Innocent stories. Cheerful life

Mukhanbetova A.T.,
teacher of Russian language and literature
"Kuryk Secondary School-Gymnasium"
Karakiyansky district of Mangistau region

Lesson topic: Russian writers about children. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “In the master’s yard”
Lesson objectives:
- introduce students to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s story “In the Master’s Yard”;
- develop analytical skills and independent activity students, develop oral and written speech, expressive reading, logical thinking;
- to cultivate in students a sense of humanism, love of life, and mercy.
Methodological techniques: Zhigso technology, technology strategies “Thin and thick questions”,
"Two-Part Diary"
Equipment: video “Childhood”, textbook on Russian literature (6th grade), excerpt from the film “Saltychikha”, assessment sheets, handouts - “Fat and subtle questions", "Two-part diary", chips, stickers.

During the classes:
І. Organizing time:
Divide into 2 groups using “happiness” and “sun” chips.
II. Call stage:
Video "Childhood"
Question: please answer, are you happy children?
Justify your answer
III. Conception stage
Demonstration of a video from the film “Saltychikha” about serfdom.
Many writers of the 60s generation were concerned about the topic of dispossessed peasants. One of them was Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin, who came from a noble family.
As a child, he often observed the picture described in the story “In the Master's Yard.”
Dear guys, today we will get acquainted with the story by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “In the master’s yard” (reading of the text by the teacher)
Vocabulary work:
boyar courtyard - baibatshanyin uyi
pity – rakym, zhanashyrlyk
blocked by a fence – dualmen korshalgan
evil – zhauyz, meyirimsiz
1/ The teacher invites the children to read the passages independently in groups, then try to convey summary these excerpts (Gigso technology)
Group 1 reads and prepares a retelling about a girl tied to a pole
Group 2 reads and prepares a retelling about Nikanor, the lady’s nephew
2/ Technique “Thick and thin questions”
(each group prepares several questions for the other group from the texts read)
Thin questions are questions that require a short (one-word) answer.
Thick questions are questions that require a complete answer.
For the first group
subtle questions
What was the girl's name?
Why was the girl punished?
Who is Nikanor?

For the second group
thick questions
Why does the writer call the landowner evil?
Why does the girl refuse Nikanor's help?
How does the story end?

3/ Two-part diary
quote comments
“...and today, since the very morning, muffled groans have been heard”
“He silently looks at Natasha. His face expresses pity."
“...Nikanor runs to the master’s estate. He looks for his mother and, crying loudly, tells her about the unfortunate girl.”
“... only in the evening the barely alive Natasha was untied from the post; she couldn't walk"

Teacher's word:
- Let's go back to the beginning of the lesson. How do you now understand the words “happiness, happy childhood”?
- Do you think the childhood of peasant children of the 18th century was happy?
Justify your answer

IV. Individual group assessment:
(Sample)
list
students my understanding of the word “happiness” retelling “Fat
and subtle questions" two-part diary problematic question Final score
Shynar

5
Askar

5
Daria

V. Reflection:
The teacher invites students to describe their impressions of the past lesson.

VI. Homework: retelling the story “In the Master’s Yard”, write an essay
on the topic “Childhood is...”.

Download manuals (classroom lessons) for teachers in various subjects: history, literature, physics. A well-designed lesson plan will help you teach a lesson to a student. Classes in mathematics, literature, physics, computer science, chemistry, psychology.

Lesson topic:

Lesson objectives:

Methodical techniques:

"Two-Part Diary"

Equipment:

During the classes:

I. Organizing time:

II. Call stage:

Video "Childhood"

Question :

Justify your answer

III. Conception stage

Vocabulary work:

boyar court - baibatshans? ?йі

pity - ra?ym, zhanashyrly?

blocked by a fence - dualmen?orshal?an

evil - zhauyz, meyirimsiz

1 group

2nd group

Thin questions - questions that require a short (one-word) answer

Thick questions are questions that require a complete answer.

For the first group

For the second group

3/ Two-part diary

Teacher's word:

-

Justify your answer

IV

(Sample)

students	my understanding of the word "happiness"	retelling	"Fat and subtle issues"	two-part diary	problematic issue	Final score

V . Reflection:

The teacher asks students to describe their impressions of the last lesson .

VI . Homework: retelling the story “In the Master’s Yard”, write an essay

on the topic “Childhood is...”.

View document contents
“Lesson on Russian literature “In the master’s yard””

Mukhanbetova A.T.,

teacher of Russian language and literature

"Kuryk Secondary School-Gymnasium"

Karakiyansky district of Mangistau region

Lesson topic: Russian writers about children. M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “In the master’s yard”

Lesson objectives:

Introduce students to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s story “In the Master’s Yard”;

Develop analytical skills and independent activity of students, develop oral and written speech, expressive reading, logical thinking;

To instill in students a sense of humanism, love of life, and mercy.

Methodical techniques: Zhigso technology, technology strategies “Thin and thick questions”,

"Two-Part Diary"

Equipment: video “Childhood”, textbook on Russian literature for 6th grade, excerpt from the movie “Saltychikha”, assessment sheets, handouts - “Thick and thin questions”, “Two-part diary”, chips, stickers.

During the classes:

I. Organizing time:

Divide into 2 groups using “happiness” and “sun” chips.

II. Call stage:

Video "Childhood"

Question : please answer, are you happy children?

Justify your answer

III. Conception stage

Dear guys, today we will get acquainted with the story by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin “In the master’s yard” (reading of the text by the teacher)

Vocabulary work:

boyar courtyard - baibatshanyin uyi

pity – rakym, zhanashyrlyk

blocked by a fence – dualmen korshalgan

evil – zhauyz, meyirimsiz

1/ The teacher invites the children to read the passages independently in groups, then try to convey a brief content of these passages (Zhigso technology)

1 group reads and prepares a retelling about a girl tied to a pole

2nd group reads and prepares a retelling about Nikanor, the lady’s nephew

(excerpt from the film “Saltychikha”)

2/ Technique “Thick and thin questions”

(each group prepares several questions for the other group from the texts read)

Thin questions are questions that require a short (one-word) answer.

Thick questions are questions that require a complete answer.

For the first group

For the second group

3/ Two-part diary

	comments
“...and today, since the very morning, muffled groans have been heard”
“He silently looks at Natasha. His face expresses pity."
“...Nikanor runs to the master’s estate. He looks for his mother and, crying loudly, tells her about the unfortunate girl.”
“... only in the evening the barely alive Natasha was untied from the post; she couldn't walk"

Teacher's word:

- Let's go back to the beginning of the lesson. How do you now understand the words “happiness, happy childhood”?

Do you think the childhood of peasant children of the 18th century was happy?

Justify your answer

IV . Individual group assessment:

(Sample)

students	my understanding of the word "happiness"	retelling	"Fat and subtle issues"	two-part diary	problematic issue	Final score

Poets write a lot about eagles in poetry, and always with praise. And the eagle has an indescribable beauty, and a quick glance, and a majestic flight. It does not fly like other birds, but soars or spreads; Moreover: he looks at the sun and argues with thunder. And others even endow his heart with generosity. So if, for example, they want to sing about a policeman in poetry, they will certainly compare him to an eagle. “Like an eagle, they say, the city badge N so-and-so spotted it, snatched it, and, after listening, forgave.”

I myself believed these panegyrics for a very long time. I thought: “It’s really beautiful! Snatched it... forgave! Forgave?!” - that’s what was especially captivating. "Whom did you forgive? - a mouse!! What is a mouse?!" And I ran in a hurry to one of my poet friends and reported on the eagle’s new act of generosity. And the poet friend would strike a pose, sniffle for a minute, and then he would begin to vomit poetry:

But one day a thought struck me. “Why, however, did the eagle “forgive” the mouse?

Once upon a time there were two generals, and since both were frivolous, soon, pike command, according to my desire, we found ourselves on a desert island.

Generals served all their lives in some kind of registry; they were born there, raised and grew old, and therefore did not understand anything. They didn’t even know any words except: “Accept the assurance of my complete respect and devotion.”

The registry was abolished as unnecessary and the generals were released. Left behind the staff, they settled in St. Petersburg, on Podyacheskaya Street in different apartments; Each had their own cook and received a pension. Only suddenly they found themselves on a desert island, woke up and saw: both were lying under the same blanket. Of course, at first they didn’t understand anything and began to talk as if nothing had happened to them.

