Lesson - study of the leaden abominations of Russian life in Gorky's story Childhood. Autobiographical works of Russian literature See what “Lead abominations” are in other dictionaries

05.03.2020

A dense, motley, inexpressibly strange life began and flowed with terrible speed. I remember it as a harsh tale, well told by a kind but painfully truthful genius. Now, reviving the past, I myself sometimes find it hard to believe that everything was exactly as it was, and I want to dispute and reject a lot of things - it’s too full of cruelty dark life"stupid tribe" But truth is higher than pity, and I’m not talking about myself, but about that close, stuffy circle of terrible impressions in which a simple Russian man lived, and still lives to this day. Grandfather's house was filled with a hot fog of mutual enmity of everyone with everyone; it poisoned adults, and even children took an active part in it. Subsequently, from my grandmother’s stories, I learned that my mother arrived precisely on those days when her brothers persistently demanded a division of property from their father. The unexpected return of their mother further exacerbated and intensified their desire to stand out. They were afraid that my mother would demand the dowry assigned to her, but withheld by my grandfather, because she had married by hand, against his will. The uncles believed that this dowry should be divided between them. They, too, had long and fiercely argued with each other about who should open a workshop in the city, and who should open a workshop beyond the Oka, in the settlement of Kunavin. Soon after their arrival, in the kitchen during lunch, a quarrel broke out: the uncles suddenly jumped to their feet and, leaning over the table, began to howl and growl at grandfather, baring their teeth pitifully and shaking themselves like dogs, and grandfather, banging his spoon on the table, turned red full and loudly - like a rooster - he cried:- I’ll send it around the world! Contorting her face painfully, the grandmother said: - Give them everything, father, it will make you feel better, give it back! - Tssch, potatchica! - the grandfather shouted, his eyes sparkling, and it was strange that, such a small one, he could scream so deafeningly. The mother got up from the table and, slowly walking away to the window, turned her back to everyone. Suddenly Uncle Mikhail hit his brother in the face with a backhand; he howled, grappled with him, and both rolled on the floor, wheezing, groaning, swearing. The children began to cry, pregnant aunt Natalya screamed desperately; my mother dragged her somewhere, taking her in her arms; the cheerful, pockmarked nanny Evgenya was kicking the children out of the kitchen; chairs fell; the young, broad-shouldered apprentice Tsyganok sat astride Uncle Mikhail’s back, and master Grigory Ivanovich, a bald, bearded man in dark glasses, calmly tied his uncle’s hands with a towel. Stretching his neck, the uncle rubbed his thin black beard along the floor and wheezed terribly, and the grandfather, running around the table, cried out pitifully: - Brothers, ah! Native blood! Oh you... Even at the beginning of the quarrel, I was frightened, jumped onto the stove and from there watched in terrible amazement as my grandmother washed away the blood from Uncle Yakov’s broken face with water from a copper washstand; he cried and stamped his feet, and she said in a heavy voice: - Damned, wild tribe, come to your senses! The grandfather, pulling a torn shirt over his shoulder, shouted to her: - What, a witch, gave birth to animals? When Uncle Yakov left, grandma poked her head into the corner, howling amazingly: - Most Holy Mother of God, restore reason to my children! Grandfather stood sideways to her and, looking at the table, where everything was overturned and spilled, he said quietly: - You, mother, look after them, otherwise they will harass Varvara, what good... - Enough, God be with you! Take off your shirt, I'll sew it up... And, squeezing his head with her palms, she kissed her grandfather on the forehead; He, small opposite her, poked his face into her shoulder: - Apparently we need to share, mother... - We must, father, we must! They talked for a long time; At first it was friendly, and then the grandfather began to shuffle his foot along the floor, like a rooster before a fight, shook his finger at the grandmother and whispered loudly: - I know you, you love them more! And your Mishka is a Jesuit, and Yashka is a farmer! And they will drink up my goodness and squander... Turning awkwardly on the stove, I knocked the iron over; thundering down the steps of the building, he plopped into a tub of slop. Grandfather jumped onto the step, pulled me down and began to look into my face as if he was seeing me for the first time. - Who put you on the stove? Mother?- I myself. - You're lying. - No, myself. I was afraid. He pushed me away, lightly hitting my forehead with his palm. - Just like my father! Go away... I was glad to escape from the kitchen. I clearly saw that my grandfather was watching me with his smart and keen green eyes, and I was afraid of him. I remember I always wanted to hide from those burning eyes. It seemed to me that my grandfather was evil; he speaks to everyone mockingly, insultingly, teasing and trying to anger everyone. At the hour of rest, during evening tea, when he, his uncles and workers came to the kitchen from the workshop, tired, with their hands stained with sandalwood, burnt with vitriol, with their hair tied with a ribbon, all looking like dark icons in the corner of the kitchen - in this dangerous For an hour my grandfather sat opposite me and, arousing the envy of his other grandchildren, talked to me more often than to them. It was all foldable, chiseled, sharp. His satin, silk-embroidered, blank waistcoat was old and worn out, his cotton shirt was wrinkled, there were large patches on the knees of his pants, and yet he seemed to be dressed cleaner and more handsome than his sons, who wore jackets, shirtfronts and silk scarves around their necks. A few days after my arrival, he forced me to learn prayers. All the other children were older and were already learning to read and write from the sexton of the Assumption Church; its golden heads were visible from the windows of the house. I was taught by the quiet, timid Aunt Natalya, a woman with a childish face and such transparent eyes that, it seemed to me, through them I could see everything behind her head. I loved to look into her eyes for a long time, without looking away, without blinking; she squinted, turned her head and asked quietly, almost in a whisper: - Well, please say: “Our Father like you...” And if I asked: “What is it like?” - She looked around timidly and advised: - Don't ask, it's worse! Just say after me: “Our Father”... Well? I was worried: why is asking worse? The word “as if” took on a hidden meaning, and I deliberately distorted it in every possible way: - “Yakov”, “I’m in leather”... But the pale, as if melting aunt patiently corrected her in a voice that kept breaking up in her voice: - No, just say: “as it is”... But she herself and all her words were not simple. This irritated me, preventing me from remembering the prayer. One day my grandfather asked: - Well, Oleshka, what did you do today? Played! I can see it by the nodule on my forehead. It's not great wisdom to make money! Have you memorized “Our Father”? The aunt said quietly: - His memory is bad. The grandfather grinned, raising his red eyebrows cheerfully. - And if so, then you need to flog! And he asked me again:- Did your father whip you? Not understanding what he was talking about, I remained silent, and my mother said: - No, Maxim didn’t beat him, and he forbade me too.- Why so? “I said you can’t learn by beating.” - He was a fool in everything, this Maxim, a dead man, God forgive me! - the grandfather said angrily and clearly. I was offended by his words. He noticed this. - Are you pouting your lips? Look... And, stroking the silver-red hair on his head, he added: “But on Saturday I’ll flog Sashka for a thimble.” - How to flog it? - I asked. Everyone laughed, and the grandfather said: - Wait, you'll see... Hiding, I thought: flogging means embroidering dresses that have been dyed, and flogging and beating are the same thing, apparently. They beat horses, dogs, cats; In Astrakhan, guards beat Persians - I saw that. But I have never seen little children be beaten like that, and although here the uncles flicked theirs first on the forehead, then on the back of the head, the children treated it indifferently, only scratching the bruised area. I asked them more than once:- Hurt? And they always responded bravely. - No, not at all! I knew the noisy story with the thimble. In the evenings, from tea to dinner, the uncles and the master sewed pieces of colored material into one “piece” and fastened cardboard labels to it. Wanting to play a joke on the half-blind Gregory, Uncle Mikhail ordered his nine-year-old nephew to heat the master’s thimble over a candle fire. Sasha clamped the thimble with tongs for removing carbon deposits from candles, heated it up very hot and, discreetly placing it under Gregory’s arm, hid behind the stove, but just at that moment the grandfather came, sat down to work and put his finger into the red-hot thimble. I remember when I ran into the kitchen at the noise, my grandfather grabbed his ear with his burnt fingers, jumped funny and shouted: - Whose business is it, infidels? Uncle Mikhail, bent over the table, pushed the thimble with his finger and blew on it; the master sewed calmly; shadows danced across his huge bald head; Uncle Yakov came running and, hiding behind the corner of the stove, laughed quietly there; Grandma was grating raw potatoes. - Sashka Yakovov arranged this! - Uncle Mikhail suddenly said. - You're lying! - Yakov shouted, jumping out from behind the stove. And somewhere in the corner his son was crying and shouting: - Dad, don't believe it. He taught me himself! The uncles began to quarrel. Grandfather immediately calmed down, put grated potatoes on his finger and silently left, taking me with him. Everyone said that Uncle Mikhail was to blame. Naturally, over tea I asked whether he would be whipped and flogged? “We should,” grumbled the grandfather, looking sideways at me. Uncle Mikhail, hitting the table with his hand, shouted to his mother: - Varvara, calm down your puppy, otherwise I’ll break his head! Mother said: - Try it, touch it... And everyone fell silent. She could talk short words somehow, as if she was pushing people away from her, throwing them away, and they diminished. It was clear to me that everyone was afraid of their mother; even grandfather himself spoke to her differently than to others - more quietly. This pleased me, and I proudly boasted to my brothers: - My mother is the strongest! They didn't mind. But what happened on Saturday tore my relationship with my mother. Before Saturday I also managed to do something wrong. I was very interested in how cleverly adults change the colors of materials: they take yellow, soak it in black water, and the material turns deep blue - “cube”; They rinse the gray in red water, and it becomes reddish - “Bordeaux”. Simple, but incomprehensible. I wanted to color something myself, and I told Sasha Yakovov, a serious boy, about it; he always kept himself in front of adults, affectionate with everyone, ready to serve everyone in every possible way. The adults praised him for his obedience and intelligence, but grandfather looked at Sasha sideways and said: - What a sycophant! Thin, dark, with bulging, crab-like eyes, Sasha Yakovov spoke hastily, quietly, choking on his words, and always looked around mysteriously, as if about to run somewhere, to hide. His brown pupils were motionless, but when he was excited, they trembled along with the whites. He was unpleasant to me. I liked the inconspicuous hulk Sasha Mikhailov much more, a quiet boy, with sad eyes and a good smile, very similar to his meek mother. He had ugly teeth; they protruded from the mouth and grew in two rows in the upper jaw. This occupied him greatly; he constantly kept his fingers in his mouth, swinging them, trying to pull out the teeth of the back row, and dutifully allowed everyone who wanted to feel them. But I didn’t find anything more interesting in it. In a house crowded with people, he lived alone, loved to sit in dim corners, and in the evening by the window. It was good to be silent with him - to sit by the window, pressed closely against it, and be silent for a whole hour, watching how in the red evening sky around the golden bulbs of the Assumption Church black jackdaws hovered and darted, soared high up, fell down and, suddenly covering the fading sky like a black network, disappear somewhere, leaving emptiness behind them. When you look at this, you don’t want to talk about anything, and a pleasant boredom fills your chest. And Uncle Yakov’s Sasha could talk a