“Tales” by M. Saltykov-Shchedrin as an example of socio-political satire

Russian literature has always been more closely connected with the life of society than European literature. Any changes in public mood, new ideas immediately found a response in literature. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin was acutely aware of the ills of his society and found an unusual artistic form to attract the attention of readers to the problems that worried him. Let's try to understand the features of this form created by the writer.

Traditionally, Russian folklore distinguishes three types of fairy tales: magical, social and everyday tales, and fairy tales about animals. Saltykov-Shchedrin created a literary fairy tale that combines all three types. But the fairy tale genre does not determine all the originality of these works. In Shchedrin’s “Fairy Tales” we encounter the traditions of fables and chronicles, or rather, parodies of chronicles. The author uses such fable techniques as allegory, allegory, comparison of human phenomena with phenomena of the animal world, and the use of emblems. An emblem is an allegorical image that traditionally carries one meaning. In Shchedrin’s “Fairy Tales,” the emblem is, for example, a bear. He personifies awkwardness and stupidity, but under the pen of Saltykov-Shchedrin, these properties acquire social significance. Thus, the traditional emblematic meaning of the image of a bear colors and characterizes a specific social image (voivode, for example).

The genre beginning of the chronicle is found in the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship.” It is indicated by the presence of a chronological sequence in the presentation of events: Toptygin I, Toptygin II and so on. Parody is achieved by transferring the properties and qualities of specific historical figures onto the images of forest inhabitants. Leo's illiteracy is reminiscent of the notorious illiteracy of Peter I.

However, the artistic originality of “Fairy Tales” is not limited to the genre nature characteristic of fairy tales. Special mention should be made about satire. Satire, that is, special laughter aimed at destroying an object, becomes “the main creative technique.

It is quite natural that the object of satire for Saltykov-Shchedrin, a writer who continues Gogol’s traditions, is serfdom.

Trying to depict relationships in his contemporary society, he models situations that allow this to be done.

In the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner,” the disappearance of the peasants reveals the landowner’s inability to exist independently. The unnaturalness of the relationships that exist in society is also shown in the fairy tale “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals.” This is a very interesting fairy tale, which is based on a situation similar to that of “Robinson Crusoe”. A man and two generals found themselves on a desert island. Freeing his characters from the conventions of civilized life, the author preserves existing relationships, showing their absurdity.

The following fact is also interesting. The fairy tale only indicates the social status, but does not give the names of the heroes. It can be assumed that Saltykov-Shchedrin uses a technique similar to that of emblems. For the author, a peasant, a landowner, a general have the same constant meaning as a hare, fox, and bear for readers of fables.

All of the above-mentioned situations are created with the help of fantastic elements, one of which is the grotesque, which serves as the main means of creating images (the image of the “wild landowner” from the fairy tale of the same name.) Exaggeration, shifting the boundaries of reality, allows you to create a game situation. It is based on a phrase introduced by Pushkin - “wild lordship,” but with the help of the grotesque, “savagery” takes on a literal meaning. The image of the man is also built on the grotesque. In the fairy tales “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” and “The Wild Landowner” the passivity and subordination of the peasantry are exaggerated. I will not give classic examples from “The Tale of That...” -. The second tale is much more interesting. There the men gather into a herd, a flock, and fly away. A very lively, associative image of a collective principle.

The technique of bringing together social phenomena and types with the animal world, often used by the writer, makes it possible to more clearly depict images connecting the properties of animals and people. This technique gives the author relative freedom of expression, allowing him to bypass censorship restrictions.

What distinguishes Shchedrin’s comparison with animals from the fable tradition is a clearly expressed social orientation.

The character system is also unique. All fairy tales can be divided into tales about people and about animals. But, despite this formal difference, the entire system of characters in any fairy tale is built on the principle of social contrast: oppressor and oppressed, victim and predator.

