The creativity of Saltykov-Shchedrin is extremely diverse. He wrote novels, dramas, chronicles, essays, reviews, stories, articles, reviews. Among the satirist’s vast heritage, his fairy tales occupy a special place. Form folk tale used by many writers before Shchedrin. Literary tales, written in verse or prose, recreated the world of folk ideas, folk poetry, and sometimes also contained satirical elements, for example, Pushkin’s fairy tales “About the Priest and His Worker Balda”, “About the Golden Cockerel”. Shchedrin creates sharply satirical tales, continuing the Pushkin tradition.
Fairy tales are the result of many years of life observations, the result of everything creative path writer. They intertwine the fantastic and the real, combine the comic with the tragic, they widely use the grotesque, hyperbole, and manifest amazing art Aesopian language. In fairy tales we meet all Shchedrin's heroes. Here are the stupid, fierce, ignorant rulers of the people, their exploiters (\"Bear in the Voivodeship\", \"Eagle Patron of the Arts\", \"Wild Landowner\") here and the people themselves, hardworking, talented, powerful and at the same time submissive to their exploiters (\"The Tale of How a Man Fed Two Generals\", \"Horse\") here are also people awakening, seeking truth and overthrowing the yoke of autocracy (\"The Raven Petitioner\", \"On the Way\ ", \"Bogatyr\").
Fairy tales depict the betrayal of liberals (\"Liberal\", \"Dried roach\"), the cowardly narrow-mindedness of the average person (\"Sane Hare\").
In many of Shchedrin's fairy tales, there is a belief in the final triumph of positive ideals. This faith illuminates the sad pages of his satire with the light of optimism. Thus, in the fairy tale "Conscience Lost" Shchedrin stigmatizes the world of predators, money-grubbers and covetous people - a society that has lost its conscience. But the writer expresses confidence that conscience, thrown out like an unnecessary old rag, once in the cradle where a little Russian child lies, will find its protector in him.
Like Nekrasov, Shchedrin wrote his fairy tales for the people, for the broadest reading circles. He turned to oral folk art, enriching traditional images and plots with new, revolutionary content. The satirist masterfully used the folk language, as well as the language of journalism, and clerical jargon, and archaisms, and foreign words.
Shchedrin widely used images from folk tales about animals: a greedy wolf, a cunning fox, a cowardly hare, a stupid and evil bear. However, the satirist introduced topical political motives into the world of folk tales and, with the help of traditional, familiar fairy-tale images, revealed complex problems of our time.
Thus, in the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship,” a dull, sometimes evil, sometimes good-natured fairy-tale clubfooted bear, under the pen of a satirist, acquires the features of an obscurantist administrator who exterminates sedition, oppresses the people and destroys education.
The satirist castigated not only weaknesses and vices in his fairy tales. For example, in a fairy tale " The wise minnow\" With bitter mockery, he draws the image of a frightened man in the street, \"a dunce who doesn't eat, doesn't drink, doesn't see anyone, doesn't share bread and salt with anyone, but only saves his cold life.\"
This tale contains extremely important (and not only for Shchedrin’s era) philosophical problems: what is the meaning of life and the purpose of a person, what ideals should he strive for, how to live?
The image of a small, pitiful fish, incompetent. sickening and cowardly, perfectly characterizes the trembling man in the street. The writer attributes human properties to the fish and at the same time shows that humans have “fish-like” traits. Thus, "minnow" is the definition of a person, it is artistic metaphor, aptly characterizing the breed of ordinary people, cowardly and pathetic.
The entire biography of the gudgeon comes down to a short formula: "He lived - he trembled and died - he trembled." With his fairy tale, the writer wants to tell the reader: live in such a way as to give people warmth and light, because happiness can only be one thing - bringing happiness to others.
The images of fish, animals, and birds created by the satirist have become household names. If we talk about a person: this is a real idealistic crucian carp, this one is a dried roach, and that one is a wise minnow, then it is clear to everyone what qualities we mean.
Of all the arts, literature has the richest possibilities for embodying the comic. Most often, the following types and techniques of comedy are distinguished: satire, humor, grotesque, irony. Satire is called looking “through a magnifying glass” (V. Mayakovsky). The object of satire in literature can be a variety of phenomena. Political satire is most common. A clear proof of this is the fairy tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Fantastic fairy tales allowed Saltykov-Shchedrin to continue criticizing the social system, bypassing censorship even in the face of political reaction. Shchedrin's fairy tales depict not just evil or good people, not just the struggle between good and evil, like most folk tales, they reveal the class struggle in Russia in the second half of the 19th century century.