lot and respectably about everything, like an adult. Having learned that I wanted to take up the craft of a dyer, he advised me to take a white festive tablecloth from the closet and dye it blue. - White is the easiest to paint, I know! - he said very seriously. I pulled out a heavy tablecloth and ran out into the yard with it, but when I lowered the edge of it into a vat of “pot”, Gypsy flew at me from somewhere, tore out the tablecloth and, wringing it out with his wide paws, shouted to his brother, who was watching my work from the entryway: - Call grandma quickly! And, ominously shaking his black shaggy head, he said to me: - Well, you’ll get hit for this! My grandmother came running, groaned, even cried, cursing me funny: - Oh, you Perm, your ears are salty! May they be lifted and slapped! Then Gypsy began to persuade: - Don’t tell grandpa, Vanya! I’ll hide the matter; maybe it will work out somehow... Vanka spoke worriedly, wiping his wet hands with a multi-colored apron: - Me, what? I will not say; Look, Sashutka wouldn’t lie! “I’ll give him seventh grade,” my grandmother said, taking me into the house. On Saturday, before the all-night vigil, someone led me into the kitchen; it was dark and quiet there. I remember tightly closed doors to the hallway and to the rooms, and outside the windows the gray haze of an autumn evening, the rustle of rain. In front of the black forehead of the stove, on a wide bench, sat an angry Gypsy, unlike himself; Grandfather, standing in the corner by the tub, selected long rods from a bucket of water, measured them, stacking them one with the other, and swung them through the air with a whistle. Grandmother, standing somewhere in the dark, loudly sniffed tobacco and grumbled: - Ra-ad... tormentor... Sasha Yakovov, sitting on a chair in the middle of the kitchen, rubbed his eyes with his fists and, in a voice that was not his own, like an old beggar, drawled: - Forgive me for Christ's sake... Uncle Mikhail’s children, brother and sister, stood behind the chair like wooden ones, shoulder to shoulder. “If I whip you, I’ll forgive you,” said the grandfather, passing a long wet rod through his fist. - Come on, take off your pants!.. He spoke calmly, and neither the sound of his voice, nor the boy's fidgeting on the creaky chair, nor the shuffling of his grandmother's feet - nothing disturbed the memorable silence in the gloom of the kitchen, under the low, smoky ceiling. Sasha stood up, unbuttoned his pants, lowered them to his knees and, supporting him with his hands, bent over and stumbled towards the bench. Watching him walk was not good, my legs were shaking too. But it got even worse when he obediently lay down on the bench face down, and Vanka, tying him to the bench under his arms and around his neck with a wide towel, bent over him and grabbed his legs at the ankles with his black hands. “Lexei,” the grandfather called, “come closer!.. Well, who am I telling?.. Look at how they flog... Once!..” With a low wave of his hand, he slammed the rod on his naked body. Sasha squealed. “You’re lying,” said the grandfather, “it doesn’t hurt!” But this way it hurts! And he hit him so hard that the body immediately caught fire, a red stripe swelled, and the brother howled protractedly. - Not sweet? - the grandfather asked, raising and lowering his hand evenly. - Don't you like it? This is for a thimble! When he waved his hand, everything in my chest rose along with it; the hand fell, and I seemed to fall all over. Sasha squealed terribly thinly, disgustingly: - I won’t... After all, I said about the tablecloth... After all, I said... Calmly, as if reading the Psalter, the grandfather said: - Denunciation is not an excuse! The informer gets his first whip. Here's a tablecloth for you! Grandmother rushed to me and grabbed me in her arms, shouting: - I won’t give you Lexey! I won't give it to you, you monster! She began kicking the door, calling: - Varya, Varvara!.. Grandfather rushed to her, knocked her down, grabbed me and carried me to the bench. I struggled in his arms, pulled his red beard, bit his finger. He screamed, squeezed me and finally threw me onto the bench, smashing my face. I remember his wild cry: - Tie it up! I'll kill you!.. I remember my mother’s white face and her huge eyes. She ran along the bench and wheezed: - Dad, don’t!.. Give it back... My grandfather clocked me until I lost consciousness, and for several days I was ill, lying with my back upside down on a wide, hot bed in a small room with one window and a red, unquenchable lamp in the corner in front of a case with many icons. There were days of ill health for me big days life. During them I must have grown a lot and felt something special. From those days, I developed a restless attention to people, and, as if the skin had been torn from my heart, it became unbearably sensitive to any insult and pain, my own and that of others. First of all, I was very struck by the quarrel between my grandmother and my mother: in the cramped room, the grandmother, black and big, climbed on her mother, pushing her into the corner, towards the images, and hissed: - You didn’t take it away, did you?- I was scared. - Such a hefty one! Shame on you, Varvara! I'm an old woman, but I'm not afraid! Be ashamed!.. - Leave me alone, mother: I’m sick... - No, you don’t love him, you don’t feel sorry for the orphan! The mother said heavily and loudly: - I myself am an orphan for the rest of my life! Then they both cried for a long time, sitting on a chest in the corner, and the mother said: “If it weren’t for Alexei, I would have left, I would have left!” I can’t live in this hell, I can’t, mother! No strength... “You are my blood, my heart,” my grandmother whispered. I remember: mother is not strong; She, like everyone else, is afraid of her grandfather. I'm stopping her from leaving the house where she can't live. It was very sad. Soon the mother really disappeared from the house. I went somewhere to visit. One day, suddenly, as if jumping from the ceiling, grandfather appeared, sat down on the bed, touched my head with his hand as cold as ice: - Hello, sir... Yes, answer me, don’t be angry!.. Well, or what?.. I really wanted to kick him, but it hurt to move. He seemed even redder than before; his head shook restlessly; bright eyes were looking for something on the wall. Taking out of his pocket a gingerbread goat, two sugar cones, an apple and a branch of blue raisins, he placed it all on the pillow, close to my nose. - You see, I brought you a gift! He bent down and kissed my forehead; then he spoke, quietly stroking my head with a small, hard hand, painted yellow, especially noticeable on the curved, bird-like nails. “I’ll kill you then, brother.” Got very excited; you bit me, scratched me, well, and I got angry too! However, it doesn’t matter that you endured too much - it will count! You know: when your loved one hits you, it’s not an insult, it’s science! Don’t give in to someone else’s, but don’t give in to yours! Do you think they didn't beat me? Olesha, they beat me so much that you wouldn’t even see it in your worst nightmare. They offended me so much that, go figure, God himself looked and cried! What happened? An orphan, the son of a beggar mother, I have now reached my place - I was made a shop foreman, a leader of the people. Leaning against me with his dry, folded body, he began to talk about his childhood days in strong and heavy words, putting them together easily and deftly. His green eyes flared up brightly and, cheerfully bristling with golden hair, thickening his high voice, he trumpeted in my face: “You arrived by steamship, the steam carried you, and in my youth I, with my own strength, pulled barges across the Volga. The barge is on the water, I am along the bank, barefoot, on sharp stones, on scree, and so on from sunrise to night! The sun is heating up the back of your head, your head is boiling like cast iron, and you, bent over, your bones are creaking, you keep walking and you can’t see the way, then your eyes are flooded, but your soul is crying, and a tear is rolling , - ehma, Olesha, shut up! You walk and walk, and then you fall out of the strap, face down on the ground - and you’re glad of that; therefore, all the strength has left, at least rest, at least die! This is how they lived before the eyes of God, before the eyes of the merciful Lord Jesus Christ!.. Yes, this is how I measured the Mother Volga three times: from Simbirsk to Rybinsk, from Saratov to Syudov and from Astrakhan to Makaryev, to the fair - there are many thousands of miles in this ! And in the fourth year he became a water-drinker and showed his master his intelligence!.. He spoke and - quickly, like a cloud, he grew before me, turning from a small, dry old man into a man of fabulous strength - he alone leads a huge gray barge against the river... Sometimes he would jump out of bed and, waving his arms, show me how barge haulers walked in their straps and how they pumped out water; he sang some songs in a bass voice, then again youngly jumped onto the bed and, all amazing, said even more loudly and firmly: - Well, on the other hand, Olesha, at a rest stop, on vacation, on a summer evening in Zhiguli, somewhere, under a green mountain, we used to set up fires - cook a mush, and when the grief-stricken barge hauler starts a heartfelt song, and when they stand up, the whole artel breaks out , - the frost will ripple through your skin, and it’s as if the Volga is going faster, - so, tea, it would rear up on its hind legs, right up to the clouds! And every sorrow is like dust in the wind; People started singing so much that sometimes the porridge would run out of the cauldron; here you have to hit the cook on the forehead with a ladle: play as you like, but remember the point! Several times they looked at the door and called him, but I asked:- Don't go! He grinned and waved people away: -Wait there... He talked until the evening, and when he left, bidding me affectionately, I knew that grandfather was not evil and not scary. It was hard for me to cry to remember that it was he who beat me so brutally, but I couldn’t forget about it. A visit to my grandfather opened the door wide for everyone, and from morning to evening someone sat by the bed, trying in every possible way to amuse me; I remember that it was not always fun and funny. My grandmother visited me more often than others; she slept in the same bed with me; but the most vivid impression of these days was given to me by Gypsy. Square, broad-chested, with a huge curly head, he appeared in the evening, festively dressed in a golden silk shirt, corduroy pants and creaky harmonica boots. His hair shone, his slanted, cheerful eyes sparkled under thick eyebrows and white teeth under the black stripe of a young mustache, his shirt burned, softly reflecting the red fire of an unquenchable lamp. “Look at that,” he said, lifting his sleeve, showing me his bare arm up to the elbow covered in red welts, “it’s so smashed!” Yes, it was even worse, a lot has healed! - Do you feel how grandfather went into a rage, and I see that he will flog you, so I began to put this hand out, waiting for the rod to break, grandfather to go for another, and your grandmother or mother will drag you away! Well, the rod didn’t break, it’s flexible and soaked! But you still got hit less—see how much? I, brother, am a rogue!.. He laughed a silky, affectionate laugh, again looking at his swollen hand, and, laughing, said: “I feel so sorry for you, I can feel it in my throat!” Trouble! And he whips... Snorting like a horse, shaking his head, he began to say something about business; immediately close to me, childishly simple. I told him that I loved him very much, and he unforgettably simply replied: “Well, I love you too, and that’s why I mistook the pain for love!” Who would I marry someone else? I don't care... Then he taught me quietly, often looking back at the door: “When they suddenly flog you in a row, look, don’t cower, don’t squeeze your body, do you hear it?” It’s doubly painful when you squeeze your body, but you release it freely, so that it is soft - lie there like jelly! And don’t pout, breathe with all your might, shout good obscenities - remember this, it’s good! I asked: “Will they still flog you?” - What about it? - Gypsy said calmly. - Of course they will! Guess what, they'll beat you up often...- For what? - Grandfather will find... And again he began to teach with concern: - If he cuts from a canopy, he simply places a vine on top - well, lie there calmly, softly; and if he whips with a drawbar - he hits and pulls the vine towards himself to remove the skin - then you wiggle your body towards him, behind the vine, understand? This is easier! Winking his dark sideways eye, he said: “I’m smarter in this matter than even the police officer!” My brother, I have necks made of leather! I looked at his cheerful face and remembered my grandmother’s fairy tales about Tsarevich Ivan, about Ivan the Fool.

