Fantastic and realistic depiction of reality in the works of N.V. Gogol. Introduction Realism in Gogol's works examples

Fantastic and realistic depiction of reality in the works of N.V. Gogol.

Fiction is a special form of reflecting reality, logically incompatible with the real idea of the world around us. It is widespread in mythology, folklore, art and expresses a person’s worldview in special, grotesque and “supernatural” images.

In literature, fantasy developed on the basis of romanticism, the main principle of which was the depiction of an exceptional hero acting in exceptional circumstances. This freed the writer from any restrictive rules and gave him freedom to realize his creative potential and abilities. Apparently, this attracted N.V. Gogol, who actively used fantastic elements not only in romantic, but also in realistic works.

N.V. Gogol is an exceptionally original, national writer. He created a captivating image of the Motherland, turning not only to the motives of folk tales and legends, but also to the facts of real life. The combination of the romantic and realistic becomes the most important feature of Gogol's works and does not destroy the romantic conventions. Descriptions of everyday life, comic episodes, national details are successfully combined with the lyrical musicality characteristic of romanticism, with a conventional lyrical landscape expressing the mood and emotional richness of the narrative. National color and fantasy, appeal to legends, fairy tales, and folk legends indicate the formation of a national, original principle in the work of N.V. Gogol.

This feature of the writer is most clearly reflected in his wonderful “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”. Here, folk demonology and fantasy appear either in a grotesque form (“The Lost Letter”, “The Enchanted Place”, “The Night Before Christmas”), or in a tragically terrible form (“Terrible Revenge”). The folklore origin can be traced both in the plot of the stories and in the essence of the conflict - this is a traditional conflict, which consists in overcoming obstacles standing in the way of lovers, in the reluctance of relatives to marry a girl to a loved one. With the help of “evil spirits” these obstacles are usually overcome. So, the blacksmith Vakula flies on the line to St. Petersburg for the Tsarina’s slippers; Petro, with the help of “evil spirits,” obtains a treasure that gives him the opportunity to marry Paraska; Levko, thanks to the patronage of the little mermaid, finds happiness with Hanna.

Unlike many romantics, for whom the fantastic and the real are sharply separated and exist on their own, Gogol’s fantasy is closely intertwined with reality and serves as a means of comic or satirical depiction of heroes; it is based on the folk element. His Solo-ha (“The Night Before Christmas”) rides around on a broom, flirting with the devil, with the sexton. She is both a witch and at the same time a lively and clever village woman who is envied by other women. Solokha is shown by Gogol with sly mockery, thanks to which fantasy is perceived as conventional grotesque, humor, and switches to the everyday, satirical plane.

The same is the image of the devil, combining real human traits with fantastic ones. He “jumps from one hoof to another and blows into his fist, wanting to somehow warm up his frozen hands.” There is nothing mystical or mysterious in this image, it is perceived as a parody image, it is real. “The devil who roasts sinners in hell” is compared to “a woman who roasts sausage for Christmas.”

The peculiarity of Gogol’s fiction is that it is based on the rapprochement of human characters with “evil spirits.” Thus, the devil in “The Night Before Christmas” is described as a parody of an official: “... behind him he was a real provincial attorney in uniform, because he had a tail hanging, as sharp and long as today’s uniform coattails.”

Another feature of Gogol’s stories in “Evenings” is noteworthy: the time of action. Events are depicted either in relation to the past or in relation to the present. In stories about the past (“The Missing Letter”, “The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”, “Terrible Revenge”, etc.), fantasy openly interferes with the plot, it is personified, these are images in which the evil principle is embodied: the devil or the people who entered into conflict with him in conspiracy. Moreover, fantastic events are reported either by the author-narrator, or by the character-main narrator, who makes reference to “eyewitnesses” (grandfather, grandfather’s aunt, etc.).

In contemporary works, the fantastic is presented differently. There is no direct indication of the unreality of the event. On the contrary, it seems that the author is trying to obscure this unreality, to smooth out the reader’s feeling of the unreality of the event. For example, in “Sorochinskaya Fair” the characters talk about rumors, but the narrator talks about real “oddities”. Almost immediately, with the beginning of the story, an expectation of something terrible, some kind of misfortune arises among the characters. It turns out that a “cursed place” was set aside for the fair. All this is reported so far in the form of rumors. Then the incredible happens: a “terrible pig’s face” is exposed at the window, Cherevik has a “red scroll” tied to a horse instead of a horse, etc. And the portrait of the gypsy is somehow unusual: he is a tramp, a swindler, but he also has the features of a terrible man, reminiscent of "evil force" similar to a sorcerer.

The image of Khivri is also dual: her description resembles a witch, although Gogol never said this directly. The fantasy in “May Night” is constructed in the same way.

Gogol's fiction is built on the idea of two opposite principles - good and evil, divine and devilish (as in folk art), but there is no actual good fiction, it is all intertwined with “evil spirits.” The only exception in this regard is the little mermaid in “May Night”. But she is also a suffering creature; she cannot resist the devil’s power. And only with the help of Levko the mermaid defeats the witch-stepmother.

It should be noted that the fantastic elements in N.V. Gogol’s “Evenings” are not an accidental phenomenon in the work of the great Russian writer. Using the example of almost all of his works, the evolution of fantasy is traced, and the ways of introducing it into the narrative are being improved. And this improvement goes along the line of veiling specific carriers of supernatural power. An example of this is the realistic story “The Nose”.

The theme of this story is the character’s loss of “part” of his “I” as a result of the action of “evil spirits.” The motive of persecution plays an organizing role in the plot, although there is no specific embodiment of supernatural power in the story. It is not stated who is responsible for the mysterious separation of Kovalev’s nose. There is no pursuer or culprit, but the persecution is felt all the time. The mystery captures the reader literally from the first sentence, it is constantly reminded of it, it reaches a climax, and there is no resolution to this mystery even in the finale. It is not only the separation of the nose that is mysterious, but also how it existed independently. The ending of the story is also unexpected: “But here the incident is obscured by fog, and absolutely nothing is known what happened next.”

Thus, in the story there is a peculiar interweaving of the fantastic and real plans, and the real plan is embodied in the previously known form of rumors, which the author constantly mentions. These are rumors that the nose is either walking along Nevsky Prospekt, or along the Tauride Garden, or that it was supposedly in a store, etc. Why was this form of reporting introduced? While maintaining a form of mystery, the author ridicules the carriers of these rumors.

Many critics have noted that the story “The Nose” is the brightest example of Gogol’s fiction, a parody, a wonderful mockery of all modern prejudices and belief in supernatural forces.

Thus, fantastic elements in the works of N.V. Gogol are one of the ways of satirically depicting many vices of society, one of the ways of establishing a realistic principle in life.

COURSE WORK

"The Real and the Fantastic in Gogol's St. Petersburg Tales"

INTRODUCTION

1. THE ARTISTIC WORLD OF GOGOL

2. REAL AND FANTASTIC IN “PETERSBURG TALES”: PRACTICAL ANALYSIS

2.1 Features of “Petersburg Tales” by N. Gogol

2.2 Real and fantastic in “Petersburg Tales”

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In literature, fantasy developed on the basis of romanticism, the main principle of which was the depiction of an exceptional hero acting in exceptional circumstances. This freed the writer from any restrictive rules and gave him freedom to realize his creative potential and abilities. Apparently, this is what attracted N.V. Gogol, who actively used fantastic elements not only in romantic, but also in realistic works.

