Matryonin Dvor analysis of the work. A lesson on Russian literature on the topic "Analysis of A.I. Solzhenitsyn's story "Matryonin's Dvor"." Folk character in the work

The history of the creation of Solzhenitsyn’s work “Matryonin’s Dvor”

In 1962, the magazine “New World” published the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” which made Solzhenitsyn’s name known throughout the country and far beyond its borders. A year later, in the same magazine, Solzhenitsyn published several stories, including “Matrenin’s Dvor.” At this point the publications stopped. None of the writer’s works were allowed to be published in the USSR. And in 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Initially, the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” was called “A village is not worth it without the righteous.” But, on the advice of A. Tvardovsky, in order to avoid censorship obstacles, the name was changed. For the same reasons, the year of action in the story from 1956 was replaced by the author with 1953. “Matrenin’s Dvor,” as the author himself noted, “is completely autobiographical and reliable.” All notes to the story report on the prototype of the heroine - Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova from the village of Miltsovo, Kurlovsky district, Vladimir region. The narrator, like the author himself, teaches in a Ryazan village, living with the heroine of the story, and the very middle name of the narrator - Ignatich - is consonant with the patronymic of A. Solzhenitsyn - Isaevich. The story, written in 1956, tells about the life of a Russian village in the fifties.
Critics praised the story. The essence of Solzhenitsyn’s work was noted by A. Tvardovsky: “Why is the fate of an old peasant woman, told on a few pages, of such great interest to us? This woman is unread, illiterate, a simple worker. And yet her spiritual world is endowed with such qualities that we talk to her as if we were talking to Anna Karenina.” Having read these words in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Solzhenitsyn immediately wrote to Tvardovsky: “Needless to say, the paragraph of your speech relating to Matryona means a lot to me. You pointed to the very essence - to a woman who loves and suffers, while all the criticism was always scouring the surface, comparing the Talnovsky collective farm and the neighboring ones.”
The first title of the story, “A village is not worthwhile without the righteous,” contained a deep meaning: the Russian village rests on people whose way of life is based on the universal human values ​​of goodness, labor, sympathy, and help. Since a righteous person is called, firstly, a person who lives in accordance with religious rules; secondly, a person who does not sin in any way against the rules of morality (rules that determine morals, behavior, spiritual and mental qualities necessary for a person in society). The second name - "Matrenin's Dvor" - somewhat changed the point of view: moral principles began to have clear boundaries only within the boundaries of Matryonin's Dvor. On a larger scale of the village, they are blurred; the people surrounding the heroine are often different from her. By titling the story “Matrenin’s Dvor,” Solzhenitsyn focused the readers’ attention on the wonderful world of the Russian woman.

Type, genre, creative method of the analyzed work

Solzhenitsyn once noted that he rarely turned to the short story genre, for “artistic pleasure”: “You can put a lot into a small form, and it is a great pleasure for an artist to work on a small form. Because in a small form you can hone the edges with great pleasure for yourself.” In the story “Matryonin’s Dvor” all facets are honed with brilliance, and encountering the story becomes, in turn, a great pleasure for the reader. The story is usually based on an incident that reveals the character of the main character.
There were two points of view in literary criticism regarding the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”. One of them presented Solzhenitsyn’s story as a phenomenon of “village prose.” V. Astafiev, calling “Matrenin’s Dvor” “the pinnacle of Russian short stories,” believed that our “village prose” came from this story. Somewhat later, this idea was developed in literary criticism.
At the same time, the story “Matryonin’s Dvor” was associated with the original genre of “monumental story” that emerged in the second half of the 1950s. An example of this genre is M. Sholokhov’s story “The Fate of a Man.”
In the 1960s, the genre features of the “monumental story” are recognized in “Matryona’s Court” by A. Solzhenitsyn, “Mother of Man” by V. Zakrutkin, “In the Light of Day” by E. Kazakevich. The main difference of this genre is the depiction of a simple person who is the custodian of universal human values. Moreover, the image of an ordinary person is given in sublime tones, and the story itself is focused on a high genre. Thus, in the story “The Fate of Man” the features of an epic are visible. And in “Matryona’s Dvor” the focus is on the lives of saints. Before us is the life of Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva, a righteous woman and great martyr of the era of “total collectivization” and a tragic experiment over an entire country. Matryona was portrayed by the author as a saint (“Only she had fewer sins than a lame-legged cat”).

Subject of the work

The theme of the story is a description of the life of a patriarchal Russian village, which reflects how thriving selfishness and rapacity are disfiguring Russia and “destroying connections and meaning.” The writer raises in a short story the serious problems of the Russian village of the early 50s. (her life, customs and morals, the relationship between power and the human worker). The author repeatedly emphasizes that the state only needs working hands, and not the person himself: “She was lonely all around, and since she began to get sick, she was released from the collective farm.” A person, according to the author, should mind his own business. So Matryona finds the meaning of life in work, she is angry at the unscrupulous attitude of others to the work.

An analysis of the work shows that the problems raised in it are subordinated to one goal: to reveal the beauty of the heroine’s Christian-Orthodox worldview. Using the example of the fate of a village woman, show that life's losses and suffering only more clearly reveal the measure of humanity in each person. But Matryona dies and this world collapses: her house is torn apart log by log, her modest belongings are greedily divided. And there is no one to protect Matryona’s yard, no one even thinks that with Matryona’s departure something very valuable and important, not amenable to division and primitive everyday assessment, is leaving life. “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the very righteous person without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand. Not a city. Neither the whole land is ours.” The last phrases expand the boundaries of Matryonya’s courtyard (as the heroine’s personal world) to the scale of humanity.

The main characters of the work

The main character of the story, as indicated in the title, is Matryona Vasilyevna Grigorieva. Matryona is a lonely, destitute peasant woman with a generous and selfless soul. She lost her husband in the war, buried six of her own, and raised other people’s children. Matryona gave her pupil the most precious thing in her life - a house: “... she didn’t feel sorry for the upper room, which stood idle, like neither her labor nor her goods...”.
The heroine suffered many hardships in life, but did not lose the ability to empathize with others' joy and sorrow. She is selfless: she sincerely rejoices at someone else’s good harvest, although she herself never has one in the sand. Matryona’s entire wealth consists of a dirty white goat, a lame cat and large flowers in tubs.
Matryona is the concentration of the best traits of the national character: she is shy, understands the “education” of the narrator, and respects him for this. The author appreciates in Matryona her delicacy, lack of annoying curiosity about the life of another person, and hard work. She worked on a collective farm for a quarter of a century, but because she was not at a factory, she was not entitled to a pension for herself, and she could only get it for her husband, that is, for the breadwinner. As a result, she never achieved a pension. Life was extremely difficult. She obtained grass for the goat, peat for warmth, collected old stumps torn up by a tractor, soaked lingonberries for the winter, grew potatoes, helping those around her to survive.
An analysis of the work says that the image of Matryona and individual details in the story are symbolic in nature. Solzhenitsyn's Matryona is the embodiment of the ideal of a Russian woman. As noted in critical literature, the heroine’s appearance is like an icon, and her life is like the lives of saints. Her house symbolizes the ark of the biblical Noah, in which he is saved from the global flood. Matryona's death symbolizes the cruelty and meaninglessness of the world in which she lived.
The heroine lives according to the laws of Christianity, although her actions are not always clear to others. Therefore, the attitude towards it is different. Matryona is surrounded by her sisters, sister-in-law, adopted daughter Kira, and the only friend in the village, Thaddeus. However, no one appreciated it. She lived poorly, squalidly, alone - a “lost old woman”, exhausted by work and illness. Relatives almost never showed up at her house; they all condemned Matryona in unison, saying that she was funny and stupid, that she had been working for others for free all her life. Everyone mercilessly took advantage of Matryona’s kindness and simplicity - and unanimously judged her for it. Among the people around her, the author treats her heroine with great sympathy; both her son Thaddeus and her pupil Kira love her.
The image of Matryona is contrasted in the story with the image of the cruel and greedy Thaddeus, who seeks to get Matryona’s house during her lifetime.
Matryona's courtyard is one of the key images of the story. The description of the yard and house is detailed, with a lot of details, devoid of bright colors. Matryona lives “in the wilderness.” It is important for the author to emphasize the inseparability of a house and a person: if the house is destroyed, its owner will also die. This unity is already stated in the title of the story. For Matryona, the hut is filled with a special spirit and light; a woman’s life is connected with the “life” of the house. Therefore, for a long time she did not agree to demolish the hut.

