Evenings on a farm near Dikanka abbreviation to read. N.V. Gogol “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”: description, characters, analysis of the cycle of works

Sorochinskaya fair

The action takes place at a fair in the town of Sorochynets. Residents of surrounding villages gather for it. Solopiy Cherevik and his daughter Paraska come to the fair. At the fair, a boy wooes her, Cherevik agrees, but his wife opposed such a hasty decision. At the fair, a red scroll is noticed - a symbol of a curse. According to legend, every year the devil in the guise of a pig looks for a scroll at the fair. Cherevik began to tell this story to his guests, when suddenly a window frame broke in the house and a pig’s face appeared. Everything in the house was mixed up, the guests fled.

The evening before Ivan bathed. A true story told by the sexton of the *** church.

The beautiful daughter of the Cossack Korzha fell in love with the boy Petrus. But Korzh drove him away. And it was decided to marry the daughter to a rich Pole. Petrus meets Basavryuk in a tavern. As it turned out, he turned into a man in order to tear off treasures with the help of young people. Petrus, not knowing, agrees to help him find a fern flower on the night of Ivan Kupala. As a result, Petrus encounters all sorts of evil spirits and witches in the forest. After this he begins to go crazy. People who once ran to Petrus’s house find only ashes in his place. In it, the local commissioner orders consent to Levko’s marriage to Hanna.

May Night, or the Drowned Woman

The story is about two lovers - Hanna and Levka. His father is against the marriage. Levko tells the girl a story about a young lady who was not loved by her witch stepmother. Pannochka threw herself into the water and became the leader over the drowned women. Levko says goodbye to Ganna. After some time in the darkness, he hears a conversation between his lover and a man who scolds Levko. The stranger turns out to be his father. Levko and the boys decide to teach him a lesson. A stone flies into the house towards the head. Instead of the instigator, Kalenik was caught by mistake. And the hero goes to the lady’s house, sings a song and agrees to play a game. He unmistakably distinguishes a witch among drowned women. As a reward from the lady he receives a note addressed to his father-head.

Christmas Eve

The night before Christmas is a traditional time for caroling. All the young boys and girls are taking to the streets. The blacksmith Vakula is in love with the daughter of the Cossack Chub, who is quite rich. The devil, who hates the blacksmith, steals the moon in the hope that he will not go to Oksana in the dark. Vakula nevertheless goes to Chub’s house, where the beautiful Oksana mocks him. She declares that she will become the blacksmith’s wife if he brings her little slippers like the queen’s. Chance helps Vakula. He manages to catch the devil. He orders him to take him to St. Petersburg for some little slippers. The blacksmith manages to get a reception from the queen, she gives him the treasured shoes. The whole village rejoices at Vakula’s return, and he marries Oksana.

Terrible revenge

Many guests gathered at the wedding of the son of Yesaul Gorobets. Among them are Danilo Burulbash with his wife Katerina and little son. At the height of the wedding, Gorobets brought out two icons to bless the newlyweds. At that moment a sorcerer appeared in the crowd, but immediately disappeared, frightened by the icons. The next day, when the heroes returned home, Katerina tells her husband about her dream that her father was a sorcerer. Danilo decides to check on his father-in-law and watches him in his house. The fears are confirmed, the sorcerer is chained in the basement, and Katerina renounces him. But, having pity, he lets him go. The Poles help the sorcerer, they burn the surrounding area, and Danilo is killed in the battle. Then the sorcerer, coming to Katerina in a different guise, kills her. The sorcerer then goes to the Carpathians, but he himself suffers death along the way.

Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his aunt

Ivan Fedorovich Shponka, who served in an infantry regiment, receives news from his aunt that she is no longer able to look after the estate. The hero receives his resignation and goes to Gadyach. On the way to the tavern, the hero meets Grigory Storchenko. The aunt, whose meeting turned out to be very warm, sends Ivan Fedorovich to Khortyn for a deed of gift. There he again meets his friend Storchenko, who should have the document for the estate. Storchenko tries to assure Shponka that there was no deed of gift. The hospitable owner tries to divert the conversation to other topics and introduces Ivan Fedorovich to his young ladies-sisters. Returning to her aunt, Shponka tells her about the quirky Storchenko. The relatives decide to go to him together.

The evening before Ivan bathed. A true story told by the sexton of the *** church.

May Night, or the Drowned Woman

Christmas Eve

Terrible revenge

Many guests gathered at the wedding of the son of Yesaul Gorobets. Among them are Danilo Burulbash with his wife Katerina and little son. At the height of the wedding, Gorobets brought out two icons to bless the newlyweds. At that moment a sorcerer appeared in the crowd, but immediately disappeared, frightened by the icons. The next day, when the heroes returned home, Katerina tells her husband about her dream that her father was a sorcerer... Danilo decides to check on his father-in-law and watches him in his house. The fears are confirmed, the sorcerer is chained in the basement, and Katerina renounces him. But, having pity, he lets him go. The Poles help the sorcerer, they burn the surrounding area, and Danilo is killed in the battle. Then the sorcerer, coming to Katerina in a different guise, kills her. The sorcerer then goes to the Carpathians, but he himself suffers death along the way.

Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his aunt

Enchanted place. A true story told by the sexton of the *** church

The action takes place in a village. The head of the family left to trade, leaving his wife, young sons and grandfather at home. In the evening, the Chumaks, old acquaintances of my grandfather, arrived at the house. The feast began. Grandfather started dancing. But suddenly, having reached a certain place, he stopped and could not move his legs. He began to look around - he could not find out where he was, everything seemed unfamiliar. Grandfather identified a path in the darkness and suddenly saw a light. I thought it was a treasure and decided to leave a note in the form of a broken branch at this place. The next day the grandfather went to look for that place, but it started to rain and he had to return home. The next day, the grandfather discovered that place and began to dig it. Suddenly, an evil spirit overpowered everyone, voices were heard, and a mountain loomed overhead. With the cauldron dug out, the grandfather rushed to run. But there was nothing in it except garbage. Grandfather decided that the place was enchanted and never went there again.

“Evenings...” consist of two chapters of four stories each. Below is a summary of the evening on a farm near Dikanka. Read it, and you might want to read the full text of the stories.