For all its originality, Shchedrin’s “Fairy Tales” are based on an obvious, albeit stylized, folklore tradition. This is connected with the theory of “skaz”, which was put forward by the famous Russian literary critic Eikhenbaum. According to this theory, works focused on oral speech have a number of artistic features: puns, clauses, game situations. Classic examples of the use of “skaz” are the works of Gogol and “The Enchanted Wanderer” by Leskov.

Shchedrin’s “Fairy Tales” are also “fairy tale” works. This is even indicated by the presence of traditional fairy-tale phrases: “once upon a time,” “at the behest of a pike, according to my desire,” “in a certain kingdom, a certain state,” “to live and live,” and so on.

In conclusion, I would like to say that it is the artistic form of “Fairy Tales” that is their main advantage. Of course, literature has always been a public platform, but very rarely does a work that deals only with social problems remain in the history of literary development. Thanks to the amazing and complex artistic world and truly artistic originality, Shchedrin’s “Fairy Tales” are still included in the compulsory reading circle of all educated people.

“Fairy Tales” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Genre traditions and innovation.

Introduction

“Saltykov has... this serious and malicious humor, this realism, sober and clear amid the most unbridled play of the imagination...”

(I.S. Turgenev).

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is an unrivaled artist of words in the field of socio-political satire. This determines his special place in Russian classical realism, the originality and enduring significance of his literary heritage. A revolutionary democrat, socialist, educator in his ideological convictions, he acts as an ardent defender of the oppressed people and a fearless denouncer of the privileged classes.

The main pathos of his work lies in the uncompromising denial of all forms of oppression of man by man.

Brief autobiography

The proximity of death usually does not allow us to see the real magnitude of a person’s merits, and while the merits of some are exaggerated, the merits of others are undoubtedly presented in an understated form, even if no one doubted their existence and even their enemies paid them a silent tribute of respect. The latter also applies to Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov.

Mikhail Evgrafovich was born on January 15, 1826 in the village of Spas-Ugol, Kalyazinsky district, Tver province. His parents - his father, a collegiate adviser, Evgraf Vasilyevich, and his mother, Olga Mikhailovna, nee Zabelina, of a merchant family - were quite wealthy local landowners; He was baptized by his aunt Marya Vasilyevna Saltykova and the Uglich tradesman Dmitry Mikhailovich Kurbatov.

Having received a good education at home, Saltykov at the age of 10 was accepted as a boarder at the Moscow Noble Institute, where he spent two years, then in 1838 he was transferred to the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. Here he began to write poetry, having been greatly influenced by the articles of Belinsky and Herzen, and the works of Gogol.

And in 1844, after graduating from the Lyceum, he served as an official in the office of the War Ministry. “...Everywhere there is duty, everywhere there is coercion, everywhere there is boredom and lies...” - this is how he described bureaucratic Petersburg. Another life was more attractive to Saltykov: communication with writers, visiting Petrashevsky’s “Fridays,” where philosophers, scientists, writers, and military men gathered, united by anti-serfdom sentiments and the search for the ideals of a just society.

Saltykov’s first stories “Contradictions” (1847), “A Confused Affair” (1848), with their acute social problems, attracted the attention of the authorities, frightened by the French Revolution of 1848. The writer was exiled to Vyatka for “... a harmful way of thinking and a destructive desire to spread ideas that have already shaken the whole of Western Europe...". For eight years he lived in Vyatka, where in 1850 he was appointed to the position of adviser to the provincial government. This made it possible to often go on business trips and observe the bureaucratic world and peasant life. The impressions of these years will influence the satirical direction of the writer’s work.

Genre traditions and innovation.

An outstanding achievement of the last decade of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s literary activity is the book “Fairy Tales,” which includes thirty-two works. This is one of the brightest and most popular creations of the great satirist. With few exceptions, fairy tales were created over a period of four years (1883 – 1886).

Fairy tales are a vivid and accessible example of the immorality of society in the works of Saltykov-Shchedrin. It seemed that such a literary genre as fairy tales was intended for children's understanding of good and evil. But Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales are imbued with irony; they contain a problem of Russian society, which the author wants to solve using a simple example, ridiculing the actions of his heroes in certain moments.

