2.4 Problems of psychology and the meaning of life in stories " Grand slam", "Once upon a time", "The Story of Sergei Petrovich", "Thought"
The writer's attention has always been attracted by the moral, ethical and philosophical essence of human existence. He was especially concerned about the increasing alienation and loneliness of modern man. “Andreev associated the disunity of people, their spiritual inferiority, indifference to the fate of their native country not only with social inequality and material need, for him this is the result of the abnormal structure of bourgeois society as a whole. Disunity and lack of spirituality are also inherent in “prosperous” ordinary people.” “The Grand Slam” is one of the most successful stories of a philosophical mood and one of Andreev’s most powerful anti-bourgeois and anti-philistine stories. The law, the norm, the circle of human destiny (“fate”) acquire symbolic and phantasmagonic features in it.
Andreev shows that “everyday life devalues the spiritual content of human life so much that it becomes like a meaningless spinning, a fantastic game. (In this story, the symbolic image of the game is based on an empirical one - the card game of screw. In his future work, Andreev will widely use the image of a masquerade, a spectacle, a playground, where a person is a mask, a puppet).”
And the worst thing here is that there is no way out of this terrible game. All the actions of the heroes: conversations, thoughts come down to only one thing - winning a game of screw. Even the death of one of the heroes does not find a response in their hearts. Their only regret is that they lost their partner, and he did not know that he had won.
“In the Grand Slam final, sarcasm and a cry of pain, irony and a cry of despair merged together. A person, deadened, destroyed by the subjugation of mechanical everyday life, deserves mercy (a man is missing!) and contempt (those who have become reified cannot be people, they are not capable of solidarity, they are strangers even to themselves).” The characters are indifferent to each other, united only by a long-term game of screw, they are so faceless that the author begins to call them the equally faceless “they” - this is another idea of the writer. When one of the players dies during the game, the remaining players are disturbed not by the death itself, but by the fact that the dead one did not know about his winnings, and they lost a fourth partner.
The story “Once upon a time” is one of the peaks early creativity Andreeva. In it, the motives of life, death, alienation, and happiness sound in full force, sharply contrasting the worldviews of two antipodean heroes: a stranger to the land and people, the predatory and unfortunate merchant Kosheverov and the happy deacon Speransky, who is close to life. Both heroes find themselves in the same hospital room, both of them will soon die, but there is a significant difference between them: their attitude towards their future. “And if for Kosheverov a chamber, a cell, a room is a deplorable end, a joyless and hopeless outcome, death, followed by emptiness, if for him death only revealed the futility and purposelessness of his existence, then for Speransky death once again revealed the great meaning and price of life.
Speransky is completely open to life. He is not focused on his illness, he is turned to other patients, to doctors and students, nurses and caregivers, to living life outside the ward. He hears the cry of sparrows, rejoices in the shine of the sun, and watches the road with interest. His fate is closely connected with the fate of his wife, children, home and garden - they all live in him, and he continues to live in them.”
With this story, Andreev wanted to show that different people have different attitudes to life. For some people it is happiness, an opportunity to express themselves (Speransky), while for others life is a meaningless, empty vegetation.
“The last phrase of the story “Once upon a time”: “The sun rose” is unusually capacious and polysemantic. It is related to the fate of Kosheverov (he died, defeated by both life and death, and invincible life continues to flow). It applies no less to the fate of Deacon Speransky: the deacon will soon die, but his death itself is the triumph of life, it is a confirmation of what he loved, for which he lived. This last phrase also applies to the fate of the third actor- student Torbetsky, whose life, although he lies in a hospital bed, is still ahead, like the lives of people of thousands of generations.
At the center of “The Story of Sergei Petrovich” is the leading problem of Andreev’s early work: “man and fate.” The hero of the stories of a philosophical mood experienced the influence of “fate” and reacted to it with his behavior. Sergei Petrovich finds himself in a position that gives him the opportunity to see, feel, and realize his dependence on “fate.” The narration in the story is not from the person of Sergei Petrovich, but from a third person, but this unknown and “objective” third person is at the level of Sergei Petrovich’s consciousness, as close as possible to the range of his ideas.
“The assessment that Andreev gave to the story is curious. In several cases (letters to M. Gorky, A. Izmailov, etc.) Andreev admitted that the story was not entirely successful for him artistically. At the same time, he persistently insisted that ideologically “Sergei Petrovich” is very important for him, that he places it above many, if not all, early stories of this time, including above the story “Once upon a time” “in terms of the significance and seriousness of the content” . Here, for example, is what Andreev wrote about the story in his own diary: “...death is not scary to me now and is not scary precisely because “Sergei Petrovich” is over...”. In his diary, Andreev briefly writes down the main theme of the story, as he understands it: “... this is a story about a man, typical of our time, who recognized that he has the right to everything that others have, and rebelled against nature and against people who depriving him of his last opportunity for happiness. He commits suicide - a “free death”, according to Nietzsche, under whose influence the spirit of indignation is born in my hero.”
In choosing the theme and plot, Andreev largely followed Mikhailovsky, his interpretation of the strengths of Nietzsche’s philosophy and his dispute with Nietzsche about free man. According to Mikhailovsky, Nietzsche is strong in his criticism of the modern personality, erased to nothing by modern bourgeois society, and his acute longing for a new, free, bright person. A little person, Mikhailovsky believed, “can conceal within himself, and on occasion even reveal, such moral power and beauty, before which we must inevitably respectfully take off our hats. But it can be removed just as respectfully in front of an ordinary ordinary worker in a matter that we consider important, necessary, sacred.”
Andreev chooses as the hero of the story just such an ordinary ordinary worker, whom he once attracted to himself and was amazed by “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” Under the influence of Nietzsche’s idea of the “superman”, the ordinary man Sergei Petrovich saw the light: the ideal of a person “strong, free and courageous in spirit” lit up before him, and he realized how far he was from this ideal.