Strange, Your Excellency, I had a dream today,” said one general, “I see as if I was living on a desert island...

Nowadays this is not the case, but there was a time when Voltaireans came across even among dignitaries. The highest authorities themselves adhered to this fashion, and the dignitaries imitated it.

At this very time, there lived a governor who did not believe in many things that others, in their simplicity, believed. And most importantly, I did not understand for what reason the governor’s office was established.

On the contrary, the leader of the nobility in this province believed in everything, and even understood the significance of the governor’s office to a fine degree.

And then, one day, the two of them sat down in the governor’s office and started arguing.

Once upon a time there lived a minnow. Both his father and mother were smart; Little by little, the arid eyelids lived in the river and did not get caught either in the fish soup or in the pike. They ordered the same for my son. “Look, son,” said the old gudgeon, dying, “if you want to chew your life, then keep your eyes open!”

And the young minnow had a mind. He began to use this mind and saw: no matter where he turned, he was cursed. All around, in the water, everything big fish they swim, and he is the least of them all; Any fish can swallow him, but he cannot swallow anyone. And he doesn’t understand: why swallow? A cancer can cut it in half with its claws, a water flea can bite into its spine and torture it to death. Even his brother the gudgeon - and when he sees that he has caught a mosquito, the whole herd will rush to take it away. They’ll take it away and start fighting with each other, only they’ll crush the mosquito for nothing.

One morning, waking up, Kramolnikov quite clearly felt that he was gone. Only yesterday he recognized himself as existing; today is yesterday being somehow magically turned into non-existence. But this nothingness was completely special kind. Kramolnikov hastily felt himself, then said a few words out loud, and finally looked in the mirror; it turned out that he was here, there, and that, as a revision soul, he existed in the same form as yesterday. Not only that: he tried to think - it turned out that he could think... And behind all that, there was no doubt for him that he did not exist. No that non-revision Kramolnikov, as he perceived himself the day before.

Conscience is gone. People crowded the streets and theaters as before; in the old way they either caught up or overtook each other; as before, they fussed and caught pieces on the fly, and no one guessed that something had suddenly become missing and that some pipe had stopped playing in the general orchestra of life. Many even began to feel more cheerful and freer. Man’s move has become easier: it has become more dexterous to expose one’s neighbor’s foot, it has become more convenient to flatter, grovel, deceive, gossip and slander. All sorts of be sick suddenly it was gone; people did not walk, but seemed to rush; nothing upset them, nothing made them think; both the present and the future - everything seemed to be given into their hands - to them, the lucky ones, who did not notice the loss of conscience.

Conscience disappeared suddenly... almost instantly! Just yesterday this annoying hanger-on was just flashing before my eyes, just imagining itself in my excited imagination, and suddenly... nothing!

Two men were walking along the road: Ivan Bodrov and Fyodor Golubkin. Both were fellow villagers and neighbors in the yards, both had just gotten married in the spring meat-eater. Since April they had been living in Moscow as masons and now they begged the owner to go home for haymaking time. It was necessary to walk about forty miles away from the railway, and perhaps even an ordinary man would not be able to cover such a colossus in one day.

They walked slowly, without straining themselves. We left early in the morning, and now the sun was already high. They had only gone about fifteen miles when their legs already needed rest, especially since the day turned out to be hot and stuffy. But, looking around to see if there was a haystack under which they could eat and sleep, they talked animatedly among themselves.

What are you taking home, Ivan? - asked Fedor.

Yes, the owner gave three pentas before settlement. I must admit, I spent one on trifles in Moscow, and I’m taking two home.

Our rural priest gave the most beautiful sermon today for the holiday.

“Many centuries ago,” he said, “on this very day Truth came into the world.

The truth is eternal. Before all centuries, she sat with Christ the lover of mankind at the right hand of her father, together with him she was incarnated and lit her torch on earth. She stood at the foot of the cross and was crucified with Christ; she sat, in the form of a luminous angel, at his tomb and saw his resurrection. And when the lover of mankind ascended to heaven, he left Truth on earth as living evidence of his unchanging benevolence towards the human race.

Since then, there has been no corner in the whole world into which Truth has not penetrated and filled it with itself. The truth educates our conscience, warms our hearts, enlivens our work, indicates the goal towards which our lives should be directed.

One day the hare did something wrong to the wolf. He was running, you see, not far from the wolf’s den, and the wolf saw him and shouted: “Bunny! Stop, dear!” But the hare not only did not stop, but even accelerated his pace. So the wolf caught him in three leaps, and said: “Because you didn’t stop at my first word, here’s my decision for you: I sentence you to deprivation of your belly by being torn to pieces. And since now I’m full, and my wolf If you’re full, and we have enough reserves for another five days, then sit under this bush and wait in line. Or maybe... ha ha... I’ll have mercy on you!”

The hare sits on its hind legs under a bush and does not move. He thinks about only one thing: “In so many days and hours, death must come.” He will look in the direction where he is wolf's den, and from there a glowing wolf's eye looks at him. And another time it’s even worse: a wolf and a she-wolf will come out and start walking past him in the clearing.

In a certain village lived two neighbors: Ivan the Rich and Ivan the Poor. The rich man was called "sir" and "Semyonich", and the poor man was simply called Ivan, and sometimes Ivashka. Both were good people, and Ivan Bogaty was even excellent. Like there is a philanthropist in every form. He did not produce any valuables himself, but he thought very nobly about the distribution of wealth. “This, he says, is a contribution on my part. The other, he says, does not produce any value, and even thinks ignoblely - this is disgusting. But I’m still nothing.” And Ivan Bedny did not think at all about the distribution of wealth (he had no time for it), but, in return, he produced valuables. And he also said: “This is a contribution from my side.”

Chapter first

"VILLAGE TEN-YEAR CHILDHOOD"

In January 1826, in the metric book of the Church of the Transfiguration of the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazin district, Tver province, an entry appeared: “In 1826, under No. 2, in the village of Spassky, with the town of Collegiate Councilor and Cavalier Evgraf Vasiliev Saltykov, wife Olga Mikhailova gave birth to a son, Mikhail, on January 15, whom priest Ivan Yakovlev and the clergy prayed and baptized on the 17th of the same month; His successor was the Moscow tradesman Dmitry Mikhailov.” Upon completion of baptism, the recipient ( Godfather) Dmitry Mikhailov Kurbatov “prophesied” that the baby Mikhail who was born would be a “warrior”, a “conqueror of adversaries.”

So, in the midst of the winter of 1826, in a snow-covered provincial village of the provincial Kalyazinsky district, in a remote “corner” of the then Tver province, where three more provinces met at “corners”: Moscow, Yaroslavl and Vladimir (hence the name of the village - Spas on the Corner , or Spas-Ugol), saw the light and began its life path Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov. His father turned fifty this year, his mother twenty-five. In general, the case was very ordinary, “Poshekhonsky”. Before Mikhail, the Saltykovs had five children (the eldest daughter Nadezhda in 1818, the eldest son Dmitry in 1819), and after Mikhail two more - a total of three sisters and five brothers.

As before, as always, across the entire face of the Russian land - “Poshekhonya” - countless masses of nobles, men, merchants multiplied, inhabiting this land, cultivating it to the point of bloody sweat, trading timber, bread, oats and flax, living and dead souls... And praying in numerous churches of the Transfiguration, Ascension, Nativity of Christ, Laying of the Robe, Dormition...

In all directions from Spas-Ugol, impenetrable forests and impassable swamps stretched for many, many miles across what seemed then to be an endless Great Russian plain. “The forests were burning, rotting on the roots and cluttered with dead wood and windbreaks; the swamps infected the surrounding area with miasma, the roads did not dry out in the most intense summer heat; The villages huddled close to the landowners' estates, and rarely passed by themselves at a distance of five or six miles from each other. Only near small estates did light clearings break through, only here all they tried to cultivate the land for arable land and meadows...” Miserable little rivers “barely wandered among the marshy swamps, in some places forming stagnant bogs, and in some places completely disappearing under a thick veil of watery thickets. Here and there small lakes were visible, in which simple fish were found, but to which summer time it was impossible to drive up or approach. In the evenings, a thick fog rose over the swamps, which shrouded the entire neighborhood in a gray, swirling veil” (“Poshekhon Antiquity”).