Shchedrin's fairy-tale genre flourished in the 1980s. It was during this period of rampant political reaction in Russia that the satirist had to look for a form that was most convenient for circumventing censorship and at the same time the closest and most understandable to the common people. And the people understood the political acuteness of Shchedrin’s generalized conclusions, hidden behind Aesopian speech and zoological masks. He created a new, original genre of political fairy tale, which combines fantasy with real, topical political reality.

The fantasy of Shchedrin's fairy tales is real and carries a generalized political content. Eagles are "predatory, carnivorous...". They live “alienated, in inaccessible places, they do not engage in hospitality, but they commit robbery” - this is what the fairy tale about the philanthropic eagle says. And this immediately depicts the typical circumstances of the life of a royal eagle and makes it clear that we are not talking about birds at all. And further, combining the setting of the bird world with affairs that are not at all avian, Shchedrin achieves high political pathos and caustic irony.

The language of Shchedrin's tales is deeply folk, close to Russian folklore. The satirist overheard the words and images for his wonderful tales in folk tales and legends, in the picturesque talk of the crowd, in all the poetic elements of the living folk language.

The connection between Shchedrin’s fairy tales and folklore was manifested in traditional beginnings using the form of a long-past tense (“once upon a time…”), and in the use of sayings (“at the command of a pike, according to my desire”, “neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen” etc.), and in the satirist’s private appeal to folk sayings, always presented in a witty interpretation.

The satirist uses not only traditional fairy-tale techniques and images, but also proverbs, sayings, sayings (“If you don’t give a word, be strong, but if you give, hold on!”, “You can’t have two deaths, you can’t avoid one,” “Ears don’t grow higher than your forehead.” ", "My hut is on the edge", "Simplicity is worse than theft").

And yet, despite the abundance of folklore elements, Shchedrin's tale, taken as a whole, is not similar to folk tales. It does not repeat traditional folklore schemes either in composition or in plot. The satirist did not imitate folklore models, but freely created on the basis of them in their spirit, revealed and developed their deep meaning, took them from the people in order to return them to the people ideologically and artistically enriched.

A master of Aesopian speeches, in fairy tales written mainly during the years of cruel censorship, he widely uses the technique of allegory. Under the guise of animals and birds, he depicts representatives of various social classes and groups. Allegory allows the satirist not only to encrypt and hide the true meaning of his satire, but also to exaggerate the most characteristic things in his characters. The images of the forest Toptygins, committing “petty, shameful” atrocities or “major bloodshed” in a forest slum, could not have more accurately reproduced the very essence of the despotic system.

Sometimes Shchedrin, taking traditional fairy-tale images, does not even try to introduce them into a fairy-tale setting or use fairy-tale techniques. Through the mouths of the fairy tale heroes, he directly sets out his idea of ​​social reality.

This is, for example, the fairy tale "Neighbors". The dialogue of the characters is colorful, the speech depicts a specific social type: an imperious, rude eagle, a beautiful-hearted idealist crucian carp, an evil reactionary robber, a bigoted priest, a dissolute canary, a cowardly hare, etc.

However, all of Shchedrin's fairy tales were subject to censorship persecution and many alterations. Many of them were published in illegal publications abroad. The masks of the animal world could not hide the political content of Shchedrin's fairy tales. The transfer of human traits, both psychological and political, to the animal world created a comic effect and clearly exposed the absurdity of existing reality.

Analysis of the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner”

The writer was outraged by Russian society by the unfair attitude of masters towards slaves and the obedience of the common people to senior officials. In his works, the author ridiculed the vices and imperfections of Russian society.

The fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” (1869) begins as an ordinary fairy tale: “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state, there lived a landowner...”. But here, an element of modern life enters into the fairy tale: “And that stupid landowner was reading the newspaper “Vest”” - a reactionary-serf newspaper, and the stupidity of the landowner is determined by his worldview.