The relevance of the topic of the course work lies in the fact that N.V. Gogol is an exceptionally original, national writer. He created a captivating image of the Motherland, turning not only to the motives of folk tales and legends, but also to the facts of real life. The combination of the romantic, fantastic and realistic becomes the most important feature of Gogol's works and does not destroy the romantic conventions. Descriptions of everyday life, comic episodes, national details are successfully combined with fantasy, imagination, fiction, lyrical musicality characteristic of romanticism, with a conventional lyrical landscape expressing the mood and emotional richness of the narrative. National color and fantasy, appeal to legends, fairy tales, folk legends testify to the formation of N.V. Gogol has a national, original beginning.

According to the Russian philosopher N. Berdyaev, Gogol is “the most mysterious figure in Russian literature.” There was no writer in Russia who caused such irreconcilable controversy as Gogol.

The purpose of the course work is to highlight the real and the fantastic in “Petersburg Tales” by N.V. Gogol.

Coursework objectives:

Consider Gogol's artistic world;

Analyze the fantastic and the real in “Petersburg Tales”;

Highlight the features and significance of fantasy and realism in Gogol’s “Petersburg Tales”.

The object of the course work is the cycle of works by Gogol - “Petersburg Tales”.

The subject of the course work is the features of the real and fantastic in these stories by the author.

The work used sources on literary theory, materials from printed media, as well as the author’s own developments.

The course work consists of three chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

Every great artist is a whole world. To enter this world, to feel its versatility and unique beauty means to bring oneself closer to the knowledge of the infinite diversity of life, to place oneself at some higher level of spiritual, aesthetic development. The work of every major writer is a precious storehouse of artistic and spiritual, one might say, “human-science” experience, which is of enormous importance for the progressive development of society.

Shchedrin called fiction a “condensed universe.” By studying it, a person gains wings and is able to gain a broader, deeper understanding of history and the always restless modern world in which he lives. The great past is connected with the present by invisible threads. The artistic heritage captures the history and soul of the people. That is why it is an inexhaustible source of his spiritual and emotional enrichment. This is also the real value of Russian classics.

Gogol's art arose on the foundation that was erected before him by Pushkin. In "Boris Godunov" and "Eugene Onegin", "The Bronze Horseman" and "The Captain's Daughter" the writer made the greatest discoveries. The amazing skill with which Pushkin reflected the entirety of contemporary reality and penetrated into the recesses of the spiritual world of his heroes, the insight with which in each of them he saw a reflection of the real processes of social life.

Gogol followed the trail laid by Pushkin, but he went his own way. Pushkin revealed the deep contradictions of modern society. But for all that, the world, artistically realized by the poet, is full of beauty and harmony, the element of negation is balanced by the element of affirmation. Pushkin, in the true words of Apollo Grigoriev, “was a pure, sublime and harmonious echo of everything, transforming everything into beauty and harmony.” Gogol's artistic world is not so universal and comprehensive. His perception of modern life was also different. There is a lot of light, sun, and joy in Pushkin’s work. All his poetry is imbued with the indestructible power of the human spirit, it was the apotheosis of youth, bright hopes and faith, it reflected the boiling of passions and that “revelry at the feast of life” that Belinsky enthusiastically wrote about.

In the first half of the 19th century, many great poets and writers lived and worked in Russia. However, in Russian literature it is generally accepted that the “Gogolian” period of Russian literature begins in the 40s of the 19th century. This formulation was proposed by Chernyshevsky. He credits Gogol with the merit of firmly introducing the satirical - or, as it would be more fair to call it, the critical - trend into Russian fine literature. Another merit is the founding of a new school of writers.

Gogol's works, which exposed the social vices of Tsarist Russia, constituted one of the most important links in the formation of Russian critical realism. Never before in Russia has the gaze of a satirist penetrated so deeply into the everyday, into the everyday side of the social life of society.

Gogol's comedy is the comedy of the established, everyday, which has acquired the force of habit, the comedy of petty life, to which the satirist gave a huge generalizing meaning. After the satire of classicism, Gogol's work was one of the milestones of new realistic literature. Gogol's significance for Russian literature was enormous. With the appearance of Gogol, literature turned to Russian life, to the Russian people; began to strive for originality, nationality, from rhetorical she sought to become natural, natural. In no other Russian writer has this desire achieved such success as in Gogol. To do this, it was necessary to pay attention to the crowd, to the masses, to portray ordinary people, and unpleasant ones were only an exception to the general rule. This is a great merit on Gogol’s part. With this, he completely changed his view of art itself.

Gogol's realism, like Pushkin's, was imbued with the spirit of a fearless analysis of the essence of social phenomena of our time. But the uniqueness of Gogol’s realism was that it combined a broad understanding of reality as a whole with a microscopically detailed study of its most hidden nooks and crannies. Gogol depicts his heroes in all the concreteness of their social existence, in all the smallest details of their everyday life, their everyday existence.

“Why depict poverty, and poverty, and the imperfection of our life, digging people out of the wilderness, from the remote corners of the state?” These opening lines from the second volume of Dead Souls perhaps best reveal the pathos of Gogol's work.

Never before have the contradictions of Russian reality been as exposed as in the 30s and 40s. The critical depiction of its deformities and ugliness became the main task of literature. And Gogol sensed this brilliantly. Explaining in the fourth letter “Regarding “Dead Souls”” the reasons for the burning of the second volume of the poem in 1845, he noted that it was pointless now “to bring out several wonderful characters that reveal the high nobility of our breed.” And then he writes: “No, there is a time when it is impossible to otherwise direct society or even an entire generation towards the beautiful until you show the full depth of its real abomination.”

Gogol was convinced that in the conditions of contemporary Russia, the ideal and beauty of life can be expressed, first of all, through the denial of ugly reality. This is exactly what his work was like, this was the originality of his realism. Gogol's influence on Russian literature was enormous. Not only all the young talents rushed to the path shown to them, but also some writers who had already gained fame followed this path, leaving their previous one.

Nekrasov, Turgenev, Goncharov, Herzen spoke about their admiration for Gogol and connections with his work, and in the 20th century we observe the influence of Gogol on Mayakovsky. Akhmatov, Zoshchenko, Bulgakov and others. Chernyshevsky argued that Pushkin is the father of Russian poetry, and Gogol is the father of Russian prose literature.

Belinsky noted that in the author of “The Inspector General” and “Dead Souls,” Russian literature found its “most national writer.” The critic saw the national significance of Gogol in the fact that with the appearance of this artist, our literature exclusively turned to Russian reality. “Perhaps,” he wrote, “through this it became more one-sided and even monotonous, but also more original, original, and, consequently, true.” A comprehensive depiction of the real processes of life, a study of its “roaring contradictions” - all great Russian literature of the post-Gogol era will follow this path.

Gogol's artistic world is unusually original and complex. The apparent simplicity and clarity of his works should not deceive. They bear the imprint of the original, one might say, amazing personality of the great master, his very deep view of life. Both are directly related to his artistic world. Gogol is one of the most complex writers in the world. His fate - literary and everyday - amazes with its drama.

By exposing everything that is bad, Gogol believed in the triumph of justice, which will win as soon as people realize the fatality of the “bad”, and in order to realize, Gogol ridicules everything despicable and insignificant. Laughter helps him accomplish this task. Not that laughter that is generated by temporary irritability or bad character, not that light laughter that serves for idle amusement, but the one that “flows entirely from the bright nature of man,” at the bottom of which lies “his eternally flowing spring.”

