... “And next to her, a completely different life continues to flow - disgustingly dirty and qipersonally shameless, she both outside a person and inside him, she repels him with her ugliness and in an incomprehensible way attracts him to her, he does not forget about it both in the bosom of nature and in the hustle and bustle of city streets. " Grechnev V.Ya. Tragedy in everyday life (type of hero, conflict and originality of psychologism in the stories of L. Andreev) // Grechnev V.Ya. Russian story of the late 19th - early 20th century. L., 1979.S. 139. A pseudo-moral society turns a blind eye to this reverse side of civilization, does not allow itself to think about it.

Pavel Rybakov sinks to the bottom of street debauchery with a move to St. Petersburg. The image of the capital is revealed in the story metonymically: through the natural and climatic characteristics of the city - fog. The fog is not so much a detail of the cityscape as it recreates the symbolic plan of the work, reflects the state of mind of Paul. The November fog is painted by Andreev the artist in a disturbing dark yellow color. It covers everything: streets, houses of a stone city, figures of passers-by. The fog also enters Paul's room : "Everything was yellow from him: the ceiling, walls and a crumpled pillow", "yellow ... notebooks and papers", "Paul's face also turned yellow from him."

In the story, the dirty city fog and the "dirty" illness of the protagonist metaphorically converge. They carry death within them. In the fog, which is compared to a shapeless yellow-bellied reptile, belated painfully bright flowers perish. Paul feels miserable due to illness , terribly lonely "Like a leper on his pus". He decides to commit suicide and murder of the prostitute Manechka on the very day when the city was suffocating in a yellow fog from the very dawn.

In St. Petersburg, Paul is in the grip of something fatal, leaving no hope of salvation. Here he is mercilessly pursued by women with cold and insolent eyes. When Paul “He sleeps and is powerless to control his feelings and desires, they grow as fiery ghosts from the depths of his being; when he is awake, some terrible force takes him into his iron hands and ... throws him into the dirty arms of dirty women. "

In the expressive description of the city, the influence on L. Andreev of the works of S. Baudelaire, E. Po. In Paul's mind, the city is teeming with women, "Like decomposed meat by worms"... In this city he fell ill and because of the illness he feels himself "In some stinking slop"... The city makes a terrible and unpleasant impression not only on Paul, but also on the reader: "There was sticky and gray mud on the pavement," "the air was still and heavy," "wood lice were crawling along the slippery, high walls."

The indifferent city is covered with a murky and cold fog. And Paul seemed incomprehensible and strange that "That in this leaden, rotten fog, some kind of its own, restless and lively life continues to flow ...".

The image of Petersburg in Leonid Andreev's story "In the Fog" continues in Russian literature the folk tradition, according to which Petersburg is the center of evil and crime, suffering and death.

3.3 "Town"

The city landscape is most fully and characteristic for the work of Leonid Andreev in the story entitled "The City", written in 1902.

The story tells about a poor official who feels completely alone among thousands of people living in a huge city. Petrov was very afraid of this city, especially during the day, when the streets are full of strangers and strangers. The protagonist had no family or friends. There was no one around whom he could tell about his experiences and fears. In the town “Each ... man was a separate world, with its own laws and goals, with its own special joy and sorrow, - and each was like a ghost,who appeared for a momentand, unsolved, unrecognized disappeared. And what the more there were people who did not know each other, the more terrible everyone's loneliness became. "

Against the background of general alienation, Petrov is still looking for human communication. Once a year, on Easter, he meets another unfortunate official in the house of Messrs. Vasilevsky. Their meetings gradually develop into acquaintance. A friendly relationship seems to be established between them, where feelings of joy, anxiety, and grief are manifested. But sincere conversations do not work, and in laconic conversations each of them speaks about his own. In the end, they even remain nameless for each other (and for the readers): the other official in Petrov's memoirs is only "that", Petrov himself for “That” - “hunchbacked”.

On the one hand, the hero of Leonid Andreev is an ordinary, weak person, he belongs to the faceless mass of the city's inhabitants. Every day Petrov went to work, in winter he occasionally visited the theater, and in the summer he went to see his friends at the dacha. His life was measured and monotonous, like everyone else's, and was "measured" by the change of seasons.

On the other hand, the writer singles out from the crowd a small official who intuitively realizes the pettiness and routine of his personality. Unlike the rest of the inhabitants of the city, Petrov thinks about why he is alone among many people, why there are obstacles on the way of rapprochement between man and man. Misunderstanding and loneliness lead Petrov to a kind of protest. In a drunken riot with tears he screams : "We are all humans! All brothers! "... Andreev's hero almost literally repeats Bashmachkin's exclamations from the Gogol story: "I am your brother", "Why do you offend me?"). Petrov protests under the influence of alcohol, but he simply cannot express his suffering in another way.

In this story, Andreev continues to develop the theme of the "little man" in literature. The writer, however, does not focus on the low social position of the official, on his oppression by the masters. V.A. Meskin rightly notes: “The tragedy here is not that individuality is rejected by society,and not that society rejects individuality, but that individuals do not constitute a single society. " V.A. Meskin Between “two truths” // Andreev L.A. Red laugh. Remizov A.M. Cockerel. M., 2001.S. 93-94.

Dissociation of people occurs within the city boundaries. In the description of this city, Andreev's gravitation towards hyperbolization is observed. This is understandable, because the reader sees the urban landscape through the eyes of a frightened Petrov. "The city was crowded and huge"- these characteristic features are repeated in the text in different variations several times.

The urban landscape is concretized in expressively rich descriptions of streets and houses. "With the colossal weight of his inflated stone houses, he 'the city' crushed the ground on which he stood, and the streets between the houses were narrow, crooked and deep, like cracks in a rock."... Streets, "Broken, suffocated, frozen in a terrible convulsion" animate, endowed with the ability to be seized with panic, to flee from the city into the open field. But, like Petrov, the streets are captured by the city. Houses are likened to impersonal residents: "Now reddening with cold and liquid blood of fresh bricks, then painted with dark and light paint, they stood on the sides with unshakable firmness, met and saw off indifferently, crowded in a dense crowd both in front and behind, lost their physiognomy and became similar to one another ...".

Leonid Andreev did not strive to objectively recreate some kind of real city in his work, although the features of St. Petersburg are guessed in it. It is much more important for the writer to convey the emotional perception of the city by its inhabitants, to show the relationship between the subject of consciousness (Petrov) and the object of the image (city).

The city acts in relation to the hero as "Something stubborn, invincible, indifferently cruel." Petrov is in the power of the stone city, he feels "A grain of sand among other grains of sand" and suffocates from loneliness.

The giant city, once created by human hands, comes to life, abstracts and begins to live a self-sufficient life. It mercilessly "kills" its inhabitants: the Smirnovs, Antonovs, Nikiforovs. And the “little man” L. Andreev, lost in the city's furnished rooms, becomes depersonalized under the influence of life in this city. Petrov, however, does not accept his position and tries to "rebel" against the evil fate of fate, but everything ends with the victory of the indifferent city. “The huge city has become even larger, and where the field is wide spread, new streets stretch uncontrollably, and on their sides thick, open stone houses weigh heavily on the ground on which they are standing. And to the seven cemeteries that were in the city, a new, eighth one was added. "

Thus, Andreev's city is paradoxical, disharmonious. It does not unite, but, on the contrary, will separate the people living in it. The city is a symbol of loneliness, a symbol of the divisive principle. The mystical city destroys people, turning them into ghosts. He is alien to man and represents for him a space of horror and stuffiness. This "dead" city, capturing a free field, leaves no one hoping for a "resurrection".

Conclusion

We examined the image of the city in the early stories of Leonid Andreev using the example of works that L. Jesuitova refers to as stories of “philosophical mood”. It was in them that the image of the city was reflected most vividly and fully, here it plays a significant role.

The description of the city showed the tragic worldview of the writer. The city appears in relation to the hero as a hostile and destructive beginning. Within the limits of urban space, a fatal force, a fatal predetermination of fate, reigns over a person, regardless of his social status in society, age, life experience. And L. Andreev did not see the possibilities of overcoming this evil of civilization. According to the writer, who was formed in the era of religious nihilism and disillusionment with materialistic theories of "social progress", something is wrong in the deepest foundations of people's lives.

Bibliographic withsqueak

I. Fiction

1.Andreev L.N. Collected works in 6 volumes. Vol. 1. M., 1990.