The abolition of serfdom aroused anger among the landowners towards the peasants. According to the plot of the fairy tale, the landowner turned to God to take the peasants away from him: “He reduced them so that there is nowhere to stick his nose: no matter where you look, everything is forbidden, but not allowed, and not yours!” Using Aesopian language, the writer depicts the stupidity of the landowners who oppress their own peasants, at the expense of whom they lived, having a “loose, white, crumbly body.”

There were no more peasants throughout the entire domain of the stupid landowner: “Where the peasant went, no one noticed.” Shchedrin hints at where the man might be, but the reader must guess this for himself.

The peasants themselves were the first to call the landowner stupid: “...even though their landowner is stupid, he has been given great intelligence.” There is irony in these words. Next, representatives of other classes call the landowner stupid three times (triple repetition technique): actor Sadovsky with his “actors” invited to the estate: “However, brother, you are a stupid landowner! Who gives you a wash, stupid one?”; the generals, whom instead of “beef” he treated to printed gingerbread and candy: “However, brother, you are a stupid landowner!”; and, finally, the police captain: “You are stupid, Mr. Landowner!” The stupidity of the landowner is visible to everyone, since “you can’t buy a piece of meat or a pound of bread at the market,” the treasury is empty, since there is no one to pay taxes, “robbery, robbery and murder have spread in the district.” But the stupid landowner stands his ground, shows firmness, proves his inflexibility to the liberal gentlemen, as his favorite newspaper Vest advises.

He indulges in unrealistic dreams that without the help of the peasants he will achieve prosperity in the economy. “He’s thinking about what kind of cars he’ll order from England,” so that there won’t be any servile spirit. “He’s thinking about what kind of cows he’ll breed.” His dreams are absurd, because he cannot do anything on his own. And only one day the landowner thought: “Is he really a fool? Could it be that the inflexibility that he so cherished in his soul, when translated into ordinary language, means only stupidity and madness?..”

In the further development of the plot, showing the gradual savagery and brutalization of the landowner, Saltykov-Shchedrin resorts to the grotesque. At first, “he was overgrown with hair... his nails became like iron... he walked more and more on all fours... He even lost the ability to pronounce articulate sounds... . But I haven’t acquired a tail yet.” His predatory nature was manifested in the way he hunted: “like an arrow, he will jump from a tree, grab onto his prey, tear it apart with his nails and so on with all the insides, even the skin, and eat it.” The other day I almost killed the police captain. But then the final verdict on the wild landowner was pronounced by his new friend the bear: “... only, brother, you destroyed this man in vain!

And why?

But because this man was far more capable than your nobleman brother. And therefore I’ll tell you straight: you’re a stupid landowner, even though you’re my friend!”

Thus, the fairy tale uses the technique of allegory, where human types appear in their inhuman relationships under the guise of animals.

This element is also used in the depiction of peasants. When the authorities decided to “catch” and “install” the peasant, “as if on purpose, at that time a swarm of peasants flew through the provincial town and showered the entire market square.” The author compares peasants to bees, showing the hard work of peasants.

When the peasants were returned to the landowner, “at the same time, flour, meat, and all kinds of livestock appeared at the market, and so many taxes arrived in one day that the treasurer, seeing such a pile of money, just clasped his hands in surprise and cried out:

And where do you scoundrels get it from!!!” How much bitter irony there is in this exclamation! And they caught the landowner, washed him, cut his nails, but he never understood anything and learned nothing, like all the rulers who ruin the peasantry, rob the workers and do not understand that this could result in ruin for themselves.

At first glance, this is just a funny story of a stupid landowner who hated the peasants, but, left without Senka and his other breadwinners, he became completely wild, and his farm fell into disrepair. Even the mouse is not afraid of him.