Nietzsche awakened in him a feeling of his inequality in the natural world due to his ordinariness, ordinariness (in comparison with some comrades he is “ugly”, “stupid”, “less talented”, etc.). Sergei Petrovich was deeply hurt by Nietzsche's thought about the inferiority of ordinary people, to whose category he belonged.
Starting with Nietzsche, starting from him, Sergei Petrovich comes to the understanding that he is not free, not strong, not brave in spirit, not only because he is devoid of bright talents. He is unhappy because the social system does not give him any opportunity to develop his own natural needs and capabilities (he deeply loved nature, was fond of music and art, dreamed of the joyful work of a simple plowman and the sensitive female love). In an unfairly constructed society, he is assigned the role of a member useful to the market (as a buyer), to statistics and history (as an object of study of the laws of population), to progress. All his “usefulness,” as it became clear to Sergei Petrovich, “is beyond his will.”
“The most insignificant”, “the most ordinary” Sergei Petrovich is a rebel like Pushkin’s Eugene (“The Bronze Horseman”). Eugene rose up against state and historical necessity, which deprived him of personal will. Sergei Petrovich rebelled against “fate”. In the concept of “rock” he first of all includes the social injustice of the bourgeois world. It also includes “natural inequality” (talents and ordinary people). But if for Nietzsche this division forever elevates some and “rejects” others, then for Sergei Petrovich it is clear that this inequality should become imperceptible in a society where every person can find himself, be in his place and receive satisfaction from his own efforts and recognition according to the results of their work.
Sergei Petrovich, like most of Andreev’s heroes, is an individualist, an altruistic individualist, suffering and weak, and as an individualist he does not know the ways to achieve social equality in which he could become a free person. Moreover, Sergei Petrovich was fully convinced that in this world he could not be equal to any other person and, therefore, could not be happy. Nietzsche’s treatise (“If life fails you, know that death will succeed”) was the impetus for self-awakening and the reason for the suicide of Sergei Petrovich, the real reason suicide was an awareness of one’s own helplessness in a world where all kinds of inequality are cultivated. His suicide is a step of despair, and indignation, and rebellion, and the triumph of the winner at the same time.
In the story “Thought” the theme of “the powerlessness and impersonality of human thought, the meanness of the human mind” is most clearly expressed. Main character story - Doctor Kerzhentsev. This person refuses moral standards and ethical principles, and recognizes only the power of thought. "All human history“,” he writes in his notes, “seemed to me like a procession of one triumphant thought. ...I idolized her,” he said about the thought, “and wasn’t she worth it? Didn’t she, like a giant, fight against the whole world and its errors? She carried me to the top of a high mountain, and I saw how deep below people were swarming with their petty animal passions, with their eternal fear of life and death, with their churches, masses and prayer services.”
Having abandoned the morality of society, Kerzhentsev relies on his own thought. To prove his superiority over all people, he decides to kill. Moreover, he kills his friend Alexei Savelov. Kerzhentsev imitates his madness and is glad that he cleverly deceived the investigation. “But the thought killed its creator and master with the same indifference with which he killed others with it.”
So the writer leads us to the conclusion that Kerzhentsev’s self-centered and non-social thought is dangerous both for himself and for the people around him. The hero's tragedy is not the only one of its kind; Andreev shows that this will happen to anyone who wants to elevate himself above others.
CONCLUSION
The artistic thought of Leonid Andreev very often, for a long time and persistently lingered on “eternal” questions and problems - about life and death, about the mysteries of human existence, about the purpose of man and his place in the endless cycle of life.
The spiritual crisis of Father Vasily, depicted by Andreev, a man who naively thought of saving humanity from the evils of life by the will of heaven, was perceived by contemporaries as a call to achieve truth on earth on their own.
From the story of the same name, Sergei Petrovich understands that in a socially unjust society a person cannot be happy, and, realizing that he is insignificant, he decides to commit suicide.
In the story “Once upon a time,” Andreev drew a piece of eternal, indestructible life, captured its brief moment and showed that for some it can be joyless, meaningless, aimless, for others it can be immortal, an introduction to the eternal and good.
The story “Thought” shows the tragedy of a man who destroyed his “moral instincts” and who then destroyed himself.
The writer in the story “Bargamot and Garaska” argued that even the “last” person is also a person and is called your brother.
The writer acted as an ardent opponent of the war in the story “Red Laughter.”
The story was a cry about the need to save man, people, nations, humanity from the “world infection” that spreads war as a way of its own existence and spread.
The writer expresses the idea that everyday life “discolors” a person, devalues his soul; such a person deserves contempt, but at the same time, pity (“Grand Slam”).
Andreev presents the theme of betrayal (“Judas Iscariot”) in a completely new way. Judas cannot defeat him, but he cannot help but love Jesus. And the whole psychology of betrayal then lies in the struggle of the individual with predestination in the struggle of Judas with the mission destined for him.
Stories about children make us think about the stolen childhood and irretrievably lost happiness that every person needs.
Stories by L. Andreev, written in late XIX- early 20th century remain relevant today. The ideas expressed by the writer still concern modern people: senseless wars continue in the world; people are still struggling with their fate, some know exactly what they are living for, others are simply living it. This is why the work of Leonid Andreev remains relevant a century later.
Andreev discovered his own in literature, new world, a world covered in the revolutionary breath of rebellious elements, anxious thoughts, and philosophical moods. Reacting sharply to the transition and crisis of all spheres of life in a turning point era, Andreev acted as an artist-seeker, an experimenter, who infected everyone who came into contact with him with the very process of intense, painful searches. Blok and Gorky, Vorovsky and Veresaev, Benois and Kirov, Lunacharsky and Voloshin, Korolenko and R. Luxemburg - these and many other contemporaries of Andreev repeated, for example, that he made it vital for each of them the need now, immediately and accurately, to answer themselves and everyone around to the eternal, “damned” questions discovered by humanity in ancient times and relevant to this day: about the goal human existence, about the tragedies of life and death, about the paths of reason, faith and feeling, about the fight against “world evil” for the victory of man, for the victory of good. A. Blok considered this very ineradicable need of Andreev to ask questions and demand answers to them to be a characteristically Russian trait, which became sharply visible in the revolutionary era. Andreev asked his questions to the old world “from his very depths, relentlessly and unconsciously,” asked them on behalf of the “great child - Russia,” which entered the arena of world history as the leading actor and needed effective answers.
