Literature lesson “Alexander Green. Analysis of the problems of the story “The Green Lamp. Characteristic features of G. Green's creativity

Despite the genre diversity of Green's work, his novels brought him real and well-deserved fame. The first novel, The Man Inside, was published in 1929. This is a book by a young writer. It lacks that restraint and at the same time the subtlety and transparency of style that constitute one of the enduring advantages of any mature work by Greene. But already in the very first novel he asks those questions that will appear before us as facets in his further work. Already in the very first historical novel, which takes place at the beginning of the 20th century, there are motifs that remain favorites in mature books that have won fame: the motif of betrayal, sometimes involuntary, and crime and punishment, physical defeat and moral cleansing and victory.

Green's work is characterized by the following features:

The diversity of geography in his works: his heroes are predominantly English, rarely living in their homeland. Fate took them to Sweden, Vietnam, Cuba. Literary scholars have expressed the opinion that, no matter where globe No matter how the action of the books takes place, it still takes place in “Greenland” - a country born of the imagination and talent of the writer. However, "Greenland" is by no means a fictional country. Novels - “guides” to it are replete with precise signs of real time and place, which gives a special, not only ethnographic, but most importantly socio-political flavor to the conflicts that the writer explores. Green deliberately chooses the “hot spots” of the planet as the setting for his novels—Vietnam, which is fighting against French colonialists (“The Quiet American”), and Cuba, where the brutal Ballista regime ruled (“Our Man in Taiwan”). The choice of geographical area is determined by the peculiarities of the writer’s organization of the plot. Greene is distinguished by the fact that in many of his works he creates critical situations that help reveal the complexity of human characters. The characters in Green's novels find themselves in extreme conditions that contribute to the revelation of their moral essence, forcing them to make a choice between decency and betrayal; for loyalty to their principles they have to pay with freedom, or even life.

Green was always concerned with moral categories. He was interested in the nature and essence of good (for Greene, this is, first of all, humanity, compassion) and evil (dogma, callousness, hypocrisy).

Speaking about the problem of following dogma, it should be noted that Greene, a Catholic, willingly forgives his heroes both the lack of faith and conscious atheism. Perhaps the only thing that is unacceptable to him under any circumstances is blind adherence to abstract dogma.

From the beginning literary activity Greene acted in two disparate genres - an “entertaining” novel with a detective slant and a “serious” novel, exploring the depths of human psychology and colored by philosophical reflections on human nature.

However, Green's true essence, which makes him a true classic English literature twentieth century, continuer of the traditions of F.M. Ford, G.K. Chesterton and J. Conrad, whom he revered as his teachers and to whom he dedicated the best essays he wrote, was reflected in his other works, devoid of vanity, “momentariness,” addressed to the inner world of man, to Eternity: the novels “Power and Glory,” “ Monsignor Quixote” and especially acutely in last novel"The Captain and the Enemy"

The classic of English literature divided his novels into “entertaining stories” based on detective intrigue, and “ serious novels"with powerful social overtones, although the boundary between them is often arbitrary, since Graham Greene did not know how to write frivolous works. However, artistic solutions, which usually presuppose the presence of a paradox, which can also acquire a tragic character, are essentially the same in books classified by the author into different categories.

The main problematic of Green’s prose is also identical, which, regardless of the characteristics of the genre ( comic novel morals, like "Travels with Auntie", 1969, a parable with elements of travesty and classic plot, like “Monsignor Quixote”, 1982, etc.) remains a narrative with a sharply highlighted moral problematic, determined by the search for meaning and justification of life in an age of ethical apathy and progressive dehumanization.

This division into serious and entertaining novels occurred after the release of Express to Istanbul in 1932. During this time, Greene worked as a columnist for The Spectator and for the magazine Day and Night. One of his articles led to prosecution by the film company 20th Century Fox, and Greene was sentenced to a large fine (not having forgotten the insult, Greene would later strike the United States with the novel The Quiet American, but they were not in debt either , declaring him "the most anti-American writer").

The action of Graham Greene's novels often takes place in lands far from his homeland. This is not simply explained by the fact that the writer traveled a lot, or his love of the exotic. Green is attracted to those areas of the earth where it is easiest to put heroes in extreme situations, where the ulcers of our century are especially striking: the arbitrariness and cynicism of politicians, lawlessness, poverty, ignorance. When he turns to Europe, he usually chooses tense, crisis moments in its history (“The Office of Fear,” “The Tenth,” etc.). At the same time, he is far from the idea that the drama of life is determined exclusively by external, political and social factors. Whatever country he connects the fate of his heroes with - with England or France, Mexico or Vietnam - in the first place he has eternal questions about good and evil, duty and compromise, courage and election life path. He is always ready to tear off the masks of false authorities and knows how to find heroism where you least expect to find it.

The writer puts his characters in extreme circumstances that help reveal their moral essence, forcing them to make a choice between loyalty and betrayal. Green was concerned with how certain moral categories and principles are actually refracted and embodied in specific relationships between people. He was interested in the essence and nature of good (for Green, this is primarily humanity, compassion) and evil (dogma, callousness, hypocrisy). One of the key issues for the writer was the question of the individual’s right to actively intervene in the fate of other people, even from the best and noblest intentions.

Moral problems have always been the most important for Greene and have always been at the center of his work. They remain decisive in his last books. However, here the author came face to face with social morality: what an individual person has the right and not the right to do, responsible not only to himself and his conscience (or God, who in Green’s novels is the same as conscience), but to people in general, to the whole people. These problems should have pushed Green, a writer living in a turbulent era of historical change, to solve social and political problems.

The figure of the writer itself is far from ambiguous. With a more in-depth acquaintance with the proposed biographers (David Lodge), materials from the image familiar to us - a respectable, dispassionately ironic English gentleman, focused on literature and travel, an exemplary Catholic, an aristocrat, for whom a short episode of cooperation with intelligence was something like a tribute There was nothing left of the specifically English (Maugham, Durrell, etc.) writing tradition, and, of course, material for novels.

Greene is surprisingly inconsistent, passionate, one might say, unrestrained. Unable to cope with himself, Greene tries to maintain balance with the help of theological paradoxes: “No one understands Christianity like a sinner. Except perhaps a saint” (Green put this statement by Charles Péguy as the epigraph to the novel “The Heart of the Matter”).

Well, his work in intelligence was by no means short-lived, as is commonly believed (1941 - 1944) - Greene, it seems, carried out delicate assignments for a very long time. And in this work he was not loyal not only to the countries where he represented the interests of British intelligence, but also to his own department - for example, the situation of his relationship with Philby, his former friend, looks very strange. Most likely, Greene was aware of Philby’s work for the USSR and, as they say, washed his hands of it and stepped aside.

In addition, biographers discovered a lot of strange and ambiguous episodes from Greene’s biography, which somewhat shook the already canonized image of one of the patriarchs of European literature of the twentieth century.

The pessimism characteristic of most of Greene's books stemmed from the author's conviction that the evil that exists in the world is incorrigible, and the loneliness to which a person is doomed is an irresistible consequence of the established order. At the same time, all the books invariably raised the painful question of responsibility for a person’s fate. It is this question that distinguishes Green from the singers of despair, of whom there are so many in the literature of the bourgeois West. This question leads him to social issues, on the one hand, and to contradictions, on the other.