II. Scientific and critical literature

1. Achatova A.A. The originality of the genre of L. Andreev's story at the beginning of the 900s // Problems of method and genre. Tomsk, 1977. Issue. 5.

2. Bakhtin M.M. Epic and novel. SPb., 2000.

3. Bogdanov A. Between the wall and the abyss // Andreev L.N. Collected works in 6 volumes. Vol. 1. M., 1990.

4. Grechnev V.Ya. Russian story of the late 19-20 century. L., 1979.

5. Dolgopolov L. At the turn of the century: On Russian literature of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. L., 1985.

6. Zobov R.A., Mostepanenko A.M. On the typology of spatio-temporal relations in the field of art // Rhythm, space and time in literature and art. L., 1974.

7. Jesuitova L.A. Creativity of Leonid Andreev (1892-1906). L., 1976.

8. Karpov I.P. Leonid Andreev's word // Andreev L.N. Red laugh. Remizov A.M. Cockerel. M., 2001.

9. Keldysh V.A. Russian realism of the early 20th century. M., 1975.

10. Kolobaeva L.A. The concept of personality in Russian literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. M., 1990.

11. Kulova T.K. The creative quest of Leonid Andreev // Critical Realism of the 20th century. and modernism. M., 1967.

12. Levin F. L. N. Andreev // Andreev L. Stories and stories. Kuibyshev, 1981.

13. Likhachev D.S. The inner world of a work of art // Questions of literature. 1968. No. 8.

14. Likhachev D.S. Poetics of Old Russian Literature. L., 1971.

15. Meskin V.A. Between “two truths” // Andreev L.A. Red laugh. Remizov A.M. Cockerel. M., 2001.

16. Meskin V.A. The artistic method of Leonid Andreev and expressionism // Problems of the poetics of Russian literature of the 19th century. M., 1983.

17. Mikheeva L.N. With a thought about Russia, about a person: Pages of creativity A.I. Kuprin, I.A. Bunin, L.N. Andreev. M., 1992.

18. Moskovkina I.I. "Red Laughter": Apocalypse after Andreev // Andreev L.A. Red laugh. Remizov A.M. Cockerel. M., 2001.

19. Muratova K.D. Leonid Andreev // History of Russian Literature. T.4. L., 1983.

20. Novikova T.N. Poetics of the genre of the story of the 80-90s of the 19th century. in Russian criticism // Problems of the poetics of Russian literature of the 19th century. M., 1983.

21. L.A. Smirnova LN Andreev's work: Problems of artistic method and style. M., 1986.

22. Sokolov A.G. The history of Russian literature of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. M., 1999.

23. Toporov V.N. Petersburg and the "Petersburg text of Russian literature" // Toporov V.N. Myth. Ritual. Symbol. Image: Research in the field of mythopoetic: Selected works. M., 1995.

24. Uspensky B. Poetics of composition. SPb., 2000.

25. N.A. Shipacheva "The language and style of the story" City "by L.N. Andreev // Russian speech. 1988. No. 3.

III. Reference literature

1. Brief literary encyclopedia. In 9 volumes. T.9. M., 1971.

2. Literary encyclopedic dictionary. M., 1987.

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Analysis of Andreev's story "Valya"

The story "Valya" (originally the title was "Mother. From the world of children") tells about complex child psychology, about growing up, about mutual understanding. “The mother is not the one who gave birth, but the one who raised” is a deep thought conveyed by the author through the character of a little boy. And also the idea of the inevitability of fate and the need for humility in the face of hopelessness. The image of the child is of particular interest. It is curious that when Andreev created the character and description of Vali, he used his childhood photographs as a prototype. The author willingly tried on the image of a boy, was able to penetrate the thoughts that may have lurked in his own soul when he was a child.

Valya had a "general look of strict seriousness", a sensible child who does not play with other children, his best friend is a book. He is sensitive to changes in the atmosphere within the family.

The story depicted by L.N. Andreev is painfully familiar to many. An ordinary plot, passed through the unusually sensitive psyche of the author, acquires unusual features, characteristic details.

Andreev's works are "tenacious". He grabs the reader by the soul with his originality, the ability to turn a simple plot into something deep, even philosophical. Particular attention should be paid to his language and figures of speech. Comparisons prevail in the text: “the woman looked at him with a look that seemed to be photographing a man”; “She immediately withdrew into herself and darkened like a secret lantern in which the lid was suddenly closed”; “Laughter as sharp as a knife”; "The boy's face was as white as the pillows on which he slept." Moreover, throughout the story, the boy compares his mother to the “poor little mermaid” from the tales of H. K. Andersen.

It is impossible not to pay attention to the bright color painting in Andreev's texts: "a crimson dance in the light of torches"; "Tongues of fire in red clouds of smoke"; "Human blood and dead white heads with black beards", "pink bald spot".

Analysis of Andreev's story "A flower under the foot"

In another story "a flower under the foot" the author writes on behalf of the 6th Yura. A work about the mistakes and carelessness of adults. Yurochka cannot help but love her mother, for whom guests are more important than her son, who hurries to a date with her lover secretly from her father. The boy witnesses her follies, but is silent. The child still does not understand a lot, but already instinctively feels what is the right thing to do and what should be done. Children always feel the tension between their parents. Yurochka is like a flower that no one notices at name days. He is under his mother's foot. And everything under your feet often gets in the way. He, by childish attentiveness, pays attention to every speck of dust of this huge mysterious world, while he himself is barely noticeable against the background of parental problems.

In this work, Andreev uses such a trope as personification: “I was scared for the fate of the holiday”; "The day ran as fast as a cat runs from a dog" (it is also a comparison); "The night lay everywhere, crawled into the bushes."

Sound writing is also present:

"The sounds all hit him at once, growled, thundered, crawled like goosebumps."

Analysis of Andreev's story "The Abyss"

Andreev's story "The Abyss" is of a completely different kind. The internal conflict of the protagonist Nemovetsky led to an external conflict among the writers. This story is rightfully considered the most scandalous and shocking in the entire work of the author. “They read passionately,” Andreev wrote to M. Gorky, “they pass the number from hand to hand, but they scold! Oh, how they scold. " Many people compared Andreev with Maupassant: "he created" exemplary vileness "in pursuit of originality, fired a shot at human nature."

The main task of the author was to depict the scoundrel-noble human nature. Leonid Nikolayevich explained the idea of the story as follows: “You can be an idealist, believe in a person and the ultimate triumph of good, and with complete denial refer to that modern spiritual being without feathers, which has mastered only the external forms of culture, but in fact in a significant proportion of their instincts and motives remained an animal ... may your love be as pure as your speech about it, stop poisoning a person and poison the beast mercilessly. "

LN Tolstoy spoke negatively about almost all of Leonid Andreev's prose, but he read every new work of him. Lev Nikolayevich and his wife were horrified when they read The Abyss, in connection with which another critical wave followed. Here is what Andreev wrote about this to critic A. A. Izmailov:

“Have you read, of course, how Tolstoy scolded me for“ The Abyss ”? It is in vain that he - "The Abyss" is the native daughter of his "Kreutzer Sonata", even if it’s a minor one ... In general, he hits me for "The Abyss" - and I like it. "

Move by move, thought by thought, the author leads us to a shocking finale. The escalation of the situation goes throughout the entire work through detailed descriptions of nature (if the author describes nature, then he, most likely, seeks to conduct a parallel connection with the human soul). And also thanks to clear characteristics, for example, the description of the eyes of one of the rapists: “I met terrible eyes near my face. They were so close, as if he were looking at them through a magnifying glass and clearly distinguished red veins on the squirrel and yellowish pus on the eyelashes. "

In this story, color painting plays an important role: "the sun blazed with red hot coal"; "A red sunset snatched out a tall pine trunk"; "The road ahead was covered with a crimson coating"; "The girl's hair shone with a golden-red halo"; "They remembered the girls as pure as white lilies" (since ancient times, the lily flower has been considered a symbol of purity and innocence).

Korney Chukovsky, in his publicistic works dedicated to the work of Leonid Andreev, paid special attention to the flashy figurative headings and color writing. Andreev is dominated by black, red and white shades. We often do not even pay attention to this in the text, but the subconscious mind works for us. For example, black is almost always associated with something dark and even mourning. Red also causes, as a rule, a panic mood, for immediately there is an image of blood. White, on the contrary, evokes positive emotions, since it is associated with something light and pure. Color painting helps Leonid Andreev to press the necessary strings of the reader's soul, squeezing out longing, grief and melancholy. And also thanks to playing with color, the author manages to fully implement the antithesis technique in the text.