Plot and composition

The story consists of three parts. In the first part we are talking about how fate threw the hero-storyteller to a station with a strange name for Russian places - Torfoprodukt. A former prisoner, and now a school teacher, eager to find peace in some remote and quiet corner of Russia, finds shelter and warmth in the house of the elderly Matryona, who has experienced life. “Maybe to some from the village, who are richer, Matryona’s hut did not seem good-natured, but for us that autumn and winter it was quite good: it had not yet leaked from the rains and the cold winds did not blow the stove heat out of it right away, only in the morning , especially when the wind was blowing from the leaky side. Besides Matryona and me, the other people living in the hut were a cat, mice and cockroaches.” They immediately find a common language. Next to Matryona, the hero calms down his soul.
In the second part of the story, Matryona recalls her youth, the terrible ordeal that befell her. Her fiancé Thaddeus went missing in the First World War. The younger brother of the missing husband, Efim, who was left alone after death with his youngest children in his arms, wooed her. Matryona felt sorry for Efim and married someone she didn’t love. And here, after three years of absence, Thaddeus himself unexpectedly returned, whom Matryona continued to love. Hard life did not harden Matryona's heart. Caring for her daily bread, she walked her way to the end. And even death overtook a woman in labor worries. Matryona dies while helping Thaddeus and his sons drag part of their own hut, bequeathed to Kira, across the railroad on a sleigh. Thaddeus did not want to wait for Matryona’s death and decided to take away the inheritance for the young people during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death.
In the third part, the tenant learns about the death of the owner of the house. The descriptions of the funeral and wake showed the true attitude of the people close to her towards Matryona. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry more out of obligation than from the heart, and think only about the final division of Matryona’s property. And Thaddeus doesn’t even come to the wake.

Artistic features of the analyzed story

The artistic world in the story is built linearly - in accordance with the heroine’s life story. In the first part of the work, the entire narrative about Matryona is given through the perception of the author, a man who has endured a lot in his life, who dreamed of “getting lost and lost in the very interior of Russia.” The narrator evaluates her life from the outside, compares it with her surroundings, and becomes an authoritative witness of righteousness. In the second part, the heroine talks about herself. The combination of lyrical and epic pages, the coupling of episodes according to the principle of emotional contrast allows the author to change the rhythm of the narrative and its tone. This is the way the author goes to recreate a multi-layered picture of life. Already the first pages of the story serve as a convincing example. It opens with an opening story about a tragedy at a railway siding. We will learn the details of this tragedy at the end of the story.
Solzhenitsyn in his work does not give a detailed, specific description of the heroine. Only one portrait detail is constantly emphasized by the author - Matryona’s “radiant”, “kind”, “apologetic” smile. Nevertheless, by the end of the story the reader imagines the appearance of the heroine. Already in the very tonality of the phrase, the selection of “colors” one can feel the author’s attitude towards Matryona: “The frozen window of the entryway, now shortened, was filled with a little pink from the red frosty sun, and Matryona’s face was warmed by this reflection.” And then - a direct author’s description: “Those people always have good faces, who are in harmony with their conscience.” Even after the terrible death of the heroine, her “face remained intact, calm, more alive than dead.”
Matryona embodies a folk character, which is primarily manifested in her speech. Expressiveness and bright individuality are given to her language by the abundance of colloquial, dialectal vocabulary (prispeyu, kuzhotkamu, letota, molonya). Her manner of speech, the way she pronounces her words, is also deeply folkish: “They began with some kind of low, warm purring, like grandmothers in fairy tales.” “Matryonin’s Dvor” minimally includes the landscape; he pays more attention to the interior, which appears not on its own, but in a lively interweaving with the “residents” and with sounds - from the rustling of mice and cockroaches to the state of ficus trees and a lanky cat. Every detail here characterizes not only peasant life, Matryonin’s yard, but also the narrator. The narrator's voice reveals a psychologist, a moralist, even a poet in him - in the way he observes Matryona, her neighbors and relatives, and how he evaluates them and her. The poetic feeling is manifested in the author’s emotions: “Only she had fewer sins than a cat...”; “But Matryona rewarded me...” The lyrical pathos is especially obvious at the very end of the story, where even the syntactic structure changes, including paragraphs, turning the speech into blank verse:
“The Veems lived next to her / and did not understand / that she was the very righteous person / without whom, according to the proverb, / the village would not stand. /Neither the city./Nor our whole land.”
The writer was looking for a new word. An example of this is his convincing articles on language in Literaturnaya Gazeta, his fantastic commitment to Dahl (researchers note that Solzhenitsyn borrowed approximately 40% of the vocabulary in the story from Dahl’s dictionary), and his inventiveness in vocabulary. In the story "Matrenin's Dvor" Solzhenitsyn came to the language of preaching.

Meaning of the work

“There are such born angels,” Solzhenitsyn wrote in the article “Repentance and Self-Restraint,” as if characterizing Matryona, “they seem to be weightless, they seem to glide over this slurry, without drowning in it at all, even if their feet touch its surface? Each of us has met such people, there are not ten or a hundred of them in Russia, these are righteous people, we saw them, were surprised (“eccentrics”), took advantage of their goodness, in good moments responded to them in kind, they have a positive attitude, and immediately immersed again to our doomed depths.”
What is the essence of Matryona's righteousness? In life, not by lies, we will now say in the words of the writer himself, spoken much later. In creating this character, Solzhenitsyn places him in the most ordinary circumstances of rural collective farm life in the 50s. Matryona's righteousness lies in her ability to preserve her humanity even in such inaccessible conditions. As N.S. Leskov wrote, righteousness is the ability to live “without lying, without being deceitful, without condemning one’s neighbor and without condemning a biased enemy.”
The story was called “brilliant,” “a truly brilliant work.” Reviews about it noted that among Solzhenitsyn’s stories it stands out for its strict artistry, integrity of poetic expression, and consistency of artistic taste.
Story by A.I. Solzhenitsyn's "Matrenin's Dvor" - for all times. It is especially relevant today, when issues of moral values ​​and life priorities are acute in modern Russian society.