Let us consider the features of the problems of the writer’s fairy tales using the example of two of them. In “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals,” Shchedrin shows the image of a hard worker-breadwinner. He can get food, sew clothes, conquer the elemental forces of nature. On the other hand, the reader sees the man’s resignation, his humility, his unquestioning submission to the two generals.
He even ties himself to a rope, which once again indicates the submissiveness and downtroddenness of the Russian peasant. The author calls on the people to fight, protest, calls to wake up, think about their situation, and stop submitting meekly.
In the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner,” the author shows to what extent a rich gentleman can sink when he finds himself without a man. Abandoned by his peasants, he immediately turns into a dirty and wild animal, moreover, he becomes a forest predator. And this life, in essence, is a continuation of his previous predatory existence. The wild landowner, like the generals, acquires a dignified appearance again only after his peasants return.
In its own way literary form and style, Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales are associated with folklore traditions. In them we meet traditional fairy tale characters: talking animals, fish, birds. The writer uses the beginnings, sayings, proverbs, linguistic and compositional triple repetitions, vernacular and everyday peasant vocabulary, constant epithets, words with diminutive suffixes, characteristic of a folk tale. As in a folk tale, Saltykov-Shchedrin does not have a clear time and spatial framework. But, using traditional techniques, the author quite deliberately deviates from tradition.
He introduces socio-political vocabulary, clerical phrases, French words. The pages of his fairy tales include episodes of modern public life. This is how styles are mixed, creating a comic effect, and the plot is combined with modern problems. Thus, enriching the tale with new satirical techniques, Saltykov-Shchedrin turned it into a tool of socio-political satire.
A striking sign of the creativity of many writers of the XIX century was their ability to continue folklore traditions in their works. Pushkin, Nekrasov, Gogol, and Tolstoy were famous for this. But this series would be incomplete if we did not add one more name to it - Saltykov-Shchedrin. Among the enormous heritage of this writer, his fairy tales are very popular. It is in them that the traditions of Russian folklore can be most clearly traced.
The form of folk tale was used before Saltykov-Shchedrin different writers. In poetry or prose they recreated the world of folk ideas, folk poetry, and folk humor. Let us recall, for example, Pushkin’s fairy tales: “About the priest and his worker Balda”, “About the golden cockerel”.
The work of Saltykov-Shchedrin is also replete with folk poetic literature. His tales are the result of many years of life observations of the author. The writer conveyed them to the reader in an accessible and vivid manner. artistic form. He took words and images for them from folk tales and legends, in proverbs and sayings, in the picturesque talk of the crowd, in all the poetic elements of the living folk language. Like Nekrasov, Shchedrin wrote his fairy tales for ordinary people, for the widest readership. It is no coincidence that the subtitle was chosen: “Fairy tales for children of considerable age"These works were distinguished by true nationality. Using folklore samples, the author created on their basis and in their spirit, creatively revealed and developed their meaning, took them from the people in order to return them later ideologically and artistically enriched. He masterfully used the folk language. Memories have been preserved that Saltykov-Shchedrin “loved purely Russian peasant speech, which he knew perfectly.” He often said about himself: “This is basically the language of his works.”
Emphasizing the connection between fairy tales and reality, Saltykov-Shchedrin combined elements of folklore speech with modern concepts. The author used not only the usual opening (“Once upon a time...”), traditional phrases (“neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen,” “began to live and get on with life”), folk expressions (“he thinks in a thought,” “mind the chamber "), colloquialisms ("spreading", "destroy"), but also introduced journalistic vocabulary, clerical jargon, foreign words, and turned to Aesopian speech.
He enriched folklore stories new content. In his fairy tales, the writer created images of the animal kingdom: the greedy Wolf, the cunning Fox, the cowardly Hare, the stupid and evil Bear. The reader knew these images well from Krylov’s fables. But Saltykov-Shchedrin introduced topical themes into the world of folk art. political topics and, with the help of familiar characters, revealed the complex problems of our time.
But the author’s words dedicated to the people are permeated with bitterness. He endures the oppression of the landowner, he endures it without complaint. When it becomes unbearable, the men turn to God with a tearful orphan prayer: “Lord! It’s easier for us to perish with small children than to suffer like this all our lives!” Men are dumb creatures living an unconscious herd life. The heart of the great writer is filled with longing, pain for his people and hatred for the oppressors.