According to various surviving documents, it is known that the Saltykovs’ hereditary estate, or patrimony, the Saltykov noble nest, was formed here, among the windfall forests and inaccessible swamp, in this wilderness of central Russia, no later than the 16th century, and probably before the birth of Mikhail Saltykov in 1826 , little has changed and has changed over the centuries in the usual local life of this “nest”. Historical life went on somewhere, as if in some distant kingdom, a thirtieth state (did they know anything in Spas-Uglu, for example, about the terrible events that shook Imperial Russia on December 14, 1825, just before the birth of Mikhail?). And although the ancestors of Mikhail Evgrafovich (in fact the Satykovs, not the Saltykovs) made a lot of efforts (one of them was even beaten by the batogs for his claims) to be assigned to the boyar family of the Saltykovs - which they eventually succeeded in - they actually In fact, “there were real local nobles who hid in the very wilderness of Poshekhonye, ​​quietly collected tribute from enslaved people and modestly multiplied.” Only very rarely did History capture into its orbit one of the more lively ones, and perhaps simply because of the inscrutability of its paths. Thus, Vasily Bogdanich Saltykov, Mikhail’s grandfather, lieutenant of the Semenovsky Life Guards Regiment, turned out to be a participant in the rebellion against the emperor Peter III, for which he was awarded by the new empress, Catherine II. But, I think, he himself was quite frightened by this unexpected gift of fortune, which is why he immediately resigned and secluded himself in his Spas-Uglu, far from St. Petersburg and its “charms” and all sorts of temptations.

Immediately, Vasily Bogdanich’s marriage to the Moscow merchant’s daughter Nadezhda Ivanovna Nechaeva arrived. (However, Mikhail Saltykov did not know his grandparents by paternal line, who died long before his birth.)

It is clear that the first person who initially made the whole world for Misha Saltykov was his mother, Olga Mikhailovna Saltykova, born Zabelina, like her grandmother, a Moscow merchant’s daughter. When she was still a girl, fifteen years old, she was married off to a recently retired official of the Moscow Foreign Collegium Archives, a Kalyazin landowner, forty-year-old Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov. “There was a legend in the family that at first she was a cheerful and spoiled young thing, she called the maids her friends, loved to play songs with them, run to the burners and go in a cheerful crowd to the forest to pick berries. She often went to visit and invited guests to her place and generally did not deny herself pleasures.” But in the house of her middle-aged husband, a man deeply alien to her, with some kind of spiritual world of her own, long established and incomprehensible to her, next to her unmarried “sisters”-sisters-in-law, who are not without reason, according to Russian proverb, called Kolotovki (Olga Mikhailovna’s sisters-in-law , however, they didn’t beat her, but they came up with another, no less caustic way to annoy the young daughter-in-law - they teased her as a merchant’s wife, and even with an unpaid dowry, although promised), in this new and materially and morally ordinary situation noble estate her youth “jumped off” of her unusually quickly. The joyful poetry of youth was quickly replaced by the sober prose of everyday “Golovlevsky” existence, or, simply put, by unbridled acquisitiveness and sometimes completely senseless hoarding in the name of hoarding (at the same time, the motive of concern for the future of children, who meanwhile dreamed of how to eat their fill, was persistently repeated ). The low life of home and the harsh practice of serfdom, the uncontrolled power of the landowners completely absorbed the short youth and directed extraordinary strength and, perhaps, even talent in the wrong direction. In addition, there were children: Olga Mikhailovna gave birth to her first daughter, Nadezhda, at the age of seventeen, and Mikhail, the sixth, when she was not even twenty-five.

Still, it is unlikely that such a revolution - the transformation of a cheerful Moscow merchant's daughter into a demanding, intolerant of objections, and sometimes cruel landowner - took place, so to speak, overnight, with all its “coolness”. When Mikhail was born, Olga Mikhailovna was young, her feelings had not yet frozen in that indomitable and despotic power that ultimately turned her, in the words of one contemporary, into “Boyaryna Morozova” (the famous imperious and irreconcilable schismatic of the 17th century).

Misha Saltykov is just over a year and a half old; At the beginning of September 1827, Olga Mikhailovna wrote to her husband, Evgraf Vasilyevich, in Moscow, where he was at that time: “Misha is so sweet, it’s a miracle. Everything says and is good. Happens to me incessantly and never leaves. Everything consoles me in separation from you. I admit, my friend, I feel calmer and more cheerful with him, and everyone kisses him...” And five days later to him, “my friend” Evgraf Vasilyevich: “... the children are all sweet, and Misha is so sweet that he doesn’t I can describe it. Imagine, he talks to me all the time, and in the morning, when he wakes up, he goes into the dining room to look for me, asking: where is daddy? Mama, I want some tea. He goes to your office, we drink tea there, then returns to my bedroom, where all the joys of dating and kisses are, takes you by the hand and leads you: give me some tea, mummy. He consoles me so much that in his presence I forget our separation a little.” Although there are six children, and they are all cute, Misha is still the cutest of all: however, he is the youngest. Even if we make allowances for the sentimental spirit and style of family correspondence that was so characteristic of the twenties of the last century, there is still a feeling of a fairly good family, which was soon replenished with two more sons - Sergei, born in 1829, and Ilya, born in 1834.

Happy childhood memories of a caressing mother, of bright days early childhood, about the comfort of their home, probably lived somewhere in the subconscious, in the vague depths of the still unformed, so to speak, ugly infant memory, there lived a feeling of peace and joy, not yet overshadowed by later painful impressions. After all, of course, it’s not without reason that at the end of his days, a sick and homeless writer who has experienced a lot, essentially his entire life, will say a phrase that causes bewilderment after everything that we know about his childhood and from his direct memories, and from the general gloomy tone and coloring “Poshekhonskaya antiquity”: “If I learned anything from life, it was from there, from my rural ten-year childhood.”

But even in the few remaining letters from this time, belonging to members of the Saltykov family, apparently, a motive alien to the family harmony, the family idyll, begins to sound with sharp dissonance. In August 1829 (which means Misha was two and a half years old) Evgraf Vasilyevich writes to Olga Mikhailovna: “For God’s sake, I ask you not to punish the children too much, because if something happened without you, then they are already punished, and in the future, beware of them and confirm that they are humble and diligent..."

For Misha Saltykov, his childish, directly unconscious, happy existence ended with one of these punishments. And here memory has already come into its own, an awakened - albeit still unclear - consciousness, which will soon gain the ability to evaluate, judge and not forget.

“Do you know when my memory began? - Saltykov once asked in his later years. “I remember that they were whipping me... they were whipping me properly, with a rod... I must have been two years old then, no more.” This motif of punishment, beating with some kind of terrible - screaming, heart-breaking - note sounds in many of Saltykov’s works, right up to “Tailor Grishka” (“Little Things in Life”) and “Poshekhon Antiquity”.

In general, this “corner” of the Tver province, this entire area, the most remote of the remote, as Saltykov noted, recalling his childhood years, seemed to be destined by nature itself for the “mysteries of serfdom.” And these mysteries were played out not only on the backs of peasants, not only in the relationship of an autocratic, autocratic landowner with a powerless serf man - a “boor” or a serf girl - a “scoundrel”. Everything was serfdom: all aspects of everyday life, everyday relationships, everyday morality. Serfdom penetrated everywhere. Children were serfs, and - not least - the children of landowners.

In Saltykov’s memory, half a century later, the first thing that comes to mind is “vague impressions of children’s crying, which was heard almost without interruption, mainly at the class table... It’s scary to think that, despite the abundance of children, our house during non-class hours was plunged into such silence as as if everything in him had died out. But during classes there was incessant moaning, accompanied by blows on the hands with a ruler, slaps on the head, slaps in the face, and so on. My younger brother I was about to hang myself several times. He was three years younger than me, but, for the sake of economy, he studied with me, and the same things were demanded of him as of me. And since he could not fulfill these demands, they beat him, beat him endlessly” (unfinished memoir sketch for “Poshekhonsky Stories”).