1868–1936

A book about the poverty and wealth of the human soul

This book is hard to read. Although, it would seem, none of us today would be surprised by the description of the most sophisticated cruelties in books and on the screen. But all these cruelties are comfortable: they are make-believe. And in M. Gorky’s story everything is true.

What is this book about? About how the “humiliated and insulted” lived in the era of the birth of capitalism in Russia? No, this is about people who humiliated and insulted themselves, regardless of the system - capitalism or another “ism”. This book is about family, about the Russian soul, about God. That is, about you and me.

The writer Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov, who called himself Maxim Gorky (1868–1936), truly acquired bitter life experience. And for him, a man who had an artistic gift, a difficult question arose: what should he do? popular writer and for an already accomplished person - try to forget about difficult childhood and youth, like a bad dream, or, once again stirring up your own soul, tell the reader the unpleasant truth about the “dark kingdom”. Maybe it will be possible to warn someone about how you cannot live if you are a human being. And what should a person who often lives dark and dirty do? Should you distract yourself from real life with beautiful fairy tales or realize the whole unpleasant truth about your life? And Gorky gives the answer to this question already in 1902 in his famous play “At the Lower Depths”: “Lies are the religion of slaves and masters, truth is the God of a free man!” Here, a little further, there is an equally interesting phrase: “We must respect a person!.. do not humiliate him with pity... we must respect him!”

It is unlikely that it was easy and pleasant for the writer to remember his own childhood: “Now, reviving the past, I myself sometimes find it hard to believe that everything was exactly as it was, and I want to dispute and reject a lot - the dark life of the “stupid tribe” is too rich in cruelty “. But truth is higher than pity, and I’m not talking about myself, but about that close, stuffy circle of terrible impressions in which I lived, and still live, a simple Russian man.”

The genre of autobiographical prose has long existed in fiction. This is the author's story about his own destiny. A writer can present facts from his biography with varying degrees of accuracy. “Childhood” by M. Gorky – real picture the beginning of a writer’s life, a very difficult beginning. Remembering his childhood, Alexey Maksimovich Peshkov tries to understand how his character was formed, who and what influence had on him in those distant years: “As a child, I imagine myself as a hive, where various simple gray people carried, like bees, the honey of their knowledge and thinking about life, generously enriching my soul in whatever way he could. Often this honey was dirty and bitter, but all knowledge is still honey.”

What kind of person is the main character of the story, Alyosha Peshkov? He was lucky to be born into a family where his father and mother lived in true love. That’s why they didn’t raise their son, they loved him. This charge of love, received in childhood, allowed Alyosha not to disappear, not to become bitter among the “stupid tribe.” It was very difficult for him, since his soul could not stand human savagery: “... other impressions only offended me with their cruelty and dirt, arousing disgust and sadness.” And all because his relatives and acquaintances are most often senselessly cruel and unbearably boring people. Alyosha often experiences a feeling of acute melancholy; He is even visited by the desire to leave home with the blind master Gregory and wander around, begging, just not to see his drunken uncles, tyrant grandfather and downtrodden cousins. It was hard for the boy also because he had a developed sense of self-esteem: he did not tolerate any violence either towards himself or towards others. So, Alyosha says that he could not stand it when street boys tortured animals and mocked beggars, he was always ready to stand up for the offended. It turns out that this life is not easy for an honest person. And his parents and grandmother raised in Alyosha a hatred of all lies. Alyosha's soul suffers from the cunning of his brothers, the lies of his friend Uncle Peter, from the fact that Vanya Tsyganok steals.

So, maybe try to forget about the sense of dignity and honesty, and become like everyone else? After all, life will become easier! But this is not the hero of the story. lives in it acute feeling protest against untruth. In defense, Alyosha may even commit a rude act, as happened when, in revenge for his beaten grandmother, the boy spoiled his grandfather’s favorite Saints. Having matured a little, Alyosha enthusiastically takes part in street fights. This is no ordinary hooliganism. This is a way to relieve mental stress - after all, injustice reigns around. On the street, a guy can defeat his opponent in a fair fight, but in ordinary life injustice most often avoids a fair fight.

People like Alyosha Peshkov are now called difficult teenagers. But if you look closely at the hero of the story, you will notice that this person is drawn to goodness and beauty. With what love he talks about mentally talented people: about his grandmother, Gypsy, about a company of faithful street friends. He even tries to find the best in his cruel grandfather! And he asks people for one thing - a kind human attitude (remember how this hunted boy changes after a sincere conversation with him from a kind man - Bishop Chrysanthus) ...

In the story, people often insult and beat each other. It’s bad when a person’s conscious life begins with the death of his beloved father. But it’s even worse when a child lives in an atmosphere of hatred: “Grandfather’s house was filled with the hot fog of mutual enmity of everyone with everyone; it poisoned adults, and even children took an active part in it.” Soon after arriving at the house of his mother’s parents, Alyosha received the first truly memorable impression from his childhood: his own grandfather beat him, a small child, half to death. “From those days I developed a restless attention to people, and, as if the skin had been torn from my heart, it became unbearably sensitive to any insult and pain, my own and that of others,” the man no longer recalls one of the most memorable events in his life. first youth.

This family did not know any other way of education. The elders humiliated and beat the younger ones in every possible way, thinking that in this way they were gaining respect. But the mistake of these people is that they confuse respect with fear. Was Vasily Kashirin a natural monster? I think not. He, in his own wretched way, lived by the principle “it wasn’t started by us, it won’t end by us” (by which many still live today). Some kind of pride even sounds in his teaching to his grandson: “When a relative beats one of your own, it’s not an insult, but a science! Don’t give in to someone else’s, but don’t give in to yours! Do you think they didn't beat me? Olesha, they beat me so much that you wouldn’t even see it in your worst nightmare. I was so offended that, go figure, the Lord God himself looked and cried! What happened? An orphan, the son of a beggar mother, but he reached his place - he was made a shop foreman, a leader of the people.”

Is it any wonder that in such a family “the children were quiet and unnoticeable; they are beaten to the ground like dust by rain.” There is nothing strange in the fact that the bestial Yakov and Mikhail grew up in such a family. A comparison of them with animals arises at the very first acquaintance: “.. the uncles suddenly jumped to their feet and, leaning over the table, began to howl and growl at grandfather, pitifully baring their teeth and shaking themselves like dogs...” And the fact that Yakov plays the guitar, doesn't make him human yet. After all, his soul yearns for this: “If Yakov were a dog, Yakov would howl from morning to night: Oh, I’m bored! Oh, I'm sad." These people do not know why they live, and therefore suffer from mortal boredom. And when one’s life is a heavy burden, a desire for destruction appears. So, Yakov beat his own wife to death (and not immediately, but through sophisticated torture for years); Another monster, Mikhail, is really tormenting his wife Natalya. Why are they doing that? Master Gregory answers this question to Alyosha: “Why? And he probably doesn’t even know... Maybe he beat her because she was better than him, and he was envious. The Kashirins, brother, don’t like good things, they envy him, but they can’t accept him, they destroy him!” In addition, since childhood, before my eyes is the example of my own father brutally beating his mother. And this is the norm! This is the most disgusting form of self-affirmation - at the expense of the weak. People like Mikhail and Yakov really want to look strong and courageous, but deep down they feel flawed. Such people, in order to feel self-confidence at least for a short time, show off over their loved ones. But at their core, they are real losers, cowards. Their hearts, turned away from love, are fed not only by causeless rage, but also by envy. Brutal war begins between brothers for their father's good. (An interesting thing, after all, is the Russian language! In its first meaning, the word “good” means everything positive, good; in the second, it means junk that you can touch with your hands.) And in this war, all means will do, including arson and murder. But even after receiving an inheritance, the brothers do not find peace: you cannot build happiness on lies and blood. Mikhail, he generally loses all human appearance and comes to his father and mother with one goal - to kill. After all, in his opinion, it is not he himself who is to blame for living his life like a pig, but someone else!

Gorky in his book thinks a lot about why Russian people are often cruel, why they make their life “gray, lifeless nonsense.” And here is one more of his answers to himself: “Russian people, due to their poverty and poverty of life, generally love to amuse themselves with grief, play with it like children, and are rarely ashamed of being unhappy. In endless everyday life and grief there is a holiday, and fire is fun; in an empty place, a scratch is a decoration...” However, the reader is not always obliged to trust the author’s direct assessments.

The story is not about poor people (at least they don’t immediately become poor); their wealth will allow them to live humanly in every sense. But you will find truly good people in “Childhood”, most likely, among the poor: Grigory, Tsyganok, Good Delo, grandmother Akulina Ivanovna, who came from a poor family. This means that it is not a matter of poverty or wealth. The point is mental and spiritual poverty. After all, Maxim Savvateevich Peshkov did not have any wealth. But that didn't stop him from being amazing beautiful man. Honest, open, reliable, hard-working, with self-esteem, he knew how to love beautifully and recklessly. I didn’t drink wine, which is rare in Russia. And Maxim became destiny for Varvara Peshkova. Not only did he not beat his wife and son, he had no thoughts of insulting them. And he remained the brightest memory and example for his son for the rest of his life. People were jealous of the happy and friendly Peshkov family. And this muddy envy pushes the degenerates Mikhail and Yakov to kill their son-in-law. But by a miracle, Maxim, who survived, shows mercy, saving his wife’s brothers from certain hard labor.