In the fairy tale, there is a call-question, like Nekrasov’s: “Will you wake up, full of strength?” And, it seems to me, with this fairy tale and all his other works, Saltykov-Shchedrin tried to convey to the people those high ideals in the name of which he himself fought with the sharp pen of satire.
Relying on folk wisdom, using the riches of folk speech, Russian folklore, imbued with purely folk humor, the writer created works whose purpose was to awaken in the people their great spirit, their will and strength. With all his creativity, Saltykov-Shchedrin sought to ensure that “children of a fair age” matured and ceased to be children.
Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote fairy tales mainly from 1880 to 1886, at the final stage of his work. The form of a fairy tale was chosen by the writer not only because this genre provided the opportunity to hide the true meaning of the work from censorship, but also because it allowed a simple and accessible interpretation of the most complex problems of politics and morality. He seemed to pour all the ideological and thematic richness of his satire into the form most accessible to the masses.
Shchedrin's tales are truly encyclopedic. Everything was reflected in them Russian society post-reform era, all public and social forces of Russia.
The main themes of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales were: denunciation of autocracy (“The Bear in the Voivodeship”), the ruling class (“Wild Landowner”), and liberalism (“ The wise minnow”, “Liberal”, “Crucian idealist”), and also touched upon the problem of the people (“The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals”).
Folklore traditions are clearly visible in Shchedrin's fairy tales. The connection with folklore is established with the help of the traditional “once upon a time,” which is the beginning of the fairy tale. The writer also uses sayings (“By pike command, according to my desire...”), refers to folk sayings presented in a socio-political interpretation.
The plot of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales is also folkloric, since here good is opposed to evil, good is opposed to bad. However, the usual boundaries between these two concepts are blurred, and even positive characters turn out to be endowed with negative traits, which are then ridiculed by the author himself.
Saltykov-Shchedrin had to constantly improve his allegorical style in order to make his work accessible to the reader, so his closeness to folklore is also manifested in the figurative structure, which gives him the opportunity to directly use epithets, and when choosing animals for allegory, also rely on the fable tradition. The writer uses roles familiar to both fables and fairy tales. For example, in the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship” the Bear-voivode is a major, the Donkey is an adviser, the Parrots are buffoons, and the Nightingale is a singer.
The allegory of Shchedrin’s fairy tales is always as transparent as in Krylov’s fables, where, according to Belinsky, there are no animals, but there are people, “and, moreover, Russian people.” It was no coincidence that Saltykov-Shchedrin’s tales were called fables in prose, since they clearly showed the tradition of depicting human vices in the images of animals corresponding to this genre. In addition, Shchedrin's fairy tale, like Krylov's or Aesop's fable, always carries a lesson and morality, being a spontaneous educator and mentor of the masses.
In his fairy tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin continues the Russian satirical literary tradition. For example, in a number of fairy tales Gogolian motifs and polemics with Gogol can be traced. In general, Gogol’s satire largely determined the nature of subsequent literary activity writer. For example, both Gogol’s “The Overcoat” and Saltykov-Shchedrin’s “The Wise Piskar” show the psychology of a frightened average person. Shchedrin's innovation was that he introduced political satire into fairy tales, which had both a topical and universal resonance. This writer revolutionized the very idea of satire, going beyond Gogol's psychological method, pushed the boundaries of the possibilities of satirical generalization and ridicule. From now on, the subject of satire was not individual, often random events and incidents and not the private individuals involved in them, but the entire life of the state from top to bottom, from the essence of the tsarist autocracy to the dumb slave people, whose tragedy lay in the inability to protest against cruel forms of life. Thus, the main idea of the fairy tale “The Bear in the Voivodeship” is that the causes of national disasters are not only in the abuse of power, but also in the very nature of the autocratic system. This means that the salvation of the people lies in the overthrow of tsarism.
Shchedrin's satire thus acquires a persistent political overtones.
The satirist fights not with specific phenomena, but with the one who generates and feeds these phenomena social system. Saltykov-Shchedrin considers each individual person as a product of the social environment that gave birth to him, deprives artistic image all human traits and replaces individual psychology with manifestations of class instinct. Every action of the hero is interpreted by Shchedrin as socially necessary and inevitable.
In all Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales, two levels are organically combined: real and fantastic, life and fiction, and fantasy is always based on real events.