“And, most importantly, how amazing! - at every given moment the world is painted with one color, only one, and when he writes about milk - his whole world is milk, and when about chocolate - the whole world is chocolate, - and the chocolate sun from the chocolate sky illuminates the chocolate people, - oh, give him any topic, and it will become his air, his element, his space "

A good part of his works Leonid Nikolayevich wrote at night, for which he was nicknamed "the singer of the twilight of the night." Many critics, due to some similarity of themes and decadent mood, compare Andreev with Edgar Poe, with this "planet without orbits", but today it is clear that this is too superficial a comparison.

Themes of Andreev's works very diverse. It seems that he can handle any topic: war, hunger, thought, death, faith, good, power and freedom. "This is the psychology of the poster genius: he changes his themes, like Don Juan - women, but he gives himself up to any one to the end."

Shakespeare said: "the whole world is a theater ..." Andreev will write: "the whole world is a prison" ("My Notes"), "the whole world is a madhouse" ("Ghosts"). For Leonid Nikolaevich, each work is a separate world.

Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev is one of the most interesting and unusual authors. He was well versed in human psychology and knew firsthand what the "dialectic of the soul" is. His contemporaries treated him differently: some simply did not understand, others disliked. A. A. Blok on October 29, 1919 in "In memory of Leonid Andreev" will write:

“I know one thing well about him, that the chief Leonid Andreev, who lived in the writer Leonid Nikolaevich, was infinitely lonely, was not recognized and was always turned into the collapse of the black window that overlooks the islands and Finland, on a damp night, into an autumn downpour, which we loved with one love. It was through such a window that the last guest in a black mask came to him - death. "

Trotsky will write:

“Andreev is a realist. But his truth is not the truth of concrete protocolism, but psychological truth. Andreev, using the expression of the old criticism, is a “historiographer of the soul” and, moreover, of the soul, mainly in moments of acute crises, when the ordinary becomes miraculous, and the miraculous appears as ordinary ... ”.

Interesting? Keep it on your wall!

Andreev from his youth was surprised at the undemanding attitude of people to life, and he exposed this undemanding attitude. “The time will come,” Andreev the schoolboy wrote in his diary, “I’ll draw people an amazing picture of their life,” and I did. Thought is the object of attention and the main instrument of the author, who is directed not to the flow of life, but to thinking about this flow.

Andreev is not one of the writers whose multicolored play of tones creates the impression of living life, as, for example, in A. P. Chekhov, I. A. Bunin, B. K. Zaitsev. He preferred grotesque, tear, contrast of black and white. A similar expressiveness, emotionality distinguishes the works of F.M.Dostoevsky, loved by Andreev V.M. Garshin, E. Po. His city is not big, but "huge", his characters are oppressed not by loneliness, but by "fear of loneliness", they do not cry, but "howl". Time in his stories is "compressed" by events. The author seemed to be afraid of being misunderstood in the world of the visually impaired and hearing impaired. It seems that Andreev is bored in the current time, he is attracted by eternity, "the eternal appearance of man", it is important for him not to depict a phenomenon, but to express his evaluative attitude towards it. It is known that the works "The Life of Basil of Thebes" (1903) and "Darkness" (1907) were written under the impression of the events told to the author, but he interprets these events in his own way.

There are no difficulties in the periodization of Andreev's work: he always painted the clash of darkness and light as a clash of equivalent principles, but if in the early period of creativity in the subtext of his works lay a ghostly hope for the victory of light, then by the end of his work this hope was gone.

Andreev by nature had a special interest in everything inexplicable in the world, in people, in himself; the desire to look beyond the boundaries of life. As a youth, he played dangerous games that made him feel the breath of death. Characters of his works also look into the "kingdom of the dead", for example, Eleazar (story "Eleazar", 1906), who received "cursed knowledge" there, killing the desire to live. Andreev's work corresponded to the eschatological frame of mind that was then taking shape in the intellectual environment, the aggravated questions about the laws of life, the essence of man: "Who am I?", "The meaning, meaning of life, where is he?" impressive, but where is the end? " These questions from Andreev's letters lie in the subtext of most of his works1. All theories of progress evoked a skeptical attitude of the writer. Suffering from his unbelief, he rejects the religious way of salvation: "To what unknown and terrible boundaries will my denial reach? .. I will not accept God ..."

The story "Lies" (1900) ends with a very characteristic exclamation: "Oh, how crazy it is to be human and seek the truth! What a pain!" Andreevsky's narrator often sympathizes with a person who, figuratively speaking, falls into the abyss and tries to grab hold of at least something. "There was no well-being in his soul," GI Chulkov reasoned in his memoirs about his friend, "he was all in anticipation of a catastrophe." A. Blok wrote about the same, feeling "horror at the door," reading Andreev4. There was a lot in this falling man from the author himself. Andreev often "entered" his characters, shared with them a common, in the words of KI Chukovsky, "spiritual tone."

Paying attention to social and property inequality, Andreev had reason to call himself a student of G. I. Uspensky and C. Dickens. However, he did not understand and imagine the conflicts of life like M. Gorky, A. Serafimovich, E. N. Chirikov, S. Skitalets, and other "writers of knowledge": he did not indicate the possibility of their solution in the context of the current time. Andreev looked at good and evil as eternal, metaphysical forces, perceived people as forced conductors of these forces. A break with the bearers of revolutionary convictions was inevitable. VV Borovsky, enrolling Andreev "predominantly" as a "social" writer, pointed to his "incorrect" coverage of the vices of life. The writer was not one of his own either among the "right" or among the "left" and was burdened by creative loneliness.

Andreev wanted, first of all, to show the dialectic of thought, feeling, the complex inner world of the characters. Almost all of them are more than hunger, cold, the question of why life is built this way and not another oppresses. They look within themselves, trying to figure out the motives of their behavior. Whoever his hero is, everyone has their own cross, everyone suffers.

"It doesn't matter to me who" he "is - the hero of my stories: a non, an official, a good man or a brute. The only thing that matters to me is that he is a man and as such bears the same burdens of life."

In these lines of Andreev's letter to Chukovsky there is a bit of exaggeration, his author's attitude to the characters is differentiated, but there is also truth. Critics rightly compared the young prose writer to FM Dostoevsky - both artists showed the human soul as a field of collisions between chaos and harmony. However, a significant difference between them is also obvious: Dostoevsky ultimately, subject to human acceptance of Christian humility, predicted the victory of harmony, while by the end of the first decade of his creative work, Andreev almost excluded the idea of harmony from the space of his artistic coordinates.

The pathos of many of Andreev's early works is due to the heroes' desire for a "different life." In this sense, the story "In the Basement" (1901) about embittered people at the bottom of their lives is remarkable. Here comes a deceived young woman "from society" with a newborn. She was not without reason afraid of meeting with thieves, prostitutes, but the baby relieves the tension. Unhappy people are drawn to a pure "gentle and weak" creature. They wanted to prevent the tabloid woman from seeing the child, but she heart-rendingly demands: "Give! .. Give! .. Give! .." like a light in the steppe, vaguely called them somewhere ... "Romantic" somewhere "passes from the young prose writer from story to story. Sleep, Christmas tree decoration, country estate can serve as a symbol of "another", bright life, other relationships. The attraction to this "other" in Andreyev's characters is shown as an unconscious feeling, innate, for example, as in the adolescent Sashka from the story "Angel" (1899). This restless, half-starved, offended "wolf cub" for the whole world, who "at times ... wanted to stop doing what is called life", accidentally hitting a holiday in a rich house, saw a wax angel on a Christmas tree. A beautiful toy becomes for a child a sign of the "wonderful world where he once lived", where "they do not know about filth and abuse." She must belong to him! .. Sasha endured a lot, defending the only thing that he had - pride, but for the sake of an angel he falls on his knees in front of the "unpleasant aunt." And again passionate: "Give! .. Give! .. Give! .."