The judgment of history, the contemptuous laughter of descendants - this is what, according to Gogol, will serve as retribution to this vulgar, indifferent world, which cannot change anything in itself even in the face of the obvious threat of its senseless death. Gogol's artistic creativity, which embodied in bright, complete types everything negative, everything dark, vulgar and morally wretched that Russia was so rich in, was for the people of the 40s an endless source of mental and moral excitement. The dark Gogol types (Sobakevichs, Manilovs, Nozdrevs, Chichikovs) were a source of light for them, for they were able to extract from these images the hidden thought of the poet, his poetic and human sorrow; his “invisible tears, unknown to the world,” turned into “visible laughter,” were both visible and understandable to them.

The artist’s great sorrow went from heart to heart. This helps us feel the truly “Gogolian” way of storytelling: the narrator’s tone is mocking, ironic; he mercilessly castigates the vices depicted in Dead Souls. But at the same time, the work also contains lyrical digressions, which depict the silhouettes of Russian peasants, Russian nature, the Russian language, roads, troikas, distances... In these numerous lyrical digressions, we clearly see the author’s position, his attitude towards what is depicted, the pervasive lyricism of his love to the fatherland.

Gogol was one of the most amazing and original masters of artistic expression. Among the great Russian writers, he possessed, perhaps, perhaps the most expressive signs of style. Gogol's language, Gogol's landscape, Gogol's humor, Gogol's manner of depicting a portrait - these expressions have long become commonplace. And, nevertheless, the study of Gogol’s style and artistic skill still remains far from a fully resolved task.

Domestic literary criticism has done a lot to study Gogol's legacy - perhaps even more than in relation to some other classics. But can we say that it has already been fully studied? It is unlikely that even in the historically foreseeable future we will have grounds for an affirmative answer to this question. At each new turn of history, the need arises to re-read and re-think the work of the great writers of the past. The classics are inexhaustible. Each era reveals previously unnoticed facets in the great heritage and finds in it something important for thinking about its own, contemporary affairs. Much in Gogol’s artistic experience today is extremely interesting and instructive.

One of the most beautiful achievements of Gogol's art is the word. Few of the great writers mastered the magic of words, the art of verbal painting, as completely as Gogol.

He considered not only language, but also syllable “the first necessary tools of every writer.” When assessing the work of any poet or prose writer, Gogol first of all pays attention to his syllable, which is, as it were, the calling card of the writer. The syllable itself does not make a writer, but if there is no syllable, there is no writer.

It is in the style that, first of all, the individuality of the artist is expressed, the originality of his vision of the world, his capabilities in revealing the “inner man,” his style. The syllable reveals all the most hidden things that exist in the writer. In Gogol's view, a syllable is not the external expressiveness of a phrase, it is not a manner of writing, but something much deeper, expressing the root essence of creativity.

Here he is trying to determine the most essential feature of Derzhavin’s poetry: “Everything about him is large. His syllable is large, like none of our poets.” It is worth noting: there is no mediastinum between one and another phrase. Having said that with Derzhavin everything is big, Gogol immediately then clarifies what he means by the word “everything” and begins with a syllable. For to talk about a writer’s style means to talk about perhaps the most characteristic thing in his art.

A distinctive feature of Krylov, according to Gogol, is that “the poet and the sage merged into one in him.” Hence the picturesqueness and accuracy of Krylov’s images. One merges with the other so naturally, and the image is so true that “you can’t catch his syllable. The object, as if not having a verbal shell, appears by itself, in kind, before the eye.” The syllable does not express the external brilliance of the phrase; the artist’s nature is visible in it.

Gogol considered caring for language and words to be the most important thing for a writer. Precision in handling words largely determines the reliability of the image of reality and helps to understand it. Noting in the article “On Sovremennik” some of the latest phenomena in Russian literature, Gogol, for example, singles out V. I. Dal among modern writers. Without mastering the art of fiction and in this regard not being a poet, Dahl, however, has a significant advantage: “he sees business everywhere and looks at every thing from its practical side.” He does not belong to the number of “storytellers-inventors,” but he has a huge advantage over them: he takes an ordinary incident from everyday life, of which he was a witness or an eyewitness, and, without adding anything to it, creates “the most interesting story.”

Language mastery is an extremely important, perhaps even the most important, element of the art of writing. But the concept of artistic mastery, according to Gogol, is even more capacious, for it more directly absorbs all aspects of the work - both its form and content. At the same time, the language of the work is in no way neutral in relation to the content. Understanding this very complex and always individually manifested relationship within the art of literary expression lies at the very essence of Gogol’s aesthetic position.

Great art never gets old. The classics invade the spiritual life of our society and become part of its self-awareness.

Gogol's artistic world, like that of any great writer, is complex and inexhaustible. Each generation not only reads the classic anew, but also enriches it with its continuously evolving historical experience. This is the secret of the unfading power and beauty of the artistic heritage.

Gogol's artistic world is a living spring of poetry, which has been moving forward the spiritual life of millions of people for almost a century and a half. And no matter how far the development of Russian literature has gone after The Inspector General and Dead Souls, many of its most outstanding achievements were predicted and prepared by Gogol at their origins.

Petersburg stories is the general name of a number of stories written by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, and the name of the collection compiled from them. United by a common place of action - St. Petersburg in the 1830s-1840s.

The St. Petersburg stories constitute, as it were, a special stage in Gogol’s work, and literary historians talk about the second, “Petersburg” period in his literary activity http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%82% D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B1%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B3%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0% B2%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8 - cite_note-0#cite_note-0.

Gogol’s “Petersburg Tales” is a new step in the development of Russian realism. This cycle includes the stories: “Nevsky Prospekt”, “The Nose”, “Portrait”, “Stroller”, “Notes of a Madman” and “Overcoat”. The writer worked on the cycle between 1835 and 1842. The stories are united by a common place of events - St. Petersburg. Petersburg, however, is not only the place of action, but also a kind of hero of these stories, in which Gogol depicts life in its various manifestations. Typically, writers, when talking about St. Petersburg life, illuminated the life and characters of the nobility, the top of the capital's society.

Gogol was attracted to petty officials, artisans (tailor Petrovich), poor artists, “little people” unsettled by life. Instead of palaces and rich houses, the reader in Gogol's stories sees city shacks in which the poor live.

The main task that Gogol set in the Petersburg Tales was to create a psychological portrait of time and man, “with his little joys, little sorrows, in a word, the whole poetry of his life.” The realities of Gogol’s era contribute to a deeper understanding of the text, against the backdrop of which the events in the lives of the heroes unfold. Having a real basis, Gogol’s events are associated with real facts, geographical names and historical figures, and the capital of the state itself is a separate, very widely represented, reliable image. In the description of St. Petersburg, the author’s personal perception of the northern capital sounds on par with an objective assessment of life in the 19th century; the feelings and sensations of Gogol, who pinned his hopes on this city, are expressed.

The capital's public itself is very diverse: from servants and lackeys, from dark Chukhonians and officials of various ranks to people of high society, also among the characters there are real historical figures (Catherine II), writers and journalists (Bulgarin F.V., Grech N. AND.). Having himself served as an official in one of the departments, Gogol gives a very reliable account of official ranks and officer ranks. In “Nevsky Prospect” we read: “... titular, court and other advisers... collegiate registrars, provincial and collegiate secretaries...” This list is a division of officials by rank, introduced by Peter I in 1722, where all officials of the civil department were divided into 14 classes. In the same story we read about a police officer - a judicial person who monitored the order and storage of incoming papers; about chamber cadets and chamberlains - court ranks for persons who had the rank of 3-4 classes; about block wardens, or police captains - this is how this position is called in “The Overcoat” - police officials in charge of certain city blocks; about the governors, about the General Staff and the State Council - the highest bodies of the Russian Empire, located in the Winter Palace.

