Lyudmila petrushevskaya time night analysis. L

Annotation

The collection of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya includes her new stories and novels, as well as works already known to readers. The heroes of Petrushevskaya are the people we meet at work, ride the subway, live in the same entrance. Each of them is a whole world that fits into one story, and therefore each such story contains the dramatic and emotional charge of the whole novel. Lyudmila Petrushevskaya is the most traditional and most modern phenomenon in our current literature. It is traditional to archaic and modern to shock. The eternal and the momentary are linked in her work, like the root and the leaves.

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya

Time is night

They called me, and a woman's voice said: - Sorry to bother you, but here after mom, - she paused, - after mom there were manuscripts. I thought you might read it. She was a poet. Of course I understand you're busy. A lot of work? I see. Well then, sorry.

Two weeks later, a manuscript arrived in an envelope, a dusty folder with many sheets of paper, school notebooks, even telegram forms. Subtitle "Notes on the edge of the table." No return address, no last name.

He does not know that when visiting, one cannot greedily rush to the mirror and grab everything, vases, figurines, bottles and especially boxes with jewelry. You can't ask for more at the table. He, having come to someone else's house, fumbles everywhere, a child of hunger, finds somewhere on the floor a little car drove under the bed and believes that this is his find, is happy, presses it to his chest, shines and tells the mistress that he has found what he has found for himself, and where - drove under the bed! And my friend Masha, it was her grandson who rolled her present, an American car, under the bed, and forgot that she, Masha, rolls out of the kitchen in alarm, her grandson Deniska and my Timochka have a wild conflict. Nice post-war apartment, we came to borrow until retirement, they all already floated out of the kitchen with oily mouths, licking their lips, and Masha had to return for us to the same kitchen and think about what to give us without damage. So Denis pulls out the little car, but this one clung to the unfortunate toy with his fingers, and Denis has just an exhibition of these cars, strings, he is nine years old, a healthy watchtower. I tear Tim away from Denis with his typewriter, Timochka is embittered, but they won't let us here anymore, Masha was already thinking when she saw me through the peephole! As a result, I take him to the bathroom to wash, weakened from tears, hysterical in someone else's house! That's why they don't like us, because of Timochka. I behave like an English queen, I refuse everything, from which everything: tea with crackers and sugar! I drink their tea only with my own bread, I pluck it out of the bag involuntarily, because the hunger pangs at someone else's table are unbearable, Tim leaned on crackers and asks if it is possible with butter (the butterdish is forgotten on the table). "And you?" - Masha asks, but it's important for me to feed Timofey: no, thanks, anoint Timochka thicker, would you like Tim, more? I catch the sidelong glances of Deniska, who is standing in the doorway, not to mention his son-in-law Vladimir and his wife Oksana, who has gone up the stairs to smoke, who comes right there to the kitchen, knowing my pain perfectly, and right in front of Tim says (and she looks great), says:

And what, aunt Anya (it's me), does Alena come to see you? Timochka, does your mother visit you?

What are you, Dunechka (that's her childhood nickname), Dunyasha, didn't I tell you? Alena is sick, she constantly has babies.

Mastitis??? - (And it was almost like, from whom is this her baby, from whose milk?)

And I quickly, grabbing a few more biscuits, some good creamy biscuits, take Tim out of the kitchen to watch TV into a large room, let's go, "Good night" soon, although at least half an hour before that.

But she follows us and says that it is possible to apply for Alena's work that the mother abandoned the child to the mercy of fate. Is it me, perhaps, the will of fate? Interesting.

What work, what are you, Oksanochka, she is sitting with a baby!

Finally, she asks, is it something that Alena once told her about on the phone, that she did not know that it happens and that it does not happen, and she cries, wakes up and cries with happiness? From that? When Alena asked for a loan for a cooperative, but we did not have it, did we change the car and repair in the country? From this? Yes? I answer that I do not know.

All these questions are asked with the aim of not going to them anymore. But they were friends, Dunya and Alena, in childhood, we rested nearby in the Baltic States, I, young, tanned, with my husband and children, and Masha with Dunya, and Masha was recovering after a cruel running after one person, had an abortion from him, and he stayed with his family, not giving up anything, neither Tomik's fashion model, nor the Leningrad Tusya, they were all known to Masha, and I added fuel to the fire: because I was also familiar with another woman from VGIK, who was famous for her wide hips and the fact that she later got married, but a summons came to her house from a dermatovenerologic dispensary that she missed another infusion for gonorrhea, and with this woman he broke from the window of his Volga, and she, then a student, ran after the car and cried, then he threw an envelope out of the window, and in the envelope (she stopped to pick it up) there were dollars, but not much. He was a professor on Lenin's subject. And Masha stayed with Duna, and my husband and I entertained her, she languidly walked with us to the tavern, hung with nets, at Majori station, and we paid for her, we live alone, despite her earrings with sapphires. And she said to my plastic bracelet of a simple modern shape 1 ruble 20 kopecks Czech: "Is this a napkin ring?" “Yes,” I said and put it on my arm.

And time has passed, I'm not talking about how I was fired, but I'm talking about the fact that we were and will be with this Masha at different levels, and now her son-in-law Vladimir is sitting and watching TV, which is why they are so aggressive every evening, because now Deniska will have a struggle with his father to switch to "Good night". My Timochka sees this program once a year and says to Vladimir: “Please! Well, I beg you! " - and folds his pens and almost kneels down, he copies me, alas. Alas.