The position of the author of these stories, who inherited pain for all unfortunates from the classics, is humane and demanding, but unlike his predecessors, Andreev is tougher. He sparingly measures out a bit of peace to the offended characters: their joy is fleeting, and their hope is illusory. "The Lost Man" Khizhiyakov from the story "In the Basement" shed happy tears, he suddenly fancied that he "would live a long time, and his life would be beautiful," but - the narrator concludes his word - at his head "a predatory death was already seated silently" ... And Sashka, having played enough with an angel, falls asleep happy for the first time, and the wax toy at this time melts either from the blow of a hot stove, or from the action of some fatal force: Ugly and motionless shadows were carved on the wall ... in each of his works. The characteristic figure of evil is built on different phenomena: shadows, night darkness, natural disasters, unclear characters, mystical "something", "someone", etc. " knocking on the hot plates. ”A similar fall is to be experienced by Sasha.

The errand boy from the city barbershop in the story "Petka at the Dacha" (1899) also survived the fall. The "aged dwarf", who knew only labor, beatings, hunger, also strove with all his soul to the unknown "somewhere", "to another place, about which he could not say anything." Having accidentally found himself in the master's country estate, "having entered into complete harmony with nature," Petka transforms externally and internally, but soon the fatal force in the person of the mysterious owner of the hairdressing salon pulls him out of the "other" life. The inhabitants of the hairdresser's are puppets, but they are described in sufficient detail, and only the master-puppeteer is captured in the outline. Over the years, the role of the invisible black force in the twists and turns of plots becomes more and more noticeable.

Andreev has no or almost no happy endings, but the darkness of life in the early stories was dispelled by glimpses of light: the awakening of Man in man was revealed. The motive of awakening is organically connected with the motive of the aspiration of Andreev's characters to "another life." In "Bargamot and Garas'k" characters-antipodes experience awakening, in which everything human seemed to have died forever. But outside the plot, the idyll of a drunkard and a policeman (a "relative" of Mymretsov's policeman GI Uspensky, a classic of "collar propaganda") is doomed. In other typologically similar works, Andreev shows how difficult and how late a Man wakes up in a person (Once Upon a Time, 1901; In Spring, 1902). With awakening, Andreev's characters often come to the realization of their callousness (The First Fee, 1899; No Forgiveness, 1904).

Very much in this sense, the story "Gostinets" (1901). The young apprentice Senista is waiting for Master Sazonka in the hospital. He promised not to leave the boy "a victim of loneliness, illness and fear." But Easter came, Sazonka went on a spree and forgot his promise, and when he came, Senista was already dead. Only the death of a child, "like a puppy thrown into the trash," revealed to the master the truth about the darkness of his own soul: "Lord! - Sazonka cried<...>raising hands to the sky<...>"Aren't we human?"

The difficult awakening of Man is also mentioned in the story "Theft was imminent" (1902). The man who was about to "maybe kill" was stopped by pity for the freezing puppy. The high price of pity, "light<...>in the midst of deep darkness ... "- this is what is important to convey to the reader as a humanist storyteller.

Many of Andreev's characters suffer from their isolation, existential attitude1. Their often extreme attempts to free themselves from this ailment are in vain (Valya, 1899; Silence and Story about Sergei Petrovich, 1900; Original Man, 1902). In the story "The City" (1902), it is said about a petty official, depressed by both everyday life and life, flowing in the stone sack of the city. Surrounded by hundreds of people, he suffocates from the loneliness of meaningless existence, against which he protests in a pitiful, comic form. Here Andreev continues the theme of the "little man" and his outraged dignity, set by the author of "The Overcoat". The narrative is filled with participation in a person whose disease "influenza" is the event of the year. Andreev borrows from Gogol the situation when a suffering person defends his dignity: "We are all people! We are all brothers!" - drunk Petrov cries in a state of passion. However, the writer changes the interpretation of a well-known topic. Among the classics of the golden age of Russian literature, the "little man" is suppressed by the character and wealth of the "big man." For Andreev, the material and social hierarchy does not play a decisive role: loneliness crushes. In the "City" the gentlemen are virtuous, and they themselves are the same Petrovs, but at a higher level of the social ladder. Andreev sees the tragedy in the fact that individuals do not make up communities. A noteworthy episode: a lady from the "institution" greeted Petrov's proposal to marry with laughter, but understandingly and in fear "squeals" when he spoke to her about loneliness.

Andreev's misunderstanding is equally dramatic, both inter-class, and intra-class, and intra-family. The divisive force in his artistic world has a wicked humor, as presented in the story "The Grand Slam" (1899). For many years "summer and winter, spring and autumn" four people played vint, but when one of them died, it turned out that the others did not know if the deceased was married, where he lived ... Most of all, the company was struck by the fact that the deceased will never know about his luck in the last game: "he had a sure great helmet".

This power overwhelms any well-being. Six-year-old Yura Pushkarev, the hero of the story "A Flower Underfoot" (1911), was born into a wealthy family, loved, but, suppressed by the mutual misunderstanding of his parents, lonely, and only "pretends that life in the world is very fun." The child "leaves people", fleeing in a fictional world. The writer returns to an adult hero named Yuri Pushkarev, an outwardly happy family man, a talented pilot in the story "Flight" (1914). These works constitute a small tragic dilogy. The joy of being Pushkarev experienced only in the sky, there in his subconscious a dream was born to forever remain in the blue space. Fatal force threw the car down, but the pilot himself "to the ground ... never returned."

"Andreev," wrote E. V. Anichkov, "made us feel an eerie, chilling consciousness of the impenetrable abyss that lies between man and man."

Disunity breeds militant selfishness. Doctor Kerzhentsev from the story "Thought" (1902) is capable of strong feelings, but he used his whole mind to plot the insidious murder of a more successful friend - the husband of his beloved woman, and then to play with the investigation. He is convinced that he owns thought, like a swordsman with a sword, but at some point the thought betrays and plays on its carrier. She was bored of satisfying "outside" interests. Kerzhentsev lives out his life in an insane asylum. The pathos of this Andreev's story is opposite to the pathos of M. Gorky's lyric-philosophical poem "The Man" (1903), this hymn to the creative power of human thought. After Andreev's death, Gorky recalled that the writer perceived thought as "the devil's cruel joke on man." They said about V.M. Garshin and A.P. Chekhov that they awaken the conscience. Andreev awakened the mind, or rather, the alarm for its destructive potentialities. The writer amazed his contemporaries with his unpredictability and addiction to antinomies.

“Leonid Nikolayevich,” M. Gorky wrote at the table reproachfully, “dug in two strangely and painfully-sharply for himself: in the same week he could sing“ Hosanna! ”To the world and proclaim“ Anathema! ”To him.

This is how Andreev revealed the dual nature of man, "divine and insignificant," according to V.S.Soloviev's definition. The artist again and again returns to the question that worries him: which of the "abysses" prevails in a person? Regarding the relatively bright story "On the River" (1900) about how a "stranger" to everyone, overcame hatred for the people who offended him and, risking his life, saved them in the spring flood, M. Gorky wrote enthusiastically to Andreev:

"You - love the sun. And this is great, this love is the source of true art, real, the very poetry that revives life."

However, Andreev soon created one of the most eerie stories in Russian literature - "The Abyss" (1901). This is a psychologically convincing, artistically expressive study of the fall of the human in man.

Scary: a pure girl was crucified by "subhumans". But it is even more terrible when, after a short internal struggle, an intellectual, a lover of romantic poetry, an anxiously in love young man behaves like an animal. A little bit "before" he did not even suspect that the beast-abyss lurks in himself. "And the black abyss swallowed him up" - such is the final phrase of the story. Some critics praised Andreev for his bold drawing, while others urged readers to boycott the author. At meetings with readers, Andreev insisted that no one was immune from such a fall1.

In the last decade of creativity, Andreev spoke about the awakening of the beast in man much more often than about the awakening of Man in man. The psychological story "In the Fog" (1902) is very expressive in this series, about how the hatred of oneself and the world in a prosperous student found a way out in the murder of a prostitute. Many publications mention the words about Andreev, the authorship of which is attributed to Leo Tolstoy: "He scares, but we are not afraid." But it is unlikely that all readers who are familiar with the named works of Andreev, as well as with his story "Lies", written a year before "The Abyss," or with the stories "The Curse of the Beast" (1908) and "The Rules of Good" (1911), will hardly agree with this. , telling about the loneliness of a person doomed to struggle for survival in the irrational stream of being.

The relationship between M. Gorky and L. N. Andreev is an interesting page in the history of Russian literature. Gorky helped Andreev to enter the literary field, contributed to the appearance of his works in the almanacs of the association "Knowledge", introduced him to the circle "Wednesday". In 1901, Gorky financed the publication of the first book of Andreev's stories, which brought the author the fame and approval of L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov. Andreev called his senior comrade "the only friend". However, all this did not straighten their relationship, which Gorky characterized as "friendship-enmity" (an oxymoron could be born when he read Andreev's letter1).

