The history of the creation of Solzhenitsyn's work "Matryonin Dvor"
In 1962, the Novy Mir magazine published the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", which made Solzhenitsyn's name known throughout the country and far beyond its borders. A year later, in the same journal, Solzhenitsyn published several stories, including “Matryona Dvor”. Postings have stopped at this point. None of the writer's works were allowed to be published in the USSR. And in 1970 Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Initially, the story "Matryona Dvor" was called "A village does not stand without the righteous." But, on the advice of A. Tvardovsky, in order to avoid censorship obstacles, the name was changed. For the same reasons, the year of action in the story from 1956 was replaced by the author with 1953. "Matrenin Dvor", as the author himself noted, "is completely autobiographical and reliable." In all the notes to the story, the prototype of the heroine is reported - Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova from the village of Miltsovo, Kurlovsky district, Vladimir region. The narrator, like the author himself, teaches in the Ryazan village, living with the heroine of the story, and the narrator's patronymic - Ignatich - is consonant with A. Solzhenitsyn's patronymic - Isaevich. The story, written in 1956, tells about the life of a Russian village in the fifties.
Critics praised the story. The essence of Solzhenitsyn's work was noted by A. Tvardovsky: “Why is the fate of the old peasant woman, told on a few pages, of such great interest to us? This woman is unread, illiterate, a simple worker. And yet her spiritual world is endowed with such qualities that we talk with her as with Anna Karenina. After reading these words in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Solzhenitsyn immediately wrote to Tvardovsky: “Needless to say, the paragraph of your speech referring to Matryona means a lot to me. You pointed to the very essence - to a woman who loves and suffers, while all the criticism scoured all the time from above, comparing the Talnovsky collective farm and neighboring ones.
The first title of the story “A village is not worth without the righteous” contained a deep meaning: the Russian village rests on people whose lifestyle is based on the universal values of kindness, labor, sympathy, and help. Since a righteous person is called, firstly, a person who lives in accordance with religious rules; secondly, a person who does not sin in any way against the rules of morality (the rules that determine the mores, behavior, spiritual and spiritual qualities necessary for a person in society). The second name - "Matryona Dvor" - somewhat changed the angle of view: moral principles began to have clear boundaries only within the Matrenin Dvor. On a larger scale of the village, they are blurred, the people around the heroine are often different from her. Having titled the story "Matryona's Dvor", Solzhenitsyn focused the readers' attention on the wonderful world of the Russian woman.
Genus, genre, creative method of the analyzed work
Solzhenitsyn once remarked that he rarely turned to the short story genre, for “artistic pleasure”: “You can put a lot in a small form, and it is a great pleasure for an artist to work on a small form. Because in a small form you can hone the edges with great pleasure for yourself. In the story "Matryona Dvor" all facets are honed with brilliance, and meeting with the story becomes, in turn, a great pleasure for the reader. The story is usually based on a case that reveals the character of the protagonist.
Regarding the story "Matryona Dvor" in literary criticism, there were two points of view. One of them presented Solzhenitsyn's story as a phenomenon of "village prose". V. Astafiev, calling "Matryona Dvor" "the pinnacle of Russian short stories", believed that our "village prose" came out of this story. Somewhat later, this idea was developed in literary criticism.
At the same time, the story "Matryona Dvor" was associated with the original genre of "monumental story" that was formed in the second half of the 1950s. An example of this genre is M. Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man".
In the 1960s, the genre features of the “monumental story” were recognizable in A. Solzhenitsyn’s Matrenin Dvor, V. Zakrutkin’s The Human Mother, and E. Kazakevich’s In the Light of Day. The main difference of this genre is the image of a simple person who is the custodian of universal human values. Moreover, the image of a simple person is given in sublime colors, and the story itself is focused on a high genre. So, in the story "The Fate of a Man" features of the epic are visible. And in the "Matryona Dvor" the emphasis is on the lives of the saints. Before us is the life of Matrena Vasilievna Grigorieva, the righteous and great martyr of the era of "solid collectivization" and the tragic experiment on the whole country. Matryona was portrayed by the author as a saint ("Only she had fewer sins than a rickety cat").
The subject of the work
The theme of the story is a description of the life of the patriarchal Russian village, which reflects how flourishing egoism and rapacity disfigure Russia and "destroy communications and meaning." The writer raises in a short story the serious problems of the Russian village of the early 50s. (her life, customs and mores, the relationship between power and a working person). The author repeatedly emphasizes that the state needs only working hands, and not the person himself: “She was lonely all around, but since she began to get sick, she was released from the collective farm.” A person, according to the author, should mind his own business. So Matryona finds the meaning of life in work, she is angry with the unscrupulous attitude of others to business.
An analysis of the work shows that the problems raised in it are subordinated to one goal: to reveal the beauty of the Christian Orthodox worldview of the heroine. On the example of the fate of a village woman, to show that life's losses and suffering only more clearly show the measure of the human in each of the people. But Matryona dies - and this world collapses: her house is pulled apart by a log, her modest belongings are greedily divided. And there is no one to protect Matryona's yard, no one even thinks that with the departure of Matryona, something very valuable and important, not amenable to division and primitive everyday assessment, passes away. “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she is the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand. No city. Not all our land." The last phrases expand the boundaries of the Matrona Court (as the personal world of the heroine) to the scale of humanity.
The main characters of the work
The main character of the story, as indicated in the title, is Matrena Vasilievna Grigorieva. Matrena is a lonely destitute peasant woman with a generous and disinterested soul. She lost her husband in the war, buried six of her own and raised other people's children. Matryona gave her pupil the most precious thing in her life - the house: "... she did not feel sorry for the upper room, which stood idle, as well as neither her labor nor her goodness ...".
The heroine has endured many hardships in life, but has not lost the ability to empathize with others, joy and sorrow. She is disinterested: she sincerely rejoices in someone else's good harvest, although she never has it on the sand herself. All the wealth of Matrena is a dirty white goat, a lame cat and large flowers in tubs.
Matryona is a concentration of the best features of the national character: she is shy, understands the "education" of the narrator, respects him for it. The author appreciates in Matryona her delicacy, the absence of annoying curiosity about the life of another person, hard work. For a quarter of a century she worked on a collective farm, but because she was not at a factory, she was not entitled to a pension for herself, and she could only get it for her husband, that is, for the breadwinner. As a result, she never received a pension. Life was extremely difficult. She got grass for a goat, peat for warmth, collected old stumps turned out by a tractor, soaked lingonberries for the winter, grew potatoes, helping those who were nearby to survive.
Analysis of the work says that the image of Matryona and individual details in the story are symbolic. Solzhenitsyn's Matryona is the embodiment of the ideal of a Russian woman. As noted in critical literature, the appearance of the heroine is like an icon, and life is like the lives of saints. Her house, as it were, symbolizes the ark of the biblical Noah, in which he escapes from the global flood. The death of Matryona symbolizes the cruelty and meaninglessness of the world in which she lived.
