Mehdiev V.G. (Khabarovsk)

The purpose of the article is to analyze the structure-forming details of the landscape in the poem “Dead Souls,” which hint at semantic echoes that go beyond the world of the characters themselves and express their author’s assessment. The landscape images of the work have traditionally (and rightly) been understood in line with Gogol’s characteristic method of typification. Gogol skillfully used his talent to fit whole content “into an infinitely small” space. But the discoveries made in connection with the concepts of “outlook,” “environment,” and “point of view” make it possible to see the nonlinear strategy of Gogol’s landscape.

In the dialogical concept of M.M. According to Bakhtin, “a twofold combination of the world with a person is possible: from within him - as his horizons, and from the outside - as his environment.” The scientist thought that “verbal landscape”, “description of the situation”, “depiction of everyday life”, etc. cannot be considered solely as “moments of the horizon of the acting, incoming consciousness of a person.” An aesthetically significant event occurs where the subject of the image is “turned outside itself, where it exists valuable only in another and for another, is involved in the world, where it does not exist from within itself.”

The theory of the hero’s outlook and environment, created by Bakhtin, in the science of literature was associated with the concept of “point of view.” There is an internal point of view - a first-person narration, where the depicted world fits as closely as possible into the character’s horizons; and an external point of view, giving scope to the author's omniscience, endowing the narrator with a higher consciousness. The external point of view has mobility, through it a multiplicity of perception and emotional and semantic assessment of the subject is achieved. N.D. Tamarchenko wrote that “the point of view in a literary work is the position of the “observer” (narrator, narrator, character) in the depicted world.” Point of view, “on the one hand, determines his horizons - both in terms of “volume,” “and in terms of assessing what is perceived; on the other hand, it expresses the author’s assessment of this subject and his outlook.” Based on the foregoing, we can conclude that the boundaries passing between unequal points of view in the narrative indicate certain moving, threshold meanings determined by the value position of observers.

The borderline meanings of the landscape in “Dead Souls” can be understood in the context of M. Virolainen’s thoughts: “describing this or that area of ​​life, Gogol likes to disrupt the direct connection with it,” “turn to it from the outside.” As a result, “a conflictual interaction arises between the subject of the image and the author’s view of the subject”; “the author’s view violates all boundaries,” “does not allow the phenomenon being described to remain equal to itself.” This position, I think, goes back to the well-known idea of ​​​​M. Bakhtin: “every moment of the work is given to us in the author’s reaction to it.” It “embraces both the subject and the hero’s reaction to it.” The author, according to the philosopher, is endowed with an “excess of vision,” thanks to which he “sees and knows something” that is “fundamentally inaccessible to the heroes.”

Indeed, an ordinary look at the poem “Dead Souls” reveals, first of all, details that have a typical meaning. In the creation of paintings of the provincial city, the life of provincial landowners, an emphasis on showing the dual unity of external and internal is noticeable. But the semantics of landscape is not limited to the typing function: Gogol presents the landscape from points of view bordering each other. About the hotel in the county town where Chichikov stayed, it is said that it belonged to a “famous family.” The landscape and the interior associated with it give rise to a feeling of ordinariness, typicality: this is all around and inside the hotel, but this can also be seen everywhere. The formula “here” and “everywhere” includes, in particular, “rooms with cockroaches peeking out like prunes from all corners.” Typicality is expressed not only metaphorically, but sometimes through direct recording of coincidences, abolishing the boundaries between external and internal: “The external façade of the hotel corresponded to its interior<...>» .

Chichikov sees what corresponds to his adventurous plan. In his ideological assessment of the district landscape, he is passive. But the narrative initiative here belongs to the writer. It is the author who acts as the highest authority and forms the value-semantic space of the provincial city. N.V. Gogol seems to follow the character, takes a transpersonal position that coincides “with the position of the given character in terms of spatial characteristics,” but diverges “from it in terms of ideology, phraseology, etc.” . True, if we analyze the fragment in isolation from the context of the work, then the belonging of the evaluative paradigm to the writer is not so obvious. From what does it follow that the subject of perception is not only Chichikov, but also the author?

The fact is that Chichikov's point of view cannot perform a compositional function. She is devoid of narrative memory: she grasps what meets her situational interests. The author’s evaluative position is a completely different matter. With the help of verbal details of the landscape and interior, a structural whole is created not only of individual episodes, but also of the text as a whole. Thanks to the culture of borders, the “closed form” “from the subject of the image” turns “into a way of organizing a work of art” (italics saved - M.V.).

This can be seen in the example of the epithets “yellow” and “black” used in the description of the hotel: the lower floor of the hotel “was plastered and remained in dark red bricks, darkened even more by the wild weather changes”; “The top one was painted with eternal yellow paint.” The expression “was painted with eternal yellow paint” can be understood to mean that the walls of the hotel were painted with yellow paint a long time ago; can be seen in the “eternal yellow paint” and a symbol of imperturbable staticity.

The epithet “black” is also given a special status, fulfilling not only a stylistic but also a compositional role. The epithet is used in different episodes of the poem in thirteen cases, and is included in contextual synonymous rows with the words “dark” and “gray”.

The dominance of the epithets “dark” and “black” should be attributed to the sphere of intentionality, dictated by the author’s intention. The description ends with a mention that one of the two samovars standing on the window “was pitch black.” The word-detail, as well as its contextual synonyms, create a ring composition of the landscape. The epithet “black” incorporates a holistic characteristic of “internal” and “external”. At the same time, the symbolic meaning of the word is not confined to a single picture, but extends to other episodes. In the description of a luxurious evening in the governor’s house, the epithet “black” enters into semantic connections with “an air squadron of flies,” “black tailcoats,” and, finally, into unusual connections with “light,” “white shining refined sugar”: “Everything was flooded with light. Black tailcoats flashed and rushed separately and in heaps here and there, like flies scampering on white shining refined sugar...”

Thus, the same picture in “Dead Souls” is drawn from two angles - from the place from which the adventurer Chichikov sees it, and from the value point from which the author-narrator contemplates it. On the moving border of Chichikov’s practical view of things and their author’s emotional, evaluative and creative perception, semantic levels of landscape arise, acting as something other than just a means of typification. These levels of semantics appear due to the combination of “different positions” that play the role of compositional means.

The landscape in the chapter about Manilov is presented at the level of conflicting interaction between two points of view - Chichikov and the author. The description is preceded by a three-dimensional picture, which the further, the more rapidly it strives to take over the “inner” space of Manilov: “The master’s house stood alone on the south, that is, on a hill open to all the winds...”. This is followed by “sloping mountains”, on which there are “trimmed turfs”, two or three “flower beds scattered in English style”, “five or six birches” “here and there raised their small-leaved thin peaks”. Under two of them there was a gazebo with the inscription: “Temple of solitary reflection”, and there, lower - “a pond covered with greenery<...>At the bottom of this elevation, and partly along the slope itself, gray log huts darkened along and across<...>There was no growing tree or any greenery between them; There was only one log visible everywhere. At some distance to the side, a pine forest darkened with some dull bluish color.”

The landscape becomes substantively denser, semantically significant details increase in it, but the description here is directed not in depth, but in breadth - it is linear. This perspective of the landscape does not reveal depth of character, but rather the absence of it. But the movement in breadth still has a limit, noted by the author. It passes where the presence of another world is noted - a darkening pine forest, as if from the things of boredom contemplating the man-made landscape of Manilov.

A constant detail in the characterization of Manilovism, designated by the word “dandy,” draws into its orbit a synonymous series that expands the reader’s perception: a house on an “elevation,” “Aglitsky gardens of Russian landowners,” “scattered flower beds in an English style,” etc. The space of “made beauty” can extend to infinity and increase in volume through the accumulation of details. But in any case, its openness is illusory, doomed to horizontality and devoid of verticality. Manilov’s landscape reaches the limit of the “top”: “The day was either clear or gloomy, but of some light gray color, which only happens on the old uniforms of garrison soldiers.” Here even the “top” loses its objective meaning, since it is reduced to comparison with the uniforms of garrison soldiers.

The word “dandy”, still only noticeable in the description of Manilov’s surroundings, is used as a key word when describing the interior: “wonderful furniture covered with dandy silk fabric”, “a dandy candlestick made of dark bronze with three antique graces, with a dandy shield”. The expressive word “dandy” compositionally connects the story about Manilov with the image of a city young man “in white rosin trousers, very narrow and short, in a tailcoat with attempts at fashion.” Thanks to the associative connection, “young man” and Manilov fall into the same semantic series.

Thus, Chichikov’s practical point of view in the description is not self-sufficient: it is shaded by the author’s point of view, revealing connections between individual fragments of the world that are invisible to the character. In the complex structure of “Dead Souls” by M.Yu. Lotman noted an unusual hierarchy: “the characters, the reader and the author are included in different types” of “special space”; “the heroes are on the ground, their horizon is obscured by objects, they know nothing except practical everyday considerations.” The heroes of the “stationary, “closed” locus are opposed by the heroes of the “open” space”, “heroes of the path” and, of course, the author himself, who is a man of the path.

The petrified life of provincial landowners, the semantic categoricalness of “mud of little things” unexpectedly collides with the energy of the author’s word. Mobile border semantic zones are exposed. So, entering Manilov’s office, Chichikov utters the words: “Nice room.” The writer picks up the phrase uttered by Chichikov, but subordinates it to his own point of view, which is necessary, first of all, to deepen the parodic meaning of the metaphor of “panache”: “The room was definitely not without pleasantness: the walls were painted with some kind of blue paint<...>tobacco<...>it was just piled up on the table. On both windows<...>there were piles of ash knocked out of the pipe, placed<...>very beautiful rows...”

The word “heap” plays a special role in the text, giving, at first glance, the impression of situational use. Gogol uses it often in the poem (in nineteen cases). It is noteworthy that it is absent in the chapter about Sobakevich, but is used with particular intensity in the episodes dedicated to Plyushkin. The noun “heap” is also found in chapters devoted to the provincial city. It is clear that Chichikov’s point of view is, in principle, devoid of such creative activity.

The iconic components of the landscape and interior can be called key in the author's plan; they can also be considered as hermeneutic pointers on the path to understanding the author's intention. Being included in the writer’s horizons, they carry the semantic energy of previous landscape drawings. Their function is to create invisible, barely perceptible threads between the individual parts of the work.

The landscape of the provincial city opens through the perception of Chichikov. Thanks to the author's view, it gradually acquires a two-voiced character. Here are the dominant signs of the city: “yellow paint on stone houses”, “gray on wooden ones”, the houses had an “eternal mezzanine”; in some places these houses seemed “lost among a street as wide as a field”, “in some places huddled together”; a drawing of “billiards with two players in tailcoats, the kind that our theater guests wear.” The city garden “consisted of thin trees, poorly grown, with supports at the bottom, in the form of triangles, very beautifully painted with green oil paint.”