Indeed, there was a friendship of great writers, according to Andreev, who beat "one bourgeois muzzle" of complacency. The allegorical story "Ben-Tobit" (1903) is an example of Andreev's blow. The plot of the story moves like a dispassionate narration about seemingly unrelated events: a "kind and good" resident of a village near Calvary has a toothache, and at the same time, on the mountain itself, the judgment of "some Jesus" is being carried out. Unhappy Ben-Tobit is outraged by the noise outside the walls of the house, he gets on his nerves. "How they shout!" - This man is indignant, "who did not like injustice", offended by the fact that no one cares about his suffering.

It was the friendship of writers who glorified the heroic, rebellious beginnings of the personality. The author of "The Story of the Seven Hanged" (1908), which tells about a sacrificial feat, moreover - about the feat of overcoming the fear of death, wrote to VV Veresaev: "A man is handsome - when he is brave and mad and tramples death on death."

Many of Andreev's characters are united by the spirit of resistance, rebellion is an attribute of their essence. They rebel against the power of gray life, fate, loneliness, against the Creator, even if the doom of protest is revealed to them. Resisting circumstances makes a person a person - this idea lies at the basis of Andreev's philosophical drama "The Life of a Man" (1906). Mortally wounded by blows of an incomprehensible evil force, the Man curses her at the edge of the grave, calls for battle. But the pathos of resistance to the "walls" in Andreev's works is weakening over the years, the author's critical attitude to the "eternal appearance" of man grows stronger.

At first, a misunderstanding arose between the writers, then, especially after the events of 1905-1906, something really reminiscent of enmity. Gorky did not idealize man, but at the same time he often expressed the conviction that the shortcomings of human nature are, in principle, correctable. One criticized the "balance of the abyss", the other - "peppy fiction." Their paths parted, but even during the years of alienation, Gorky called his contemporary "the most interesting writer ... of all European literature." And one can hardly agree with Gorky's opinion that their polemics interfered with the work of literature.

To a certain extent, the essence of their disagreements is revealed by a comparison of Gorky's novel Mother (1907) and Andreev's novel Sashka Zhegulev (1911). In both works, we are talking about young people who went into the revolution. Gorky begins with naturalistic imagery and ends with romantic. Andreev's pen goes in the opposite direction: he shows how the seeds of the bright ideas of revolution sprout in darkness, rebellion, "senseless and merciless."

The artist considers phenomena in the perspective of development, predicts, provokes, warns. In 1908 Andreev finished work on the philosophical and psychological story-pamphlet "My Notes". The main character is a demonic character, a criminal convicted of a triple murder, and at the same time a seeker of truth. "Where is the truth? Where is the truth in this world of ghosts and lies?" - the prisoner asks himself, but as a result, the newly-minted inquisitor sees the evil of life in the people's craving for freedom, and to the iron bars on the prison window, which revealed to him the beauty of limitation, he feels "tender gratitude, almost love." He alters the well-known formula and asserts: "Lack of freedom is a realized necessity." This "masterpiece of controversy" confused even the writer's friends, since the narrator hides his attitude to the beliefs of the "iron grate" poet. It is now clear that in "Notes" Andreev approached the popular in the XX century. genre of dystopia, predicted the danger of totalitarianism. The builder of "Integral" from EI Zamyatin's novel "We" in his notes, in fact, continues the reasoning of this character of Andreev:

"Freedom and crime are as inextricably linked as ... well, like the movement of the aero and its speed: the speed of the aero is 0, and he does not move, the freedom of man is 0, and he does not commit crimes."

Is there one truth "or there are at least two of them", Andreyev joked sadly and looked at the phenomena from one side or the other. In "The Tale of the Seven Hanged" he reveals the truth on one side of the barricades, in the story "The Governor" - on the other. The problems of these works are indirectly connected with revolutionary deeds. In "The Governor" (1905), a representative of the authorities doomedly awaits the execution of the death sentence passed on him by the people's court. A crowd of strikers "of several thousand people" came to his residence. First, unrealizable demands were made, and then the pogrom began. The governor was forced to order the shooting. Children were also among those killed. The narrator realizes both the justice of the people's anger and the fact that the governor was forced to resort to violence; he sympathizes with both sides. The general, tormented by pangs of conscience, in the end condemns himself to death: he refuses to leave the city, drives without protection, and the "Law-Avenger" overtakes him. In both works, the writer points out the absurdity of life in which a person kills a person, and the unnaturalness of a person's knowledge of the hour of his death.

The critics were right when they saw in Andreev a supporter of universal values, a non-partisan artist. In a whole series of works on the theme of revolution, such as Into the Dark Distance (1900), Marseillaise (1903), the most important thing for the author is to show something inexplicable in a person, the paradox of an act. However, the "Black Hundred" considered him a revolutionary writer, and, fearing her threats, the Andreev family lived abroad for some time.

The depth of many of Andreev's works was not immediately revealed. This happened with Red Laughter (1904). The author was prompted to write this story by newspaper news from the fields of the Russo-Japanese War. He showed war as insanity breeding insanity. Andreev stylizes his narration under the fragmentary memories of a front-line officer who has gone mad:

"It's a red laugh. When the earth goes crazy. It starts laughing like that. There are no flowers, no songs on it, it has become round, smooth and red, like a head that has been torn from its skin."

V. Veresaev, a participant in the Russo-Japanese War, author of the realistic notes "In the War", criticized Andreev's story for not being true. He spoke about the property of human nature to "get used" to all circumstances. According to Andreev's work, it is precisely directed against the human habit of bringing to the norm what should not be the norm. Gorky urged the author to "improve" the story, to reduce the element of subjectivity, to introduce more concrete, realistic images of war1. Andreev replied sharply: "To make healthier means to destroy the story, its main idea ... My theme: madness and horror. " It is clear that the author treasured the philosophical generalization contained in Red Laughter and its projection into the coming decades.

Both the already mentioned story "Darkness" and the story "Judas Iscariot" (1907) were not understood by contemporaries, who correlated their content with the social situation in Russia after the events of 1905 and condemned the author for "an apology for betrayal." They ignored the most important - philosophical - paradigm of these works.

In the story "Darkness," a selfless and bright young revolutionary, hiding from the gendarmes, is struck by the "truth of the brothel" revealed to him in the question of the prostitute Lyubka: what right does he have to be good if it is bad? He suddenly realized that his and his comrades' take-off was bought at the price of the fall of many unfortunate people, and concludes that "if we cannot illuminate all the darkness with flashlights, then let us put out the lights and all climb into the darkness." Yes, the author highlighted the position of an anarchist-maximalist, which the bomber had taken over, but he also highlighted the "new Lyubka", who dreamed of joining the ranks of "good" fighters for another life. This plot twist was omitted by critics who condemned the author for what they thought was a sympathetic portrayal of a renegade. But the image of Lyubka, which was also ignored by later researchers, plays an important role in the content of the story.

The story "Judas Iscariot" is tougher, in it the author draws the "eternal appearance" of mankind, who did not accept the Word of God and killed the one who brought it. "Behind her," wrote A. Blok about the story, "the author's soul is a living wound." In the story, the genre of which can be defined as "The Gospel of Judas," Andreev changes little in the storyline outlined by the evangelists. He attributes episodes that may have taken place in the relationship between the Master and the students. All the canonical Gospels differ in episodes. At the same time, Andreev's, so to speak, legal approach to characterizing the behavior of participants in biblical events opens up the dramatic inner world of the "traitor." This approach reveals the predetermination of tragedy: without blood, without the miracle of resurrection, people will not recognize the Son of Man, the Savior. The duality of Judas, expressed in his appearance, his throwing, mirrors the duality of Christ's behavior: they both foresaw the course of events and both had reason to love and hate each other. "Who will help poor Iscariot?" - Christ responds meaningfully to Peter when asked to help him in power games with Judas. Christ sadly and understandingly bows his head upon hearing the words of Judas that in another life he will be the first to be next to the Savior. Judas knows the price of good and evil in this world, painfully experiences his righteousness. Judas punishes himself for betrayal, without which the Advent would not have taken place: the Word would not have reached humanity. The act of Judas, who, until the very tragic end, hoped that people on Calvary were about to see their sight, see and realize who they were executing, is "the last stake of faith in people." The author condemns all mankind, including the apostles, for being insensitive to good3. On this subject, Andreev has an interesting allegory created simultaneously with the story - "The Snake's Tale of How It Got Poisonous Teeth." The ideas of these works will sprout with the final work of the prose writer - the novel "The Diary of Satan" (1919), published after the death of the author.

