Famous Soviet writer Viktor Astafiev lived and worked in a purely atheistic era. However, here’s what’s interesting: many of the writers of that time, even in Soviet times, in their own way expressed in their works the features of the Orthodox worldview and mentality.

It’s surprising, but true: in the conditions of the total Khrushchev and post-Khrushchev attack on Christianity in the Soviet state, a whole group of writers (first of all, let’s name V. Rasputin, V. Belov, V. Krupin) based their work on the principles of Orthodoxy - in their spontaneous popular expression. defeat. The folk-national principle carried within itself the ineradicable core of Orthodoxy as a tradition, spiritual and cultural. Country writers portrayed in their works a man of an Orthodox character: humble, but mentally resilient, responsive to the pain of others, conscientious. The same can be found in other areas of Soviet-era art, such as cinema. No wonder famous actor and director Nikolai Burlyaev once said: “The best films of Russian cinema, even of godless times, which constituted the pinnacle of world cinema, are mostly Orthodox in spirit, even if they did not directly talk about God and faith.”

Viktor Astafiev took his special place in this series. Brought up, albeit in an atheistic era, but on examples of popular morality, he, apparently, treated Orthodox shrines and faith with reverence, although over time he added to this a purely intellectual illness: faith in God - without the Church, without priests, without sacraments. How complexly everything was intertwined in the life of Astafiev and, apparently, many of our other writers of that time. In “Zatesi” Astafiev expressed a very skeptical mood in understanding church life: “...Waving a censer, a priest in an old-fashioned robe brought from Byzantium mutters in a decrepit, long-forgotten language of prayer among the people, preaches primitive, for many people simply ridiculous, banal truths ...There, in the incense smoke, obedience and humility are preached...” However, there was something else.

In an interview in 1989 after a trip to Greece, Astafiev spoke with enthusiasm and surprise from what he saw about visiting the monastery, about meeting with the Serbian priest Fr. Jeremiah, about how he visited the cave of St. John the Theologian: “I saw the Apocalypse, I was in the cave of the author of this immortal book, John the Theologian. I saw manuscripts; 13 thousand manuscripts are kept in the monastery. The monastery is 900 years old. Everything is preserved through the efforts of the monks. They work very hard and treat history with great care. Icons of the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries. The frescoes are preserved. I looked carefully at the icons and could not understand how they differed from ours. Then I figured it out. I’m used to looking at icons with holes, all the jewelry was removed from them, looted, but here they are all intact, in rich settings, they look different. The manuscript on calfskin from the 6th century attracted particular attention. I asked what was written there. Textualists believe that there are messages of good luck and happiness to us.”

But something else was even more important - the subconscious, perceived, as they say, with mother's milk. Many of his works show that the writer organically assimilated popular ideas about Orthodoxy. These ideas lack dogmatic precision, but they often deeply and correctly reflect the essence of Orthodox views on human life. One of the typical examples is Astafiev’s famous “Tsar Fish”. It would seem - what is it about?

This is not just about the theme of nature and man. The writer persistently returns to the question of God. In a pathetic moment of struggle with death, the hero turns to God with a prayer: “Lord! May you separate us! Let this creature go free! It is not in my hands!” - the catcher begged weakly, without hope. “I didn’t keep icons at home, I didn’t believe in God, I scoffed at my grandfather’s orders. And in vain. Just in case, well, at least for something like this, in case of emergency, you should keep the icon, even if it’s in the kitchenette...”

In "The Fish Tsar" V. Astafiev most likely unconsciously builds a kind of Orthodox model of human destiny. This model in canonical Orthodoxy includes three obligatory moments: sin - repentance - Resurrection in Christ (forgiveness and the granting of salvation). We find this model in all major works of Russian classics.

Of course, V. Astafiev is not a theologian or a purely religious writer. It is unlikely that he can be compared, for example, with Shmelev, V. Krupin. His hero Ignatyich is shown in the chapter “The Fish King” as an ordinary person, whose sin manifests itself in everyday life. Like everyone else, his sin does not strike the eye, but lives quietly in him, half-forgotten, not disturbing his conscience. Like any “ordinary sinner,” Ignatyich appears before us as a “litten coffin”: decorated on the outside, but stinking on the inside. But even Ignatyich himself does not feel this sinful stench until his dying hour. The author shows the accuracy, skill, and some kind of internal composure of Ignatyich. In public, he is not only a worthy person, but also, perhaps, one of the best in his village. But this is human judgment. For the time being, Ignatyich does not think about God’s judgment, does not see his sin.

Meanwhile, V. Astafiev literally “sticks his nose” at his hero’s sin. Its external everyday expression is Ignatyich’s poaching. There is also an internal sin, half-forgotten, deep-lying, a “dull, hostile secret” lying between “two people.” This sin is an outrage against Glasha. A figurative and semantic series is built: Nature-woman - Fish-woman. Thus, poaching becomes a symbol that affects not only the external life of the hero, but also his intimate life, accountable to God alone.

Ignatyich, already before the collision with the fish, tried to carry the burden of repentance: “He never raised his hand against a single woman, he never did even the slightest dirty trick to a single one, he didn’t leave Chushi, consciously hoping humility, helpfulness, serenity to get rid of the guilt, to beg for forgiveness." However, Ignatich’s repentance, according to V. Astafiev, is incomplete. And not because repentance begins with the church sacrament of confession and Ignatyich is in no way connected with the church. For this, the writer, sometimes skeptical of the church, does not reproach his hero. Repenting before one woman, Glasha, the hero of “The Fish Tsar” poaches and destroys another “woman” - nature, although V. Astafiev does not emphasize this idea, but it is discerned in his author’s remark: “Forgiveness, you are waiting for mercy. ? from whom? Nature, she, brother too feminine!" That is why Ignatyich’s repentance is called by the author “pretense.” And he expects true and complete repentance from his hero. Outside the church, this is an extreme situation when the hero is between life and death. It is then that he remembers God, from whom hid all his life. This is also in other works of Astafiev. Let us remember how in his novel “Cursed and Killed” the heroes suddenly become spiritually transformed in an extreme situation: “Even if you are a decommunist, to whom should a person turn over the abyss itself?... and everyone is quietly crossing themselves and whispering godly things. At night, who were they calling, “Party, save me!”