In the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner,” Shchedrin seemed to summarize his thoughts on the reform of the “liberation” of the peasants, contained in all his works of the 60s. He poses here an unusually acute problem of the post-reform relationship between the nobles-serfs and the peasantry completely ruined by the reform: “The cattle will go out to water - the landowner shouts: my water! a chicken wanders into the outskirts - the landowner shouts: my land! And the earth, and the water, and the air - everything became his! There was no torch to light the peasant's light, there was no rod to sweep out the hut with. So the peasants prayed to the Lord God all over the world: “Lord!” It’s easier for us to perish with our children than to suffer like this all our lives!”

after the reform of 1861 - remnants of serfdom, ingrained in the psychology of people.

Shchedrin's work is connected with the traditions of his brilliant predecessors: Pushkin ("The History of the Village of Goryukhin") and Gogol ("Dead Souls"). But Shchedrin's satire is sharper and more merciless. Shchedrin's talent was revealed in all its brilliance - accuser in his tales. Fairy tales were a kind of hom, a synthesis of the ideological and creative quest of the satirist. With foil they are connected by clore not only by the presence of certain lips but poetic details and images, they express the people's worldview. In fairy tales, Shchedrin reveals the theme of exploitation atations, gives devastating criticism of nobles, officials - all those who live by people's labor.

The generals are not capable of anything, they do not know how to do anything,believe that “rolls will be born in the same form as... their in the morning they serve coffee." They almost eat each other, although There is a lot of fruit, fish, and game all around. They would have died of hunger if there had not been a man nearby. I have no doubt Confident in their right to exploit other people's labor, the generals They force a man to work for them. And now the generals are fed up again, their former self-confidence and complacency are returning to them. “That’s how good it is to be generals - you won’t get lost anywhere!” - they think. In St. Petersburg the generals of "money" raked in," and the peasant was sent "a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver: have fun, man!"

Sympathizing with the oppressed people, Shchedrin opposesautocracy and its servants. Tsar, ministers and governors youThe fairy tale "The Bear in the Voivodeship" makes me laugh. It shows threeToptygins, who successively replaced each other in battle leadership, where they were sent by the lion to “pacify the internal early adversaries." The first two Toptygins were engaged once different kinds of "atrocities": one - petty, "shameful" ("chiate Zhika"), the other - large, "shiny" (picked up from the cr-

The old man had a horse, a cow, a pig and a couple of sheep, but the men came running and killed him). The third Toptygin did not crave “bloodshed.” Taught by the experience of history, he acted cautiously and pursued a liberal policy. For many years he received piglets, chickens, and honey from the workers, but in the end the patience of the men ran out and they dealt with the “voivode.” This is already a spontaneous explosion of discontent of the peasants against the oppressors. Shchedrin shows that the cause of the people's disasters is the abuse of power, the very nature of the autocratic system. This means that the salvation of the people lies in the overthrow of tsarism. This is the main idea of ​​the fairy tale.

In the fairy tale "The Eagle Patron" Shchedrin exposes the activities of the autocracy in the field of education. The eagle - the king of birds - decided to "introduce" science and art into the court. However, the eagle soon got tired of playing the role of a philanthropist: he destroyed the nightingale-poet, put shackles on the learned woodpecker and imprisoned him in a hollow, and ruined the crows. “Searchs, investigations, trials” began, and “the darkness of ignorance” set in. In this tale, the writer showed the incompatibility of tsarism with science, education and art, and concluded that “eagles are harmful to education.”

Shchedrin also makes fun of ordinary people. The tale of the wise minnow is devoted to this topic. All his life the gudgeon thought about how the pike would not eat him, so he sat in his hole for a hundred years, away from danger. The gudgeon "lived - trembled and died - trembled." And dying, I thought: why did he tremble and hide all his life? What joys did he have? Who did he console? Who will remember its existence? “Those who think that only those minnows can be considered worthy citizens who, mad with fear, sit in holes and tremble, believe incorrectly. No, these are not citizens, but at least useless minnows. No one is warm or cold from them ... live, taking up space for nothing,” the author addresses the reader.