Taken separately, these details do not seem to penetrate into other descriptions. But upon mental contemplation of the entire Gogol text, they acquire unity. It turns out that there are semantic relationships between them, so the writer’s use of the word “heap” to the city landscape, the description of the evening in the governor’s house, and Manilov’s interior is not accidental. The author connects the individual parts of the poem not only by plot; he connects and unites them thanks to repeated verbal images. The word “heap” is used in describing the world of Plyushkin and Korobochka. Moreover, it is constantly adjacent to the epithet “correct,” that is, with the characters’ own ideas about symmetry and beauty.

The picture of landowner life and the signs of space in the chapter about Korobochka are given through the eyes of Chichikov, and twice. The first time Chichikov comes here is at night in rainy weather. And the second time, when the hero contemplates the world of Korobochka in the early morning, the same details of space and setting are supplemented with new details. The case is unique, since in the description of Korobochka’s yard the boundaries between the perception of the character and the author-narrator are almost invisible.

Chichikov is presented with a “small house,” only “one half” of which is “illuminated with light.” “There was also a puddle in front of the house, which was directly hit by the same light. The rain pattered loudly on the wooden roof,<...>the dogs burst out into all sorts of voices." It is eloquent that the episode reflected the non-pragmatic activity of the character, which is evident from the convergence of his point of view with the point of view of the author (“illuminated with light” is a Gogol expression). Chichikov's gaze selects the details of the landscape in accordance with the logic with which the writer created the landscape, depicting the space of the county town, Manilov. Rare cases of closeness between Chichikov and the author were pointed out by Yu. Mann, who noted that in some episodes of the poem “the narrator’s reasoning leads to the character’s introspection,” in turn, “the character’s (Chichikov’s) introspection turns into the narrator’s reasoning.” By author's introspection, the scientist meant an objective idea of ​​the subject of the image belonging to the narrator.

The interior of Korobochka is also given through the eyes of Chichikov: “The room was hung with old striped wallpaper; paintings with some birds; between the windows there are old small mirrors with dark frames in the form of curled leaves...". And at the same time, the description is not free from the energetic words of the author-narrator. The writer is recognized by his passion for diminutive suffixes, the word “dark”, and light painting (“illuminated with light”). The author is also aware of the fact that he willingly gives objects a figurative embodiment (frames in the form of “curled leaves”). And yet, Chichikov’s point of view dominates the picture. For the first time, the character finds himself not inside the depicted world, but outside it. And this is no coincidence. In the morning, Chichikov “began to examine the views before him: the window looked almost into a chicken coop<...>a narrow courtyard filled with birds and all kinds of domestic creatures<...>There were apple trees and other fruit trees scattered around the garden.<...>Following the vegetable garden were peasant huts, which, although they were built scattered and not enclosed in regular streets...”

Despite the fact that the Korobochka estate gives the impression of a fortress, it does not correspond to the ideal: its dilapidation is felt. The epithet “wrong” appears, which, in the course of the plot, finds itself in new verbal and semantic contexts. It is in the chapter about Korobochka that he is directly correlated with the image of Chichikov, which makes it possible to see connections between the characters that they do not realize.

It is appropriate here to mention the story “Old World Landowners”, where the landscape, in contrast to the Korobochka estate, creates a feeling of abundance. The world of old-world landowners is associated with a corner of paradise: God did not offend the humble inhabitants of the Russian land in any way. In this regard, the story of fruit trees bent low to the ground from the weight and many fruits on them is illustrative.

In the description of Korobochka’s space, the motif of “animal” abundance is intensively introduced. The main characteristics of her world are “animal” metaphors and the epithet “narrow”. The phrase: “a narrow courtyard filled with birds and all kinds of domestic creatures” absorbs the characteristics of the hostess. She also hints at Chichikov: a not entirely linear description of the character is outlined, the prospect of his “internal” reflection.

The world of Korobochka correlates with the world of Chichikov himself - the image of her “narrow yard” is correlated with the “internal arrangement” of Chichikov’s box, a detailed description of which appears in the chapter about the landowner. In “the very middle is a soap dish, behind the soap dish there are six or seven narrow partitions for razors.” The following expression “all sorts of partitions with and without lids” is associated with the story of peasant huts that “were built randomly and were not enclosed in regular streets.” Order and “correctness” in Chichikov’s box, thanks to the indicated convergences, become synonymous with Korobochka’s “wrong” way of life. And the “animal” motif, in turn, semantically and emotionally prepares the reader for the perception of “Nozdrevism”.

Nozdryov's yard was no different from a kennel, just like Korobochka's yard was no different from a chicken coop. The associative series continues to hint at the poverty of “land abundance”: the field along which Nozdryov led the guests “consisted of hummocks.” The author persistently emphasizes the idea: the land belonging to these landowners is barren, as if it had lost God’s mercy. The motif of the barrenness of the land originates in the description of the provincial “garden” (consisting of “thin trees” “no taller than reeds”); it expands spatially and semantically deepens in the story about Manilov’s estate (“sloping mountains”, “small-leaved thin tops” of birch trees); about Korobochka’s yard (“apple trees and other fruit trees were scattered here and there throughout the garden”). But in the description of Nozdryov’s estate, the motif reaches its semantic peak.

At the same time, the opposition between “right” and “wrong” is deepening. Depth is achieved by the fact that the description combines (to a certain extent) the position of the character and the position of the narrator. In the chapter on Sobakevich, Chichikov’s perception paradoxically combines details that meet his pragmatic interests and elements that bring his point of view closer to the author’s. The epithet “wrong”, referred to the world of Korobochka, becomes a metaphorical expression of an entire way of life. Chichikov could not get rid of the feeling of some blatant asymmetry of the entire landowner way of life and Sobakevich’s appearance. Here, apparently, Chichikov’s travel impressions could not be avoided. The road, as noted by a modern researcher, “in the poem also serves as a test for the hero, a test of his ability to go beyond his own horizons.” The motif of the path is probably no less important for deepening the semantics of the opposition “right” - “wrong” - it reaches a concrete, objective embodiment in the chapter about Plyushkin. In the description of Plyushkin's estate, the author develops the landscape motifs outlined in previous chapters. Here they receive semantic completion and unity.

The first part of the landscape is entirely given in Chichikov’s horizons; but the author, in turn, seems to penetrate into the character’s horizons, comments, evaluates what might not correspond to Chichikov’s character. Obviously, Gogol, by his presence in the description, on the one hand, introduces what he saw to the reader’s perception, and on the other, to the consciousness of Chichikov himself. Thus, the “double illumination” technique used by the writer imperceptibly prepares a shift in the hero’s moral sense. In the landscape, given, at first glance, through the perception of Chichikov, a style stands out that refers to the position of the author-narrator: “the balconies are askew and turned black, not even picturesquely”; “all sorts of rubbish grew”; “two village churches: an empty wooden one and a stone one, with yellow walls, stained. This strange castle looked like some kind of decrepit invalid<...>» .

The author is also recognizable by his passion for painting. But there is something in the text that certainly cannot be correlated with Chichikov’s point of view - bewilderment at the fact that the balconies “turned black” so ugly that there was nothing “picturesque” in them. This is, of course, the artist's view. Adjacent to it is the ballad image used by Gogol (“strange castle”) and correlated with the physically tangible image of a “decrepit disabled person.” There is nothing even insignificantly “picturesque”, and therefore there is nothing to “raise into the pearl of creation.” Colloquial “all sorts of rubbish grew”, meaning that the earth “dried up”, “degenerated” , both Chichikov and the author could mentally pronounce.

The story about the picturesque garden makes up the second part of the landscape, but it is included exclusively in the author’s horizons. The path to the artistic, symbolic meaning of the landscape is closed to Chichikov. Reminiscences referring to Dante, Shakespeare, Karamzin, folklore confirm what has been said. The landscape has a “summative” meaning. He appears as a “familiar stranger.” In addition, when describing the garden, Gogol freely uses heterogeneous semantic and stylistic figures: the garden, “overgrown and decayed” - the garden “was alone picturesque in its pictorial desolation”; “green and irregular trembling-leaved domes” - birch “like a regular sparkling marble column” - “nature has destroyed the grossly perceptible correctness”, etc. Gogol creates a landscape in exact accordance with the ideal that he told his contemporary: “If I were an artist, I would invent a special kind of landscape<...>I would link tree to tree, mix up the branches, throw light where no one expects it, that’s the kind of landscapes you should paint!” .

It is striking with what consistency and intensity Gogol uses the same words and verbal forms to express the artistic idea of ​​a landscape. Almost all the details of the picture are familiar from previous descriptions. The symbolic image of the garden is crowned with a series of words that was associated with the point of view and value position of the author. The spatial density of the depicted garden is also striking, especially striking if you compare it with the “empty” land of the landowners.

The motif of infertile land in Manilov’s world was emphasized by reference to “sloping mountains.” At the same time, the forest was also mentioned, but the fact of the matter is that the “darkening forest” did not seem to be part of Manilov’s world, since it was located on the other side of Manilov’s world (“to the side”). There is a natural analogy with the garden in the provincial city: it “consisted of thin trees, badly grown, with supports at the bottom, in the form of triangles.” Only in the chapter about Plyushkin, when describing the garden, does Gogol introduce the motif of the reborn earth. But the fertile land, the sun, the sky are also on the other side, they seem not to be involved in Plyushkin’s world: “a garden that went beyond the village and then disappeared into the field.”

In Gogol's description, the contrasting meanings of “dark” are smoothed out. As for the opposition “right” - “wrong”, it is completely removed (“green and wrong...”, “birch as right”); Even the “narrow path” is poetic here. Both of them, created by the joint efforts of nature and art, are in perfect agreement with the laws of beauty and symmetry, with the idea of ​​“fertile land.” It is interesting that here even the color detail reaches its finale: supports in the form of “triangles”, “painted with green oil paint.” In the image of Plyushkin's yard, the color green becomes a symbol of death: “Green mold has already covered the dilapidated tree on the fence and gate.” The motif of death is intensified in the depiction of Plyushkin’s interior space: “a wide entryway from which the wind blew, as if from a cellar”; “The room is dark, slightly illuminated by light.”

In the poem “Dead Souls” the landscape is endowed with a multi-level semantic and narrative plan. The first level includes an imaginary, ideal landscape, functioning in the context of the lyrical theme of the work. It is included exclusively in the author’s horizons and serves as the boundary between the world of Chichikov, the landowners and the ideal world of Gogol. The background includes a landscape implying “known views”, correlated with the theme of “dead souls” and here fulfilling the function of typification. But the second plan of the landscape strategy is not linear: it is endowed with semantic polyphony, a change of subjects of perception, and a combination of points of view. The mobility of the semantics of the landscape serves to “expose” the linear life path of the characters. Repetitive details included in the sphere of the author's perception, thanks to their repetition, acquire the polysemy of the symbol, smooth out the satirical, typifying orientation of the landscape, and reveal implicit connections with the lyrical digressions in the poem. The character is described, on the one hand, from the point of his passive contemplation of his own existence, in unity with the vulgar surroundings (the character’s horizons and surroundings are thought of as something closed); and from the creatively active position of the author-narrator, who opens this isolation and illuminates it with the thought of the spiritual principles of human life.