Ignatyich brings true repentance - with the acceptance of mortal torment - in his "dying" hour, when there is no longer any hope of salvation and when his whole life appears before his eyes. This is the repentance of the thief, who repented in his last hour on the cross. But this is complete, heartfelt repentance. It is no coincidence that V. Astafiev, emphasizing the canonical side of the event, speaks of Ignatyich’s mortal torment (“I have not yet accepted all the torment”). At this decisive hour of his life, V. Astafiev’s hero asks for forgiveness from all people and especially from Glasha, “not having control of his mouth, but still hoping that at least someone will hear him.” Obviously, "someone" is God.

This is not only and not just a depiction of a sick human conscience. The writer endows his hero with an almost ecclesiastical idea of ​​sin and the image of repentance (as the highest level - pleasing God, then - sincere and deep repentance with the correction of one's life, and finally, with bad repentance - patience with sorrows and even “mortal torment”).

And God heard Ignatich and accepted his repentance this time. And he sent him not just anyone, but his brother, with whom he had a long-standing enmity. Having asked forgiveness from “everyone,” Ignatyich, therefore, asked forgiveness from his brother, and forgave him. Now he is waiting for him no longer as an enemy, but as a friend-savior. Here he acts according to the Gospel commandment: “Forgive and you will be forgiven” (Luke, 6, 37), “If you do not forgive, then your Heavenly Father will not forgive you your sins” (Mark 11, 26).

God gives Ignatyich’s brother the opportunity to come to terms with life, replacing enmity in his soul (even the desire for death for his brother) with mercy. The King Fish got off the trap and gained freedom, which symbolizes the forgiveness sent down to Ignatyich from nature.

The author has a good idea of ​​the path of salvation of the human soul (sin-repentance-Resurrection), which is taught in Orthodoxy, and describes exactly this in “The Fish King”. So, in addition to spontaneous, popular Orthodoxy, in Astafiev’s work there is also a consciously assimilated, albeit peculiarly interpreted, canonical Orthodox teaching about man and his earthly destiny. At the same time, the complexity of a writer’s fate was reflected in his statement: “The too quiet, intelligent Chekhov is not my writer. I love bright, catchy, I love devilry.”

There is no demonism in The Tsar Fish. But what gives the work artistic interest, according to the author’s plan, is precisely the non-canonical nature of Orthodox ideas about human life, an attempt to combine Christianity and pantheism. In this sense, V. Astafiev clearly demonstrates that literary creativity can almost never fully correspond to religious truth. The entire interest in a work is almost inevitably built not on following the indicated truth, but on an original, even individual, deviation from it. Each artist here has his own dominant principle. V. Astafiev’s idea of ​​Nature is pantheistic in spirit.

In the story, the writer fruitfully touched (but only touched!) the canonical understanding in Orthodoxy of the theme of sin and repentance and embroidered his artistic pattern along this canvas.

Russian natural philosophical prose of the second half of the twentieth century: training manual Smirnova Alfiya Islamovna

1. Plot – composition – genre, creative history (“The King Fish” by V.P. Astafiev)

Genre "King of the Fish" V. Astafiev, defined by the author himself as a “narration in stories,” was interpreted in criticism in different ways: as a “hidden novel” (V. Kurbatov), ​​a type of novel, distinguished by the form of narration (JL Yakimenko), a novel (N. Yanovsky), story (N. Molchanova, R. Komina, T. Vakhitova), “a genre formation that is closest to a cycle” (N. Leiderman). About how the search for the “form” of the work was carried out, Astafiev wrote: “Friends encouraged me to call “The Tsar Fish” a novel. Individual pieces published in periodicals were designated as chapters from the novel. I’m afraid of this word “novel”, it obliges me to a lot. But most importantly, if I were writing a novel, I would write differently. Perhaps, compositionally, the book would have been more harmonious, but I would have had to give up the most precious thing, what is usually called journalisticism, free digressions, which in this form of narration do not seem to look like digressions” (Astafiev 1976: 57).

To identify the genre essence of “The Tsar Fish”, it is necessary to understand compositional logic works, to identify its connection with plot construction. The unity of the work is based on a system of end-to-end motives, permeating the narrative. The first part of “The Fish King” contrasts with the second (the principle of antithesis is widely and variably used by the author); each of them is based on its own principle of construction. The chapters of the first part are closely interconnected with each other through images(including the image of the hero-narrator), single place of action, alternating lyrical and journalistic started. Some of the chapters are “attached” by plot connections (the end of one chapter and the beginning of another), and such as “The Lady”, “At the Golden Hag”, “The Fisherman Rumbled”, “The Tsar Fish”, the similarity of the plot “scheme” is characteristic of them A stable type of plot construction associated with a purely “poaching” situation is a collision with the fishery inspectorate (or the expectation and fear of this meeting). In each individual case, events under similar circumstances and situations (poaching fish) develop differently. In the second part of the book, the chapters are stitched together into a single narrative. image of Akim. The fragmentary nature of the structure makes it possible not to sequentially present the story of Akim’s life, but only to highlight individual moments from a certain angle: childhood and youth (“Ear on Boganida”), work in a geological exploration team, a fight with a bear (“Wake”), a journey to the white mountains (“Dream of White Mountains”).