“Andreev stood at the origins of a number of phenomena that were developed in Russian and foreign art. As studies about specific writers show, individual artists experienced his influence, entire literary movements followed the paths marked by his work: Andreev’s experience was of great importance for V. Mayakovsky and B. Brecht, without it it is impossible to establish the pedigree of F. Kafka, L. .Pirandello and O'Neill; an appeal to Andreev’s work reveals the roots of such literary phenomena, like existentialism (A. Camus), intellectual theater and theater of the absurd, “philosophical realism” in Japan; Andreev’s searches in the field of “neorealism” and “universal psychologism” are in line with various trends in Russian and world theater and cinema.”
LIST OF REFERENCES USED
Andreev L.N. Favorites. – M: Soviet Russia, 1988. – 323 p.
Bogdanov V.A. Creativity of L. Andreev // Andreev L.N. Favorites. – M: Soviet Russia, 1988. – pp. 3-15.
Kuleshov F.I. About the prose of Leonid Andreev // Andreev, L.N. Red Laughter: Selected Stories and Tales. – Mn: Publishing house of BSU named after. V.I. Lenin, 1981. – pp. 5-22.
Jesuitova L.A. Creativity of Leonid Andreev. – L: Leningrad University Publishing House, 1976. – 239 p.
Russian writers: bibliographic dictionary: In 2 volumes / ed. P.A. Nikolaev. – M: Education, 1990. – T. 1. – pp. 32-36.
Russian literature of the twentieth century 1897-1917: training manual for students of Belarusian departments of philological faculties of pedagogical institutes of Belarus / ed. T.B. Liokumovich. – Brest: Commercial publishing enterprise “Pirce”, 1993. – 138 p.
Sokolov A.G. History of Russian literature of the late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries. Textbook – 4th ed., add. and processed.. – M: Higher. shk; Ed. Center Academy, 2000 – 432 p.
Leonida Essay >> Literature and Russian language
April 5 10. Moscow. Leonid Egorovich! I'm not at all... in London*, popularization ideas about an obvious contradiction, ... asked Obolensky, art story*. Together with... Tolstoy. 284 in. IN. Andreev 1896 March 20. ... as much as possible diversity: to be rebuked...
M. Gorky considered “The Grand Slam” the best story by L.N. Andreeva. The work was highly appreciated by L.N. Tolstoy. In a card game, a “grand slam” is a position in which the opponent cannot take any of his partner’s cards with the highest card or trump card. For six years, three times a week (on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays) Nikolai Dmitrievich Maslennikov, Yakov Ivanovich, Prokopy Vasilyevich and Evpraksiya Vasilievna play screw. Andreev emphasizes that the stakes in the game were insignificant and the winnings were small. However, Evpraxia Vasilievna really valued the money she won and put it separately in her piggy bank.
The behavior of the characters during a card game clearly shows their attitude towards life in general. The elderly Yakov Ivanovich never plays more than four, even if he had good game. He is careful and prudent. “You never know what might happen,” he comments on his habit.
His partner Nikolai Dmitrievich, on the contrary, always takes risks and constantly loses, but does not lose heart and dreams of winning back next time. One day Maslennikov became interested in Dreyfus. Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) was a French general staff officer who was accused of passing secret documents to Germany in 1894 and then acquitted. The partners first argue about the Dreyfus case, but soon get carried away by the game and fall silent.
When Prokopiy Vasilievich loses, Nikolai Dmitrievich rejoices, and Yakov Ivanovich advises not to take risks next time. Prokopiy Vasilievich is afraid of great happiness, because behind him goes big grief.
Evpraksiya Vasilievna - the only woman in four players. During a big game, she looks pleadingly at her brother, her constant partner. Other partners await her move with chivalrous sympathy and condescending smiles.
The symbolic meaning of the story is that our whole life, in fact, can be presented as card game. It has partners, and there are rivals. “Cards can be combined in infinitely different ways,” writes L.N. Andreev. An analogy immediately arises: life also presents us with endless surprises. The writer emphasizes that people tried to achieve their own in the game, and the cards lived their own lives, which defied either analysis or rules. Some people go with the flow in life, others rush around and try to change their fate. For example, Nikolai Dmitrievich believes in luck and dreams of playing a “grand slam”. When, finally, the long-awaited serious game comes to Nikolai Dmitrievich, he, fearing to miss it, assigns a “grand slam in no trumps” - the most difficult and highest combination in the card hierarchy. The hero takes a certain risk, since for a sure victory he must also receive the ace of spades in the draw. To everyone's surprise and admiration, he reaches for the purchase and suddenly dies from cardiac paralysis. After his death, it turned out that, by a fateful coincidence, the draw contained the same ace of spades that would have ensured a sure victory in the game.
After the death of the hero, the partners think about how Nikolai Dmitrievich would rejoice at this game played. All people in this life are players. They try to take revenge, win, catch luck by the tail, thereby asserting themselves, count small victories, and think very little about those around them. For many years, people met three times a week, but rarely talked about anything other than the game, did not share problems, and did not even know where their friends lived. And only after the death of one of them, the rest understand how dear they were to each other. Yakov Ivanovich is trying to imagine himself in his partner’s place and feel what Nikolai Dmitrievich must have felt when he played the “grand slam”. It is no coincidence that the hero changes his habits for the first time and begins to play a card game, the results of which his deceased comrade will never see. It is symbolic that the most open man. He told his partners about himself more often than others, and was not indifferent to the problems of others, as evidenced by his interest in the Dreyfus case.