The heroine lives according to the laws of Christianity, although her actions are not always clear to others. Therefore, the attitude towards it is different. Matryona is surrounded by sisters, sister-in-law, adopted daughter Kira, the only friend in the village, Thaddeus. However, no one appreciated it. She lived in poverty, wretchedly, lonely - a "lost old woman", exhausted by work and illness. Relatives almost did not appear in her house, everyone condemned Matryona in chorus that she was funny and stupid, she worked for others for free all her life. Everyone mercilessly took advantage of Matryona's kindness and innocence - and unanimously judged her for it. Among the people around her, the author treats her heroine with great sympathy; both her son Thaddeus and her pupil Kira love her.
The image of Matryona is contrasted in the story with the image of the cruel and greedy Thaddeus, who seeks to get Matryona's house during her lifetime.
Matryona's courtyard is one of the key images of the story. The description of the courtyard, the house is detailed, with a lot of details, devoid of bright colors. Matryona lives "in the wilderness." It is important for the author to emphasize the inseparability of the house and the person: if the house is destroyed, its mistress will also die. This unity is already stated in the very title of the story. The hut for Matryona is filled with a special spirit and light, the life of a woman is connected with the "life" of the house. Therefore, for a long time she did not agree to break the hut.
Plot and composition
The story consists of three parts. In the first part, we are talking about how fate threw the hero-narrator to the station with a strange name for Russian places - Peat product. A former prisoner, now a school teacher, longing to find peace in some remote and quiet corner of Russia, finds shelter and warmth in the house of an elderly and familiar life Matrena. “Maybe, to someone from the village, who is richer, Matryona’s hut didn’t seem well-lived, but we were quite good with her that autumn and winter: it didn’t leak from the rains and the cold winds blew the stove heat out of it not immediately, only in the morning , especially when the wind was blowing from the leaky side. In addition to Matryona and me, they also lived in the hut - a cat, mice and cockroaches. They immediately find a common language. Next to Matryona, the hero calms down with his soul.
In the second part of the story, Matrena recalls her youth, the terrible ordeal that befell her. Her fiancé Thaddeus went missing in World War I. The younger brother of her missing husband, Yefim, who was left alone after death with the younger children in his arms, asked her to woo her. She took pity on Matryona Efim, married an unloved one. And here, after three years of absence, Thaddeus himself unexpectedly returned, whom Matryona continued to love. The hard life did not harden Matrena's heart. In worries about daily bread, she went her way to the end. And even death overtook a woman in labor worries. Matryona dies helping Thaddeus and his sons to drag part of their own hut bequeathed to Kira across the railroad on a sleigh. Thaddeus did not want to wait for the death of Matryona and decided to take the inheritance for the young during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death.
In the third part, the tenant learns about the death of the mistress of the house. The description of the funeral and commemoration showed the true attitude of people close to her towards Matryona. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry more out of duty than from the heart, and think only about the final division of Matryona's property. And Thaddeus doesn't even come to the wake.
Artistic features of the analyzed story
The artistic world in the story is built linearly - in accordance with the life story of the heroine. In the first part of the work, the whole story about Matryona is given through the perception of the author, a person who has endured a lot in his lifetime, who dreamed of "getting lost and getting lost in the very interior of Russia." The narrator evaluates her life from the outside, compares it with the environment, becomes an authoritative witness of righteousness. In the second part, the heroine talks about herself. The combination of lyrical and epic pages, the chaining of episodes according to the principle of emotional contrast allows the author to change the rhythm of the narrative, its tone. In this way, the author goes to recreate a multi-layered picture of life. Already the first pages of the story serve as a convincing example. It is opened by the beginning, which tells about the tragedy at the railway siding. We learn the details of this tragedy at the end of the story.
Solzhenitsyn in his work does not give a detailed, specific description of the heroine. Only one portrait detail is constantly emphasized by the author - the “radiant”, “kind”, “apologising” smile of Matryona. Nevertheless, by the end of the story, the reader imagines the appearance of the heroine. Already in the very tonality of the phrase, the selection of “colors”, one can feel the author’s attitude towards Matryona: “From the red frosty sun, the frozen window of the canopy, now shortened, filled with a little pink, and Matryona’s face warmed this reflection.” And then - a direct author's description: "Those people always have good faces, who are at odds with their conscience." Even after the terrible death of the heroine, her "face remained intact, calm, more alive than dead."
Matryona embodies the national character, which is primarily manifested in her speech. Expressiveness, bright individuality gives her language an abundance of colloquial, dialectal vocabulary (sweep, kuzhotkamu, summer, lightning). The manner of her speech is also deeply folk, the way she pronounces her words: “They began with some kind of low warm murmur, like grandmothers in fairy tales.” “Matryonin Dvor” minimally includes the landscape, he pays more attention to the interior, which appears not by itself, but in a lively interweaving with the “inhabitants” and with sounds - from the rustling of mice and cockroaches to the state of ficuses and a rickety cat. Every detail here characterizes not only the peasant life, Matryonin's yard, but also the storyteller. The voice of the narrator reveals in him a psychologist, a moralist, even a poet - in the way he observes Matryona, her neighbors and relatives, how he evaluates them and her. The poetic feeling is manifested in the author's emotions: "Only she had fewer sins than a cat ..."; “But Matryona rewarded me ...”. The lyrical pathos is especially obvious at the very end of the story, where even the syntactic structure changes, including paragraphs, translating the speech into blank verse:
“The Veems lived next to her / and did not understand / that she is the same righteous man, / without whom, according to the proverb, / the village does not stand. /Nor the city./Nor all our land.
The writer was looking for a new word. An example of this is his convincing articles on language in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Dahl's fantastic commitment (the researchers note that about 40% of the vocabulary in the story Solzhenitsyn borrowed from Dahl's dictionary), ingenuity in vocabulary. In the story "Matryona's Dvor" Solzhenitsyn came to the language of preaching.
The meaning of the work
“There are such born angels,” Solzhenitsyn wrote in the article “Repentance and Self-Restriction”, as if characterizing Matryona, “they seem to be weightless, they seem to glide over this slurry, without drowning in it at all, even touching its surface with their feet? Each of us met such people, there are not ten or a hundred of them in Russia, they are the righteous, we saw them, we were surprised (“eccentrics”), we used their kindness, in good moments we answered them the same, they dispose, - and immediately sank back to our doomed depths."
What is the essence of Matrona's righteousness? In life, not by lies, we will now say in the words of the writer himself, uttered much later. Creating this character, Solzhenitsyn places him in the most ordinary circumstances of rural collective farm life in the 1950s. The righteousness of Matrena lies in her ability to preserve her humanness even in such inaccessible conditions for this. As N.S. Leskov wrote, righteousness is the ability to live “without lying, without deceit, without condemning one’s neighbor and without condemning a biased enemy.”
The story was called "brilliant", "a truly brilliant work." In reviews of him, it was noted that even among Solzhenitsyn's stories he stands out for his strict artistry, the integrity of the poetic embodiment, and the consistency of artistic taste.
The story of A.I. Solzhenitsyn "Matryona Dvor" - for all time. It is especially relevant today, when the issues of moral values and life priorities are acute in modern Russian society.
Point of view
Anna Akhmatova
When his big thing came out (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”), I said: all 200 million should read this. And when I read Matrenin Dvor, I cried, and I rarely cry.