Andreev has always been attracted by an artistic experiment in which he could bring together the inhabitants of the world of existence and the inhabitants of the manifest world. He brought together both of them in a rather original way in the philosophical tale "Earth" (1913). The Creator sends angels to earth, wanting to know the needs of people, but having learned the "truth" of the earth, the messengers "nad" cannot keep their clothes unblemished and do not return to heaven. They are ashamed to be "clean" among people. A loving God understands them, forgives them and looks with reproach at the messenger who visited the earth, but kept his white clothes clean. He himself cannot descend to earth, for then people will not need heaven. There is no such condescending attitude towards humanity in the latest novel, which brings together the inhabitants of opposite worlds.

Andreev took a long time to try on the "wandering" plot associated with the earthly adventures of the incarnate devil. The implementation of the long-standing idea of creating "the devil's notes" was preceded by the creation of a colorful picture: Satan-Mephistopheles sits over a manuscript, dipping his pen into a Chersey inkwell1. At the end of his life, Andreev enthusiastically worked on a work about the stay of the leader of all unclean people on earth with a very non-trivial ending. In the novel "The Diary of Satan" the devil is a person suffering. The idea of the novel is already seen in the story "My Notes", in the image of the protagonist, in his reflections on the fact that the devil himself with all his "stock of hellish lies, cunning and cunning" man is able to "lead by the nose." The idea of the composition could have arisen in Andreev's reading of The Brothers Karamazov by FM Dostoevsky, in the chapter about the line dreaming of becoming a naive merchant's wife: “My ideal is to enter the church and light a candle from a pure heart, by God. my suffering. " But where the devil of Dostoevsky wanted to find peace, an end to "suffering." The Prince of Darkness Andreev is just beginning his suffering. An important uniqueness of the work is the multidimensionality of its content: one side of the novel is turned to the time of its creation, the other - to "eternity". The author trusts Satan to express his most disturbing thoughts about the essence of man, in fact, he questions many of the ideas of his earlier works. "The Diary of Satan", as noted by the long-time researcher of LN Andreev's work, Yu. Babicheva, is also "the personal diary of the author himself."

Satan in the guise of the merchant he had killed and with his own money decided to play with humanity. But a certain Thomas Magnus decided to take possession of the alien's funds. He plays on the feelings of a stranger to a certain Mary, in whom the devil saw Madonna. Love transformed Satan, he is ashamed of his involvement in evil, the decision has come to become just a man. Atoning for past sins, he gives money to Magnus, who promised to become a benefactor of people. But Satan is deceived and ridiculed: the "earthly Madonna" turns out to be a figurehead, a prostitute. Thomas ridiculed the devilish altruism, took possession of money in order to blow up the planet of people. In the end, Satan sees in a scientist chemist the bastard son of his own father: "It is hard and insulting to be this little thing, which is called a man on earth, a cunning and greedy worm ..." - Satan reflects1.

Magnus is also a tragic figure, a product of human evolution, a character who has suffered through his misanthropy. The narrator understands both Satan and Thomas equally. It is noteworthy that the writer endows Magnus with an appearance that resembles his own (this can be seen by comparing the portrait of the character with the portrait of Andreev, written by I.E.Repin). Satan gives a person an assessment from the outside, Magnus - from the inside, but in the main, their assessments coincide. The culmination of the story is parody: the events of the night "when Satan was tempted by man" are described. Satan cries, seeing his reflection in people, the earthly laughs "at all the ready-made devils."

Crying is the leitmotif of Andreev's works. Many and many of his characters shed tears, offended by the powerful and evil darkness. The light of God cried - the darkness cried, the circle is closed, no one can get out anywhere. In the "Diary of Satan" Andreev came close to what LI Shestov called "the apotheosis of groundlessness."

At the beginning of the 20th century, in Russia, as in all of Europe, theatrical life was flourishing. People of creativity argued about the ways of developing the performing arts. In a number of publications, primarily in two "Letters about the Theater" (1911 - 1913), Andreev presented his "theory of new drama", his vision of the "theater of pure psychism" and created a number of plays that corresponded to the set tasks2. He proclaimed "the end of everyday life and ethnography" on the stage, opposed the "outdated" A. II. Ostrovsky to the "modern" A. P. Chekhov. Not that moment is dramatic, argues Andreev, when the soldiers shoot the rebellious workers, but the one when the manufacturer struggles with "two truths" on a sleepless night. He leaves entertainment for the site of the cafe and cinema; the stage of the theater, in his opinion, should belong to the invisible - the soul. In the old theater, the critic concludes, the soul was "smuggled". Andreev the prose writer is recognized as the innovator-playwright.

Andreev's first work for the theater was the romantic-realistic play To the Stars (1905) about the place of the intelligentsia in the revolution. Gorky was also interested in this topic, and for some time they worked together on the play, but the co-authorship did not take place. The reasons for the gap become clear when comparing the problems of two plays: "To the Stars" by L. Andreev and "Children of the Sun" by M. Gorky. In one of the best plays by Gorky, born in connection with their common concept, one can find something "Andreev's", for example, in the opposition of "children of the sun" to "children of the earth," but not much. It is important for Gorky to imagine the social moment of the nation of the intelligentsia entering the revolution; for Andreev, the main thing is to correlate the purposefulness of scientists with the purposefulness of revolutionaries. It is noteworthy that Gorky's characters are engaged in biology, their main instrument is a microscope, Andreev's characters are astronomers, their instrument is a telescope. Andreev gives the floor to the revolutionaries who believe in the possibility of destroying all the "walls", to the skeptical petty bourgeois, to the neutrals who are "above the battle", and they all have "their own truth." The movement of life forward - an obvious and important idea of the play - is determined by the creative obsession of individuals, and it does not matter whether they give themselves to revolution or science. But happy with him are only people who live with their souls and thoughts turned to the "triumphant vastness" of the Universe. The harmony of the eternal Cosmos is contrasted with the insane flow of life on earth. The cosmos is in accord with the truth, the earth is wounded by the collision of "truths".

Andreev has a number of plays, the presence of which allowed his contemporaries to talk about the "theater of Leonid Andreev". This series opens with the philosophical drama Life of a Man (1907). Other most successful works in this series are Black Masks (1908); Tsar-Hunger (1908); Anatema (1909); "Ocean" (1911). The psychological compositions of Andreev are close to the above-mentioned plays, for example, such as "Dog Waltz", "Samson in Shackles" (both - 1913-1915), "Requiem" (1917). The playwright called his works for the theater "performances", thereby emphasizing that this is not a reflection of life, but a play of the imagination, a spectacle. He argued that on stage the general is more important than the particular, that the type speaks more than the photograph, and the symbol is more eloquent than the type. Critics noted the language of modern theater found by Andreev - the language of philosophical drama.

The drama "The Life of a Man" presents the formula of life; the author is "freed from everyday life", goes in the direction of maximum generalization1. The play has two central characters: Human, in whose person the author proposes to see humanity, and Someone in gray, called Him - something that combines human ideas about the supreme outside force: God, fate, fate, the devil. Among them are guests, neighbors, relatives, good people, villains, thoughts, emotions, masks. Someone in gray acts as a messenger of the "circle of iron destiny": birth, poverty, labor, love, wealth, fame, misfortune, poverty, oblivion, death. A candle burning in the hands of a mysterious Someone reminds of the transience of a human being in the "iron circle". The performance involves characters familiar from the ancient tragedy - the messenger, the moirae, the choir. When staging the play, the author demanded that the director avoid semitones: "If he is kind, then like an angel; if he is stupid, then like a minister; if ugly, then so that the children are afraid. Sharp contrasts."

Andreev strove for uniqueness, allegoricality, for the symbols of life. He has no symbols in the symbolist sense. This is the manner of drawers of popular prints, expressionist painters, icon painters, depicting the earthly path of Christ in squares bordered by a single frame. The play is tragic and heroic at the same time: despite all the blows of an outside force, the Man does not give up, and at the edge of the grave throws a glove to the mysterious Someone. The ending of the play is similar to the ending of the story "The Life of Basil of Thebes": the character is broken, but not defeated. AA Blok, who watched the play staged by V.E.Meyerhold, noted in his review that the hero's profession was not accidental - he, in spite of everything, is a creator, an architect.