Part one

Sorochinskaya fair.
One day, a family consisting of Solopy Cherevik, his wife and daughter were traveling to a fair in Sorochynets. One of the boys asked for the girl’s hand in marriage, but Solopy refused.
Rumors circulated around the fair about the devil's red scroll. In the morning Cherevik found a sleeve from a red scroll. And later he discovered the horse was missing. He was captured and accused of stealing his mare. Gritsko freed Cherevik, and he agreed to the wedding.

The evening before Ivan Kupala.
Poor Petrus fell in love with Pedorka, Korzh’s daughter. The devil promised to help if he picked a fern flower. The flower indicated the place where the treasure was. To get it, Petrus killed the boy and received the gold.
Korzh agreed to the wedding. But Petrus constantly sat near the gold. The witch came to Petrus's house, he woke up and saw a boy in front of him. In the morning they found ashes instead of Petrus, and shards instead of bags of gold.

May Night or the Drowned Woman.
Levko tells this to his Hannah. The centurion had a daughter and a wife - a witch. The father kicked his daughter out of the house, and she drowned herself. One day she dragged her stepmother under water. But she turned into a drowned woman and now the lady doesn’t know which of them is the witch.
Father Levko had his eye on Hanna. Once Levko saw a lady in the pond. He recognized one of the drowned women as his stepmother. In gratitude, the lady gave him a note to his head, which ordered him to marry Levko and Hanna.

Missing certificate.
The narrator's grandfather sewed the letter into his hat and drove off. On the way, he stopped at a fair. There he met a Cossack. He asked the narrator's grandfather to stay awake at night and watch out so that the devil would not drag him away. But grandfather still fell asleep. He wakes up - there is no hat with a diploma. He went into the forest at night and came out to the fire, behind which the witches were sitting. The grandfather began to threaten to cross all the witches, and they gave up the hat and horse.

Part two

Christmas Eve.
Chuba’s daughter Oksana said that she would marry Vakula if he brought her the queen’s slippers.
Vakula took the bag with the devil out of the house, which his mother had hidden there, and went to Patsyuk. He advised him to go to hell.
Vakula flew to the line and went to the queen. He asked her for her slippers, and she instructed him to give him shoes embroidered with gold. Vakula went to Chub and he agreed to give him his daughter Oksana. Vakula gave her slippers, and they got married.

Terrible revenge.
A sorcerer appeared at the wedding of Danila and Katerina. She began to dream that he was calling her to marry. Katerina found out that the sorcerer is her father. They decided to execute him, but he convinced Katerina to let him go.
After some time in the battle, the sorcerer shot Danila. Katerina continued to dream that the sorcerer would kill her son if she did not agree to marry him. A guest appeared in the village, supposedly a friend of Danila. Katerina recognized him as a sorcerer and rushed at him with a knife, but he stabbed her.
The sorcerer began to be pursued by his wonderful knight, he tried to hide from him, but failed. And the sorcerer died.

Ivan Fedorovich Shponka and his aunt.
Ivan Shponka resigned from service and returned to his estate to his aunt. She persuaded him to go to a neighbor to look for a deed of land. There he met his 2 sisters. The aunt decided to marry her nephew to one of them. How the story ended is unknown, since the manuscript breaks off.

Enchanted place.
Once my grandfather was dancing in the garden, but suddenly he found himself in another place in the field near the grave, he realized that there was treasure, marked the place and decided to come here again. When he returned the other night and began to dig, he dug out a cauldron. The evil spirit frightened him, but he still dragged the cauldron home. I opened it, and there was all sorts of garbage. Since then, the grandfather decided not to believe the devil, fenced off the place with a fence and did not plant anything on it.

“Evenings...”, consisting of 8 stories, are divided into exactly 2 parts, and each is preceded by a preface by the imaginary publisher. In the first, describing his farm, he characterizes some of the particularly colorful inhabitants of Dikanka, who come into the “pasichnik’s shack” in the evenings and tell those outlandish stories, of which Rudoy Panko is a diligent collector.

May Night, or the Drowned Woman

On a quiet and clear evening, when girls and boys gather in a circle and sing songs, the young Cossack Levko, the son of the village mayor, approaches one of the huts and calls out the clear-eyed Hanna with a song. But the timid Hanna does not come out right away; she is afraid of the envy of the girls, and the insolence of the boys, and her mother’s strictness, and something else unclear. Levka has nothing to console the beauty with: his father again pretended to be deaf when he started talking about marriage. Sitting on the threshold of the hut, Ganna asks about the house with boarded shutters, which is reflected in the dark water of the pond. Levko tells how the centurion who lived there and his daughter, the “clear little lady,” got married, but the stepmother disliked the little lady, harassed her, tormented her, and forced the centurion to kick her daughter out of the house. The lady threw herself from a high bank into the water, became the head of the drowned women, and one day dragged her stepmother-witch into the water, but she herself turned into a drowned woman and thereby escaped punishment. And on the site of that house they are going to build Vinnitsa, which is why the distiller has come today. Here Levko said goodbye to Ganna, hearing the boys returning.

After the well-known description of the Ukrainian night, Kalenik, who has been on a pretty good spree, bursts into the narrative and, out of the blue of the village head, “indirect steps”, not without the help of crafty girls, looks for his hut. Levko, having said goodbye to his comrades, returns and sees Hanna talking about him, Levka, with someone indistinguishable in the darkness. The stranger scolds Levka, offering Ganya his more serious love. The unexpected appearance of the mischievous boys and the clear moon reveals to the angry Levka that this stranger is his father. Having scared his head, he persuades the boys to teach him a lesson. The head himself (about whom it is known that he once accompanied Tsarina Catherine to the Crimea, which he likes to mention on occasion, is now crooked, stern, important and widowed, lives somewhat under the thumb of his sister-in-law) is already talking in the hut with the distiller when Kalenik stumbles in , constantly cursing his head, falls asleep on the bench. Feeding the owner’s ever-increasing anger, a stone flies into the hut, breaking the glass, and the distiller, with an appropriate story about his mother-in-law, stops the curses boiling on the lips of the head. But the offensive words of the song outside the window force my head into action.