Point of view

Anna Akhmatova
When his big work came out (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”), I said: all 200 million should read this. And when I read “Matryona’s Dvor”, I cried, and I rarely cry.
V. Surganov
In the end, it is not so much the appearance of Solzhenitsyn’s Matryona that evokes an internal rebuff in us, but rather the author’s frank admiration for the beggarly selflessness and the no less frank desire to exalt and contrast it with the rapacity of the owner nesting in the people around her, close to her.
(From the book “The Word Makes Its Way.”
Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn.
1962-1974. - M.: Russian way, 1978.)
This is interesting
On August 20, 1956, Solzhenitsyn went to his place of work. There were many names such as “Peat Product” in the Vladimir region. Peat product (the local youth called it “Tyr-pyr”) was a railway station 180 kilometers and a four-hour drive from Moscow along the Kazan road. The school was located in the nearby village of Mezinovsky, and Solzhenitsyn had a chance to live two kilometers from the school - in the Meshchera village of Miltsevo.
Only three years will pass, and Solzhenitsyn will write a story that will immortalize these places: a station with a clumsy name, a village with a tiny market, the house of the landlady Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova and Matryona herself, the righteous woman and sufferer. The photograph of the corner of the hut, where the guest puts a cot and, pushing aside the owner's ficus trees, arranges a table with a lamp, will go around the whole world.
The teaching staff of Mezinovka numbered about fifty members that year and significantly influenced the life of the village. There were four schools here: primary, seven-year, secondary and evening schools for working youth. Solzhenitsyn was sent to a secondary school - it was located in an old one-story building. The school year began with an August teachers' conference, so, having arrived in Torfoprodukt, the teacher of mathematics and electrical engineering of grades 8-10 had time to go to the Kurlovsky district for the traditional meeting. “Isaich,” as his colleagues dubbed him, could, if he wanted, refer to a serious illness, but no, he did not talk about it with anyone. We just saw how he was looking for a birch chaga mushroom and some herbs in the forest, and answered questions briefly: “I make medicinal drinks.” He was considered shy: after all, a person suffered... But that was not the point at all: “I came with my purpose, with my past. What could they know, what could they tell them? I sat with Matryona and wrote a novel every free minute. Why would I chatter to myself? I didn't have that manner. I was a conspirator to the end." Then everyone will get used to the fact that this thin, pale, tall man in a suit and tie, who, like all the teachers, wore a hat, coat or raincoat, keeps his distance and does not get close to anyone. He will remain silent when the document on rehabilitation arrives in six months - just the school head teacher B.S. Protserov will receive a notification from the village council and send the teacher for a certificate. No talking when the wife starts arriving. “What does anyone care? I live with Matryona and live.” Many were alarmed (was he a spy?) that he walked everywhere with a Zorkiy camera and took pictures that were not at all what amateurs usually take: instead of family and friends - houses, dilapidated farms, boring landscapes.
Arriving at the school at the beginning of the school year, he proposed his own methodology - he gave all classes a test, based on the results he divided the students into strong and mediocre, and then worked individually.
During the lessons, everyone received a separate task, so there was neither the opportunity nor the desire to cheat. Not only the solution to the problem was valued, but also the method of solution. The introductory part of the lesson was shortened as much as possible: the teacher wasted time on “trifles.” He knew exactly who and when to call to the board, who to ask more often, who to entrust with independent work. The teacher never sat at the teacher's table. He didn’t enter the class, but burst into it. He ignited everyone with his energy and knew how to structure a lesson in such a way that there was no time to get bored or doze off. He respected his students. He never shouted, didn’t even raise his voice.
And only outside the classroom Solzhenitsyn was silent and withdrawn. He went home after school, ate the “cardboard” soup Matryona had prepared and sat down to work. The neighbors remembered for a long time how inconspicuously the guest lived, did not organize parties, did not participate in the fun, but read and wrote everything. “I loved Matryona Isaich,” Shura Romanova, Matryona’s adopted daughter (in the story she is Kira), used to say. “It used to be that she would come to me in Cherusti, and I would persuade her to stay longer.” “No,” he says. “I have Isaac - I need to cook for him, light the stove.” And back home."
The lodger also became attached to the lost old woman, valuing her selflessness, conscientiousness, heartfelt simplicity, and smile, which he tried in vain to catch in the camera lens. “So Matryona got used to me, and I got used to her, and we lived easily. She did not interfere with my long evening studies, did not annoy me with any questions.” She completely lacked womanly curiosity, and the lodger also did not stir her soul, but it turned out that they opened up to each other.
She learned about the prison, and about the serious illness of the guest, and about his loneliness. And there was no worse loss for him in those days than the absurd death of Matryona on February 21, 1957 under the wheels of a freight train at the crossing of one hundred and eighty-four kilometers from Moscow along the branch that goes to Murom from Kazan, exactly six months after the day he settled in her hut.
(From the book “Alexander Solzhenitsyn” by Lyudmila Saraskina)
Matryona's yard is as poor as before
Solzhenitsyn’s acquaintance with the “conda”, “interior” Russia, in which he so wanted to end up after the Ekibastuz exile, a few years later was embodied in the world-famous story “Matrenin’s Dvor”. This year marks 40 years since its creation. As it turned out, in Mezinovsky itself this work of Solzhenitsyn has become a second-hand book rarity. This book is not even in Matryona’s yard, where Lyuba, the niece of the heroine of Solzhenitsyn’s story, now lives. “I had pages from a magazine, my neighbors once asked me when they started reading it at school, but they never returned it,” complains Lyuba, who today is raising her grandson within the “historical” walls on a disability benefit. She inherited Matryona's hut from her mother, Matryona's youngest sister. The hut was transported to Mezinovsky from the neighboring village of Miltsevo (in Solzhenitsyn’s story - Talnovo), where the future writer lived with Matryona Zakharova (in Solzhenitsyn’s - Matryona Grigorieva). In the village of Miltsevo, for the visit of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1994, a similar, but much more solid house was hastily erected. Soon after Solzhenitsyn’s memorable visit, Matrenina’s fellow countrymen uprooted the window frames and floorboards from this unguarded building on the outskirts of the village.
The “new” Mezinovskaya school, built in 1957, now has 240 students. In the unpreserved building of the old one, in which Solzhenitsyn taught classes, about a thousand studied. Over the course of half a century, not only did the Miltsevskaya river become shallow and the peat reserves in the surrounding swamps became depleted, but the neighboring villages were also deserted. And at the same time, Solzhenitsyn’s Thaddeus has not ceased to exist, calling the people’s good “ours” and believing that losing it is “shameful and stupid.”
Matryona's crumbling house, moved to a new location without a foundation, is sunk into the ground, and buckets are placed under the thin roof when it rains. Like Matryona’s, cockroaches are in full swing here, but there are no mice: there are four cats in the house, two of their own and two that have strayed. A former foundry worker at a local factory, Lyuba, like Matryona, who once spent months straightening out her pension, goes through the authorities to extend her disability benefits. “Nobody except Solzhenitsyn helps,” she complains. “Once one came in a jeep, called himself Alexey, looked around the house and gave me money.” Behind the house, like Matryona’s, there is a vegetable garden of 15 acres, in which Lyuba plants potatoes. As before, “mushy potatoes,” mushrooms and cabbage are the main products for her life. Besides cats, she doesn’t even have a goat in her yard, like Matryona had.
This is how many Mezinov righteous people lived and live. Local historians write books about the great writer’s stay in Mezinovskoye, local poets compose poems, new pioneers write essays “On the difficult fate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel laureate,” as they once wrote essays about Brezhnev’s “Virgin Land” and “Malaya Zemlya.” They are thinking about reviving Matryona’s museum hut again on the outskirts of the deserted village of Miltsevo. And the old Matryonin’s yard still lives the same life as half a century ago.
Leonid Novikov, Vladimir region.

Gang Yu. Solzhenitsyn’s Service // New Time. - 1995. No. 24.
Zapevalov V. A. Solzhenitsyn. To the 30th anniversary of the publication of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” // Russian literature. - 1993. No. 2.
Litvinova V.I. Don't live a lie. Methodological recommendations for studying the creativity of A.I. Solzhenitsyn. - Abakan: KhSU Publishing House, 1997.
MurinD. One hour, one day, one human life in the stories of A.I. Solzhenitsyn // Literature at school. - 1995. No. 5.
Palamarchuk P. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Guide. - M.,
1991.
SaraskinaL. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. ZhZL series. — M.: Young
Guard, 2009.
The word makes its way. Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn. 1962-1974. - M.: Russian way, 1978.
ChalmaevV. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Life and Work. - M., 1994.
Urmanov A.V. The works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. - M., 2003.

A. N. Solzhenitsyn, having returned from exile, worked as a teacher at the Miltsevo school. He lived in the apartment of Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova. All the events described by the author were real. Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matrenin’s Dvor” describes the difficult lot of a Russian collective farm village. We offer for your information an analysis of the story according to plan; this information can be used for work in literature lessons in the 9th grade, as well as in preparation for the Unified State Exam.

Brief Analysis

Year of writing– 1959

History of creation– The writer began working on his work, dedicated to the problems of the Russian village, in the summer of 1959 on the coast of Crimea, where he was visiting his friends in exile. Beware of censorship, it was recommended to change the title “A village is not worth it without a righteous man,” and on the advice of Tvardovsky, the writer’s story was called “Matrenin’s Dvor.”

Subject– The main theme of this work is the life and everyday life of the Russian hinterland, the problems of relations between the common man and the authorities, and moral problems.

Composition– The narration is told on behalf of the narrator, as if through the eyes of an outside observer. The features of the composition allow us to understand the very essence of the story, where the heroes will come to the realization that the meaning of life is not only (and not so much) in enrichment, material values, but in moral values, and this problem is universal, and not a single village.

Genre– The genre of the work is defined as “monumental story.”

Direction– Realism.

History of creation

The writer’s story is autobiographical; after exile, he actually taught in the village of Miltsevo, which is named Talnovo in the story, and rented a room from Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova. In his short story, the writer depicted not only the fate of one hero, but also the entire epoch-making idea of ​​​​the formation of the country, all its problems and moral principles.

Myself meaning of the name“Matrenin’s yard” is a reflection of the main idea of ​​the work, where the boundaries of her yard are expanded to the scale of the whole country, and the idea of ​​morality turns into universal human problems. From this we can conclude that the history of the creation of “Matryona’s Yard” does not include a separate village, but the history of the creation of a new outlook on life and on the power that governs the people.

Subject

Having carried out an analysis of the work in Matryona's Dvor, it is necessary to determine main topic story, to find out what the autobiographical essay teaches not only the author himself, but, by and large, the whole country.

The life and work of the Russian people, their relationship with the authorities are deeply covered. A person works all his life, losing his personal life and interests in his work. Your health, in the end, without getting anything. Using the example of Matryona, it is shown that she worked all her life without any official documents about her work, and did not even earn a pension.

All the last months of its existence were spent collecting various pieces of paper, and the red tape and bureaucracy of the authorities also led to the fact that one had to go and get the same piece of paper more than once. Indifferent people sitting at desks in offices can easily put the wrong seal, signature, stamp; they do not care about people’s problems. So Matryona, in order to achieve a pension, goes through all the authorities more than once, somehow achieving a result.

The villagers think only about their own enrichment; for them there are no moral values. Thaddeus Mironovich, her husband's brother, forced Matryona during her lifetime to give the promised part of the house to her adopted daughter, Kira. Matryona agreed, and when, out of greed, two sleighs were hooked up to one tractor, the cart was hit by a train, and Matryona died along with her nephew and the tractor driver. Human greed is above all, that same evening, her only friend, Aunt Masha, came to her house to pick up the thing promised to her before Matryona’s sisters stole it.

And Thaddeus Mironovich, who also had a coffin with his late son in his house, still managed to remove the logs abandoned at the crossing before the funeral, and did not even come to pay tribute to the memory of the woman who died a terrible death because of his irrepressible greed. Matryona’s sisters, first of all, took her funeral money and began to divide the remains of the house, crying over their sister’s coffin not out of grief and sympathy, but because that’s how it was supposed to be.

In fact, humanly speaking, no one felt sorry for Matryona. Greed and greed blinded the eyes of fellow villagers, and people will never understand Matryona that with her spiritual development the woman stands at an unattainable height from them. She is a true righteous woman.

Composition

The events of that time are described from the perspective of an outsider, a tenant who lived in Matryona’s house.

Narrator starts his story from the time he was looking for a job as a teacher, trying to find a remote village to live in. As fate would have it, he ended up in the village where Matryona lived and settled down with her.