What is the attitude of the players to the events taking place in life. What do Grand Slam heroes talk about besides the game?
In which episodes is there a clear theme of the characters’ indifference to each other and alienation?
Which scenes most clearly depict the absurdity of the described world, absorbed in the play and play of the meaningless. analyze the reaction of each of Mr. to the death of Mr. Dmitrievich, as evidenced by it
What is the ambiguity of the name?
1.They talk about abstract topics about people walking,
the weather, people walking into the forest with baskets, the fate of a certain Dreyfus, whom no one knows. The conversation is more of a background; it is meaningless. The attitude towards the events taking place in life is almost indifferent; they are more interested in cards that live “their own life”. The world around them worries them insofar as it does not break their established traditions. This shows, for example, the attitude towards Sunday as a “boring day”, because at this time there are usually no games, time is reserved for theaters and guests. For the games, we chose the quietest room possible (shows the importance of the game).
2. Nikolai Dmitrievich began to come later, but no one was interested in why. No one noticed any signs of deterioration in his health either. When he disappeared for two weeks, everyone was worried that the normal course of the game would be disrupted.
People don’t know who lives where, whether anyone has children, and they are always surprised to learn about something.
3. Cards are endowed with their own life, thoughts, feelings, intentions (spades come to some, worms to others). They are endowed with character traits (twos and threes have a “bold and mocking appearance”). And people begin to live in this imaginary world, shutting themselves off from the real world, their souls harden, they become indifferent (for example, Evpraksiya Vasilievna once had an unhappy love, but no longer remembers why they didn’t get married). This is most clearly seen in the episode of the death of Nikolai Dmitrievich.
Reaction to death. Yakov Ivanovich tries not to look at the dead man. I cried with pity only when I saw that he was literally one ace of spades short of a grand slam. He thinks about where they will get the fourth one.
Nothing is said about the third player; most likely, it is implied that he simply left.
4. The name has two meanings: literal and subtext. Literally: grand slam is a term in a card game. Subtext: the grand helmet is a symbol of what Nikolai Dmitrievich strived for during his life, what he saw as his purpose in life, his meaning. While it is just a card game, but it has replaced these people real life. He almost achieves his dream, but dies almost immediately. Yakov Ivanovich is upset that Nikolai Dmitrievich “didn’t understand” that he practically played a grand slam. While the author is sad rather because the hero died without understanding the value of real life.
Current page: 12 (book has 34 pages total) [available reading passage: 23 pages]
Story "Grand Slam"
Andreev's story "The Grand Slam" - with the ironic subtitle "idyll" - was first published in the Moscow newspaper "Courier" on December 14, 1899. The writer’s diary contains an entry: “In my absence, my story “Grand Slam” was published, indeed good story" The story was highly appreciated by L. Tolstoy, who was interested in the unusual presentation of the theme of death in it. “Your best story is “The Grand Slam,” Gorky wrote to Andreev in early April 1900. According to the recollections of one of his contemporaries, Gorky, having read “The Grand Slam,” said: “Talent is emerging... The story is written very well. One detail in particular reveals the author’s abilities: he needed to compare life and death - Andreev did this very subtly, in one stroke.”
The plot and character system of the story.
“Grand Slam,” built on a real-life plot basis, but in an in-depth philosophical and psychological aspect, embodies Andreev’s characteristic motif of the fragility and illusory nature of human happiness, already heard in the story “Angel” and developed in the writer’s subsequent works.
The plot of the “Grand Slam” carries a generalized philosophical meaning. The characters in the story - ordinary, unremarkable provincials - spend their leisure time monotonously for many years playing the card game vint. “Monetarily, the game was insignificant,” it is said at the beginning of the author’s narration: the writer in this case departs from the tradition of classical literature, the tradition of Pushkin (“ Queen of Spades") and Dostoevsky (“The Gambler”), when the theme of cards was associated with the idea of sudden enrichment, change of fate, miracle. Andreev creates a different plot situation that fully corresponds to his creative plan. The hero of the story, Nikolai Dmitrievich Maslennikov, unlike his partners, who enjoy only the process of the game itself, is obsessed with the dream of one day “playing a grand slam with no trump cards.” 1
Grand slam is a position in a card game in which the opponent cannot take any of his partner’s cards with the highest card or trump card.
“, however, he just can’t get the right combination of cards.
The situation of the “Grand Slam” is close in meaning to one of the plot motifs of L. Tolstoy’s story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” - it is no coincidence that Andreev’s story was highly appreciated by Tolstoy. “Friends came to form a party and sat down,” we read in “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.” – We dealt, warmed up new cards, added diamonds to diamonds, there were seven of them. The partner said: no trump cards, and supported two diamonds. What else? It should be fun, cheerful - a helmet. And suddenly Ivan Ilyich feels this sucking pain, this taste in his mouth, and something wild seems to him in the fact that he can rejoice at the helmet.” So capricious fortune once smiled at Andreev’s hero, but at the very moment when he finally received the coveted layout of cards, sudden death overtook him. He did not even have time to stretch out his hand to the cards to finally be convinced of this rare luck, as he immediately died of heart paralysis. The theme of fate, an inexorable fate that mercilessly destroys all the thoughts and hopes of people, directly echoes the idea expressed in “Angel” about the fragility of happiness.