Does a person have the right to stand aside from the suffering of other people? Shouldn’t he actively intervene in their lives, fight their grief and pain? And can he, even having come to the conviction that it is impossible to change and correct anything, distance himself and step aside and indifferently look at the evil and suffering around him?

These questions matured gradually in Greene's books. They sounded especially intense in the novel “The Heart of the Matter.” In “The Quiet American” and “The Comedians” they have lost their abstractness and are staged in connection with the depiction of an acute socio-political conflict. In his last books, Greene again moved towards abstract humanism.

Greene's political position was and remains controversial. Disbelief in the possibility of really changing and correcting anything in people’s lives prevented Green from finding a path to those who were fighting for the realization of their ideals on earth, for a better fate for man, and when he found these paths, he began to doubt and be afraid of “extremes” .

One of the key issues for the writer was the question of the individual’s right to be active. The problem of choosing between active and passive life position- key for most of the writer’s novels, but its specific solution has changed significantly over the course of a long time creative path. In his early books, he tends to condemn active actions, considering them meaningless and sometimes destructive. In later works his point of view changes radically.

His works are characterized by a constant motif of loneliness and despair, as well as a motif of persecution and predestination. His heroes are obsessed with the thought of a force pursuing them (which is never mystical), but a person is always defenseless before it. The heroes, in the end, either commit suicide or, one way or another, become victims of the pursuing force.

One of Green's favorite means of revealing life phenomena and human destinies is paradox. Already in the novels of the 30s, this means is organically connected, moreover, it directly follows from the paradoxical nature of the writer’s life perception: his enormous pity for man, reinforced by his own philosophical concept(“love man like God, knowing the worst about him”), understanding the depths of man’s fall, understanding the greatest contradictions that can coexist in his consciousness. On this basis, first the images of Pinky and Ferresht arise, and then of Pyle, who killed thousands of people and turned white at the sight of blood on his boot.

Green - writer big world who felt political situation in many cases better than professional politicians. His novel “The Comedians” predicted the collapse of the Duvalier dictatorship, and his novel “The Quiet American” predicted the collapse of American policy in Vietnam. The political background is visible even in books with a frankly detective plot (“The Hitman”).

And when we pick up a collection of short stories with the shocking title “Can you lend us your husband? (and other comedies of sexual life)”, the first feeling is whether this is a namesake famous writer? However, already the initial lines of the text convince: no, this is still the same Graham Greene, who once again confirmed the simple truth - for real literature there are no low topics. Dramatic story a young girl who married a young man, as they say now, another sexual orientation, who is seduced by two predatory characters on their honeymoon, could be written with no less skill and with no less passion (the first story, which gives the title to the entire collection) than the story of American military expansion in Southeast Asia and the displacement of the French colonialists from there.

Of course, there is nothing surprising in this. Graham Greene's sympathies - the writer of the big world - are always on the side little man with its “small” problems. Good one An example is the novel “Our Man in Havana,” whose hero is a vacuum cleaner salesman, and the subject of ridicule is the British Intelligence Service, so familiar to the author.

Still, these twelve stories stand out somewhat from the work of Graham Greene. They represent a kind of single novel, in which the author’s observations of the most hidden aspects of human life are concentrated. The stories are permeated with humor, irony and sadness.

Unfortunately, our reader is still not familiar with all the stories in the collection published in London by the Bodley Head publishing company in 1967. Over the more than thirty-year period of the collection’s life, six stories were translated into Russian with a wide spread in time: “ The Invisible Japanese" and "The Root of Evil" (1967), "Stranglehold" (1963 and 1986), "Two" and "Cheap Season" (1991), "Doctor Crombie" (1998). The remaining six stories (including the first, which gave the collection its title) were never published. Probably, their content seemed shocking to the censors of that time. A sanctimonious view of “moral principles” forced one to forget about the literary skill of the author, who could touch on any topic and do it with brilliance. We hope that times have changed, and this is confirmed by the passing of Central television screening of the English film adaptation of the first story in the collection with Dirk Boggard in leading role(he is familiar to viewers from the film “The Night Porter”).