V. Surganov
After all, it’s not so much the appearance of Solzhenitsyn’s Matryona that evokes an internal rebuff in us, but the author’s frank admiration for beggarly disinterestedness and no less frank desire to exalt and oppose it to the rapacity of the owner, nesting in those around her, close to her.
(From the book The Word Makes Its Way.
Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn.
1962-1974. - M.: Russian way, 1978.)
This is interesting
On August 20, 1956, Solzhenitsyn left for his place of work. There were many such names as "Peat product" in the Vladimir region. Peat product (the local youth called it "Tyr-pyr") - was a railway station 180 kilometers and a four-hour drive from Moscow along the Kazan road. The school was located in the nearby village of Mezinovsky, and Solzhenitsyn had a chance to live two kilometers from the school - in the Meshchera village of Miltsevo.
Only three years will pass, and Solzhenitsyn will write a story that will immortalize these places: a station with a clumsy name, a village with a tiny bazaar, the house of the landlady Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova, and Matryona herself, a righteous woman and a sufferer. A photograph of the corner of the hut, where the guest will put a cot and, having pushed aside the master's ficuses, will arrange a table with a lamp, will go around the whole world.
The teaching staff of Mezinovka consisted of about fifty members that year and significantly influenced the life of the village. There were four schools here: primary, seven-year, secondary and evening for working youth. Solzhenitsyn received a referral to a secondary school - it was in an old one-story building. The academic year began with the August teachers' conference, so that, having arrived in Torfoprodukt, the teacher of mathematics and electrical engineering of grades 8-10 managed to go to the Kurlovsky district for a traditional meeting. “Isaich,” as his colleagues dubbed him, could, if desired, refer to a serious illness, but no, he did not talk about it with anyone. We only saw how he was looking for a birch chaga mushroom and some herbs in the forest, and briefly answered questions: “I make medicinal drinks.” He was considered shy: after all, a person suffered ... But that was not the point at all: “I came with my goal, with my past. What could they know, what could u tell them? I sat with Matryona and wrote a novel every free minute. Why am I talking to myself? I didn't have that style. I was a conspirator to the end." Then everyone will get used to the fact that this thin, pale, tall man in a suit and tie, who, like all teachers, wore a hat, coat or raincoat, keeps his distance and does not get close to anyone. He will remain silent when a document on rehabilitation comes in six months - just the school head teacher B.S. Protserov will receive a notification from the village council and send a teacher for help. No talking when the wife starts arriving. “What is it to whom? I live with Matryona and I live. Many were alarmed (isn't it a spy?) that he goes everywhere with a Zorkiy camera and shoots something completely different from what amateurs usually shoot: instead of relatives and friends - houses, wrecked farms, boring landscapes.
Arriving at the school at the beginning of the school year, he proposed his own methodology - giving all classes a control, according to the results he divided the students into strong and mediocre, and then worked individually.
In the lessons, everyone received a separate task, so there was neither the possibility nor the desire to write off. Not only the solution of the problem was valued, but also the method of solution. The introductory part of the lesson was shortened as much as possible: the teacher spared time for "trifles". He knew exactly who and when to call to the board, who to ask more often, who to entrust with independent work. The teacher never sat at the teacher's table. He did not enter the class, but burst into it. He ignited everyone with his energy, knew how to build a lesson in such a way that there was no time to be bored or doze off. He respected his students. Never shouted, never even raised his voice.
And only outside the class Solzhenitsyn was silent and withdrawn. He went home after school, ate the “cardboard” soup prepared by Matryona and sat down to work. The neighbors remembered for a long time how inconspicuously the guest lodged, did not arrange parties, did not participate in fun, but read and wrote everything. “She loved Matryona Isaich,” used to say Shura Romanova, the adopted daughter of Matryona (in the story she is Kira). - Sometimes, she will come to me in Cherusti, I persuade her to stay longer. "No," he says. “I have Isaich - he needs to cook, heat the stove.” And back home."
The lodger also became attached to the lost old woman, cherishing her disinterestedness, conscientiousness, cordial simplicity, a smile that he tried in vain to catch in the camera lens. “So Matryona got used to me, and I to her, and we lived easily. She did not interfere with my long evening classes, did not annoy me with any questions. There was absolutely no woman's curiosity in her, and the lodger did not stir her soul either, but it turned out that they opened up to each other.
She learned about the prison, and about the serious illness of the guest, and about his loneliness. And there was no worse loss for him in those days than the ridiculous death of Matryona on February 21, 1957 under the wheels of a freight train at the crossing of one hundred and eighty-four kilometers from Moscow along the branch that goes to Murom from Kazan, exactly six months after the day he settled in her hut.
(From the book of Lyudmila Saraskina "Alexander Solzhenitsyn")
Matrenin yard is poor, as before
Solzhenitsyn's acquaintance with "condo", "interior" Russia, in which he so wanted to be after the Ekibastuz exile, a few years later was embodied in the world-famous story "Matryona Dvor". This year marks 40 years since its inception. As it turned out, in Mezinovsky itself, this work by Solzhenitsyn became a second-hand rarity. This book is not even available at Matrenin Dvor itself, where Lyuba, the niece of the heroine of Solzhenitsyn's story, now lives. “I had pages from a magazine, the neighbors once asked when they began to study it at school, and they didn’t return it,” complains Lyuba, who today brings up her grandson on disability benefits in the “historical” walls. She inherited Matryona's hut from her mother, the youngest sister of Matryona. The hut was moved to Mezinovsky from the neighboring village of Miltsevo (in Solzhenitsyn's story - Talnovo), where the future writer lodged with Matryona Zakharova (with Solzhenitsyn - Matryona Grigorieva). In the village of Miltsevo, for the visit of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1994, a similar, but much more solid house was hastily erected. Shortly after the memorable arrival of Solzhenitsyn, the countrymen uprooted window frames and floorboards from this unguarded building of Matrenina, standing on the outskirts of the village.
The "new" Mezin school, built in 1957, now has 240 students. In the unpreserved building of the old one, in which Solzhenitsyn taught lessons, about a thousand studied. For half a century, not only the Miltsevskaya river became shallow and the peat reserves in the surrounding swamps became scarce, but also the neighboring villages were empty. And at the same time, Solzhenitsyn's Thaddeus did not disappear, calling the good of the people "ours" and considering that losing it is "shameful and stupid."
The crumbling house of Matryona, rearranged to a new place without a foundation, has grown into the ground for two crowns, buckets are put under a thin roof in the rain. Like Matryona, cockroaches are in full swing here, but there are no mice: there are four cats in the house, two of our own and two that have nailed it. Lyuba, a former foundry worker at a local factory, like Matryona, who once straightened out her pension for months, goes to the authorities to extend her disability allowance. “Nobody but Solzhenitsyn helps,” she complains. “Somehow one came in a jeep, called himself Alexei, examined the house and gave money.” Behind the house, like Matryona, there is a garden of 15 acres, on which Lyuba plants potatoes. As before, mint potatoes, mushrooms and cabbage are the main products for her life. In addition to cats, she doesn’t even have a goat in her courtyard, which Matryona had.