In the story “The Nose,” our knowledge of the ranks and capital government institutions deepens, and we learn about the position of chief of police, the chief of police of St. Petersburg, about the executor, the mayor, the Senate and the Deanery Board.

Many facts from the life of St. Petersburg are reflected in the works of the St. Petersburg cycle and carry the author’s assessment, for example, the Ekaterininsky Canal, “known for its cleanliness” (we are talking about the Ekaterininsky Canal, where wastewater was discharged; Gogol speaks ironically about its purity).

The introduction of signs of the architecture of St. Petersburg into the text of the stories makes the works lively, bright, and reliable. The church under construction, in front of which two fat men stop, is nothing more than the one founded in 1883 according to the design of A.P. Bryullov Lutheran Church, distinguished by its unusual architecture for those times. Comparing the mouth of another eater with the size of the arch of the General Staff, Gogol is referring to the building on Palace Square, built according to the design of the architect Rossi and striking in its size.

The stamp of time also lies on the rumors and gossip told by Gogol, in particular “the eternal anecdote about the commandant, who was told that the tail of the horse of Falconet’s monument was cut off” (“Overcoat”). In this case we are talking about the monument to Peter I, “The Bronze Horseman”, the work of the French sculptor Falconet.

The heterogeneous metropolitan public also bears the signs of its time. From Gogol's stories we learn the names of shops and fashion stores, and read about the peculiarities of clothing of St. Petersburg residents. The list of trading establishments and all kinds of shops was well known to Gogol’s contemporaries, and now forms the history of St. Petersburg at the beginning of the 19th century, immortalized by the brilliant writer. So what were young Gogol’s contemporaries wearing? These include salops (women's outerwear in the form of a wide, long cape with slits for the arms), and motley robes made of coarse household fabric of variegated colors, and redingotes (a long, wide-cut coat), and frieze overcoats sewn from coarse fleecy fabric such as a flannel, called frieze, and demicoton frock coats made of thick cotton fabric.

The headdresses of some ladies often had plumes, that is, decorations made of feathers. And in the attire of men there were stirrups, a kind of straps, in other words, braid sewn to the legs of the trousers from the bottom and threaded under the sole of the shoe.

Many shops and stores, markets and restaurants stepped from St. Petersburg streets into Gogol’s works and remained there, for example, Juncker’s store is one of the fashionable stores (“Nose”), Shchukin Dvor is one of the capital’s markets (“Portrait”).

Events in the social and political life of the capital did not stand aside either. In the 30s, the theatrical repertoire in St. Petersburg theaters changed, and everyday vaudeville with heroes officials, actors, and merchants appeared on the stage. In “Nevsky Prospekt” we read: “The Russian people love to express themselves in such harsh expressions that they probably will not hear even in the theater.” The writer ironically presents the “important articles” published in newspapers about those arriving and departing as a permanent department in which a list of persons, usually significant, bureaucrats, who arrived or left the capital, was printed.

The author did not ignore the pseudo-historical works of Bulgarin and Grech, which enjoyed wide readership, as well as popular popular stories by Orlov, which served as a target for ridicule from literary critics. When Gogol talks about the society to which Pirogov belonged, calling it “some kind of middle class of society,” the writer adds: “In the upper class they come across very rarely, or, one might say, never. They love to talk about literature; they praise Bulgarin, Pushkin and Grech and speak with contempt and witty barbs about Orlov.” No less striking signs of metropolitan life of that time are the popular vaudevilles from common people’s life, the so-called “Philatki”, which lasted on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater until the 50s of the 19th century, as well as the first large private newspaper in Russia “Northern Bee”, whose circulation reached up to 10,000 copies.

The St. Petersburg stories constitute, as it were, a special stage in Gogol’s work, and literary historians, not without reason, speak of a second, St. Petersburg, period in his literary activity.

Arabesques" marked the beginning of a whole cycle of Gogol's stories. To the three stories included in this collection, “The Nose” and “The Overcoat” were added somewhat later. These five things made up the cycle of St. Petersburg stories. They are diverse in their content and partly even in their style. But at the same time they are connected by a clearly expressed internal unity. The ideological issues, the characters of the characters, the essential features of the poetic originality of Gogol’s vision of the world - all this creates a sense of community that unites the five works into a holistic and harmonious artistic cycle.

Standing apart among Gogol’s stories are “The Stroller” and “Rome,” which, however, were included by the writer himself in the third volume of his first collected works prepared by him in 1842, next to the Petersburg stories.

Not all of Gogol's works were appreciated by his contemporaries. Some of these works were perceived as thoughtless humoresques or pranks of genius. Such a fate befell the story of Shponka at one time, and later “The Nose.” “The Stroller” enjoyed a very strong reputation as an innocent artistic joke. Meanwhile, behind the appearance of a joke, the caustic pen of a satirist was clearly visible here, far from harmlessly depicting the life and customs of provincial noble society, its extreme spiritual poverty, its pettiness and vulgarity. The characters in "The Stroller", including its main character Chertokutsky - landowners and officers - appear before us in many respects as prototypes of the future heroes of "Dead Souls".

One of the characteristic features of Gogol’s poetics is that the writer likes to talk about serious things casually, jokingly, with humor and irony, as if wanting to reduce the importance of the subject. Many stories from the St. Petersburg cycle are based on this technique.

Gogol's Petersburg appeared here before readers as the embodiment of all the outrages and injustices that happened in police-bureaucratic Russia. This is a city where “except for the lantern everything breathes deception” (“Nevsky Prospekt”), in which the drama of a gifted artist who became a victim of a passion for profit (“Portrait”) is played out. In this terrible, crazy city, amazing incidents happen with the official Kovalev (“The Nose”) and Poprishchin (“Notes of a Madman”), there is no place for a poor, honest man (“The Overcoat”) to live here. Gogol's heroes go crazy or die in unequal combat with the cruel conditions of reality. Normal relationships between people are distorted, justice is trampled upon, beauty is ruined, love is desecrated. Gogol is a realist both in himself and as the head of an entire school of realists who followed directly in his footsteps: Dostoevsky, Pisemsky, Ostrovsky. However, Gogol's fantasy is very diverse and is distinguished by terrible power. It is very difficult to find in Russian literature a closer interweaving of the fantastic with the real than in Gogol. The terms “fantastic” and “real” are equally applied to the life and work of the author. Everywhere in Gogol there is a combination of the local, everyday, real with the fantastic. As a matter of fact, everything here is fantastic. But, on the other hand, no matter how diverse the patterns that fantasy embroiders on the everyday fabric, they are all, if not solved, then will be solved and legitimized in connection with folk beliefs and peculiar attempts to explain the environment. The folk singer Gogol did not invent anything. Everything colorful, invented, and piled up belongs to later times, to bookish influence. The epic in its original form is one of the elementary forms of folk thought. In each phenomenon in Gogol, we note three elements: 1) the artistic purpose of the fantastic; 2) the tone in which this fantastic is taken; 3) the connection between the fantastic and the real.

The St. Petersburg cycle opens with the story “Nevsky Prospekt”. Its plot is based on two short stories, the hero of one of them is the artist Piskarev, in the center of the other is Lieutenant Pirogov. Outwardly, both novellas seem to be unrelated. But it only seems so. In fact, they form an inextricable whole. Plot-wise, they are united by a story about Nevsky Prospekt.