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Getting acquainted with officials and demonstrating “very skillfully” the ability to “flatter everyone,” Chichikov “somehow casually hinted” to the governor, “that you are entering his province as if you were entering paradise, the roads are velvet everywhere” (VI, 13). Thus, for the first time in “Dead Souls,” a certain idea of ​​a road landscape appears, the reliability of which is immediately called into question: the hero’s opinion, which, as was typical for his “conversation” in certain cases, took “somewhat book turns” (VI, 13), was dictated solely by the desire to please and even “charm” (VI, 16).

However, the picture that the narrator paints when the hero goes to Manilov is not very similar to paradise: “As soon as the city left back, they began to write, according to our custom, nonsense and game on both sides of the road: hummocks, a spruce forest, low thin bushes of young pines , charred old trunks, wild heather and similar nonsense. There were villages stretched out along the cord, with a structure similar to old stacked firewood, covered with gray roofs with carved wooden decorations underneath in the form of hanging cleaning utensils embroidered with patterns. Several men yawned as usual, sitting on benches in front of the gate in their sheepskin coats. Women with fat faces and bandaged breasts looked out from the upper windows; a calf looked at the lower ones or a pig stuck out its blind muzzle. In a word, the species are known” (VI, 21-22).

The colloquial vocabulary used by the narrator (“nonsense and game,” “nonsense”), enhancing the expressiveness of the description, is much more consistent with the picture seen than book phrases. It may seem that the road views that appeared before his eyes are only “known views” because they are completely ordinary and ordinary; therefore, it is “nonsense and game” that are completely ordinary and ordinary (which is emphasized by the expressions “according to our custom”, “as usual”) - and it is precisely these “nonsense and game”, the species designated by synonymous words, that represent "species known." Meanwhile, all the details of the presented picture acquire the meaning of contextual synonyms, thus acting as components of the gradation of “nonsense and game.” A distinct feeling of such gradation is created primarily by the eloquent-enumerative intonation, but also by the increasing semantic significance of the details of the description, which opens with “bumps” and closes with “pig.”

The principle of plot gradation corresponds to the description of Chichikov’s final departure from the city, echoing the picture given above, but at the same time extremely expanding the idea of ​​​​the “known types”: “And again, on both sides of the pillar path, they went to write miles again, station keepers, logs, carts , gray villages with samovars, women and a lively bearded owner running from an inn with oats in his hand, a pedestrian in worn bast shoes trudged 800 miles, small towns built alive, with wooden shops, flour barrels, bast shoes, rolls and other small fry, pockmarked barriers, bridges being repaired, endless fields on both sides, landowners' weeping, a soldier on horseback carrying a green box with lead peas and the signature: such and such an artillery battery, green, yellow and freshly dug up black stripes, flickering across the steppes, a song lingering in the distance, pine tops in the fog, the ringing of bells disappearing in the distance, crows like flies, and an endless horizon...” (VI, 220).

And here all the details of the picture drawn by the narrator (the number of which increases sharply) are endowed with the meaning of contextual synonyms, so that the most heterogeneous, but similar in meaning, phenomena again become “nonsense”. As for the eloquent-enumerative intonation, it noticeably enhances the expressiveness of the description, which reflects the changing (from the beginning to the end of the poem) attitude of the narrator, who acquires panoramic vision, to the space that attracts him, where “nothing will seduce or enchant the gaze” (VI , 220). The significant roll call of the two paintings is intended to emphasize that the intensification of the elements of “nonsense and game” and “that kind of nonsense” goes in the plot of the poem along an ascending line, however, the “horizon without end,” indicating a change in the perspective of perception (marked by the auditory aspect of the latter), opens a symbolic perspective of the narrative, absent in the first picture, where the place of the “horizon” is taken by the “pig’s face”.

But does this change the attitude towards “known species” as “nonsense and game”? Being a fragment of the depicted space, the road landscape, for all its ordinariness, reveals signs of something unusual, so that in this case, too, what is characteristic of descriptions of a “known kind” (VI, 8), with an emphasized emphasis on repetition, a “deviation from” norms”, designed to destroy the inertia of perception of the known and turn it into the unknown. The paradox of such a description is that the details included in it, for all their visual authenticity, in their totality certainly create the impression of “nonsense”; at the same time, this or that detail is not just identical to the picture expressing this “nonsense”, but represents it, as in Sobakevich’s house, “every object, every chair seemed to say: and I, too, Sobakevich! or: I, too, look very much like Sobakevich!” (VI, 96). So, in the road landscape, both in the first and in the second, composed of such reliable details, the whole picture turns out to be anomalous: here all the “known views” - and everything is truly “nonsense and game.”

It is “nonsense and game” that are an ontological property of the world, in the organization of which alogism and absurdity play an important role. Not only in stories where the grotesque and fantasy determine the course of events and the behavior of the characters, but also in “Dead Souls” Gogol set himself the task of “depicting the incredible and implausible”; Moreover, even “little things” that look plausible turn out to be “hyperbolic and implausible” for him. It is from them that the road landscape is formed and built, when the figurative exaggeration is an accumulation of details, giving rise to the idea of ​​​​the size and limitlessness of “nonsense and game.”

It was noted that the description of the species observed by Chichikov, who went to Manilov, looks like “like a “genuine list” from reality itself,” but also “somewhat fantastic.” And that a picture showing such views meets the principle of “unusuality” in the sense of bringing “a certain quality” of the depicted object “to its extreme limits.” Taking it to extreme limits is a manifestation of the fantastic; the picture in question is fantastic to the extent that reality is fantastic, where the hero trades and buys, that is, he does not seem to go beyond the boundaries of the generally accepted in his occupation, but “sells nothing” and “buys nothing.”

The interests of the hero compel him to “look into these and other corners of our state, and mainly into those that suffered more than others from accidents, crop failures, deaths, and so on and so forth, in a word - where it would be more convenient and cheaper to buy the people they need” (VI, 240). This is how space is mastered by a chaise, in which Chichikov moves along the road, looking at the views around him. He observes these views, but the narrator describes them; It is the narrator, and not the hero, who owns the expression “known views”, the stylistic marking of which, giving it an ironic meaning, is emphasized by inversion; the definition that conveys the narrator’s emotional reaction to the picture he saw and drew is inverted. This picture, which depicts “nonsense and game,” is painted with the gaze and word of the narrator; the hero moves in the chaise, but for the narrator the chaise “does not move, but the background moves” and “the scenery changes, which, by the way, is also motionless.” The hero takes the position of an observer inside this picture, which allows him to consider objects that fall into his horizon “from the point of view of a moving object,” i.e., the same chaise. However, it would be wrong to conclude that the hero sees the same road landscape as the narrator: Chichikov sees views, and the narrator sees “known views”; Chichikov notices what everyone can notice, but the narrator reveals what only he can perceive and show.

If we remember the “word: inquiring”, which is important for Gogol, with which he “defines his attitude towards the subject,” then we can say it differently: the hero observes (when he is not distracted and is really busy watching the road), and the narrator, drawing a picture, inquires she has its hidden meaning - and probes with her eyes and words; the creation of the hero moving in the chaise occurs simultaneously with the creation of the landscape as the background of the movement. And if these are “known views”, and they are also created, then they are known differently for the hero, who is inside the picture and inside the chaise, and for the narrator, who creates both this picture and this chaise, with the description of which the poem actually begins. First, the chaise appears (appears in the narrator’s speech), and only then the gentleman sitting in it, but the britzka and the gentleman form a single whole; if without Chichikov (if “this strange plot” had not occurred to him) “this poem would not have come to light” (VI, 240), then it would not have appeared without the britzka, through which the “strange plot” is realized.

Here Chichikov, when he is driving to Korobochka, is suddenly caught by a downpour: “This forced him to draw leather curtains with two round windows, designated for viewing road views, and order Selifan to go quickly” (VI, 41). So, the windows are designated for viewing road views, but the hero is unable to see any views: “He looked around, but it was so dark that you could prick your eye out” (VI, 42). Chichikov sees “darkness,” that is, he sees nothing, since he cannot see anything. A sign of symbolic allegory, as was shown, was marked by the subsequent episode, when the chaise overturned, and the hero “plunged into the mud with his hands and feet” (VI, 42). But the inability to consider anything also carries an allegorical meaning. Wed. with another episode, at the end of the poem, when Chichikov’s chaise, leaving the city forever, is stopped by an “endless funeral procession,” which the hero “began to examine timidly through the pieces of glass in the leather curtains” (VI, 219). But he is concerned not so much with looking at something (after all, he sees the procession through a piece of glass), but rather with not being seen, which is why he draws the curtains. Chichikov’s task is why he “avoided talking a lot about himself; if he spoke, then in some commonplaces” (VI, 13), so that he would not be considered; however, he himself is not able to examine (penetrate inside what is being examined and see what is hidden from external gaze) neither the views surrounding him, nor himself: everything is closed for him by symbolic darkness.

In the case of Chichikov, external darkness turns out to be a projection of internal darkness, that is, the inability to see and distinguish. We are talking about the ontological blindness that struck the hero. To Manilov, his proposal seemed like a manifestation of madness, until Chichikov explained that he meant “not living in reality, but living in relation to the legal form” (VI, 34). But the legal form actually destroys the boundary between the living and the dead, allowing one to acquire as living “those souls that are definitely already dead” (VI, 35). This is “the main object of his taste and inclinations,” overshadowing all other types; Having left Manilov, “he soon plunged entirely into him, body and soul” (VI, 40). It is this object that is the main road landscape for Chichikov, which he constantly keeps before his eyes.

In “Dead Souls,” the road grows over the course of the narrative into a symbolic image, which gives the plot of the poem a universal meaning. The road views drawn by the narrator also acquire the same universal meaning, meaning their direct and metaphorical meaning, like that of a road. S. G. Bocharov wrote about the “picture of man,” the idea of ​​which is “scattered with countless features and details” in Gogol’s world; this picture “cannot be read without relating it to the Christian concept of the image given to every person, which a person can either cultivate to the likeness of God, or spoil and distort.” This is true not only in relation to Gogol’s man, but also to the world depicted by Gogol, of which “known species” are a part; this world can also be cultivated or spoiled if the person living in it is ontologically blind and does not distinguish living from dead. That is why the narrator, examining his hero, strives to look “deeper into his soul” and stir “at the bottom of it” what “eludes and hides from the light” (VI, 242).