The boss hasn't come to the office yet. This was to the advantage of the clerk and the senior warden. Man is not born to work. Labor, even for the benefit of the state, is a curse, and nothing more. Otherwise, God would not have wished Adam, in the form of a farewell farewell, to “eat bread by the sweat of his brow.”
This thought incidentally reminded the exhausted clerk that it was unbearably hot and that his red, calf-like face with his protruding ears was drenched in sweat. Thoughtfully he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped himself melancholy. Really, it’s not worth coming so early for a thirty-ruble salary. His years are young, ebullient... Sitting and copying numbers and fiddling with arrest tickets is such a boring task. Either way it’s evening. Colorful lights flash on the boulevard. The plates in the buffet clink appetizingly and young ladies walk around. Various young ladies. In scarves and hats, thick, thin, short, tall, to choose from. The clerk walks, twirls his mustache, twitches his butt and plays with his cane.
- Sorry, mademoiselle! Young, but alone... And not boring, sir?..
- Hee, hee! What kind of punishment is this, really!.. Such gentlemen, but you pester!..
- And you, young lady, don’t be prissy!.. It’s so nice to walk with you arm in arm on a May evening!.. And it’s so nice to drink Chinese tea with your dear one!..
- Hee, hee!..
- Hehe!..
The clerk's light thoughts are disturbed by the yawning of the warden, an old prison rat with a gray protruding mustache and red, watery eyes. He yawns as if he wants to swallow all the flies flying in the room. Finally, his toothless mouth closes and he mutters:
- But they don’t deliver coal... It turns out that we need to go to the contractor...
He has some deals with the contractor on the basis of sinless income. Here's more firewood - also a profitable item. You won't get fat on prison cereals and potatoes. No, no - yes, and “bagpipes”, a riot. The beasts don’t want to eat “economical” food. So, with breaks, you feed it, and then it goes back into your pocket. Restless. Whether it’s firewood, kerosene, coal... A sacred occupation, one might say...
The clock strikes ten. The heat intensifies. Poplars, bathed in a hot shine, stand motionless in the lattice windows. There are cabinets all around, books with labels, old shackles in the corner. The fly flounders helplessly in the ink. Silence.
The clerk sleepily numbs, lounging on a chair, and opens his mouth, exhausted from the heat. The warden stands with his legs apart, moves his mustache and mentally counts the lamp oil. Silence, boredom; both yawn, cross their mouths, say: “ugh, damn!” - and yawn again.
On the porch there are quick, measured steps; a shadow flashed outside the window. The door opens slowly, squealing as a block. The frail figure of a delivery boy with a black briefcase and a delivery book enters the office and bares his sweaty head.
- From a comrade prosecutor... Letters to political...
The silence is broken. Joyful animation bares the white, horse-like teeth of the clerk. The pen is boldly and playfully scrawled in the book, and the screeching door slams again. On the table there is a small pile of letters, postcards, smeared with stamps. The clerk rummages through them, brings them to his eyes, moves his lips and puts them aside.
- That's it! - he exclaims triumphantly, casually, as if accidentally raising a large blue envelope with two fingers. - So, you, Ivan Palych, said that father would not write to Abramson! I immediately recognized his handwriting!..
“Something I don’t know,” the warden yawns lazily, moving his mustache: “what did he write last time?”
- What did you write? - the clerk continues loudly, pulling out the letter. - And then he wrote that you, so to speak, are no longer my son. I, he says, consider your ideas to be mere fantasy... And therefore, he says, don’t expect any more letters from me...
“Well,” the “senior” resonates melancholy, sitting down at the table. - When there is such resistance on the part of your child... Forgetting God, for example, the king...
- Ivan Pavlych! - the clerk squeals joyfully, grabbing the warden by the sleeve. - A letter from the fiancée to Kozlovsky!.. Well, they write interesting things, my God!..
“That means he won’t go for a walk today,” Ivan Pavlych squints. - He's always like that. I looked through the peephole. He reads letters for a long time...
The clerk hastily, with greedy curiosity in his eyes, runs through the postcard, finely written in nervous, feminine handwriting. The postcard shows a foreign view, wooded mountains, bridges, a waterfall.
“I looked through the peephole,” continues Ivan Pavlych and squints, grinning maliciously, causing his toothless, black mouth to collapse and his thin goatee to jump. - When she cries, when she laughs. Then he hides it so that it won’t be taken away during a search... He’ll roll it up into a small tube - and even into a boot... Laughter! ! - “I, he says, won’t go today”... - “What, I say, won’t you go? According to the instructions, I say, you are obliged to take the required time off!” - He’ll scream, he’ll tremble... Laugh!..
- “My dear... m... my. Pe...cha...” the clerk reads solemnly, trying to give his voice a natural, amused expression. - I'm sorry it took so long for you not to write. Ma-ma-la-pain-on-and...
The clerk coughs and winks at the warden.
- Mom had a mustache! We know! - he says, and both laugh. Reading continues.
- ... I'll be waiting for you... you'll go to Siberia... We'll see you there... You know, you can't- why...
- He's lying! - Ivan Pavlych decides categorically. - What does she need in this brainchild? Thin as a cockroach... I saw her card in Kozlovsky's cell... Beautiful!.. Can a woman get by without a man? He's lying! He just puts the fog in his eyes so that he doesn’t bother me with letters...
- By itself! - the clerk nods. - I also think: they have it there - ideas, all sorts of fantasies... And about the crib, go figure - no, no - and they will remember!..
“Like a lord’s bone,” says Ivan Pavlych impressively, “like a bourgeois bone, like a peasant’s bone.” Everything is one. This means that nature requires one position...
- Wait for him! - the clerk exclaims indignantly. - Yes, he will be good for anything until Siberia! He'll be completely exhausted! It won’t be a man, but... ugh! She also wants, I suppose, ha, ha, ha!..
- He-he-he!.. Love, then, is such a thing... Be-e-dy!..
- Here! - the clerk raises his finger. - It is written: “there are many-interesting-people here”... See? So it goes: you are here, my dear, sit, and I’ll wave my tail there!.. Ha-ha!..
- He-he-he!..
- What a panorama! - says the clerk, examining the Swiss view. - Different types!..
- Ugh!.. - The warden jumps up and suddenly spits with fury. - What do people do! They are cheating romances!.. There are different cupids, Jewish bastards, they are letting you in... And you are responsible for them, worry... Pa-a-litika!..
He squints his eyes disdainfully and moves his mustache excitedly. Then he sits down again and says:
- But this Kozlovsky is not worth giving him letters... The opposite of everyone... The day before yesterday: “End your walk,” I say, it was already time to drive it. - “He says, half an hour has not passed yet!” - A scream, a noise made... The boss ran out... And what, - Ivan Pavlych changes his tone and smiles sweetly, maliciously, - is he waiting for a letter?
The clerk raises his eyebrows.
- It doesn’t wait, it dries! - he says gravely. - Every day he hangs around in the office to see if there’s anything, if they’ve sent him to the prosecutor for inspection...
- So please, don’t give it to him, huh? Because I didn’t deserve it, by God!.. After all, am I... perhaps out of malice? But the person just doesn’t have any respect...
The clerk thinks for a minute, holding his nose with two fingers and closing his eyes tightly.
- Why? - he finally drops, casually but decisively. - It’s possible... I’ll take the picture for myself...
The heat in the cell is scorching. The blue, shameless sky sparkles dazzlingly in the lattice binding.
The man walks around the cell and, stopping for a long time at the window, looks longingly at the distant, purple mountains, at the blue swell of the sea, where melted, golden air lulls huge, milky clouds.
His lips whisper:
- Katya, honey, where are you, where? Write to me, write, write!..

NOTES

At leisure. For the first time - in the newspaper “Comrade”, 1907, July 20 (August 2).
Be prim - here: from prim, strictly observing the rules of decency.
Comrade Prosecutor - in pre-revolutionary Russia the word “comrade” in combination with the title of the position meant the concept of “deputy”.

INTRODUCTION

I NOVELS AND STORIES

SCARLET SAILS

RUNNING ON THE WAVES

BRILLIANT WORLD

GOLD CHAIN

II STORIES

III CREATIVE METHOD OF A. GREEN

CONCLUSION

Adventurous in their plots, Greene's books are spiritually rich and sublime, they are charged with dreams of everything high and beautiful and teach readers courage and the joy of life. And in this, Green is deeply traditional, despite all the originality of his characters and the whimsicality of his plots. Sometimes it even seems that he deliberately heavily emphasizes this moralistic traditionalism of his works, their kinship with old books and parables. So, two of my stories, “ Pillory" and "One Hundred Miles Along the River", the writer, of course, not by accident, but quite deliberately, concludes with the same solemn chord of ancient stories about eternal love: “They lived a long time and died on the same day...”

This colorful mixture of the traditional and the innovative, this bizarre combination of the bookish element and powerful, one-of-a-kind artistic invention, probably consists of one of the most original features of Greene’s talent. Starting from the books he read in his youth, from a great variety of life observations, Green created his own world, his own country of imagination, which, of course, is not on geographical maps, but which undoubtedly is, which undoubtedly exists - the writer is firmly convinced of this believed - on the maps of youthful imagination, in that special world where dream and reality exist side by side.

The writer created his own country of imagination, as someone happily said, his “Greenland”, created it according to the laws of art, he determined its geographical outlines, gave it shining seas, sent snow-white ships with scarlet sails, taut from the overtaking north, across the steep waves. Vesta, marked the shores, set up harbors and filled them with human boiling, boiling passions, meetings, events...

But are his romantic fiction really so far from reality, from life? The heroes of Green's story "Watercolor" - the unemployed steamship fireman Klasson and his laundress wife Betsy - accidentally end up in art gallery, where they discover a sketch in which, to their deep amazement, they recognize their house, their unprepossessing dwelling. The path, the porch, the brick wall overgrown with ivy, the windows, the branches of maple and oak, between which Betsy stretched the ropes - everything was the same in the picture... The artist just threw stripes of light on the foliage, on the path, and colored the porch, the windows, the brick wall the colors of the early morning, and the fireman and washerwoman saw their house with new, enlightened eyes: “They looked around with a proud look, terribly regretting that they would never dare to declare that this home belonged to them. “We’re filming for the second year,” they flashed. Klasson straightened up. Betsy wrapped a scarf around her exhausted chest...” The painting by an unknown artist straightened out their souls, crumpled by life, and “straightened” them.