In his fairy tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin shows that the people are talented. The man from the fairy tale about two generals is smart, he has golden hands: he made a snare “from his own hair” and built a “miracle ship”. The people were subjected to oppression, their life was endless hard work, and the writer was bitter that he was weaving the rope with his own hands, which

They threw it around his neck. Shchedrin calls on the people to think about their fate and unite in the struggle to restructure the unjust world.

Saltykov-Shchedrin called his creative style Aesopian, each fairy tale has a subtext, it contains comic characters and symbolic images.

The uniqueness of Shchedrin's fairy tales also lies in the fact that in them the real is intertwined with the fantastic, thereby creating a comic effect. On the fabulous island, the generals find the famous reactionary newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti. From the extraordinary island not far from St. Petersburg, to Bolshaya Podyacheskaya. The writer introduces details from the lives of people into the lives of fabulous fish and animals: the gudgeon “does not receive a salary and does not keep a servant,” dreams of winning two hundred thousand.

The author's favorite techniques are hyperbole and grotesque. Both the peasant's dexterity and the generals' ignorance are extremely exaggerated. A skilled man cooks a handful of soup. Stupid generals don’t know that buns are made from flour. A hungry general swallows his friend's order.

In Shchedrin's fairy tales there are no random details or unnecessary words, and the heroes are revealed in actions and words. The writer draws attention to the funny sides of the person depicted. Suffice it to remember that the generals were in nightgowns, and each had an order hanging around their necks. In Shchedrin's fairy tales, a connection is visible with folk art (“once upon a time there was a minnow,” “he drank honey and beer, it flowed down his mustache, but it didn’t get into his mouth,” “neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen”). However, along with fairy-tale expressions, we come across book words that are completely uncharacteristic of folk tales: “sacrifice one’s life,” “the gudgeon completes the life process.” One can feel the allegorical meaning of the works.

Shchedrin's tales reflected his hatred of those who live at the expense of the working people, and his belief in the triumph of reason and justice.

These tales are a magnificent artistic monument of a bygone era. Many images have become household names, denoting social phenomena of Russian and world reality.

Features of fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin
Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin

Features of Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are a fable beginning, a certain fantastic illusoryness of what is happening, allegories, allegories, unexpected transitions from reality to unreality, grotesque sharpness, as well as political acuity, purposefulness and realism of fantasy.

Possessing powerful folk “roots”, going back to the traditions of folk tales, Shchedrin’s tale, at the same time, is not an imitation of examples of folk art. It does not obey any strict rules of the genre at all and, like other works of the satirist, boldly violates them. Refusing external verisimilitude, the author achieves a special comic effect at the intersection of traditional fairy-tale techniques and completely realistic, even everyday details of people’s contemporary lives. Thus, having told in the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship” how Toptygin the 1st accidentally ate a siskin, the author says: “It’s the same as if someone drove a poor tiny high school student to suicide through pedagogical measures.”

When creating his fairy tales, Shchedrin relied not only on the experience of folk art, but also on Krylov’s satirical fables and on the traditions of Western European fables. He created a new, original genre of political fairy tale, which combines fantasy and reality, topical political reality and fiction.

In its form and style Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin associated with the traditions of Russian folklore. The author uses traditional formulas often found in folk tales - “once upon a time they lived”, “at the command of a pike, according to my desire”, “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state”. The form of a fairy tale is used by the author for satirical denunciation. All Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin allegorical, that is, through the relationships between representatives of the animal world, the class relationships of people are reflected. The author uses the technique of allegory as a means of creating images.

Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, as in all of his work, two social forces are opposed: the working people and their exploiters. The people in fairy tales are presented in the images of defenseless and kind animals and birds (and often simply under the name “man”), and the exploiters are represented in the images of predators.

The fantasy of Shchedrin's fairy tales is real, it carries a generalized political content and has a satirical orientation. In “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” it serves as the main means of expressing the author’s satirical indignation towards the landowners. The writer uses the technique of hyperbole to show the stupidity and ignorance of representatives of the ruling class, who all their lives were firmly convinced that “rolls will be born in the same form as they are served with coffee in the morning.” The author uses the same technique to show that a representative of the oppressed class is necessary for the generals, without him they would be completely lost; he can find a way out of the most desperate situation: “He got so clever that he even began to cook soup in a handful.”