Vladimir has something against Tima, and he is generally tired of Denis like a dog, my son-in-law, I tell you a secret, is clearly running out, is already melting, hence Oksanin's poisonousness. The son-in-law is also a graduate student on the Leninist topic, this topic sticks to this family, although Masha herself publishes whatever she likes, the editor of the calendars, where she gave me some money too languidly and arrogantly, although I helped her out by quickly scribbling an article about the bicentennial of the Minsk Tractor Plant, But she wrote me a fee, even unexpectedly small, apparently, I imperceptibly came forward with someone in co-authorship, with the chief technologist of the plant, as they rely on, because they need competence. Well, then it was so hard that she told me not to appear there for the next five years, there was some remark that what could be the bicentennial of the tractor, in what year was the first Russian tractor produced (rolled off the assembly line)?

As for Vladimir's son-in-law, at the moment described, Vladimir is watching TV with red ears, this time some important match. Typical anecdote! Denis is crying, opened his mouth, sat on the floor. Timka climbs to help him out to the TV and, clumsy, blindly pokes his finger somewhere, the TV goes out, the son-in-law jumps up with a yell, but I’m ready for everything, Vladimir rushes into the kitchen for his wife and mother-in-law, he didn’t stop himself, thank God, Thank you, I came to my senses, did not touch the abandoned child. But already Denis drove the alarmed Tim, turned on whatever was needed, and already they were sitting, peacefully watching the cartoon, and Tim was laughing with a special desire.

But not everything is so simple in this world, and Vladimir pounded the women thoroughly, demanding blood and threatening to leave (I think so!), And Masha enters with a sadness on her face like a person who has done a good deed and completely in vain. Behind her is Vladimir with the face of a gorilla. Nice man's face, something from Charles Darwin, but not at such a moment. Something base is shown in him, something despicable.

Then you don't have to watch this movie, they yell at Denis, two women, and Timochka has heard enough of these screams ... He just starts to wry his mouth. A nervous tic like that. Shouting at Denis, they shout at us, of course. You are an orphan, an orphan, here is such a lyrical digression. It was even better in one house, where Tima and I went to see very distant acquaintances, there is no telephone. They came, entered, they are sitting at the table. Tim: "Mom, I want to eat too!" Oh, oh, we walked for a long time, the child is hungry, let's go home, Timochka, I just ask if there is any news from Alena (the family of her former colleague, with whom they seem to be calling back). A former colleague gets up from the table as in a dream, pours us a plate of fatty meat borscht, oh, oh. We didn't expect this. There is nothing from Alena. - Is she alive? - She didn’t come, there’s no phone at home, and she doesn’t call to work. Yes, and at work, a person here and there ... I collect contributions. What. - Oh, what are you, bread ... Thank you. No, we will not be a second, I see you are tired from work. Well, maybe only Timofeyka. Tim, would you like meat? Only for him, only for him (suddenly I cry, this is my weakness). Suddenly, a shepherd bitch rushes out from under the bed and bites Tim's elbow. Tim screams wildly with his mouth full of meat. The father of the family, also somewhat vaguely reminiscent of Charles Darwin, falls out from the table screaming and threatening, of course, pretending that in ...

Good evening, dear friends. In the courtyard "Time for Night", 1992. “Time for Night” is not only the most famous novel by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, although I, for example, love her novel “Number One” much more, which really is number one, it seems to me, in Russian social fiction, but it is also a diagnosis of the era. Indeed, it is time for the night. After the euphoria of 1991, it was the time of poverty, confusion and, perhaps, depression.

We will talk about Petrushevskaya in two aspects: how she does it, and, in fact, why does she do it. I have never hidden the fact that, although a significant part of Petrushevskaya's texts infuriates me ... In general, whenever I am beaten below the belt, even for my own good, it causes me a difficult reaction. But I honestly think that Petrushevskaya is the best living Russian prose writer, and if I once had two solid candidates from Russia for the Nobel Prize, Iskander and Petrushevskaya, today he is alone. Of course, comparing the work of Petrushevskaya with Jelinek suggests that, of course, Nobel is an unjust institution.

Petrushevskaya is a writer of animal power, such a power that even people who do not accept it, makes them admire, treat her with an insane mixture of irritation and delight, I remember well my feelings from her texts. Even Alexander Tvardovsky, to whom she was well, completely across the soul, after reading in 1969 her story "Such a girl, the conscience of the world", wrote: "Do not print. Keep in touch with the author. " Well, he did not have the opportunity to observe the mighty late age, Petrushevskaya was not published as a prose writer until 1991, so, conventionally, until the end of the eighties, when stories of the late sixties began to appear in Ogonyok.

And then she burst into Russian literature, she was known as a playwright, Arbuzov's studio, a man of exceptional and varied talents: songs with a guitar, and poetry, and magnificent graphics and watercolors, and journalism, and criticism, of course, first-class drama. Although Petrushevskaya's dramas are only preparatory sketches, as it seems to me, for her prose, they are wonderful absurd plays such as Three Girls in Blue or The Moscow Choir, or Andante, but you never know. In general, I think about twenty plays of the highest class. But all this faded before the stories and stories that began to be published widely in the nineties.

How this is done, in general, is easy to understand. And when you get used to it, and you learn to imitate Petrushevskaya's intonation, and it is imitated with amazing ease, like everything stylistically bright, then the burn is not so strong. But at the first moment, of course ...