However, both parts of the work, contrasting with each other, are not isolated from one another and together form a single whole. Fabulously The chapters of “The King of Fish” are connected mainly by the chronology of the life of the hero-narrator (the first part of the book, the chapters “Turukhanskaya Lily” and “There is no answer for me” from the second part) or Akim (the second part of the book). Each chapter reveals a special type of relationship between man and nature. The first, “Boya,” depicts the ordeal that befell Kolya and his partners, who went to Taimyr to hunt for arctic fox, but found themselves without a common cause. Their campaign almost ended tragically. This chapter gives rise to motives of retribution and salvation. The chapter “The Drop” presents a completely different type of relationship and a different way of storytelling. Communication with nature, the feeling of being united with it, allows the hero-narrator to feel happy. This chapter contrasts with the first (“Boye”). Following “The Drop,” the author placed the chapter “Missing a Heart,” which, due to censorship, was not previously included in the narrative in the stories “The King Fish” and was first published in 1990 as an independent story (Our Contemporary. 1990. No. 8). In the chapter “The Heart Is Missing,” as in “The Drop,” the voice of the hero-narrator openly sounds, but in tone this chapter is antithetical to “The Drop”: instead of a lyrical tone, it is tragic. And its beginning testifies to the contrast between “light” and “dark”: “After all these amusing stories, after happy holiday given to us light river Oparikha, it’s time to remember one old story, for which I’ll pause a little and remember the past, so that it’s clearer and more visible where we lived and what we knew, and why we were so successful in moving towards what I’ve already talked about and what remains to be told about” (Astafiev 2004: 92). The title of the chapter “Missing a Heart” is symbolic, since it talks about escaped prisoners and about one meeting that took place in the late thirties in the taiga. The tragedy of the story of Lame is that after all the trials that befell him, hell will seem like paradise. This chapter, like “The Dream of the White Mountains,” is a “text within a text,” on the one hand, introducing new accents into the understanding of the main theme and strengthening the overall tone of the narrative in the stories, on the other hand, its inclusion in the work is additional “ confirmation" of his compositional logic and principles of organization of the artistic whole.

The following chapters after “Missing a Heart” - “The Lady”, “At the Golden Hag”, “The Fisherman Rumbled” - are devoted to the depiction of poaching fish. They are arranged according to the degree of growth of the main conflict of the work, which will reach its climax in the chapter “The King Fish”. If Damka is a “waste” little man and, like other Chushans, poaches, then the Commander is already capable of committing murder for profit, although some glimpses of humanity have remained in him. The rumble represents the extreme degree of human degradation.

In these three chapters motive of retribution, outlined in the first, disappears into the subtext. The story of Kolya’s stay with his partners in Taimyr (chapter “Boye”) contains an instructive meaning and one of the important thoughts for the entire work: man is not given the opportunity to enter into confrontation with nature on equal terms, she punishes for this. Kolya and his partners thoughtlessly overestimated their strength and paid for it. Finding yourself without collaboration(fishery), locked in the space of a hut, among an alien element, they almost lose their minds, unable to change their fate, break the viscous silence around, interrupt the endlessly stretching time, almost stopped for them, resist the slow fading of their life, are close to committing murders, but are saved by caring for their “neighbor” - the sick Kolya. Through the awakening of humanity in a person, salvation comes to him. This is how it is implemented in the chapter motive of salvation.

Lady, Roaring and Commander - each in their own way pays for their chosen way of life: one loses his own name and acquires a dog's name in return, the other is forced to live away from his homeland and relatives and yearn for them all his life, being deprived of the opportunity to return there; the third, the Commander, loses his beloved daughter Taika, the only creature to whom the Commander’s embittered soul “responded” with the best in her due to the fault of a “land poacher”. In the central chapter for the entire book, “The King Fish” motives of retribution and salvation get further development and openly realize themselves in the fate of Ignatyich, satiating philosophical meaning thanks to the parable at the heart of the chapter.

The final chapter talks about different types of poaching. The place of the chapter “The Black Feather is Flying” as the final one in the first part is quite natural. It is no coincidence that the author changed its location in a separate publication. In the magazine version, it came after the chapter “Wake” before “The Turukhansk Lily” (in terms of the sketchy nature of the chapters “The Black Feather is Flying” and “The Turukhansk Lily” are close to each other). The chapter “The Black Feather is Flying” sums up the topic of poaching and sounds a warning, expressed, unlike the chapter “Tsar Fish”, in the form of a direct author’s address: “... I’m afraid when people go wild in shooting, even at an animal, on the bird, and casually, playfully, shed blood. They don’t know that they themselves are imperceptibly crossing that fatal line beyond which a person ends...”

The second part, which opens with the chapter “Ear on Boganida,” depicts a completely different type of relationship between man and nature, personified in the image of Akim’s mother. Here the natural-philosophical concept of V. Astafiev is deepened. The idea of ​​the unity of man and nature, presented in the chapter “A Drop” openly in the lyrical, journalistic, philosophical segments of the text, in the chapter “Ear on Boganida” is melted into artistic image, who embodied the writer’s ethical credo. Connections with nature dictate and determine the nature of relationships among people - this is one of the main thoughts of both the chapter “Ear on Boganida” and the entire work.