Saltykov’s memory, when the days of his ten-year childhood rise before him, is disturbed by another memory - “there is no memory more vile” - a memory that subsequently poisoned his adult life, coloring with painful tragedy his relationship with his family, primarily his mother Olga Mikhailovna and brother Dmitry, and pages of his brilliant creations - the novel “Lord Golovlevs” and the life-chronicle “Poshekhon Antiquity”. This vile memory is about the division of children into two categories - favorites and hateful ones: “This division did not stop in childhood, but subsequently passed throughout life.”

In the same memoir sketch, Saltykov noted his several special position in the family: “I personally grew up separately from most of my brothers and sisters, my mother was not particularly strict with me...” How can one explain this mother’s attitude towards her sixth child and third son? First of all, probably, that Olga Mikhailovna’s first five children were almost all the same age, and Mikhail was born three years after his sister Lyubov (Sophia, born in 1825, died in infancy). and brother Sergei was born three years after Mikhail (in 1829). For a long time, Mikhail was the youngest and favorite son. Nikolai (born in 1821; the prototype of Styopka the dunce from “The Golovlev Lords” and “Poshekhonskaya Antiquity”) and Sergei, overwhelmed by the original family pedagogy, belonged, according to Olga Mikhailovna’s classification and corresponding attitude, to the number of “hateful”. This position of Mikhail among the Saltykov children created for him some independence and played a positive role. Despite the general humiliation, oppression and downtroddenness, which, of course, he could not completely avoid, he was still downtrodden and humiliated less than others. A kind of loneliness, solitude amid the din and crying of the classroom, left more time and opportunity for reflection, comparison and evaluation. Solitude turned out to be, albeit relative, but still freedom.

Misha, in the eyes of Olga Mikhailovna and in her attitude, remained “nice” for a long time (as evidenced by her letters), attracted her in some way, stood out among others (for example, Olga Mikhailovna often took him on her business trips, preferring other children). This intelligent woman, not at all “malevolent” by nature, possessing a strong will and “enormous memory” and, moreover, “highly gifted with creativity”, probably sensed in her son Mikhail some kind of peculiarity, originality, also an extraordinary “giftedness with creativity” and singled him out among his other children, not just by random whim or some inexplicable sympathy. However, Mikhail's preference for other children was not too exceptional. Sometimes Olga Mikhailovna, completely absorbed in her endless and varied economic concerns, in the creation of the “machinery” of her serf household, simply forgot about him, like other children, and even looked with some surprise if he came across her path. And Mikhail, when he got older and understood something, apparently tried to avoid meetings with his mother, because, as he would say half a century later, these meetings, “especially in a moral sense, had an irritating effect on even the most indifferent people.”

The impressionability, liveliness of perception of the environment, “agility”, “impatience” of little “Mishenka”, about which, for example, sister Nadezhda, who was then brought up at the Moscow Catherine Institute, writes to her parents in November 1829, when the boy was in his fourth year - these are precisely these childish traits that These qualities of the child became a prerequisite for the future very difficult development, “forging” of an independent, very purposeful, persistent and persistent character.

Then, at the age of three or four, Mikhail’s training began and then continued, naturally, not under pressure. “I am very glad,” Nadezhda writes in the mentioned letter, “to learn that Mishenka is also obedient and is learning the alphabet...” The classroom in the Spassky house gathered all the Saltykov children, but they taught the older ones, while Mikhail studied, absorbing and assimilating what the elders had to gouge him out with difficulty and with beatings (this is how he learned to chat in French and German by ear). And therefore, when the serf painter Pavel Sokolov, on one of Mikhail’s birthdays (it seems it was in 1832: Misha was then six years old), solemnly - a prayer service was served beforehand - began teaching the boy to read and write, the alphabet was already well known to him, why training went so successfully and quickly.

Of course, harsh educational methods, pedagogical system The “beating” also affected Mikhail. After completing the course at the Catherine Institute, she appeared in Spassky in 1834 elder sister Nadezhda, and she was entrusted with preparing Mikhail for admission to the Moscow Noble Institute. At the same time, Nadezhda “fought with such enthusiasm, as if she was taking revenge for something.” However, by this time Mikhail, who was eight years old, essentially no longer needed teachers; from the moment when consciousness awakened in him, when memory “began”, and this happened, as we remember, very early, he had already come a long way of active self-learning and self-education.

What images, impressions, memories could be deposited in the boy’s memory from the moment it began? What work was going on in his head and heart?

The early memory of cruel punishment was undoubtedly painful, painful, but it was so vividly imprinted, probably, precisely because it was very contrary to the harmony of the first infant years spent in the nursery, mother’s bedroom, father’s study...

The boy’s horizons expanded, he “mastered” the large Saltykov house, the entire Spasskaya estate, and went out into the garden and vegetable garden.

In general, Saltykov recalled, the poor estates of the landowners in those days were not distinguished by “neither elegance nor amenities.” “For the most part, they settled in the middle of the village and certainly in a lowland, so that it would be warmer in winter. These were oblong one-story houses, blackened with age, with unpainted roofs and ancient windows in which the lower glass went up and was supported by a stand. In six or seven rooms of such a quadrangle, sometimes very numerous noble families huddled with a whole staff of courtyard girls and lackeys and with visiting guests. There was no mention of parks and gardens. Usually in front of the house there was a tiny front garden, planted with trimmed acacias and filled with flowers of lordly arrogance, royal curls and beetroot lilies. A vegetable garden was built behind the house, but it was small, because in the old days even vegetables (except cabbage) were considered empty and troublesome. Of course, the more prosperous landowners had larger estates, but the general type was the same, with the addition of a small birch grove in which countless flocks of rooks made their nests, filling the air with a crackling moan from morning to evening.” The Saltykovs also belonged to these more prosperous landowners, and their estate in Spas-Uglu was different from the one described “ general type"some lordly whims and undertakings. “As for the estate in which I was born and lived continuously until I was ten years old,” Saltykov continues to recall, “it was an example of the so-called full cup. The house was two-story, with four mezzanines (actually, the third floor, because the mezzanines had a common corridor that connected them to each other), spacious and warm; the lower floor, made of stone, housed workshops, storerooms and several courtyard families. The upper floor and mezzanines were occupied by gentlemen. At the house there was a fairly large garden with cut paths bordered by flower borders... But since at that time there was an absurd fashion for pruning trees, there was almost no shade at all, despite the fact that the entire garden was surrounded by a beautiful linden alley. Vegetable gardens and a berry garden were planted on an incomparably large scale, in which greenhouses with greenhouses, hotbeds and ground sheds were built. Berries and vegetables were grown on a large scale. It was useful, which in the old landowner environment was always given priority over the pleasant.”

Not only orchard linden alleys, not only rich greenhouses, where even exotic peaches were grown (all this was overseen by a serf gardener bought by Olga Mikhailovna for a lot of money), not only a vast vegetable garden with berries and vegetables - the estate also included a large household yard - the center of the economic life of the Saltykov estate . There were stables, cowsheds, barns, grain barns, storerooms, cellars, and forges. Life here, especially in summer and autumn, was constantly in full swing, noisy and seething - horses were harnessed, unharnessed and shod, cattle were driven out and driven in, carts with hay and sheaves were driving, grain was dried, threshed and winnowed, it was poured into barns, cellars were filled milk “skoppies” (butter, sour cream, cottage cheese) and all sorts of fruits and berries from their own garden and from the forest, where the courtyard girls dressed up to “take berries”. Here there was a dizzying mixed smell of well-dried hay, rye straw, wild strawberries and raspberries, horse and cow manure... The most varied sounds were heard and merged into an amazing symphony - the blows of flails in the barn and hammers in the forge, the neighing of mines, the mooing of cows, barking yard dogs, and sometimes mother’s menacing shout, and timid, and sometimes daring excuses and objections of the “slaves”, and their screams during punishment in the stable (however, in this we must pay tribute to Olga Mikhailovna, an ambulance for “manual punishment” , she resorted to punishing peasants “on the body” in very rare cases).

From his earliest childhood, Misha Saltykov listened with curiosity to his mother’s daily conversations with the headman, her orders regarding corvée work, which were always done “n A two” - in case of good and in case of bad weather. He fell in love with the lively movement and caring hustle and bustle of the farm yard; he peered with interest at the various chores, listened to the conversations of the servants and peasants, he knew each of them by sight, loved to talk to them, ask questions.

Fifty fathoms (about a hundred meters) from the house was the Church of the Transfiguration of Spasov (hence the name of the village).