The instigator in a black, turned-out sheepskin coat is caught and thrown into a dark closet, and the head with the distiller and the foreman are sent to the clerk, so that, having caught the brawlers, they can immediately “make a resolution to them all.” However, the clerk himself caught the same urchin and put him in the barn. Challenging each other about the honor of this capture, the clerk and the head, first in the closet, and then in the barn, find their sister-in-law, “they want to burn the mischievous one, considering him a devil. When the new captive in the inside-out sheepskin coat turns out to be Kalenik, the head goes into a frenzy, equipping the timid guards to certainly catch the instigator, promising merciless punishment for negligence.

About this time, Levko, in his black sheepskin coat and with his face smeared with soot, approached the old house by the pond, struggling with the drowsiness that was taking over him. Looking at the reflection of the manor’s house, he notices that the window in it has opened, and there are no gloomy shutters at all. He sang a song, and the window, which had been closed, opened again and a bright lady appeared in it. Crying, she complains about her stepmother hiding and promises Levk a reward if he finds the witch among the drowned women. Levko looks at the girls dancing in circles, they are all pale and transparent, but they are starting a game of raven, and the one who volunteered to be the raven seems to him not as bright as the others. And when she grabs the victim and anger flashes in her eyes, “Witch!” - says Levko, and the lady, laughing, gives him a note for his head. Here the awakened Levka, holding a piece of paper in his hand and cursing his illiteracy, is grabbed by the ten's head. Levko submits a note that turns out to be written by “the commissar, retired lieutenant Kozma Dergach-Drishpanovsky” and contains, among the prohibitions to the head, an order to marry Levka Makogonenok to Ganna Petrychenkova, “and also to repair bridges along the main road” and other important instructions. In response to the questions of the stupefied Levko, he comes up with the story of a meeting with the commissar, who allegedly promised to stop by the head for lunch. Encouraged by such an honor, the head promises Levka, in addition to the whip, a wedding the next day, starts his eternal stories about Queen Catherine, and Levko runs away to a famous hut and, having crossed the sleeping Hanna in the window, returns home, unlike the drunken Kalenik, who is still looking and not can find his hut.

Levko is the son of Yevtukh Makogonenko, the local head; a bandura player with brown eyes and a “black mustache”; in love with seventeen-year-old “clear-eyed beauty” Hanna.

Like all the loving “couples” of the “Evenings” cycle, he is faced with an insurmountable obstacle: the widowed father L., refusing to bless his son for his wedding with Hanna, himself treacherously, secretly, declares his love to her. Having decided to take revenge on the “unexpected rival,” L., together with the other boys, starts a “merry madness” that makes the soul feel like it’s in heaven.” Covering themselves in black, inverted sheepskin coats (a parody of werewolfism), they tease the head and the clerk and lure them out into the street. L.'s friends twice replace the heads of their comrades caught and locked in a cage with their sister-in-law, which plunges the readers into bewilderment and the enemy into horror, forcing him to believe in the machinations of Satan. L. is avenged: his sister-in-law, who has special rights and views on his father, learns about Makogonenko Sr.’s matchmaking with Hanna.

This deprives the “rival” of hope, but does not bring L. closer to his desired goal for a moment. Unlike another loving “boy,” the hero of the story “Sorochinskaya Fair” by Gritsko, who arranges exactly the same staging of “devilry,” L. as a result does not receive consent to the wedding, but only “takes his soul away.”

But the moonlit May night is “divine”; It is not for nothing that the story begins with a conversation between L. and Hanna about the angelic stars looking out of the windows, and about the “paradise” tree in a distant land, along which, like a ladder, God descends before Easter. Just as on Easter (and Christmas) evil loses its power over the world, so on this night magic helps lovers. In an abandoned house near the forest, L. meets a mermaid lady, whom he himself told Hanna about and in whom he himself did not believe; bandura player L. helps Rusalka find her stepmother-witch, who drove the lady to suicide and took the form of one of the drowned women; for this, the lady gives him a note from “commissar” Kozma Derkach-Drishkanovsky to his father with an order to immediately marry his son to Hanna.

The operatic origin of the plot (“Natalka-Poltavka” by I.P. Kotlyarevsky) makes itself felt - both in the rapid change of “scenery”, and in the conventional fabulousness of the events, and in the “operatic” static nature of the colorful characters.

Pannochka the mermaid, a drowned woman, is the heroine of an ancient legend, which in the 1st chapter is told to her beloved by the “formally main” hero of the story, bandura player Levko. Later, in Chapter 5, Levko’s magical assistant. Gogol’s PR should remind the reader of the folklore tradition (it is not without reason that it first appears in the “frame” of a local legend), and of the mysteriously erotic nymphs of German romanticism, and of opera characters.

Pointing to an abandoned house near the forest (in the 1820s there was a dispute about which “nymphs” the mermaids were, river or forest), Levko conveys to his beloved Hanna the “tale” of old people. Once upon a time a widowed centurion had a daughter, a bright lady, “white as snow”; Having promised his daughter that he will continue to look after her, the centurion brings a new wife, rosy-cheeked and white, into the house. The stepmother's "witchcraft" is undeniable; on the very first night a terrible black cat with burning fur and iron claws sneaks into the stepdaughter's living room; having cut off the cat's paw with his father's saber, P.-R. the next morning he notices that his stepmother’s hand is wrapped in a rag. It’s as if the father is being replaced; on the fifth day he drives his daughter out “barefoot” and without a piece of bread; Having mourned the “lost soul” of her father, she throws herself from a high bank into the river - and becomes the head of the drowned women who, on a moonlit night, go out into the master’s garden to bask in the month. On one of these nights, they drag the witch under the water, but she turns into one of the drowned women. Since then, every night P.-R. gathers all the mermaids and looks into their faces, trying to guess the witch. “And if one of the people gets caught, he immediately makes him guess, otherwise he threatens to drown him in the water.”

Having timed the action of the story to the “recent” post-Catherine antiquity with its safe demonology, and not to ancient times (to which P.-R. belongs) with their “true”, disastrous devilry, Gogol had to choose a happy ending and involuntarily correlate his P.-R. R. with ballet nymphs of the early 19th century.