The place of the chapter “Ear on Boganida” as the opening of the second part of the work is not accidental. It captures the special world of brotherhood, the basis of which is collective, commercial, artel labor. In the chapter “Ear on Boganida” it was embodied aesthetic ideal author. That is why V. Astafiev, in the book “The Staff of Memory,” speaking about the history of the creation of the work, called it “the chapter on kindness” and emphasized that this chapter is the semantic center of the book (Astafiev 1980: 197). Chush And Boganida - two central ones, opposite in their ethical essence, poles, two image-symbol, with which the principle is associated antitheses, inherent in the overall artistic thinking of the writer and fulfilling in the work structure-forming function.

An important place in the natural philosophical concept of the “Tsar Fish” is occupied by the image of Akim’s mother. She is not called by name, her purpose is motherhood. Mother is a child of nature and her connections with her are strong and indissoluble. It is no coincidence that the cause of the mother’s death is the “banishing potion” she drank, which kills the germ that had arisen in her. new life and herself. The rhythm of life determined by nature is disrupted. This disharmony, introduced into the natural course of natural processes, leads to the death of the mother.

The second chapter of the second part – “Wake” – depicts new stage biography of Akim: work in a geological exploration team, a fight with a bear, which in the context of the work is filled with a special meaning. Akim withstood the trials that befell Kolya (“Boye”) and Ignatyich (“Tsar Fish”). The scene of Akim’s fight with the bear that killed Petrunya contrasts with the picture of a duel between a man and the Tsar Fish. Antithesis in the depiction of the collision of man with the forces of nature, a compositional solution is also found: in the arrangement of the chapters “Tsar Fish” and “Wake” it is used "mirror" principle - they are located symmetrically in relation to each other The chapter “The King Fish” occupies second place from the end of the first part, the chapter “Wake” comes second from the beginning of the second part. The realization of the antithesis is also facilitated by the cult - in the context of myth - origin of the images of the king fish and the bear - “master of the taiga”. These are “exceptional” opponents, worthy of each other.

The next chapter - “Turukhanskaya Lily” - occupies a central place in the second part of the book, standing out in that in the chapter, as in the first part, the main character is the hero-narrator, Akim fades into the background, the journalistic element predominates in it . The title of the chapter is symbolic in the context of the theme of nature. The Turukhansk lily, saranka, embodies the organicity and naturalness inherent only in natural phenomena. The chapter “Turukhanskaya Lily” is thematically, in terms of plot structure and style, close to the chapter “The Drop” (the first part). And they are located symmetrically to each other. If we consider the final chapter “There is no answer for me” as a kind of epilogue to the entire work, then the second chapter “Drop” and the eleventh “Turukhansk Lily” constitute a kind of composite frame inside the book. Therefore, the author “takes” “The Dream of the White Mountains” (the completed work within the narrative) outside this frame.

The main motives of the work in the penultimate chapter receive their logical conclusion. The chapter “Dream of the White Mountains” is conclusive. It “echoes” the first chapter of “Boye”: the similarity of situations (isolation from the human world in the natural elements), the identity of the embodiment of the chronotope, the completion motives of retribution, salvation, which began in the chapter “Boye”. Akim and Elya, like other heroes of the work, are “tested” by those forces of nature over which man has no control. The culmination of the chapter's plot is the depiction of their attempt to get out of snow captivity. Their path to salvation, which has become the road to people, ends happily. This is how it is embodied in the chapter motive of salvation.

Receives completion in the chapter “Dream of the White Mountains” and motive of retribution, revealing the fate of Goga Gertsev. It seems quite legitimate to talk about this chapter as a “work within a work,” since many artistic realities, presented fragmentarily in the story chapters, found a more complete “interpretation” in it.

Criticism has already written about the “conscious” internal connection of the chapter “Dream of the White Mountains” with “Hero of Our Time” by M. Lermontov (See: Marchenko 1977), reminiscences of which are contained in Gertsev’s diary and in his characterization in the work. Comparing Goga with Pechorin serves satirical purposes, revealing the pretentiousness and borrowed nature of Hertsev’s philosophy. His accidental death in the taiga is that pay, which inevitably had to overtake Goga. He despises people. Akim is a “stinker” to him. Family ties with parents and his own child do not matter to him. He is also insolvent in love, treating women (the librarian Lyudochka, Elya) in a consumerist way.

Based on the relationship between the chapters “Boye” and “Dream of the White Mountains,” we can talk about the circular completeness of the plot of the work, or about the following, second composite frame, framing the previous one. Interconnected in “The King Fish” exposition And epilogue(chapter “There is no answer for me”), which make up third composite frame. In the exposition and epilogue, the author’s voice is openly heard, thanks to which the narrative is saturated with lyrical and philosophical sound. The exhibition talks about the arrival of the hero-narrator in Siberia. He had previously “had the opportunity to visit the Yenisei” more than once (after this exposition, a description of the journey through Siberia, along the Yenisei and its tributaries begins), in the epilogue the hero-narrator leaves Siberia and surveys it from the window of the plane, seeing the changes that have taken place, comparing her past and present. In the context of the epilogue, the epigraph to the chapter (“Never return anything...

You can return to the same places, but it is impossible to go back”), which in meaning echoes the closing words from Ecclesiastes: “For everything there is an hour and a time for every task under heaven...”.

Presence in the work of V. Astafiev triple composite frame indicates that he successfully uses traditional literary device framing. The triple compositional frame is an important proof that we are not dealing with a cycle of stories, or even with two relatively independent parts within the narrative, where the chapter “The Dream of the White Mountains” stands apart, but with a work that represents a single artistic whole. The author sought to achieve this integrity by further refining “The Tsar Fish” (by changing the location of individual chapters and dividing it into two parts, which was absent in the first – magazine – edition). And even the inclusion of a new chapter in the text (“The Heart Is Missing”) only testifies to the “mobility” of the fragmentary form, but not to the fact that, “freely organized,” it can “expand” indefinitely. As for structures narratives in stories, then the inclusion of a new chapter only “completed” the process of “harmonization” of the text: the parable chapter “The Fish King” occupied its place in its structure central position, becoming seventh (out of thirteen).