Green’s “Watercolor” evokes Gleb Uspensky’s famous essay “Straightened Up,” in which the statue of the Venus de Milo, once seen by the village teacher Tyapushkin, illuminates his dark and poor life and gives him “the happiness of feeling like a human being.” This feeling of happiness from contact with art and a good book is experienced by many of the heroes of Green’s works. Let us remember that for the boy Gray from “Scarlet Sails” a picture depicting a raging sea was “that with the right word in the conversation of the soul with life, without which it is difficult to understand oneself.” And a small watercolor - a deserted road among the hills - called “The Road to Nowhere” amazes Tirrey Davenant. The young man, full of bright hopes, resists the impression, although the ominous watercolor “attracts like a well”... Like a spark from a dark stone, a thought is struck: to find a road that would lead not to anywhere, but “here”, fortunately, that at that moment dreamed of Tirrei.

And perhaps it would be more accurate to say this: Green believed that every real person has a romantic flame glimmering in their chest. And it's just a matter of inflating it. When Green's fisherman fishes, he dreams of catching a big fish, such a big one, “like no one has caught before.” A charcoal miner, piling up a basket, suddenly sees that his basket has blossomed, from the branches he has burned, “buds have spread and sprinkled with leaves”... A girl from a fishing village, having heard enough fairy tales, dreams of an extraordinary sailor who will sail for her on a ship with scarlet sails. And her dream is so strong, so passionate that everything comes true. And an extraordinary sailor and scarlet sails.

Green was strange and unusual in the usual circle of realist writers, everyday writers, as they were called then. He was a stranger among the Symbolists, Acmeists, Futurists... “The Tragedy of the Suan Plateau” by Greene, a thing that I left conditionally in the editorial office, warning that it may or may not work, a beautiful thing, but too exotic...” This lines from a letter from Valery Bryusov, who edited the literary department of the magazine “Russian Thought” in 1910-1914. They are very revealing, these lines sound like a sentence even if Bryusov, a great poet, sensitive and responsive to literary novelty, seemed to like Green’s work. and beautiful, but too exotic, which may or may not work, then what was the attitude towards the works of a strange writer in other Russian magazines?

Meanwhile, for Greene, his story “The Tragedy of the Suan Plateau” (1911) was an ordinary thing: he wrote like that. Invading the unusual, the “exotic,” into the ordinary, familiar in the everyday life around him, the writer sought to more sharply indicate the splendor of its miracles or the monstrosity of its ugliness. This was his artistic style, his creative style.

Moral monster Bloom, main character The story, dreaming of a time “when a mother does not dare to stroke her children, and whoever wants to smile will first write a will,” was not a particularly literary novelty. The misanthropes, homegrown Nietzscheans at that time, “on the night after the battle” of 1905, became fashionable figures. “A revolutionary by chance,” Blum is related in his inner essence to the terrorist Alexey from Leonid Andreev’s “Darkness,” who wished “for all the lights to go out,” and the notorious cynic Sanin from novel of the same name M. Artsybasheva, and the obscurantist and sadist Trirodov, whom Fyodor Sologub presented as a Social Democrat in his “Navi Charms”.

Greene's subjects were defined by time. With all the exoticism and whimsicality of the patterns of the artistic fabric of the writer’s works, in many of them the spirit of modernity, the air of the day in which they were written, is clearly felt. The features of time are sometimes so noticeably, so emphatically written out by Greene that for him, a recognized science fiction writer and romantic, they even seem unexpected. At the beginning of the story “Hell Returned” (1915) there is, for example, the following episode: to famous journalist Galien Mark, sitting alone on the deck of the steamer, is approached with clearly hostile intentions by a certain party leader, “a man with a triple chin, black hair combed over a low forehead, dressed baggy and rudely, but with a pretension to panache, expressed by a huge crimson tie... " After this portrait characteristics you can already guess what kind of party this leader represents. But Green considered it necessary to say more precisely about this game (the story is told in the form of notes from Galien Mark).

“I saw that this man wanted a quarrel,” we read, “and I knew why. IN last issue“Meteora” published my article exposing the activities of the Autumn Month Party.”

Green's literary heritage is much wider and more diverse than one might assume, knowing the writer only from his romantic short stories, stories and novels. Not only in his youth, but also at the time of wide fame, Green, along with prose, wrote lyrical poems, poetic feuilletons and even fables. Along with romantic works, he published essays and stories of everyday life in newspapers and magazines. The last book, on which the writer worked was his “ Autobiographical story", where he depicts his life strictly realistically, in all its genre colors, with all its harsh details.

He began his literary career as a “houseman,” as the author of stories, the themes and plots of which he took directly from the reality around him. He was overwhelmed with life impressions, accumulated in abundance during the years of wandering around the world. They urgently demanded a way out and lay down on paper, it seems, in their original appearance, not in the least transformed by imagination; as it happened, so it was written. In the “Autobiographical Tale”, on those pages where Green describes the days he spent at the Ural iron foundry, the reader will find the same pictures of the unsightly morals of the working barracks as in the story “Brick and Music”; even some situations and details coincide. And in the partner of the young man Grinevsky, the gloomy and angry “heavy man”, with whom he sifted coal in sieves from morning until late at night (“75 kopecks per day”), one can easily recognize the prototype of the shaggy and angry, black with soot Evstigney.

The story about Evstigney was included in the writer’s first book, “The Invisible Cap” (1908). It contains ten stories, and about almost each of them we have the right to assume that it was, to one degree or another, copied from life. From his direct experience, Green knew the joyless life of the workers’ barracks; he was in prison, without receiving news from outside for months (“At his leisure”), he was familiar with the vicissitudes of the “mysterious romantic life” of the underground, as depicted in the stories “Marat” , “Underground”, “To Italy”, “Quarantine”... There is no such work that would be called “The Invisible Cap” in the collection. But this title was, of course, not chosen by chance. Most of the stories depict “illegal immigrants” who, in the author’s opinion, live as if under an invisible cap. Hence the name of the collection. A fairy-tale title on the cover of a book where life is shown in a completely different way from fairy-tale twists... This is a very indicative touch for the early Greene.

Of course, Greene’s impressions of existence were not put on paper in a naturalistic way; of course, they were transformed by his artistic imagination. Already in his first purely “prosaic” everyday things, the seeds of romance sprout, people with a spark of dreams appear. In the same shaggy, embittered Evstigney, the writer saw this romantic spark. Halakha music ignites his soul. Image romantic hero the story “Marat”, which opens “The Invisible Cap”, was undoubtedly prompted to the writer by the circumstances of the famous “Kalyaev case”. The words of Ivan Kalyaev, who explained to the judges why he did not throw a bomb at the Moscow governor’s carriage the first time (a woman and children were sitting there), are repeated almost verbatim by the hero of Grinov’s story. Green has a lot of works written in a romantic-realistic vein, in which the action takes place in Russian capitals or in some Okurov district, more than one volume. And, had Green followed this already well-trodden path, he would certainly have developed into an excellent writer of everyday life. Only then Green would not have been Green, a writer of the most original type, as we know him now.