In the second part, the narrator describes the difficult fate of Matryona, who has not seen happiness since his youth. Her life was hard, with daily labors and worries. She had to bury all of her six children who were born. Matryona endured a lot of torment and grief, but did not become embittered, and her soul did not harden. She is still hardworking and selfless, friendly and peaceful. She never judges anyone, treats everyone evenly and kindly, and still works in her yard. She died trying to help her relatives move their own part of the house.

In the third part, the narrator describes the events after Matryona’s death, the same callousness of people, the woman’s relatives and friends, who, after the woman’s death, flew like crows into the remains of her yard, trying to quickly steal and plunder everything, condemning Matryona for her righteous life.

Main characters

Genre

The publication of Matryona's Court caused a lot of controversy among Soviet critics. Tvardovsky wrote in his notes that Solzhenitsyn is the only writer who expresses his opinion without regard to the authorities and the opinions of critics.

Everyone clearly came to the conclusion that the writer’s work belongs to "monumental story", so in a high spiritual genre a description of a simple Russian woman is given, personifying universal human values.

Work test

Rating analysis

Average rating: 4.7. Total ratings received: 1601.

Solzhenitsyn's surname these days is associated exclusively with his novel “The Gulag Archipelago” and its scandalous fame. However, he began his journey as a writer as a talented short story writer, who in his stories depicted the fate of ordinary Russian people of the mid-twentieth century. The story “Matryonin’s Dvor” is the most striking example of Solzhenitsyn’s early work, which reflected his best writing talents. The many-wise Litrecon offers you its analysis.

The history of writing the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” is a series of interesting facts:

  • The story is based on Solzhenitsyn’s memories of his life after returning from a labor camp, when he lived for some time in the village of Maltsevo, in the house of the peasant woman Matryona Zakharova. She became the prototype of the main character.
  • Work on the work began in the summer of '59 in Crimea, and was completed in the same year. The publication was supposed to take place in the magazine “New World”, but the work passed the editorial committee only the second time, thanks to the help of editor A.T. Tvardovsky.
  • The censors did not want to let a story with the title “A village not stand without a righteous man” (this was the first title of Solzhenitsyn’s work) go into print. They saw in it unacceptable religious overtones. Under pressure from the editors, the author changed the title to a neutral one.
  • “Matrenin’s Dvor” became Solzhenitsyn’s second work after the book “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” It gave rise to a lot of controversy and disagreement, and after the author emigrated, it was completely banned, like all the books of the dissident writer.
  • Readers saw the story only in 1989, during the era of Perestroika, when a new principle of USSR policy - glasnost - came into force.

Direction and genre

The story "Matryonin's Dvor" was written within the framework. The writer strives for a reliable depiction of the surrounding reality. The images he created, their words and actions breathe authenticity and naturalism. The reader can believe that the events described in the story could actually happen.

The genre of this work can be defined as a story. The narrative covers a short period of time and includes a minimal number of characters. The problem is local in nature and does not affect the world as a whole. The absence of any specifics only emphasizes the typicality of the events shown.

Meaning of the name

Initially, Solzhenitsyn gave his story the title “A village is not worth without a righteous man,” which emphasized the writer’s main idea about a highly spiritual main character who unselfishly sacrifices herself for the sake of those around her and thereby binds people embittered by poverty together.

However, in the future, in order to avoid Soviet censorship, Tvardovsky advised the writer to replace the title with a less provocative one, which was done. “Matrenin’s Dvor” is both a reflection of the denouement of the work (the death of the heroine and the division of her property), and an indication of the main theme of the book - the life of a righteous woman in a village exhausted by wars and the predatory policies of the authorities.

Composition and Conflict

The story is divided into three chapters.

  1. The first chapter is devoted to exposition: the author introduces us to his hero and tells us about Matryona herself.
  2. In the second chapter, the beginning occurs, when the main conflict of the work is revealed, as well as the climax, when the conflict reaches its highest point.
  3. The third chapter is reserved for the finale, in which all storylines come to a logical conclusion.

The conflict in the work is local in nature between the righteous old woman Matryona and those around her, who use her kindness for their own purposes. However, the artistic features of the story create a feeling of typicality of this situation. Thus, Solzhenitsyn gives this conflict an all-Russian philosophical character. People have become embittered due to unbearable living conditions, and only a few are able to retain kindness and responsiveness.

The bottom line: what is it about?

The story begins with the fact that the narrator, having spent ten years in exile in a labor camp, settles in the village of Torfoprodukt, in the house of Grigorieva Matryona Vasilievna.

Gradually, the main character learns the whole story of Matryona’s life, about her unsuccessful marriage, about the death of her children and husband, about her conflict with her ex-fiancé Thaddeus, about all the difficulties that she had to go through. The narrator develops respect for the old woman, seeing in her the support on which not only the local collective farm, but the whole of Russia rests.

At the end of the story, Matryona, under pressure from Thaddeus’s family, gives it to her daughter Kira, whom she raised, as her part of her hut, bequeathed to her. However, while helping to transport the dismantled room, he dies. Matryona's relatives are sad only for show, rejoicing at the opportunity to share the old woman's inheritance.

The main characters and their characteristics

The system of images in the story “Mother’s Court” is presented by the Many-Wise Litrecon in table format.

heroes of the story "Mother's Court" characteristic
Matryona an ordinary Russian peasant woman. a kind, sympathetic and submissive old woman who sacrificed herself for others all her life. after her fiancé, Thaddeus, went missing, under family pressure she married his brother, Efim. unfortunately, all her children died before they even lived three months, so many began to consider Matryona “damaged.” Then Matryona took Kira, Thaddeus’s daughter from his second marriage, to raise her, and sincerely fell in love with him, bequeathing to her part of her hut. she worked for nothing and devoted her whole life to people, being content with little.
kira a simple village girl. Before her marriage, she was raised by Matryona and lived with her. the only person, besides the narrator, who sincerely mourns the deceased. She is grateful to the old woman for her love and kindness, but she treats her family coldly, because she was simply given away as a puppy to a strange woman.
Thaddeus sixty-year-old Russian peasant. was Matryona's favorite fiancé, but was captured during the war, and for a long time nothing was heard about him. After returning, he hated Matryona because she did not wait for him. married a second time to a woman also named Matryona. an authoritarian head of the family who does not hesitate to use brute force. a greedy person who strives to accumulate wealth at any cost.
narrator Ignatyich

a kind and sympathetic person, observant and educated, unlike the villagers. At first, the village does not accept him because of his dubious past, but Matryona helps him join the team and find shelter. It is no coincidence that the author indicates the exact coordinates of the village, emphasizing that he was forbidden to approach the city at a distance of 100 km. this is a reflection of the author himself, even his patronymic is similar to the hero’s patronymic - Isaevich.

Themes

The theme of the story “Mother’s Court” is universal and is food for thought for all generations of people:

  1. Soviet village life– Solzhenitsyn portrays the life of Soviet peasants as an ordeal. Village life is difficult, and the peasants themselves are mostly rude and their morals are cruel. A person has to make great efforts to remain himself in such a hostile atmosphere. The narrator emphasizes that people are exhausted by eternal wars and reforms in agriculture. They have a slave position and no prospects.
  2. Kindness– the focus of kindness in the story is Matryona. The author sincerely admires the old woman. And, although in the end those around her use the heroine’s kindness for selfish purposes, Solzhenitsyn has no doubt that this is exactly how one should live - to give one’s all for the good of society and the people, and not to fill bags with wealth.
  3. Responsiveness– in the Soviet village, according to the writer, there is no place for responsiveness and sincerity. All peasants think only about their survival and do not care about the needs of other people. Only Matryona was able to retain her kindness and desire to help others.
  4. Fate– Solzhenitsyn shows that often a person is not able to control his life and must obey circumstances, like Matryona, but only he controls a person’s soul, and he always has a choice: to become embittered at the world and become callous, or to preserve his humanity.
  5. Righteousness– Matryona, in the eyes of the writer, looks like the ideal of a righteous Russian person who gives all of himself for the good of other people, on whom the entire Russian people and Russia rest. The theme of righteousness is revealed in the actions and thoughts of a woman, in her difficult fate. No matter what happens, she does not lose heart and does not complain. She only pities others, but not herself, although fate does not spoil her with attention. This is the essence of the righteous - to preserve the moral wealth of the soul, having gone through all life's trials, and to inspire people to moral deeds.