The genre definition of “storytelling” indicates novelistic type of construction works, but the mechanism for juxtaposing “stories” has an important feature: all chapters are clearly “fixed” relative to each other, arranged in such a way that the author’s natural philosophical concept receives its most complete, polysemantic artistic embodiment. United in one work in a certain subordination, these “fragments” constitute unity of the highest order. The novelistic type of narrative construction fully justifies itself. It seems that the writer found, if not a new, but with great artistic possibilities, a form that made it possible to realize the author’s need for a lengthy, unhurried presentation of the “journey”, which incorporated heterogeneous material. This same “free” form made it possible to cut off all the secondary, aggravating narration, to include in it chapters with different genre dominants (lyrical-philosophical story, journalistic essay, parable, story). However, it also obliged the author to consistently maintain the logic of the narrative, to carefully think through architectonics And composition works. And this reveals the originality of V. Astafiev’s genre thinking, creatively rethinking the traditional form of “novelistic” narration in world literature. The unity and integrity of “The King Fish” are created thanks to the images of the hero-narrator and Akim, the cross-cutting structure-forming motives of salvation and retribution, the rhythmic organization of the composition, and the circular closure of the plot.

To understand the poetics of “The Fish King” it is important creative history work, which clarifies issues related to the structure of the text. In the process of analyzing the narrative in the stories, we touched on some aspects of this story, structural transformations of the text. Let us dwell in more detail on the process of creating and finalizing the work after its first publication.

N.K. Piksanov wrote: “We are usually content with studying major works in their final, crystallized form. Meanwhile, understanding the results of a process without studying the process itself is discredited for the historian in advance: only the study of the entire history of phenomena provides a complete understanding of it” (Piksanov 1971: 15). Researcher considers a question creative history works not only as one of the moments in the versatile study of a writer’s work, but also as a special scientific problem of “great fundamental significance” (Piksanov 1971: 7), complaining that in literary science insufficient attention is paid to the study of the creative history of a work.

V. Astafiev is one of those writers who are not satisfied with what they have written once and, years later, return to their work again, refining it. The story “The Shepherd and the Shepherdess” was subject to particularly careful editing; he “rewrote” it five times. “A worthwhile writer,” according to the writer in the book “The Staff of Memory,” “will always find something to redo, for there is no limit to perfection” (Astafiev 1980: 174). It is interesting to compare the first, magazine, publication of “The Tsar Fish” (“Our Contemporary.” 1976. No. 4–6) and subsequent ones, of which we will focus on the publication of the work in the first collected works of V.P. Astafieva (Astafiev V. Collection cit.: In 4 vols. T. 4. M., 1981). When comparing two versions of “The Tsar Fish”, attention is drawn to those changes that are caused by the desire to introduce as much as possible, as V. Astafiev puts it, “writing discipline” into art, in particular compositional, the structure of the book. In a separate edition, the narrative was supplemented with a new chapter “The Lady” (removed from the magazine for censorship reasons) and acquired a two-part composition. Some chapters have changed places. The chapter “The Black Feather is Flying,” which was located in the magazine version after the chapter “The Wake,” moved to take place after the chapter “The King Fish,” thus becoming the final chapter of the first part. This is what the structure of a work looks like in magazine and separate editions:

Journal publication

(Our contemporary. 1976. No. 4–6)

At the golden hag

Fisherman Rumbled

King fish

Ear on Boganida

Black feather flies

Tur u ha ne ka ya lily|

Dream of White Mountains

No answer for me

Separate edition

(Collected works: In 4 vols. T. 4).

Part I

At the golden hag

Fisherman Rumbled

King fish

Black feather flies

Part II

Ear on Boganida

Tur ear not ka I'm a lily

Dream of White Mountains

No answer for me

For a holistic perception of a work, the very idea of ​​dividing it into two parts is fruitful - combining chapter-stories into parts within the whole confirms the idea that we are not dealing with a collection of stories, not with scattered stories and short stories, united only by a common theme, title and image a hero-narrator, but with a completed artistic phenomenon. The basis of this phenomenon is the ordered subordination of chapters, internal compositional logic. Inclusion in the book of a new chapter “The Queen” and its place in artistic structure works, as well as partial changes in architectonics, are motivated by ideological and aesthetic considerations.

Work on “The King Fish” was not limited to just rearranging the chapters. It is multifaceted in nature and is carried out on different levels: compositional, semantic, stylistic, syntactic, morphological, phonetic. Almost every page or fragment of text bears the stamp of the author's editing, multi-purpose in its focus. Let's consider various aspects of the creative refinement (and often reworking) of the work by V. Astafiev.

Improving composition “The King of Fishes” appears not only on the scale of the entire book, but also on local sections of the text, within one chapter or even a compositional form (description, narration, dialogue, etc.). A particularly large edit, reflecting the writer’s desire to strengthen logic and chronological sequence narrative, the chapter “Dream of the White Mountains” was subjected. The nature of its revision can be judged by a large passage, which in the magazine version was continuous text and had a different structure. In a separate edition, this passage is divided into three parts, and some paragraphs have been swapped.

Chronological coordinates “fix” the development of the plot in the chapter. Here is the beginning of each of the three sections highlighted by the writer:

1. “It’s full, quiet autumn in the taiga.” Next comes the editing of the first major passage (first section) (Astafiev 1981: 315).

2. “The day became shorter and shorter, and the sooner it shortened, the denser it became for the hunter” - edit of the second section (Astafiev 1981: 317).