The running formula “Writer N occupies special place in literature" was invented in time immemorial. But it could have been rediscovered during Green's time. And this would be exactly the case when standard phrase, the gray stamp is filled with vital juices, finds its original appearance, and acquires its true meaning. Because Alexander Green occupies a truly special place in Russian literature. It is impossible to remember any writer similar to him (neither Russian nor foreign). However, pre-revolutionary critics, and later Rapp’s critics, persistently compared Greene with Edgar Allan Poe, the American romantic of the 19th century, the author of the popular poem “The Raven” during Greene’s youth, each stanza of which ends with the hopeless “Nevermore!” ("Never!").

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Green A. Collection. op. in 6 volumes, M., 1980

2. Aliev E. The problem of the hero in post-October creativity

3. Amlinsky V. In the Shadow of the Sails. To the 100th anniversary of the birth of A. Green. " New world", 1980. No. 10

4. Arnoldi E. Belletrist Green. "Star", 1963. No. 2

5. Admoni. In “Poetics and Reality”, L., 1976

6. Bakhmetyeva V. “Scarlet Sails” set sail (about the film based on the story of the same name by A. Green). "Literature and Life", 1960, September 25

7. Bakhtin M. The work of Francois Rabe and the folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. M., 1965

8. Berezovskaya L. A. Green: “Battles with drafts.” "Literary

study", 1982. No. 5

9. Bern. E “Games that people play”, M., 1988

10. Bizheva Z.H. “Adyghe language picture of the world”, Nalchik 2000

11. Borisov L. Alexander Green: - In the book. Borisov L. At the round table of the past. L. 1971

12. Bochkovskaya T. Heroes of Greenland. 100 years since the birth of A. Green. "Science and Religion". c.980, no. 9

13. Bulletins of Literature and Life, 1916, No. 21

14. Vaddaev V. Preacher of cosmopolitanism: unclean meaning

“pure” art of A. Green. "New World", 1950, No. 1

15. Vanslav V. Aesthetics of Romanticism. M, 1966

16. Verzhbitsky N. Bright soul. "Our Contemporary". 1964, no. 8

18. Voronova 0. Poetry of dreams and moral searches. "Neva"," 1980. No. 8

19. Memories of Alexander Green. L., 1972

20. Gladysheva A. Scarlet Green sails. “Russian language at school”, 1980.

21. Gorky M. Collection. op. in 30 volumes, vol. 24, M., 1953

22. Gorshkov D. The mystery of the neighborhood of words (notes about the language of the story

23. A.S. Green “Scarlet Sails”). “Russian Speech”, 1960, No. 4

24. Green A. Strait of storms. „ Modern world“, 1913, № 6

26. Gulev N. About the controversial in the theory of romanticism. “Russian Literature”, 1966. No. 1

27. Gubko N. I have never betrayed art. - In the book: A. Green “Running on the Waves”. Stories. L. 1980

28. Danina V. Memories of A. Green. L., 1972 (review of the book), “Star”. 1973, No. 9

29. Dmitrevsky V. What is the magic of A. Green? - In the book: A. Green. Gold chain. The road is going nowhere. Penza, 1958

30. Dunaevskaya I.K. “Where it’s quiet and dazzling,” “Science and Religion” 1993/8,

31. “Ethical and aesthetic concept of man and nature in the works of A. Green”, Riga 1988

32. Egorova L. About the romantic trend in Soviet prose.

Sevastopol, 1966

33. Zagvozdkina T. The originality of the fantastic in novels

34. A. Grina. “Problems of Realism”, vol. 1U, Vologda, 1977

35. Zelinsky K. Green. “Red News”, 1934, No. 4

36. Kandinsky V.V. “On the spiritual in art”, “A Word about Science and Culture”, Obninsk, 2000

37. Kovsky V. Return to A. Green (about literary destiny writer). “Questions of Literature”, 1981, No. 10

38. His: Education with romance. “Literature at school”, 1966, No. 1

39. His: A. Green. Transformation of reality. Frunze, 1966

40. His: The Romantic World of A. Green. M., 1969

41. His: Creativity of A. Green (the concept of man and reality). - Abstract of the dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences. I., 1967

42. Kirkin I. Alexander Green. Bibliographic index works of A.S. Green and literature about him 1906-1977. M... 1980

43. His: A.S. Green in print and literature about him (1906-1970) Abstract of a dissertation for the degree of candidate of pedagogical sciences. L. 1972

44. On the history of Russian romanticism. M., 1973

45. Kobzev N. Some features creative method Greena. “Questions of Russian Literature”, vol. 3, 1969

46. Kobzev N. Novel by Alexander Green (problems, hero, style) Chisinau, 1983

47. Kudrin V. “The Worlds of A. Green”, “Science and Religion” 1993/3

49. Lipelis L. The world of heroes of A. Green. “Questions of Literature”, 1973, No. 2

50. Lebedyaeva Ya. He is poetic, he is courageous. “Literature at school.” 1960, no. 4

51. Lesnevsky B. Poetry and prose of Alexander Green (about the book by V. Kharchev “Poetry and prose of Alexander Green”). „ TVNZ“, 1976, April 17

52. Mann Yu. Poetics of Gogol. M., 1978

53. Matveeva I. About the book by L. Mikhailova “A. Green. life, personality, creativity." M., 1980, “Literary newspaper”, 1981, No. 52. December 23

54. “Metaphor in language and text”, M., 1988

55. Milashevsky V. A. Green. In the book: Milashevsky V. Yesterday, the day before yesterday. M., 1972

56. Miller V. Russian Maslenitsa and Western European Carnival.

57. Mikhailova L. Psychology of the unusual. Notes on creativity

58. Hers: A. Green. Life, personality, creativity. M., 1972

59. Hers: A. Green, Life, personality, creativity. M., 1980

60. Ozhegov S. Dictionary of the Russian language. M., 1978

61. Panova V. About A. Green. L., 1972

62. Paustovsky K. Collection. op. in 6 volumes, vol. 5, M., 1958

63. Problems of tradition and innovation in fiction. Sat. scientific works. Gorky, 1978

64. “Problems of Romanticism”, M., 1961

65. Prokhorov E. Alexander Green. M, 1970

66. Revyakina A. Some problems of romanticism of the 20th century and issues of art in the post-October work of A. Green. - Abstract of the dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences. M., 1970

67. Her same: 0 creative principles A. Green. Scientific notes of Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, 1971, No. 456

68. Review without signature: A.S. Green. Stories. "Russian wealth". 1910. No. 3

70. His: Pages of Life. M., 1974

71. Russian prose writers, vol. I, L, 1959

72. Saidova M. Poetics of A.S. Green (based on romantic short stories). Abstract of the dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences. Dushanbe, 1976

73. Saikin 0, Inspired by a dream. To the 100th anniversary of Green. “Moscow”, 1980, No. 8

74. Samoilova V. Creativity of A. Green and problems of romanticism in Soviet literature. - Abstract of the dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences. M., 1968