Poor, unfortunate Varvara! It’s true, God was pleased to give her such a man - the dream of every woman. She managed to escape from that suffocating swamp where she was born and raised, and to know true happiness. It didn't last long! Maxim passed away offensively early. And since then, Varvara’s life has gone awry. It happens that a woman’s lot develops in such a way that there is no replacement for the one and only one. It seemed that she could find, if not happiness, then peace with Evgeny Maximov, an educated man, a nobleman. But underneath his outer gloss hid, as it turned out, a nonentity, no better than the same Yakov and Mikhail.

The surprising thing about this story is that the author-narrator does not hate those who crippled his childhood. Little Alyosha learned well the lesson of his grandmother, who said about Yakov and Mikhail: “They are not evil. They are just stupid! This must be understood in the sense that they are, of course, evil, but also unhappy in their misery. Repentance sometimes softens these withered souls. Yakov suddenly begins to sob, hitting himself in the face: “What is this, what?...Why is this? Scoundrel and scoundrel, broken soul! Vasily Kashirin, a much smarter and stronger man, suffers more and more often. The old man understands that his cruelty was also inherited by his unsuccessful children, and in shock he complains to God: “In grief-stricken excitement, reaching the point of a tearful howl, he poked his head into the corner, towards the images, and hit the dry, echoing chest with all his might: “Lord, am I more sinful than others?” For what?’” However, this tough tyrant is worthy not only of pity, but also of respect. For he never put a stone instead of bread into the outstretched hand of an unlucky son or daughter. In many ways, he himself crippled his sons. But he also supported! Saved me from military service (which I bitterly regretted later), from prison; Having divided the property, he spent whole days in his sons’ workshops, helping to set up the business. And what about the episode when the brutal Mikhail and his friends, armed with stakes, break into the Kashirins’ house. The father in these terrible moments is mainly concerned with ensuring that his son is not hit on the head in the fight. He is also concerned about the fate of Varvara. Vasily Kashirin understands that his daughter’s life is not going well, and gives, in fact, his last, only to provide for Varvara.

As already mentioned, this book is not only about family life, about everyday life, but also about God. More precisely, about how an ordinary Russian person believes in God. But it turns out that you can believe in God in different ways. After all, not only did God create man in his own image and likeness, but man also constantly creates God according to his own standards. So, for grandfather Vasily Kashirin, a businesslike, dry and tough man, God is a strict overseer and judge. His God is precisely and first of all punishing and taking revenge. It is not for nothing that, remembering the Sacred History, the grandfather always tells episodes of the torment of sinners. Vasily Vasilyevich understands religious institutions as a soldier understands military regulations: memorize, do not reason and do not contradict. Little Alyosha's acquaintance with Christianity begins in his grandfather's family with cramming prayer formulas. And when the child begins to ask innocent questions about the text, Aunt Natalya interrupts him in fear: “Don’t ask, it’s worse! Just say after me: “Our Father...” For the grandfather, turning to God is the strictest, but also a joyful ritual. He knows a huge number of prayers and psalms by heart and enthusiastically repeats the words of the Holy Scriptures, often without even thinking about what they mean. He, an uneducated person, is filled with joy by the fact that he speaks not in the crude language of everyday life, but in the sublime structure of “divine” speech.

Grandmother Akulina Ivanovna has a different God. She is not an expert on sacred texts, but this does not in the least prevent her from believing fervently, sincerely and childishly naively. For this is the only way true faith can be. It is said: “Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matt. 18:1). Grandmother's God is a merciful intercessor who loves everyone equally. And not at all omniscient and omnipotent, but often crying over the imperfections of the world, and himself worthy of pity and compassion. God for grandmother is akin to a bright and fair hero folk tale. You can turn to him, as to the closest one, with your innermost thoughts: “Varvara would smile with such joy! How did she anger you, why was she more sinful than others? What is it: a woman is young, healthy, but lives in sadness. And remember, Lord, Grigory - his eyes are getting worse...” This is exactly the kind of prayer, albeit devoid of established order, but sincere, it will reach God faster. And for all my hard life in a cruel and sinful world, grandmother thanks the Lord, who helps people far and near, loves and forgives them.

M. Gorky’s story “Childhood” shows us, the readers, that it is possible and necessary in the most difficult life conditions not to become bitter, not to become a slave, but to remain Human.

V. A. Karpov

Childhood

I dedicate it to my son

I

In a dim, cramped room, on the floor, under the window, lies my father, dressed in white and unusually long; the toes of his bare feet are strangely spread out, the fingers of his gentle hands, quietly placed on his chest, are also crooked; his cheerful eyes are tightly covered with black circles of copper coins, his kind face is dark and scares me with his badly bared teeth.

Mother, half naked, in a red skirt, is on her knees, combing her father’s long soft hair from his forehead to the back of his head with a black comb, which I used to saw through the rinds of watermelons; the mother continuously says something in a thick, hoarse voice, her gray eyes are swollen and seem to melt, flowing down with large drops of tears.

My grandmother is holding my hand - round, big-headed, with huge eyes and a funny, doughy nose; she is all black, soft and surprisingly interesting; she also cries, somehow singing along with her mother especially and well, she trembles all over and tugs at me, pushing me towards my father; I resist, hide behind her; I'm scared and embarrassed.

I had never seen big people cry before, and I did not understand the words repeatedly spoken by my grandmother:

- Say goodbye to your uncle, you will never see him again, he died, my dear, at the wrong time, at the wrong time...

I was seriously ill - I had just gotten back to my feet; during my illness - I remember this well - my father merrily fussed with me, then he suddenly disappeared and was replaced by my grandmother, a strange man.

-Where did you come from? – I asked her. She answered:

- From above, from Nizhny, but she didn’t come, but she arrived! They don't walk on water, shush!

It was funny and incomprehensible: upstairs in the house lived bearded, painted Persians, and in the basement an old yellow Kalmyk was selling sheepskins. You can ride down the stairs on the railing, or when you fall, you can roll somersault - I knew that well. And what does water have to do with it? Everything is wrong and funny confused.

- Why am I pissed?

“Because you make noise,” she said, also laughing. She spoke kindly, cheerfully, smoothly. From the very first day I became friends with her, and now I want her to quickly leave this room with me.

My mother suppresses me; her tears and howls sparked a new, anxious feeling in me. This is the first time I see her like this - she was always strict, spoke little; she is clean, smooth and big, like a horse; she has a tough body and terribly strong arms. And now she is all somehow unpleasantly swollen and disheveled, everything on her is torn; the hair, lying neatly on the head, in a large light cap, scattered over the bare shoulder, fell on the face, and half of it, braided in a braid, dangled, touching his father’s sleeping face. I’ve been standing in the room for a long time, but she’s never looked at me, she combs her father’s hair and keeps growling, choking on tears.

Black men and a sentry soldier look in the door. He shouts angrily:

- Clean it up quickly!

The window is curtained with a dark shawl; it swells like a sail. One day my father took me on a boat with a sail. Suddenly thunder struck. My father laughed, squeezed me tightly with his knees and shouted:

- It’s okay, don’t be afraid, Luk!

Suddenly the mother threw herself up heavily from the floor, immediately sank down again, toppled over onto her back, scattering her hair across the floor; her blind, white face turned blue, and, baring her teeth like her father, she said in a terrible voice:

- Shut the door... Alexei - get out! Pushing me away, my grandmother rushed to the door and shouted:

- Dear ones, don’t be afraid, don’t touch me, leave for Christ’s sake! This is not cholera, the birth has come, for mercy, priests!

I hid in a dark corner behind a chest and from there I watched my mother squirm across the floor, groaning and gritting her teeth, and my grandmother, crawling around, said affectionately and joyfully:

– In the name of the Father and the Son! Be patient, Varyusha! Most Holy Mother of God, Intercessor...

I'm scared; They are fiddling around on the floor near their father, touching him, moaning and screaming, but he is motionless and seems to be laughing. This lasted a long time - fussing on the floor; More than once the mother rose to her feet and fell again; grandmother rolled out of the room like a big black soft ball; then suddenly a child screamed in the darkness.

– Glory to You, Lord! - said the grandmother. - Boy!

And lit a candle.

I must have fallen asleep in the corner - I don’t remember anything else.

The second imprint in my memory is a rainy day, a deserted corner of the cemetery; I stand on a slippery mound of sticky earth and look into the hole where my father’s coffin was lowered; at the bottom of the pit there is a lot of water and there are frogs - two have already climbed onto the yellow lid of the coffin.

At the grave - me, my grandmother, a wet guard and two angry men with shovels. Warm rain, fine as beads, showers everyone.

“Bury,” said the watchman, walking away.

Grandmother began to cry, hiding her face in the end of her headscarf. The men, bent over, hastily began to throw earth into the grave, water squelched; Jumping from the coffin, the frogs began to rush onto the walls of the pit, clods of earth knocking them to the bottom.

“Move away, Lenya,” my grandmother said, taking me by the shoulder; I slipped out from under her hand; I didn’t want to leave.

“What are you, Lord,” the grandmother complained, either to me or to God, and stood silently for a long time, with her head down; The grave has already been leveled to the ground, but it still stands.

The men loudly splashed their shovels on the ground; the wind came and drove away, carried away the rain. Grandmother took me by the hand and led me to a distant church, among many dark crosses.

-Aren't you going to cry? – she asked when she went outside the fence. - I would cry!

“I don’t want to,” I said.

“Well, I don’t want to, so I don’t have to,” she said quietly.

All this was surprising: I cried rarely and only from resentment, not from pain; my father always laughed at my tears, and my mother shouted:

- Don't you dare cry!

Then we rode along a wide, very dirty street in a droshky, among dark red houses; I asked my grandmother:

-Won’t the frogs come out?

“No, they won’t get out,” she answered. - God be with them!

Neither father nor mother pronounced the name of God so often and so closely.

A few days later, I, my grandmother and my mother were traveling on a ship, in a small cabin; my newborn brother Maxim died and lay on the table in the corner, wrapped in white, swaddled with red braid.

Perched on bundles and chests, I look out the window, convex and round, like a horse’s eye; Behind the wet glass, muddy, foamy water flows endlessly. Sometimes she jumps up and licks the glass. I involuntarily jump to the floor.

“Don’t be afraid,” says grandma and, easily lifting me with soft hands, she puts me back on the knots.