The depiction of the “ghostliness” of political reality required an appropriate form that, by bringing the phenomenon to the point of absurdity, to the point of ugliness, would expose its true ugliness. This form could only be the grotesque (the combination of the incompatible), which is an important source in fairy tales comic effect. Thus, the grotesque distorted and exaggerated reality, while fantasy gave the most unusual life phenomena the character of familiarity and routine, and the thought of the daily and regular nature of what was happening only strengthened the impression. Excessive cruelty political regime and the complete lack of rights of the people really bordered on magic, on fantasy. So, for example, in the fairy tale “The Wild Landowner” Shchedrin in an ugly-comic form showed the apogee of both moral and external “negligence” of man. The landowner “has grown hair, his nails have become like iron,” he began to walk on all fours, “he has even lost the ability to pronounce articulate sounds,” “but has not yet acquired a tail.” And in “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals” the generals find desert island issue of “Moskovskie Vedomosti”.
Shchedrin very actively uses hyperbole. Both the peasant's dexterity and the generals' ignorance are extremely exaggerated. A skilled man cooked a handful of soup, stupid generals don’t know that buns are made from flour, and one even swallowed his friend’s medal.
Sometimes - although not as often and obviously as other means artistic image, - Saltykov-Shchedrin uses antithesis (opposition). This can be seen in the example of “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals.” The generals “raked in so much money - it’s impossible to say in a fairy tale, not to describe it with a pen,” and the man received “a glass of vodka and a nickel of silver.”
Important in understanding a fairy tale is the author's irony, thanks to which the author's position is revealed. Irony can be seen in all the images present in fairy tales. For example, in “The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals,” the calligraphy teacher cannot distinguish between the cardinal directions.
The language of all Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales is particularly aphoristic. The writer not only actively uses elements of folklore (proverbs, sayings), already established in the language, but also introduces new expressions into it, for example: “Please accept the assurances of my complete respect and devotion,” “Actually, I was not angry, but so, a brute.” "
So, active use artistic techniques allowed the writer to more deeply reveal the essence of the autocratic apparatus. In addition, the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin had a great influence on further development Russian literature and especially the genre of satire.
The plots of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales are based on a grotesque situation, but behind it one can always guess the real ones. public relations, reality is shown under the guise of a fairy tale. The grotesque-hyperbolic images of the heroes are essentially metaphors for the actual socio-psychological types of Russia at that time.
Found in fairy tales real people, newspaper names, references to topical socio-political topics. Along with this, there are also stylized situations that parody reality. In particular, ideological cliches and their typical linguistic forms are parodied.
Animals in fairy tales often perform a typical fable function, rather than a fairy tale one. Saltykov-Shchedrin uses “ready-made” roles assigned to some animals; traditional symbolism is found in his fairy tales.
Saltykov-Shchedrin demonstrates his commitment to the fable tradition; in particular, he includes in some fairy tales a moral, a typical fable device, for example, “let this serve as a lesson to us.”
The grotesque, as Saltykov-Shchedrin’s favorite means of satire, is expressed in the very fact that animals act as people in specific situations, most often associated with
ideological disputes, socio-political issues relevant to Russia in the 1880s. In the depiction of these incredible, fantastic events, the originality of Shchedrin’s realism is revealed, noting the essence of social conflicts and relationships, character traits which are hyperbolized.
Evil, angry ridicule of slave psychology is one of the main objectives of Shchedrin's fairy tales. He not only states these features of the Russian people - their long-suffering, irresponsibility, and not only anxiously seeks their origins and limits.
Saltykov-Shchedrin widely uses the technique of allegory in his works. Including fairy tales. He also masterfully uses the vernacular.
In conclusion, I would like to add that the thoughts expressed by the writer in fairy tales are still contemporary today. Shchedrin's satire is time-tested and it sounds especially poignant in times of social unrest, such as those that Russia is experiencing today.
“The story of how one man fed two generals.”
The plot of the tale is as follows: two generals suddenly, in an unimaginable way, found themselves on a desert island in a completely helpless state. This is the first of the features of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales - a combination of the real and the fantastic. The second feature is irony. The image of these generals is filled with it; their appearance is funny. They are in nightgowns, barefoot, but with an order around their necks. Thus, in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s description, the order is depreciated and loses its meaning, since they received it not for work, but for “long sitting in the department.” The author also speaks ironically about the general’s abilities: he cannot remember them, except perhaps the calligraphic handwriting.