3. “In the morning, the autumn crust crunched and sparkled around with charm” - this is followed by the editing of the third section (Astafiev 1981: 318).

The most significant changes are contained in the first section, devoted to Akim’s preparation for leaving the winter hut. He makes provisions for the winter, each action of Akim, the sequence of actions, is filled with special meaning and significance. While finalizing the text, the author depicts with maximum scrupulousness how carefully Akim prepares for the campaign, conveys the smallest details of the life of the winterers, the difficulties they have to overcome.

Astafiev not only moves individual paragraphs, but also reworks them. Speaking about the taste of the bird meat that Akim ate, in the magazine version the author notes: “The birds ate not only berries, but also buds, alder cones, and the smell of rotting, mossy wood did not leave Akim even at night, it bothered him in his stomach, sucked in his chest, and he tried to save himself with berries and nuts” (Astafiev 1976: 6, 32). In the book version, a clarification is made: “The boar bird moved from the berries to the bud and alder cone,” since it is already late autumn in the taiga and snow has fallen.

In some cases, editing is accompanied by the inclusion of inserts. By changing the composition of a large fragment of text, the author had to maintain the internal correlation of paragraphs from different sections, since already written pieces of text served as the “building material”. Here is one such example taken from the first section:

Journal publication

"At the time when Ende

rapidly

sludge rolled down,

soldering before our eyes

protect the river,

erasing her curve

strip from the ground, like

sketch from a notebook

student's rubber band.

Akim shirkap beam

pipa firewood and before

I'll finish it. that Epya

once said..."

(Astafiev 1976: 6. 33).

Separate edition

"At the time when Ende

rapidly

sludge rolled down,

soldering before our eyes

protect the river,

erasing her curve

strip of earth, like

sketch from a notebook

student's rubber band.

Elya was between

life and death and

there were supplies to be made

lack of time But as soon as

she has gained a little weight,

and she could be left

in a hut with Rozka..."

(Astafiev 1981: 316).

In the magazine version, the present time of the events depicted is interrupted by the past tense, the author returns to an episode that happened in the past, as indicated by the words: “At that time...”, and suddenly the past tense also unexpectedly merges with the present time of Akim and Eli’s stay in the winter hut . It is important for V. Astafiev to preserve subsequence in the very flow of time, without disturbing its course when describing the pastime of the winterers, as the gradual improvement in Eli’s health, Akim’s daily preparation for the journey, changes in nature (“The day became shorter and shorter,” “the ice on the End is unreliable”) is depicted. Thus, the sequence of the movement of time, its continuity when depicting the lives of heroes is of particular importance for the writer. He returns the episode with the saw from the past to the present, which is consistently developing time of heroes.

The past tense appears in the narrative (in the book version) already in connection with the memory of Eli’s illness. And here the author adds a few lines: “Elya was between life and death and there was no time to make supplies, but as soon as she recovered a little.” Everything falls into place. Editing makes it easier for the reader to perceive the work. This “everyday” episode (Akim saws wood, irritating Eli with the sound of the saw) conveys the internal changes that occur in Elina’s soul. The writer strives to condense the narrative, to “pull” it into a single knot, in which all everyday and psychological details are closely “fitted” to each other, interconnected and interdependent.

Editing the magazine version contributes to a deeper understanding of both the characters’ characters and the author’s attitude towards them. This concerns primarily the image of Eli. Already moving the fragment of text in question somehow softens it. In the magazine version, two episodes depicting Elya’s nervous irritation were located side by side - one followed the other (the first - Elya is irritated by the sound of a saw, the second - Elya disgustedly knocks a mug with a decoction of grass out of Akim’s hands). In a separate publication, these episodes are separated from each other, which indicates an improvement in Eli’s psychological appearance and somewhat softens the author’s assessment of the heroine.

By improving the text, V. Astafiev strives to strengthen reliability depicted, which is associated with the very essence creative method a writer in whom the journalistic way of reflecting the world plays a significant role. This is clearly noticeable, in particular, on that very significant one! - processing (precisely compositional) to which another large fragment of “The Dream of the White Mountains” was subjected, dedicated to the diaries of Goga Gertsev, which begins in the journal with the question: “Why, why did they attract Elya and Akim?” The compositional rearrangement within it is motivated by the fact that in the original version, Elya’s insight is unnecessarily accelerated, facilitated and premature: Elya wants to understand what happened, what she experienced, and then - literally in a few lines! - the answer is found, in fact, a verdict to oneself, which is pronounced “without regret, and even without grief, with disarming surprise.” In order to avoid simplifying the character of Eli and at the same time simplifying the main conflict of the chapter, to achieve the utmost psychological authenticity, V. Astafiev, compositionally finalizing a fragment of the text, reproduces events as they should have happened in life itself, according to the logic of the characters’ behavior, the logic of the development of their characters .

In the book version, the story about the diaries of Goga Gertsev begins with the fact that Elya spent long evenings listening to them while Akim read: “Long evenings, sitting opposite the stove door, looking into the ardent fire, especially hot and quick from the nut shell, twilight in the light of the lamp -gornushka, in a tidy hut, squeezed on all sides by taiga and darkness, Elya listened to Gertsev’s diaries, trying to understand something, even if it was late, to figure out what and why happened to her” (Astafiev 1981: 329). Next, the diaries themselves are characterized, and then the question quite justifiably sounds: why, why did Gertsev’s diaries beckon to them? After all, he “always kept his morals in sight.” Eli's admission of his own mistakes is absent here. Everything is much more complicated for her. In order to understand herself, to understand (at least now!) Goga, with whom she so recklessly set out on an unknown journey that became his last, she needed to get to know the owner of the diaries better, understand the way of thinking and the philosophy that Gertsev professed, find out about him life goals. After a different Goga appeared in the diaries compared to the one she knew him, Eli’s confession – “I messed something up in life...” – sounds almost tragic. And it is pronounced by Eley completely differently. Before us is the path of mistakes that she followed. Thanks to her meeting with Akim, her acquaintance with Gertsev’s diaries, the situation (on the verge of death) in which she found herself, Elya understands the falsity of this path, evaluates it from the position of an adult who has finally realized responsibility for her actions. And this is a visible result, the result of Eli’s growing up, a step on the path to her spiritual insight.