With a big artistic power The “Grand Slam” conveys the horror of the internal disunity of people, of their coldly cruel indifference to each other. The calm and smooth rhythm of the story, the condescending, almost benevolent depiction of the characters, combined with the author’s subtle irony, deliberate sharpening of images and situations - all these artistic media contribute to a deeper and more complete disclosure of the spiritual alienation of the heroes. The story begins with the words: “They played screw three times a week.” With this impersonal “they,” the author immediately emphasizes that the individual, special properties of the heroes are not of significant importance here. We learn nothing about the inclinations, occupation, family connections of the characters - just as they themselves, who meet three times a week at the card table, know nothing and do not want to know about each other. Only by chance, when Nikolai Dmitrievich did not show up for the game for two weeks, the partners learned with “surprise” that his son (whose existence they did not suspect) had been arrested and that Nikolai Dmitrievich himself had long been suffering from acute attacks of a serious illness. But even these episodes outside the card game, which caused only slight confusion, are not able to bring the partners out of their usual balance - the established ritual suppresses any manifestations of living life.
The appearance of the heroes is described very succinctly. One of the partners, Yakov Ivanovich, “was a small, dry old man, who wore a welded frock coat and trousers winter and summer, silent and stern.” He is contrasted with Nikolai Dmitrievich - “fat and hot”, “red-cheeked, smelling fresh air" These sparse portrait details correspond to the behavior of both heroes playing a card game. Yakov Ivanovich, without being surprised or upset, in any situation - winning or losing - never played more than four tricks. His actions are strictly and accurately weighed, not allowing the slightest deviation away from the unchangeable order he himself has established. On the contrary, the more lively Nikolai Dmitrievich is not inclined to put up with routine in the game. His dream of a grand slam, in fact, is nothing more than an attempt - albeit an absurd, senseless one - to break out of the predetermined “circle” of life, to try fate, to show will.
Ways to demonstrate the author's position
IN artistic structure In the story, the seemingly random author's mention of a similar situation once experienced by Yakov Ivanovich is of particular significance. “One day it happened that, as Yakov Ivanovich began to move from deuce, he moved away all the way to the ace, taking all thirteen tricks. “But why didn’t you play a grand slam?” – Nikolai Dmitrievich screamed. “I never play more than four,” the old man answered dryly and didactically remark: “You never know what might happen.” Ultimately, however, the “impenetrable” Yakov Ivanovich, with all his sober and prudent caution, feels childishly helpless after a sudden and therefore especially terrible death Nikolai Dmitrievich. Perhaps only at this moment does he realize the pointlessness of his attempts to “bypass” fate, to protect himself from its inexorably cruel will.
The artistic space of the story, confined within the confines of the room where the game takes place, acquires symbolic meaning. She, this room, “became completely deaf,” as if destroying “with her upholstered furniture” all extraneous sounds that could distract the players from their favorite pastime. Outside the card game, various events take place, the world “obediently bore the heavy yoke of endless existence and either blushed with blood or shed tears, announcing its path in space with the groans of the sick, hungry and offended,” but the partners, absorbed in their irrepressible passion, do not notice anything around .
Only Nikolai Dmitrievich from time to time introduces “faint echoes of this alarming and alien life” into the ritual of the card game. Either he informs those present that “the frost was ten degrees during the day,” then he starts a conversation about a sensational court case, unconsciously reviving his partners - against their own will, they became involved in a dispute about the legality of the order in legal proceedings, they even almost quarreled, but, immediately coming to their senses , again focused “seriously and thoughtfully” on the game. The impression is that life seemed to pass from their hands to the cards, living according to their own, silent and mysterious laws.
In parallel with the depiction of the monotonous everyday life of the partners, the writer builds another figurative and symbolic series. In the eyes of the players, the cards “have long lost the meaning of soulless matter” - each of them “was strictly individual and lived its own separate life.” The animated world of cards with their “whimsical disposition, their mockery and inconstancy,” recreated by the author by means of sharp verbal grotesquerie (“the three sixes laughed and the king of spades smiled gloomily,” “the damned sixes again bared their wide white teeth”), personifies the highest fatalities in the story. forces that dominate human thoughts and aspirations. There can be no mutual understanding between the world of people and the world of cards: the blind luck that befalls Nikolai Dmitrievich quickly and sharply turns into tragedy. Both of these worlds are close to each other only in one thing - in dull and cold indifference to everything around them. Even death is unable to stir up the natural human: everything is absorbed, crushed, destroyed by a meaningless game.
Only after the death of Nikolai Dmitrievich do his partners begin to hardly remember where the deceased lived and whether he had a wife. However, something else is noteworthy. Even in these tragic moments, which force people to forget about everything in the world, they cannot free themselves from their all-consuming passion, from the absurd and wretched cult of card games.
The semantic summary of the story
Yakov Ivanovich was surprised and frightened, first of all, by the fact that the deceased Nikolai Dmitrievich “would never know that he had an ace in his hand and that he had the right big helmet in his hands.” And he experiences a real shock after, having changed his rule for the only time - not to take more than four tricks, he took the cards of the deceased and played a grand slam for him. The deceased partner was extremely lucky, but he will never know about it - this is what plunges Yakov Ivanovich into despair. And one more thought haunts the players: “Where will we get the fourth one now?” That's all. Someday, the next one will suddenly die at the card table in exactly the same way, and the rest will be just as concerned about where they can find a new partner to make up a game of screw. And life, empty and colorless, will continue meaninglessly, and the cards will be “indifferent and sometimes maliciously mocking.” The finale of the Grand Slam combines sarcasm and a cry of pain, irony and a cry of despair. A person subject to the pernicious, destructive effects of mechanical everyday life is worthy of compassion, but at the same time deserves condemnation - for spiritual emptiness, indifference to others.
The conclusion from the story is obvious: an ordinary person does not and cannot have joy, happiness in life, where everything - from birth to death - is subject to almighty fate. But Andreev is far from humbly accepting this conclusion. The “Grand Slam” confirms the correctness of Alexander Blok, who wrote that Andreev “screamed” at the sight of human suffering and that “his cries were heard; they are so piercing, such things that they reach the innermost hiding places of quiet and well-fed calf souls...”
Review questions
1. What type of story is “Grand Slam”? What are the features of his figurative and artistic structure?
2. What is the philosophical meaning of the story?
4. Which artistic value Does Grand Slam have a card game motif? What does his dream of “playing a grand slam without trump cards” mean in the life of Nikolai Dmitrievich?