Levko, who has survived the shock (it turns out that his father did not agree to marry Hanna, since he himself has designs on her), takes revenge on his offending father by staging “demonic” games. Then he comes to the abandoned house of P.-R. Levko does not believe “women’s” tales; he is wearing an inside-out sheepskin coat - but this is not a sign of real werewolfhood, but just a “masquerade costume” that was necessary for revenge on his father. And the revenge of the “parubka” itself, unlike the mermaid’s revenge on the stepmother, was just a game. However, in the light of the strange night, the old house seemed to be transformed; The “strange, intoxicating” radiance, the smell of blossoming apple trees, a glimpse of white light in the window merge into a deathly beautiful lunar image. Levko cannot resist playing the bandura and singing. In front of him is P.-R.: “Boy, find me my stepmother!” The mermaids start a game of raven; Unlike the one that the boys organized in the village, this ritual game is serious; that drowned woman who herself volunteers to be a raven in order to “take away the poor mother’s chickens” is a witch. The stepmother is captured; from now on P.-R. free from obsession, mermaid despondency leaves her; Levko is awarded and returns with a note from the “commissar” she presented to her formidable father with an order to immediately marry his son to Hanna.

The story, which began with the heroes talking about the stars as angels of God looking out of their windows, and about the Easter victory over the dark forces, ends with Levko’s mental wish: “God grant you the kingdom of heaven, kind and beautiful lady...” This wish is completely at odds with church tradition ( suicides are not always given a funeral service and are not buried in the church fence), but it coincides with the semi-folklore image of paradise as the heroes of “Evenings” imagine it. In this paradise (where the sky is like an “above-ground” river), not only can there be a place for the kind P.-R., who also looks at the world from her luminous “window,” but she does not have to part with her “mermaid” appearance: “Let among the holy angels forever smiles at you in the next world!”

In the preface that precedes further stories, the pasichnik talks about a quarrel with the “pea panic” from Poltava, which was remembered before. The guests who arrived at the pasichnik’s house began to discuss the rules for pickling apples, but the presumptuous panicker declared that first of all it was necessary to sprinkle the apples with canuper, and with this indecent remark he caused everyone’s bewilderment, so that the pasichnik was forced to take him quietly aside and explain the absurdity of such a judgment. But the panicked man was offended and left. Since then he has not come, which, however, did not harm the book published by the beekeeper Rudy Panko.

Christmas Eve

The last day before Christmas is replaced by a clear, frosty night. The girls and boys had not yet come out to carol, and no one saw how smoke came out of the chimney of one hut and a witch rose on a broom. She flashes like a black speck in the sky, gathering stars into her sleeve, and the devil flies towards her, for whom “the last night was left to wander around the white world.” Having stolen the month, the devil hides it in his pocket, assuming that the coming darkness will keep the rich Cossack Chub, invited to the clerk for kutya, at home, and the blacksmith Vakula, hated by the devil (who painted a picture of the Last Judgment and the shamed devil on the church wall) will not dare to come to Chubova’s daughter Oksana . While the devil is building chickens for the witch, Chub and his godfather, who came out of the hut, do not decide whether to go to the sexton, where a pleasant company will gather over the varenukha, or, in view of such darkness, to return home - and they leave, leaving the beautiful Oksana in the house, who was dressing up in front of the mirror, for which and Vakula finds her. The stern beauty mocks him, not at all moved by his gentle speeches. The disgruntled blacksmith goes to unlock the door, on which Chub, who has lost his way and lost his godfather, knocks, having decided to return home on the occasion of the blizzard raised by the devil. However, the blacksmith’s voice makes him think that he was not in his own hut (but in a similar one, the lame Levchenko, to whose young wife the blacksmith probably came). Chub changes his voice, and the angry Vakula, jabbing him, kicks him out. The beaten Chub, having realized that the blacksmith has therefore left his own home, goes to his mother, Solokha. Solokha, who was a witch, returned from her journey, and the devil flew with her, dropping a month in the chimney.

It became light, the snowstorm subsided, and crowds of carolers poured into the streets. The girls come running to Oksana, and, noticing on one of them new slippers embroidered with gold, Oksana declares that she will marry Vakula if he brings her the slippers “that the queen wears.” Meanwhile, the devil, who had relaxed at Solokha’s, is scared away by his head, who did not go to the clerk for kutya. The devil quickly climbs into one of the bags left among the hut by the blacksmith, but soon his head has to climb into another, since the clerk is knocking on Solokha’s door. Praising the virtues of the incomparable Solokha, the clerk is forced to climb into the third bag, since Chub appears. However, Chub also climbs there, avoiding meeting with the returning Vakula. While Solokha is talking in the garden with the Cossack Sverbyguz, who has come after him, Vakula takes away the bags thrown in the middle of the hut, and, saddened by the quarrel with Oksana, does not notice their weight. On the street he is surrounded by a crowd of carolers, and here Oksana repeats her mocking condition. Having thrown all but the smallest bags in the middle of the road, Vakula runs, and rumors are already creeping behind him that he was either mentally damaged or hanged himself.

Vakula comes to the Cossack Pot-bellied Patsyuk, who, as they say, is “a little like the devil.” Having caught the owner eating dumplings, and then dumplings, which themselves climbed into Patsyuk’s mouth, Vakula timidly asks the way to hell, relying on his help in his misfortune. Having received a vague answer that the devil is behind him, Vakula runs away from the savory dumplings falling into his mouth. Anticipating easy prey, the devil jumps out of the bag and, sitting on the blacksmith’s neck, promises him Oksana that same night. The cunning blacksmith, having grabbed the devil by the tail and crossed him, becomes the master of the situation and orders the devil to take himself “to Petemburg, straight to the queen.”

Having found Kuznetsov’s bags at that time, the girls want to take them to Oksana to see what Vakula caroled. They go for the sled, and Chubov’s godfather, calling a weaver to help, drags one of the sacks into his hut. There, a fight ensues with the godfather's wife over the unclear but tempting contents of the bag. Chub and the clerk find themselves in the bag. When Chub, returning home, finds a head in the second bag, his disposition towards Solokha greatly decreases.

The blacksmith, having galloped to St. Petersburg, appears to the Cossacks who were passing through Dikanka in the fall, and, holding the devil in his pocket, tries to be taken to see the queen. Marveling at the luxury of the palace and the wonderful painting on the walls, the blacksmith finds himself in front of the queen, and when she asks the Cossacks, who came to ask for their Sich, “what do you want?”, the blacksmith asks her for her royal shoes. Touched by such innocence, Catherine draws attention to this passage of Fonvizin standing at a distance, and gives Vakula shoes, having received which he considers it a blessing to go home.