But the general’s stupidity is visible, their ignorance of life is obvious. They don’t know how to do anything, they are used to living at the expense of others, they think that rolls grow on trees. The third visual device used here is hyperbole, that is, exaggeration. Of course, there couldn’t be such stupid generals, but they didn’t receive their salaries based on merit—as much as they wanted. With the help of hyperbole, the author ridicules and depersonalizes this phenomenon. To emphasize the worthlessness of the generals, the author uses the fourth feature - contrast. The generals are not alone: miraculously, a man ended up on the island. A jack of all trades, he fed the insatiable generals. Capable of creating anything: even boiling soup in a handful. Saltykov-Shchedrin is ironic not only about the generals, but also about the peasant. In particular, over his submission to stupid, defenseless generals. They forced him to make a rope for himself - the generals wanted to tie him so that he would not run away. The situation is fabulous, but the author used it to laugh evilly at his contemporary life, namely, at mediocre newspapers. After futile attempts to get food, the generals find one of these newspapers on the island and read it out of boredom. Saltykov-Shchedrin invites the reader to make fun of its content and stupid articles. The fairy tale ends with the man returning the generals to St. Petersburg, and in gratitude they give a glass of vodka and a copper penny. Saltykov-Shchedrin uses a phrase from a folk tale: “It flowed down my mustache, but didn’t get into my mouth.” But here it is used in the same ironic sense - the man got nothing. The masters live by the labor of the peasants, and the latter are ungrateful, and the savior people receive nothing from their labor.
Saltykov-Shchedrin said: “I love Russia to the point of heartache.” It was love and the desire for change that guided him when, with the help of various visual arts painted a really fantastic story about two worthless generals and a smart guy.
“Crucian carp is an idealist.”
This fairy tale Saltykova-Shchedrin, like all his fairy tales, self-explanatory name. From the title you can already tell that this tale describes a crucian carp who had idealistic views on life. Crucian carp is the object of satire, and in his image people are represented who, like him, hope for a class idyll.
He is pure in soul, and says that evil has never been a driving force, it devastates our lives and puts pressure on it. And good is the driving force, it is the future.
But immersed in his ideological thoughts, he completely forgot that he lived in a world where there was, is and will be a place for evil. But Saltykov-Shchedrin does not ridicule idealistic views, but the methods by which he wanted to achieve an idyll. In his fairy tales, the author uses threefold repetition. Three times the crucian carp went to debate with the pike. Seeing her for the first time, he was not intimidated; she seemed to him like an ordinary fish, like everyone else, only mouth to ear. He also told her about happy life, where all the fish will be united, that even she listened to him, but the methods seemed funny to her too. Karas proposed to pass laws prohibiting, for example, pike from eating crucian carp. Yes, the fact is that these laws did not exist and, perhaps, never will. So the pike had three disputes with crucian carp, but accidentally swallowed it with water.
There is irony in this tale, because they secretly mock the crucian carp, saying that he is smart.
The images of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales have entered our daily life, and now you can see people promoting their ideology, but not knowing how to implement it.
"Sane Hare"
The sane hare, the hero of the fairy tale of the same name, “reasoned so sensibly that it fits a donkey.” He believed that “every animal is given its own life” and that, although “everyone eats hares,” he is “not picky” and “agrees to live in every possible way.” In the heat of this philosophizing, he was caught by the Fox, who, bored with his speeches, ate him.
The heroes of the tale are standard for most fairy tales. You can remember not a single fairy tale where the main characters are a fox and a hare and their confrontation is discussed throughout the entire work. In fact, this is an exciting and quite interesting plot. That is why Saltykov-Shchedrin focused on these characters in one of his fairy tales.
The main theme of the tale is that when depicting animals, the author wanted each reader to transfer the content to himself, i.e. a fairy tale is like a fable and has a hidden meaning.
In my opinion, if we apply the fairy tale to the modern world, then its main idea is that for the most part there are much more stupid people and therefore those who are more literate and educated face many problems and lack of recognition of themselves in society. Also, the hare's intelligence is intertwined with a degree of boasting and talkativeness, which ultimately leads to a disastrous end.
Each of the characters has their own point of view and expresses their thoughts. For excessive talkativeness, the hare was eaten by a fox, although his reasoning cannot be called meaningless and irrelevant.
"Wild Landowner"
The theme of serfdom and the life of the peasantry played an important role in the work of Saltykov-Shchedrin. The writer could not openly protest the existing system. Saltykov-Shchedrin hides his merciless criticism of autocracy behind fairy-tale motives. He wrote his political tales from 1883 to 1886. In them, the writer truthfully reflected the life of Russia, in which despotic and all-powerful landowners destroy hardworking men.