6. Compare the two heroes - Nikolai Dmitrievich and Yakov Ivanovich - by their appearance and behavior at the card table. How do these details reveal their characters?
7. How did you understand the meaning? tragic ending story, the players' reaction to the death of Nikolai Dmitrievich?
Play "Human Life"
“I want to reform drama,” Andreev wrote to A. Serafimovich in November 1906 after finishing work on the play “Human Life.” In a letter to G. Chulkov, Andreev also noted the innovation of his plan: “The fact is that I took completely new uniform- neither realistic, nor symbolist, nor romantic, - I don’t know...” The writer experienced considerable difficulties while working on the play. “I’ll be honest,” he admitted to Vl. Nemirovich-Danchenko, - I myself am dissatisfied with “The Life of a Man.” You had to grope along, your thoughts stubbornly strayed to the old, familiar, and for minutes there was no way to figure out whether you were doing a good thing or a bad thing. In the very process of work, the form developed and became clear, and only when finishing the play did I understand its essence... Let this be my first experience.”
According to the author, “The Life of a Man” was to be the first in a cycle of philosophical plays, “connected by the one-sidedness of the form and the inextricable unity of the main idea.” “After “Human Life” comes “Human Life,” which will be depicted in four plays: “Tsar Famine,” “War,” “Revolution” and “God, the Devil and Man,” Andreev wrote to Nemirovich-Danchenko in May 1907 year. – Thus, “The Life of a Man” is a necessary introduction, both in form and content, into this cycle, to which I dare to attach great importance. great value" And although this plan was not realized in its original version (of those mentioned, only the play “Tsar Famine” was written), Andreev’s very intention to create a cycle dramatic works, in which the destinies of individual people had to be linked with the destinies of humanity, clearly correlated with the most acute philosophical demands of the time and in its own way reflected the need for a new level of philosophical, historical and artistic thought.
Themes and issues of the play
The prologue to the play immediately declares its main theme - the timeless tragedy of a person dependent on the will of fate. Someone in gray, called He, a conventional character personifying everything that impedes human freedom, fixes the orbit of human life: “Uncontrollably drawn by time, he will inevitably go through all the stages of human life, from bottom to top, from top to bottom. Limited by sight, he will never see the next step, to which his unsteady foot will no longer rise; limited by knowledge, he will never know what the coming day, the coming hour or minute brings to him. And in his blind ignorance, tormented by forebodings, he will obediently complete the circle of iron destiny.” All five scenes of the play (“The Birth of a Man and the Torments of the Mother”, “Love and Poverty”, “A Ball at a Man’s”, “The Misfortune of a Man”, “The Death of a Man”), respectively demonstrating the five stages of a person’s life from birth to death - “from the bottom to the top, from top to bottom,” illustrate this thesis.
The emphasis in dramatic action is placed on the vicissitudes of a person’s collision with the “immutable.” A tragic outcome The conflict is determined by the fact that man’s attempts to break this “circle of iron destiny” turn out to be futile, invariably running into the stony indifference of Someone in gray with a burning candle in his hands, monotonously repeating: “But the wax consumed by the fire decreases. “But the wax is decreasing.”
But, recognizing the power of fatally irresistible forces over a person, the writer did not resign himself to reality, did not give up attempts - even if doomed to failure - to resist the blows of fate. In the second scene of the play, Man, shown as young, energetic, and believing in the power of reason, challenges fate itself when it gets in his way. Turning to Someone standing in the corner of the room, the Man exclaims: “Hey, you, what’s your name: rock, the devil or life, I throw down the gauntlet to you, I call you to battle!.. Let’s flash our swords, ring our shields, rain down blows on our heads, from which the earth will tremble! Hey, come out and fight!” Alexander Blok, literally “shocked,” as he admitted, by “The Life of a Man” (in February 1907 he had a chance to see Vs. Meyerhold’s performance on the stage of the St. Petersburg Theater by V.F. Komissarzhevskaya), felt the true greatness and tragedy precisely in the fact that Andreevsky a person does not give up, but fights to the end. At that time, Blok was close to the mood of “ultimate despair” expressed in “The Life of a Man”, the artist’s fierce, albeit fruitless, hatred of his surroundings “ scary world“, and in this aspect he comprehended the rebellion of a man who challenged “an inexorable, square, damned Fate” to battle. In Andreev’s drama, Blok saw “vivid proof that Man is a man, not a doll, not a pitiful creature doomed to decay, but a wonderful phoenix overcoming the “icy wind of boundless spaces.” “Wax melts, but life does not diminish,” he concluded his thought.
Features of dramatic form
Large-scale philosophical content"Human Lives" is embodied in an innovative dramatic form. “If in Chekhov... the stage should give life,- Andreev pointed out in one of his letters to K. S. Stanislavsky, - then here - in this presentation– the stage should only give reflection life. Not for one minute should the viewer forget that he is standing in front of a picture, that he is in a theater and in front of him are actors portraying this and that.” In contrast traditional theater direct emotional experience, Andreev creates his own “performance” theater, a theater philosophical thought, abandoning life-likeness and resorting to conditionally generalized images. “From the outside, this is stylization,” Andreev explained the concept of “The Life of a Man” in a letter to Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. “Characters, situations and settings should be reduced to their main ideas, simplified and at the same time deepened due to the absence of trifles and secondary things.”
IN figurative system"A Man's Lives" features several types of characters. There are individual characters, but extremely distant from the individual, concrete, deprived of a name (Man, Man's Wife, Doctor, Old Woman). There are “choral” images that embody a collective – moral or social – essence large group people (Relatives, Neighbors, Guests at the ball). The functions of these images are to comment on events, the setting of the stage action, and instill in the audience a certain mood required by the author’s intention. For example, in the second picture, which depicts the youth, poverty, and beauty of Man, the Neighbors’ remarks are full of touching attention and love, containing many good wishes. On the contrary, the dialogues of Drunkards and sinister Old Women in the 5th scene foreshadow the darkness of non-existence into which the dying Man is about to plunge. Finally, there is a character who carries an abstract symbolic meaning (Someone in Gray).