This is all one sentence: “But they were friends, Dunya and Alena, in childhood, we rested nearby in the Baltic States, and I, young, tanned, with my husband and children, and Masha and Dunya, and Masha was recovering after a cruel running after one person, had an abortion from him , and he stayed with his family, without abandoning anything, neither the fashion model Tomik, nor the Leningrad Tusya, they were all known to Masha, and I added fuel to the fire: because I was familiar with another woman from VGIK, who was glorious wide hips and the fact that later she got married, but a summons came to her house from the dermatovenerologic dispensary that she missed another infusion for gonorrhea, and with this woman he broke from the window of his Volga, and she, then still a student, ran after the car and cried, then he threw an envelope out of the window, and in the envelope (she stopped to pick it up) there were dollars, but not much. He was a professor on Lenin's subject. "

In one phrase, the whole life of a generation, here you have gonorrhea, and wide hips, and a joint vacation in the Baltics, and a professor on the Leninist theme, and we even see with amazing vividness the fashion model Tomik and the Leningrad Tusya. Our life was spent next to them, in this environment. Petrushevskaya, after the story "Own Circle", which appeared in "Novy Mir" and made her a solid fame as a major prose writer, printed things one stronger than the other.

As Mark Lipovetsky quite rightly notes, at the heart of these works is always acute, to the point of physiology and to the point of indecency, love of a mother for her child. In general, Petrushevskaya is very physiological, in "Time for Night" it is enough to recall this scene when a woman's water leaves in a taxi, and then a fly flies into these waters, and in brackets it is written - well, what to take, our bloody deeds. Of course, then many, well, for example, Alla Latynina, very accurately noticed that this is not a feature of life, but a feature of the author's gaze, sometimes the eyes can be averted, but Petrushevskaya's gaze is fixed on the terrible.

She's so Andersen. Of course, she tells tales, but these are terribly cruel, physiological Andersen's tales. Andersen's fairy tales are also terribly cruel, remember "The Red Shoes". And at the same time, she constantly paints a rose bush in her watercolors, and, indeed, Andersen also loves a rose bush very much, because when it grows from blood, pus and dung, it makes a huge, even stronger impression.

What cannot be taken away from Petrushevskaya is the amazing linguistic accuracy, especially in dialogues, the powerful dramatic school is reflected. And, of course, what can I say, she perfectly feels the pain points of the reader, she is really an expert in striking precisely these pain points. And this is always a lonely woman, always an unhappy deceived mother and always a terrible predator man. Men at Petrushevskaya are always physiological, and this is all. Firstly, they eat a lot, and I, who has a habit of reading while eating, am always terribly ashamed of this when I read Petrushevskaya, because my son eats a lot in "Time of Night", who just got out of prison and now comes and eats mother: "eats my flesh, my blood, my black bread with herring." In general, I must say that physiological, nutritional, gastronomic associations arise very often in Petrushevskaya. When she writes about a premature baby, she writes - that he weighed there, three hundred grams, a pack of cottage cheese, and we still have this curd as the taste of this premature baby in the mouth. She knows how to combine two planes of being - physiological and gastronomic.

A man is rude all the time, cruel all the time, breaks up and throws dollars in an envelope, while he is an expert on the Leninist topic, that is, he is also a hypocrite. He takes everything from a woman, rapes her and devours her, and she continues to idolize him and looks at him with huge tragic eyes, like Anna Andrianovna, the main character-narrator in "Time of Night", such a poetess, a painful parody of Anna Akhmatova with her erect posture and with her pride, pride.

What is important here? How she does it, of course, a great many parodies have already driven a tank across Petrushevskaya. But the question, why does she do this, is really not an accidental question. The first intention that arises from the reader is the first guess that it is she who takes revenge. Well, she has something to take revenge on, because in the preface to her newly published book Wanderings about Death, she is a book in which all boundaries have already been violated, all measures have been exceeded. For example, in the story "Strict Granny", on the one hand, there is such a stirring up of horror, and unhappiness, on the other, that the first reaction is the desire to throw the book into the wall and never open it again. Well, you can't do this, when you lack the keyboard, you can't pound on the lid of the piano like that. But even in her other works, earlier, even more tactful, how she does it is understandable, but why? This is not only revenge for her and our abused life, in the preface that I mentioned, she writes that you cannot even imagine how I suffered at thirty, but how I suffered at eighteen, and only after 69 I did not care What will they think of me, I went on stage, I sing, I am completely happy, guys, you have everything ahead of you. This is also very Petrushevsky.

Indeed, a woman like her can only calm down by achieving everything, “I have reached the highest power,” she usually lists her awards with some ecstasy, she is the most translated of Russian authors, in my opinion, and so it is officially recognized. Therefore, now she can afford to somewhat weaken the pressure, but with all this, she really takes revenge, only she does not avenge herself. She has a great monologue in the series "Monologues" - "And who will answer?" This is such a constant questioning speech to a God that does not exist, whom she feels with her Polish, Catholic roots, she has Polish blood, and she is always aware of this. By the way, she was originally named Dolores, that is, "suffering", and then only she was renamed, was renamed Lyudmila.

Lyudmila Stefanovna is a person of an incredibly acute feeling of resentment towards the world, but this resentment is high, humanistic. She really wants revenge, she wants an answer. And why? Who did that? And in the wonderful story "The Meaning of Life", which I would not advise anyone to read, even a person with the strongest nerves, although there is one and a half pages, after the publication of this story in "Syntax", I, frankly, swore to read Petrushevskaya for a long time. But the question was asked there in the finale, here's a puzzle about the meaning of life, if you like. She asks this question, it is the pathos of the Catholic questioning.