So lived and live many Mezinovsky righteous. Local historians write books about the stay of the great writer in Mezinovsky, local poets compose poems, new pioneers write essays “On the difficult fate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel laureate”, as they once wrote essays about Brezhnev’s “Virgin lands” and “Small land”. They are thinking of resurrecting the museum hut of Matrena on the outskirts of the deserted village of Miltsevo. And the old Matrenin yard lives the same life as it did half a century ago.
Leonid Novikov, Vladimir region.
Gang Yu. Service Solzhenitsyn // New time. - 1995. No. 24.
Zapevalov V. A. Solzhenitsyn. To the 30th anniversary of the publication of the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" // Russian Literature. - 1993. No. 2.
Litvinova V.I. Don't live in lies. Methodological recommendations for the study of A.I. Solzhenitsyn. - Abakan: KhSU publishing house, 1997.
MurinD. One hour, one day, one life of a person in the stories of A.I. Solzhenitsyn // Literature at school. - 1995. No. 5.
Palamarchuk P. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Guide. - M.,
1991.
SaraskinaL. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. ZhZL series. - M .: Young
guard, 2009.
The word makes its way. Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn. 1962-1974. - M .: Russian way, 1978.
ChalmaevV. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Life and work. - M., 1994.
Urmanov A.V. Works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. - M., 2003.
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 1
1. The story "Matryonin Dvor":
B) is based on fiction;
C) based on eyewitness accounts, contains elements of fiction.
2. The story is told in:
A) in first person
B) from a third party;
C) two narrators.
3. Function of exposition in a story:
a) introduce the reader to the main characters;
B) intrigue the reader with a mystery that explains the slow movement of the train along a segment of the railway track;
C) to acquaint with the place of action and indicate the involvement of the narrator in what happened
events.
4. The narrator settled in Talnovo, hoping to find patriarchal Russia:
A) and was upset when he saw that the inhabitants were unfriendly towards each other;
B) and did not regret anything, because he learned the folk wisdom and sincerity of the inhabitants of Talnovo;
C) and stayed there forever.
5. The narrator, paying attention to the description of everyday life, talking about a middle-aged cat, a goat, mice and cockroaches living freely in Matryona's house:
A) did not approve of the inaccuracy of the hostess, although he did not tell her about it so as not to offend;
B) emphasized that the good heart of Matryona felt sorry for all living things, and she sheltered in the house of those
who needed her compassion;
C) showed the details of village life.
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 2
1. Unlike the detailed description of Thaddeus, the portrait of Matryona is stingy with details:
“The round face of Matryona, tied with an old faded handkerchief, looked at me in the indirect soft reflections of the lamp ...” This allows:
B) indicate its belonging to the villagers;
C) to see a deep subtext in the description of Matryona: her essence reveals not a portrait, but how she lives and communicates with people.
2. Reception of the arrangement of images with a gradual increase in significance, which the author uses in the finale of the story ( ) is called:
3. What the author is talking about: “But it must have come to our ancestors from the Stone Age itself, because, heated once before dawn, it keeps warm food and drink for livestock, food and water for humans all day long. And sleep warmly.
5. How does the fate of the narrator of the story "Matryona Dvor" resemble the fate of the author A. Solzhenitsyn?
5. When was the story "Matryonin Dvor" written?
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 3
1. Matryona told the narrator Ignatich the story of her bitter life:
A) because she had no one to talk to;
B) because he also had to go through difficult times, and he learned to understand and sympathize;
C) because she wanted to be pitied.
2. A short acquaintance with Matryona allowed the author to understand her character. He was:
A) kind, gentle, sympathetic;
B) closed, taciturn;
C) cunning, mercantile.
3. Why was it hard for Matryona to give the upper room during her lifetime?
4. What did the narrator want to work in the village?
5. Indicate on whose behalf the narration is being conducted in Solzhenitsyn's story "Matryonin Dvor"
B) objective storytelling
D) bystander
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 4
A) went for holy water at Baptism;
B) she cried when she heard Glinka's romances on the radio, taking this music with her heart;
C) agreed to give the upper room for scrapping.
2. Main theme of the story:
A) revenge of Thaddeus Matryona;
B) the alienation of Matryona, who lived closed and lonely;
C) the destruction of Matryona's court as a haven of kindness, love and forgiveness.
3. Waking up one night in the smoke that rushed to save Matryona?
4. The sister-in-law, after the death of Matryona, said about her: "... stupid, she helped strangers for free." Were people strangers to Matryona? What is the name of this feeling, on which Rus' is still based, according to Solzhenitsyn?
5. Indicate the second name of Solzhenitsyn's story "Matryonin Dvor"
A) "The case at the station Krechetovka"
B) "Fire"
C) “A village does not stand without the righteous”
D) "business as usual"
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 5
A) highlight the hero's solidity, dignity, fortress.
B) to show the resilience of the once “tar hero”, who did not waste his spiritual kindness and generosity;
C) more clearly reveal the anger, hatred, greed of the hero.
2. The narrator is:
A) an artistically generalized character showing a complete picture of events;
B) the character of the story, with his life story, self-characterization and speech;
C) a neutral narrator.
3. What did Matryona feed her tenant?
4. Continue.“But Matryona was by no means fearless. She was afraid of fire, she was afraid of lightning, and most of all for some reason .... "
a) "The village of Torfoprodukt"
b) “A village does not stand without a righteous man”
c) "Backless Matryona"
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 6
1. Depicting the lamentation of relatives for the deceased Matryona,
A) shows the proximity of the heroes to the Russian national epic;
B) shows the tragedy of events;
C) reveals the essence of the sisters of the heroine, who, in tears, argue for the inheritance of Matryona.
2. A tragic omen of events can be considered:
A) the loss of a rickety cat;
B) the loss of the house and everything connected with it;
C) discord in relations with sisters.
3. Matryona's clock was 27 years old and they were in a hurry all the time, why didn't this bother the hostess?
4. Who is Kira?
5. What is the final tragedy? What does the author want to tell us? What worries him?
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 7
1. Solzhenitsyn calls Matryona a righteous woman, without whom the village does not stand, according to the proverb. He came to this conclusion:
A) since Matryona always spoke the right words, her opinion was listened to;
B) because Matryona observed Christian customs;
C) when the image of Matryona became clear to him, close, like her life without the pursuit of good, for outfits.
2. What words begin the story "Matryonin Dvor"?
3. What connects the story "Matryonin Dvor" and?
4. What was the original name of the story "Matryonin Dvor"?
5. What hung "on the wall for beauty" in Matryona's house?
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 8
1. Matryona cooked food in three cast-iron pots. In one - for himself, in the other - for Ignatich, and in the third - ...?
3. What sure remedy did Matryona have to regain her good mood?
4. What event or omen happened to Matryona at Baptism?
5. What is the full name of Matryona .
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 9
1. What part of the house did Matryona bequeath to her pupil Kira?
2. What historical period is the story about?
a) after the revolution
b) after World War II
3. What music heard on the radio did Matryona like?
4. What kind of weather did Matryona call duel?
5. " From the red frosty sun, the frozen window of the canopy, now shortened, filled with a little pink, - and Matryona's face warmed this reflection. Those people always have good faces, who….” Continue.