Related to the general idea of “performance” theater is another artistic principle used in “A Man’s Life.” “Due to the fact that there is not life here, but only a reflection of life, a story about life, an idea of how they live, in certain places there should be underlining, exaggeration, bringing a certain type, property to its extreme development,” Andreev noted in a letter K. S. Stanislavsky. “There is no positive, calm degree, but only excellent... Sharp contrasts.” The very state of the world depicted in “The Life of a Man” prompted the author, instead of “quiet, gentle, subtle moods,” to turn to “sharp, distinct, angry sounds of the trumpet.”
In Andreev’s play there is really no place for a “calm degree”: either satirical grotesque is used (3rd scene “A Man’s Ball”), or hopeless horror is intensified (5th scene “The Death of a Man”), or a sublimely bright structure of feelings and thoughts is conveyed (2nd picture “Love and Poverty”). The writer needs exaggeration, grotesquery, and contrasts in order to neutralize the possibility of emotional empathy and to express purely intellectual philosophical content with extreme clarity.
For the same purpose, Andreev widely uses in “Human Life” the means of related types of art - painting, music, elements of plastic arts. The techniques for depicting stylized characters and the emotional stage “backdrop” were influenced by L. N. Andreev’s passion for the art of the great Spanish artist Francisco Goya, especially the series of etchings “Caprichos” and “Disasters of War”. Such properties of Goya's graphic writing as grotesque, hyperbolization, unrestrained fantasy, contrasting "play" of light and dark colors, absence of particulars, "shadows", the desire to expose contradictions in highest degree, – were originally implemented in Andreev’s selection of “living paintings” representing human life. Color palette The play is very fluid: each picture, permeated with a certain mood and recreating a certain stage in a person’s life, has its own range of colors. Thus, in the 2nd picture, the theme of the youth of the Man and his wife is enhanced by “bright, warm light”, “perfectly smooth light pink walls”, “bright, cheerful dresses”, “a beautiful bouquet of wild flowers”. On the contrary, in the 5th picture the theme of death is accompanied, as it were, by “an uncertain, wavering, flickering gloomy light”, “smooth dirty walls”, “an endless variety of disgusting and terrible”.
Equally significant in “The Life of a Man” is the symbolism of music. A short, two musical phrase, loud “polka with trembling, cheerful and extremely empty sounds,” to which “girls and young people” diligently dance, expressively emphasizes the complete impersonality of the Guests gathered at the ball - puppets, overcome by the expression of “complacency, arrogance and stupidity.” respect for the wealth of Man." And the geometrically correct room in which the action takes place and through the windows of which the night always looks, deepens the thought of the depressing monotony of existence: the forever given form of the world - the cell.
Each picture is preceded by a special exposition that explains the connection between all parts of the play. These expositions, introducing the atmosphere of what is happening on stage, are built either in the form of dialogues of minor characters (for example, the conversation of the Old Women in the 1st picture, the conversation of the Neighbors in the 2nd), or a monologue of some character (for example, in the 4th a picture where the maid talks about how “Man has fallen into poverty again”). Unity storyline in the play it is achieved only by a prologue, the idea of which is consistently revealed by all the pictures, and by the figure of Someone in Gray, invariably present on the stage with a candle, the wax of which gradually melts, as if marking the stages of life's path.
Many features of the dialogue in “A Man’s Life” are also explained by the author’s focus on extreme generalization in the depiction of characters and stage settings. Within each thematic section, the dialogue is structured according to a given scheme and usually explains the characters’ attitude to a particular statement or event that occurs, as a rule, behind the scenes. These, in particular, are the remarks of the guests at the ball: “How rich! How magnificent! How bright! How rich!” – pronounced monotonously and sluggishly. For the most part, the author's remarks are the same. For example, the Man in Gray speaks in a “hard, cold voice, devoid of excitement and passion”; The guests at the ball talk “without whispering, without laughing, almost without looking at each other... pronouncing abruptly, as if cutting off... words”; The Man's servant speaks "in an even voice, addressing an imaginary interlocutor."
The artistic features of the play are subordinated to one task - to reveal the tragedy of all humanity in the relationship between Man and Fate. This main idea of the play is associated with the rejection of the intense dynamics of the plot action, and the disclosure of the inner experiences of the characters. For the author, one or another combination of specific life situations cannot be of interest - before eternity, everything is insignificant and predetermined, therefore, in “The Life of a Man” there are no psychological or other “real” motivations for plot events. The actions of the heroes, the situations in their lives seem random to them: by chance a Man becomes rich, by chance his son is killed, by chance he becomes poor again. All events in the hero’s life are motivated only by spontaneous, “blind” laws of fate. The man in Andreev’s play is not tormented, does not suffer, does not experience joy or despair - he only makes notes, signs of his emotions, reports to the audience about what he is experiencing at this moment. However, the randomness of the plot situations is external: it is justified in the prologue by the fact that Man “obediently completes” the “circle of iron destiny” determined by fate. To show the “blind ignorance” of Man, Andreev eliminates realistic motivations, depersonalizes the characters, and develops stage action solely as an expression of the author’s main idea. That is why Andreevsky’s man is not endowed with the motive of tragic guilt - doom, suffering, death are the result not of an internal mental struggle, but of an external, irresistible fate.
In “The Life of a Man” (as in some subsequent plays) Andreev managed to anticipate characteristic features expressionist dramaturgy, which developed most strongly in German literature 1910–1920s (in plays by G. Kaiser, E. Toller and other writers). Like the German Expressionists, he acutely perceived the tragedy of the existence of an alienated human “I”, helpless before the power of fate. By highlighting not the reflection of events, but the emotional, subjective attitude to them, Andreev created the “art of experience,” in which pictures of reality were deformed under the pressure of the artist’s stormy, confused experiences, reacting anxiously to the glaring dissonances of history.