In the village at this time, the Dikan women in the middle of the street are arguing about exactly how Vakula committed suicide, and the rumors that have reached about this confuse Oksana, she does not sleep well at night, and not finding the devout blacksmith in the church in the morning, she is ready to cry. The blacksmith simply slept through matins and mass, and upon awakening, he takes a new hat and belt out of the chest and goes to Chub to woo him. Chub, stung by Solokha’s treachery, but seduced by the gifts, agrees. He is echoed by Oksana, who has entered, ready to marry the blacksmith “without slippers.” Having started a family, Vakula painted his hut with paints, and painted a devil in the church, and “so disgusting that everyone spat when they passed by.”

Vakula the blacksmith is the main character of the story that opens the second part of “Evenings”. V. is in love with the capricious daughter of the rich Cossack Korniy Chuba, black-eyed seventeen-year-old Oksana. She mockingly demands to get for her shoes (shoes) that weigh as much as the queen herself, otherwise she will not marry V.; the blacksmith flees the village with the intention of never returning to it - and accidentally grabs the bag in which his mother, the forty-year-old witch Solokha, hid her devil boyfriend when other gentlemen came to see her. Repeating the plot of the story about St. John, Archbishop of Novgorod, and St. Anthony the Roman, V. manages to saddle the devil and, threatening him with the cross, goes to St. Petersburg. Mixing with the crowd of Cossacks, he enters the palace; begs Catherine the Great for royal slippers. Meanwhile, the frightened Oksana manages to fall madly in love with the blacksmith, who was needlessly offended by her and, perhaps, lost forever. The Cherevichki were delivered, but the wedding would have taken place without them.

From scene to scene, the tone of the narrative becomes softer, more mocking; the image of “world evil” that the blacksmith has to cope with is becoming more and more frivolous. Untying the bag with the devil, V. thoughtfully says: “Here, it seems, I laid my tool”; and in fact, the evil spirit will have to serve as a “tool” for the deft blacksmith; The plaintive and comical request of the devil will not help either: “Let only your soul go to repentance; don’t put a terrible cross on me!”

Like most of the heroes of "Evenings", V. is written in a semi-legendary past. In this case, this is Catherine’s conditional “golden age,” on the eve of the abolition of the Zaporozhye freemen, when the world was not yet as boring as it is now, and magic was commonplace, but not as terrible as before. Witches and demons are not exactly tamed, but they are no longer omnipotent and are sometimes funny. The devil that V. is riding on is “completely German in front,” with a narrow, fidgety muzzle, a round snout, and thin legs. He looks more like a “nimble dandy with a tail” than a devil beaten by sinners during the Last Judgment, as V. portrayed him (V. is not only a blacksmith; he is also a god) on the eve of the church, before the St. Petersburg voyage. And even more so, he doesn’t look like that terrible devil in hell that V. will paint later, “in atonement” for this trip (“so disgusting that everyone spat when they passed by the bach, like some kind of paint!”). Moreover, the very image of the saddled devil is reflected in many plot mirrors (V.’s mother, the “devil-woman” witch Solokha, at the very beginning of the story lands unsuccessfully in the stove - and the devil ends up riding on her; Oksana’s father Chub, one of Solokha’s many suitors , hidden in a bag where the clerk is already sitting); what is funny can no longer be completely scary.

This is the first thing; secondly, V. comes into contact with evil spirits, using evil for good (at least his own personal good - not just sometime, but precisely on the night before Christmas. According to the logic of “Evenings”, in the “small” calendar time, pagan everyday life is so different from the eves of church holidays, how much in the great historical time the old antiquity differs from the recent past. The closer to Christmas and Easter, the more active the evil is - and the weaker it is; “pranks”, because everywhere they are already caroling and praising Christ.

Thirdly, V., for all his “blacksmith” strength, is incredibly simple-minded. And most importantly, he is the most devout of all the village residents; The narrator talks about the hero’s piety with gentle humor, but returns to this topic relentlessly, right up to the finale. (Having returned from the “trip”, V. wakes up to the festive matins and mass, is upset, perceives this as retribution for communicating with the unclean, whom he flogged at parting, but did not baptize; peace comes to the hero only after a firm decision to confess everything in the next week bottom and from today begin to bow “fifty bows throughout the whole year.”)

That is why V., being the son of a “witch” and the personal enemy of the devil he offended, can come face to face with evil spirits - and remain unharmed. This applies not only to the main storyline, but also to its side branches. Sent by Oksana to get some slippers (according to the fairytale principle “go there, I don’t know where, bring something, I don’t know what”), V. must find a magical assistant - because he cannot cope alone. There are practically no good helpers in the stories of the cycle; therefore V. goes straight to Pot-bellied Patsyuk, about whom everyone says that he “knows all the devils and will do whatever he wants.”

Patsyuk was expelled (or, rather, fled) from Zaporozhye, which is doubly bad. The Sich is beyond the threshold of the normal world, just as the devil is beyond its borders; but even from Zaporozhye people are not expelled for good deeds. He lives on the outskirts, doesn’t go anywhere; sits cross-legged. Something “other”, alien, infidel also appears in his appearance: short, wide, in such enormous trousers that when he moves down the street, it seems as if the Kad is walking by itself. After eating a bowl of dumplings, Patsyuk starts eating dumplings, and they themselves jump into sour cream and then go into the eater’s mouth. But even after seeing all this; even greeting Pot-bellied Patsyuk with the words: “You are a little like the devil”; even having received an ambiguous answer: “When you need the devil, then go to hell, he doesn’t have to go far, who has the devil behind him,” V. still does not understand where and to whom he has landed. And just realizing that Patsyuk eats a small meal on the night before Christmas, when the “hungry kutya” is supposed to be, and even then only after the star (especially since the stars were stolen from the sky by Solokha and her dapper friend, who sits behind V.’s shoulders, in the bag), V. guesses who is sitting in front of him. Patsyuk not only “knows all the devils”, not just “kin to the devil”; he is the real devil. And his “hut” is the other world; The dumpling, which by itself falls into V.’s mouth, is a kind of mythological “test”. (The living cannot eat “afterlife” food.) For any hero of stories from ancient, “mythological” life, such a visit to the lair of the “enemy” would be costly, at best it would cost his life, at worst - his soul. However, the pious, although not very quick-thinking (at least in this scene) blacksmith easily leaves the “enchanted place” in order to literally saddle another devil in the next episode: smaller, dumber and more accommodating than Patsyuk.