The boy's first impressions of his father were associated with church rituals.

Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov never seriously engaged in his generally simple farming (about three hundred souls of peasants in total), the main part of which was located in Spas-Uglu, and other villages and hamlets were scattered not only in Tverskaya, but also in Yaroslavl, Vologda, Kostroma and even Tambov provinces.

When little Misha Saltykov, still two or three years old, found himself in his father’s office, he met here an original personality, uniquely brought up by his entire previous fifty years of life, and even by his entire somewhat strange and original life destiny. Apparently, already from his youth, this noble undergrowth was increasingly defined as “a man devoid of actions” (to use the words of his son, spoken, however, on a different occasion). Until the age of twenty-five, he was nurtured and trained “on his own cat” under the supervision of his mother Nadezhda Ivanovna. True, during this time he learned three very well foreign languages, not to mention some other “foreign sciences”. His penchant for literary (however, quite amateurish) activities was revealed, in particular for translations from German and French languages(some of his translation compilations were even published).

The new, nineteenth century finds Evgraf Vasilyevich in St. Petersburg, in the house of Count Dmitry Ivanovich Khvostov, a famous poet at that time, who at that time served as chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod (the government agency that governed Orthodox Church). These were the last years of the reign of Emperor Paul - Grand Master (!) of Malta knightly order Johannites, years of a strange combination of Russian Orthodoxy with Masonic mysticism. It was here that the small Poshekhonsky nobleman Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov in some strange way became involved in the activities of the Knights of Malta and even became a Knight of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

But all this does not provide daily bread, and the economy brings very meager fruits: you have to go to work. Knowledge of foreign languages ​​turns out to be useful, and Evgraf Vasilyevich has been serving for more than ten years - first in St. Petersburg and then in Moscow - in the Collegium of Foreign Affairs as a translator. He did not have significant successes in his career, although he retired in 1816 with a fairly respectable rank of collegiate adviser (rank of VI class according to Peter the Great's table of ranks, corresponding to the military rank of colonel).

Having married and retired to Spas-Ugol, Evgraf Vasilyevich locked himself in his office. Having left the household, and to a large extent the upbringing of children, in the hands of his wife, he completely devoted himself to the strict observance of all the details and details of the Orthodox church rite. All the everyday and economic fuss, everything that lay outside the boundaries of these interests, for him is complete ignorance.

In Evgraf Vasilyevich’s office in Spas-Uglu there is a library, and he re-reads semi-mystical and religious works that were popular during his youth in St. Petersburg: the Bryusov calendar (with all kinds of predictions and prophecies), “Hours of Charity, or Conversations of a Christian Family,” “The Key to the mysteries of nature" by Karl Eckartshausen and others like that. “Moreover, he is reputed to be a pious man, he presides over all church services, he knows when to bow to the ground and be touched at heart, and diligently encourages the sexton at mass.”

Ritualism, formalism and mechanicalness reigned here. Religion became overgrown with a dense everyday life. The church was only a part, an element of this serf life; “The church, like everything else, was a serf, and the priest with it was a serf.” The church clergy were treated with disdain, they paid pennies for the fulfillment of requirements (weddings, christenings, funerals), and they did not hesitate to simply call the semi-literate priest Ivan, who had risen from the sexton list, Vanka. The priest was forced to work on his plot, like a peasant. The boy Saltykov remembered how his father intervened in the course of the church service, correcting the priest who was confused while reading the Gospel.

In addition, the “pious” landowners did not want to fork out money to buy a bell for their church, instead of a small and cracked one.

In all this landowner foolishness and hypocrisy, “nothing was felt that would resemble the exclamation: “Horus e we have hearts A ! The knees bent, the foreheads hit the floor, but the hearts remained mute.”

Next to the estate and the church lay the actual village of Spas-Ugol, where the Poles led their lives in their huts, on their own and on their lords’ houses, from generation to generation they celebrated their peasant life, on the patronal feast day (August 6 - the second, apple Savior) they walked, and in all other days, months, years until death - three hundred revision souls, three hundred tax-payers, who also had their own families - wives, children, grandchildren ... plowed, sowed, reaped, threshed...

The gentle (as they said then) noble upbringing not only required protecting the children of landowners from communication with the peasants, but also, so to speak, initially developed a very definite - contemptuous - attitude towards the slave and boor.

The conditions of the estate life of the small and medium-sized Russian landowner, who constantly lived in his “corner” or “nest,” were, however, such that there was no way to avoid mutual communication between the nobles and young ladies with the peasant environment. After all, the farm yard of the estate, the servants’ room, the maid’s room, and the dining room in the landowner’s house itself were full of working serfs. The whole point was just who O and Thurs O could take away from this communication how to look at both the everyday life that has developed over the centuries, and at the frequent, in essence, also everyday human dramas, which took place in the silent and gray mass of the serf peasantry.

In the manor's house, the courtyard people (the same serfs, only deprived of their own land allotment and correcting all sorts of work at the landowner's courtyard) were crowded together and huddled in their own corners, sleeping on the floor on felts; Some of the servants had families, but most of them were seny (from the word “seni”) girls, “girls” in serfdom usage: Olga Mikhailovna Saltykova strictly forbade them to get married. Lackeys, maids, nurses, nannies, mothers, coachmen from the serfs - in general, people (“man” in the then landowner vocabulary meant “servant”) accompanied the landowner from cradle to grave, in a sense, they even raised noble children. “I,” wrote Saltykov, “grew up in the bosom of serfdom, was fed with the milk of a serf nurse, raised by serf mothers and, finally, taught to read and write by a serf literate” (“Little Things in Life”).

The serf nurse, who fed the master's child with her milk, enjoyed the privilege: the foster brother or foster sister of this child was set free. Giving freedom to a future draftee or recruit was considered unprofitable, and therefore peasant women who gave birth to girls were usually taken as wet nurses. Little Misha then loved to run furtively into the village to see his serf nurse Domna, and the hungry barchuk (a consequence of hoarding at home) ate his fill in her hut on ordinary peasant scrambled eggs. It is difficult to say what Saltykov retained in his memory from his secret meetings with his foster mother and foster sister. Probably, it was not hunger, but a grateful human feeling, a feeling of love, albeit unclear and unconscious, that drew him to Domna’s hut. And the image of an unknown and inconspicuous peasant woman undoubtedly took its place in that huge, impressive image of the Russian peasant, village, people, which gradually and latently grew in his memory and consciousness.

There were many nannies and mothers, they were constantly changing, but among them there was not a single storyteller - Arina Rodionovna. The purely prosaic mood of the Spassky house was fully manifested in this case. “One of the most significant shortcomings of my upbringing,” says the memoir sketch for “Poshekhonsky Stories,” “was the complete absence of elements that could give food to the imagination. No communication with nature, no religious excitement, no passion fairy world“Nothing like that was allowed in our family,” nothing poetic was allowed. Then, when it was time to study, the nannies and mothers were replaced by governesses invited from Moscow, who taught mainly foreign languages ​​and music (all the same “gentle” noble upbringing). They were remembered most of all for their varied and sophisticated beating techniques, and not at all for the desire to awaken imagination in children, to introduce the poetry of nature, fairy tales or native literature into the children's world (Saltykov would later say that as a child he did not know Russian literature: there were not even fables in the house Krylov).

The imagination nevertheless demanded food, sought it and finally found it; it was impossible to kill children's imagination completely and irrevocably. The content of this fantasy, unfortunately, most often turned out to be pitiful and meager, just as meager was spiritual world Saltykovskaya estate: the highest happiness of life lay in food, I dreamed and dreamed not about the fabulous Lukomorye or the beautiful sleeping princess and the valiant seven heroes, but about things much more prosaic and real - wealth and generalship. True, they believed in evil spirits, they were afraid of devils, brownies and other “trifles”.

Sometimes the landowner's children were allowed (just not on the patronal holiday, when the men were walking) to walk through the village, accompanied by a governess, to look into peasant courtyards and huts.

The barchata, “grouped around the governess, sedately and sedately wander through the village. The village is deserted, the working day has not yet ended; The young bars are followed from a distance by a crowd of village kids.

The children exchange comments.