Piskarev’s character is revealed to us as if on two planes: real and fantastic. In the first of them, he appears as a shy, timid young man who has not yet had time to taste the sorrows of life, full of rosy illusions and romantic ideas about people and the reality around him. In this part of the story, Piskarev is depicted in all his everyday concreteness. The fleeting meeting with the beauty on Nevsky and her wretched home are described in a stylistic manner that was fully consistent with the realistic concept of the story. But in parallel, another plan is developing, sharply different in character and style.

Already in Piskarev’s first dream, the image becomes unsteady, ephemeral, half-real, half-fantastic. The beauty’s dress “breathes music,” the “subtle lilac color” sets off the bright whiteness of her hand, the dancers’ dresses are woven “from the very air,” and their legs seemed completely ethereal. In this semi-illusory atmosphere, the image of Piskarev dissolves. He is present in this picture, and it is as if he is not there at all. And then there is an awakening and a sharp change of colors occurs. Again - switching the entire tone of the narrative. Piskarev wakes up, and the gray, muddy chaos of his room again reveals itself to his gaze. “Oh, how disgusting reality is! What, is she against the dream? - the voice of the narrator is heard.

This happens many times. In a dream, Piskarev finds the full measure of happiness, in reality - the full measure of suffering. Everything is dislocated and abnormal in this strange and terrible real world, just as everything is distorted in the life of an artist. We can say, the author notes, that Piskarev slept in reality, but was awake in a dream. These increasingly frequent metamorphoses became the source of his physical and moral suffering and ultimately drove him to madness.

One of the most tragic stories of the St. Petersburg cycle is “Notes of a Madman.”

The hero of this story is Aksentiy Ivanovich Poprishchin, a small official offended by everyone. He is a nobleman, but very poor. And this is the reason for his humiliation in society, his sorrowful experiences. But he doesn't claim anything yet. With a sense of self-esteem, he sits in the director's office and trims his feathers. And he is filled with the greatest respect for His Excellency. There are many, many things that Poprishchina has in common with vulgar reality. He is her very offspring and flesh of her flesh.

Poprishchin's consciousness is upset. Already in the very first recording, he reproduces the remark of the head of the department addressed to him: “What is it, brother, that your head is always such a jumble?” Poprishchin confuses matters, “so that Satan himself cannot figure it out.” Very quickly the chaos intensifies in his head, and the world around him takes on completely bizarre forms. The correspondence between two dogs, which Gogol introduces into the plot of the story, is very interesting. Medzhi and Fidel each in their own way reproduce the morals of that vulgar, high-society environment to which their owners belong.

We have before us a characteristic feature of Gogol’s poetics. In other works of this writer it is not so easy to distinguish between the images of the narrator and the author himself. Reality, transformed through the consciousness of one or another fictional character, and this often turns out to be the image of the narrator, takes on bizarre, grotesque forms. Real reality has nothing in common with the laws of reason; it is full of oddities and sometimes wild absurdities. An incorrect, unjust system of life gives rise to those deviations from the norm and tragic inconsistencies that people encounter everywhere. Everything in this world is displaced, everything is confused, people who are considered normal in society commit wild acts, and crazy people reason quite soberly and correctly.

Everything is shifted in this life. That is why it should not be surprising that Gogol sometimes conveys his most cherished and sincere thoughts to negative characters. This happens, for example, in the seventh chapter of “Dead Souls” - in the famous scene when Chichikov, looking at the lists of dead souls he bought, dreamed about how many wonderful workers were destroyed in the dead serfs. And some kind, Gogol writes about Chichikov, “a strange feeling, incomprehensible to himself, took possession of him.” Gogol and Poprishchina gave many of their own “purest tears.”

Here is Gogol's fantastic story - "The Nose". First of all, we note that the fantastic should not and cannot give illusions here. We will easily get carried away by imagining the terrible hallucinations of Khoma Brut, but not for a minute will we imagine ourselves in the position of Major Kovalev, whose nose was completely smooth. It would be a big mistake, however, to think that the fantastic is used here in the sense of an allegory or allusion in a fable or some modern pamphlet, in a literary caricature. It serves neither instruction nor denunciation here, and the author’s goals were purely artistic, as we will see in further analysis. The tone and general character of the fantastic in the story “The Nose” is comic. Fantastic details should enhance the funny. There is a very widespread opinion that “The Nose” is a joke, a kind of game of the author’s imagination and author’s wit. It is incorrect, because in the story one can discern a very specific artistic goal - to make people feel the vulgarity that surrounds them. Gogol’s thought and the images of his poetry are inseparable from his feeling, desire, his ideal. Gogol, when drawing Major Kovalev, could not treat his hero like a beetle that a biologist would describe or draw: look at it, study it, classify it. He expressed in his face his animated attitude towards vulgarity, as a well-known social phenomenon that every person must reckon with. Kovalev is not an evil or kind person - all his thoughts are focused on his own person. This person is very insignificant, and so he tries in every possible way to enlarge and embellish her... “Ask, darling, Major Kovalev.” “Major” sounds more beautiful than “collegiate assessor.” He does not have an order, but he buys an order ribbon; wherever possible, he mentions his secular successes and his acquaintance with the family of a staff officer and a civil councilor. He is very busy with his appearance - all his interests revolve around his hat, hairstyle, smoothly shaved cheeks. He is also especially proud of his rank. How can you shake this person up? Obviously, touching on his rank or his appearance, no less; He doesn’t understand anything else in life.I. Annensky writes: “Now imagine that Major Kovalev would have been disfigured by smallpox, that his nose would have been broken by a piece of cornice while he was looking at pictures through the mirror glass or at another moment of his idle existence. Would anyone really laugh? And if there were no laughter, what would be the attitude towards vulgarity in the story. Or imagine that Major Kovalev’s nose would disappear without a trace, so that he would not return to his place, but would continue to travel around Russia, posing as a state councilor. Major Kovalev’s life would have been ruined: he would have become unhappy and a useless, harmful person, he would have become embittered, he would have beaten his servant, he would have found fault with everyone, and maybe he would even have started to lie and gossip.” The detail of the impostor of the nose that gives away himself as a state councilor is extremely characteristic. For a Caucasian collegiate assessor, the rank of civil councilor is something unusually high, enviable and offensive in its unattainability, and suddenly this rank goes to the nose of Major Kovalev, and not to the major himself, the rightful owner of the nose. In general, the power of the fantastic in the story “The Nose” is based on its artistic truth, on its graceful interweaving with the real into a living, bright whole.

The fantastic plot is told by Gogol as a “true” story, absolutely real. In this regard, the famous episode in the Kazan Cathedral is especially interesting. Kovalev meets his own nose there, which stood aside and, with an expression of the greatest piety, indulged in his religious feelings. The nose, judging by his uniform and hat with a plume, turned out to be a state councilor, i.e., a rank higher than Kovalev.

Kovalev’s nose took on an independent life. It is not difficult to imagine how great the indignation of the collegiate assessor was. But the trouble is that Kovalev cannot give vent to his indignation, because his own nose was in a much higher rank than himself. The dialogue between the collegiate assessor and his nose exactly imitates the conversation between two officials of unequal rank: the humbly pleading intonation of Kovalev’s speech and the smug, bossy phraseology of the Nose.