Then V. bravely endures the dangerous flight - and ends up in St. Petersburg. This is a strange place in all respects, floating in a sea of lights (as if switching “roles” with the Christmas sky), separated from the rest of the world by a barrier. This means that, like the Sich, it is beyond the threshold. Is it surprising that V. and the devil immediately end up in the company of the Cossacks, who were passing through Dikanka a year ago. Having demonstrated to them his ability to speak “in Russian” (“What a great city” - “wonderful proportion”), V., with the help of a tailed “instrument,” forces the Cossacks to take him to the palace.

Things are far from simple with the palace either. Next to the angelic empress appears an ambiguous character - a stout man in a hetman’s uniform, who is not only crooked (the first sign of “diabolism”), but also teaches the Cossacks to be cunning. That is, he behaves like a real devil, an evil one. The direct, etymological meaning of the “dark,” demonic surname is emphasized by its proximity to the “radiant” title “The Most Serene” (“The Most Serene promised to introduce me today to my people...”). But the simple-minded V. again does not understand who is standing in front of him (especially since the image of Potemkin is balanced in this scene by the image of the truthful writer Fonvizin, who is also surrounded by the empress and personifies the “good”, honest beginning of St. Petersburg life). And again V. gets away with spiritual ignorance. He is not a Cossack; he is not disingenuous; He, bypassing His Serene Highness Potemkin, turns directly to the queen, whose “sugar legs” sincerely delight him, and therefore receives the desired little slippers from her. While the cunning Cossacks will soon be left with nothing - the Sich, which they ask to preserve, for which they came to the capital of the empire, will be abolished in 1775.

However, the abolition of the Sich will mean not only the final end of the “mythical antiquity”, but also the “beginning of the end” of the romantic-legendary past. The path to a non-scary but boring modernity is open; the little “child” of V. and Oksana is destined to live in a world where adventures similar to those that befell V. will no longer be possible, for the ancient evil spirits will be finally pushed out of reality into the realm of Rudy Panka’s fables and into the subjects of church paintings of the blacksmith V. .: “...yak kaka painted!”

Terrible revenge

Captain Gorobets once celebrated his son’s wedding in Kyiv, which was attended by many people, including the captain’s brother Danilo Burulbash with his young wife, the beautiful Katerina, and his one-year-old son. Only Katerina’s old father, who had recently returned after a twenty-year absence, did not come with them. Everything was dancing when Yesaul brought out two wonderful icons to bless the young people. Then the sorcerer appeared in the crowd and disappeared, frightened by the images.

Danilo and his household return to the farmstead at night across the Dnieper. Katerina is frightened, but her husband is not afraid of the sorcerer, but of the Poles, who are going to cut off the path to the Cossacks, and that’s what he thinks about, sailing past the old sorcerer’s castle and the cemetery with the bones of his grandfathers. However, crosses are staggering in the cemetery and, one more terrible than the other, the dead appear, dragging their bones towards the month itself. Consoling his awakened son, Pan Danilo reaches the hut. His house is small, not roomy for his family and ten selected young men. The next morning a quarrel broke out between Danilo and his gloomy, quarrelsome father-in-law. It came to sabers, and then to muskets. Danilo was wounded, but if it weren’t for the pleas and reproaches of Katerina, who by the way remembered her little son, he would have continued to fight. The Cossacks were reconciled. Katerina soon tells her husband a vague dream that her father is a terrible sorcerer, and Danilo scolds his father-in-law’s busurman habits, suspecting him of being an unchrist, but he is more worried about the Poles, about whom Gorobets again warned him.

After dinner, during which the father-in-law disdains dumplings, pork, and vodka, in the evening Danilo leaves to scout around the old sorcerer’s castle. Climbing onto an oak tree to look out the window, he sees a witch’s room, illuminated by who knows what, with wonderful weapons on the walls and flickering bats. The father-in-law who entered begins to cast a spell, and his whole appearance changes: he is already a sorcerer in filthy Turkish attire. He summons Katerina's soul, threatens her and demands that Katerina love him. The soul does not give in, and, shocked by what has been revealed, Danilo returns home, wakes up Katerina and tells her everything. Katerina renounces her apostate father. In Danila’s basement, a sorcerer sits in iron chains, his demonic castle is burning; not for witchcraft, but for conspiring with the Poles, he will be executed the next day. But, promising to start a righteous life, retire to the caves, and with fasting and prayer to appease God, the sorcerer Katerina asks to let him go and thereby save his soul. Fearing her actions, Katerina releases him, but hides the truth from her husband. Sensing his death, the saddened Danilo asks his wife to take care of his son.

As predicted, the Poles come running in like a countless cloud, setting fire to the huts and driving away the cattle. Pan Danilo fights bravely, but the bullet of the sorcerer who appears on the mountain overtakes him. And even though Gorobets jumps to the rescue, Katerina is inconsolable. The Poles are defeated, the wonderful Dnieper is raging, and, fearlessly steering the canoe, the sorcerer sails to his ruins. In the dugout he casts spells, but it is not Katerina’s soul that appears to him, but someone uninvited; Although he is not scary, he is terrifying. Katerina, living with Gorobets, sees the same dreams and trembles for her son. Waking up in a hut surrounded by watchful guards, she discovers him dead and goes crazy. Meanwhile, a gigantic horseman with a baby, riding a black horse, gallops from the West. His eyes are closed. He entered the Carpathians and stopped here.

Mad Katerina is looking for her father everywhere to kill him. A certain guest arrives, asking for Danila, mourns him, wants to see Katerina, talks to her for a long time about her husband and, it seems, brings her to her senses. But when he starts talking about how Danilo asked him to take Katerina for himself in case of death, she recognizes her father and rushes to him with a knife. The sorcerer himself kills his daughter.