Problems

The problems of the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” are a reflection of the problems of the development and formation of the USSR. The victorious revolution did not make the life of the people easier, but only complicated it:

  1. Indifference- the main problem in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”. The villagers are indifferent to each other, they are indifferent to the fate of their fellow villagers. Everyone tries to get their hands on someone else's penny, earn extra and live more satisfyingly. All people’s concerns are only about material success, and the spiritual side of life is as indifferent to them as the fate of their neighbor.
  2. Poverty– Solzhenitsyn shows the unbearable conditions in which Russian peasants live, upon whom the difficult trials of collectivization and war fell. People survive, not live. They have neither medicine, nor education, nor the benefits of civilization. Even the morals of people are similar to medieval ones.
  3. Cruelty– peasant life in Solzhenitsyn’s story is subordinated to purely practical interests. In peasant life there is no place for kindness and weakness; it is cruel and rude. The kindness of the main character is perceived by fellow villagers as “eccentricity” or even a lack of intelligence.
  4. Greed– the focus of greed in the story is Thaddeus, who is ready, during Matryona’s lifetime, to dismantle her hut in order to increase his wealth. Solzhenitsyn condemns this approach to life.
  5. War– the story mentions a war, which becomes another difficult test for the village and indirectly becomes the cause of many years of discord between Matryona and Thaddeus. She cripples people's lives, robs villages and ruins families, taking away the best of the best.
  6. Death– Matryona’s death is perceived by Solzhenitsyn as a catastrophe on a national scale, because along with her the idealistic Christian Rus' that the writer so admired dies.

main idea

In his story, Solzhenitsyn depicted the life of a Russian village in the mid-twentieth century without any embellishment, with all its lack of spirituality and cruelty. This village is contrasted with Matryona, who lives the life of a true Christian. According to the writer, it is thanks to such selfless individuals as Matryona that the whole country, clogged with poverty, war and political miscalculations, lives. The meaning of the story “Matryona’s Dvor” lies in the priority of eternal Christian values ​​(kindness, responsiveness, mercy, generosity) over the “worldly wisdom” of greedy and mired peasants. Freedom, equality and brotherhood could not replace simple truths in the minds of the people - the need for spiritual development and love for one's neighbor.

The main idea in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” is the need for righteousness in everyday life. People cannot live without moral values ​​- kindness, mercy, generosity and mutual assistance. Even if everyone loses them, there must be at least one guardian of the soul's treasury who will remind everyone of the importance of moral qualities.

What does it teach?

The story “Matryona’s Court” promotes Christian humility and self-sacrifice, which Matryona demonstrated. He shows that not everyone can live such a life, but he emphasizes that this is exactly how a real person should live. This is the moral laid down by Solzhenitsyn.

Solzhenitsyn condemns the greed, rudeness and selfishness that reign in the village, calls on people to be kinder to each other, to live in peace and harmony. This conclusion can be drawn from the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”.

Criticism

Alexander Tvardovsky himself admired Solzhenitsyn’s work, calling him a real writer, and his story a true work of art.

Before Solzhenitsyn’s arrival today, I re-read his “Righteous Woman” since five in the morning. Oh my god, writer. No jokes. A writer who is solely concerned with expressing what lies “at the core” of his mind and heart. Not a shadow of a desire to “hit the bull’s eye”, to please, to make the task of an editor or critic easier - whatever you want, get out of it, but I won’t get out of my way. I can only go further

L. Chukovskaya, who moved in journalistic circles, described the story as follows:

...What if they don’t publish Solzhenitsyn’s second work? I liked her more than the first one. She stuns with her courage, astonishes with her material, and, of course, with her literary skill; and “Matryona”... here you can already see a great artist, humane, returning to us our native language, loving Russia, as Blok said, with mortally insulted love.

“Matryonin’s Dvor” caused a real explosion in the literary community and often mirror opposite reviews. Nowadays, the story is considered one of the most outstanding prose works of the second half of the twentieth century and a striking example of the work of early Solzhenitsyn.

In the summer of 1956, the hero of the story, Ignatyich, returns to central Russia from the Asian camps. In the story he is endowed with the function of narrator. The hero works as a teacher in a rural school and settles in the village of Talnovo in the hut of sixty-year-old Matryona Vasilievna Grigorieva. The tenant and the landlady turn out to be people who are spiritually close to each other. In Ignatyich’s story about Matryona’s daily life, in the assessments of the people around her, in her actions, judgments and memories of her experiences, the fate of the heroine and her inner world are revealed to the reader. The fate of Matryona and her image become for the hero a symbol of fate and the image of Russia itself.

In winter, the relatives of Matryona’s husband take away part of the house from the heroine - the upper room. While transporting a dismantled room, Matryona Vasilievna dies at a railway crossing under the wheels of a steam locomotive, trying to help the men remove a stuck sleigh with logs from the crossing. Matryona appears in the story as a moral ideal, as the embodiment of the lofty spiritual and moral principles of people's life that have been displaced by the course of history. She, in the eyes of the hero-narrator, is one of those righteous people on whom the world stands.

With its genre features, Solzhenitsyn’s story comes close to an essay and goes back to the Turgenev tradition of “Notes of a Hunter.” Along with this, “Matrenin’s Dvor” seems to continue the tradition of Leskov’s stories about Russian righteous people. In the author’s version, the story was called “A village is not worth it without a righteous man,” but was first published under the title “Matrenin’s Dvor.”

The fate of the hero-narrator of Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matrenin’s Dvor” is correlated with the fate of the heroes of the story “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Ignatyich, as it were, continues the fate of Shukhov and his fellow camp inmates. His story tells what awaits prisoners in life after release. Therefore, the first important problem in the story is the problem of the hero choosing his place in the world.

Ignatyich, who spent ten years in prison and a camp, after living in exile in a “dusty hot desert,” seeks to settle in a quiet corner of Russia, “where it would not be a shame to live and die.” The hero wants to find a place in his native land that would preserve unchanged the original features and signs of folk life. Ignatyich hopes to find spiritual and moral support and peace of mind in the traditional national way of life, which has withstood the destructive influence of the inexorable course of history. He finds it in the village of Talnovo, settling in the hut of Matryona Vasilievna.

What explains this choice of the hero?

The hero of the story refuses to accept the terrible inhuman absurdity of existence, which has become the norm of life of contemporaries and has diverse manifestations in the everyday way of life of people. Solzhenitsyn shows this with the mercilessness of a publicist in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor.” One example is the careless, nature-destroying actions of the collective farm chairman, who received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for the successful destruction of centuries-old forests.

The tragic fate of the hero is a consequence of the abnormal course of history and the illogical way of life. The absurdity and unnaturalness of the new way of life is especially noticeable in cities and industrial towns. Therefore, the hero strives to the outback of Russia, wants to “settle... forever” “somewhere away from the railway.” The railway is a traditional symbol for Russian classical literature of a soulless modern civilization that brings destruction and death to humans. The railway also appears in this meaning in Solzhenitsyn’s story.

At first, the hero's desire seems impossible. He bitterly notices both in the life of the village of Vysokoye Pole and in the village of Torfoprodukt (“Ah, Turgenev didn’t know that it was possible to compose something like this in Russian!” says the narrator about the name of the village) the terrible realities of the new way of life. Therefore, the village of Talnovo, Matryona’s house and she herself become the last hope for the hero, the last opportunity to fulfill his dream. Matrenin's yard becomes for the hero the desired embodiment of that Russia, which it was so important for him to find.

In Matryona, Ignatyich sees the spiritual and moral ideal of the Russian person. What character traits, personality traits of Matryona allow us to see in her the embodiment of the lofty spiritual and moral principles of people’s life that have been displaced by the course of history? What storytelling techniques are used to create the image of the heroine in the story?

First of all, we see Matryona in an ordinary setting, in a series of daily worries and affairs. Describing the heroine’s actions, the narrator seeks to penetrate their hidden meaning and understand their motives.

In the story about the first meeting of Ignatyich and Matryona, we see the sincerity, simplicity, and unselfishness of the heroine. “I only found out later,” says the narrator, “that year after year, for many years, Matryona Vasilievna did not earn a ruble from anywhere. Because she was not paid a pension. Her family didn't help her much. And on the collective farm she didn’t work for money - for sticks.” But Matryona is not trying to get a profitable tenant. She fears that she will not be able to please the new person, that he will not like it in her house, which she directly tells the hero. But Matryona is happy when Ignatyich still stays with her, because with a new person her loneliness comes to an end.

Matryona is characterized by inner tact and delicacy. Getting up long before the guest, she “quietly, politely, trying not to make noise, heated the Russian stove, went to milk the goat,” “she did not invite guests to her place in the evenings, respecting my activities,” says Ignatyich. Matryona lacks “womanish curiosity”; she “did not annoy the hero with any questions.” Ignatyich is especially captivated by Matryona’s goodwill; her kindness is revealed in a disarming “radiant smile” that transforms the heroine’s entire appearance. “Those people always have good faces who are at peace with their conscience,” the narrator concludes.

“Things called to life,” the narrator says about Matryona. For the heroine, work also becomes a way to restore peace in her soul. “She had a sure way to regain her good spirits - work,” notes the narrator.

Working on a collective farm, Matryona did not receive anything for her work; helping her fellow villagers, she refused money. Her work is selfless. For Matryona, working is as natural as breathing. Therefore, the heroine considers taking money for her work inconvenient and impossible.

A new way to create the image of Matryona is to introduce the heroine’s memories into the narrative. They demonstrate new facets of her personality, in them the heroine is fully revealed.

From Matryona’s memoirs we learn that in her youth, like Nekrasov’s heroine, she stopped a galloping horse. Matryona is capable of a decisive, even desperate act, but behind this is not a love of risk, not recklessness, but a desire to avert trouble. The desire to avert trouble and help people will dictate the behavior of the heroine in the last minutes of her life before her death, when she rushed to help the men pull out the sleigh stuck at the railway crossing. Matryona remains true to herself to the end.