Time is Night, of course, is a terrible exaggeration of details, albeit done with amazing art. Here's a look, by the way, how she brilliantly stylizes fragments from a girl's diary, as Mikhail Weller justly remarked: "There are not so many writers in Russia who could describe a naked eighteen-year-old student in such a way as to cause not excitement, but horror among readers." But take a look: “Please, no one ever read this diary, even after my death. Oh Lord, what mud, what mud I plunged into, Lord, forgive me. I fell low. Yesterday I fell so terribly, I cried all morning. How scary it is when morning comes, how hard it is to get up for the first time in my life from someone else's bed, dress in yesterday's underwear, I rolled my panties into a ball, just pulled on tights and went to the bathroom. He even said "why are you ashamed." What am I ashamed of. What seemed familiar yesterday, his pungent smell, his silky skin, his muscles, his swollen veins, his fur covered with dew drops, his body of an animal, baboon, horse - all this in the morning became alien and repulsive after he said, that he apologizes, but at ten in the morning he will be busy, he must leave. I also said that I had to be in one place at eleven, oh shame, shame, I cried and ran into the bathroom and cried there. I cried under the shower, washing, washing my body, which had become a stranger, as if I were watching it in a pornographic picture, my foreign body, inside which some chemical reactions were going on, some kind of mucus was seething, everything was swollen, hurt and burned, something happened that needed to be stopped, finished, crushed, otherwise I would have died.

My note (this is mother's note) : what happened, we will see nine months later. "

You see, the monstrosity of what is happening, it is being forced from both sides. On the one hand, this is the horror, indeed, of female love, faced with disappointment, on the other, excuse me, this is the horror of style, because this is written by an exalted fool, this is “the body of an animal, a baboon, a horse” and all this, sorry, banal betrayals ... Alena is probably the most unpleasant heroine of "Time for Night", because it is because of her that Anna Andrianovna dies, in the end, she takes her children from her, that is, she takes her grandson, and this, in fact, ends the meaning her existence. Although this is a beggar, painful existence, but she lives with these children, and physiologically adores them, there “baby's urine smells like calendula,” all this is infinite, on the one hand, physiology, and on the other hand, endless sentimentality, joining together, they give wonderful effect. As one writer, whom I will not name, Petrushevskaya writes, like a German officer, this very junction of sentimentality and cruelty, when he can shoot ten people and then cry over a dog that has broken a leg, yes, it is like that.

But at the same time, in "Time for Night" there are also terrible images, it is nevertheless written by the poet and poet Anna Andrianovna, and the poet Petrushevskaya. There, behind the wall, a neighbor who crushes bones all the time, crushes them into bone meal to fertilize the site. And this knock of crushing bones, which is heard constantly behind the wall, as a symbol of such a background of life, is also about Petrushevskaya, because, according to Petrushevskaya, life splits a person. And the only thing that can save him is mercy, and only on this mercy she counts. Yes, she beats the reader, beats them without mercy, but she still knocks pity out of him. Of course, very often this is hatred, if you are already a sensitive person. Once upon a time, Aleksey Nikolaevich Tolstoy remarkably said about Leo Tolstoy: "I already understood, but the old man pounds everything." You see, indeed, this is so, and here, I already understood, but why are you all beating me?

By the way, Kira Muratova, who loves Petrushevskaya so much and calls her the main writer today, and she is absolutely right, Muratova said absolutely exactly about her, not even about her, remember the beginning of the film "Melody for the Organ", when two children, orphans, they ride in a frozen electric train, and in this train they turn on, the beggar turns on the tape recorder so that he can be served more, and this tape recorder sings: "Sleep, my son, sleep my dear bell." After this prologue, I immediately said, guys, the beat will be long and painful. And for three hours, which lasts "A melody for a barrel organ," we are dunked like this, and at the end there is still a balloon over the frozen child on the street like a soul. Well, my mother is a woman! Here is a ball over a corpse - this is the whole aesthetics of Muratova and all the aesthetics of Petrushevskaya. But this is done so that we, having burned ourselves, regretted that we have at least some sensitive point.

Of course, I put much higher those texts in which Petrushevskaya invents, invents, in which she is a science fiction writer. For example, the brilliant story "Hygiene", I'm not afraid of this word, is the best Russian story of the nineties. In general, Petrushevskaya is a great master of social dystopia, well, "New Robinsons", when the whole family, expecting what will begin, and we all understand what will begin, fled into the forest and lives there, harvesting mushrooms, and there are two old women, one completely survived from mind, and another storehouse of folk wisdom. Well, and "Hygiene", when, in essence, an epidemic began, and the family began to prepare for it so much that, in general, they died of hygiene. One of the most terrible and nauseatingly physiological texts by Petrushevskaya, a terrible thing.

When she comes up with how she comes up with transmigration of souls and the mysterious tribe of Enchi in the novel "Number One", then, indeed, now I love you, now I praise you. But when she describes life, a truly animal life, I think that this is too much. Okay, maybe this is too much for me, but she will make someone wake up, and, in general, you know, the nineties were a time of shock therapy. She was dealt with by two people, Chubais - in economics and Petrushevskaya - in literature, both equally cruel. But I must tell you, they achieved something, they awakened the people's ability to take care of themselves, because it became clear that there was no one else to take care of, and awakened compassion, because the world would not survive without it.

In Petrushevskaya's fairy tale "The Clock", and she has quite a few fairy tales, after the mother and daughter reconciled, the daughter showed altruism there, there the witch says: "Well, at least this time the world remained intact." And in the nineties he remained intact, and not least thanks to Petrushevskaya. Let's not forget that its main script is "A Tale of Fairy Tales" made by Norstein, and this script says: all the pictures we show must be folded like an accordion into one sound, into one word - "we live." And in general, oddly enough, Petrushevskaya's texts add up to this sound, therefore, oddly enough, paradoxical as it may seem, her black hopeless "Time is Night" gives rise to a feeling of hope with which we remain.

And next time we will talk about a much more cheerful writer of this era, about Victor Pelevin, and his collection "Blue Lantern".

The story "Time is night"

Throughout the motley round dance, the myth of cast roles is central

the position of Petrushevskaya is most often occupied by the Mother and the Child.