It is not only the species that alone occupy Chichikov and constitute the subject of his concern that slip away and hide; It is not without reason that the road in the poem also serves as a test for the hero, a test of his ability to go beyond the limits of his own horizons, having seen a phenomenon encountered “on the way of a person, unlike everything that he had seen before, which at least once awakens in him a feeling not similar to those that he is destined to feel throughout his life” (VI, 92). But the “vision,” which appeared in an “unexpected way,” disappeared, causing “thoughts” in the hero (VI, 92-93), again associated with the acquisition and directly reflecting the deformed picture of man.

Chichikov, waiting for the funeral procession to pass, looks at it through the windows, and then thinks that it is “good that there was a funeral; they say it means happiness if you meet a dead person” (VI, 220). But this is not just a matter of popular belief; Let us recall that he “felt a slight heartbeat” when he learned from Sobakevich that Plyushkin, whose “people are dying in large numbers,” lives only “five miles” from him (VI, 99). Habitually rejoicing at the news of the dead, Chichikov, even at the sight of funerals that seem to have no direct relation to the subject that worries him, does not fall into a melancholy mood and is not inclined to indulge in elegiac reflections on the frailty of life and the mystery of death; but in the plot of the poem, the picture of the funeral is connected precisely with this object, however, neither this picture nor the object itself can make the hero feel and experience the “running of all-destroying time.”

But for the narrator, road impressions serve as a direct reason for lyrical reflection. Describing the road as a spectacle that left a mark on his memory, and recalling his reaction to what he saw, the narrator traces the changes that occurred to him and deeply affected his personality. Wed. beginning: “Before, long ago, in the years of my youth, in the years of my irrevocably flashed childhood, it was fun for me to drive up for the first time to an unfamiliar place: it didn’t matter whether it was a village, a poor provincial town, a village, a settlement, I discovered a lot of curious things he has a child’s curious look” (VI, 110). And the conclusion: “Now I indifferently approach every unfamiliar village and indifferently look at its vulgar appearance; It’s unpleasant to my chilled gaze, it’s not funny to me, and what would have awakened in previous years a lively movement in the face, laughter and silent speech, now slides past, and my motionless lips keep an indifferent silence. O my youth! oh my freshness! (VI, 111).

“Famous views” - this is that vulgar appearance of the world, ordinary and ordinary pictures for a cooled gaze, now contemplated by the narrator; the elegiac tonality of the lyrical digression reflects his experiences, in which variations of “stable motifs and symbols” characteristic of elegiac poetics are discernible, and the road melodies of Russian lyrics are heard. What does the metamorphosis that happened to the narrator mean? The fact that he, like every person, be he even a poet, who got into the cart of life in the morning, was shaken by noon, that is, by the middle of his life. And this is a completely different situation than that of the hero, who was also once young, was a “boy”, before whom one day “the city streets flashed with unexpected splendor, making him gape for several minutes” (VI, 224-225), and now that a new vision has appeared to him, he is “already middle-aged and of a prudently cool character” (VI, 92-93) and is not inclined to indulge in lamentations about his loss of youthful freshness, preferring everyday calculations and calculations to them. While the gaze of the narrator, so demanding of himself, does not at all seem cooled, and it is not for nothing that he further turns to the readers in order to refresh them: “Take with you on the journey, emerging from the soft youthful years into stern, embittering courage, take with you all human traffic, don’t leave them on the road: you won’t pick them up later!” (VI, 127).

The narrator is talking about both the road of life and the symbolic path of the human soul, about the indissoluble unity of these paths and roads, which served as the theme of lyrical reflections in the poetic works of Gogol’s contemporaries. Wed. in Baratynsky’s poem “Equipping for the road of life...” (1825):

Equipping for the road of life

Your sons, us madmen,

Golden dreams of good fortune

Gives the reserve known to us:

Us quickly years postal

They take you from the tavern to the tavern,

And those traveling dreams

In Baratynsky’s “early elegies,” the word fate means “the passage of time itself”; This is how the lyrical situation is described in the poem “Confession”: “A person is not responsible for what happens in him outside of him.” If we return to our example, he is not responsible for what happens to him on the road of life. In Gogol, the fate of a person (both the fate of the hero and the fate of the narrator), who is destined to see golden dreams in childhood and youth, the supply of which is inevitably wasted over the years, depends on himself, whether he will preserve all human movements. Speaking about “the fate of the writer who dared to call out everything that is every minute before the eyes and which indifferent eyes do not see,” the narrator ends the lyrical digression with the significant statement “that a lot of spiritual depth is needed in order to illuminate a picture taken from a despised life, and elevate it to the pearl of creation” (VI, 134).

The narrator not only sees a picture taken from a despicable life, but illuminates it with the light of spiritual depth, the light of inner vision, which alone is capable of expressing the inexpressible. Hence the role of lyrical digressions as a special kind of “window” in the narrative structure of the poem: they, these digressions, allow the narrator to express those feelings and experiences that are hidden in the depths of his soul.

For the narrator, being on the road is both a means of understanding a despicable life, but also an opportunity to again feel like a creator, capable of illuminating the picture he saw: “God! how beautiful you are sometimes, long, long way! How many times, like someone dying and drowning, have I grabbed onto you, and every time you generously carried me out and saved me! And how many wonderful ideas, poetic dreams were born in you, how many wondrous impressions were felt!..” (VI, 222). Having seen enough of the “known views,” it is no coincidence that the narrator resorts to a lyrical figure, an address that acts “like a lyrical force”; here this lyrical power is directed at the narrator himself, who, on the road, seems to re-enter himself. He moves along the road with the hero, the hero observes views, common and ordinary, while the narrator sees “known views” and illuminates the pictures he sees; he, unlike the hero, knows that “the two of them will still have to go hand in hand; two large parts in front are not a trifle” (VI, 246). And what new and different road views await them, known and unknown, because the path they will follow is the path to themselves, the path on which inner vision is gained, when both the hero and the readers will have to look “inside their own souls" (VI, 245).

When reading “Dead Souls,” you sometimes want to exclaim, like many of Gogol’s heroes: “The devil knows what this is!” - and put the book down. Amazing details curl like baroque patterns and carry us along. And only vague bewilderment and the voice of common sense do not allow the reader to finally succumb to the attractive absurdity and take it for granted. In fact, we involuntarily plunge into the world of details and only then suddenly realize that they are strange in the extreme; and it is no longer clear why they are here and why they cross the line of the narrative.

“Dead Souls” shows us all the variety of such “little things” - landscape details, portraits, interior details, detailed comparisons, replete with details. Gogol strives to create as complete a picture as possible of the daily life of the provincial city of NN (and there were probably a great many such cities in Russia at that time), to fully reveal the images of the landowners, he resorts to describing the smallest details, which sometimes, as has already been said, cause the reader is genuinely surprised.

Chichikov arrives in the city; Gogol immediately draws the reader’s attention to some men talking about the wheels of the hero’s chaise, and a certain young man with a Tula pin in the shape of a pistol (interestingly, these characters will never appear on the pages of the book again). Chichikov gets a room in a local hotel; here Gogol even talks about cockroaches and the door to the next room, lined with a chest of drawers. And even that the neighbor is usually curious and interested in the life of the person passing by. Just whether Chichikov had such a neighbor, whether he came when the hero was away, or whether there was no neighbor at all, we will not know, but from now on we have an accurate idea of ​​the “popular kind” of hotels.

In the description of the external façade of the hotel, an absurd detail appears - a red-faced knocker looking out of the window with a samovar made of red copper. Gogol likens an object and a person to two objects, two samovars, and one of them has a beard. You can no longer tell where the person is and where the samovar is. A similar technique of “reification” of a person (or comparing him with something devoid of human traits) is used by Gogol in other episodes of the poem (villages with women in the upper windows of houses and pigs in the lower ones, two faces in the window of Sobakevich’s house, similar to one a cucumber, another - on a Moldavian pumpkin, from which balalaikas are made; the face of the governor’s daughter, deathly oval, clean, “like a just laid egg”; “black tailcoats” at the ball - here is an extremely detailed comparison with flies; without class or rank, wandering around the sleeping city). On the one hand, these details lead nowhere and serve to depict insignificant characters; but, if you think about it, don’t these individual touches speak about the original lack of spirituality of the city? Things are dead, which means the souls of people who live a meaningless, seemingly frozen life are also dead; small people NN replace each other before our eyes, like grotesque surreal figures (about the same as the same nymph with huge breasts in the picture in the hotel or the Greek commanders with thick thighs in the portraits in Sobakevich’s house), cut out of cardboard. What, for example, does everyone see in the prosecutor before his death? Eyebrows and winking eyes. Lifeless details. Sometimes they are funny, but when combined with other images, images of the landowners whom Chichikov visits, they give some kind of ominous picture. Manilov, Korobochka, Plyushkin, Sobakevich - they all withered away, became callous in their estates, among soulless things.

Here is Manilov with his sweet, sugary face, who is accustomed to idleness, loves to make idyllic plans for the future, but never goes beyond words. He only smokes a pipe (in his room there are neat piles of tobacco and ash everywhere), and on his table lies the same book, laid on the same page. The living room is furnished with beautiful furniture (although there was not enough silk fabric for two armchairs). In the evening, candlesticks are brought into the living room - one luxurious, the other “just a copper invalid.” All the details of the interior are a reflection of the incompleteness and meaninglessness of Manilov’s actions, who in words strives for beauty and even built a gazebo called “Temple of Solitary Reflection”, but in reality leads a completely unspiritual, boring life, “dull bluish”, like the forest in his estate.

Here is Korobochka with her passion for hoarding; in her house there are mirrors, paintings with some birds, decks of cards, letters, chests of drawers filled with old clothes (probably where the landowner hides money in colorful bags); there is abundance in the yard. Chickens, turkeys, pigs. Spacious vegetable gardens, a well-kept village, and the peasants have carts. Korobochka is a zealous housewife, but her life is filled with nothing more than taking care of the household; Even if this landowner prays at night in front of the images, she is, in fact, just a scarecrow; it is not for nothing that there is a scarecrow in her garden, on which she is wearing her own cap. This is the life of an old, spiritless old woman, whose slow time is counted by a wheezing and hissing wall clock.

Everything on Sobakevich’s estate is solid: a strong, prohibitively thick fence, sheds made of thick logs, huts “no frills.” Objects in the house resemble their owners: heavy pot-bellied chairs, a bureau, a table, a blackbird in a cage. Sobakevich himself, clumsy, with a rough face, wears a bear-colored tailcoat, has a habit of stepping on everyone’s feet and eats a lot (at an evening with the police chief, he eats a whole sturgeon; on the day of Chichikov’s arrival, cheesecakes the size of a plate and a turkey the size of a calf are served). His soul is “closed in a thick shell,” and it is unknown whether there are any feelings there.