“But Matryona was by no means fearless,” notes the narrator. “She was afraid of the fire, she was afraid of the Molonia, and most of all, for some reason, of the train.” Just the sight of the train “makes Matryona feel hot, her knees are shaking.” The panic fear experienced by Matryona from the mere sight of a train, which at first evokes a smile, by the end of the story, after the death of the heroine under its wheels, takes on the meaning of a tragically true premonition.

In the heroine's memories of her experience, it is revealed that she has a sense of self-esteem, cannot bear insults and strongly protests when her husband raised his hand to her.

The outbreak of the First World War separates her from her beloved man, Thaddeus, and predetermines the entire subsequent tragic course of Matryona’s life. In three years, new tragedies have occurred in the life of Russia: “And one revolution. And another revolution. And the whole world turned upside down." Matryona’s life also turned upside down. Like the whole country, Matryona faces a “terrible choice”: she must choose her destiny, answer the question: how to live further? Thaddeus’s younger brother, Efim, wooed Matryona. The heroine married him - started a new life, chose her destiny. But the choice was wrong. Six months later, Thaddeus returns from captivity. In the disastrous game of passions that gripped him, Thaddeus is ready to kill Matryona and her chosen one. But Thaddeus is stopped by a moral prohibition that still exists in life - he does not dare to go against his brother.

There is no turning back for the heroine. Matryona's choice does not bring her happiness. The new life does not work out, her marriage is fruitless.

In 1941, the world war began again, and the tragedy experienced in the First World War repeated itself in Matryona’s life. Just as Matryona lost her beloved in the first war, so in the second she loses her husband. The inexorable passage of time dooms Matryona’s courtyard to death: “The once noisy, but now deserted hut rotted and grew old - and the deserted Matryona grew old in it.”

Solzhenitsyn strengthens this motive, showing that the terrible inhuman absurdity of existence, which has become the norm of life for people in a new historical era and from which the hero sought salvation in Matryona’s house, did not escape the heroine. The new way of life relentlessly invades Matryona’s life. The eleven post-war years of collective farm life were marked by aggressive, inhuman stupidity and cynicism of the collective farm order. It seems that an experiment for survival was carried out on Matryona and her fellow villagers: on the collective farm they did not pay money for work, they “cut off” personal gardens, did not provide mowing for livestock, and were deprived of fuel for the winter. A triumph of the absurdity of collective farm life appears in the story in the listing of the property of Matryona, who worked on the collective farm for many years: “a dirty white goat, a lanky cat, ficus trees.” But Matryona managed to overcome all the hardships and hardships and keep the peace of her soul unchanged.

Matryona's house and its mistress appear as opposed to the surrounding world and the illogical and unnatural way of life that has established itself in it. The human world feels this and takes cruel revenge on Matryona.

This motif receives plot development in the story of the destruction of Matrenin's yard. Despite fate, which doomed her to loneliness, Matryona raised Thaddeus’s daughter, Kira, for ten years and became her second mother. Matryona decided: after her death, half the house, the upper room, should be inherited by Kira. But Thaddeus, with whom Matryona once wanted to unite her life, decides to take the upper room while its mistress is still alive.

In the actions of Thaddeus and his assistants, Solzhenitsyn sees a manifestation of the triumph of a new way of life. The new way of life formed a special attitude towards the world and determined a new nature of human relationships. The terrible inhumanity and absurdity of human existence is revealed by the author in the substitution of concepts that has become established in the minds of contemporaries, when “our language fearfully calls our property our property” as “good.” In the plot of the story, this “good” turns into all-crushing evil. The pursuit of such “good”, which “is considered shameful and stupid to lose in front of people,” turns out in the story into a different, immeasurably greater loss of genuine and enduring good: the world loses a kind, wonderful person - Matryona, high spiritual and moral principles are lost in life. A desperate and reckless pursuit of “good property” brings death to the human soul and brings to life the terrible destructive properties of human nature - selfishness, cruelty, greed, aggressiveness, greed, cynicism, pettiness. All these base passions will manifest themselves in the people surrounding Matryona, determining their behavior in the story of the destruction of her house and the death of herself. Matryona's soul, her inner world is contrasted with the souls and inner world of the people around her. Matryona's soul is beautiful because, Solzhenitsyn believes, Matryona's goal in life was not goodness-property, but goodness-love.

Matryona's house in Solzhenitsyn's story becomes a symbol of the harmonious traditional way of peasant life, high spiritual and moral values, the keeper of which is Matryona. Therefore, she and the house are inseparable. The heroine intuitively senses this: “it was terrible for her to start breaking the roof under which she had lived for forty years. ...for Matryona this was the end of her entire life,” the narrator concludes. But Thaddeus and his assistants think differently. The hero’s disastrous passions are no longer restrained by anything—there are no longer any previously existing moral prohibitions standing in their way. They “knew that her house could be broken during her lifetime.”

Matrenin's yard, in which the hero of the story found spiritual and moral support, becomes the last stronghold of the traditional national way of life, which was unable to withstand the destructive influence of the inexorable course of history.

The destruction of Matryona's house becomes in the story a symbol of a violation of the natural course of historical time, fraught with catastrophic upheavals. Thus, the death of Matryonin’s court becomes an indictment of a new historical era.

The final chord in creating the image of the heroine comes at the end of the story, after the death of Matryona, by comparing her with the people around her. The tragic death of Matryona was supposed to shock people, make them think, awaken their souls, shake off the scales from their eyes. But this doesn't happen. The new way of life has devastated the souls of people, their hearts have become hardened, there is no place in them for compassion, empathy, or true sorrow. Solzhenitsyn shows this at the farewell ceremonies, funerals, and wakes of Matryona. The rituals lose their high, mournful, tragic meaning; all that remains of them is a ossified form, mechanically repeated by the participants. The tragedy of death is not able to stop people’s mercantile and vain aspirations.

Matryona's loneliness during life after her death takes on a special and new meaning. She is lonely because Matryona’s spiritual and moral world, objectively, against the will of the heroine, opposes the values ​​of the world of the people around her. Matryona's world was alien and incomprehensible to them, causing irritation and condemnation. Thus, the image of Matryona allows the author to show in the story the moral troubles and spiritual emptiness of modern society.

The narrator's acquaintance with the people surrounding Matryona helps him fully understand her high purpose in the world of people. Matryona, who did not accumulate property, endured cruel trials and remained strong in spirit, is “the very righteous man without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand.

Neither the city.

Neither the whole land is ours.”

Lesson-reflection in 11th grade on the topic: “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous person”

(based on the story by A.I. Solzhenitsyn “Matrenin’s Dvor”)

The purpose of the lesson: To introduce students to the works of A.I. Solzhenitsyn; help students think about such moral concepts as kindness, mercy, sensitivity, humanity, conscience; lead students to understand the image of Matryona as the righteous woman of the Russian land; think about the meaning of human life.

Expected result of the integrated part of the lesson:preventing the use of psychoactive substances. Have a well-formed point of view on alcoholism and smoking as difficult-to-treat diseases.

Epigraph to the lesson:

To end,
Until the silent cross
Let the soul
It will remain clean!

N. Rubtsov

During the classes

    Org moment. slide 1

Teacher's opening speech

- Today in our lesson, a lesson-reflection, we will talk not only about the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but also about Russia, about the Russian person, about the Russian people. We will talk about the meaning of human life, about the meaning of our lives. Question: “How to live on earth?” sooner or later confronts every person. slide 2 You can live in life in different ways: You can live in sorrow and in joy, Eat on time, drink on time, Do nasty things on time.

Or you can do this: get up at dawn and, thinking about a miracle, reach for the sun with your naked hand and give it to people. (Sergey Ostrovoy)

So how to live on earth? We will try to find the answer to this question from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, because a real writer thinks about life, understands life and people more deeply. Solzhenitsyn in the story “Matrenin’s Dvor” sang a swan song to the village, to the peasant world, the breakdown of which turned, in the exact words of the writer, into the breakdown of the backbone of the entire Russian people.

A. Akhmatova about the story: (slide 3)

2 What is the story behind this amazing story?

Student message. In 1963, a short story was published, about which they would later say that almost all modern village prose came out of it, just as Russian prose of the last century came out of Gogol’s overcoat, compassionate for the poor, “little” man. We are talking about “Matryona’s Court” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which, as it were, continues Leskov’s stories about Russian righteous people.

The story is completely autobiographical and authentic. The life of Matryona Vasilyevna Zakharova and her death were reproduced as they were. The true name of the village is Miltsevo, Kurlovsky district, Vladimir region. Initially, the author called his work “A village is not worthwhile without a righteous man.” It is known that in 1963, in order to avoid friction with censorship, the publisher A.T. Tvardovsky changed the name - the idea of ​​righteousness referred to Christianity and was in no way welcomed in the early 60s of the twentieth century. When publishing it in Novy Mir, Solzhenitsyn agreed with the editor-in-chief’s proposal to give a neutral name - “Matryonin’s Dvor.”