There is a gray, wet fog over the water; Far away somewhere a dark land appears and disappears again into fog and water. Everything around is shaking. Only the mother, with her hands behind her head, stands leaning against the wall, firmly and motionless. Her face is dark, iron and blind, her eyes are tightly closed, she is silent all the time, and everything is somehow different, new, even the dress she is wearing is unfamiliar to me.

Grandmother more than once told her quietly:

- Varya, would you like to eat something, a little, eh? She is silent and motionless.

Grandma speaks to me in a whisper, and to my mother - louder, but somehow carefully, timidly and very little. It seems to me that she is afraid of her mother. This is clear to me and brings me very close to my grandmother.

“Saratov,” the mother said unexpectedly loudly and angrily. -Where is the sailor?

So her words are strange, alien: Saratov, sailor. A wide, gray-haired man dressed in blue came in and brought a small box. The grandmother took him and began to lay out his brother’s body, laid him down and carried him to the door on outstretched arms, but, being fat, she could only walk through the narrow door of the cabin sideways and hesitated funny in front of it.

- Eh, mother! - my mother shouted, took the coffin from her, and both of them disappeared, and I remained in the cabin, looking at the blue man.

- What, little brother left? - he said, leaning towards me.

- Who are you?

- Sailor.

– Who is Saratov?

- City. Look out the window, there he is!

Outside the window the ground was moving; dark, steep, it smoked with fog, resembling a large piece of bread that had just been cut from a loaf.

-Where did grandma go?

- To bury my grandson.

- Will they bury him in the ground?

- What about it? They will bury it.

I told the sailor how they buried live frogs when burying my father. He picked me up, hugged me tightly and kissed me.

- Eh, brother, you still don’t understand anything! - he said. – There is no need to feel sorry for the frogs, the Lord is with them! Have pity on the mother - look how her grief hurt her!

There was a hum and a howl above us. I already knew that it was a steamer and was not afraid, but the sailor hastily lowered me to the floor and rushed out, saying:

- We must run!

And I also wanted to run away. I walked out the door. The dark, narrow crevice was empty. Not far from the door, copper glittered on the steps of the stairs. Looking up, I saw people with knapsacks and bundles in their hands. It was clear that everyone was leaving the ship, which meant I had to leave too.

But when, together with a crowd of men, I found myself at the side of the ship, in front of the bridge to the shore, everyone began to shout at me:

- Whose is this? Whose are you?

- Don't know.

They pushed me, shook me, groped me for a long time. Finally a gray-haired sailor appeared and grabbed me, explaining:

- This is from Astrakhan, from the cabin...

He carried me into the cabin at a run, put me in some bundles and left, wagging his finger:

- I'll ask you!

The noise overhead became quieter, the steamer no longer trembled or thumped through the water. The window of the cabin was blocked by some kind of wet wall; it became dark, stuffy, the knots seemed to be swollen, oppressing me, and everything was not good. Maybe they will leave me alone forever on an empty ship?

I went to the door. It does not open, its copper handle cannot be turned. Taking the milk bottle, I hit the handle with all my might. The bottle broke, the milk poured over my feet and flowed into my boots.

Distressed by the failure, I lay down on the bundles, cried quietly and, in tears, fell asleep.

And when I woke up, the ship was thumping and shaking again, the cabin window was burning like the sun. Grandmother, sitting next to me, scratched her hair and winced, whispering something. She had a strange amount of hair, it thickly covered her shoulders, chest, knees and lay on the floor, black, tinged with blue. Lifting them from the floor with one hand and holding them in the air, she hardly inserted a wide-toothed wooden comb into the thick strands; her lips curled, her dark eyes sparkled angrily, and her face in this mass of hair became small and funny.

Today she seemed angry, but when I asked why her hair was so long, she said in yesterday’s warm and soft voice:

- Apparently, the Lord gave it as punishment - comb them, you damned ones! When I was young I boasted about this mane, I swear in my old age! And you sleep! It’s still early, the sun has just risen from the night...

- I don’t want to sleep!

“Well, don’t sleep otherwise,” she immediately agreed, braiding her hair and looking at the sofa, where her mother lay face up, stretched out. - How did you crack the bottle yesterday? Speak quietly!

She spoke, singing the words in a special way, and they easily became stronger in my memory, like flowers, just as affectionate, bright, juicy. When she smiled, her pupils, dark as cherries, dilated, flashing with an inexpressibly pleasant light, her smile cheerfully revealed her strong white teeth, and, despite the many wrinkles in the dark skin of her cheeks, her whole face seemed young and bright. This loose nose with swollen nostrils and red at the end spoiled him very much. She sniffed tobacco from a black snuff box decorated with silver. She was all dark, but she shone from within - through her eyes - with an unquenchable, cheerful and warm light. She was stooped, almost hunchbacked, very plump, and she moved easily and deftly, like a big cat - she was as soft as this affectionate animal.

It was as if I was sleeping before her, hidden in the darkness, but she appeared, woke me up, brought me into the light, tied everything around me into a continuous thread, wove everything into multi-colored lace and immediately became a friend for life, the closest to my heart, the most understandable and dear person, - it is her selfless love to the world enriched me, saturating me with strong strength for a difficult life.

Forty years ago steamships moved slowly; We drove to Nizhny for a very long time, and I remember well those first days of being saturated with beauty.

The weather was fine; from morning to evening I am with my grandmother on the deck, under a clear sky, between the autumn-gilded, silk-embroidered banks of the Volga. Slowly, lazily and loudly thumping across the greyish-blue water, a light-red steamship with a barge in a long tow is stretching upstream. The barge is gray and looks like a woodlice. The sun floats unnoticed over the Volga; Every hour everything around is new, everything changes; green mountains are like lush folds on the rich clothing of the earth; along the banks there are cities and villages, like gingerbread ones from afar; golden autumn leaf floats on the water.

- Look how good it is! - Grandma says every minute, moving from side to side, and she’s all beaming, and her eyes are joyfully widened.

Often, looking at the shore, she forgot about me: she stood at the side, folded her arms on her chest, smiled and was silent, and there were tears in her eyes. I tug at her dark skirt, printed with flowers.

- Ass? - she perks up. “It’s like I dozed off and was dreaming.”

-What are you crying about?

“This, dear, is from joy and from old age,” she says, smiling. - I’m already old, in my sixth decade of summer and spring, my thoughts have spread and gone.

And, after sniffing tobacco, he begins to tell me some outlandish stories about good robbers, about holy people, about all kinds of animals and evil spirits.

She tells fairy tales quietly, mysteriously, leaning towards my face, looking into my eyes with dilated pupils, as if pouring strength into my heart, lifting me up. He speaks as if he were singing, and the further he goes, the more complex the words sound. It is indescribably pleasant to listen to her. I listen and ask:

- And here’s how it happened: an old brownie is sitting in the shelter, he’s stabbed his paw with a noodle, he’s rocking, whining: “Oh, little mice, it hurts, oh, little mice, I can’t stand it!”

Raising her leg, she grabs it with her hands, swings it in the air and wrinkles her face funny, as if she herself is in pain.

There are sailors standing around - bearded gentle men - listening, laughing, praising her and also asking:

- Come on, grandma, tell me something else! Then they say:

- Come have dinner with us!

At dinner they treat her with vodka, me with watermelons and melon; this is done secretly: a man travels on the ship who forbids eating fruit, takes it away and throws it into the river. He is dressed like a guard - with brass buttons - and is always drunk; people are hiding from him.

Mother rarely comes on deck and stays away from us. She is still silent, mother. Its big slender body, a dark, iron face, a heavy crown of blond hair braided into braids - all of it powerful and solid - I remember as if through fog or a transparent cloud; Straight gray eyes, as large as grandma’s, look out from it distantly and unfriendly.

One day she said sternly:

– People are laughing at you, mother!

- And the Lord is with them! - Grandma answered carefree. - Let them laugh, for good health!

I remember my grandmother’s childhood joy at the sight of Nizhny. Pulling my hand, she pushed me towards the board and shouted:

- Look, look how good it is! Here it is, father, Nizhny! That's what he is, Gods! Those churches, look, they seem to be flying!

And the mother asked, almost crying:

- Varyusha, look, tea, huh? Look, I forgot! Rejoice!

The mother smiled gloomily.

When the ship stopped against beautiful city, in the middle of a river closely cluttered with ships, bristling with hundreds of sharp masts, a large boat with many people floated up to its side, hooked itself with a hook to the lowered ladder, and one after another the people from the boat began to climb onto the deck. A small, dry old man, in a long black robe, with a red beard like gold, a bird's nose and green eyes, walked quickly ahead of everyone.

The work of M. Gorky is connected with his personal life experience. The eventful life of Alexei Maksimovich Peshkov, the future writer Maxim Gorky, was reflected in the autobiographical trilogy “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”.

Tremendous learning value life path The future writer needs the story “Childhood” to understand the process of his spiritual formation. The liveliness and authenticity of what is depicted is achieved by the fact that the pictures, characters, and events bear the stamp of a child’s perception.

History of formation and growth human personality shown in it against the backdrop of Russian reality of the 70s and 80s of the 19th century. The author wrote: “...and I’m not talking about myself, but about that close, stuffy circle of terrible impressions in which... a simple Russian man lived.” At the same time, the story is imbued with the idea of the spiritual strength of the people, of the “good human” that is inherent in it. Therefore, the characteristics of those characters in the story that Alyosha encounters, as well as the analysis of pictures of the life of the bourgeoisie, should become an important link in the lesson. At each lesson, students should also draw attention to Alyosha’s psychology, show how his strength matures in constant communication with real people from the people and in the fight against the inertia and cruelty of people disfigured by the desire for property.

The autobiographical nature of “Childhood” enhances its educational significance, and the skillful use of its emotional impact on children depends on the teacher.

In the first lesson, you need to read the first chapter of the work with the students, then move on to a conversation about the main issues of the story - the struggle of the “good human” with the world of inertia and acquisitiveness. The feeling of the beauty of the world, which opens up while sailing on a steamboat along the Volga, is combined with a keen sense of hostile forces in it. Already here the beginning of Alyosha’s conflict with the old world is given.

We offer the main range of questions and tasks that should be covered in the lesson: what pictures open before us in the first chapter? What characters are they associated with? Through whose eyes do we look at everything that happens in the story? What and how did Gorky tell about the Volga, its banks and cities? Who opens up a wonderful world to the boy?

What place did grandmother occupy in Alyosha’s life? Answer with the words of the story.

Describe Alyosha’s first impression of meeting his grandfather. How does grandfather talk to people? How did he feel in Alyosha? How is this stated in the text? Read the description of the Kashirins' house. Find epithets and comparisons in this description and determine their role.