In Plyushkin, everything smells of desolation, decay, even death: bad roads, crumbling, rickety huts and churches, an unkempt manor house, stagnant storehouses of grain, green mold, rotting hay, an overgrown garden (the only thing that is beautiful and alive in this estate), gradually hiding the work of man. The interior of the house is disorderly, chaotic: a heap of various unnecessary rubbish that Plyushkin accumulates for no one knows why (this is already meaningless hoarding, and not the desire for well-being, like Korobochka), furniture piled up like a mountain, a dusty chandelier. Chichikova Plyushkin wants to treat him to Easter cake and liqueur from God knows how long ago (at the same time, other landowners have hearty dinners). Plyushkin's outfit looks more like beggar's rags; the landowner's eyes are like black mice, still fast; he tries to notice everything and watches over his serfs, spares candles and papers, but his thrift is insignificant and disgusting.

The description of details sometimes obscures the people themselves. The landowners gradually lose everything living, human, and merge with the material world. They seem more “dead” than Nozdryov with his face bursting with life (a blush all over his cheek, “blood and milk”). He is soulless, like them, his life resembles his own shabby stroller with tattered clamps (he himself is shabby, with sideburns of different lengths), but at least he has some living, natural, human vices: the inexplicable, the stupid , some kind of disinterested desire to spoil his neighbor, a love of carousing (it’s not for nothing that he leans so heavily on wine and treats guests with champagne, then Madeira, or rowan ash, which turned out to be a “fuel tree”) and a passion for lying (he keeps dogs and he himself always barks, like a dog; one cannot help but recall the notorious Turkish daggers with the inscription “Master Savely Sibiryakov”).

These are the most notable characters of the city of NN and its environs. Cities where the governor is very kind and Embroiders on tulle(nevertheless, the peasants here once killed an assessor), where officials read “Lyudmila” and Jung, where ladies keep dogs, dress in the capital for balls and discuss festoons. A kaleidoscope of meaningless details depicts the emptiness - the true content of the city - in which absurd rumors sprout like mushrooms, solely because the townspeople are mired in inaction. Most of them actually have no goals or aspirations, they are marking time in the same place. Chichikov, at least, is moving forward along the road of life, although his goals, of course, are too petty, and he himself is “nothing”, not fat, not thin, except that he is wearing a well-groomed tailcoat, lingonberry color with a sparkle. Chichikov's box is a whole world, a material narrative about the hero's life, about acquisitions, hoarding, about the persistent pursuit of money, about prudence and narcissism; here there is soap, and razors, and an inkwell, and feathers, and posters, and tickets, and stamp paper, and banknotes. Money is his main passion. After all, his father taught him: “You can ruin everything in the world with a penny.”

The picture is quite sad (perhaps it would only cause disgust if not for the irony of the author). Story looks sadly at her from the portraits of Kutuzov and Bagration hung at Korobochka and Sobakevich for some unknown reason. Not so long ago, these heroes fought desperately (the unfortunate captain Kopeikin also fought); the heroes of history waved sabers, and now this saber rests peacefully in Chichikov’s chaise “to instill appropriate fear in anyone.” And Chichikov himself at some point appears in the eyes of the townspeople - the apotheosis of the absurd! - Napoleon...

Gogol laughs at this meaningless, like a pile of old papers, reality of the city of NN, and thinks about it, coming to conclusions that are far from comforting. But the oppressive weight of the absurd dissolves as soon as the provincial town disappears from sight, only the road remains, and the memory of strange events will soon fade in Chichikov’s memory.

So we sometimes stop, look around, and suddenly the thought comes over us: “The devil knows what it is!” - and we stand like that, not understanding anything, for some time, then we scratch our heads, grin and go on our way.

DNEPROPETROVSK ORDER OF THE RED BANNER OF LABOR ■■. . State Agricultural University NAMED AFTER THE 300TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE REUNIFICATION OF UKRAINE WITH RUSSIA

As a manuscript

ZHUKOVA Natalya Dmitrievna.

SCENERY. IN "DEAD SOULS" BY N.V. GOGOL

Dnepropetrovsk - 1992

The work was carried out at the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature of Simferopol State University named after M.V. Frunze.

Scientific, supervisor: / Doctor of Philological Sciences,

Professor V.P. Kazarin.

Official opponents: Doctor of Philology,

Professor V.A. Koshelev; . Candidate of Philology, . ■ associate professor A.A. Karpov.

; The leading organization is the Kharkov State Pedagogical Institute named after G.S. Skovoroda.,

■",.""." The defense will take place ". /S - i", y..* ,:."! 1992 at /"K o'clock. at a meeting of the specialized council K.053.24.09 for the defense of dissertations for the academic degree of candidate of philological sciences at the Dnepropetrovsk Order of Labor; Red Banner: State University named after. 30th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine. with Russia (320625, GSP, Dnepropetrovsk, Gagarina Avenue, 72).

The dissertation can be found in the library of Dnepropetrovsk State University.

Scientific Secretary U /"("

specialized council "/ Kolesnichenko T.V.

The problems of the poetics of Russian classical prose are among the least studied. True, in Russian literary criticism, from time to time, works appear whose authors remind us of the need to prioritize the study of problems of artistic form, and also try to implement this approach, but the study of the poetics of works of art has not become permanent and systematic.

Increased interest in the problems of poetics was observed in the 20-30s of our century. It gradually faded away by the end of the 40s. During that period, works by A.I. Beletsky, A. Bellgo, V.M. Zhirmunsky were published , Yu.N. Tynyanov, M.M. Bakhtin, G.A. Gukovsky, B.M. Eikhenbaum, V.V. Vinogradov.

Only in the late 60s - early 70s did this problem again attract the attention of literary scholars. At this time, already known ones are republished and new studies devoted to issues of poetics appear. Among the latter are the works of Yu.M. Lotman, A.P. Chudakov, Yu.V. Mann, S.M. Solovyov, B.E. Galanova and. etc.

In Gogol studies, the result of this natural intensification of interest in the artistic skill of the writer were monographs by Yu.V. Mann, I.V. Kartashova, E., A. Smirnova, as well as a number of articles: A.H. Goldsnberg, V.A. Voropaevg I. V. Egorov and E. LLSonstvntikovskaya. S.A. Goncharova, O.G. Di-laktorskaya, A.I. Parpenko and others.

Among the numerous problems of poetics, landscape is of great interest, the study of which was noted by researchers of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Thus, I.V. Zabelin, K.K. Arsenyev, V.F. Savodnik and others considered the “literary landscape” to be a reflection of the writer’s worldview, and the study of the verbal fabric of the landscape, its descriptive, symbolic system is one of the means of penetration into the artistic world , into the “deepest passages” of the soul and the “subtle nerves” of the writer’s creativity.

In the post-October period, no one, with the exception of A. Bely and A. I. Beletsky, addressed the special problems of the literary landscape. Back in 1934, V.S. Nechaeva noted that “the theory and history of literary landscape painting has no special literature,” and this remains relevant today. It is indicative: V.I. Gusev’s article “Landscape” was published only in

additional volume of the "Concise Literary Encyclopedia" (1978). Several pages are devoted to the problems of the landscape of Russian romantic prose in the work of V.Yu. Troitsky “Artistic discoveries of Russian romantic prose of the 20-30s of the PC century.” In it, the researcher proposes a classification of romantic landscapes, which is perhaps the first attempt of this kind.

In Gogol studies, A. Bely, V.F. Pereverzev, V.T. Adam and some others addressed certain issues of the writer’s landscape. The latter raised the problem of the need to study Gogol’s “sense of nature” -. Interesting remarks regarding Gogol's landscapes are found in the works of G.A. Gukovsky, Yu.M. Lotman, M.B. Khrapchenko, Yu.V. Mann, E.S. Smirrova-Chikina, E.A. Smirnfroy, in a number of articles by the authors named above. From the point of view of this reality, K.V. Pigarev examines a number of Gogol’s landscapes. , .

Thus, insufficient knowledge of the literary landscape as one of the most important artistic means of embodying the author's idea determined the relevance and novelty of our research.

The choice of Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls” as the subject of research is due to the fact that this is the writer’s most controversial work. Despite the rather long history of its study and the abundance of works, the essence of Gogol’s plan and its artistic originality have still not been revealed sufficiently deeply and convincingly .

The purpose of the proposed work is to analyze the pose of the landscape of Gogol's "Dead Souls". The goal determines the research objectives:; identify the specifics of artistic details of Gogol’s landscapes; determine the laws to which they are subject; consider the landscape poem?■ the context of the writer’s work; reveal the originality of artistic images with the help of which the writer embodies his idea of ​​reality; to understand more clearly the positive program of Khudogapas, its “idea” of transforming man and the world.

The problem of the landscape of "Local Souls", like many others, is multifaceted. It is connected with the issues of “personal sources” (A.N. Veseloysky), which are embodied in the poem.

The works of B. Skvortsov (1917) and V.V. Danilov (1940) are specially devoted to this problem, the authors of which are looking for biographical realities on the pages of poetry. What is also of interest is the very mechanism of the transition of a fact of reality into a fact of creativity.

To understand the concept of “Dead Souls”, take into account the peculiarities of the spiritual make-up of the writer’s personality, which left an imprint on the artistic system of the poem. A.I. Beletsky rightly considered it necessary to study the “psychographics” of creativity.

Studying the poetics of the paisan poem is impossible without taking into account the context of everything, the work of the prose writer, including articles and epistolary heritage. Turning to the early works of the writer allows us to trace the path of formation of the artistic system of the poem, which in aesthetic form embodies the moral and philosophical quest of the author. At that time, since the poem was not completed, its correlation with “Selected Places, from Correspondence with Friends” helps to clarify “a number of ideas that the author intended to implement in subsequent volumes. Comparison of ideas and images” Dead Souls" with works from different periods of Gogol's work helps to decipher the poem's "sweet symbolism.

Let's note. th such aspect of the study of the poetics of the landscape of Gogol’s work, as its connection with other poetic means of embodying the author’s concept.

Thus, in order to understand the role of the landscape in Gogol’s poem “Dead Souls”, an integrated approach to the study of the problem is necessary. The principles of comparative historical and typological research methods are used in the work. a textual analysis of landscape sketches was undertaken.

Practical: the significance of the work lies in the fact that the materials and results of the study can be used in compiling comments on Gogol’s works, and such in preparing general and special courses on the history of Russian literature.

Analysis of the landscape sketches of the poem made it possible to classify them according to the thematic principle. The landscapes of “Dead Souls” can be divided into three types: urban, estate and, relatively speaking, rural (all-Russian) - which determined the structure

work. Thus, the dissertation consists of an Introduction, three chapters corresponding to each individual type of landscape, and a Conclusion.