- What do you think? the name is more accurate?Recording the topic and epigraph in a notebook (slide 4)

— What is the meaning of the word “righteous”? (slide 5)

Righteous is a person with a clear conscience and soul. (V. Dal “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language.”)Righteous 1. For believers: a person who lives a righteous life has no sins. 2. A person who does not sin in any way against morality. (S. Ozhegov “Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language.”)

Let's open New Testament (slide 6)

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. …For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).

-Who in the story does not accumulate treasures for themselves on earth? (Matryona Vasilievna and the hero-narrator

3. Working with the text of the work (analysis of the prologue and chapter 1)

The image of the hero-narrator

We learn about Matryona Vasilievna from the story of the hero - the narrator, the only person who understood and accepted Matryona. The narrator is close to the author, but not equal to him. The author deliberately emphasizes this distancing from the hero-narrator, giving him a “name and patronymic” Ignatich.

What do we learn about him from the prologue?
Why does the narrator ask to be “placed away from the railroad”?

(slide 7)

Firstly , the narrator, Ignatich, returned from the Asian wilderness after ten years in the camps, asks to be assigned in depth, namely to the “internal” Russia (far inside), the “kondo” Rus' ( “strong, durable, primordial, preserving old customs and foundations”) . His search leads him to the outback, where behind the “dense, impenetrable forests” the original Russian soul could be preserved. - It is clear that Ignatich is looking for himself (note - there is no name, just recently - only a number), here he is trying to find internal stability, spiritual and moral support.

-Have many years of trials instilled resentment towards Russia in the narrator’s soul and left an evil trace in it?

Secondly , the image of a path, a road, has many meanings: a road is the life path of a person, a country. The path motif contains a metaphorical meaning movements of the human soul .

-Where does our hero go first? (slide 8) « High Field . The name itself didn't lie. But in Vysokoye Pole “they didn’t bake bread,” “they didn’t sell anything edible.” The life of rural, “condo”, “interior Russia” turns out to be corroded by lies.The hero is at a crossroads: he is looking for the ideal. The village of Vysokoye Polye personifies a high spiritual beginning, which the narrator has not yet achieved.

And then where? (slide 9) The village of Torfoprodukt. Prove with text that this place can be called “the underworld.” Draw your own conclusions. (Indeed, the description of the village Torfoprodukt resembles the underground kingdom of the devil.Color spectrum here it is appropriate - gray, gloomy tones predominate.Sounds reminiscent of hellish squeals and screams. There is no doubt that the village belongs to the devilish world: peat is extracted from the belly of the earth; according to popular beliefs, the swamp is inhabited by devils and dark forces).— What village does the narrator live in?

Matryona's House

- Find a description of Matryona Vasilievna’s house. Here is a photograph of this house taken by Solzhenitsyn(slide 10)

-What surrounds Matryona in real life?

Exercise: match the keywords with definitions from the text(slide 11)

hut

The wood chips were rotting, the logs were turning gray, spacious, darkish, gray, rotting

ficus

The loneliness of the hostess was filled with a silent but lively crowd

cat

Laggy, chosen out of pity, not young

mice

They rustled brazenly, a rare quick rustling

cockroaches

They swarmed at night. Merged, single, continuous, like the sound of the ocean, rustling, there was nothing evil in it, there was no lie

goat

Off white

— What prompted the hero-storyteller to settle with Matryona? And why only in Matryona’s hut did the hero feel something akin to his heart. (there was nothing evil in it, there was no lie.) Who does this house remind you of?
Conclusion: So, Ignatich temporarily settles in the village of Talnovo - not in Vysokoye Polye and not in Torfoprodukt, but somewhere in between. He still has to make the final choice.

Image of Matryona

1. First acquaintance with Matryona Remember under what circumstances do readers first meet Matryona? Matryona is not among the “applicants” who can let a guest into her house; The thought of going to Matryona appears at the very last place in the woman leading Ignatich around the village: “Well, maybe we’ll go to Matryona... Only she doesn’t have the same toilet, she lives in a desolate place...”

— Does Matryona want to get such a “profitable” guest?? Support your answer with a quote from the text. Conclusion: Yes, for the villagers she is a useless housewife who does not have the opportunity to properly receive a guest in her neglected house, the hero-narrator suddenly feels that this life is internally close to him - and remains to live with Matryona.

2. The name of the heroine. (slide 12)

-What is the meaning of the name Matryona? “venerable lady”, “madam”, “mother of the family”, “mother”).

    Portrait

— Is there a detailed portrait of the heroine in the story?

— What portrait details does the writer focus on? What is the role of these details?

Most often, only one detail is repeated - a smile: “a radiant smile”, “the smile of her round face”, “she smiled at something”, “enlightened, happy with everything, with her kind smile”, “an apologetic half-smile”. Note that, like all the writer’s favorite heroes, Matryona is endowed with discreet appearance

(“simply looking with faded blue eyes”, “with a veil of tears in her dim eyes”).

(slide 13) It is important for the author to depict not so much the external beauty of a simple Russian peasant woman, but rather the inner light flowing from her eyes, and all the more clearly to emphasize his thought, expressed publicly directly:“Those people always have good faces, who are at peace with their conscience.”

Therefore, even after the terrible death of the heroine, her “face remained intact, calm, more alive than dead.”

— Many times Alexander Isaevich tried to photograph Matryona at ease, smiling, but nothing worked. “Seeing the cold gaze of the lens on herself, Matryona assumed an expression either tense or extremely stern. Once I captured her smiling at something, looking out the window onto the street.” (— This photograph has survived. Is this how you imagined Matryona Vasilievna?

slide 14) Those people always have good faces who are at peace with their conscience.” You can’t say it better than Solzhenitsyn. And this, probably, is the main mystery of her face - in it.

    Conscience.

The heroine's speech Read the most characteristic statements of the heroine. What is special about her speech? How are language expansion tools used to create the image of Matryona?, Matryona's deeply folk character is manifested primarily in her speech. The abundance of colloquial, dialect vocabulary and archaisms gives her language expressiveness and bright individuality.. dialect formationSolzhenitsyn endows his heroine with the gift of language creation, as evidenced by her sayings, reminiscent of folk proverbs (“If you don’t know how, if you don’t cook, how will you lose it?”), and numerous examples of folk etymology:du-el(fromblowing), intelligence (socket), portion (spoilage), cardboard soup. Just as deeply folk is Matryona’s manner of speech, the way she pronounces her “kind words.” "They started somehow

low warm purring, like grandmothers in fairy tales.”

5. The fate of Matryona -How is a typical day at Matryona’s?

(I lit the stove, milked the goat, went for water, cooked, went for peat, for berries, dug potatoes, prepared hay for the goat)

-What happened in her real life and what didn’t happen? (Slide 15)

-What did Matryona have to experience in the past? (Slide 16)Is Matryona angry at this world, which is so cruel to her?? (But - amazing thing! - Matryona did not get angry at this world, she retained a good mood, a feeling of joy and pity for others, as beforea radiant smile enlightens her face. )

Where does one find salvation?What was her sure way of regaining her good spirits? Matryona’s attitude towards work is different from everyone else: for her this concept is synonymous with joy, relaxation, and a cure for all ailments. Work was never a burden to her; “Matryona never spared either her labor or her goods.”

6. Attitude of surrounding people. — How do people around her use her work?She selflessly helps her neighbors, sincerely admiring the size of other people's potatoes. At the same time, those around her willingly take advantage of her kindness, never ask, but simply state the fact: “We will have to help the collective farm”; “Tomorrow, Matryona, you will come to help me.”

— How do the people around her treat Matryona?Relatives almost did not appear in her house, apparently fearing that Matryona would ask them for help. Everyone unanimously condemned Matryona that she was funny and stupid, working for others for free. The sister-in-law, who recognized Matryona’s simplicity and cordiality, spoke about this “with contemptuous regret.” Everyone mercilessly took advantage of Matryona’s kindness and simplicity - and unanimously condemned her for it. Conclusion: Matryona Vasilyevna, apart from her kindness and conscience, did not accumulate any other wealth. She is used to living according to the laws of humanity, respect and honesty.

4. Analysis of chapter 2

- Read the beginning of chapter 2 and answer the question: what kind of relationship has developed between Matryona and the narrator? The narrator and Matryona live in the present, do not bring up each other’s past, do not ask about it.)

Image of Thaddeus

What destroys this silence, the usual foundation of their relationship? — Find and read the description of Thaddeus’s appearance? Old-Hebrew - "praise"

What colors are Thaddeus painted in the story? ? What “talking” epithet characterizes this hero?

What motivates Thaddeus? How is his moral position manifested? How does Thaddeus behave when dismantling the upper room?