75. Dictionary of foreign words, 7th ed., M., 1979

76. Slonimsky M. Alexander Green, real and fantastic. -In the book: “Book of Memories”. M.-L, 1966

77. Toporov V.M. “Myth. Ritual. Symbol. Image", M., 1995

78. Sukiasova I. New information about Alexander Greene. “Literary Georgia”. 1968, no. 12.

79. Wheelwright.F “Metaphor and Reality”, M., 1990

80. Khailov A. In the country of Green. “Don”, 1963, No. 12

81. Fedorov.F.F “Romantic art world»

82. Fromm.E “The Soul of Man”, M., 1992

83. Kharchev V. Poetry and prose of Alexander Greene. Gorky, 1978

84. His: 0 style of “Scarlet Sails”. “Russian Literature”, 1972.

85. Khrapchenko M. Creative individuality writer and the development of literature. M., 1970

86. Khrulev V. Philosophical-aesthetic and artistic principles Greene's romanticism. „ Philological sciences“, 1971, №1

87. Philosophical Dictionary, ed. Frolova I. M. 1980

88. Shogentsukova.N.A “Experience of ontological poetics” M, 1995. P. 26

89. Shcheglov M. Ships of A. Green. “New World”, 1956, No. 10

INTRODUCTION

I NOVELS AND STORIES

SCARLET SAILS

RUNNING ON THE WAVES

BRILLIANT WORLD

GOLD CHAIN

II STORIES

III CREATIVE METHOD OF A. GREEN

CONCLUSION

Adventurous in their plots, Greene's books are spiritually rich and sublime, they are charged with dreams of everything high and beautiful and teach readers courage and the joy of life. And in this, Green is deeply traditional, despite all the originality of his characters and the whimsicality of his plots. Sometimes it even seems that he deliberately heavily emphasizes this moralistic traditionalism of his works, their kinship with old books and parables. Thus, the writer, of course, not by accident, but quite deliberately concludes his two stories, “The Pillory” and “A Hundred Miles Along the River,” with the same solemn chord of ancient stories about eternal love: “They lived a long time and died in one day.” day..."

But are his romantic fiction really so far from reality, from life? The heroes of Green's story "Watercolor" - the unemployed steamship fireman Klasson and his washerwoman Betsy - accidentally end up in an art gallery, where they discover a sketch in which, to their deep amazement, they recognize their house, their unprepossessing dwelling. The path, the porch, the brick wall overgrown with ivy, the windows, the branches of maple and oak, between which Betsy stretched the ropes - everything was the same in the picture... The artist just threw stripes of light on the foliage, on the path, colored the porch, the windows, brick wall with the colors of early morning, and the fireman and washerwoman saw their house with new, enlightened eyes: “They looked around with a proud look, terribly regretting that they would never dare to declare that this housing belonged to them. “We are renting for the second year,” flashed through their minds. Klasson straightened up. Betsy wrapped her scarf around her exhausted chest...” The painting by an unknown artist straightened out their souls, crumpled by life, “straightened” them.

Green’s “Watercolor” evokes Gleb Uspensky’s famous essay “Straightened Up,” in which the statue of the Venus de Milo, once seen by the village teacher Tyapushkin, illuminates his dark and poor life and gives him “the happiness of feeling like a human being.” This feeling of happiness from contact with art and a good book is experienced by many of the heroes of Green’s works. Let us remember that for the boy Gray from “Scarlet Sails,” a picture depicting a raging sea was “that necessary word in the conversation of the soul with life, without which it is difficult to understand oneself.” And a small watercolor - a deserted road among the hills - called “The Road to Nowhere” amazes Tirrey Davenant. The young man, full of bright hopes, resists the impression, although the ominous watercolor “attracts like a well”... Like a spark from a dark stone, a thought is struck: to find a road that would lead not to nowhere, but “here”, fortunately, that in At that moment Tirrei dreamed.

Green was strange and unusual in the usual circle of realist writers, everyday writers, as they were called then. He was a stranger among the Symbolists, Acmeists, Futurists... "The Tragedy of the Suan Plateau" by Greene, a piece that I left conditionally with the editors, warning that it may or may not work, a beautiful thing, but too exotic... “These are lines from a letter from Valery Bryusov, who edited the literary department of the magazine “Russian Thought” in 1910-1914. They are very revealing, these lines that sound like a sentence. Even if Bryusov, a great poet, sensitive and responsive to literary novelty, is Green’s thing Although it seemed beautiful, it was too exotic, which may or may not work, then what was the attitude towards the works of a strange writer in other Russian magazines?

The moral monster Blum, the main character of the story, who dreams of a time “when a mother does not dare to stroke her children, and whoever wants to smile will first write a will,” was not a special literary novelty. The misanthropes, homegrown Nietzscheans at that time, “on the night after the battle” of 1905, became fashionable figures. “A revolutionary by chance,” Blum is related in their inner essence to the terrorist Alexey from Leonid Andreev’s “Darkness,” who wished “for all the lights to go out,” and the notorious cynic Sanin from the novel of the same name by M. Artsybashev, and the obscurantist and sadist Trirodov, whom Fyodor Sologub in his “Navi Charms” passed off as a Social Democrat.

Greene's subjects were defined by time. With all the exoticism and whimsicality of the patterns of the artistic fabric of the writer’s works, in many of them the spirit of modernity, the air of the day in which they were written, is clearly felt. The features of time are sometimes so noticeably, so emphatically written out by Green that for him, a recognized science fiction writer and romantic, they even seem unexpected. At the beginning of the story “Hell Returned” (1915) there is, for example, the following episode: the famous journalist Galien Mark, sitting alone on the deck of a steamship, is approached with clearly hostile intentions by a certain party leader, “a man with a triple chin, black hair combed onto his low forehead.” hair, dressed baggy and rudely, but with a claim to panache, expressed by a huge crimson tie...". After such a portrait description, you can already guess what kind of party this leader represents. But Green considered it necessary to say more precisely about this game (the story is told in the form of notes from Galien Mark).

“I saw that this man wanted a quarrel,” we read, “and I knew why. My article was published in the last issue of Meteor, exposing the activities of the Autumn Month party.”

Green's literary heritage is much wider and more diverse than one might assume, knowing the writer only from his romantic short stories, stories and novels. Not only in his youth, but also at the time of wide fame, Green, along with prose, wrote lyrical poems, poetic feuilletons and even fables. Along with romantic works, he published essays and stories of everyday life in newspapers and magazines. The last book the writer worked on was his “Autobiographical Tale,” where he depicts his life strictly realistically, in all its genre colors, with all its harsh details.

He began his literary career as a “everyday writer”, as the author of stories, the themes and plots of which he took directly from the reality around him. He was overwhelmed with life impressions, accumulated in abundance during the years of wandering around the world. They urgently demanded a way out and lay down on paper, it seems, in their original appearance, not in the least transformed by imagination; as it happened, so it was written. In the "Autobiographical Tale", on those pages where Green describes the days he spent at the Ural iron foundry, the reader will find the same pictures of the unsightly morals of the workers' barracks as in the story "Brick and Music", even some situations and details coincide. And in the partner of the young man Grinevsky, the gloomy and angry “heavy man”, with whom he sifted coal in sieves from morning until late at night (“75 kopecks per day”), one can easily recognize the prototype of the shaggy and angry, black with soot Evstigney.