In conclusion, the teacher says that in this house, among people Alyosha did not like, the boy’s difficult childhood will pass.

At home, students read chapter two and answer the questions in the textbook.

The second lesson is devoted to revealing the “lead abominations” of Russian life in the story and clarifying the character of grandfather Kashirin.

Almost exhaustive material for covering these issues is provided by the second chapter, which paints terrifying pictures of drunken cruelty, mischief, mockery of the weak, family fights over property that pervert human souls.

We begin work on the topic by discussing the question: what struck Alyosha in the Kashirins’ house? It is necessary to dwell in more detail on the author’s description of the situation in the grandfather’s house (the first three paragraphs of the second chapter), to find words and expressions that most accurately characterize it. Then, using specific examples, show the “mutual enmity of everyone with everyone,” which poisoned both adults and children. The students will focus on the following episodes: a quarrel between uncles, a scene with a thimble, spanking children, Sasha’s denunciation of Alyosha.

The morals in the grandfather's house are most fully conveyed in the quarrel scene (it can be read). We draw the attention of schoolchildren to how the author conveys the bestial appearance of fighting brothers, how grandmother and grandfather behave during a quarrel, and how this characterizes each of them. Although the grandfather is also possessed by the spirit of acquisitiveness, he is at the same time pitiful, since he is unable to stop his sons. The grandmother stands out as a bright spot against the gloomy background of cruel life, who tries to bring peace to this house.

Conversations between grandparents about the need to divide property will show students that main reason Enmity in the Kashirin family was a craving for property, giving rise to merciless cruelty. The teacher should explain to schoolchildren that the brothers' enmity was aggravated by the precarious position of small enterprises in the era of capitalist development.

What especially struck Alyosha about the Kashirin family? Attention is drawn to the attitude towards women and children in this house. The punishment scene is analyzed, which is important not only for the depiction of cruelty, on the one hand, and submission, on the other. It is also interesting because it shows how cruelty, in turn, gives rise to such equally terrible and base qualities as hypocrisy and betrayal. Having adapted to the world of violence and lies, Sasha became an informer and sycophant of Uncle Yakov, slavishly obedient and weak-willed - the son of Uncle Mikhail. Let's find out: what did Gorky say about the children of Yakov and Mikhail? What epithets and comparisons most clearly convey their character? What feeling does Sasha Yakov make in students? In which episodes does he show himself most fully?

Which of the characters especially evokes a feeling of compassion and why? An analysis of the episode with the thimble will show what place Grigory occupies in the Kashirins’ house, that his fate is a typical fate of a worker in tsarist Russia. A former companion of his grandfather, who devoted his entire life to the Kashirins, he is now, half-blind and sick, enduring the bullying of even children.

A natural continuation of the conversation on this topic will be a discussion of the question: who was the main culprit of that “abundant cruelty” of life in the Kashirins’ house? So students move on to analyzing the image of Kashirin. They should be led to understand the complexity and contradictory nature of the image of the grandfather, the guardian of proprietary principles, the victim own greed and greed, to show why cruelty and greed became the predominant traits of his character.

After listening to the students’ opinions about how their first acquaintance with their grandfather made them feel, we move on to analyzing the episodes in which his character is especially clearly manifested. We find out his manner of talking to people, look for imperative intonations characteristic of his grandfather’s speech in the first and second chapters.

Students think through answers to the questions: how is Kashirin’s appearance depicted? How is the grandfather different from his sons, Yakov and Mikhail? How portrait characteristic grandfather is confirmed by his actions and judgments about people? Why did Alyosha have “special attention, cautious curiosity” towards his grandfather?

Having comprehended the characteristics of the grandfather’s character, we read and further analyze his story about his past; We pay attention to what and how the grandfather talks. To perceive the content of his story, the following questions can be asked:

What were your grandfather’s childhood and youth like? What pictures are drawn to Alyosha in his grandfather’s story about his youth? Compare these pictures with the description of the Volga in the works of N.A. Nekrasov. and in Repin’s painting I.E. "Barge Haulers on the Volga". The richness of intonation, melodiousness and imagery of speech, its closeness to folklore give a complete picture of popular basis the grandfather’s character, the richness of his imagination, his craving for beauty.

How did Alyosha see his grandfather in this conversation? It turns out that the grandfather can be both affectionate and warm-hearted, and knows how to tell interesting stories. Alyosha also thinks his appearance is different (compare with the original portrait). The boy realized that his grandfather stood out thanks to his intelligence.

What made my grandfather bitter? The analysis of the reasons should be discussed in a little more detail. Having drank the bitter cup of the barge hauler to the bottom, having experienced humiliation and beatings, the grandfather finally made his way into the people and became the owner. But the cruel morality of capitalism, the pursuit of a penny, the constant fear of losing the dye shop gave rise to the spirit of the owner, embitterment, and distrust of people in him. Kashirin gradually lost all the best that was in him from the people, pitting himself against working people. It is advisable to read individual lines from the thirteenth chapter, telling about the future fate of the grandfather, when, having gone bankrupt, he loses the remnants of his human appearance.

At home, students prepare an expressive reading of their grandfather's story about their past, read the third and fourth chapters and answer the questions in the textbook.

In the third lesson, the teacher will begin to work on the second theme of the story - “bright, healthy and creative” in Russian life. The focus is on the history of Alyosha’s character formation and the image of the Gypsy.

At the beginning of the lesson, we find out what is said in the third chapter about the cruel morals in the Kashirins’ house (the uncles’ evil “jokes” with the grandfather’s former companion, their attitude towards the Gypsy). It is advisable for students to express their attitude towards their uncles and evaluate Gregory’s behavior: is he right to endure all insults so patiently? Summarizing the conversation on the first topic, you can ask the students: what is the author’s feeling that permeates the pages of the story telling about the life and customs in the Kashirins’ house?

Working on the main theme of the story - the formation of the character of Alyosha Peshkov, it is necessary to help students understand why Alyosha felt like a “stranger” among the “stupid tribe”. Alyosha came to the Kashirins' house when he was four years old, but the impressions of another life were already living in him. He remembered a friendly family, his father Maxim Savvateevich, an intelligent, cheerful and talented person, and at first he was proud of his mother, who was not like the people around her. For the rest of his life, Alyosha also remembered “the first days of being saturated with beauty” while sailing on the ship.

How did the first impression of the Kashirin family reflect on the boy’s sensitive soul and big heart? We highlight those lines that say that Alyosha didn’t like everything: both adults and children, and even “grandmother somehow faded,” the words of his mother, whom he “prevents from leaving home,” also evoked painful thoughts in him , where she cannot live.” The “thick, motley, inexpressibly strange life” in the Kashirin family is perceived by Alyosha as “a harsh fairy tale, well told by a kind, painfully truthful genius.” Behind the epithets and comparisons with which the author conveys the boy’s state of mind, one can discern a subtle, poetic nature, a man of good feelings who does not put up with evil.

How has Alyosha changed during the days of “ill health”? - The teacher will help the children better understand the changes that have occurred in Alyosha with the help of narrower questions: how does Gorky convey Alyosha’s state? What's new in the boy's attitude towards people?

We reveal the changes that have occurred in Alyosha based on the material of the seventh chapter. Students will tell how Alyosha is driven to madness by the cruelty of street entertainment, how he feels shame in front of the blind master Grigory because his grandfather does not feed him.

Another source that strengthened Alyosha on his path was communication with real people from the people. A significant role in Alyosha’s moral maturity belongs to the Gypsy, with whose image the second theme of the story is connected - the image of how “through... a layer... of bestial rubbish the bright, healthy and creative grows.” The Gypsy embodies the beautiful human qualities: extraordinary kindness and humanity, hard work, deep inner decency, talent, desire for the best.

The image of the Gypsy does not cause any particular difficulties for students.

The teacher will guide the work with the following questions:

What did Alyosha learn about Gypsy’s past from his grandmother’s stories? Describe his portrait. What place did Gypsy occupy in his grandfather’s house? How did others treat him? What characteristics did his grandfather and grandmother give him? How do you understand the expression “golden hands”? Which episodes show Gypsy’s giftedness and talent? Tell us about his fun and expressively read the dance scene (analysis of this episode can be carried out while simultaneously watching a film fragment). How does Alyosha see the dancing Gypsy? Find comparisons in the description and determine their role. Did the artist B. A. Dekhterev manage to convey the character of the Gypsy in his drawing? Why did Alyosha fall in love with the Gypsy “and was amazed at him until he was speechless”? What influence did Gypsy have on Alyosha?

In conclusion, we find out (or report) how Gypsy died and whether his death was accidental.

You can invite students at the end of the lesson to independently create a plan for the image of the Gypsy.

At home, students read chapter four and receive individual assignments to collect material for the image of the grandmother.

The fourth lesson is entirely devoted to analyzing the image of the grandmother. A person of great natural intelligence, bright artistic talent and sensitive heartfelt responsiveness, Akulina Ivanovna instilled in her grandson a love for the world and people, opened his eyes to the beauty of nature, connected him with folk art. Due to the high structure of her soul, she remained for Gorky all her life, in his words, “a friend, the closest to her heart... the most understandable and dear person”; her selfless love for the world enriched Alyosha, “saturating her with strong strength for a difficult life.” Initially, Gorky even intended to call the story “Grandmother.”

Students will find material for observing the image in chapters one, four and seven. The forms of work can be different: a conversation on questions or a teacher’s story.

Direct independent work students over the indicated chapters, when the student himself understands the meaning of the text and its artistic side, and then reports his observations to the class. In the latter case, specific tasks are needed that can be individualized: the first row prepares observations on the first chapter, the second on the second, third and seventh chapters, the focus of the third row is on the fourth chapter.

Questions and assignments for the first chapter may be as follows:

Describe the portrait of your grandmother. What means of figurative language did Gorky use when creating this portrait? What epithets predominate? Name them. How does grandma's talent manifest itself? How does the grandmother’s conversation with Alyosha and an excerpt from her fairy tale confirm Gorky’s words about the peculiarities of her speech? What words did the writer express his feelings of gratitude to his grandmother? For expressive reading, we can recommend a portrait of a grandmother and her conversation with her grandson.

The grandmother’s sense of beauty makes her irreconcilable with everything ugly. The writer revealed this side of her character in the second, third and seventh chapters. Akulina Ivanovna is shown in them against the background of the gloomy life of the Kashirin family. Let's ask students the following questions:

What role did the grandmother play in the house? Which episodes convey her kindness and desire to bring a spirit of peace into relationships between people? (Pay attention to the form of the grandmother’s address to different people). How does her conversation with Alyosha about Master Gregory characterize her (chapter seven)? What is grandma's prayer? How is Akulina Ivanovna shown on holiday evenings? How does she appear to Alyosha during the dance and how does the artist capture her in the drawing? (Read this episode expressively, name words that convey the beauty of the grandmother’s movements and the richness of her creative powers).