Compositional editing of certain passages of text is most often dictated by the writer’s need to identify the logic of the narrative within each passage, to streamline the system of artistic “coordinates” in particular, time (“Dream of the White Mountains”), to give greater concreteness, plasticity and emotional expressiveness to images, drama and dynamism to situations . Achieve maximum psychological authenticity of characters and circumstances.

Many changes in the journal text “The King of Fishes” are associated with the introduction of new material into the artistic fabric of the work, enriching the content of the book and expanding the boundaries of the narrative. This tendency of semantic "saturation" The text is implemented in a system of inserts, different in volume and nature. There are small inserts, introduced for the purpose of explanation or clarification. The magazine edition in the chapter “Boye” talks about the lemming without any explanation, and the book edition gives an explanation: “... This is the scientific name of the pied mouse - the smallest and most evil animal in the north; For all living things in the tundra, pestle is food...” (Astafiev 1981: 22).

And here is an example of a different kind from the chapter “At the Golden Hag.” A small insert was added after the words that the Chushans perceive all laws with cunning: “... if the law protects them from adversity, helps them strengthen themselves financially, and helps them get drunk, they willingly accept it,” but if it infringes on them in some way, they pretend to be orphans . “Well, if they’re backed up to the wall and can’t get out,” continues V. Astafiev in a separate publication, “a silent, long siege begins, by starvation, quietly, the Chushans get their way: what they need to bypass, they’ll bypass, what they want to get, they’ll get who they need.” to survive from the village - they will survive”... (Astafiev 1981: 89). This is an important additional touch collective image Chushan, characterizing his socio-psychological appearance.

Significant changes have been made to the chapter “Fisherman Rumbling”. Recreating the past of this poacher, V. Astafiev strives to tell with maximum accuracy about the events that took place in reality. The introduction of additional details of Grokhotalo’s biography concretizes his image, explains how a native of Ukraine ended up in the North and why he did not go on vacation to his homeland, for which he missed (in the magazine version this remained unclear, just as the extent and degree of Grokhotalo’s guilt was not entirely clear).

New details and facts included in the text of the work are accompanied by additional processing. The part of the chapter that tells about the end of this ill-fated day for Rumble and tragic for the Commander (his daughter died) is also being reworked. V. Astafiev added a capacious detail, which again serves to concretize the moral character of the Chushan people. When the Commander was looking for the destroyer of his daughter, and Rumble was destroying household belongings, “some kayakers were drowning on the Yenisei” (Astafiev 1981: 121). This message fills the passage in question with new content and deepens the author’s assessment of what is depicted. In the book version of “The King of Fishes,” in accordance with the genre setting, the journalistic “stream” is strengthened, helping to more clearly identify author's position. This is typical, in particular, for the chapter “The Black Feather is Flying.” The magazine editorial said that fashionistas had adopted swan fluff for their outfits,” “especially for winter muffs.” In a separate publication, the author, not limiting himself to stating a fact, gives it a journalistic assessment (See: Astafiev 1981: 165).

The ending of the chapter appeared in a separate publication in a modified form compared to the magazine publication. The author “finishes” it, setting out with documentary accuracy the facts of mismanagement and sloppiness. In the year of the mass extermination of birds on the Siberian Sym River, which is described in the chapter, the procurement office accepted wood grouse for three rubles apiece, then for a ruble, then stopped accepting them altogether: there was no refrigerator, it was warm and drizzly, planes stopped flying.

The bird flew into the warehouse. The stench floated throughout the village, the “product” was written off, the losses were attributed to the elements, a tidy sum was hung around the neck of the state, and wood grouse were loaded with dung forks into the backs of cars and taken to the local pond, to a landfill” (Astafiev 1981: 172).

In the chapter “The Black Feather is Flying,” the artistic and journalistic beginning is presented most clearly, so the “new” ending fits into the content of the chapter and sums it up, since it deals with the consequences of the “massacre” of wood grouse in the fall of 1971.

“All winter and spring, crows, magpies, dogs, cats feasted; and as the wind rose, a black feather, raised from the banks of a large pond, flew like soot over the village of Chush, flew, circled, blocking out the white light, rippling burnt gunpowder and dead dust on the face of the crazy sun” (Astafiev 1981: 172). This ending also explains the title of the chapter - “A Black Feather is Flying.”

Sometimes the inserts grow over entire pages, on which individual episodes, human destinies are detailed and concretized (images of the “absent-minded poet” and Tikhon Pupkov from the chapter “Dream of the White Mountains”), which helps the writer reproduce a broad historical background, or give a description of the moral character of some -That social group. In this regard, the fate of Paramon Paramonovich Olsufiev, Akim’s mentor, a man who spent his entire life on the river (“Ear on Boganida”), is indicative. The magazine version of the work stated that the Bedovy steamship was sold for scrap. What happened to the “biggest head of the track situation” on the Bedovoy, Paramon Paramonovich, remained unclear to the reader. In a separate publication, the author gives a biography of his hero, clarifying historical realities. Olsufiev had a hard time parting with “Bedov” - he was “suffered by a stroke.” After lying in the hospital, he sold his sailor's equipment for next to nothing and went with his wife to Kazakhstan to the “heroic virgin lands” to start a new, “land” life there.