The story about Evstigney was included in the writer’s first book, “The Invisible Cap” (1908). It contains ten stories, and about almost each of them we have the right to assume that it was, to one degree or another, copied from life. From his direct experience, Green knew the joyless life of the workers' barracks, sat in prisons, without receiving news from the outside for months ("At Leisure"), he was familiar with the vicissitudes of the "mysterious romantic life" of the underground, as depicted in the stories "Marat" , “Underground”, “To Italy”, “Quarantine”... There is no such work that would be called “The Invisible Cap” in the collection. But this title was, of course, not chosen by chance. Most of the stories depict “illegal immigrants” who, in the author’s opinion, live as if under an invisible cap. Hence the name of the collection. A fairy-tale title on the cover of a book where life is shown in a completely different way from fairy-tale twists... This is a very indicative touch for the early Greene.

Of course, Greene’s impressions of existence were not put on paper in a naturalistic way; of course, they were transformed by his artistic imagination. Already in his first purely “prosaic” everyday things, the seeds of romance sprout, people with a spark of dreams appear. In the same shaggy, embittered Evstigney, the writer saw this romantic spark. Halakha music ignites his soul. The image of the romantic hero of the story “Marat”, who opens “The Invisible Cap”, was undoubtedly suggested to the writer by the circumstances of the famous “Kalyaev case”. The words of Ivan Kalyaev, who explained to the judges why he did not throw a bomb at the Moscow governor’s carriage the first time (a woman and children were sitting there), are repeated almost verbatim by the hero of Grinov’s story. Green has a lot of works written in a romantic-realistic vein, in which the action takes place in Russian capitals or in some Okurov district, more than one volume. And, had Green followed this already well-trodden path, he would certainly have developed into an excellent writer of everyday life. Only then Green would not have been Green, a writer of the most original type, as we know him now.

The popular formula “Writer N occupies a special place in literature” was invented in time immemorial. But it could have been rediscovered during Green's time. And this would be exactly the case when a standard phrase, a gray stamp is filled with vital juices, finds its original appearance, acquires its true meaning. Because Alexander Green occupies a truly special place in Russian literature. It is impossible to remember any writer similar to him (neither Russian nor foreign). However, pre-revolutionary critics, and later Rapp’s critics, persistently compared Greene with Edgar Allan Poe, the American romantic of the 19th century, the author of the popular poem “The Raven” during Greene’s youth, each stanza of which ends with the hopeless “Nevermore!” ("Never!").

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Green A. Collection. op. in 6 volumes, M., 1980

2. Aliev E. The problem of the hero in post-October creativity

3. Amlinsky V. In the Shadow of the Sails. To the 100th anniversary of the birth of A. Green. "New World", 1980. No. 10

4. Arnoldi E. Belletrist Green. "Star", 1963. No. 2

5. Admoni. In “Poetics and Reality”, L., 1976

6. Bakhmetyeva V. “Scarlet Sails” set sail (about the film based on the story of the same name by A. Green). "Literature and Life", 1960, September 25

7. Bakhtin M. The work of Francois Rabe and the folk culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. M., 1965

8. Berezovskaya L. A. Green: “Battles with drafts.” "Literary

study", 1982. No. 5

9. Bern. E “Games that people play”, M., 1988

10. Bizheva Z.H. “Adyghe language picture of the world”, Nalchik 2000

11. Borisov L. Alexander Green: - In the book. Borisov L. At the round table of the past. L. 1971

12. Bochkovskaya T. Heroes of Greenland. 100 years since the birth of A. Green. "Science and Religion". c.980, no. 9

13. Bulletins of Literature and Life, 1916, No. 21

14. Vaddaev V. Preacher of cosmopolitanism: unclean meaning

"pure" art of A. Green. "New World", 1950, No. 1

15. Vanslav V. Aesthetics of Romanticism. M, 1966

16. Verzhbitsky N. Bright soul. "Our Contemporary". 1964, no. 8

18. Voronova 0. Poetry of dreams and moral searches. "Neva, 1980. No. 8

19. Memories of Alexander Green. L., 1972

20. Gladysheva A. Scarlet Green sails. "Russian language at school", 1980.

21. Gorky M. Collection. op. in 30 volumes, vol. 24, M., 1953

22. Gorshkov D. The mystery of the neighborhood of words (notes about the language of the story

23. A.S. Green “Scarlet Sails”). “Russian Speech”, 1960, No. 4

24. Green A. Strait of storms. "Modern World", 1913, No. 6

26. Gulev N. About the controversial in the theory of romanticism. "Russian Literature", 1966. No. 1

27. Gubko N. I have never betrayed art. - In the book: A. Green “Running on the Waves.” Stories. L. 1980

28. Danina V. Memories of A. Green. L., 1972 (review of the book), "Star". 1973, No. 9

29. Dmitrevsky V. What is the magic of A. Green? - In the book: A. Green. Gold chain. The road is going nowhere. Penza, 1958

30. Dunaevskaya I.K. “Where it’s quiet and dazzling,” “Science and Religion” 1993/8,

31. “Ethical and aesthetic concept of man and nature in the works of A. Green”, Riga 1988

32. Egorova L. About the romantic trend in Soviet prose.

Sevastopol, 1966

33. Zagvozdkina T. The originality of the fantastic in novels

34. A. Grina. "Problems of Realism", vol. 1U, Vologda, 1977

35. Zelinsky K. Green. "Red Nov", 1934, No. 4

36. Kandinsky V.V. “On the spiritual in art”, “A Word about Science and Culture”, Obninsk, 2000

37. Kovsky V. Return to A. Green (about the literary fate of the writer). "Questions of Literature", 1981, No. 10

38. His: Education with romance. "Literature at school", 1966, No. 1

39. His: A. Green. Transformation of reality. Frunze, 1966

40. His: The Romantic World of A. Green. M., 1969

41. His: Creativity of A. Green (the concept of man and reality). - Abstract of the dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences. I., 1967

42. Kirkin I. Alexander Green. Bibliographic index of works by A.S. Green and literature about him 1906-1977. M.. 1980

43. His: A.S. Green in print and literature about him (1906-1970) Abstract of a dissertation for the degree of candidate of pedagogical sciences. L. 1972

44. On the history of Russian romanticism. M., 1973

45. Kobzev N. Some features of Green’s creative method. "Questions of Russian Literature", vol. 3, 1969

46. Kobzev N. Novel by Alexander Green (problems, hero, style) Chisinau, 1983

47. Kudrin V. “The Worlds of A. Green”, “Science and Religion” 1993/3

49. Lipelis L. The world of heroes of A. Green. "Questions of Literature", 1973, No. 2

50. Lebedyaeva Ya. He is poetic, he is courageous. "Literature at school." 1960, no. 4

51. Lesnevsky B. Poetry and prose of Alexander Green (about the book by V. Kharchev “Poetry and prose of Alexander Green”). "Komsomolskaya Pravda", 1976, April 17

52. Mann Yu. Poetics of Gogol. M., 1978

53. Matveeva I. About the book by L. Mikhailova “A. Green. life, personality, creativity.” M., 1980, "Literary newspaper", 1981, No. 52. December 23