"The Life of a Man is a vivid proof that Man is a man, not a doll, not a miserable creature doomed to decay, but a wonderful phoenix that overcomes the" icy wind of boundless spaces. Wax melts, but life does not subside. "

The play "Anatema" is seen as a kind of continuation of the play "The Life of a Man". This philosophical tragedy reappears Someone guarding the entrances - impassive and powerful guardian of the gates, beyond which the Beginning of beginnings, the Great Reason, stretches. He is the keeper and servant of eternity-truth. Opposed to him Anatema, devil cursed for rebellious intentions to learn the truth

The Universe and equalize with the Great Reason. The evil spirit, cowardly and in vain at the feet of the keeper, is a tragic figure in its own way. “Everything in the world wants good,” the damned one thinks, “and does not know where to find it, everything in the world wants life — and only meets death ...” He comes to doubts about the existence of Reason in the Universe: is the name of this intelligence ? Out of despair and anger that it is not possible to learn the truth on the other side of the gate, Anatema tries to learn the truth on this side of the gate. He sets up cruel experiments on the world and suffers from unjustified expectations.

The main part of the drama, which tells about the feat and death of David Leizer, "the beloved son of God", has an associative connection with the biblical story of humble Job, with the gospel story of the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. Anatema decided to test the truth of love and justice. He endows David with enormous riches, pushes him to create a "miracle of love" for his neighbor, contributes to the formation of David's magical power over people. But the devil's millions are not enough for all those who suffer, and David, as a traitor and deceiver, is stoned to death by his beloved people. Love and justice turned into deception, good into evil. The experiment was carried out, but Anatema did not get a "pure" result. Before his death, David does not curse people, but regrets that he did not give them the last penny. The epilogue of the play repeats its prologue: the gate, the silent guard of Someone and the seeker of truth Anatema. With the ring composition of the play, the author speaks of life as an endless struggle of opposing principles. Soon after it was written, the play staged by V.I.Nemirovich-Danchenko was successfully staged at the Moscow Art Theater.

In the work of Andreev, artistic and philosophical beginnings merged together. His books nourish an aesthetic need and awaken thought, disturb the conscience, awaken sympathy for a person and fear for his human component. Andreev sets up a demanding approach to life. Critics spoke of his "cosmic pessimism", but his tragic is not directly related to pessimism. Probably foreseeing a misunderstanding of his works, the writer has repeatedly argued that if a person cries, this does not mean that he is a pessimist and does not want to live, and vice versa, not everyone who laughs is an optimist and has fun. He belonged to the category of people with a heightened sense of death due to an equally heightened sense of life. People who knew him closely wrote about Andreev's passionate love for life.

Leonid Andreev's story "Kusak" about compassion, responsibility of a person for those whom he has tamed. Subsequently, this idea was formulated and presented to the world in the form of an aphorism by another master of words, the French writer A. de Saint-Exupery. The author of the story calls to feel the pain of the suffering living soul of a homeless dog.

History of creation and description of the story

The story of a stray dog is told by an outside observer. Kusaka grew up and became an adult dog in spite of the ruthless circumstances in which she found herself. The dog has no home and is always hungry. But the main thing that pursues her is the cruelty of people, strong ones, who have the opportunity to offend a weak animal. Kusaka dreams of affection and one day she dares to accept it, but as a result she gets kicked in the stomach with a boot. She doesn't trust anyone anymore. Once, finding himself in the garden of someone else's dacha, a dog bites a girl who wants to caress her. This is how she gets to know the family of summer residents and here she becomes “her” dog.

A kind attitude and daily food change not only the life, but also the character of the stray animal. Kusaka becomes affectionate, guards the dacha and amuses the new owners with his funny joy. However, autumn comes, the girl Lelya, together with her family, leaves for the city, leaving her four-legged friend in an abandoned dacha. The story ends with the melancholy howl of a homeless and useless Kusaka.

main characters

L. Andreev wrote that, having made the dog the main heroine of the story, he wanted to convey to the reader the idea that “all living things have the same soul,” which means that he suffers equally and needs compassion and love. Kusaka has a loyal heart, knows how to be grateful, responsive to affection and capable of love.

Another heroine of the story, the girl Lelya, on the contrary, does not value loyalty, her love is selfish and fickle. The girl could be better, she has good moral inclinations. But her upbringing is occupied by adults, for whom well-being and tranquility are more important than such "trifles" as compassion and responsibility for a weak and trusting being.

Analysis of the story

In a letter to K. Chukovsky, Leonid Andreev writes that the works included in the collection are united by one idea: to show that "all living things suffer from suffering alone." Among the heroes of the stories there are people of different classes and even a homeless dog, but as part of the "living", they are all united by "great impersonality and equality" and are equally compelled to resist the "enormous forces of life."

The writer shows the difference between pity, mixed with momentary emotions, and real lively and active compassion. The selfishness of the girl and her family is obvious: they are glad that they were able to shelter a homeless animal. But this joy is not based on responsibility and is largely based on those considerations that the dog brightens up the suburban life of summer residents with its inept and unrestrained manifestation of joy. It is not surprising that pity for a homeless animal easily turns into indifference at the mere thought of the personal inconvenience of a dog living in a city house.

The story, it seems, could become a story with a good ending. Like those in Christmastide stories. But L. Andreev aims to awaken the conscience of people, to show the cruelty of indifference to the suffering of a weak being. The writer wants a person to accept the pain of someone else's soul as his own. Only then will he himself become kinder, come closer to his high vocation - to be a human being.

"Town"

It was a huge city in which they lived: an official of a commercial bank, Petrov, and the other, without a name and surname.

They met once a year - on Easter, when both of them paid a visit to the same house of Messrs. Vasilevsky. Petrov also made visits at Christmas, but probably the other one he met came at the wrong hours for Christmas, and they did not see each other. The first two or three times Petrov did not notice him among the other guests, but in the fourth year his face seemed already familiar to him, and they greeted him with a smile, and in the fifth year Petrov invited him to clink glasses.

To your health! ”He said amiably and held out a glass.

To your health! ”Answered, smiling, and he held out his glass.

But Petrov did not think of recognizing his name, and when he went out into the street, he completely forgot about his existence and did not think about him for the whole year. Every day he went to the bank, where he had served for ten years, in winter he occasionally went to the theater, and in the summer he went to see his friends at the dacha, and twice was ill with influenza - the second time just before Easter. And, already ascending the stairs to the Vasilevskys, in a tailcoat and with a folding top hat under his arm, he remembered that he would see one and the other there, and was very surprised that he could not at all imagine his face and figures.

Petrov himself was short, a little stooped, so that many took him for a hunchback, and his eyes were large and black, with yellowish whites. For the rest, he did not differ from all the others who visited the Vasilevskys twice a year, and when they forgot his name, they simply called him "hunchback."

The other one was already there and was about to leave, but when he saw Petrov, he smiled affably and stayed. He, too, was in a tailcoat and also with a folding top hat, and Petrov did not have time to examine anything else, as he engaged himself in conversation, food and tea. But they went out together, helped each other dress like friends; politely made way and both gave the doorman fifty dollars each. On the street they stopped a little, and the other one said:

Tribute! That's that.

Nothing can be done, - Petrov answered, - a tribute!

And since there was nothing more to talk about, they smiled affectionately, and Petrov asked:

Where are you going?

To my left. And you?

To my right.

In the cab, Petrov remembered that he again had no time either to ask about the name, or to examine it. He turned: carriages were moving back and forth, -

the sidewalks were blackened by the walking people, and in this continuous moving mass of one and the other, it was impossible to find, just as it is impossible to find a grain of sand among other grains of sand. And again Petrov forgot him and did not remember him for the whole year.

He lived for many years in the same furnished rooms, and there he was very disliked, since he was gloomy and irritable, and was also called

"humpback". He often sat in his room alone and it is not known what he was doing, because the bellboy Fedot did not consider either a book or a letter to be a case. At night, Petrov sometimes went out for a walk, and the doorman Ivan did not understand these walks, since Petrov returned always sober and always alone - without a woman.

And Petrov went for a walk at night because he was very afraid of the city in which he lived, and most of all he was afraid of him during the day, when the streets are full of people.