Tasks for independent work
1. How is the main theme of “Human Life” determined? What stages of human life are shown in the work?
2. Why did Alexander Blok see in the man from Andreev’s play “the only non-cardboard hero of the newest drama”? How is the struggle of a person with himself and with the “immutable” revealed in “The Life of a Man”?
3. How do the hero’s hopes for happiness and the exposure of illusions alternate in “A Man’s Life”? What is the hero’s attitude towards the world around him at different stages of life?
4. What are the philosophical and artistic functions figures of Someone in Gray? What does the burning candle in his hand mean?
5. What are the fundamental differences between “The Life of a Man” - in content and form - from traditional realistic drama?
6. Why does Andreev depersonalize his characters and deprive them of their names? Show how the author’s intention is realized in “Human Life” - “to provide a generalization of entire periods of life.”
7. Why did Andreev call his play a “performance”? What genre originality"Human Life"?
8. How are painting techniques, light and color contrasts, and musical motifs used in the artistic and figurative structure of “Human Life”?
9. What are the ways of constructing individual and group, “choral” images in “Human Life”?
Essay topics
1. Social and moral meaning works by L. Andreev.
2. Man and rock in the works of L. Andreev.
3. The theme of human birth and death in the play “Human Life”.
4. The system of characters in “A Man’s Life.”
5. Innovation artistic form plays "Human Life".
6. Features of the plot and composition of the play “Human Life”.
7. Techniques of grotesque and hyperbolization in “Human Life”.
8. Methods of constructing dialogue in “Human Life”.
L.N. Andreev is one of the few writers who subtly felt the movement of life, its rapid impulses and the slightest changes. The writer was especially acutely aware of the tragedy of human existence, which is controlled by mysterious, fatal forces unknown to people. His work is the result of philosophical reflection, an attempt to answer the eternal questions of existence. In Andreev’s works, artistic details acquire special value. At first glance, they seem completely motionless and silent. Behind the smallest details, like light strokes, subtle halftones and hints are hidden. Thus, the writer encourages his reader to independently answer critical issues human life. Therefore, in order to understand Andreev’s works, you need to feel the semantic shades of each word, be able to determine its sound in context. This is what we will now try to do when analyzing the story “Grand Slam”. II Conversation on the story “Grand Slam” - What is the peculiarity of the plot and character system?(The plot of the story, at first glance, seems quite simple. However, upon closer examination, one can notice the philosophical meaning that is hidden behind the real everyday basis. The characters in the story are ordinary people. For many years they spend their leisure time playing vint. Author sparingly outlines the features of his heroes, says nothing about inner world characters. The reader himself has to guess that behind the simple plot basis and laconic depiction of the characters there is meant a symbol of the monotony of the flow of life, in the rhythm of which ordinary people live aimlessly).- What is the intonation of the piece? What is her role? ( The intonation of the story is simple, devoid of emotionality, acute drama, and calm. The author impartially describes the leisure time of the players. We are talking about ordinary and inconspicuous events. But behind the measured intonation of the narrative, tension is hidden, drama is felt in the subtext. In this calm flow of life, behind the monotony of a card game, people lose their spiritual appearance and individuality).- What can you say about the heroes of the story “Grand Slam”? How are their actions described? (The appearance of the heroes is briefly outlined. Yakov Ivanovich “was a small, dry old man, winter and summer, walking around in a welded frock coat and trousers, silent and stern.” The complete opposite of him is Nikolai Dmitrievich - “fat and hot,” “red-cheeked, smelling fresh.” air.” Evpraksiya Vasilievna and Prokopy Vasilyevich are described in less detail. When describing their brother and sister, Andreev limits himself to mentioning the facts of their biography. All the heroes have one thing in common - the card game has replaced the diversity of their lives. established order and the artificially created conditions of existence may collapse. The world of these heroes will be hidden within the confines of a deck of cards. Therefore, their actions are very stereotyped. The author succinctly describes the manner of their playing).- Compare the two heroes Nikolai Dmitrievich and Yakov Ivanovich by their behavior at the card table. How do their characters reveal themselves through details?(Yakov Ivanovich never played more than four tricks, his actions are precisely weighed, do not allow the slightest deviation from the order he established. Nikolai Dmitrievich, on the contrary, is presented in the story as a passionate player. Playing cards completely absorbs him. In addition, he dreams of a grand slam , so he constantly displays outbursts of emotion).- How does Andreev describe the cards in the story “Grand Slam”? What is the meaning behind the detailed images of the cards? (One gets the impression that cards and people have swapped places: people look like inanimate objects, and cards behave like living beings. The author describes the card suits in detail. As the description becomes more detailed, the cards acquire a character, a certain pattern of behavior, they become prone to manifestations emotions. We can say that the author performs an artistic ritual of reviving the cards. The personification of the cards can be contrasted with the process of spiritual death of the heroes).- What symbolic subtext is hidden behind the death of Nikolai Dmitrievich? (The death of this hero is natural and inevitable. The entire course of the narrative foreshadows a tragic ending. The absurdity of the dream of a grand slam testifies to the spiritual death of the hero. After which physical death occurs. The absurdity of the situation is enhanced by the fact that his dream came true. The death of Nikolai Dmitrievich symbolizes the emptiness of many human aspirations and desires, the destructive influence of everyday life, which, like acid, corrodes the personality and makes it colorless).- What is the philosophical meaning of the story?(Many people live in an atmosphere of spiritual vacuum. They forget about compassion, kindness, mercy, intellectual development. There is no keen interest in the world around them in their hearts. By depicting the limited personal space of his heroes, the author covertly expresses his disagreement with this form of existence).