The introduction is devoted to substantiating the novelty and relevance of the study, defining its goals and objectives.

In the first chapter - “The City Landscape in Dead Souls” - it is stated that the poetics of the city landscape of Gogol’s work never became the subject of special analysis. Individual elements of the description (at the same time, only the cities of N.5 were addressed by researchers to resolve issues directly... not related to the city landscape. They also missed the fact that the city landscape is presented in several varieties. In addition to descriptions of the city N., in the poem we find pictures of the cities mentioned in the lyrical digressions - an image of the capital city, etc. :

The image of the city N. embodies the “idea of ​​the city.” The writer reveals this “idea” in the notes “To the 1st part” as “emerging, to the highest degree, Emptiness. Idle talk. Gossip...”, “insensitive deadness,” “idleness” of life. The artistic means of its implementation also correspond to the nature of the author's plan.

An analysis of the most extensive, which has become a textbook, description of the city of N. at the beginning of the first chapter showed that, despite its sufficient volume, one cannot help but notice the absence in it of specific elements inherent only to the city of N.. that would distinguish it from the environment of other cities. The apparent variety of descriptive details hides the paucity of factual information. Before us is a description-catalog (V.M. Zhirmunsky), “built on the enumeration” of the characteristics of the city in general, each of which has a “speaking” character.

Judging by the description, the city of N. is deserted, and human figures are present only on signs, and then in unnatural poses. In addition, the writer depicts people through inanimate objects. The fact that the city seemed deserted until it was stirred up by the incident with the purchase of dead souls, in the further narration, is emphasized by the writer himself.

Revealing the idea of ​​the city, Gogol uses the principle of chaotic mixing of dissimilar objects. Chaos of things and phenomena,

The uniqueness of his attitude towards the city is determined by Gogol’s worldview, as evidenced by his letters. The author thinks of the city as the center of the “Yaki.” The deceitfulness of the urban environment is a persistent feature of Gogol’s work. In pride, according to the writer’s ideas, the natural, originally beautiful qualities of people, objects and phenomena are distorted or completely lost.

In the letters, the author emphasizes that urban plants “have lost their smell here (in the city - N.K.), as if transplanted by a violent hand onto soil that is not their own” (X, 180). De-ravya in descriptions of the city of N. are depicted as having lost their natural beauty. In.this.city, it is not the trees that are green, but the supports, while the other trees “turned white, they walked from the city’s village that had never left.”

Gogol had a special relationship with the blue sky. The natural color of the sky is present in the poem in the descriptions of the city. Gai of death, but only as the color.. “colosh” of one of the houses, the living room, which is “of course blue”, ii, a fashionable dress. White het -, -simgll" "moral purity and spirituality in Gogol's aesthetics - in the city of K"; turns out to be the color of the "present *" nature. In this case, the sp is used by the author with obvious irony: regarding the “shst-totts ^yu placed” in it. positions." L with a similar meaning, the color white is used in the description of one1 j of the doyov.

The moral “desolation” of the inhabitants of the city of K. is embodied by the author l s! -with the help of a color symbolizing “Yaozlos”, - and tzkge: epithets such as “dirty”, “darkened”, “sound”, “dark”, etc. .

- ""Orzshchegnyo g produced! and Gogod’s letters from different years, as well as the writings of his contemporaries, showed that in the aesthetics of Gogol’s creativity, the natural, according to the author’s vision, the aspiration of plants and the human spirit upward, to the sky, acquires great significance.

La, ■ "the legislative idea - height" - architecture must also be subordinated. In the descriptions of the city of N. there is no sky, which means that its inhabitants have lost the “divine dimension of life and objects” (I.A. Ilyin). As a result, in Gogol’s image the trees are “no taller than reeds”, the houses are only “one, two and one and a half floors”, all objects are deliberately “down to earth”.

There is no natural light in the city. The “sun” in the world of the city of N. turns out to be the chairman of the government office, and the functions of sunlight are “performed” by the yellow paint on the houses, which “hit the eyes very hard.” Real moonlight appears only in the description of the “unknown city” in one of the lyrical digressions. And into the city of N. - “a blind, dark night” looked out of Chichikov’s window.”

In the descriptions of the city of N. there is no mention of fresh air and natural smells. Participates in creating the image of the city and the sound design of the landscape. Thus, the writer repeatedly speaks of either the “thunder” produced by Chichikov’s chaise, or the “rattling” of Korobochka’s tarantass. Annoying noises accompany all descriptions of city life in Gogol’s works.

3, the image of the city shows the idea of ​​its spatial limitation: the trees are propped up or behind bars, the flower is in the pot, the bird is in the clerk, and the man lives in a dark gray house. The urban space is filled with fences, and the city itself is fenced off by the repeatedly mentioned barrier. “All this embodies the idea of ​​mutual disunity, the spiritual limitations of people. The unifying principle in the city of N. is “gossip that has gone beyond limits.” The author himself dreamed of the unity of “people and brotherly love between them::”, of their “heavenly brotherhood.”

The descriptions of the city of N. embody the idea of ​​artificial orderliness, the monotonous monotony of life, which also indicates the spiritual ill-being of the city's inhabitants.

At first glance, the “capital” differs from the description of a provincial city, but in essence it has all the attributes of a small city. The only difference is their size. Elements of description inherent in the "capital" - bell towers, statues, towers - are used in the plural form. Sledova-

Actually, in the “capital” there are no buildings that distinguish it from other cities. The “capital” was created only by “the hand and quenelle of man,” which indicates the absence of a spiritual principle in it.

Gogol’s ideal of the habitat of a “beautiful person” formed the basis for the description of the dream city in one of the lyrical digressions of the 11th chapter. The author preaches the need for harmony between nature and art. In the description of the dream city, artistic details are used that are opposite in their figurative meaning to the details of the city of P.: “many-windowed, high palaces”, “countless millions of wild roses”, “the noise and eternal dust of waterfalls”, “mountains”, “silver, clear skies” ". In the image of a dream city, inanimate objects come to life. All elements of write-off are directed upward. In accordance with the laws of Gogol’s poetics, the external appearance of an ideal city reflects the spirituality of its inhabitants.

The artistic system of urban landscape painting was formed throughout the writer’s entire creative work. Its features lie in the worldview of the prose writer, in his attitude towards civilization. Gogolke considered the traditional romantic conflict between the city and nature to be antagonistic. The author of the poem believed that their harmonious fusion was necessary. He dreamed of an inspired civilization and civilized nature.

In the second chapter - “The estate landscape in “Dead Souls”” - the poetics of descriptions of landowner estates are analyzed.

As you know, the writer endows each of the landowners with only one, initially beautiful, but distorted and brought to the point of absurdity, trait of the Russian national character. In the estate landscape of each of the heroes, “our truly Russian, indigenous properties” found their embodiment.

Ah, Thor is trying to reveal the reasons for the deformation of the initially beautiful spiritual qualities of “all humanity en masse” and point out the path to its spiritual revival. According to Gogol's plan, convinced of his prophetic calling as an artist, his readers were to follow this path together with Chichikov and Plyushkin. Analysis of the estate landscape allows us to identify specific artistic means of realizing the author's idea.

The problem of “unjust management” is connected with the problem of the moral and spiritual revival of heroes. In the first one-

me poesh writer Using the method “from the opposite.”, he asserts his idea of ​​​​the ideal Russian landowner, which will subsequently be directly expressed in “Selected passages from correspondence with friends;;, l”.

Gogol depicts landowners living in a closed, physically limited space. This spatial limitation, according to the precise remark of Yu.M. Lotchan, expresses the metaphorical meaning of spiritual limitation. The means of organizing the artistic space of each landowner have their own specifics.

The artistic space."Manilov is organized around a hill, and its center is the manor's house, which stood "alone" on a hill. The landowner's house turns out to be the personification" of the owner himself, and - "the openness of the house to the winds" whichever it pleases to blow means ; the lack of character of the landowner, his lack of his own opinion.

The writer emphasizes the deadness and spiritual emptiness of Manilov. Thus, in the description of the village, located "at the foot of the hill, attention is drawn to the absence of living trees. In addition, the sky above the estate is gray in color, which, according to Gogol, personifies vulgarity. Moreover, the writer compares the color of the sky with the color of “the old uniforms of garrison soldiers,” thereby introducing “into the characterization of the hero the motif of barracks, which for Gogol always meant a distortion of human nature.”

Manilov, although nodding in the village, is cut off from natural life. This id. I am symbolically embodied in the fact that his house is located on a hill, and the village is at the foot of the hill." The landowner is trying to establish life in a city manner. More than that, Manilov brings into his purely everyday life the external attributes of ancient culture, but not its essence, implying spirituality.

The oblivion of one’s own nature, one’s own culture, the mechanical copying of someone else’s and newfangled things led, in the writer’s opinion, to chaos “in the sciences, arts, in the image of life, and most of all in the head of a Russian person. This chaos is reflected in the description of the Manilovsky interiors and the estate. They combine inherently incompatible objects.

Gogol, through artistic means, embodies the idea of

the stubbornness of Manilov’s dreams, and also “emphasizing the tragic transformation of the human desire, with the help of a dream, to rise above everyday reality into an ugly subordination to it, this reality - in all its vulgarity and nakedness.

In the description of the estate, a number of other artistic details acquire a clearly expressed semantic significance, for example, a forest, a pond, the image of “two women”, a gazebo with a “flat” green” (?) dome and doves?, that (?) columns, etc. To clarify the meaning of individual images and motifs of Manilov’s estate landscape, different editions and versions of the text of Gogol’s pose are compared.

A characteristic feature of the Korobochka estate landscape is the pragmatic conditionality of all its elements. The image of Korobochka contains the idea of ​​a perversely understood economic caution, practicality, called “club-headedness.”

In her estate, the house and the chicken coop represent a single whole: they are literally connected by a “window. All visible prszt-ra! -tvo” outside the chicken coop house, “blocked by a board fence,” are occupied by vegetable gardens and “fruit” trees. They replace Korobochka with a real garden, which, in the writer’s opinion, should be an integral part of the landowner’s estates. The image of the landowner contains the idea of ​​hoarding, deadening housekeeping. Even objects and phenomena are subordinated to this idea and image of Korobochka’s estate. by its nature it is chukdae (huts built “scattered”, “scattered” trees, etc.).

"The well-being of the villages of Korobochki, noted by Chichikov, is only "fading." The contentment of the peasants, if it exists, is of a material nature, which, in the writer's opinion, is absolutely insufficient. It is about this that the eloquent speaker speaks The fact is that there are no fugitives on Korobochka’s estate, but the best of her men (“such nice people, all the workers”) are dying or drinking themselves to death.