In this tale, Saltykov-Shchedrin reflects on the unlimited power of landowners, who abuse the peasants in every possible way, imagining themselves almost as gods. The writer also talks about the landowner’s stupidity and lack of education: “that landowner was stupid, he read the newspaper “Vest” and his body was soft, white and crumbly.” Shchedrin also reflects the disenfranchised position of the peasantry in Tsarist Russia in this fairy tale: “There was no torch for the peasant to light in the light, there was no rod with which to sweep out the hut.” The main idea of the fairy tale was that the landowner cannot and does not know how to live without the peasant, and the landowner dreamed of work only in nightmares. So in this fairy tale, the landowner, who had no idea about work, becomes a dirty and wild beast. After all the peasants abandoned him, the landowner never even washed himself: “Yes, I’ve been walking around unwashed for so many days!”
The writer caustically ridicules all this negligence of the master class. The life of a landowner without a peasant is far from reminiscent of normal human life.
The master became so wild that “he was covered with hair from head to toe, his nails became like iron, he even lost the ability to pronounce articulate sounds. But he had not yet acquired a tail.” Life without peasants was disrupted even in the district itself: “no one pays taxes, no one drinks wine in taverns.” “Normal” life begins in the district only when the men return to it. In the image. Saltykov-Shchedrin showed this one landowner the life of all the gentlemen in Russia. And the final words of the tale are addressed to each landowner: “He plays grand solitaire, yearns for his former life in the forests, washes himself only under duress, and moos from time to time.”
This tale is full of folk motifs and is close to Russian folklore. There are no sophisticated words in it, but there are simple Russian words: “once said and done”, “peasant trousers”, etc. Saltykov-Shchedrin sympathizes with the people. He believes that the suffering of the peasants will not be endless, and freedom will triumph.
"Horse"
In the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the image of the Russian people, which was embodied in the image of a horse, is very well revealed. Konyaga are ordinary people, peasants who work for the benefit of the entire state, who with their labor are able to feed all the inhabitants of Russia. The image of Konyaga is imbued with the pain and fatigue that a difficult task gives him.
If Saltykov-Shchedrin described, he spoke verbatim about the lives of various social strata, then his works would not have been published due to censorship, but, thanks to Aesopian language, he achieved a very touching and natural description of the classes. What is Aesopian language? This special kind secret writing, censored allegory, which was often resorted to fiction, deprived of freedom of expression under censorship. In Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tale “The Horse,” this technique is widely used, which allows one to expose reality and serves as a means of combating the infringement of the rights of the lower strata of society by political figures. This work shows the difficult, even ugly, life of the Russian people. Saltykov-Shchedrin himself sympathizes with the peasants, but he still shows this terrible picture of a miserable lifestyle.
The field on which a man and a horse work is limitless, just as their work and importance for the state are limitless. And, apparently, the images of the Idle Dancers contain all the upper strata of the population: gentlemen, officials - who only watch the work of the horse, because their life is easy and cloudless. They are beautiful and well-fed, they are given the food that the horse provides with his hard work and he himself lives from hand to mouth.
Saltykov-Shchedrin encourages us to think about the fact that such hard work of the Russian people for the good of the state does not provide them with freedom from serfdom and does not save them from humiliation in front of officials and gentlemen who live easily, who can afford a lot.
The problem of the people and the bureaucracy is still very relevant in our time, because for modern readers it will be interesting and curious. Also, thanks to the use of such an artistic medium as Aesopian language, the problem of the fairy tale “The Horse” is acute to this day.
Tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin are written in real folk language - simple, concise and expressive.
The satirist overheard the words and images for his wonderful tales in folk tales and legends, in proverbs and sayings, in the picturesque talk of the crowd, in all the poetic elements of the living folk language. The connection between Shchedrin’s fairy tales and folklore is also evident in:
Traditional beginnings using the form of a long past tense (“Once upon a time there were”; “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state”; “Once upon a time there was a newspaperman, and there was a reader”);
The satirist’s frequent appeal to folk sayings - proverbs, sayings and sayings (“neither to describe with a pen, nor to tell in a fairy tale”, “at the behest of a pike”, “soon the tale will tell”, “how long, how short?”);
The use of numerals with non-numerical meaning (“far away kingdom”, “because of distant lands”);
Use constant epithets and ordinary folklore inversions (“honey full”, “furious millet”, “rolling snores”, “fierce animals”);
Borrowing proper names from folklore (Militrisa Kirbitevna, Ivanushka the Fool, Tsar Gorokh, Mikhailo Ivanovich);
The use of synonymous combinations characteristic of folk poetry (“on the road”, “judged and dressed”) and phraseological units dating back to folklore (“to breed on beans”, “you can’t lead with your ears”, “grandmother said in two”).