Beyond Kiev, “an unheard-of miracle appeared”: “suddenly it became visible far to all ends of the world” - the Crimea, and the marshy Sivash, and the land of Galich, and the Carpathian Mountains with a gigantic horseman on the peaks. The sorcerer, who was among the people, runs away in fear, for he recognized in the horseman an uninvited person who had appeared to him during a spell. Night terrors haunt the sorcerer, and he turns to Kyiv, to the holy places. There he kills the holy schema-monk, who did not undertake to pray for such an unheard-of sinner. Now, wherever he steers his horse, he moves towards the Carpathian Mountains. Then the motionless horseman opened his eyes and laughed. And the sorcerer died, and, dead, he saw the dead rising from Kyiv, from the Carpathians, from the land of Galich, and was thrown by a horseman into the abyss, and the dead sank their teeth into him. Another one, taller and scarier than all of them, wanted to rise from the ground and shook it mercilessly, but could not get up.

This story ends with the ancient and wonderful song of the old bandura player in the city of Glukhov. It sings about the war between King Stepan and Turkey and the brothers, the Cossacks Ivan and Peter. Ivan caught the Turkish Pasha and shared the royal reward with his brother. But the envious Peter pushed Ivan and his baby son into the abyss and took all the goods for himself. After Peter's death, God allowed Ivan to choose his brother's execution himself. And he cursed all his descendants and predicted that the last of his kind would be an unprecedented villain, and when his end came, Ivan would appear from the hole on horseback and throw him into the abyss, and all his grandfathers would come from different ends of the earth to gnaw at him, and Petro will not be able to rise and will gnaw at himself, wanting revenge but not knowing how to take revenge. God marveled at the cruelty of the execution, but decided that it would be according to this.

The sorcerer (father, brother Koprian, Antichrist) is a hero who combines the negative traits of all the negative characters in the “Evenings” cycle. The Sorcerer is Gogol's first attempt to portray the Antichrist. In this attempt, Gogol relied on the novelistic experience of German romantics (the alchemist in “The Glass” by L. Tieck, the child killer in his “Enchantment, Love”) and their Russian epigones (the image of the demonic villain Bruno von Eisen in the story by A. A. Bestuzhev (Marlinsky ) "Castle Eisen", 1827). At the end of the story, the image of K. receives a “mythological” interpretation in the spirit of the same L. Tick (short story “Pietro Apone”) and the folk cosmogony of the Bogumil sectarians; The “German” image of the main character-villain is woven into the stylistic pattern of Ukrainian song folklore.

Something dubious is present in K.’s appearance from the very beginning. After many years of wandering, returning from “where there are no churches,” he lives in the family of his daughter Katerina and her Cossack husband Danila Burulbash. Vagrancy is a sign of rootlessness; rootlessness is an attribute of demonism. K. smokes overseas cradle cap, does not eat dumplings or pork, and prefers “Jewish noodles” to them. The fact that he does not drink vodka finally convinces Burulbash that his father-in-law, “it seems, does not believe in Christ.”

K;, with her husband alive, tries to control her daughter - and even tries to kill her son-in-law in a duel; when he kisses Katerina, his eyes glow with a strange sparkle. The hint of incest, the lawless passion of a father for his daughter, is transparent; it finally becomes clearer in Katerina’s nightmare. She dreams that her father is the very Cossack werewolf whom she and her husband saw at the Kyiv wedding of Yesaul Gorobets (the story begins with this episode): when the young were blessed with icons from the schema-monk Elder Bartholomew, which had a special “protective power”, this Cossack had a nose grew to the side, his eyes turned green instead of brown, his lips turned blue, like the devil, and he himself changed from a young man into an old man, so that everyone shouted in horror: K. is back again! In a dream, K. tries to seduce Katerina: “Look at me, I’m good, I’ll be a nice husband for you...” The exposition is over: the plot is tied.

But it turns out that Katerina, having awakened, does not remember everything that her soul saw in the kingdom of sleep. The next night, Pan Danilo sneaks into an ancient castle on the dark side of the Dnieper, where the Poles (in the world of "Evenings" the Poles are always at one with the devil) are going to build a fortress on the way of the Cossacks; through the window he sees his father the sorcerer changing his appearance, exactly as the “Kiev” Cossack werewolf changed his. K. is wearing a wonderful hat with “a letter not in Polish or Russian” (that is, with “Kabbalistic” signs of the Hebrew alphabet or Arabic-Muslim script; both are equally bad); bats fly in the room, instead of images on the walls there are “scary faces”. Through the transparent layers of “astral” light (blue, pale gold, then pink) a figure passes, white as a cloud - this is the soul of the sleeping Katerina. Danilo learns something that his wife will not be able to remember after waking up: her father once stabbed her mother to death; With Katerina, he is trying to “replace” his murdered wife. The next morning, Burulbash tells Katerina with horror that through her he became related to the Antichrist tribe; alas, he is right, but he still does not realize what price he will have to pay for this relationship.

The plot about K. is moving towards its climax. As time passes, the Antichrist father finds himself in prison, in chains; for secret collusion with Catholics, he will face a cauldron of boiling water or flaying. Witchcraft is powerless against the walls once built by the “holy schema-monk.” (The symbolic image of a “schemnik” endowed with prayerful power over dark forces constantly appears in the stories of the cycle.) But Katerina, succumbing to the false persuasion of K. (who begs for time to atone for sins - “for the sake of the unfortunate mother”!), releases her father from prison . And although Danilo Burulbash decides that the sorcerer himself slipped out of the chains, the “ideological betrayal” of the wife to her husband has already been committed; although the father does not receive power over his daughter’s body, his power over her soul overpowers the husband’s power. This means that some incorporeal “anti-Christ” possession of her will is still accomplished. The false climax foreshadows the imminent outcome of Burulbash's storyline. Even if his father does not replace him in the marital bed, he does “squeeze” him out of life.

Katerina’s “apostasy” brings damage to the Zaporozhye world, disrupts its internal unity: there is no longer order in Ukraine, there is no “head”; Danilo, who had long had a presentiment of his imminent death, dies in a battle with the Poles. However, K. cannot celebrate victory: the funeral feast that the Cossacks perform over Burulbash, as it were, restores the lost unity. The sacrificial blood of the husband washes away the sin of the wife - and through the clouds the wonderful face of the “wonderful head” looks at the “Antichrist”. The mystery of this image will be explained in the epilogue. In the meantime, K. is trying to complete the villainous work he has begun; appears in dreams to Katerina, who, together with the baby, moved to Kyiv, to Esaul Gorobets; K. threatens his daughter to kill her son if she does not marry her father, and in the end kills the innocent child. This is the second culmination.