For creative process V. Astafiev is characterized by the desire to give psychological “full-bloodedness” to each, even episodic character, of which there are many in the narrative. An example of this kind of revision is the story about paper wads (chapter “Wake”), which the writer needed in order to reproduce the very course of the investigation, enhance the reliability of its presentation, and reveal the psychological details of Petrunya’s appearance. The ending of the chapter “Wake” was also changed, incorporating a lengthy insertion necessary to specify the life of the geological exploration team. If in the magazine version there were only two words that after the wake for Petruna “they went to work on time,” then a separate edition paints a detailed picture of the arrival of the party chief by plane to the detachment, replete with colorful everyday and production details.

The chapter “Dream of the White Mountains” has also undergone significant revision in the same direction. In the story about the Moscow life of Eli in the house of his mother, the editor of a publishing house, the author adds two inserts that describe the life of the creative intelligentsia (the first insert is about the poet who visited their house and about his “transformation”, the second about Tikhon Pupkov). The author, with a few strokes, recreates the portrait of episodic characters and reveals character development. In the chapter “Dream of the White Mountains” there is an unusual insert - a poem included in Goga Gertsev’s diary. It's small poetic work about the fate of a lion, who suffered from a bullet as a child, grew up and lived his whole life in captivity, but yearns for freedom. It fits organically into the context of not only Gertsev’s diary, but also the entire work.

“The Fish King” is a philosophical work. The chapter “The Drop” is permeated with philosophical reflections, and the chapter “Dream of the White Mountains” is full of philosophical subtext. Her heroes - Akim and Elya - find themselves in an unusual situation for themselves - they are isolated from the entire world around them, their space is limited by the confines of the hut, and behind the hut begins the element that is beyond their control, but on which they are dependent. For them, the concepts of “life - death” appear in all their nakedness. Once you stop resisting, stop fighting for life, death will come. This is the reality they face every day. In this situation, thoughts arise about the value of human life, about its meaning, embodied in the insert, included in the book version. It begins with the question, did it become easier for people because they learned that there is no immortality?

The finale of the work was also revised. Apparently, the author used different translations of Ecclesiastes. A separate edition more clearly presents the antithetical nature of the provisions of Ecclesiastes, which is generally inherent figurative system and the compositional structure of Astafiev’s work.

Using a system of inserts, V. Astafiev significantly expands the spatio-temporal framework of the narrative, enriches and saturates it with additional art material socio-historical, psychological and everyday properties. Insert-explanation (clarification), insert-description, insert-characterization, insert-evaluation allow the author to create a wide panorama of reality, which in the magazine version looked more localized and aesthetically less multidimensional.

An important place in the work on a work is occupied by the tendency to thickening the narrative indicating an increase in the “specific weight” of the word, its semantic load. It manifests itself in two ways: firstly, in simplifying the construction of the sentence, and secondly, in saving linguistic means. Improving the stylistic “shell” of the text, V. Astafiev removes from the work words and phrases that do not carry new or aesthetically rich information, simplifies the syntactic structure of sentences, bringing the language of the work closer to colloquial speech, removing, in particular, inversions.

The tendency to compress the narrative was manifested in the removal of individual fragments of text, most often insignificant in volume. Perhaps the biggest deletion is the removal from the journal text of the previous ending of the chapter “The King Fish”. In the magazine version, at the end of the chapter, the rescue of Ignatyich is told, to whose aid his brother Commander came. In the book version, the ending of the chapter appeared in a truncated form. “Go, fish, go! Live as long as you can! I won’t tell anyone about you!” - said the catcher, and he felt better. The body - because the fish did not pull down, did not hang on it like a slump, the soul - from some kind of liberation, not yet comprehended by the mind” (Astafiev 1981: 155). The crisis situation of confrontation between man and nature chosen by V. Astafiev (the image of a fish acts as its symbol) helps to artistically realize the moral and philosophical meaning of the parable. The writer persistently strives to give it a generalizing, symbolic character, as evidenced by the revision of the chapter. The “new” ending is open and does not answer the question of whether Ignatyich will be saved. In this form, it is more consistent with the parable nature of the chapter.

The trend towards saving language resources is expressed in the fact that the writer eliminates phrases, phrases, and words that carry “redundant” information. Of the two synonymous words, in some cases the author leaves one. Replaces complex verb forms with simple ones, removes unnecessary words naming the actions of the heroes in cases where it is clear from the context that the hero will do this. V. Astafiev also crosses out words that “slow down” the statement, bringing the language of the work closer to colloquial, giving the text dynamism and expression. In the book version, the author strives not to use inserted constructions; he changes the construction of the sentence with the participial phrase, placing it after the word being defined.

There are many examples of this kind. The linguistic structure of the entire work reveals an orientation towards living colloquial speech. It is no coincidence that criticism immediately drew attention to this feature of Astafiev’s narrative. “...All this is from oral history,” noted Gleb Goryshin (Literary Review 1976: 10, 52).

The book version takes into account critical remarks about the author’s abuse of vulgarisms and dialectisms. Some dialectisms are deciphered, hunting and fishing terms are explained, argotisms and vulgarisms are replaced with understandable colloquial words. The phonetic texture of the speech of Akim and other characters is clarified.

The writer’s process of working on “The King Fish” is much more multifaceted and immeasurably richer than the summarized observations presented here. But the above facts also allow us to judge the irresistible thirst for perfection, high demands on oneself and the writer’s immense responsibility to his reader, which serve as the fertile soil for V. Astafiev’s works.