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 10
1. What was Thaddeus thinking about as he stood at the tombs of his son and the woman he had once loved?
2. What is the main idea of the story?
a) depiction of the severity of the life of the peasantry of collective farm villages
b) the tragic fate of a village woman
c) loss of spiritual and moral foundations by society
d) displaying the type of eccentric in Russian society
3.
Continue: “Not understood and abandoned even by her husband, who buried six children, but did not like her sociable character, a stranger to her sisters, sister-in-law, funny, stupidly working for others for free - she did not accumulate property to death. Dirty white goat, rickety cat, ficuses…
We all lived next to her and did not understand that she was the one .... "
4.
5. What artistic details help the author create the image of the main character?
a) lopsided cat
b) potato soup
c) a large Russian stove
d) a silent but lively crowd of ficuses
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 11
1. What is the meaning of the namestory?
a) the story is named after the scene
b) Matrenin yard - a symbol of a special structure of life, a special world
c) a symbol of the destruction of the world of spirituality, goodness and mercy in the Russian village
2. What is the main idea of this story? What Solzhenitsyn puts into the image of the old woman Matryona?
3. What is the feature of the image systemstory?
a) built on the principle of pairing of characters
b) the heroes surrounding Matryona are selfish, callous, they used the kindness of the main character
c) emphasizes the loneliness of the main character
d) designed to highlight the character of the main character
4. Write what was the fate of Matryona.
5. How did Matryona live? Was she happy in life?
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 12
1. Why didn't Matryona have children?
2. What was Thaddeus worried about after the death of his son and former beloved woman?
3. What did Matryona bequeath?
4. How can you characterize the image of the main character?
a) a naive, funny and stupid woman who has worked for others for free all her life
b) an absurd, poor, miserable, abandoned old woman
c) a righteous woman who has not sinned in any way against the laws of morality
a) artistic details
b) in a portrait
c) the nature of the description of the event underlying the story
e) internal monologues of the heroine
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 13
1. What type of traditional thematic classification does this story belong to?
1) Village 2) military prose 3) intellectual prose 4) urban prose
2. What type of literary heroes can Matryona be attributed to?
1) an extra person, 2) a small person, 3) a premature person, 4) a righteous person
3. The story "Matryonin Dvor" is written in the following traditions:
4. The episode of the destruction of the house is:
1) opening 2) exposition 3) climax 4) denouement
5. Traditions of what ancient genre can be found in the story "Matryonin's yard"?
1) parables 2) epics 3) epic 4) lives
Solzhenitsyn "Matryonin Dvor"
Option 14
1. What is the original title of the story?
1) “Life is not a lie” 2) “A village does not stand without a righteous man” 3) “Be kind!” 4) "Death of Matryona"
2. The specific subject of the narrative, indicated by the pronoun "I" and the first person of the verb, the protagonist of the work, the intermediary between the image of the author and the reader is called:
3. Words found in the story "Mismatch", "to the ugly", "room" are called:
1) professional 2) dialect 3) words with a figurative meaning
4. Name the technique that the author uses when depicting the characters of Matryona and Thaddeus:
1) antithesis 2) mirror composition 3) comparison
5. Reception of the arrangement of images with a gradual increase in significance, which the author uses in the finale of the story ( village - city - all our land) is called:
1) hyperbole 2) gradation 3) antithesis 4) comparison
Answers:
Option 1
1 - a
3 - in
4 - a
5 B
Option 2
2- gradation
3 - About the Russian stove.
Option 3
3. “It was not a pity for the chamber itself, which stood idle, as in general, Matryona never spared her labor or goodness. And this room was still bequeathed to Kira. But it was terrible for her to start breaking the roof under which she had lived for forty years.
4. teacher
Option 4
3. She began to throw ficuses on the floor so that they would not suffocate from the smoke.
4. The righteous
Option 5
1. V
2. 2.
3. “Cardboard not peeled”, “cardboard soup” or barley porridge.
4. Trains.
5. b
Option 6
3. If only they didn’t fall behind, so as not to be late in the morning. ”
4. pupil
5. Matryona perishes - Matryonin's yard perishes - Matryonin's world - a special world of the righteous. The world of spirituality, goodness, mercy, about which they also wrote. No one even thinks that with the departure of Matryona, something valuable and important passes away. Righteous Matryona is the moral ideal of the writer, on which the life of society should be based. All the actions and thoughts of Matryona were consecrated with a special holiness, not always clear to others. The fate of Matryona is firmly connected with the fate of the Russian village. There are fewer and fewer Matryonas in Rus', and without them " do not stand the village". The final words of the story return to the original title - " A village does not stand without a righteous man”and fill the story about the peasant woman Matryona with a deep generalizing, philosophical meaning. Village- a symbol of moral life, the national roots of man, the village - the whole of Russia.
Option 7
1. IN
2. “At one hundred and eighty-four kilometers from Moscow along the branch that goes to Murom and Kazan, for a good six months after that, all the trains slowed down, as it were, to the touch.”
3. It was he who gave it that name.
4. A village does not stand without a righteous person.”
5. Ruble posters about the book trade and about the harvest.
Option 8
1. goat.
2. About electricity.
3. Job.
4. The pot of holy water is missing.
5. Grigorieva Matryona Vasilievna
Option 9
1. Upper room.
2. d) 1956
2. Glinka's romances.
3. Blizzard.
4. "At odds with your conscience."
Option 10
1. “His high forehead was darkened by a heavy thought, but this thought was to save the logs of the upper room from the fire and from the machinations of the Matryonov sisters.”
2. V)
3. "... the righteous, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand."
4. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Matryona? What did Ignatic understand for himself?
5. e) "radiant", "kind", "apologising" smile
Option 11
1. V
2. the moral ideal of the writer, on which the life of society should be based. All the actions and thoughts of Matryona were consecrated with a special holiness, not always clear to others. The fate of Matryona is firmly connected with the fate of the Russian village. There are fewer and fewer Matryonas in Rus', and without them " do not stand the village»
Option 12
1. Died
2. save the logs of the upper room from the fire and from the machinations of the Matryonov sisters.
3. The true meaning of life, humble
4. IN
Analysis of the story by A.I. Solzhenitsyn "Matrenin Dvor"
AI Solzhenitsyn's view of the village in the 1950s and 1960s is distinguished by its harsh and cruel truth. Therefore, the editor of the journal Novy Mir, A.T. Tvardovsky, insisted on changing the time of the story Matrenin Dvor (1959) from 1956 to 1953. It was an editorial move in the hope of getting a new work by Solzhenitsyn to be published: the events in the story were transferred to the time before the Khrushchev thaw. The picture depicted leaves too painful an impression. “Leaves flew around, snow fell - and then melted. Plowed again, sowed again, reaped again. And again the leaves flew around, and again the snow fell. And one revolution. And another revolution. And the whole world turned upside down.
The story is usually based on a case that reveals the character of the protagonist. Solzhenitsyn builds his story on this traditional principle. Fate threw the hero-narrator to the station with a strange name for Russian places - Peat product. Here "dense, impenetrable forests stood before and overcame the revolution." But then they were cut down, brought to the root. In the village they no longer baked bread, did not sell anything edible - the table became scarce and poor. Collective farmers “down to the whitest flies, all to the collective farm, all to the collective farm,” and they had to collect hay for their cows already from under the snow.