Her best texts about it: "Own Circle", "Daughter of Ksenia", "Case

Virgin "," Poor Heart of Pani "," Mother's Greetings ",

"Little Terrible", "Never". Finally - her story "Time

night". It is "Time for Night" (1991), the largest prose

the work of the writer, allows you to see the characteristic

Petrushevskaya's interpretation of the relationship between mother and di-

topics with maximum complexity and completeness.

Petrushevskaya always and in this story in particular brings

everyday, everyday collisions to the last edge. Everyday

life in her prose is somewhere on the verge of non-being and requires

from a person of colossal efforts in order not to slip

beyond this line. This motive is persistently drawn by the author of the story,

starting with the epigraph, from which we learn about the death of the

woman, Anna Andrianovna, who considered herself a poet and

left after death "Notes on the edges of the table", which, in fact,

and form the body of the story. As it seems to us, the story and

this death, not directly announced - one can guess about it - her

the parish is prepared by the constant feeling of the collapse of life,

the steady reduction of its space - to a patch of

edges, to the point, to the collapse at last: “It has come white, cloudy

morning of execution. "

The plot of the story is also built as a chain of irreversible losses.

The mother loses contact with her daughter and with her son, husbands leave wives,

grandmother is taken to a distant boarding school for psychochronic, daughter vomits

all relationships with the mother, and the worst thing that beats to death:

daughter takes grandchildren from her grandmother (her mother). To the limit everything

tense also because life by external signs is quite

intelligent family (mother works in the editorial office of the newspaper, daughter

studies at the university, then works in some scientific institute)

runs in a permanent state of absolute poverty,

when seven rubles is a lot of money, and a free potato

A gift of fate. In general, the food in this story is always

event, because every piece counts, but on what! "Shark

Glotovna Hitler, I once called her goodbye in my mind,

when she ate two supplements of the first and the second, and I did not

knew that at that moment she was already very pregnant, and there is

there was absolutely nothing ... ”- this is how a mother thinks of her daughter.

Oddly enough, "Time for Night" is a story of love. About incinerating

a mother's love for her children. A characteristic of this love

Pain and even torture. It is the perception of pain as a

the phenomenon of love determines the relationship of a mother with children, and before

just with her daughter. Anna's telephone conversation is very indicative

Andrianovna with Alena, when her mother deciphers her every rudeness

in relation to his daughter as words of his love for her. "You will

to love - they will torment, ”she formulates. Even more

frankly, this theme sounds in the finale of the story, when Anna Andri-

anovna returns home and discovers that Alena is with children

left her: "They left me alive," sighs with relief

Anna Andrianovna steadily and often unconsciously strives

to dominate is the only form of her self-realization. But

the most paradoxical is that it is power that she understands

like love. In this sense, Anna Andrianovna embodies

a kind of "home totalitarianism" - historical models

which was imprinted on the level of subconsciousness, reflex, instinct1.

The ability to hurt is proof of maternal

power, and therefore love. This is why she is despotically

trying to subjugate his children to himself, jealous of his daughter to her men,

a son to his women, and a grandson to his mother. In this love

gentle "my little" pulls a rude one: "obsessive bastard

". Petrushevskaya's mother's love is monologue in nature.

For all life losses and failures, the mother demands compensation for herself

love - in other words, the recognition of her unconditional power.

And naturally, she is offended, hates, ferocious when

children donate their energy of love not to her, but to others. Love in such

understanding becomes something terribly materialistic, something

like a monetary debt that must be paid back,

and better - with interest. "Oh mother-in-law's hatred, you are jealousy

and nothing else, my mother herself wanted to be an object of her love

daughter, i.e. me, so that I only love her, an object of love and

trust, this mother wanted to be the whole family for me. Replace

everything, and I saw such female families, mother, daughter and little

child, full-fledged family! Horror and nightmare "- so Anna

Andrianovna describes her own relationship with her mother,

not noticing that her relationship with her daughter completely fits

into this model.

However, despite the "horror and nightmare", Anna Andrianovna's love

never ceases to be great and immortal. Actually,

1 This interpretation of Petrushevskaya's story was most thoroughly substantiated

X. Goschilo. See: Goscilo Helena. Mother as Mothra: Totalizing Narrative

and Nurture in Petrushevskaya / / A Plot of Her Own: The Female Protagonist in Russian

Literature / Ed. Sona Stephan Hoisington. - Evanston, 1995. - P. 105-161; Goscilo

Helena. Dexecing Sex: Russian Womanhood During and After Glasnost. - Ann Arbor:

Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996. P. 40-42. Goshilo H. Not a single ray in the dark

kingdom: Art optics Petrushevskaya / / Russian literature of the XX century:

Directions and currents. - Issue. 3. - S. 109 - 119.

stealing, this is an attempt to live by responsibility, and only by it. This attempt

sometimes it looks monstrous - like loud remarks

to a stranger on a bus who, in the opinion of Anna And-

ryanovna, caresses her daughter too ardently: “And again I saved

baby! I save everyone all the time! I am alone in the whole city in our

i listen to the microdistrict at night, will anyone scream! " But one thing is not

cancels out the other: the opposite assessments are combined here.

The paradoxical duality of assessment is embodied in

structure of the story.

"Memory of the genre" shining through "notes on the edge

table ”is an idyll. But if Sokolov's "Palisandria" has a genre

the archetype of the idyll becomes the basis of the metaparody, then in

Petrushevskaya's idyllic motives arise quite seriously,

as a hidden, repetitive rhythm underlying the family

decay and permanent scandal. So, “specific

a spatial corner where fathers lived, children and grandchildren will live

"(Bakhtin), an idyllic symbol of infinity and integrity

life, Petrushevskaya embodied in the chronotope of a typical two-room

apartments. Here is the meaning of "age-old attachment to

life "gains everything - from the inability to retire anywhere and

never, except at night, in the kitchen (“my daughter ...

celebrate loneliness as I always do at night. I have no place here!