The narrative is permeated with the idea of ​​the impossibility of Korobochka’s spiritual rebirth. Thus, the author notes that in peasant households there were new carts, or even two, but there is not even a mention of horses. Moreover, it turns out that there is no one to shoe the landowner’s own horse, since the “skilled blacksmith” has died.

The symbolic meaning of horses in the text of the poem is clearly revealed in connection with the image of the three-bird.

In the future, Korobochka will find herself in the city of N.. which, at first glance, means that she has overcome the isolation of her artistic space. However, in essence, this is just a continuation of economic activity. Moreover, the landowner takes her chicken coop with her, as follows from the description of the tarantass. Those. The spiritual space of Korobochka remains unchanged in its limitations.

In the description, the author also notes that Korobochka’s world is so narrow that for her, objects and phenomena that are outside tangible limits simply do not exist. With the help of a number of artistic elements, the writer realizes the idea of ​​​​the tenacity of the space of Korobochka - the spiritless world of bare material well-being.

The image of Nozdryov embodies the idea of ​​the breadth of the Russian soul, which has turned into the prowess of a fairground bully. His irrepressible vital energy is directed toward “empty” goals, spent on unbridled lies and “ebullient idleness.”

Nozdryov’s estate also has a “border” - a clearly defined limit, “consisting of a wooden post and a narrow ditch,” which organize the landowner’s artistic space. The “border” is at the same time a kind of conventional line between the desired and the actual, which is hidden from the landowner himself. Nozdryov easily overcomes the boundaries of truth and lies, and with no less ease the physical limitations of his space. He sometimes appears unexpectedly where no one is looking for him. All this is connected with Nozdrev’s loss of ideas about moral standards.

Nozdryov freely “overcomes” the “border” of his domain, declaring the web “on the other side” to be his own. The same as on this side. But on both sides he has a “emptiness”, the idea of ​​which is contained in the surname. The only advantage of the estate is the dogs, which, judging by the carefully selected nicknames, figuratively embody the passions of No: roar.

The writer allegorically conveys the peculiarities of the impulsive nature of the landowner in his description of the journey of Nozdryov’s guests to the border of his domain.

The image of Sobakevich embodies the idea of ​​perverted heroism. If Korobochka, who is no less economical than Sobakevich, has the living soul of nature buried under endless vegetable gardens, and in her estate you will not find either a plant or an animal that would not make sense from the point of view of economic pragmatism, then Sobakevich’s life is subordinated to the overwhelming web and the whole law of strength.

The writer extremely narrows the spatial boundaries of the landowner (“What a fist!” Chichikov said to himself). All the architectural transformations that he carries out are united by the idea of ​​​​quantitative reduction of elements; Sobakevich’s quince metaphor is the thrush living in the estate in a cage. Ka- and the bird , the world of the landowner is fenced with a “strong, excessively thick wooden lattice” and is located in the middle of a vast space. And if his soul had not been covered with a “thick shell,” there would have been room for the hero to “turn around.”

The image of the landowner reflected the duality of his nature, the dark and light principles. Sobakevich takes care of the flies, but not at the behest of his soul, but only “based on the fact that they are false, it will be worse for you.” In the pragmatic background of his concern for the peasants lies, according to Gog’s ideas, the hero’s greatest sin. The writer also speaks of the duality of Sobakevich’s image in “Reflections:?” about the heroes of “Dead Souls”.

Plyushkin’s world differs from the previous characters in its shabby spatial boundaries (green mold had already covered the dilapidated wood on the fence and gate; the garden was surrounded by a “low, broken town in places”). Only Plyushkin had runaway peasants.

In his description of the landowner's "estate," Gogol uses a whole series of symbolic images, for example: grain deposits, in which "faint rubbish" has grown; "blind-sighted" windows; "giant castle" on the dilapidated gate; stale crust of bread; "mold", etc. d. Having different meanings, these images embody the idea of ​​​​the absence of the divine, spiritual essence<-в этой усадьбе. А разрушенность, общий беспорядок и запустение - знак запустения душевного хозяйства ее обитателей. з

The image of Plyushkin embodies the idea of ​​a perishing soul, i.e. Not

dead, frozen, and “moving” in its very “fall.” In the description of the landowner’s appearance there are indications of a barely smoldering spiritual fire, since his eyes “have not yet gone out.” If the soul is not dead, then it potentially contains the possibility , revival.

Signs of the hidden possibility of the landowner’s spiritual rebirth are two churches, which are mentioned only in the description of Plyushkin’s estate.

The famous Shshdka garden has many meanings. In three parts; his description contains several ideas. One of them is the idea of ​​two polar “states of the human spirit: its infinite height and no less infinite lowness.” In this case, the writer says that no matter how the soul falls, it always has a chance for rebirth (the symbol of rebirth is “a young branch of a maple”, which was visible in a bottomless “abyss”). The “white colossal trunk of a birch, the vine top of a hushka”, similar to a marble cotton, is also symbolic. It was in the description of Plyushkin’s garden that for the first time in the poem Gogol expressed the cherished thought that a true ideal, a true estheses perfection is possible only as a result of the harmonious unity of nature and art.

In the third verb - "." Rural. (all-Russian). The complete mayor is reflected in the third type of landscape. . “Already the very first description of Russian nature paintings of rural life, presented in the second chapter, introduces the atmosphere of dull monotony of its landscape. The landscape consists of two parts: the first embodies the idea of ​​dull: nature, and... the second.-. -;., the nature of a person living in a “monotonously sad” environment. This landscape is characterized by the following artistic techniques: the use of descriptive details in the plural; the use of “formulas of a national spatial scale” (Y.V. Kann); pgobrzkeshsh bezde£otvu hda, static human: fshur (the image of yawning men is indicative); introducing the motif of artificial orderliness, barracks (“Aorevsh;” in the description of O^li are gray and “eighty”

lace"). The writer also uses the “minus technique” (Yu.M. Lotman), i.e., a significant absence of elements. Thus, in this description there are no “acoustic images” (A.I. Beletsky); - there is no mention of the natural illumination of the world; it is not clear what time of day and what time of year we are talking about. The landscape is more like a theatrical set and embodies the idea of ​​“the idleness of life”, its “dead insensibility”, “we find confirmation of the world”. , comparing it with pictures of rural life in one of the lyrical digressions and in the second volume of the poem.

In the second volume, in contrast to the first, the diversity of village life is emphasized. This is manifested both in the activities of people and in the objects and phenomena around them. In life embodied: in the second volume, “there is no emptiness, everything is fullness.” Life is filled with activities that “truly uplift the spirit.”

In the first volume, Gogol recreated the existence of people, from which the spiritual, divine principle leaves. Therefore, it is shrouded in a “haze” of boredom and... longing. The absence of God in the soul leads to the death of the sources of creativity. The monotony of life, as a result of the lack of creative and... other spiritual impulses, manifests itself in the active idleness of people, and melts away in the appearance of their cities and villages.

The idea of ​​desolation, sadness, and homelessness of Rus' is embodied with the help of other landscape sketches. The most extensive of them (see vol.: 71, p.220), despite the external variety of details, is subordinated to the same idea. In this case, Gogol uses a catalog description. The rapid succession of apparently heterogeneous elements creates the illusion of movement. The meaning of the landscape becomes clear in the context of the author’s entire work. This description embodies ideas that are the opposite of Gogol’s idea of ​​the ideal. The landscape “spreads” in width, all of it; details are small, insignificant. The writer calls them "small fry". Gogol uses plural, diminutive and even derogatory forms of words. There is nothing "original or noticeable" about this landscape. The smallness of objects in Gogol’s aesthetics has a metaphorical meaning of the smallness of the soul, the baseness of spiritual impulses, or the absence thereof. Among

In a monotonously monotonous environment, “simple faith” in God is lost, without which the moral image of people is distorted. This description embodies the chaos that, according to the author’s perception, prevails in the world.

The lines of one of the landscapes, contrasting with the image of the dream city, can be called generalizing: “Everything in you is open, deserted and smooth,” says the writer, addressing Rus'. For the author of Vansha, these two concepts are used to designate the Russian landscape, which, in his opinion, has a significant influence on the nature of the Russian soul. Other descriptions also testify to this.

Through the vast space with a “horizon without end,” through its infinity, boundlessness, the writer reveals the boundlessness of the Russian soul. The writer directly speaks about its lack of formalization, and therefore its ability to revive, in “Selected Places” in the article “Bright Sunday.”

In the poem, the image of the “road” acquires a symbolic meaning. In addition to numerous meanings,” noted by researchers, . this image means the path of spiritual revival of Rus'. And it takes you not just out of the darkness of the urban space into open space, but “flies”, “nowhere into the disappearing distance.”

In the lyrical digression about the “swamp lights” behind which people drag (VI, 210-211), parallels can be traced with the storyline about Chichikov’s journey through the province. These include the “thunderstorm” that led Chichikov to Korobochka, and the “roads” that “spread out in all directions, like caught crayfish when they are poured out of a bag.” “The thunderstorm”, from which the hero closed the “curtains,” -.”; in a lyrical digression it turns out to be a “meaning descending from heaven.” And “roads” indicate that the hero had a choice of path, but he steps on that , which will lead him to Nozdryov. In a lyrical digression, the writer talks about the existence of many paths leading to “eternal truth.”

The artistic details of the last landscape of the poem acquire symbolic meaning: the dark “des” (the image of the Forest is framing in the poem); in the forest - “a crow’s cry” and “the sound of an ax”; "spruce and pines"; "sky"; “light clouds” and “pushing month”, etc. The symbolism of this landscape is evidenced by

There is also a combination in it of phenomena that are incompatible in real life.

The meaning of a number of details in the description is revealed in the context of the prose writer’s work. In addition, in the subsequent lyrical digression we find concepts that also help to identify the meaning of the symbolic images of the “forest” landscape.

For example, “heaven” in this description is a sign of immutability, the truth of the spiritual principle, as opposed to the transitory, vain desire of people for purely external material well-being. “If you take care of the economy, not the material one, but the economy?, the human soul. Only there you will find happiness,” the author said in one of the letters (K±1, 325).

Thus, in the all-Russian (rural) landscape, with the help of symbolic images and other artistic means, the writer explores the idea of ​​​​the spiritual revival of Rus'. This id (I is embodied in the image of a “road” that passes through deserted fields (with the help of which the writer allegorically conveys the Chukhov emptiness of life) and is carried away “into the vanishing distance” of centuries. At the same time, Rus' “rushes, all inspired by God.”

The Conclusion summarizes the results of the study. The study of the three types of landscapes, which we considered on a thematic basis, showed that their artistic system is subject to the uniform laws of poetics and has a number of common techniques with the help of which the author conveys his idea of ​​reality and affirms the idea of ​​​​the spiritual rebirth of people.

One of the most important principles of Gogol’s narration stems from the writer’s firm conviction that behind the external, visible side of existence lies the true essence of the objects depicted, invisible to ordinary consciousness.