The character of the main character of the story, Matryona, is revealed by the author through a tragic event - her death. It was only after her death that “the image of Matryona floated before me, which I did not understand her, even living side by side with her.” Throughout the story, the author does not give a detailed, specific description of the heroine. Only one portrait detail is constantly emphasized by the author - Matryona's "radiant", "kind", "apologising" smile. But by the end of the story, the reader imagines the appearance of the heroine. The author's attitude to Matryona is felt in the tonality of the phrase, the selection of colors: "From the red frosty sun, the frozen window of the canopy, now shortened, filled with a little pink, and Matryona's face warmed this reflection." And then - a direct author's description: "Those people always have good faces, who are at odds with their conscience." I remember the smooth, melodious, primordially Russian speech of Matryona, beginning with "some kind of low warm murmur, like that of grandmothers in fairy tales."
The surrounding world of Matryona in her darkish hut with a large Russian stove is, as it were, a continuation of herself, a part of her life. Everything here is organic and natural: the cockroaches rustling behind the partition, the rustle of which resembled the “distant sound of the ocean”, and the shaggy cat, picked up by Matryona out of pity, and the mice that rushed behind the wallpaper on the tragic night of Matryona’s death, as if Matryona herself “invisibly rushed about and said goodbye here to her hut. Favorite ficuses "filled the loneliness of the hostess with a silent, but lively crowd." The same ficuses that Matryona once saved in a fire, not thinking about the meager acquired good. “Frightened by the crowd” ficuses froze that terrible night, and then they were forever taken out of the hut ...
The author-narrator unfolds the story of Matryona's life not immediately, but gradually. She had to sip a lot of grief and injustice in her lifetime: broken love, the death of six children, the loss of her husband in the war, hellish labor in the countryside, a severe illness, a bitter resentment against the collective farm, which squeezed all her strength out of her, and then wrote it off as unnecessary leaving without pension and support. In the fate of Matrena, the tragedy of a rural Russian woman is concentrated - the most expressive, blatant.
But she did not get angry at this world, she retained a good mood, a sense of joy and pity for others, her radiant smile still brightens her face. "She had a sure way to get her good spirits back - work." And in her old age, Matryona did not know rest: either she grabbed a shovel, or she went with a bag to the swamp to mow grass for her dirty-white goat, or she went with other women to steal peat for winter kindling secretly from the collective farm.
“Matryona was angry with someone invisible,” but she did not hold a grudge against the collective farm. Moreover, according to the very first decree, she went to help the collective farm, without receiving, as before, anything for her work. Yes, and she did not refuse to help any distant relative or neighbor, without a shadow of envy later telling the guest about the neighbor's rich potato harvest. Work was never a burden to her, "Matryona never spared her labor or her goodness." And shamelessly everyone around Matryona used unselfishness.
She lived in poverty, wretchedly, lonely - a "lost old woman", exhausted by work and illness. Relatives almost did not appear in her house, apparently fearing that Matryona would ask them for help. Everyone condemned her in unison, that she was funny and stupid, working for others for free, always climbing into men's affairs (after all, she got under the train, because she wanted to help the peasants to drag the sleigh through the crossing). True, after the death of Matryona, the sisters immediately flocked, “seized the hut, the goat and the stove, locked her chest with a lock, gutted two hundred funeral rubles from the lining of her coat.” Yes, and a half-century friend, "the only one who sincerely loved Matryona in this village," who came running in tears with the tragic news, nevertheless, leaving, took Matryona's knitted blouse with her so that the sisters would not get it. The sister-in-law, who recognized Matrona's simplicity and cordiality, spoke of this "with contemptuous regret." Mercilessly everyone used Matryona's kindness and innocence - and unanimously condemned for it.
The writer devotes a significant place in the story to the funeral scene. And this is no coincidence. For the last time, all relatives and friends gathered in Matryona's house, in whose environment she lived her life. And it turned out that Matryona was leaving life, never understood by anyone, not mourned by anyone in a human way. At the memorial dinner, they drank a lot, they said loudly, “It’s not about Matryona at all.” As usual, they sang "Eternal Memory", but "the voices were hoarse, different, drunken faces, and no one put feelings into this eternal memory."
The death of the heroine is the beginning of the decay, the death of the moral foundations that Matryona strengthened with her life. She was the only one in the village who lived in her own world: she arranged her life with work, honesty, kindness and patience, preserving her soul and inner freedom. In the popular way, wise, prudent, able to appreciate goodness and beauty, smiling and sociable in nature, Matryona managed to resist evil and violence, preserving her “yard”, her world, a special world of the righteous. But Matryona dies - and this world collapses: her house is pulled apart by a log, her modest belongings are greedily divided. And there is no one to protect Matryona's yard, no one even thinks that with the departure of Matryona, something very valuable and important, not amenable to division and primitive everyday assessment, passes away.
“We all lived next to her and did not understand that she is the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand. Neither city. Not all of our land."
Bitter end of the story. The author admits that he, having become related to Matryona, does not pursue any selfish interests, nevertheless, he did not fully understand her. And only death revealed to him the majestic and tragic image of Matryona. The story is a kind of author's repentance, bitter remorse for the moral blindness of everyone around him, including himself. He bows his head before a man of a disinterested soul, absolutely unrequited, defenseless.
Despite the tragedy of events, the story is sustained on some very warm, bright, piercing note. It sets the reader up for good feelings and serious reflections.
Magrenip Yard
The action of the story by A.I. Solzhenitsyn's Matrenin Dvor takes place in the mid-1950s. The events described in it are shown through the eyes of the narrator, an unusual person who dreams of getting lost in the very interior of Russia, while the bulk of the population wants to move to big cities. Later, the reader will understand the reasons why the hero seeks the outback: he was in prison and wants a quiet life.
The hero goes to teach in a small place "Peat-Product", from which, as the author ironically notes, it was difficult to leave. Neither monotonous barracks, nor dilapidated five-story buildings attract the main character. Finally, he finds a place to live in the village of Talnovo. So the reader gets acquainted with the main character of the work - a lonely sick woman Matryona. She lives in a darkish hut with a dim mirror through which nothing could be seen, and two bright posters about the book trade and the harvest. The contrast of these interior details is obvious. It foresees one of the key issues raised in the work - the conflict between the ostentatious bravado of the official chronicle of events and the real life of ordinary Russian people. There is a deep understanding of this tragic inconsistency in the story.
Another, no less striking contradiction in the story is the contrast between the extreme poverty of the peasant life, among which Matryona's life passes, and the richness of her deep inner world. The woman worked all her life on the collective farm, and now she does not even receive a pension either for her work or for the loss of a breadwinner. And to achieve this pension due to bureaucracy is almost impossible. Despite this, she has not lost pity, humanity, love for nature: she grows ficuses, picked up a rickety cat. The author emphasizes in his heroine a humble, good-natured attitude to life. She does not blame anyone for her plight, she does not demand anything.