Look, Antipka cheered up what a hut, and now it stands empty! - says Stepan. “He was poor and drank a lot, but he got an icon from somewhere - and from then on he went to get some money. And he stopped drinking, and the money appeared. Wider and wider, he got four horses, each better than the other, cows, sheep, built this very hut... Finally he begged for a quitrent, began to trade... Mother only wondered: where did they come to Antipka? So someone tell her: Antipka has this icon that brings him happiness. She took it and took it away. At that time, Antipka was lying at his feet, offering money, but she kept repeating one thing: “You don’t care which icon you pray to God...” She never gave it. Since then, Antipka has become worse again. He began to drink, to feel sad, and day by day it got worse and worse... Now the good house is empty, and he and his family live in a shack behind. Starting this year, they were again put into corvee, and a week ago they were already punished in the stables...

But here is Katka’s hut,” Lyubochka responds, “yesterday I saw it from behind the garden lattice, coming from the hayfield: black, thin. “What, Katka, I’m asking: is it sweet to live with a man?” “It’s okay,” he says, “I’ll still pray to God for your mother.” Even after death, I won’t forget her caress!”

She has a hut... look! there is no living log!

And it would serve her right,” Sonechka decides, “if only all the girls...

The whole walk is spent in such conversations. There is not a single hut that does not cause remark, because behind each there is some kind of story. Children do not sympathize with the peasant and only recognize his right to endure insult, and not to grumble about it. On the contrary, the mother’s actions towards the peasants meet with their unconditional approval” (“Poshekhon Antiquity”).

Children look at the village from the windows of their manor house, through the eyes of the environment in which they live, they retell the conversations that they hear in the dining room, in their father’s office, in the common room, in the girls’ room, they repeat the foul language that filled the atmosphere of their home like a bad smell - rude, cynical or sanctimonious language of a very base nature , to whom, without being embarrassed by the presence of children, the mother, father, and servants who inhabited the human community spoke. Acquisitiveness, career success, gender relations, or rather, the reverse side of these relations - the interests and conversations of adults revolved in this circle, this circle of interests formed the consciousness and morality of children. From here, from their mother’s bedroom, their father’s office, from the lackeys and depraved servants, the Saltykov children endured a rudely contemptuous attitude towards the humble and homespun peasant, who was either making fun of his poor hut, his simple yard, or stubbornly and stupidly, from sunrise to sunset, following plow either in your own lane or in the master’s field.

The worst thing was the indifference and, often, cynicism of the children.

Mikhail Saltykov, of course, did not immediately understand that this atmosphere was pernicious. Although he, as already mentioned, enjoyed some freedom in the house and his mother’s condescending attitude, the all-crushing order of things weighed heavily on him almost completely. What could awaken him from this, so to speak, sleep of immorality and cold indifference, cause, if not protest and rejection (this was still a long way off), then at least something similar to internal anxiety, moral concern about the troubles reigning in this world of violence, money-grubbing, hypocrisy and cynicism, to give birth to something in his heart, consciousness, conscience yours?

Misha Saltykov was drawn to the farm yard of the estate: there was something special going on there - heavy, but in its own way joyful, working life, there was no sucking boredom and deathly silence parents' house and especially the classroom. Interest in this life, and perhaps a quiet love for the affectionate and pitying Domna of the barchuk, awakened in the boy’s soul a completely different attitude towards the hard-working peasant people - not cynical, rude and contemptuous, but sympathetic to joyful love. Of course, the utility yard manor's estate- this is not yet a peasant village, not a village that lived a special life, deeply different from lordly life, faithful to its ancient traditions and customs of the peasant world. Difficult, long and slow was the path of the noble son Mikhail Saltykov to the understanding that the serf is not a meek tax-dealer, obliged to pull the yoke of hard corvee labor for the sake of the landowner's well-being, pay taxes and dues, put on a red soldier's cap, go into exile in Siberia by order (or even at the whim) of the landowner or landowner, to meekly endure “manual punishment” or lie down under the rod in the stable. It was necessary to break the vicious circle of routine and familiarity of the established eternal ones, and therefore it was as if eternal relationship. “Own” accumulated and ripened gradually, in a series of successive impressions, images that flashed, but were still deposited in the “huge memory.”

In 1831, Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov wrote in his address calendar: “On August 21, in the morning, at 8 o’clock, Olga Mikhailovna Saltykova with her children Dmitry and Mikhail Saltykov left the village of Spassky, and arrived in Moscow to the house of her father Mikhail Petrovich Zabelin on August 23 at 9 o’clock in the morning, and returned to the village of Spasskoye on October 3 in the afternoon at 10 o’clock.”

Thus, the end of August - September 1831, five-year-old “Mikhaila” Saltykov, together with his mother and older brother Dmitry, spent in the Moscow house of his maternal grandfather Mikhail Petrovich Zabelin (the house was located on Arbat, in Bolshoy Afanasyevsky Lane). Grandfather Mikhail Petrovich, a wealthy Moscow merchant, was famous for the fact that during Patriotic War 1812 donated a large sum to the Moscow militia. For this patriotic impulse, he was awarded the rank of collegiate assessor and thereby ranked among the hereditary nobility.

The trip to Moscow was deposited in Saltykov’s memory, in contrast to the vague and unclear images of the first five years of his life, with impressions of vivid and significant images. The imagination, which had faded in the meager environment of Spas-Ugol, devoid of air and poetry, perked up and played out under the influence of new, unusual impressions.

Direct, spiritualizing communication with nature, due to the “gentle” noble upbringing, was not allowed in the Saltykov house. It was not the custom to look at nature other than from the point of view of its usefulness and suitability for economic needs.

And here is the first trip outside the estate in the early morning of a clear pre-autumn day: “... when we drove several miles, it seemed to me that I had escaped from confinement into the open. Vigorous air, filled with the smell of coniferous trees, covered from all sides: I breathed easily and freely...” Here for the first time, and then every time I left my native Spas-Ugol, inhaling the air of forests and fields opening and floating back, the fragrant smell of pine needles, meadows and marsh flowers and herbs, Mikhail Saltykov experienced that necessary feeling for every person of participation in the great universal life of nature, which he was deprived of in the Spasskaya estate, a feeling that, unfortunately, people in big cities do not know.

The journey to Moscow on our horses took two days and a half (a total of one hundred and thirty-five miles). For the first night, forty miles from Spas-Ugol, we stopped in the village of Grishkovo, in the hut of the old peasant Kuzma, who kept something like an inn. So for the first time the boy spent the night in a peasant’s yard, in the village. True, at first village life did not occupy him much.

“When they woke me up, the horses were already harnessed, and we immediately left. The sun had not yet risen, but there was a bustling movement in the village, in which the female population mainly took part. The fresh, almost cold air, saturated with soot and smoke from the burning stoves, penetrated me right through from sleep. On the village street there was a column of dust from a herd being driven away.

Although I had not left the village until then, I, strictly speaking, lived not in the village, but in the estate, and therefore it would seem that the picture of the awakening of the village, which I had never seen, should have interested me. Nevertheless, I cannot help but admit that the first time she met me completely indifferent. Probably, this lies already in the very nature of man, that only bright and colorful pictures immediately capture his attention and are quickly imprinted in his memory. Here everything was gray and monochromatic. Frequent repetition of such gray pictures is necessary in order to affect a person through, so to speak, spiritual assimilation. When the gray sky, the gray distance, the gray surroundings become so attractive to a person that he feels enveloped by them on all sides, only then will they completely take over his thoughts and find lasting access to his heart. Bright pictures will drown in the bends of memory, the gray ones will become eternally present, filled with lively interest, and amiable” (“Poshekhon Antiquity”). And indeed gray paintings peasant life Over time, they will become “eternally inherent” in the thoughts, heart and memory of Mikhail Saltykov.

The next, main stop, for the evening and night, was supposed to be in Sergievsky Posad, at the famous monastery of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, founded in the 14th century by the associate of Demetrius of Donskoy, Sergius of Radonezh. Religious enthusiasm was alien to Saltykov’s family upbringing, while business-minded Olga Mikhailovna, invariably absorbed in economic labors and worries, apparently shared the popular view of monks as parasites. Evgraf Vasilyevich’s “piety,” both in Spassky and during his visits to Moscow, boiled down to strict, but formal, mechanical observance of church rituals, which hardly affected his long-dead soul in any way.