") Up to being crushed on the sofa (" ... my

turn to sit on the sofa with a burrow ").

Moreover, Petrushevskaya's grandmother - mother - daughter repeat

each other "literally", step on the trail, coinciding even in

little things. Anna is jealous and tortures her daughter Alena, in the same way,

how her mother Sima was jealous and tormented her. "Depravity" (from the point of view

Anna) Alena is completely analogous to Anna's adventures in her

early years. Even the spiritual closeness of the child with the grandmother, and not with

mother, already was - Alena and Sima, as now Tima with

Anna. Even the mother's claims about the alleged "excessive"

the son-in-law's appetite is repeated from generation to generation: “... grandmother

she reproached my husband openly, “devours everything from children,” etc. "1.

Even Alena's jealousy for her brother Andrei responds with dislike

six-year-old Tima to one-year-old Katenka. They even shout all the same:

"... carrying an open mouth ... inhaling: and ... Aaaa!"). This repeatability

the characters of the story themselves notice, “... what other

1 It is interesting that these eternal scandals between different generations due to

food in its own way is also justified by the "memory" of the idyllic genre: "Food and drink

are idyllic or public in nature (Anna Andrianovna's campaigns with

grandson Tima for guests in the hope of a free treat, a trip with a performance

to a pioneer camp - for the same purpose. - Auth.), Or - most often - family

character: generations, ages converge for food. Typical for idyll

and aesthetics. - M., 1975. - S. 267).

rye, old songs, "Anna Andrianovna sighs. But it's amazing

no one is trying to learn at least some lessons from the already

mistakes, everything is repeated anew, without any

no attempt was made to go beyond the torturous circle. Can

explain this by the blindness of the heroes or the burden of social circumstances.

The idyllic archetype aims at a different logic: “Unity

places of generations weakens and softens all time boundaries

between individual lives and between different phases

the same life. The unity of the place brings the cradle closer and merges

and the grave ... childhood and old age ... This is defined by unity

places softening all facets of time contributes to the creation of a characteristic

for the idyll of the cyclical rhythm of time "(Bakhtin)

In accordance with this logic, we have before us not three characters, but

one: a single female character in different age stages -

from cradle to grave. Gaining experience is impossible here, because

that, in principle, the distance between the characters is impossible -

they smoothly flow into each other, not belonging to themselves, but to this

the cyclical flow of time, bearing only losses for them,

only destruction, only loss. Moreover, Petrushevskaya emphasizes

the bodily character of this unity of generations. Cradle

These are “smells of soap, phlox, ironed diapers”. Grave -

"Our shit and urine-smelling clothes." This bodily unity

it is also expressed in confessions of the opposite nature. With one

sides: "I love him fleshly, passionately" - this is a grandmother about her grandson.

On the other hand: “Andrey ate my herring, my potatoes,

my black bread, drank my tea, coming from the colony, again, like

used to eat my brain and drink my blood, all cobbled together from my

food ... ”- this is a mother about her son. The idyllic archetype as interpreted

devoid of traditional idyllic semantics. Front

us antiidyllia, which nevertheless retains the structural framework

old genre.

Repetition signals in the life of generations, forming in

this framework, form the central paradox of "Time for Night" and all

prose Petrushevskaya as a whole: what seems to be self-destruction

family turns out to be a repeatable, cyclical, form of its sustainable

existence. Order - in other words: illogical, "crooked

"(" Crooked family "- says Alena), but in order. Petrushevskaya

deliberately blurs the signs of time, history, society

This order is essentially timeless, i.e. eternal.

That is why the death of the central heroine inevitably comes

at the moment when Anna falls out of the chain of addicts

relationship: when she discovers that Alena left with everyone

three grandchildren from her, and therefore, she no longer cares about anyone

1 Ibid. - S. 266.

thrive. She dies from the loss of a burdensome addiction

their children and grandchildren, bearing the only tangible meaning

her terrible existence. Moreover, as in any “chaotic

»System, there is a mechanism in the family antiidyllia

feedback. A daughter who hates (and for good reason) a mother on

throughout the story, after her death - as follows from the epigraph

mother is a graphomaniac, she now attaches a few

different meaning. This, in general, a trivial literary

gesture in Petrushevskaya's story is filled with a special meaning

It contains reconciliation between generations and recognition

a transpersonal order that unites mother and daughter. Sami "Notes

»Acquire the meaning of formulas of this order, precisely by virtue of

its transpersonal nature, requiring going beyond the family

Pigasova Guzyaliya Sharibzyanovna -

teacher of the Russian language and literature of the Municipal Educational Institution "Basic General Education School No. 7" in Chusovoy, Perm Region;

winner of the competition for the best teachers in Russia, 2006;

honorary worker of general education of the Russian Federation

Extracurricular Reading Lessons Summaries

based on the work of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya

I would like to offer notes of extracurricular reading lessons on the works of L. Petrushevskaya in grades 5-11.

The works of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya tell not only about the "leaden abominations of life", about the pain and suffering of the "little man", they teach to love people, to sympathize with them. Reading the stories of Petrushevskaya, you remember the words of A.P. Chekhov: "It is necessary that at the door of every happy person there should be someone with a hammer and remind of the unfortunate and disadvantaged, of the vulgarity of our life ...".

Petrushevskaya remains where people feel bad and ashamed, but bad and ashamed, at least sometimes, happens to everyone. Therefore, Petrushevskaya writes about each of us. In addition, the writer's works teach to love life and live in seemingly unbearable conditions: "in this world, however, one must endure everything and live ...".