In the fourth chapter, the grandmother is shown in a moment of danger (it is advisable to read the entire chapter in class). We recommend the following questions to prepare for your message:

Why was Alyosha so struck by his grandmother during the fire? What verbs convey the speed of her movements? How does she organize firefighting? Why is the episode with the horse Sharap interesting? What lines from the story can be signed under the drawing by B. A. Dekhterev? How did grandfather assess the strength of the grandmother? What lines from N. A. Nekrasov’s poem “Frost, Red Nose” come to mind when reading these pages?

To summarize, let’s talk about the grandmother’s extraordinary humanity, her love for people, her ability to do good to people in an environment of evil, and her faith in the victory of justice. In the image of his grandmother, Gorky embodied all the best that was characteristic of ordinary Russian people. At the same time, the wisdom of the grandmother is the wisdom of the patriarchal people; it expresses their humility and forgiveness. The grandmother even comes to terms with the cruelty that she herself had to experience more than once from her grandfather, finding justification for his outbursts of anger.

The work on the image will be completed by drawing up a plan.

At home, students read the story to the end and prepare answers to the questions in the textbook.

On last lesson the role of the lodger Good Deed in Alyosha’s life is revealed and the writer’s faith in the creative powers of the people and their future is spoken of (chapters five, eight, twelve, thirteen).

The lesson begins with a conversation about what people and events influenced Alyosha’s character. It is worth briefly repeating what impressions Peshkov took from life in the Kashirins’ house, what his grandfather taught him (additional material is given in the fifth chapter), what influence Gypsy and his grandmother had on the boy. It is important that students understand how Alyosha’s unconscious protest against violence develops into conscious resistance to the injustice and cruelty that he observed around him, and what role in the growth of this feeling belongs to those wonderful people with whom his fate collided.

Alyosha also owes his inner growth and spiritual enrichment to a guest nicknamed Good Deed, who captivated the boy with his directness and truthfulness.

We listen to students’ answers to the textbook questions and deepen them using the following questions:

Who do you think is Good Deed? (An excerpt is read that talks about his mysterious and incomprehensible activities.) Why did Alyosha become friends with Good Deed and what did he value in this friendship? Students are asked to give examples of friendly conversations between the tenant and Alyosha and read out the most striking dialogues. What does Alyosha have in common with Good Deed? What about the attitude of adults towards him caused Alyosha to be especially indignant? How does Alyosha express his protest against injustice? Is it random? Explain how you understand the words: “So ended my friendship with the first person from an endless series of strangers in my native country - the best people her".

These were the first lessons of harsh life that Alyosha received in the Kashirins’ house. The question of undoubted interest will be: are there any traits in Alyosha that allow us to believe that this boy can grow into a man with a big heart?

Simple Russian people, smart, kind, interesting, talented, strengthened in Alyosha the noble and bright traits of his personality: truthfulness and courage, kindness and sensitivity, the desire for knowledge, will and hard work (the thirteenth chapter), which received further development while wandering “among people” (we look at the final drawing for the story).

It should be said about educational value Alyosha's life path. The teacher can give examples of the difficult childhood of many people in pre-revolutionary Russia, when only thanks to enormous will and energy they were able to defeat the surrounding evil and enter the broad road of life.

In conclusion, we read the twelfth chapter, which expresses the main idea of the story, and discuss the question: what does the story teach us?

At home, students select material for the topic “Alyosha in the Kashirin family.”

The task of the next lesson, speech development lesson , - bring students’ knowledge on this topic into a strict system, that is, draw up a plan, highlight the most important thing in each point, practice transitions from one point of the plan to another, repeat citing techniques (one of the forms is points of the plan), think through a short introduction and conclusion to the topic .

Rough plan

I. Alyosha Peshkov is the central character of A. M. Gorky’s story “Childhood”.

II. Alyosha's harsh school of life.

The house of “mutual enmity of all with all.”
A stranger among the “stupid tribe.”
Alyosha's protest against the “leaden abominations of Russian life.”
What did friendship with Gypsy give to Alyosha?
A friend for life is a grandmother.
The role of the lodger is a good thing in the spiritual maturation of Alyosha.
"Strong strength for a difficult life."

III. What I like about Alyosha.

One or two student stories should be heard in class.

At home, students write an essay.

Literature

Gorky M. “Childhood”. Moscow, Enlightenment 1982
Weinberg I. Pages of a great life. Moscow, 1980
Gorky at school. Collection of articles edited by Golubkov V.V. Moscow, 1960
Dubinskaya M.S., Novoselskaya L.S. Russian literature in grades 6–7. Kyiv, 1977
Korovina V.Ya. Literature in 7th grade: Methodological advice. Book for teachers. Moscow, Education, 1995
Snezhevskaya M.A., Shevchenko P.A., Kurdyumova T.F. and others. Methodological guide to the textbook - anthology " Native literature" 6th grade. Moscow, Education, 1986

The works are written “in the first person” (for example, the trilogy “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth”; Turgenev’s story “First Love”; chronicle novels “Family Chronicle” and “Childhood of Bagrov the Grandson”; novel “The Life of Arsenyev "; stories by M. Gorky from the collection “Across Rus'” and his trilogy “Childhood”, “In People”, “My Universities”; - Mikhailovsky’s “Childhood of the Lord”; “Childhood of Nikita”; “First Love”, “Spring Waters”).

In autobiographical works, the main thing is always the author himself, and all the events described are conveyed directly through his perception. And yet, these books are, first of all, works of art, and the information contained in them cannot be taken as real story author's life.

Let us turn to the works of Mikhailovsky. What unites them?

All the heroes of the stories told are children.

The authors took the image of pictures of spiritual growth as the basis for the plot. little man. Telling about the past of your hero is not in chronological sequence, and by drawing pictures of the most powerful impressions left in the child’s mind, the artists of words show how a real person of that time perceived these events, what he thought about, how he felt the world. The author makes readers feel the “living breath” of history.

The main thing for writers is not the events of the era, but their refraction in the soul of a growing person; the psychology of the characters, their attitude to life, the difficulty of finding oneself.

All writers argue in their works that the basis of a child’s life is the love that he needs from others and which he is ready to generously give to people, including loved ones.

The lessons of childhood are comprehended by the heroes throughout their lives. They remain with him as guidelines that live in their conscience.

The plot and composition of the works are based on the life-affirming worldview of the authors, which they convey to their characters.

All works have enormous moral strength, which is necessary for a growing person today as an antidote to the lack of spirituality, violence, and cruelty that have overwhelmed our society.

What is depicted in the works is seen simultaneously through the eyes of a child, the main character, who is in the thick of things, and through the eyes of a wise person, assessing everything from the perspective of great life experience.

What distinguishes these autobiographical works?

In the works of Mikhailovsky, the authors talk not only about the childhood of the heroes, but also about how their independent life develops.

And they reveal to the reader the childhood impressions of their heroes.

The life of little heroes develops and is covered by writers in different ways.

Gorky's work differs from other stories of an autobiographical nature in that the child is in a different social environment. Childhood, depicted by Gorky, is far from a wonderful period of life. Gorky’s artistic task was to show the “leaden abominations of life” of the entire social stratum to which he belonged. On the one hand, it was important for the writer to show the “close, stuffy circle of terrible impressions” in which Alyosha lived in the Kashirin family. On the other hand, talk about the enormous influence on Alyosha of those “ beautiful souls”, with whom he met in his grandfather’s house and in the surrounding world and who instilled “hope for rebirth... to a bright, human life.”

The hero of “Childhood” peers into this life, at the people around him, tries to understand the origins of evil and hostility, reaches for the bright, defends his beliefs and moral principles.

The story “My Universities” has a strong journalistic beginning, which helps the reader to better understand Gorky’s personality, his thoughts and feelings. The main lesson of this story is the writer’s idea that a person is created by his resistance to the environment.

The childhood of the characters of other writers is warmed by the affection and love of their relatives. Light and warmth family life, the poetry of a happy childhood is carefully recreated by the authors of the works.

But then sharp ones arise social motives: the unsightly sides of landowner and aristocratic-secular life are depicted clearly and without embellishment.

“Childhood” and “Adolescence” is a story about Nikolenka Irteniev, whose thoughts, feelings and mistakes are depicted by the writer with complete and sincere sympathy.

Nikolenka Irtenyev, the hero of the work, is a boy with a sensitive soul. He longs for harmony between all people and strives to help them. He perceives life events more acutely, sees what others do not notice. The child does not think about himself and suffers when he sees human injustice. The most difficult life questions The boy puts it in front of him. What is love in a person's life? What is good? What is evil? What is suffering, and is it possible to live a life without suffering? What is happiness (and unhappiness)? What is death? What is God? And in the end: what is life, why live?

A distinctive feature of Nikolenka’s character is the desire for introspection, strict judgment of her thoughts, motives and actions. He blames and punishes himself not only for unworthy actions, but even words and thoughts. But this is the torment of a sensitive child’s conscience.

The story about the hero’s youth is a different picture. He retained his old aspirations and noble spiritual qualities. But he was brought up in the false prejudices of an aristocratic society, from which he frees himself only towards the end of the story, and then only after going through doubts and serious reflection and meeting other people - not aristocrats.

"Youth" is a tale of mistakes and rebirth.

Books about childhood and youth were created before Tolstoy. But Tolstoy was the first to introduce an acute topic into the history of the formation of the human personality. internal struggle, moral self-control, revealing the “dialectics of the soul” of the hero.

Tyoma Kartashev (“Tyoma’s Childhood”) lives in a family where the father is a retired general and gives a very definite direction to the upbringing of children. The actions of Tyoma, his pranks become the subject of the most close attention a father resisting the “sentimental” upbringing of his son, “making” him a “nasty slobber.” However, Tyoma's mother, an intelligent and well-educated woman, has a different view on raising her own son. In her opinion, any educational measures should not destroy a child’s human dignity and turn him into a “feared little animal” intimidated by the threat of corporal punishment.

The bad memory of executions for misdeeds will remain with Tyoma for a long time. long years. So, after almost twenty years, accidentally finding himself in home, he remembers the place where he was flogged, and his own feeling towards his father, “hostile, never reconciled.”