- Self-interest, the thirst to “seize” the plot for his daughter force him to destroy the house that he once built himself. “Life was also broken in its own way by inhumane circumstances; Thaddeus, unlike Matryona, harbored a grudge against fate, taking it out on his wife and son. — An almost blind old man, breaking down the hut of his former bride: “his eyes... sparkled busily,” “climbed deftly,” “bustled animatedly.” -Greed also becomes the cause of the tragedy: the second sleigh began to fall apart at the crossing, because “Thaddeus did not give the forest anything good for them.” Thaddeus's inhumanity is especially clearly manifested on the eve of Matryona's funeral.When “his daughter was losing her mind, his son-in-law was on trial, the son he had killed was lying in his own house, and on the same street was the woman he had killed, whom he had once loved,” Thaddeus thought only about “saving the logs of the upper room from the fire.” and from the machinations of Matryona’s sisters" - But why did Matryona love him then? (In his youth he was completely different. In the fact that by old age he had changed beyond recognition, there is a certain share of Matryona’s own guilt. And she felt it, forgave him a lot. After all, she didn’t wait from the front - and Thaddeus became angry with the whole world, driving away all his resentment and anger towards his wife, the second Matryona)

7. A story about Matryona’s past

- What do we learn about her past from the lips of Matryona herself?

— Talking about her past, Matryona seems to be reliving these events. “So that evening Matryona revealed herself to me completely. And as it happens, the connection and meaning of her life, barely becoming visible to me, began to move in those same days.”

— What changed Matryona’s usual way of life?

- Why is it difficult for Matryona to decide to give her bequeathed room to her pupil during her lifetime? Why “does she not sleep for two nights”, thinking about the upper room? Does she feel sorry for the upper room?

Matryona does not feel sorry for the upper room itself; the destruction of the house is perceived by her as the destruction of her whole life.

Let's find out what significance it plays for Matryona Vasilievnaupper room?
What other hero is associated with this word?

Upper room for Matryona, this is her whole life, because she lived here for about 40 years, but she gives away the upper room for Kira, who needs it, thereby dooming herself to death, but she cannot do otherwise. The sinister black old man Thaddeus immediately understood how to break Matryona. There is some mystical meaning in this when the old man encroaches on the upper room.

(slide 17)

In V. Dahl’s “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language” the word "upper room" and "mountain" are considered as having the same root, and the word “high” is defined as “highest, heavenly, relating to the spiritual world.” Thus, the seizure of Matryona’s upper room can be regarded as an attack on the heroine’s faith in the heavenly.

Death of the Upper Room at the crossing it acquires a symbolic meaning: having been torn away from the land on which it was built, having lost its owner, it dies, just as a person who has broken with his roots dies. A bitter fate awaits Matryona's hut. On the night of the tragedy, she is depicted as “chilled by the frequent opening of doors,” immersed in darkness and silence: with the death of Matryona, warmth, light and life itself leave her house. Not realizing this spiritual loss, the owner’s relatives took her favorite ficus trees out of the empty hut, and filled the hut itself until spring (like a coffin), continuing to argue about who would get it

Old woman

- Why does the narrator feel that the events will really end tragically? Where has the author already managed to prepare us for just such an ending? Try, guys, to look for these author’s “tips” for the reader.

(Matryona’s fear of the train; the disappearance of holy water (a bad omen!) on Epiphany; the disappearance of a lame-legged cat.)

8 Integrated part

Program section: Prevention of psychoactive substance use.

Contents of the integrated part: Social, psychological and physiological consequences of substance use. Legal and personal responsibility for the distribution and use of psychoactive substances. Expected result: Have a formed point of view on alcoholism as a difficult to treat disease

“And there is also a real reason for the tragedy that happened.” Which? (CONSUMPTION OF MOONHOON)

- Do you think this justifies the men, mitigates their guilt? (Adds to their guilt)

— Do you think the tragedy would have happened if they had not been drunk? (Of course not)

— What was the threat to Matryona for making moonshine? (“But one thing was clear: that Matryona could be sentenced for moonshine”)

— How does NATURE prevent tragedy? Find in the text an episode of a raging snowstorm. How does nature help us understand the heroine’s inner state? A darkness falls on Talnovo, similar to that which covered the earth during the execution of Christ.

Why does Matryona die? ( I decided to help the guys)

What symbolic meaning does the death of Matryona Vasilievna under the cover of darkness have?

Our ancestors had the concept of night darkness ("gloom") got closer to the idea of death; the word "darkness" was related in root to the word "pestilence". It is from the darkness of the night that a creature, terrible in its ruthlessness, emerges - locomotive, train, which Matryona is very afraid of.

The image of a steam locomotive has a symbolic meaning. It can be viewed in different ways: it is the technological progress that swept through Russia, it is also a symbol of communism that rushed through the Christian life of millions of crippled destinies of the Russian people.

Part 3 analysis

Is it possible to say that only Thaddeus is a negative hero? But the most important thing is that Thaddeus was not the only one in the village.

— Let’s monitor the behavior of the people gathered at Matryona’s funeral.(read out)

- What good How does Matryona live, how does Thaddeus and others like him live? Why the word good Does the author put it in italics?

(Good for Matryona is everything spiritual:incapacity for evil, love and compassion;

good for Thaddeus is everything material: personal property, belongings, things.

In this substitution of concepts, Solzhenitsyn sees the essence of the spiritual crisis that struck Russia.

Let's read the ending of the story.What does the Author admit to? that he didn’t fully understand it either. And only death revealed to him the majestic and tragic image of Matryona. And the story is a kind of author's repentance, bitter repentance for the moral blindness of everyone around him, including himself. He bows his head before a man of great selfless soul. With the departure of Matryona, something valuable and important leaves life...

Solzhenitsyn helped We can see a great soul in a simple Russian woman, we can see a righteous woman. (slide 18)

Independent work in pairs (slide 19)

What accompanies the life of a righteous man and a sinner? (students make a table, check on the slide)

MEANING OF THE TITLE - What do you guys think is the story “Matrenin’s Dvor”?Matryonin's yard is a kind of island in the middle of the ocean of lies, which keeps the treasures of the people's spirit.

— By comparing episodes depicting this wide world, we are convinced that the basis of relationships in it becomes lie.

The chairman of the collective farm is lying, stocking up on peat on time and not selling it to the residents, his colleague Gorshkov, who cut down hectares of forest to the roots and received the title of Hero, is lying, the trust is lying, showing in its reports abundant peat production, the railway management is lying, not selling empty tickets. carriages, - the school is lying, fighting for a high percentage of academic performance, - the tractor driver is lying, driving the tractor “secretly for the left”, the shoemaker is lying, who hid underground with his mother throughout the war, - finally, the state is lying, which “today, you see, gave, but he'll fuck you tomorrow." — The very language of this state lies, replacing the original Russian names of villages that captured the truth of people’s life with linguistic monsters, like “ Peat product."

Matrenin's court is opposed to this world of lies. Everything here is true. Even about the rustling of cockroaches, the author says that “there was no lie in it.”

Conclusion: Matryonin's yard is Matryonin's world - the special world of the righteous. The world of spirituality, kindness, mercy, which was written about by F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy. At the climax of the story, Matryonin’s courtyard, the courtyard of selflessness and righteousness, is destroyed, and in the story this takes on a symbolic meaning. The hut, wooden Russia is faced with the iron 20th century, with the iron grip of self-interest, and it crumbles into pieces.

The death of Matryona, the destruction of her yard and hut is a dire warning about the catastrophe that can happen to a society that has lost its moral guidelines. - The ending is bitter. But does this mean that the author leaves no hope? The truth of life of Matryona will penetrate and remain in the soul of her follower - Ignatich.

(slide 20) Therefore, the tragic ending of the story sounds somewhat optimistic : “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the same righteous person, without whom, according to the proverb, the village would not stand. Neither the city. Not all the land is ours”.. He remains righteous in the village, which means there is hope for the future, the revival of goodness and justice. Apparently, the original title of the story was connected with these hopes - “A village does not stand without a righteous man.”

Let's listen to a wonderful poem by Bulat Okudzhava (read by a student.)

In our life, beautiful and strange,
and short, like the stroke of a pen,
It’s time to think about the smoking fresh wound, really.
Think about it and take a closer look,
think while you're alive,
what lies there in the twilight of the heart,
in his darkest closet.
Let them say that your affairs are bad,
but it's time to learn, it's time
don't beg for pitiful crumbs
mercy, truth, goodness.
But in the face of a harsh era,
which in its own way is also right,
don't swindle the pitiful crumbs,
and create by rolling up your sleeves.

— In your opinion, are the moral principles affirmed by A. I. Solzhenitsyn viable today?

“Today, when mutual hatred, embitterment, and alienation have reached terrifying proportions, the very idea that such people are possible in our troubled times will seem absurd to some. Nevertheless, it is so. And I will never agree with the statement that Russian people have morally degenerated over the past decades and have completely lost their once inherent spiritual identity. And besides, if this were so, would there still be strange people in our literature, blessed, righteous, not crushed, not broken by either the system or ideology?

Conclusion: The life and fate of each of them are real life lessons for us - lessons of goodness, conscience and humanity. 9. Homework: answer a question in writing (optional) (slide 21)— What did A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s story “Matrenin’s Dvor” make me think about? — Do you think we need righteous people in our lives?