The closeness of Saltykov-Shchedrin's satire and works of folklore can also be seen in the use of colloquial folk speech or vernacular.
Vernacular - words, expressions, phrases, forms of inflection that are not included in the norm literary speech; often allowed in literary works And colloquial speech to create a certain color.
The vernacular made Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales more intelligible and understandable for the people, and helped the satirist express his attitude towards him or his oppressors. The speech of the heroes of Saltykov-Shchedrin's fairy tales, who personify the working people, is simple, natural, intelligent and colorful. It is unusually individualized and depicts a specific social type.
However, there is no dialogue as such, much less a noticeable confrontation between characters in fairy tales. In essence, this is one common peasant, nationwide speech, divided into replicas distributed to two heroes. They do not argue, they think out loud, correcting and supplementing each other, looking for more convincing explanations for incomprehensible, confusing issues, and come to a common ending.
And yet, despite the abundance folklore elements, Shchedrin's tale, taken as a whole, is not similar to folk tales. It does not repeat traditional folklore schemes either in composition or in plot. The satirist not only freely created on the basis and in the spirit of folklore samples, revealing and developing their deep meaning, but also brought something new, his own. For example, in the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the image of the author appears, helping the satirist to express his personal attitude towards acting persons and current events.
Based on the rich imagery of a satirical folk tale, Saltykov-Shchedrin interpreted complex social phenomena with the help of unsurpassed examples of brevity. Every word, epithet, metaphor, comparison, every artistic image in his fairy tales has a high ideological and artistic meaning and concentrates enormous satirical power. In this regard, especially noteworthy are those tales in which representatives of the animal world act.
Images of the animal kingdom have long been inherent in fables and satirical tale about animals. Under the guise of a story about animals, the people acquired some freedom to attack their oppressors and the opportunity to speak in an intelligible, funny, witty manner about serious things. This form of artistic storytelling, beloved by the people, was widely used in Shchedrin’s fairy tales.
“The Menagerie” presented in Shchedrin’s tales testifies to the satirist’s great skill in the field of allegory and artistic allegory. The choice of representatives of the animal kingdom for allegories in Shchedrin’s tales is always subtly motivated and based on the folklore, fairy tale and literary fable tradition.
For his socio-political allegories, depicting class enmity and despotism of the authorities, Saltykov-Shchedrin used images fixed in the fairy-tale and fable tradition (lion, bear, donkey, wolf, fox, hare, pike, eagle, etc.), as well as , starting from this tradition, he extremely successfully created other images (crucian carp, gudgeon, roach, hyena, etc.).
The hidden meaning of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy-tale allegories is easily comprehended by the reader from the very figurative pictures of folk tales and fables and, due to the fact that the satirist often accompanies his allegorical images with direct hints of the hidden meaning.
The special poetic charm and irresistible artistic persuasiveness of Shchedrin’s fairy tales lies in the fact that, no matter how the satirist “humanizes” his zoological pictures, no matter what complex roles he assigns to the “tailed” heroes, the latter always retain their basic natural properties.
Another typical Saltykov-Shchedrin technique in fairy tales is the interweaving of the real with the fantastic, the reliable with fiction. The fantasy of Shchedrin's fairy tales is fundamentally real, inextricably linked with concrete political reality, and carries an extremely deep revolutionary content in an encrypted form. An example of this is Shchedrin’s political fairy tales “The Eagle Patron” and “The Bear in the Voivodeship”. The satirist, describing the activities of the heroes of these fairy tales, makes it clear that we are not talking about bird and bear affairs and actions.
In the images of these predators, the satirist emphasizes their main, leading features. The beginnings and endings of fairy tales, fairy-tale images taken by Saltykov-Shchedrin from folklore in no way detract from the comic effect when describing reality. With the help of the discrepancy between the magical setting and the pronounced real political content, Saltykov-Shchedrin emphasizes the meaning of such fairy tales as “The Sleepless Eye” and “The Bogatyr”, and further exposes the political essence of any type or circumstance.
Also, Saltykov-Shchedrin, as the narrative progresses, adds some more elements of reality to the fairy tales: the hares study “statistical tables published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs...”, write correspondence to newspapers, and newspapers publish articles about them; bears go on business trips and receive travel money; the birds are talking about the capitalist railway worker Guboshlepov; fish talk about the constitution, debate about socialism; a landowner living “in a certain kingdom, in a certain state” reads the real newspaper “Vest” and much more.