And there is not the slightest parody here, the dialogue is carried out in a completely realistic spirit, it is absolutely believable. And this is the whole comedy of the situation. The comedy of the situation, brought to the point of grotesqueness, almost to the point of buffoonery. The contradiction between form and content creates that comedic and satirical effect that is so characteristic of Gogol.

The thought of a person into whose soul God breathed, and whose fate is often determined by the devil, apparently did not leave Gogol. “Petersburg Tales” is, in fact, dedicated to this topic. For example, "Overcoat".

Before completing the story of his hero’s earthly existence, Gogol introduces a figure who introduces new notes into the narrative - a “significant person.” The loss of the overcoat, no matter how terrible it was in itself, should not have brought poor A.A to the grave, because A.A. I didn’t even catch a cold when I was lying in the snow on the square, when I was running through the cold to my home. Then he suddenly showed incredible energy and even persistence when he was looking for his overcoat.

But everywhere, exhausted A.A. encountered indifference, as if the devil had crawled into human souls. His journey through torment is crowned by a visit to a “significant person.” This person had just recently emerged from being an insignificant person, received the rank of general and had already mastered management techniques. They consisted of three phrases: “How dare you? Do you know who you are talking to? Do you understand who is standing in front of you?” Poor Bashmachkin was terribly unlucky: the presence of an old friend added agility to the “significant person.” When all this fell on A.A., and even with the stamping of feet, the timid official could not stand it. “He froze, staggered, shook all over his body and could not stand; they carried him out almost without moving.”

Gogol protects the reader from making the mistake of thinking that the whole point is in the properties of a “significant person.” No, the general was then tormented by his conscience, and at heart he was a kind person. “But the general’s uniform completely confused him.” The system destroys the natural, human in a person. A person is killed in a person. The writer Gogol wanted to bring us back to himself. The writer asks us to take pity on the suffering and defenseless, to stop the hand or unjust word addressed to someone who himself cannot resist the bureaucratic rudeness and cruelty of the powers that be. This is the strength and wisdom of Russian literature. Continuing Pushkin's traditions, N.V. Gogol “called for mercy for the fallen.” To understand Russian literature, you need to remember the writer’s confession of F.M. Dostoevsky: “We all came out of Gogol’s “The Overcoat”…”.

Fate and reality - this is Gogol’s main idea in “The Overcoat”.

Gogol's humorous, implausible story has great social content.

Man has been turned into an automaton. This is the result of inhumanity. Akaki Akakievich is surrounded by indifference and cold ridicule; he is quite lonely; He doesn’t go to anyone, and no one visits him either. Nothing occupies him except stationery paper. “Not once in his life did he pay attention to what was happening and happening every day on the street.” Akaki Akakievich is not capable of offending anyone, he is quiet, irresponsible, but he is also terrible: for him it is not a person, but paper. If you turn to Akakiy Akakievich on a matter that requires attentive humanity, he will either remain deaf and impenetrable, or he will turn out to be helpless.

He cannot be entrusted with work that requires even a hint of independence. Once they asked him to write an attitude with a slight change in words - he started sweating and finally asked to let him rewrite something else.

The overcoat obscures the person; he already seems like an appendage to it. The overcoat occupies entirely all the thoughts of Akaki Akakievich; she is already something cosmic; Thanks to his overcoat, he began to attract the attention of his colleagues. Moreover: when the thugs tore off Akakiy Akakievich’s overcoat, the officials, who had recently tormented him with ridicule, took pity on him, that is, they took pity on the overcoat, even intended to contribute, but collected a trifle, because even earlier they had spent money on a portrait for the director and on a book at the suggestion superiors. Such is the power of a thing over a person. It is no wonder that Akaki Akakievich, robbed, deprived of a dream, the meaning of life, dies, and in his dying delirium he imagines an overcoat. “A creature has disappeared, unprotected by anything, not dear to anyone, not interesting to anyone... but for whom a bright guest in the form of an overcoat, who revived a poor life for a moment, and on whom misfortune also then bears tolerably befalls.”

“The Stroller” can also be classified among the St. Petersburg stories: the action takes place in a provincial town, but Chertokutsky and his Excellency can easily be moved to the gallery of metropolitan types. There is only boredom and melancholy in the city. Perhaps purely provincial. The boredom and melancholy are such that all that remains is to entertain ourselves by talking about unusual strollers. They and things like them occupy attention and become the source of various anecdotal provincial incidents. One such funny incident is told with casual liveliness in a short story, rather in a humoresque. Chertokutsky is a combination of Pirogov and the future Khlestakov. The general resembles “one significant person,” and when Chertokutsky is seen in a stroller, hidden and bent over, the stroller seems to completely obscure the person, and the whole scene even acquires a symbolic meaning of the domination of a thing over a person.

“Give me a man! I want to see a person, and I demand spiritual food.” But instead of a person, there is a defenseless creature, almost an animal, unhappy and stupid; instead of a person, “one significant person”, the existence of Pirogov, the German Schiller, Major Kovalev, Chertokutsky, generals and chamber cadets who took possession of everything a person needs, human likenesses captivated by base reality, insulting the high moral and aesthetic world, spiritual castrati, or groundless dreamers Piskarevs, crazy Poprishchins.

Is the artist now chained only to them, condemned to depict only them? And where are the heroic people, the selfless bearers of truth and truth, where is the asceticism, the intense spiritual life? Where is the ideal? These questions are posed by Gogol in “Portrait”. By the way: what are all the “material” titles: “Nevsky Prospekt”, “Overcoat”, “Stroller”, “Nose”, “Portrait”.

In conclusion, it can be noted that the Petersburg Tales revealed with great force the accusatory direction of Gogol’s work. Imagining himself to be a Spanish king, Poprishchin speaks with contempt of the all-powerful director: “He’s a traffic jam, not a director.” Moreover, Poprishchin considers himself no worse than Nicholas I himself. Having met the “sovereign emperor” on Nevsky, he took off his hat only for the sake of form, in order to remain incognito.

Even the wordless Bashmachkin, in his dying delirium, begins to “blaspheme, uttering the most terrible words,” which immediately followed the address “your excellency.”

The sad story of the stolen overcoat, according to Gogol, “unexpectedly takes on a fantastic ending.”

We have seen that in all St. Petersburg stories the real-life plot is complicated by a fantastic element. The ghost, which was recognized as the recently deceased Akaki Akakievich, tore off greatcoats “from all shoulders, without regard to rank and title.” One fine day, punishment befell the most “significant person.” And although he escaped with only the loss of his overcoat, his shock was so great that he “almost died.”

Such decisive actions are committed in Gogol’s works not only by crazy people or in the form of a fantastic incident. Let us at least recall the famous scene of the beating of the smug Lieutenant Pirogov by the artisans. It is curious that many years later, Dostoevsky, frightened by the sharp exacerbation of social contradictions in Russia, referred to this episode in the “Diary of a Writer” and called it “prophetic”: “Lieutenant Pirogov, forty years ago hewed out in Bolshaya Meshchanskaya by the mechanic Schiller, was terrible a prophecy, a prophecy of a genius who so terribly guessed the future...”

At the end of the course work, conclusions can be drawn.

In Gogol's St. Petersburg stories there is a peculiar interweaving of the fantastic and the real plan, and the real plan is embodied in the previously known form of rumors.

Many critics have noted that the story “The Nose” is the brightest example of Gogol’s fiction, a parody, a wonderful mockery of all modern prejudices and belief in supernatural forces.

Thus, fantastic elements in the works of N.V. Gogol are one of the ways of satirically depicting many vices of society, one of the ways of establishing a realistic principle in life.