Satire Saltykova-Shchedrin is full of journalistic content, the author strives to present reality in extremely contrasting lighting. The main method of depiction in his work becomes realistic grotesque, that is, contrasting exaggeration, giving the images a conventional, implausible, often fantastic quality.
Sky character. When using this technique, the image is often taken beyond the limits of acceptable plausibility.

But Saltykova-Shchedrin Any exaggeration seems realistically motivated; its fiction is a means of revealing the hidden, potential capabilities of a character in unexpected situations. An important feature of satirical typification in Saltykova-Shchedrin is the ability to create generalized, collective images that reflect the social psychology of certain groups of people. For example, the “wise squirrel,” the hero of the fairy tale of the same name, personifies wingless and vulgar philistinism. The meaning of his life, the life of an “enlightened, moderately liberal” coward, was self-preservation, avoidance of clashes and struggle, which is why he lived to a ripe old age. But this life consisted of continuous trembling for his own skin: “He lived and trembled - that’s all.”

The language of Shchedrin's tales is deeply folk, close to Russian folklore. The satirist uses not only traditional fairy-tale techniques and images, but also proverbs, sayings, and sayings. For example, “it’s awkward for a lamb without a lamb” (“The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”), “living life is not like licking a whorl” (“The Wise Minnow”), “the major will come, then we’ll find out how Kuzka’s mother-in-law’s name” (“Bear in the Voivodeship”).

The tales absorbed Shchedrin's many years of observations and reflections, expressing them in the most refined, concise and accessible form. On several pages, he skillfully revealed the essence of social relations (“How one man fed two generals”), talked about many events that were repeated with cruel regularity in the history of Russia (about the misadventures of culture and education in the fairy tale “The Eagle Patron”), characterized ideological currents of the era (“Crucian idealist”, “Liberal”).

Saltykov-Shchedrin M. E.