– Mikhailovsky takes his hero, a kind, impressionable, hot boy, through all the crucibles of life. More than once his hero ends up, like the Bug, “into a stinking well.” (The image of the Bug and the well is repeatedly repeated in the tetralogy as a symbol of the dead-end state of the heroes.) However, the hero is capable of being reborn. The plot and composition of the family chronicle are structured as a search for a way out of crises.

“My compass is my honor. You can worship two things - genius and kindness,” Kartashev says to his friend. The fulcrum in life for the hero will be work, in which the hero’s talents, spiritual and physical strengths will be revealed.

There are no incidents in “The Childhood Years of Bagrov - Grandson.” This is the story of a peaceful, eventless childhood, surprising only by the child’s extraordinary sensitivity, which is facilitated by an unusually compassionate upbringing. The special strength of the book lies in its depiction of a beautiful family: “The family allows a person of any era to remain more stable in society... limiting the animal in a person,” wrote A. Platonov. He also emphasized that the family in Aksakov’s portrayal fosters a sense of homeland and patriotism.

Seryozha Bagrov had a normal childhood, surrounded by parental love, tenderness and care. However, he sometimes noticed a lack of harmony between father and mother due to the fact that “on the one hand, there was exactingness, and on the other, an inability to satisfy subtle demands.” Seryozha noted with surprise that his beloved mother was indifferent to nature and arrogant towards the peasants. All this darkened the life of the boy, who understood that some of the blame lay with her.

I. Shmelev’s story “The Summer of the Lord” is based on childhood impressions and a reflection of the world of a child’s soul. Home, father, people, Russia - all this is given through children's perception.

In the plot, the boy is given a middle position, a kind of center between his father, seething with business and worries, and the calm, balanced Gorkin, whom the pilgrims take for a priest. And the novelty of each chapter is in the world of Beauty that opens to the child’s gaze.

The image of Beauty in the story has many faces. These are, of course, pictures of nature. Light, joy - this motif constantly sounds in the boy’s perception of nature. The landscape is like a kingdom of light. Nature spiritualizes the life of a child, connects it with invisible threads to the eternal and beautiful.

With the image of Heaven, the thought of God also enters the narrative. The most poetic pages of the story are those depicting Orthodox holidays and religious rituals. They show the beauty of spiritual communication: “Everyone was connected to me, and I was connected to everyone,” the boy thinks joyfully.

The whole story is like a filial bow and a monument to the father, created in the word. A very busy father, he always finds time for his son, for home, for people.

One of his contemporaries writes about him: “... Great is the power of talent, but even stronger, deeper and more irresistible is the tragedy and truth of a shocked and passionately loving soul... No one else has been given such a gift to hear and divine the suffering of others as he has.”

"Nikita's childhood" Unlike other works, in Tolstoy's story each chapter represents a complete story about some event from Nikita's life and even has its own name.

From childhood, A. Tolstoy fell in love with the magical Russian nature, recognized the rich, imaginative folk speech, treated the people with respect and endowed Nikita with all these qualities.

Poetry is poured into everything that surrounds this boy - gentle, observant and very serious. In the most ordinary events of Nikita's life, the author finds inexplicable charm. He seeks to poeticize the world and infects others with this desire.

In this work, told with a playful smile, Big world and deep feelings of adults and children.

As can be seen from the analysis of the works, the life of some heroes develops serenely and calmly in a happy family (Seryozha Bagrov, Nikita).

Other characters play pranks, suffer, fall in love, suffer, lose parents, struggle, pose difficult philosophical questions that a thinking person wrestles with from birth to death.

Grandfather told her:

-Are you okay, mother?

They kissed three times.

Grandfather pulled me out of the crowd of people and asked, holding me by the head:

-Whose will you be?

- Astrakhansky, from the cabin...

-What is he saying? - the grandfather turned to his mother and, without waiting for an answer, pushed me aside, saying:

- Those cheekbones are like fathers... Get into the boat!

We drove ashore and walked in a crowd up the mountain, along a ramp paved with large cobblestones, between two high slopes covered with withered, trampled grass.

Grandfather and mother walked ahead of everyone. He was as tall as her arm, walked shallowly and quickly, and she, looking down at him, seemed to be floating through the air. Behind them silently moved the uncles: black, smooth-haired Mikhail, dry as a grandfather; fair and curly-haired Yakov, some fat women in bright dresses and about six children, all older than me and all quiet. I walked with my grandmother and little aunt Natalya. Pale, blue-eyed, with a huge belly, she often stopped and, breathless, whispered:

- Oh, I can’t!

- Did they bother you? - Grandmother grumbled angrily. - What a stupid tribe!

I didn’t like both the adults and the children, I felt like a stranger among them, even my grandmother somehow faded and moved away.

I especially didn’t like my grandfather; I immediately sensed an enemy in him, and I developed a special attention to him, a cautious curiosity.

We reached the end of the congress. At the very top of it, leaning against the right slope and beginning the street, stood a squat one-story house, painted dirty pink, with a low roof and bulging windows. From the street it seemed large to me, but inside it, in the small, dimly lit rooms, it was cramped; Everywhere, as on a steamship in front of the pier, angry people were fussing, children were darting about in a flock of thieving sparrows, and everywhere there was a pungent, unfamiliar smell.

I found myself in the yard. The yard was also unpleasant: it was all hung with huge wet rags, filled with vats of thick, multi-colored water. The rags were also soaked in it. In the corner, in a low, dilapidated outbuilding, wood was burning hot in the stove, something was boiling, gurgling, and an invisible man was loudly saying strange words:

But truth is higher than pity, and I’m not talking about myself, but about that close, stuffy circle of terrible impressions in which a simple Russian person lived - and still lives - to this day.

Grandfather's house was filled with a hot fog of mutual enmity of everyone with everyone; it poisoned adults, and even children took an active part in it. Subsequently, from my grandmother’s stories, I learned that my mother arrived precisely on those days when her brothers persistently demanded a division of property from their father. The unexpected return of their mother further exacerbated and intensified their desire to stand out. They were afraid that my mother would demand the dowry assigned to her, but withheld by my grandfather, because she had married by hand, against his will. The uncles believed that this dowry should be divided between them. They, too, had long and fiercely argued with each other about who should open a workshop in the city, and who should open a workshop beyond the Oka, in the settlement of Kunavin.

Soon after their arrival, in the kitchen during lunch, a quarrel broke out: the uncles suddenly jumped to their feet and, leaning over the table, began to howl and growl at grandfather, baring their teeth pitifully and shaking themselves like dogs, and grandfather, banging his spoon on the table, turned red full and loudly - like a rooster - he cried:

- I’ll send it around the world!

Contorting her face painfully, the grandmother said:

“Give them everything, father, it will make you feel better, give it back!”

- Tsits, potatchica! - the grandfather shouted, his eyes sparkling, and it was strange that, such a small one, he could scream so deafeningly.

The mother got up from the table and, slowly walking away to the window, turned her back to everyone.

Suddenly Uncle Mikhail hit his brother in the face with a backhand; he howled, grappled with him, and both rolled on the floor, wheezing, groaning, swearing.

The children began to cry, pregnant aunt Natalya screamed desperately; my mother dragged her somewhere, taking her in her arms; the cheerful, pockmarked nanny Evgenya was kicking the children out of the kitchen; chairs fell; the young, broad-shouldered apprentice Tsyganok sat astride Uncle Mikhail’s back, and master Grigory Ivanovich, a bald, bearded man in dark glasses, calmly tied his uncle’s hands with a towel.

Stretching his neck, the uncle rubbed his thin black beard along the floor and wheezed terribly, and the grandfather, running around the table, cried out pitifully:

- Brothers, ah! Native blood! Oh you...

Even at the beginning of the quarrel, I was frightened, jumped onto the stove and from there watched in terrible amazement as my grandmother washed away the blood from Uncle Yakov’s broken face with water from a copper washstand; he cried and stamped his feet, and she said in a heavy voice:

- Damned, wild tribe, come to your senses!

The grandfather, pulling a torn shirt over his shoulder, shouted to her:

- What, the witch gave birth to animals?

When Uncle Yakov left, grandma poked her head into the corner, howling amazingly:

- Most Holy Mother of God, restore reason to my children!

Grandfather stood sideways to her and, looking at the table, where everything was overturned and spilled, he said quietly:

- You, mother, look after them, otherwise they will harass Varvara, what good...

- That's enough, God be with you! Take off your shirt, I’ll sew it up...

And, squeezing his head with her palms, she kissed her grandfather on the forehead; He, small opposite her, poked his face into her shoulder:

- Apparently we need to share, mother...

- We must, father, we must!

They talked for a long time; At first it was friendly, and then the grandfather began to shuffle his foot along the floor, like a rooster before a fight, shook his finger at the grandmother and whispered loudly:

- I know you, you love them more! And your Mishka is a Jesuit, and Yashka is a farmer! And they will drink up my goodness and squander it...

Turning awkwardly on the stove, I knocked the iron over; thundering down the steps of the building, he plopped into a tub of slop. Grandfather jumped onto the step, pulled me down and began to look into my face as if he was seeing me for the first time.

-Who put you on the stove? Mother?

- No, myself. I was afraid.

He pushed me away, lightly hitting my forehead with his palm.

- Just like my father! Go away…

I was glad to escape from the kitchen.

I clearly saw that my grandfather was watching me with his smart and keen green eyes, and I was afraid of him. I remember I always wanted to hide from those burning eyes. It seemed to me that my grandfather was evil; he speaks to everyone mockingly, insultingly, teasing and trying to anger everyone.

- Oh, you! - he often exclaimed; The long “ee-and” sound always gave me a dull, chilly feeling.

At the hour of rest, during evening tea, when he, his uncles and workers came to the kitchen from the workshop, tired, with their hands stained with sandalwood, burnt with vitriol, with their hair tied with a ribbon, all looking like dark icons in the corner of the kitchen - in this dangerous For an hour my grandfather sat opposite me and, arousing the envy of his other grandchildren, talked to me more often than to them. It was all foldable, chiseled, sharp. His satin, silk-embroidered, blank waistcoat was old and worn out, his cotton shirt was wrinkled, there were large patches on the knees of his trousers, and yet he seemed to be dressed cleaner and more handsome than his sons, who wore jackets, shirtfronts and silk scarves around their necks.

A few days after my arrival, he forced me to learn prayers. All the other children were older and were already learning to read and write from the sexton of the Assumption Church; its golden heads were visible from the windows of the house.

I was taught by the quiet, timid Aunt Natalya, a woman with a childish face and such transparent eyes that, it seemed to me, through them I could see everything behind her head.