54. “Metaphor in language and text”, M., 1988

55. Milashevsky V. A. Green. In the book: Milashevsky V. Yesterday, the day before yesterday. M., 1972

56. Miller V. Russian Maslenitsa and Western European Carnival.

57. Mikhailova L. Psychology of the unusual. Notes on creativity

58. Hers: A. Green. Life, personality, creativity. M., 1972

59. Hers: A. Green, Life, personality, creativity. M., 1980

60. Ozhegov S. Dictionary of the Russian language. M., 1978

61. Panova V. About A. Green. L., 1972

62. Paustovsky K. Collection. op. in 6 volumes, vol. 5, M., 1958

63. Problems of tradition and innovation in fiction. Sat. scientific works. Gorky, 1978

64. “Problems of Romanticism”, M., 1961

65. Prokhorov E. Alexander Green. M, 1970

67. Her same: 0 creative principles of A. Green. Scientific notes of Moscow State Pedagogical Institute, 1971, No. 456

68. Review without signature: A.S. Green. Stories. "Russian wealth". 1910. No. 3

70. His: Pages of Life. M., 1974

71. Russian prose writers, vol. I, L, 1959

72. Saidova M. Poetics of A.S. Green (based on romantic short stories). Abstract of the dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences. Dushanbe, 1976

73. Saikin 0, Inspired by a dream. To the 100th anniversary of Green. "Moscow", 1980, No. 8

74. Samoilova V. Creativity of A. Green and problems of romanticism in Soviet literature. - Abstract of the dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences. M., 1968

75. Dictionary of foreign words, 7th ed., M., 1979

76. Slonimsky M. Alexander Green, real and fantastic. -In the book: "Book of Memories". M.-L, 1966

77. Toporov V.M. “Myth. Ritual. Symbol. Image", M., 1995

78. Sukiasova I. New information about Alexander Greene. "Literary Georgia". 1968, no. 12.

79. Wheelwright.F “Metaphor and Reality”, M., 1990

80. Khailov A. In the country of Green. "Don", 1963, No. 12

81. Fedorov.F.F “Romantic artistic world”

82. Fromm.E “The Soul of Man”, M., 1992

83. Kharchev V. Poetry and prose of Alexander Greene. Gorky, 1978

84. His: 0 “Scarlet Sails” style. "Russian Literature", 1972.

85. Khrapchenko M. Creative individuality of the writer and the development of literature. M., 1970

86. Khrulev V. Philosophical, aesthetic and artistic principles of Green’s romanticism. "Philological Sciences", 1971, No. 1

87. Philosophical Dictionary, ed. Frolova I. M. 1980

88. Shogentsukova.N.A “Experience of ontological poetics” M, 1995. P. 26

89. Shcheglov M. Ships of A. Green. "New World", 1956, No. 10

In London in 1920, in the winter, on the corner of Piccadilly and One Lane, two well-dressed middle-aged people stopped. They had just left an expensive restaurant. There they had dinner, drank wine and joked with artists from the Drurilensky Theater.

Now their attention was drawn to a motionless, poorly dressed man of about twenty-five, around whom a crowd began to gather.

Stilton cheese! - the fat gentleman said disgustedly to his tall friend, seeing that he had bent down and was peering at the man lying down. - Honestly, you shouldn’t spend so much time on this carrion. He's drunk or dead.

“I’m hungry... and I’m alive,” muttered the unfortunate man, rising to look at Stilton, who was thinking about something. - It was a faint.

Reimer! - said Stilton. - Here's a chance to make a joke. I came up with an interesting idea. I'm tired of ordinary entertainment, and there's only one way to joke well: making toys out of people.

These words were spoken quietly, so that the man lying and now leaning against the fence did not hear them.

Reimer, who did not care, shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, said goodbye to Stilton and went to while away the night at his club, and Stilton, with the approval of the crowd and with the help of a policeman, put the homeless man into a cab.

The crew headed to one of Gaystreet's taverns. The poor guy's name was John Eve. He came to London from Ireland to seek service or work. Yves was an orphan, raised in the family of a forester. Except primary school, he did not receive any education. When Yves was 15 years old, his teacher died, the adult children of the forester left - some to America, some to South Wales, some to Europe, and Yves worked for some time for a farmer. Then he had to experience the work of a coal miner, a sailor, a servant in a tavern, and at the age of 22 he fell ill with pneumonia and, upon leaving the hospital, decided to try his luck in London. But competition and unemployment soon showed him that finding work was not so easy. He spent the night in parks, on wharves, became hungry, grew thin, and was, as we have seen, raised by Stilton, the owner of trading warehouses in the City.

Stilton, at the age of 40, experienced everything that a single person who does not know the worries about lodging and food can experience for money. He owned a fortune of 20 million pounds. What he came up with to do with Yves was complete nonsense, but Stilton was very proud of his invention, since he had the weakness of considering himself a man of great imagination and cunning imagination.

When Yves drank wine, ate well and told Stilton his story, Stilton said:

I want to make you an offer that will immediately make your eyes sparkle. Listen: I’m giving you ten pounds on the condition that tomorrow you rent a room on one of the central streets, on the second floor, with a window onto the street. Every evening, exactly from five to twelve at night, on the windowsill of one window, always the same, there should be a lit lamp, covered with a green lampshade. While the lamp burns for the designated period of time, you will not leave the house from five to twelve, you will not receive anyone and you will not speak to anyone. In a word, the work is not difficult, and if you agree to do so, I will send you ten pounds every month. I won't tell you my name.

If you’re not joking,” answered Yves, terribly amazed at the proposal, “then I agree to forget even given name. But tell me, please, how long will this prosperity of mine last?

This is unknown. Maybe a year, maybe a lifetime.

Better. But - I dare to ask - why did you need this green illumination?

Secret! - Stilton replied. - Great secret! The lamp will serve as a signal for people and things about which you will never know anything.

Understand. That is, I don’t understand anything. Fine; drive the coin and know that tomorrow at the address I provided, John Eve will illuminate the window with a lamp!

Thus a strange deal took place, after which the tramp and the millionaire parted, quite satisfied with each other.

Saying goodbye, Stilton said:

Write post restante like this: "3-33-6". Also keep in mind that who knows when, maybe in a month, maybe in a year, in a word, completely unexpectedly, suddenly you will be visited by people who will make you a wealthy person. Why and how this is - I have no right to explain. But it will happen...

Damn it! - Yves muttered, looking after the cab that was taking Stilton away, and thoughtfully twirling the ten-pound ticket. - Either this man has gone crazy, or I am a special lucky guy. Promise such a heap of grace just for the fact that I burn half a liter of kerosene a day.

In the evening next day one window on the second floor of the gloomy house number 52 River Street shone with a soft green light. The lamp was moved close to the frame.

Two passersby looked for a while at the green window from the sidewalk opposite the house; then Stilton said:

So, my dear Reimer, when you are bored, come here and smile. There, outside the window, sits a fool. A fool bought cheaply, in installments, for a long time. He will get drunk from boredom or go crazy... But he will wait, not knowing what. Yes, here he is!

Indeed, a dark figure, leaning his forehead against the glass, looked into the semi-darkness of the street, as if asking: “Who is there? What should I expect? Who will come?”

However, you are also a fool, my dear,” said Reimer, taking his friend by the arm and dragging him towards the car. - What's funny about this joke?

A toy... a toy made from a living person,” said Stilton, “the sweetest food!”