An essay on a work on the topic: Fairy tales by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is one of the greatest Russian satirists who castigated the autocracy, serfdom, and after the reform of 1861 - the remnants of serfdom, rooted in the psychology of people.
Shchedrin's work is connected with the traditions of his brilliant predecessors: Pushkin ("The History of the Village of Goryukhin") and Gogol ("Dead Souls"). But Shchedrin's satire is sharper and more merciless. Shchedrin's talent as an accuser was revealed in all its brilliance in his fairy tales. Fairy tales were a kind of result, a synthesis of the ideological and creative quest of the satirist. They are connected with folklore not only by the presence of certain oral and poetic details and images, they express the people's worldview. In his fairy tales, Shchedrin reveals the theme of exploitation, gives scathing criticism of nobles, officials - all those who live by people's labor.
In “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals,” Shchedrin exposes the parasitism of two former high-ranking officials who ended up on the island. These are parasite generals who did not bring any benefit to the state, who served their entire lives in the registry, which was then abolished “as unnecessary.”
The generals are not capable of anything, they don’t know how to do anything, they believe that “the rolls will be born in the same form as they are served with coffee in the morning.” They almost eat each other, although there is a lot of fruit, fish, and game all around. They would have died of hunger if there had not been a man nearby. Without any doubt about their right to exploit the labor of others, the generals force the peasant to work for them. And now the generals are fed up again, their former self-confidence and complacency are returning to them. “That’s how good it is to be generals - you won’t get lost anywhere!” - they think. In St. Petersburg, the generals “raked in the money,” and sent the peasant “a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver: have fun, man!”
Sympathizing with the oppressed people, Shchedrin opposes the autocracy and its servants. The Tsar, ministers and governors are ridiculed by the fairy tale "The Bear in the Voivodeship". It shows three Toptygins, successively replacing each other in the voivodeship, where they were sent by the lion to “pacify the internal adversaries.” The first two Toptygins were engaged in various kinds of “atrocities”: one was small, “disgraceful” (“he ate a little siskin”), the other was large, “brilliant” (he took a horse, a cow, a pig and a couple of sheep from a peasant, but the men came running and killed him ). The third Toptygin did not crave “bloodshed.” Taught by the experience of history, he acted cautiously and pursued a liberal policy. For many years he received piglets, chickens, and honey from the workers, but in the end the patience of the men ran out and they dealt with the “voivode.” This is already a spontaneous explosion of discontent of the peasants against the oppressors. Shchedrin shows that the cause of the people's disasters is the abuse of power, the very nature of the autocratic system. This means that the salvation of the people lies in the overthrow of tsarism. This is the main idea of ​​the fairy tale.
In the fairy tale "The Eagle Patron" Shchedrin exposes the activities of the autocracy in the field of education. The eagle - the king of birds - decided to "introduce" science and art into the court. However, the eagle soon got tired of playing the role of a philanthropist: he destroyed the nightingale-poet, put shackles on the learned woodpecker and imprisoned him in a hollow, and ruined the crows. “Searchs, investigations, trials” began, and “the darkness of ignorance” set in. In this tale, the writer showed the incompatibility of tsarism with science, education and art, and concluded that “eagles are harmful to education.”
Shchedrin also makes fun of ordinary people. The tale of the wise minnow is devoted to this topic. All his life the gudgeon thought about how the pike would not eat him, so he sat in his hole for a hundred years, away from danger. The gudgeon "lived - trembled and died - trembled." And dying, I thought: why did he tremble and hide all his life? What joys did he have? Who did he console? Who will remember its existence? “Those who think that only those minnows can be considered worthy citizens who, mad with fear, sit in holes and tremble, believe incorrectly. No, these are not citizens, but at least useless minnows. No one is warm or cold from them . live, taking up space for nothing,” the author addresses the reader.
In his fairy tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin shows that the people are talented. The man from the fairy tale about two generals is smart, he has golden hands: he made a snare “from his own hair” and built a “miracle ship”. The people were subjected to oppression, their life was endless hard work, and the writer was bitter that with his own hands he was twisting a rope that was thrown around his neck. Shchedrin calls on the people to think about their fate and unite in the struggle to restructure the unjust world.
Saltykov-Shchedrin called his creative style Aesopian, each fairy tale has a subtext, it contains comic characters and symbolic images.
The uniqueness of Shchedrin's fairy tales also lies in the fact that in them the real is intertwined with the fantastic, thereby creating a comic effect. On the fairy-tale island, the generals find the famous reactionary newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti*. From the extraordinary island not far from St. Petersburg, to Bolshaya Podyacheskaya. The writer introduces details from the lives of people into the lives of fabulous fish and animals: the gudgeon “does not receive a salary and does not keep a servant,” dreams of winning two hundred thousand.
The author's favorite techniques are hyperbole and grotesque. Both the peasant's dexterity and the generals' ignorance are extremely exaggerated. A skilled man cooks a handful of soup. Stupid generals don’t know that buns are made from flour. A hungry general swallows his friend's order.
In Shchedrin's fairy tales there are no random details or unnecessary words, and the heroes are revealed in actions and words. The writer draws attention to the funny sides of the person depicted. Suffice it to remember that the generals were in nightgowns, and each had an order hanging around their necks. In Shchedrin's fairy tales there is a visible connection with folk art ("once upon a time there was a gudgeon", "he drank honey and beer, it ran down his mustache, but it didn't get into his mouth", "neither can be said in a fairy tale, nor described with a pen"). However, along with fairy-tale expressions, we come across book words that are completely uncharacteristic of folk tales: “sacrifice one’s life,” “the gudgeon completes the life process.” One can feel the allegorical meaning of the works.
Shchedrin's tales reflected his hatred of those who live at the expense of the working people, and his belief in the triumph of reason and justice.
These tales are a magnificent artistic monument of a bygone era. Many images have become household names, denoting social phenomena of Russian and world reality. http://www.