Petrushevskaya is a professional who works in a wide variety of genres, so the writer's works can be used when we talk about fairy tales, myths, parables, dystopias and other genres in our lessons.

Summary of the lesson based on the story of L. Petrushevskaya "Time for Night"

(the lesson was held in grade 10 after studying the novel by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The Lord Golovlevs")

During the lessons, it was said why the story of the Golovlev family turns into a “story of deaths”; the entire Golovlev family is dying out, historical marginalization enters the bloodstream, penetrates into nature, and is passed on from generation to generation. Saltykov-Shchedrin's novel warns: where there is unlimited power, there is a cruel attitude towards a person; where there is no love, where hypocrisy, greed, lies reign, where they reproach with a piece of bread - there is no Family, no Life. The family will also be discussed in the story "Time for Night" by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya.

Lesson topic "Crooked family"

The purpose of the lesson: analysis of the story "Time is Night", moral lessons, artistic skill of L. Petrushevskaya.

Equipment: multimedia projector, screen, presentation in Power Point on the works of L. Petrushevskaya.

Everything hung in the air like a sword, our whole life,

ready to collapse. The trap slammed shut

how it slams behind us every day,

but sometimes a log still fell from above, and in the coming

silence crushed all spread ...

L. Petrushevskaya

…where is everyone?

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

Today in the lesson we will again talk about the family, because in our difficult times the role of the family has never been so important. Even Leo Tolstoy said: "Happy is he who is happy at home." It depends on the family how we will go out into the big life - able to overcome difficulties and hardships, enjoy life and love it, or we will feel hateful, unnecessary, superfluous in this life.

- What do you think the family is based on (at this time on the screen the presentation "Happy Moments" with images of happy moments of family life)?

A note appears on the board:

Respect

Love

Care

Kindness

Thanks

Honesty towards each other and people

May God save you love, respect, gratitude for the rest of your life, remember the biblical commandment: "Honor your father and your mother, may it be good and may you be long on earth." And God forbid that at one moment, looking back and seeing only emptiness and complete ruin, you exclaim: "What is, what has become? .. where is everything?"

The "crooked family" will be discussed in today's lesson.

- How do you understand the meaning of the title of the story?

Before us are records made at night, when everyone is asleep, when there is an opportunity to collect thoughts, to ponder what has been lived. The heroine of the story Anna Andrianovna says: "... my time is night - a date with the stars and with God, the time of conversation, I write everything down" (hereinafter the text is cited from the edition of L. Petrushevskaya. Collected works, volume 1. Prose. Of five books. M ., 1996, pp. 311-398).

But, in addition, the heroes of Petrushevskaya are nocturnal residents. They, as if on command, wake up closer to the night. "Time is night" - a prearranged signal, a password for heightened feelings, increased heart rate, revitalization of the plot, events and incidents. And the catastrophic blindness of the heroes in relations with each other, misunderstanding, tragic disunity are due to the fact that they live in the darkness of the night.

But the story, or rather the heroine's diary entries, are subtitled “Notes on the edge of the table.

- How would you explain this name?

The table has long been considered a symbol of life in Russia. These are notes "on the edge of life", notes between life and death "... here after my mother there were manuscripts."

- Define the genre of the work?

Before us is a diary, or rather, two diaries - a mother and a daughter. This means that the story is inherent in the utmost sincerity, confession. The diary, as a genre variety of prose, attracts the author by its ease of choosing a topic, great compositional possibilities, it allows you to create the illusion of free expression of thoughts and impressions, as well as fully and deeply reveal the character of the heroine.

Anna Andrianovna's diary allows Petrushevskaya to step aside from the story, to observe the life of the Golubev family from the sidelines, but Petrushevskaya herself will say in Karamzin:

life in general

can't

watch from the side

she is indecent

defenseless

The “indecent and defenseless” life of the Golubev family rises before us from the pages of a diary that has no beginning or end.

- Can the story "Time for Night" be called a family chronicle? Tell us about the main characters of the story.

There are three central female characters in the story: Anna, Seraphima and Alena. Their fates are mirrored, their lives repeat each other with fatal inevitability.

Anna Andrianovna is a typical mother, but in the recent past and in her memories she is a typical daughter. At one time, the same thing happened to her as is now happening to her “fool” Alenka: “it was the madness of one archaeological expedition and my next grandiose mistake, an affair with a married man, the birth of children, then the departure of my husband. It is interesting that the heroine herself is absolutely not aware of this similarity, which the author emphasizes all the time. Anna Andrianovna is constantly affirming her superiority over her daughter: “what is she and what is I”, not realizing that the daughter is exactly repeating her fate. It is as if there is some kind of wall in her mind that prevents her from seeing the truth. In their fates, the same episodes, the same faces flicker, the same phrases sound.

“What was wrong with food was always among our family members, poverty was to blame for that, some scores, claims, my grandmother openly reproached my husband,“ she eats everything from children ”and so on. And I never did that, except that Shura pissed me off, really, a parasite and bloodsucker. " And in many years, he will probably also reproach his son-in-law Alena, perhaps not noticing that in anger he repeats the words of his mother and grandmother.

- What words are repeated most often in Anna Andrianovna's diary?

These words IS, FEED, EAT IN THREE THROATS Gradual necrosis occurs, and, oddly enough, nutrition becomes a sign of the dead. Anna Andrianovna speaks about her son Andrei, a weak-willed man: “... he ate my brain and drank my blood, all cobbled together from my food, but yellow, dirty, deadly tired”. It is no coincidence that at the end of the story and at the end of the diary the image of death appears: “The steps of fate ... They sleep in a deadly dream. Are they still alive ... I cannot predict about four coffins, small and small, and how to bury all this ?! ”.