Solzhenitsyn constantly emphasizes that Matryona's life could have turned out differently, because her house was built for a large family: degas and grandchildren could sit on stools instead of ficuses. Through the description of Matryona's life, we learn
about the difficult life of the peasantry. Of the products in the village, one potato and barley groats. The store sells only margarine and combined fat. Only once a year for the shepherd does Matryona buy local “delicacies” in the village store, which she herself does not eat: canned fish, sugar and butter. And when she finished her overcoat from a worn railway overcoat and began to receive a pension, her neighbors even began to envy her. This detail not only testifies to the miserable situation of all the inhabitants of the village, but also sheds light on the unsightly relations between people.
It is paradoxical, but in the village with the name "Peat product" people do not even have enough peat for the winter. Peat, which is around a lot, was sold only to the authorities and one car each - to teachers, doctors, factory workers. When the hero talks about this, his heart aches: it's scary to think to what degree of downtroddenness and humiliation a simple person in Russia can be brought to. Due to the same stupidity of economic life, Matryona cannot get a cow. The grass around is the sea, and it is impossible to mow it without permission. So an old sick woman has to look for grass for a goat along the islands in the middle of the swamp. And there is no place to get hay for a cow.
A.I. Solzhenitsyn consistently shows what difficulties the life of an ordinary hardworking peasant woman involves. If she tries to improve her plight, obstacles and prohibitions are everywhere.
At the same time, in the image of Matryona A.I. Solzhenitsyn embodied the best features of a Russian woman. The narrator often admires her kind smile, notices that the cure for all troubles for the heroine was the work in which she easily got involved: either she dug potatoes, or went to pick berries in a distant forest. 11e immediately, only in the second part of the story, we learn about Matryona's past life: she had six children. Eleven years she waited from the war for her missing husband, who, as it turned out, was not faithful to her.
In the story of A.I. Solzhenitsyn's sharp criticism of the local authorities is heard every now and then: winter is on the nose, and the chairman of the collective farm is talking about anything but fuel. You won’t find a secretary of the village council at all on the spot, and even if you get some piece of paper, then you will have to redo it later, since all these people, called upon to ensure law and order in the country, work through their sleeves, but you won’t find justice for them. A.I. writes with indignation. Solzhenitsyn that the new chairman “first of all cut the vegetable gardens for all disabled people”, even though the cropped acres were still empty behind the fence.
Even the grass on the collective farm land had no right to mow Matryona, but when a problem happened on the collective farm, the chairman’s wife came to her and, without greeting, demanded to go to work, and even with her pitchfork. Matrena helped not only the collective farm, but also the neighbors.
Next to the artistic details of A.I. Solzhenitsyn emphasizes in the story how far the achievements of civilization are from the real life of a peasant in the Russian outback. The invention of new machines and artificial earth satellites is heard on the radio as wonders of the world, from which neither sense nor use will be added. The peasants will also load peat with pitchforks and eat empty potatoes or porridge.
Also incidentally tells A.I. Solzhenitsyn and the situation in school education: Antoshka Grigoriev, a round loser, didn’t even try to learn anything: he knew that they would still be transferred to the next class, since the main thing for the school is not the quality of students’ knowledge, but the struggle for a “high percentage of academic performance” .
The tragic end of the story was prepared in the course of the development of the plot by a remarkable detail: someone stole a cauldron of holy water from Matryona at the blessing of water: “She always had holy water, but this year she didn’t.”
In addition to the cruelty of state power and its representatives in relation to a person, A.I. Solzhenitsyn raises the problem of human callousness in relation to the neighbor. Matryona's relatives force her to dismantle and give her niece (adopted daughter) a room. After that, Matrena's sisters scolded her for being a fool, and the rickety cat, the last consolation of an old woman, disappeared from the yard.
Taking out the upper room, Matryona herself dies at the crossing under the wheels of the train. With bitterness in his heart, the author tells how Matryona's sister, who had quarreled with her before her death, flocked to share her miserable inheritance: a hut, a goat, a chest and two hundred funeral rubles.
Only the phrase of one old woman translates the plan of the narration from everyday to existential: “There are two riddles in the world: how I was born - I don’t remember, how I’ll die - I don’t know.” People glorified Matryona even after her death. There was talk that her husband did not love her, walked away from her, and indeed she was stupid, because she dug up gardens for people for free, but she never made her own property. The author's point of view is extremely capaciously expressed by the phrase: "We all lived next to her and did not understand that she is the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand."
A writer is judged by his best works. Among the stories of Solzhenitsyn, published in the 60s, Matrenin Dvor was always put in the first place. He was called "brilliant", "a truly brilliant work." "The story is true", "the story is talented", it was noted in criticism. Among Solzhenitsyn's stories, he stands out for his strict artistry, the integrity of his poetic embodiment, and the consistency of his artistic taste.
Solzhenitsyn is a passionate artist. His story about the fate of a simple peasant woman is full of deep sympathy, compassion, humanity. It evokes a response in the reader. Each episode "wounds the soul in its own way, hurts in its own way, delights in its own way." The combination of pages of lyrical and epic plans, the chaining of episodes according to the principle of emotional contrast allow the author to change the rhythm of the narrative, its tone. In this way, the writer goes to recreate a multi-layered picture of life. Already the first pages of the story serve as a convincing example of this. It opens the beginning-preliminary. It's about tragedy. The author-narrator remembers the tragedy that happened at the railway siding. We learn the details of this tragedy at the end of the story.
The features of the literary text noted here make its stylistic analysis preferable, which accompanies the expressive reading of individual, most impressive fragments: Solzhenitsyn's lyrical landscapes, the description of Matryona's yard, Matryona's story about her past, the final scenes.
"Matrenin Dvor" is an autobiographical work. This is Solzhenitsyn's story about himself, about the situation in which he found himself, having returned in the summer of 1956 "from the dusty hot desert." He "wanted to get lost in the very interior of Russia", to find "a quiet corner of Russia away from the railways." Ignatich (under this name the author appears before us) feels the delicacy of his position: a former camp inmate (Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated in 1957) could only be hired for hard work - to carry a stretcher. He also had other desires: "But I was drawn to teaching." And in the structure of this phrase with its expressive dash, and in the choice of words, the mood of the hero is conveyed, the most cherished is expressed.
“But something was starting to shake.” This line, conveying a sense of time, gives way to further narration, reveals the meaning of the episode “In the Vladimir Oblono”, written in an ironic vein: and although “every letter in my documents was touched, they walked from room to room”, and then - for the second time - again they “were like from room to room, called, creaked”, the position of the teacher was nevertheless given, in the order they printed: “Peat product”.
The soul did not accept the settlement with the following name: "Peat product": "Ah, Turgenev did not know that it was possible to compose such a thing in Russian!" The irony here is justified: and in it is the author's sense of the moment. The lines following this ironic phrase are written in a completely different tone: “The wind of calmness drew me from the names of other villages: High Field, Talnovo, Chaslitsy, Shevertni, Ovintsy, Spudni, Shestimirovo.” Ignatich "brightened" when he heard the people's dialect. The speech of the peasant woman "struck" him: she did not speak, but sang touchingly, and her words were the very ones that longing from Asia pulled me after.