In Spas-Uglu everything was ordinary, familiar - the house, the people, and the church on the hill: no impressions exciting the imagination or feelings.

Here, in the monastery, in the “monastery” there are a lot of pilgrims, beggars, cripples, monks; various monastic buildings - the academy, the large Assumption Cathedral and small churches and little churches. But it was not even this crowd and bustle that touched the boy’s soul, although it was all colorful and unusual. He clearly did not like the dapper and smug monks.

But still, something unforgettable - fabulous - remained in the memory of the first visit to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.

The all-night service in the Assumption Cathedral amazed little Misha Saltykov. “The transition from outside light made the temple somewhat gloomy, but this was only the first steps. The more we moved, the brighter it became from the many lit lamps and candles... Two choirs sang: young monks on the right choir, elders on the left. For the first time I heard sensible church singing, I understood for the first time...” The singing of the elders was especially striking. “Mourning, full of senile sorrow, it painfully worried the heart...” - singing that drowned in the darkness of the cathedral vaults and seemed to return again with sadness and pain of the heart...

Hitherto dormant spiritual depths were awakened, along with the exciting and inspiring ability to sympathize and compassion - perhaps the most important component of poetic and artistic talent. Deeply impressed by the soulful singing of the elders, wise by the long bitter experience of life, Mikhail understood something for the first time...

The church and religious life of that time required reading the Bible, and children became acquainted with its stories and parables during church services and through oral retellings, even though they themselves could not read. In essence, this was the only spiritual food of the peasants around them, the only exit from the world of violence and sorrow into some other world, such an exit that inspired hope for future deliverance. Folk poetry - fairy tales, songs - lived somewhere in the village, in peasant hut, but she hardly reached the Saltykov house; she was not encouraged by the landowners. Biblical stories, legends and parables stimulated the imagination and excited the senses. Any story about the suffering of Job or about the three-day stay of the prophet Jonah in the belly of a whale was perceived as amazing fairy tale story. And it was not for nothing that the meetings in the monastery with Hieromonk Jonah reminded Misha Saltykov of the fantastic biblical story about Jonah, swallowed up by a whale: it seemed to the boy that this tall and “spacious in body” monk was exactly that biblical Jonah and that the whale that contained such a person should really be unusually large. The most artistically gifted, spiritually sensitive and nervously excitable, and such was undoubtedly Mikhail Saltykov, felt some kind of vague, not yet realized anxiety because behind the formal religious shell of the Gospel story about the passion of the Lord, behind the maxims of the Christian sermon addressed to “the toiling and burdened,” there may be hidden not only an abstract moral, but also a very specific social meaning.

“When I first became acquainted with the Gospel (of course, not from the originals, but from oral stories) and the lives of the martyrs and martyrs of Christianity, it made such a complex impression on me, which I still cannot explain to myself. It was, so to speak, a vital initiative, thanks to which everything that had hitherto been hidden and formed in the secret folds of my childhood being suddenly burst into life and demanded an answer from it. As far as I can determine the feeling that took possession of me now, it was enthusiasm, at the basis of which lay boundless pity. For the first time, living images appeared before me, created by imagination, populating a special world, which became as concrete for me as the everyday reality with which I was surrounded. These images oppressed me with their multitude and diversity; they relentlessly followed me step by step. Not only the factual side of Christ’s life and (especially) his suffering gave rise to an endless string of images, not only parables, but also abstract gospel teachings. All these hungry and poor in spirit, all these persecuted, whom they are deprived of and about whom they speak every evil verb, all this mass of bloodied, tormented by torture “for my name’s sake” - all of them passed before me with amazing clarity, humiliated, abused, ulcerated, in rags... In my childhood, this was perhaps the only page on which a rather brightly poetic feeling emerged and thanks to which my dormant consciousness was disturbed.”

Thus, Saltykov’s creative memory preserved for the rest of his life the very moment when he was born as an artist and a person. The birth of an artist was evidenced by this involuntary, alarming, probably even painful in its unstoppable creation of images, their endless multiplication in a nervously excited fantasy. About the birth of a person - a pity-compassion that shook the receptive nature of the boy, addressed to the everyday reality in which he existed from infancy.

Of course, these, although very sharp and vivid, impressions at first only “disturbed” his “dormant consciousness”, only, so to speak, “prepared” his conscience for very definite assessments, and, subsequently, actions. The involuntary creativity of imagination and feelings received “reinforcement” in an increasingly intensely working, albeit childish, consciousness - for two or three years before entering the Moscow Noble Institute. This was the time when, having engaged in “self-study,” the boy began to independently master the books and notebooks of his older brothers and sisters, who were already being brought up in Moscow in educational institutions for children of nobles.

For the second time, after the quoted autobiographical sketch, turning, this time to “ Poshekhon antiquity”, to the description of his “complete life revolution”, Saltykov especially emphasized his increasingly conscious attitude towards the world that worried him poetic images and moral postulates. His pity becomes an active social feeling, a feeling of humanity that sympathizes with the very real oppressed serf peasant.

Reading the Gospel, Saltykov writes in “Poshekhon Antiquity”: “sowed in my heart the beginnings of a universal conscience and called forth from the depths of my existence something sustainable, yours, thanks to which the dominant way of life no longer enslaved me so easily. With the assistance of these new elements, I acquired a more or less solid basis for evaluating both my own actions and the phenomena and actions that took place in the environment around me. In a word, I have already emerged from the state of vegetation and began to recognize myself as a human being. Moreover, I transferred the right to this consciousness to others. Until now, I knew nothing about the hungry, or the thirsty and the burdened, but I saw only human individuals formed under the influence of the indestructible order of things; Now these humiliated and insulted stood before me, illuminated by the light, and loudly cried out against the inherent injustice that had given them nothing but chains, and persistently demanded the restoration of the violated right to participate in life. That " yours", which suddenly spoke to me, reminded me that other have the same, equivalent to “their own”. And the excited thought was involuntarily transferred to concrete reality, to the girls’ room, to the table, where dozens of abused and tortured human beings were suffocating.”

This revolution was, of course, facilitated by direct communication with the serf masses.

Moreover, in this very mass individual destinies, personal adversities, misfortunes and grief were increasingly visible.

The Poshekhon Antiquity tells how the first teacher little hero life-chronicle, the serf painter Pavel married, during one of his wanderings on rent, a free tradeswoman of the city of Torzhok, Mavrusha. The poor woman became enslaved by love. Unable to bear the hopeless existence under the all-seeing and menacing eye of the merciless landowner, who very soon made her feel what “fortress” means, without finding protection from her husband - a slave by birth and psychology - Mavrusha hanged herself.

The serf painter Pavel Sokolov really existed and actually taught Misha Saltykov to read and write. However documentary information there is no information about his marriage to a free woman. Most likely, the tragic fate of Mavrusha Novotorka is the fruit of that artistic generalization that Saltykov wrote about, warning against an unconditionally autobiographical interpretation of “Poshekhon Antiquity.” However, without a doubt, the attitude of a receptive and early-thinking child is autobiographical, if not precisely to this, then to other similar facts, which he, of course, witnessed: “In me personally, then still a child, this incident aroused strong curiosity” - and, one must think , lay somewhere in the depths of memory. This incident apparently did not arouse any curiosity in anyone else, especially since it was not out of the ordinary.

Perhaps there was nothing unusual in another episode, which is narrated on the pages of Poshekhon Antiquity. Olga Mikhailovna sometimes took her beloved son on her frequent business trips, perhaps secretly hoping that he would inherit her efficiency, economic savvy and acumen, her energetic life-building, and a very realistic view of the world.

One of these trips was a trip to the village of Zaozerye, Uglich district, Yaroslavl province.

Olga Mikhailovna was very fond of telling in all the details, which always worried her, how she, then still a very young woman (this happened in 1829), appeared at the Moscow Guardianship Council on Solyanka and, having only thirty thousand rubles in her hands ( her dowry), decided to purchase for this money (almost for nothing!) a rich estate with three thousand serfs - this is the village of Zaozerye and several villages assigned to it. With the acquisition of Zaozerye, Olga Mikhailovna began the creation of her enormous fortune and, at the same time, some kind of feverish epic of hoarding and money-grubbing, which ultimately ended in the collapse of the family and the complete disintegration of family ties.