Gogol’s fantastic is by no means an external device, not accidental and not superficial. Remove the fantastic - the stories will fall apart not only in plot, but also in their meaning, in their idea. An evil, extraneous force, unknown, coming from somewhere, destroys the quiet, serene, ancient way of life with the help of chervonets and all sorts of things - that’s the meaning. There is something demonic in wealth, in money, in treasures: they beckon, entice, tempt, push people into terrible crimes, turn people into fat cattle, into carnivorous gluttons, deprive them of the image and likeness of humanity. Things and money sometimes seem alive and moving, and people become like dead things.

The St. Petersburg stories were an important stage in Gogol’s ideological and artistic development. Together with Mirgorod, they testified to the mature skill of the writer and his decisive assertion in the positions of critical realism.

The peculiarity of Gogol’s fiction is that it is based on the rapprochement of human characters with “evil spirits.”

The St. Petersburg stories mark the writer's conversion from small- and medium-sized estates to bureaucratic St. Petersburg. Gogol's mastery became even more mature and socially oriented, but at the same time even darker. The sharpness of the pen, conciseness, expressiveness, and general economy of means have increased. The intricate and fantastic plot gave way to an anecdote, the style of writing became more prosaic.

Dreams of useful public service and teaching were dashed. However, much has been achieved. Gogol emerged from obscurity, from “dead silence,” from the Mirgorod and Nizhyn backwaters. He is intimately acquainted with Pushkin and Zhukovsky, and has been accepted by dignitaries in St. Petersburg. He has enthusiastic admirers. Not only is he famous, he is celebrated. S.T. Askakov says: Moscow students were delighted with Gogol and spread loud rumors about the new great talent.

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"Grotesque - the oldest artistic technique, based, like hyperbole, on exaggeration, sharpening the qualities and properties of people, objects, natural phenomena and facts of social life." However, not every exaggeration is grotesque. Here it has a special character: what is depicted is absolutely fantastic, unreal, implausible and in no case possible in real life.

Along with hyperbole, the grotesque was widely used in various myths, legends and fairy tales (for example, one can recall such a fairy-tale hero as Koschey the Immortal).

The effect of grotesque images is enhanced by the fact that they are usually shown on a par with ordinary, real events.

If we talk about the story by N.V. Gogol’s “The Nose”, there is also a combination of an absurd story with the disappearance of a nose and the everyday reality of St. Petersburg . Gogol's image of St. Petersburg qualitatively different from those created, for example, by Pushkin or Dostoevsky. Just like for them, for Gogol it is not just a city - it is an image-symbol; but Gogol’s Petersburg is the center of some incredible power, mysterious incidents happen here; the city is full of rumors, legends, myths.

To depict St. Petersburg, Gogol uses the following technique: synecdoche- transferring the characteristics of the whole to its part. Thus, it is enough to say about a uniform, an overcoat, a mustache, sideburns - or a nose - to give a comprehensive idea of a particular person. A person in the city becomes depersonalized, loses his individuality, becomes part of the crowd

It seems that it was not without reason that Gogol made St. Petersburg the setting for the story “The Nose.” In his opinion, only here could the indicated events “happen”; only in St. Petersburg they do not see the man himself behind his rank. Gogol brought the situation to the point of absurdity - the nose turned out to be a fifth-class official, and those around him, despite the obviousness of his “inhuman” nature, behave with him as with a normal person, accordingly his status . And Kovalev himself, the owner of the runaway nose, behaves in exactly the same way.

Gogol structured his plot in such a way that this incredible event - the sudden disappearance of the nose from the face and its subsequent appearance on the street in the form of a state councilor - either does not surprise the characters at all, or surprises, but not in the way it should, according to the logic of things. For example, a respectable gray-haired official from a newspaper expedition listens to Kovalev’s request absolutely indifferently. Kvartalny, who returned Kovalev’s nose, also did not see anything strange in this situation and even, out of habit, asked him for money.

What about Kovalev? What worries him is not that without a nose, in principle, he should be deprived of the ability to breathe, and the first thing the major does is not to the doctor, but to the chief of police. He is only worried about how he will appear in society now; Throughout the story there are very often scenes when the major looks at pretty girls. Thanks to the author's short description, we know that he is now choosing a bride for himself. In addition, he has “very good friends” - state councilor Chekhtareva, staff officer Pelageya Grigorievna Podtochina, who obviously provide him with useful connections. Undoubtedly, this is an exaggeration to show the reader what is real value for a St. Petersburg official.

The nose behaves as it should" significant person" in the rank of state councilor: he makes visits, prays in the Kazan Cathedral, visits the department, and plans to leave for Riga using someone else’s passport. Nobody cares where he came from. Everyone sees him not only as a person, but also as important. official . It is interesting that Kovalev himself, despite his efforts to expose him, approaches him with fear in the Kazan Cathedral and generally treats him as a person.

Grotesque in the story also lies in surprise and, one might say, absurdity . From the very first line of the work we see a clear indication of the date: “March 25th” - this does not immediately imply any fantasy. And then there’s the missing nose. There was some kind of sharp deformation of everyday life, bringing it to complete unreality. The absurdity lies in the equally dramatic change in the size of the nose. If on the first pages he is discovered by the barber Ivan Yakovlevich in a pie (that is, he has a size quite corresponding to a human nose), then at the moment when Major Kovalev first sees him, the nose is dressed in a uniform, suede trousers, a hat and even has a himself a sword - which means he is the height of an ordinary man. The last appearance of the nose in the story - and it is small again. The quarterly brings it wrapped in a piece of paper. It didn’t matter to Gogol why the nose suddenly grew to human size, and it didn’t matter why it shrank again. The central point of the story is precisely the period when the nose was perceived as a normal person.

The plot of the story is conventional, the idea itself is ridiculous , but this is precisely what Gogol’s grotesque consists of and, despite this, is quite realistic. Gogol unusually expanded the boundaries of convention and showed that this convention remarkably serves the knowledge of life. If in this in an absurd society everything is determined by rank, then why can’t this fantastically absurd organization of life be reproduced in a fantastic plot? Gogol shows that it is not only possible, but also quite advisable. And thus art forms ultimately reflect life forms.

How do the features of Gogol’s “fantastic realism” appear in the story “The Nose”? - Exactly the absurdity and fantastic nature of the plot caused such abundant criticism of the writer. But it should be understood that this story has a double meaning, and Gogol’s idea is much deeper and more instructive than it seems at first glance. It is thanks to such an incredible plot that Gogol manages to draw attention to an important topic at that time - a person’s position in society, his status and the individual’s dependence on him . From the story it becomes clear that Kovalev, who for greater importance called himself a major, all his life devotes himself to his career and social status, he has no other hopes or priorities.

In Russian literature, the grotesque was widely used to create bright and unusual artistic images by N. V. Gogol ("The Nose", "Notes of a Madman"), M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin ("The History of a City", "The Wild Landowner" and other fairy tales ), F. M. Dostoevsky ("The Double. The Adventures of Mr. Golyadkin").

What does the loss of his nose mean for the hero of the story? - Kovalev is losing his nose - something that, it would seem, cannot be lost for no apparent reason - and now he cannot appear in a decent place, in secular society, at work or in any other official institution. But he cannot come to an agreement with the nose; the nose pretends that it does not understand what its owner is talking about and ignores him. With this fantastic plot, Gogol wants to emphasize the shortcomings of the society of that time, the shortcomings of thinking and consciousness of that layer of society , to which collegiate assessor Kovalev belonged.