The city was huge and crowded, and there was something stubborn, invincible and indifferently cruel in this crowding and enormity. With the colossal weight of his bloated stone houses, he crushed the ground on which he stood, and the streets between the houses were narrow, crooked and deep, like cracks in a rock. AND

it seemed that all of them were seized with panic and tried to run out from the center into the open field, but could not find the way, and got confused and swirl like snakes, and cut each other, and rushed back in hopeless despair. One could walk for hours on these streets, broken, suffocated, frozen in a terrible convulsion, and still not leave the line of thick stone houses. Tall and low, now reddening with the cold and liquid blood of fresh bricks, now painted with dark and light paint, they stood on the sides with unshakable firmness, indifferently met and saw off, crowded in a dense crowd both in front and behind, lost their physiognomy and became similar to one another - and the walking man became afraid:

as if he stood motionless in one place, and the houses pass by him in an endless and menacing line.

Once Petrov walked calmly down the street - and suddenly felt what thickness of stone houses separates him from a wide, free field, where the free earth breathes easily under the sun and the human eye sees far away.

And it seemed to him that he was suffocating and going blind, and he wanted to run in order to escape from the stone embrace - and it was scary to think that, no matter how quickly he ran, he would be escorted around by all the houses, houses, and he would have time to suffocate, before running out of town. Petrov hid in the first restaurant that he came across on the way, but even there he felt for a long time that he was suffocating, and he drank cold water and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief.

But the worst thing was that people lived in all the houses. There were many of them, and they were all strangers and strangers, and they all lived their own life hidden from the eyes, were continuously born and died - and there was no beginning or end to this stream. When Petrov went to work or for a walk, he saw already familiar and familiar houses, and everything seemed familiar and simple to him; but it was worth, at least for a moment, to stop attention on some face - and everything changed sharply and menacingly. With a feeling of fear and powerlessness, Petrov looked at all the faces and realized that he was seeing them for the first time, that yesterday he saw other people, and tomorrow he would see others, and so he always, every day, every minute he sees new and unfamiliar faces. The fat gentleman over there, at whom Petrov was looking, disappeared around the corner - and Petrov would never see him again. Never. And if he wants to find him, he can search all his life and will not find him.

And Petrov was afraid of a huge, indifferent city. This year Petrov again had influenza, very severe, with complications, and very often he had a runny nose. In addition, the doctor found his stomach catarrh, and when the new Easter came and Petrov went to the Vasilevsky gentlemen, on the way, he thought about what he would eat there. And when he saw the other, he rejoiced and told him:

And I, my friend, have a catarrh.

The other one shook his head with pity and replied:

Please tell me!

And again Petrov did not know his name, but began to consider him a good friend of his and remembered him with a pleasant feeling. “That one,” he called him, but when he wanted to remember his face, he imagined only a tailcoat, a white vest and a smile, and since the face was not remembered at all, it turned out that the coat and the vest were smiling. In the summer, Petrov very often went to one dacha, wore a red tie, made a mustache and told Fedot that in the fall he would move to another apartment, and then he stopped going to the dacha and started drinking for a whole month.

He drank absurdly, with tears and scandals: once he knocked out the glass in his room, and another time he scared a lady - he went into her room in the evening, knelt down and offered to be his wife. The unknown lady was a prostitute and at first listened to him attentively and even laughed, but when he spoke of his loneliness and cried, she took him for a madman and began to scream with fear. Petrov was taken out; he resisted, pulled Fedot by the hair and shouted:

We are all humans! All brothers!

They had already decided to evict him, but he stopped drinking, and again at night the doorman cursed, opening and closing the door behind him. By the New Year's, Petrov's salary was increased: 100 rubles a year, and he moved to the next room, which was five rubles more expensive and overlooked the courtyard. Petrov thought that here he would not hear the roar of street driving and could at least forget about the multitude of strangers and strangers surrounding him and living near his own special life.

And in winter it was quiet in the room, but when spring came and the snow chipped off the streets, the roar of the ride began again, and the double walls did not save from it. During the day, while Petrov was busy with something, he moved and made noise, he did not notice the rumble, although it did not stop for a minute; but night came, everything calmed down in the house, and the rumbling street rushed imperiously into the dark room and robbed her of her peace and solitude. The rattling and broken knocking of individual carriages was heard; a quiet and liquid knock originated somewhere far away, grew brighter and louder and gradually faded away, and a new one appeared to replace it, and so on without interruption. Sometimes the horseshoes of horses knocked clearly and in time, and the wheels were not heard - it was a carriage on rubber tires, and often the knocking of individual carriages merged into a powerful and terrible rumble, from which the stone walls began to twitch with a weak tremor and jingle bottles in the cupboard. And they were all people. They sat in cabs and carriages, rode from nowhere and where, disappeared into the unknown depths of the huge city, and new, different people appeared to replace them, and there was no end to this continuous and terrible in its continuity movement. And each person who passed by was a separate world, with its own laws and goals, with its own special joy and grief - and each was like a ghost that appeared for a moment and, unsolved, unrecognized, disappeared. And the more there were people who did not know each other, the more terrible everyone's loneliness became. And on these black, roaring nights, Petrov often wanted to scream with fear, hide somewhere in a deep basement and be there all alone. Then you can think only of those you know, and not feel so infinitely lonely among many strangers.

On Easter, the Vasilevskys did not have one or the other, and Petrov noticed this only towards the end of the visit, when he began to say goodbye and did not meet the familiar smile.

And his heart became restless, and he suddenly felt a painful desire to see the other, and to tell him something about his loneliness and about his nights. But he remembered very little about the man he was looking for: only that he was middle-aged, he seemed to be blond and always dressed in a tailcoat, and by these signs gentlemen

The Vasilevskys could not guess who they were talking about.

We have so many people on holidays that we do not know everyone by their last names, "said Vasilevskaya." But ... isn't that Semyonov?

And she listed several names on her fingers: Smirnov, Antonov,

Nikiforov; then without surnames: bald, who serves somewhere, it seems, in the post office; blond; completely gray-haired. And they were all not the one that Petrov asked about, but they could have been that. They never found him.

That year nothing happened in Petrov's life, and only his eyes began to deteriorate, so he had to wear glasses. At night, if the weather was fine, he went for a walk and chose quiet and deserted alleys for a walk.

But even there he met people whom he had never seen before, and then he would never see, and on the sides were houses like a blank wall, and inside them everything was full of strangers, strangers who slept, talked, quarreled;

someone was dying behind these walls, and next to him a new person was born into the world to get lost for a while in its moving infinity, and then die forever. To console himself, Petrov listed all his acquaintances, and their close, studied faces were like a wall that separates him from infinity. He tried to remember everyone: familiar doormen, shopkeepers and cabbies, even accidentally remembered passers-by, and at first it seemed to him that he knew a lot of people, but when he began to count, it turned out terribly little: in his entire life he learned only two hundred and fifty people, including here and that, the other. And that was all that was close and familiar to him in the world. Perhaps there were still people he knew, but he forgot them, and it was all the same, as if they were not at all.

The other one was very happy when he saw Petrov on Easter. He was wearing a new tailcoat and new boots with a creak, and he said, shaking Petrov's hand:

And I, you know, almost died. Grabbed pneumonia, and now here - he knocked himself on the side - at the top, it seems, is not quite okay.

What are you? - Petrov was sincerely upset.

They talked about different illnesses, and each talked about his own, and when they parted, they shook hands for a long time, but they forgot to ask about the name. And on the next Easter, Petrov did not appear at the Vasilevskys', and the other was very worried and asked Ms. Vasilevskaya who the hunchback that happens to be with them was.

Well, I know, - she said. - His name is Petrov.

What's your name?

Mrs. Vasilevskaya wanted to say her name, but it turned out that she did not know, and was very surprised at this. She also did not know where Petrov served: either in the post office, or in some banker's office.

Then the other did not appear, and then both came, but at different hours, and did not meet. And then they stopped appearing altogether, and gentlemen

The Vasilevskys never saw them again, but did not think about it, since they have a lot of people and they cannot remember everyone.

The huge city has become even larger, and where the field is wide spread, new streets are irresistibly stretched, and on their sides, thick, open stone houses weigh heavily on the ground on which they are standing. And to the seven cemeteries that were in the city, a new, eighth one was added. There is absolutely no greenery on it, and so far only the poor are buried on it.

And when the long autumn night falls, the cemetery becomes quiet, and only in the distant echoes the rumble of street driving rushes, which does not stop day or night.