The author appears before us as a lyricist of the finest warehouse, with a developed sense of the Beautiful. In the general plan of the narrative, lyrical sketches, heartfelt lyrical miniatures will find their place. "High Field. From one name the soul cheered ”- this is how one of them begins. The other is a description of a “drying dammed river with a bridge” near the village of Talnovo, which Ignatich “liked”. So the author brings us to the house where Matryona lives.
"Mother's Yard". Solzhenitsyn did not accidentally name his work that way. This is one of the key images of the story. The description of the courtyard, detailed, with a mass of details, is devoid of bright colors: Matryona lives "in the wilderness." It is important for the author to emphasize the inseparability of the house and the person: if the house is destroyed, its mistress will also die.
“And the years went by, as the water floated…” As if from a folk song, this amazing proverb came into the story. It will contain the whole life of Matryona, all the forty years that have passed here. In this house, she will survive two wars - German and Patriotic, the death of six children who died in infancy, the loss of her husband, who went missing in the war. Here she will grow old, remain lonely, suffer need. All her wealth is a rickety cat, a goat and a crowd of ficuses.
Matrena's poverty looks from all angles. But where will prosperity come from in a peasant house? “It was only later that I found out,” says Ignatich, “that year after year, for many years, Matryona Vasilievna did not earn a single ruble from anywhere. Because she didn't get paid. Her family did little to help her. And on the collective farm she worked not for money - for sticks. For sticks of workdays in a filthy record book. These words will be supplemented by the story of Matryona herself about how many grievances she endured, bustling about her pension, about how she got peat for the stove, hay for the goat.
The heroine of the story is not a character invented by the writer. The author writes about a real person - Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova, with whom he lived in the 50s. Natalya Reshetovskaya's book "Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Reading Russia" contains photographs taken by Solzhenitsyn of Matrena Vasilievna, her house, and the room that the writer rented. His story-recollection echoes the words of A. T. Tvardovsky, who recalls his neighbor, aunt Daria,
With her hopeless patience,
With her hut without canopy,
And with an empty workday,
And with the labor of the night - not fuller ... With all the trouble -
Yesterday's war
And a grave current misfortune.
It is noteworthy that these lines and Solzhenitsyn's story were written at about the same time. In both works, the story of the fate of the peasant woman develops into reflections on the brutal ruin of the Russian village in the war and post-war period. “But can you tell me about it, what years you lived ...” This line from M. Isakovsky’s poem is consonant with the prose of F. Abramov, who tells about the fate of Anna and Lisa Pryaslins, Marfa Repina ... This is the literary context in which the story “Matryona’s Yard” falls "!
But Solzhenitsyn's story was written not only to reiterate the suffering and troubles that a Russian woman endured. Let us turn to the words of A. T. Tvardovsky, taken from his speech at the session of the Governing Council of the European Writers Association: “Why is the fate of an old peasant woman, told in a few pages, of such great interest to us? This woman is unread, illiterate, a simple worker. And, however, her spiritual world is endowed with such a quality that we talk with her, as with Anna Karenina.
After reading this speech in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Solzhenitsyn immediately wrote to Tvardovsky: “Needless to say, the paragraph of your speech referring to Matryona means a lot to me. You pointed to the very essence - to a woman who loves and suffers, while all the criticism scoured all the time from above, comparing the Talnovsky collective farm and neighboring ones.
So two writers come to the main theme of the story "Matryona Dvor" - "how people live." In fact: to survive what Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova experienced, and remain a disinterested, open, delicate, sympathetic person, not be embittered at fate and people, to keep your “radiant smile” until old age ... What mental strength is needed for this ?!
This is what Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn wants to understand and wants to tell about. The whole movement of the plot of his story is aimed at comprehending the secret of the character of the main character. Matryona reveals herself not so much in her ordinary present as in her past. She herself, recalling her youth, confessed to Ignatich: “It was you who had not seen me before, Ignatich. All my bags were, I didn’t consider five pounds a weight. The father-in-law shouted: “Matryona! You'll break your back!" The divir did not come up to me to put my end of the log on the front end.
Young, strong, beautiful, Matryona was from that breed of Russian peasant women that "stops a galloping horse." And it was like this: “Once the horse, frightened, carried the sleigh into the lake, the men jumped off, and I, however, grabbed the bridle and stopped ...” - says Matryona. And at the last moment of her life, she rushed to "help the peasants" at the crossing - and died.
Matryona will be revealed most fully in the dramatic episodes of the second part of the story. They are connected with the arrival of the "tall black old man", Thaddeus, the brother of Matryona's husband, who did not return from the war. Thaddeus came not to Matryona, but to the teacher to ask for his eighth-grader son. Left alone with Matryona, Ignatich forgot to think about the old man, and even about herself. And suddenly from her dark corner she heard:
“- I, Ignatich, once almost married him.
She got up from the shabby rag bed and slowly came out to me, as if following her words. I leaned back - and for the first time I saw Matryona in a completely new way ...
- He was the first to marry me ... before Yefim ... He was an older brother ... I was nineteen, Thaddeus was twenty-three ... They lived in this very house then. Theirs was a house. Built by their father.
I looked around involuntarily. This old gray decaying house suddenly appeared to me through the faded green skin of the wallpaper, under which mice were running, as young, not yet darkened then, planed logs and a cheerful resinous smell.
- And you him? .. And what? ..
“That summer ... we went with him to sit in the grove,” she whispered. - There was a grove here ... Almost didn’t come out, Ignatich. The German war has begun. They took Thaddeus to war.
She dropped it - and flashed before me blue, white and yellow July of the fourteenth year: still a peaceful sky, floating clouds and people boiling with ripe stubble. I imagined them side by side: a resin hero with a scythe across his back; her, ruddy, hugging the sheaf. And - a song, a song under the sky ...
- He went to war - disappeared ... For three years I hid, waited. And no news, and no bones ...
Tied with an old faded handkerchief, Matrona's round face looked at me in the indirect soft reflections of the lamp - as if freed from wrinkles, from everyday careless attire - frightened, girlish, before a terrible choice.
Where, in what work of modern prose can one find the same inspired pages that could be compared with Solzhenitsyn's sketches? Compare the strength and brightness of the character depicted in them, the depth of his comprehension, the penetration of the author's feeling, expressiveness, juiciness of the language, and their dramaturgy, artistic linkages of numerous episodes. In modern prose - nothing.
Having created a charming character, interesting for us, the author warms the story about him with a lyrical sense of guilt. “There is no Matryona. A family member was killed. And on the last day I reproached her for her quilted jacket. Comparison of Matryona with other characters, especially noticeable at the end of the story, in the wake scene, strengthened the author's assessments: “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she is the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand.
Neither city.
Not all our land."
The words concluding the story bring us back to the original version of the name - "A village does not stand without a righteous man."
Questions and tasks for an indicative and analytical conversation on the story "Matryona Dvor"
1. Highlight autobiographical moments in the story "Matryona Dvor".
2. Solzhenitsyn-landscape painter. Prepare an expressive reading of landscape sketches, a stylistic commentary on them. What description is associated with the title of the story?
3. Expand the topic "Matryona's past and present." Show what role in the story "Matryona Dvor" plays one and the other plan.
4. Name other characters in the story. What role did they play in the fate of the main character?
5. Why was the heading "A village without a righteous man" impossible? Expand its philosophical meaning.