Grotesque is an unprecedented, special world, opposing not only everyday life, but also the real, actual. Here the grotesque borders on fantasy and unrealism. It shows how absurdly the scary and the funny, the absurd and the authentic collide.

Such is the world of Gogol's story "The Nose". Is it possible in our time for the inexplicable disappearance of Major Kovalev’s nose, his flight from his rightful owner, and then an equally inexplicable return to his place? Only by using the grotesque satirical genre was Gogol able to show this ill-fated nose, which exists simultaneously as part of the face and in the form of a state councilor serving in the scientific department. What is surprising to us does not surprise the rest of the characters in the comedy. Unusual incidents make us indignant, and everyone looks at it as if it were a planned action. In the end, we understand that the grotesque can exist without fantasy. If you think about it, some officials actually walk with their noses in the air, and sometimes you think that their nose controls them. To some extent, Gogol described our society; he combined the real with the absurd, the funny with the scary.

In order to understand what is unique about N.V.’s realism. Gogol, it is necessary to turn directly to the explanation of this literary concept and, relying on it, to find non-standard ways of implementing this artistic principle in the comedy “The Inspector General” and the poem “Dead Souls”.

According to F. Engels' definition, realism is the depiction of typical characters in typical circumstances while remaining faithful to the details. In realistic works there is a need for interaction between character and environment, which

Would motivate his development and formation. But at the same time, the possibility of dynamics in the character of a realistic hero is affirmed, which contributes to the emergence of a complex, contradictory image. In other words, a realistic work can be called a work where there is a hero (heroes) whom we could meet in real life, where we see the environment around him and understand the development of his character, the reasons that prompt him to act this way and not otherwise.

Such heroes, capable of autonomous life, possessing a rich inner world, will, acting almost in spite of

But in Gogol’s works there are no typical characters: neither a reasoning hero, nor a hero leading a love affair. In his writings there is no influence of the environment on the characters. In the poem "Dead Souls" Gogol characterizes each landowner through the environment that surrounds him. The writer shows the identity of a person and the everyday environment in which he lives and of which this hero is a continuation. The image is practically exhausted by the things surrounding it. Therefore, in Sobakevich’s house, even every chair “seemed to say”: “And I, too, Sobakevich!” Thus, the line between living and dead principles is blurred. With this inner deadness, the modern researcher of Gogol’s work, Yu. Mann, explains the “automatism” and “puppet-likeness” inherent in landowners and compares them with automata, which lack an individual reaction.

Another feature of Gogol’s realism is the presence of grotesque characters in the heroes of his works. It would seem that if the work is realistic, then there is no place for the grotesque, everything should be “like in life,” real.

In “The Inspector General” we see that the stupidity of Khlestakov, who thinks slower than his servant, and his career, when from a simple “elistrate” he turns into a department manager, have been brought to fantastic limits. Also, the fear of officials of the auditor, who subsequently interferes with their lives and turns them into “fossils,” is exaggerated to the maximum.

In the poem "Dead Souls" the grotesque is also unique: Gogol reveals only one trait or one word that characterizes a person. Thus, the trait that has reached its maximum development in Korobochka is her “club-headedness,” which deprives this heroine of the ability to think abstractly. To depict officials, Gogol uses an original means - just one detail, which essentially does not characterize them in any way. For example, the governor of the city N.N. “He was a big good-natured person and sometimes even embroidered tulle himself.”

Thus, it can be noted that the heroes of Gogol’s works are not so much characters as images, which are not characterized by the presence of internal content, spiritual development, or psychologism. Both the heroes of the comedy "The Inspector General" and the landowners (Manilov, Nozdrev) from the poem "Dead Souls" waste their vitality, cherish meaningless hopes and dreams. Wasting energy in pursuit of emptiness (in "The Inspector General") and the purchase of non-existent peasants - only their surnames, "sound" (in "Dead Souls") - form a mirage of intrigue in these works, on which the plot of the first work and the initial eleven chapters of the second are based .

Thus, Gogol often balances between the real and the fantastic. The line between the real and the fictional is quite blurred, which gives Gogol’s style of writing that unique charm. This feature of his narrative, coupled with the absence of a hero with a dynamic, developing character, makes the question of Gogol's realism the cause of much debate. But a modern researcher of realism, Markovich, expresses his opinion that realism does not presuppose life-likeness as such, does not presuppose exclusively life-like poetics. That is, with the help of mirage intrigue, Gogol shows the grotesquely exaggerated negative sides of his heroes. This allows him to portray the characters of his characters more vividly, to get closer to the most interesting aspects of reality for him.

Gogol criticizes the morals of people, the imperfection of their characters, but not the very foundations of the then existing order and not serfdom. We can say that Gogol affirmed the pathos of criticism, which was consciously part of his creative program, since this was characteristic of adherents of the “natural school.” The presence of pathos of criticism in Gogol’s works is confirmed by the author’s reflections in them about two types of writer, about false and true patriotism and about the seemingly completely legitimate right to “hide a scoundrel.” Gogol saw his goal as correcting the evils of society, which characterizes him as a realist. He was a writer who depicted reality “through laughter visible to the world and through tears invisible to the world.”

Gogol has been called "the most mysterious figure in Russian literature", according to Russian philosopher N. Berdyaev. Mystery marks, first of all, the writer’s life path, starting from his first steps.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a completely unique writer, unlike other masters of words. There is a lot in his work that is striking, arousing admiration and surprise: the funny is intertwined with the tragic, and the fantastic with the real. It has long been established that the basis of Gogol’s comic is carnival, that is, a situation where the heroes seem to put on masks, display unusual properties, change places, and everything seems confused and mixed up. On this basis, a very unique Gogolian fantasy arises, rooted in the depths of folk culture. Gogol was not only a realist and satirist, but a mystic and religious prophet, all of whose literary images are deep symbols.

Saltykov-Shchedrin believed that Gogol is a writer with “extraordinary, strong and high talent”, “the founder of critical realism”, “the greatest of Russian artists”. In the eyes of contemporaries, this is also an ambiguous, often contradictory nature. Many creative people have studied his literary heritage - from V. G. Belinsky to Yu. M. Lotman, including Andrei Bely and Vladimir Nabokov. From the first steps of his literary career, Gogol was interested in Ukrainian folklore. This contributed to the fact that subsequently folk motifs almost became the main ones in his work. Fortunately, this did not happen. Readers received a more multifaceted writer than was expected from his first texts. And critics and researchers deal with various manifestations of Gogol’s multiple talent.

Often the subject of close attention of literary scholars is what makes Gogol a particularly interesting and original figure - these are fairy-tale, fantastic motifs that play an important role in his work. After all, these motives, if you look at it, permeate most of Gogol’s works. At the same time, the very definition of “fantastic” should in this case be understood as broadly as possible. This is not just a “play of the imagination” of the writer, which is reflected in “fairy tales” about ghouls and other evil spirits. Even more important is the use of fantastic motifs to express the author’s worldview, when he, in symbols, grotesque images, and unimaginable plot structures, creates his own bizarre picture of the world, which is not correlated with everyday ideas about it. Therefore, there is, perhaps, no sphere of life accessible to human consciousness that Gogol, without touching on it, would not introduce an element of unusualness, mystery, and sometimes literally “diabolism.”

Similar features can be found in the description of the city, nature; the plot itself is sometimes unrealistic and does not have a “reasonable”, practical explanation. It is necessary to dwell on these aspects of the problem and illuminate them in somewhat more detail.