Misha did not like this quitrent estate - a large trading village, the whole way of which was sharply different from the peasant way of life of the corvee village of Spas-Ugol, where men did not go to the cities (most often to Moscow) to earn money by some kind of craft (shoemakers, tailors, hairdressers etc.) to pay quitrent to the landowner, but from time immemorial they were peasants, working on arable land, working off the landowner's corvee. In the Zaozersk estate there was neither a garden nor a farm yard with its business bustle, there were no interesting meetings and conversations with men. The Zaozersky men, who became rich, most often through trade, to whom Olga Mikhailovna had a predilection and with whom she did business, did not arouse sympathy in the boy.

It was necessary to travel from Spas-Ugol to Zaozerye for more than forty miles. The road passed close to the estate of one of the “sisters” of Evgraf Vasilyevich Saltykov - Elizaveta Vasilievna Abramova, nicknamed in the family for her “evil character” in A tearing. Olga Mikhailovna, in order to “not get upset” at the inn, after some indecision and, as they say, reluctantly, decided to stop at her sister-in-law for lunch and feeding the horses.

Many feudal “mysteries” were played out on the estate of this barbarian landowner, who used her omnipotence over the serfs with a kind of cruel voluptuousness. After “relative” conversations at home, in Spas-Uglu, which had a strong effect on the children’s imagination, Elizaveta Vasilievna appeared to Misha Saltykov as “something like a skeleton,” “in an ashen-gray tunic, with arms outstretched forward, the ends of which were armed with sharp claws instead fingers, with gaping hollows instead of eyes and with snakes curling on the head instead of hair” (he once saw such a picture in a book - it was probably one of the mythical gorgons).

With the personality of Elizaveta Vasilyevna in “Poshekhonskaya Antiquity”, where she is called Anfisa Porfiryevna, Saltykov, artistically generalizing, connected an actual case from the fantastic practice of serfdom, which he recalled in the cycle “In an environment of moderation and accuracy”: “Will the reader believe that in childhood I knew a man (he was our neighbor on the estate) who, according to all documents, was listed as dead? He was dead, and yet he lived...” He said he was dead in order to avoid the soldiery that threatened him, for the monstrous tortures and abuses to which he subjected his serfs surpassed all likelihood and all measure and even overflowed the highest cup in relation to leniency towards landowners. Instead of this landowner-beast, who supposedly died, they buried, by the way, the deceased yard man, and the landowner became a serf of his widow wife!

When the auntie appeared on the porch of the house to greet the unexpected guests, it turned out that even in her appearance she was somewhat similar to the image that had developed in a child’s fantasy - bony, in a faded, shabby robe, with hair flying in the wind, in which the boy’s excited imagination seemed to see moving snakes. And soon he saw such a serf mystery, with which his aunt’s nickname of the barbarian was fully justified.

Mother remained in the house to talk with her “sister”-sister-in-law, and Misha, who loved all kinds of economic activity and was accustomed to observing it in Spassky, went to the stables and other estate services. But complete silence reigned everywhere; everything seemed to have died out: apparently, both the men and the servants were in the field doing corvée work. Only the Saltykov coachman Alempiy and some old man, probably a servant, were talking peacefully near the stable. The silence was only occasionally broken by quiet painful moans coming from somewhere.

What did the boy see when he approached the services?

“Near the stable, on a pile of manure, tied with her elbows to a post, stood a girl of about twelve years old, torn in all directions. It was already one o'clock in the afternoon, the sun was still pouring its rays on the unfortunate woman. Swarms of flies rose from the slurry, hovered over her head and clung to her inflamed face, covered with tears and saliva. Small wounds had already formed in some places, from which ichor was oozing. The girl was tormented, and right there, two steps away from her, two old men were calmly chattering, as if nothing unusual was happening in their eyes.

I myself stood indecisive in the face of the vague expectation of responsibility for uninvited interference - to such an extent did serfdom subdue human impulses even in children.

Don't touch me... my auntie will scold you... it will be worse! - the girl stopped me, - wipe your face with your apron... Master!... cute!

And at the same time, an old voice came from behind me:

Mind your own business, little boy! And your auntie will tie you to a post!

This was said by Alempiev’s interlocutor. At these words something shameful happened within me. I instantly forgot about the girl and with my fists raised, with the words: “Be silent, you vile slack!” - rushed to the old man. I don’t remember that such a fit of anger has ever happened to me and that it was expressed in such forms, but it is obvious that the practice of serfdom has already built a strong nest in me and was only waiting for an opportunity to emerge.”

How impenetrably indifferent at the sight of the suffering of the tortured girl were the coachman Alempiy and the unknown old man who was talking with him (in “Poshekhon Antiquity” this is supposedly the deceased husband of the mistress who became a serf)! How calmly and just as indifferently did his mother and auntie listen to the boy’s story, choked with tears, about what he had seen in the yard! For them, all this was ordinary serf practice - and nothing more.

The tragic scene of abuse of a helpless, suffering child, on the creation of which Saltykov in “Poshekhonskaya Antiquity” “threw”, so to speak, all his indignant genius as an artist, in some details, probably, artistically enhanced and generalized. However, the very fact of such torture and the boy Saltykov’s angry and painful reaction to it are hardly fictional. All this is not only the undoubted truth of the everyday life of a serf village, it is the truth of the developing personality, the developing character of young Saltykov. He, still a child, breaks the chains of serf discipline, and in him he conquers his own humanity. But Saltykov is merciless to himself, he is also a child of the ruthless practice of serfdom, which freed the master from all “discipline”, angry at the lackey who dared to contradict him. Remembering, Saltykov mercilessly calls his fit of uncontrollable anger “shameful.”

Childhood ended in 1836. In August of this year, Mikhail Saltykov, together with his mother, again traveled from Spas-Ugol through Trinity-Sergievsky Posad to Moscow, the path along which he would travel many, many times over the course of ten long years of study, first in Moscow, and then in Tsarskoe Selo and St. Petersburg, going to summer holidays to his native Spas-Ugol and returning to the classrooms and dormitories of the Noble Institute and Lyceum. He would travel along this same road more than once later, when he became an adult.

The road between Moscow and Sergievsky Posad was then “a wide ditch dug between two ramparts, lined with two rows of birch trees, in the form of a boulevard. This boulevard was intended for pedestrians who found it really convenient to walk. But the road itself, thanks to the clayey soil, was filled with mud to such an extent in rainy times that it formed an almost impassable quagmire. Nevertheless, there were always a lot of travelers. In addition to Sergievsky Posad, the same road went all the way to Arkhangelsk, through Rostov, Yaroslavl, Vologda.” The road was usually filled with “lines of pedestrians, some of whom walked with knapsacks on their shoulders and sticks in their hands, others rested or had a snack on the side. Crews were encountered at every step, sometimes dapper, racing at full speed, sometimes modest, barely crawling on “their own”, like the carriage of the provincial landowners Saltykovs. The villages and hamlets found along the sides of the highway were unusually huge, completely lined with “long two-story houses (the stone lower floor housed the owners and passing gray people), in which crowds of people swarmed day and night, winter and summer.”

“About three versts away, the striped mileposts gave way to pyramids carved from wild stone, and that specific smell, which in the old days distinguished the immediate vicinity of Moscow, rushed towards us.

It smells like Moscow! - said Alempiy on the box.

Yes, Moscow... - Mother repeated, deftly pinching her nose.

The city... you can’t live without it! How many ordinary people live here! - Agasha also inserted her word, innocently linking the presence of an unpleasant smell with the accumulation of common people.

But now it’s very close; The boulevard stopped on both sides of the road, a barrier flashed in the distance, and a huge mass of churches and houses unfolded before our eyes...

Here it is, Moscow - golden domes!”

The meeting with Moscow in 1836 was not the first, but it was special; ten-year-old Mikhail Saltykov entered the Noble Institute, where his older brothers Dmitry and Nikolai had previously studied. This decisive turn in the boy’s fate had long been planned and predetermined by his parents, especially the enterprising and far-sighted Olga Mikhailovna. The sons, especially the gifted Mikhail, had to justify their mother’s ambitious hopes for brilliant career, as the satirist would later say, “a state baby.” It was precisely these “state babies”, “nurses of glory” who were destined to hold the fate of Russia in their hands, that the closed class educational institution where young Saltykov spent two years was called upon to educate.