The extreme formal conciseness and at the same time the exceptional “semantic” capacity of Gogol’s text gave rise to the polysemy of each element of the description, a complex, branched and stable system of symbols that formed their own specific “language”, without “deciphering” which a complete understanding of the meaning of “Dead Souls” is impossible ".

“The study of the landscape revealed” in the poem two pictorial plans. One - embodies the mundane, everyday world, reflecting Gogol’s perception of reality,

the other - concludes the dream of the author, his. ideal.\The description of the earthly world is, as it were, a distorted mirror image of the sublime world. It also betrays phenomena that are organic to the ideal, in the world of vulgarity they turn into their opposite or are absent altogether. The sublime world, according to the author, is not opposed to the earthly world, but was originally inherent in it, in the Russian spirit, but for a number of reasons it is simply deformed.

In conclusion, artistic techniques common to all types of landscape are named. Prospects for further research are outlined.

Approbation of work. The dissertation was discussed at the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature of Simferopol State University. The main provisions of the work were presented in reports at All-Union scientific conferences at the Nezhin and Vologda Pedagogical Institutes, Kiev University, and at annual scientific conferences at Simferopol University.

1. Poetics of landscape in “Dead Souls”. N.V. Gogol // The legacy of N.V. Gogol and modernity: Abstracts of reports and messages of the scientific-practical Gogol conference. - Part 2. -Nezhin, 1980. - P. 24-25.

2. On the problem of ancient reminiscences in “Dead Souls” by N.V. Gogol // Abstracts of reports of the Crimean scientific conference “Programs of Ancient Culture”. - Part I. - Simferopol,

3. The problem of romantic landscape and N.V. Gogol’s “Dead Souls” // N.V. Gogol’s work and modernity: Abstracts of the scientific-practical Gogol conference. - Part I, - Nezhin, 1989. - P. 52-53.

4. On the typology of rachitic landscape, from N.V. Gogol and M.Yu. Lermontov // Current issues of modern Lermontov. Literary studies. Materials and methodological recommendations for general and special courses. - Kyiv,

Ekaterina Bosina,
10th grade,
School No. 57, Moscow
(teacher -
Catherine
Vladimirovna
Vishnevetskaya)

The role of detail in the poem “Dead Souls”

When reading “Dead Souls,” you sometimes want to exclaim, like many of Gogol’s heroes: “The devil knows what this is!” - and put the book down. Amazing details curl like baroque patterns and carry us along. And only vague bewilderment and the voice of common sense do not allow the reader to finally succumb to the attractive absurdity and take it for granted. In fact, we involuntarily plunge into the world of details and only then suddenly realize that they are strange in the extreme; and it is no longer clear why they are here and why they cross the line of the narrative.

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“Dead Souls” shows us all the variety of such “little things” - landscape details, portraits, interior details, detailed comparisons, replete with details. Gogol strives to create as complete a picture as possible of the daily life of the provincial city of NN (and there were probably a great many such cities in Russia at that time), to fully reveal the images of the landowners, he resorts to describing the smallest details, which sometimes, as has already been said, cause the reader is genuinely surprised.

Chichikov arrives in the city; Gogol immediately draws the reader’s attention to some men talking about the wheels of the hero’s chaise, and a certain young man with a Tula pin in the shape of a pistol (interestingly, these characters will never appear on the pages of the book again). Chichikov gets a room in a local hotel; here Gogol even talks about cockroaches and the door to the next room, lined with a chest of drawers. And even that the neighbor is usually curious and interested in the life of the person passing by. Only whether Chichikov had such a neighbor, whether he came when the hero was absent, or whether there was no neighbor at all, we will not know, but from now on we have an accurate idea of ​​​​the hotels of the “known kind”.

In the description of the external façade of the hotel, an absurd detail appears - a red-faced knocker looking out of the window with a samovar made of red copper. Gogol likens an object and a person to two objects, two samovars, and one of them has a beard. You can no longer tell where the person is and where the samovar is. A similar technique of “reification” of a person (or comparing him with something devoid of human traits) is used by Gogol in other episodes of the poem (villages with women in the upper windows of houses and pigs in the lower ones, two faces in the window of Sobakevich’s house, similar to one a cucumber, another - on a Moldavian pumpkin, from which balalaikas are made; the face of the governor’s daughter, deathly oval, clean, “like a just laid egg”; “black tailcoats” at the ball - here is an extremely detailed comparison with flies; without class or rank, wandering around the sleeping city). On the one hand, these details lead nowhere and serve to depict insignificant characters; but, if you think about it, don’t these individual touches speak about the original lack of spirituality of the city? Things are dead, which means the souls of people who live a meaningless, seemingly frozen life are also dead; small people NN replace each other before our eyes, like grotesque surreal figures (about the same as the same nymph with huge breasts in the picture in the hotel or the Greek commanders with thick thighs in the portraits in Sobakevich’s house), cut out of cardboard. What, for example, does everyone see in the prosecutor before his death? Eyebrows and winking eyes. Lifeless details. Sometimes they are funny, but when combined with other images, images of the landowners whom Chichikov visits, they give some kind of ominous picture. Manilov, Korobochka, Plyushkin, Sobakevich - they all withered away, became callous in their estates, among soulless things.

Here is Manilov with his sweet, sugary face, who is accustomed to idleness, loves to make idyllic plans for the future, but never goes beyond words. He only smokes a pipe (in his room there are neat piles of tobacco and ash everywhere), and on his table lies the same book, laid on the same page. The living room is furnished with beautiful furniture (although there was not enough silk fabric for two armchairs). In the evening, candlesticks are brought into the living room - one luxurious, the other “just a copper invalid.” All the details of the interior are a reflection of the incompleteness and meaninglessness of Manilov’s actions, who in words strives for beauty and even built a gazebo called “Temple of Solitary Reflection”, but in reality leads a completely unspiritual, boring life, “dull bluish”, like the forest in his estate.

Here is Korobochka with her passion for hoarding; in her house there are mirrors, paintings with some birds, decks of cards, letters, chests of drawers filled with old clothes (probably where the landowner hides money in colorful bags); there is abundance in the yard. Chickens, turkeys, pigs. Spacious vegetable gardens, a well-kept village, and the peasants have carts. Korobochka is a zealous housewife, but her life is filled with nothing more than taking care of the household; Even if this landowner prays at night in front of the images, she is, in fact, just a scarecrow; it is not for nothing that there is a scarecrow in her garden, on which she is wearing her own cap. This is the life of an old, spiritless old woman, whose slow time is counted by a wheezing and hissing wall clock.

Everything on Sobakevich’s estate is solid: a strong, prohibitively thick fence, sheds made of thick logs, huts “no frills.” Objects in the house resemble their owners: heavy pot-bellied chairs, a bureau, a table, a blackbird in a cage. Sobakevich himself, clumsy, with a rough face, wears a bear-colored tailcoat, has a habit of stepping on everyone’s feet and eats a lot (at an evening with the police chief, he eats a whole sturgeon; on the day of Chichikov’s arrival, cheesecakes the size of a plate and a turkey the size of a calf are served). His soul is “closed in a thick shell,” and it is unknown whether there are any feelings there.

In Plyushkin, everything smells of desolation, decay, even death: bad roads, crumbling, rickety huts and churches, an unkempt manor house, stagnant storehouses of grain, green mold, rotting hay, an overgrown garden (the only thing that is beautiful and alive in this estate), gradually hiding the work of man. The interior of the house is disorderly, chaotic: a heap of various unnecessary rubbish that Plyushkin accumulates for no one knows why (this is already meaningless hoarding, and not the desire for well-being, like Korobochka), furniture piled up like a mountain, a dusty chandelier. Chichikova Plyushkin wants to treat him to Easter cake and liqueur from God knows how long ago (at the same time, other landowners have hearty dinners). Plyushkin's outfit looks more like beggar's rags; the landowner's eyes are like black mice, still fast; he tries to notice everything and watches over his serfs, spares candles and papers, but his thrift is insignificant and disgusting.

The description of details sometimes obscures the people themselves. The landowners gradually lose everything living, human, and merge with the material world. They seem more “dead” than Nozdryov with his face bursting with life (a blush all over his cheek, “blood and milk”). He is soulless, like them, his life resembles his own shabby stroller with tattered clamps (he himself is shabby, with sideburns of different lengths), but at least he has some living, natural, human vices: the inexplicable, the stupid , some kind of disinterested desire to spoil his neighbor, a love of carousing (it’s not for nothing that he leans so heavily on wine and treats guests with champagne, then Madeira, or rowan ash, which turned out to be a “fuel tree”) and a passion for lying (he keeps dogs and he himself always barks, like a dog; one cannot help but recall the notorious Turkish daggers with the inscription “Master Savely Sibiryakov”).

These are the most notable characters of the city of NN and its environs. Cities where the governor is very kind and embroiders on tulle(nevertheless, the peasants here once killed an assessor), where officials read “Lyudmila” and Jung, where ladies keep dogs, dress in the capital for balls and discuss festoons. A kaleidoscope of meaningless details depicts the emptiness - the true content of the city - in which absurd rumors sprout like mushrooms, solely because the townspeople are mired in inaction. Most of them actually have no goals or aspirations, they are marking time in the same place. Chichikov, at least, is moving forward along the road of life, although his goals, of course, are too petty, and he himself is “nothing”, not fat, not thin, except that he is wearing a well-groomed tailcoat, lingonberry color with a sparkle. Chichikov's box is a whole world, a material narrative about the hero's life, about acquisitions, hoarding, about the persistent pursuit of money, about prudence and narcissism; here there is soap, and razors, and an inkwell, and feathers, and posters, and tickets, and stamp paper, and banknotes. Money is his main passion. After all, his father taught him: “You can ruin everything in the world with a penny.”

The picture is quite sad (perhaps it would only cause disgust if not for the irony of the author). Story looks sadly at her from the portraits of Kutuzov and Bagration hung at Korobochka and Sobakevich for some unknown reason. Not so long ago, these heroes fought desperately (the unfortunate captain Kopeikin also fought); the heroes of history waved sabers, and now this saber rests peacefully in Chichikov’s chaise “to instill appropriate fear in anyone.” And Chichikov himself at some point appears in the eyes of the townspeople - the apotheosis of the absurd! - Napoleon...

Gogol laughs at this meaningless, like a pile of old papers, reality of the city of NN, and thinks about it, coming to conclusions that are far from comforting. But the oppressive weight of the absurd dissolves as soon as the provincial town disappears from sight, only the road remains, and the memory of strange events will soon fade in Chichikov’s memory.

So we sometimes stop, look around, and suddenly the thought comes over us: “The devil knows what it is!” - and we stand like that, not understanding anything, for some time, then we scratch our heads, grin and go on our way.