The bond of any family is love. Love in the family ignites a fire in a person's soul that burns in him all his life, which should burn in him, despite the cold that can surround a person. Maybe Anna Andrianovna is a person whose all feelings are atrophied: love, compassion, pity.

- Refute or confirm this assumption.

The heroine retains an inescapable need for warmth, although she cannot find it in the world: “twice a day showers and for a long time: someone else's warmth! Heat from CHP for lack of a better one. " He retains the ability and need to love. “Love, love and again love and pity for him guided me when he left the colony,” the heroine recalls.

But in her ability and need to love, some kind of inferiority is felt. Love is perceived as a debt that must be returned with high interest. “My mother herself wanted to be an object of love for her daughter, that is, me, so that I only loved her, an object of love and trust, this mother wanted to be the whole family for me, to replace everything,” the heroine says about her mother. But these words can be attributed to Anna Andrianovna herself. She passionately loves her grandson, "sinful love ... the child from her only hardens and unbelts." Love, which only demands, does not hold together, but destroys the family. Anna Andrianovna turned out to be “superfluous in life”.

- Can the heroine of the story be called a woman with a thirst for destruction? If so, why?

The main character persistently and deliberately breaks the threads connecting her with the outside world, with the people around her: “we are at different levels”. First, the husband leaves. A mother, a sick old woman who has gone out of her mind, is sent to the mental hospital. The son-in-law, whom Anna Andrianovna once forcibly married to her daughter, leaves, and then mercilessly persecuted, reproaching with a piece of bread. The daughter leaves for a new man to be abandoned again. A son, a drunken man, broken after prison, leaves. Anna Andrianovna remains close to her only native being - her grandson Timofey. But in the end he will leave her too.

The heroine will be left alone within the walls of her impoverished apartment, alone with her thoughts, alone with the night. And looking around the "ashes", listening to the dead silence, she could, like the hero of the novel by Saltykov-Shchedrin Judushka, exclaim: "We must forgive me! For everyone ... both for themselves and for those who no longer exist. What? What has happened ?! where is everyone ?! "

The story of Lyudmila Petrushevskaya warns us: where there is no mutual understanding, kindness, love, care, gratitude, there is no Family, no life.

Homework: write a miniature essay "My family" or create an electronic presentation "My family".

Author's note: the basis for the preparation and conduct of the lesson on the topic "Crooked family" in the humanitarian class was based on the group method of work on the study of the text. Two weeks before the lesson, the class was divided into three groups, the groups were asked the following questions and tasks:

1st group

Why immediately after studying the novel by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin "The Lord Golovlevs" we turned to L.Petrushevskaya's story "Time for Night"?

Can L. Petrushevskaya's story "Time for Night" be called a family chronicle?

Tell us about the fate of three generations of the Golubev family: Baba Seraphim, Anna Andrianovna, Alena and Andrei.

What struck you the most in the description of everyday life, relationships in the Golubev family, what episodes shocked you?

What, in your opinion, is the reason for the tragic disunity of the heroes of the story?

2nd group

Explain the meaning of the title of the story "Time for Night"?

Define the genre features of the story "Time for Night"?

Why does L. Petrushevskaya refer to such a genre as a diary?

How do you understand the meaning of the title of the heroine's diary "Notes on the edge of the table"?

Why didn't Anna Andrianovna's family become salvation in this disharmonious world?

Group 3

Heroes' speech as a means of creating artistic images. Observe the characters' speech, what phrases and words the characters use when describing family relationships, attitudes towards people, towards the world. Find the keywords of the story.

How does speech characterize heroes?

What other artistic techniques does Petrushevskaya use (grotesque, slang, stream of consciousness, an unexpected end, or rather, its absence, etc.)? Give examples.

The lesson discusses the proposed questions.

Note: this lesson can also be taught in grade 11 when studying modern prose.

List of references

N. Agisheva. Sounds "Mu", magazine "Theater", 1988, No. 9, p.21

S.P. Bavin. Ordinary stories (Lyudmila Petrushevskaya): B13. Bibliographic sketch. Moscow RSL, 1995.

N. Ivanova. Go through despair, magazine "Youth", 1990, №2, p.94.

T. Kasatkina. "But I'm scared: you will change your appearance ...", Novy Mir magazine, 1996, No. 4, pp. 212-219

A. Kuralekh. Life and Being in L. Petrushevskaya's prose, Literaturnoye Obozreniye magazine, 1993, No. 5, p. 63-66.

O. Lebedushkina. Book of Kingdoms and Opportunities, Druzhba Narodov magazine, 1998, No. 4, pp. 199-207.

L. Pann. Instead of an interview, or the experience of reading prose by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya far from the literary life of the metropolis, Zvezda magazine, 1994, No. 5, p.197-201

L. Petrushevskaya. Collected works, vols. 1,2, Moscow, 1996.

M. Remizova. Catastrophe theory or a few words in defense of the night, literary newspaper, 1996, №11, p.4.

O. Slavnikova. Petrushevskaya and emptiness, Voprosy literatury magazine, 2000, No. 2, pp. 47-61.

Lyudmila Petrushevskaya

Time is night

And what, aunt Anya (it's me), does Alena come to see you? Timochka, does your mother visit you?

What are you, Dunechka (that's her childhood nickname), Dunyasha, didn't I tell you? Alena is sick, she constantly has babies.

Mastitis??? - (And it was almost like, from whom is this her baby, from whose milk?)

But she follows us and says that it is possible to apply for Alena's work that the mother abandoned the child to the mercy of fate. Is it me, perhaps, the will of fate? Interesting.

What work, what are you, Oksanochka, she is sitting with a baby!

Buryat national theater of song and dance baikal Everybody dance baikal theater May 7

Buryat KVN team "Khara Morin" lost the first game in the Higher League