K.’s “persistence” is explained not so much by his sinful lust, but by his global “Antichrist” goal: having completely taken possession of his daughter, mystically destroy the natural ties that reign in the world. By destroying them, you can completely destroy the already weakened Cossack brotherhood, the Orthodox army; for as long as Ukraine holds its defense against the “Poles”, evil cannot triumph on earth. But the closer K. is to his goal, the closer he is to his own destruction. Once again, a mysterious “out-of-plot” image appears on the pages of the story: a horseman-hero of inhuman stature, galloping into the Carpathians on a black horse and falling asleep at the top of the mountain. This image exudes a still incomprehensible threat to K., who, under the guise of “brother Kopryan” in a red zhupan, reminiscent of the “red scroll” of the devil in “Sorochinskaya Fair”, appears in Kyiv, to the distraught Katerina, in order to deceive her.

But madness only sharpens the daughter’s spiritual sensitivity; her soul, now acting apart from her mind, recognizes its tormentor; the blood of her husband and son finally atones for Katerina’s criminal weakness; the integrity of the world has been restored; The coming of the Antichrist has not yet taken place. K. is doomed; at the moment of the second climax, his storyline goes through the denouement stage.

Now nothing will help K.; even the murder of a “holy schema-monk” who refused to beg for the soul of a terrible sinner looks more like a gesture of despair than a sign of omnipotence. (Although in itself, and even near the “holy places” of Kyiv, this murder testifies to the transcendental mystical power of the “Antichrist.”) Wherever K. directs the horse, he gallops in one and only direction: to the Carpathian mountains, where he is waiting for him The Great Horseman to kill and throw the physically revived soul into the abyss, where the teeth of the dead will forever gnaw K.

K. dies “instantly” and immediately opens his eyes after death, without being resurrected. The same thing happens with the plot of the story: it ends, exhausts itself (punishment is proportionate to the crimes), and immediately continues further. This “revived plot” finally deciphers the mythological background of the legendary events; The reason for the “Antichrist’s” hatred of Orthodox brotherhood, unity, and pathological attraction to his daughter also becomes clear. K. is the last man in the family, which was started by Judas Petro, who betrayed the great brotherhood out of envy of glory and killed Ivan, with whom they had “everything in half.” For this, Ivan begged God so that the last in the Petro family would be such a villain as never before existed in the world, and that he, Ivan, would throw this villain into the abyss, where the dead gnaw each other, and have fun looking at his torment. God agrees, but “dooms” Ivan to sit “eternally on his horse,” enjoying terrible revenge, but not having the kingdom of heaven. (The lunar reflection of this lonely figure falls on the figure of Pontius Pilate in M. A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”; Yu. N. Tynyanov pointed to the plot-semantic projection of the images of the story in “The Mistress” by F. M. Dostoevsky.)

Evil is punished; goodness does not triumph. The heroes of the myth that crowns the legend of K., the “ancient tale” - such a genre definition was given to the story when it was first published - connect together the apocryphal version of the biblical story of Cain and Abel with the Bogumil cosmogony, in which the Apostle Peter is often identified with Judas, and the Apostle John the Theologian (inseparable from John the Baptist) - with God himself. All this is superimposed on the background of the German romantic tradition, from Schiller’s “The Robbers” to L. Tieck’s short story “Pietro Apone.” In this mythological “branch” of the plot, K. from the main character instantly turns into a secondary character, an indirect participant in the plot, who does not and cannot have an outcome.

A person who would not know the works of N.V. It will be very difficult to find Gogol in our country (and throughout the CIS). And is it worth doing? One of the writer’s most popular masterpieces is “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka.” Even those who have not read the book have probably seen films or musicals based on stories from this publication. We invite you to study an extremely abbreviated retelling of each work. “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” (summary) - for your attention.

The secret to the success of works: what is it?

Of course, each person has his own tastes and preferences. But, oddly enough, this collection of stories is liked by both older people and young people. Why is this happening? Most likely, due to the fact that Gogol was able to combine mystical plots, humor and adventures, as well as love stories, in one book. In fact, this is a win-win recipe for success! So, “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka.” The summary will allow you to understand whether it is worth tuning in to read the book in its entirety!

Please note that this book is a collection consisting of two parts. Therefore, we will try to outline in a few sentences what each story is about.

“Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”: a summary of the first part

In the story about the fair in Sorochintsy, the reader can have a lot of fun enjoying the adventures of Cherevik, his charming daughter Parasia, her admirer Grytsko, the enterprising Gypsy and the contentious Khivri, Cherevik’s wife. We can understand that love can work miracles, but immoderate libations and adultery ultimately turn out to be adequately punished!

“The Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala” is a story filled with mysticism and some kind of gloomy romance. The plot revolves around Petrus, who is in love with Pedorka, whose wealthy father is not particularly keen to give his daughter as a wife to a poor man. But here, as if it were a sin, he undertakes to help the unlucky lover. Of course, not for nothing. The devil demands a fern flower for his help. Having committed a murder, the young man obtains what Satan wanted from him. But this does not bring him happiness. Petrus himself dies, and his gold turns into skulls...

“May Night, or the Drowned Woman” is a story about how pure love, courage and resourcefulness overcome injustice, even those committed many years ago.

From the story “The Missing Letter” we learn that even devils can be defeated in a card game. To do this, you need to cross the playing cards with sincere faith. True, it is not a fact that after this your spouse will not start dancing every year, not wanting to do so at all.

“Evenings on a farm near Dikanka”: a summary of the second part

We also learn that it is quite possible to saddle the Devil and fly on it, and courage and enterprise will help to conquer even the most unapproachable beauty! I wonder if this only happens on Christmas Eve?

“Terrible Revenge” is a story that is truly scary! Of course, how can you guess in advance that your wife’s father is a sorcerer? By the way, the story also mentions very real historical figures!

The collection also contains a story about how the ardent desire of an elderly relative (aunt) to arrange the personal life of her nephew (Ivan Fedorovich Shponka) can significantly change a monotonous and measured existence! Is it only for the better?

"Enchanted place." This story tells about the adventures you can get into even in old age. Eh, you shouldn’t mess with evil spirits!

Happy and fun reading!