The striking originality of Shchedrin as a satirist writer also lies in the power of his humor, because laughter is the main weapon of satire. “This weapon is very strong,” said Saltykov-Shchedrin, “for nothing discourages vice more than the consciousness that it has been guessed and that laughter has already been heard about it” XIII, 270. Shchedrin’s laughter is revealing and castigating, ennobling and educating, causes hatred and confusion among enemies and joy among champions of truth, goodness and justice. Saltykov-Shchedrin considered the main purpose of laughter to arouse feelings of indignation and active protest against social inequality and political despotism.
In Shchedrin’s laughter, mostly menacing and indignant, other emotional tones and shades are not excluded, due to the diversity ideological plans and image objects. “Fairy Tales,” which paint pictures of all social strata of society, can also serve as a textbook of examples of Shchedrin’s humor in all the richness of its artistic manifestation. Here there is contemptuous sarcasm, branding kings and royal nobles (“Eagle the Patron,” “Bear in the Voivodeship”), and cheerful mockery of the nobility (“The Tale of How One Man Fed Two Generals,” “Wild Landowner”), and a disdainful mockery of the shameful cowardice of the liberal intelligentsia (“The Wise Minnow,” “Liberal”).
In "Fairy Tales" Shchedrin's irony shines with all its colors. The satirist admires the clever hares and, together with the generals, is indignant at the behavior of the parasitic peasant, as if he agrees with the need for a pacifying bear to come to the forest slum.
All the techniques that Saltykov-Shchedrin used in his fairy tales, like the genre itself political tale, are used to express political views and the author's ideas. It was in fairy tales that Saltykov-Shchedrin’s ardent love for the people, hatred and contempt for their oppressors received especially vivid expression.
The entire cycle of fairy tales “for children of a fair age” is built on sharp social contrasts. It's not just evil and good people, the fight between good and evil. Fairy tales reveal the class struggle in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. they recreate a picture of a society torn apart by internal contradictions, full of social drama, and depict a direct and sharp clash between representatives of antagonistic classes. Next to the deep drama of the life of the working people, Saltykov-Shchedrin showed the most shameful comedy of the life of the noble-bourgeois strata of society. Hence the constant interweaving of the tragic and the comic in Shchedrin’s fairy tales, the continuous alternation of feelings of sympathy with feelings of anger, the severity of conflicts and the sharpness of ideological polemics.
In his tales, Saltykov-Shchedrin embodied his many years of observations of the life of the enslaved Russian peasantry, his bitter thoughts about the fate of the oppressed masses, his deep sympathies for the working people and his bright hopes for people's strength.
Samoilov M.
Research work: "Folklore motifs in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin"
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Municipal budgetary educational institution
Bondarskaya secondary school
Literary and artistic creativity competition
"Masterpieces from the Inkwell"
Research work (abstract) on the topic:
“Folklore motives in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin"
Nomination: “Literary Studies”
Completed by: student of class 7A Samoilov M.
Head: Russian language teacher and
Literature Shestakova O.A.
With. Bondari
2016
Brief summary
The author of this work tried to find the distinctive features and characteristics of the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, as well as to analyze what brings the fairy tales of the great writer closer to works of folklore and how they differ from them.
Tasks:
Analyze folklore motives in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin;
Find out the distinctive features and characteristics of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales;
Check whether the work of this author is interesting to the modern reader.
Research methods:
1. Working with fairy tale texts.
2. Analysis of information about M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales from various sources.
3. Testing based on the tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin.
Relevance
A striking feature of the creativity of many writers of the 19th century was their ability to continue folklore traditions in their works. This also applies to the work of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. This is most clearly manifested in his fairy tales.
The fairy tale is one of the most popular folklore genres. This type of oral storytelling with fantastic fiction has a centuries-old history. Saltykov-Shchedrin's tales are associated not only with folklore traditions, but also with satirical literary fairy tale XVIII-XIX centuries.
In “Fairy Tales for Children of a Fair Age,” the writer castigates the unrest that hinders the development of Russia. And the main evil that the author condemns is serfdom.
I explore the connection between M.E.'s fairy tales. Saltykov-Shchedrin with the traditions of oral folk art and will try to understand for what purpose the author introduced topical political themes into folklore motifs and, with the help of familiar characters, revealed the complex problems of his time.
Introduction
M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote more than 30 fairy tales.
But A.S. Pushkin was right when he wrote: “A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it!..” Yes, a fairy tale is a lie, a fiction, but it was with the help of M.E.’s fairy tale. Saltykov - Shchedrin shows everything positive traits people and stigmatizes and ridicules the dominance of some over others in society. I believe that with the help of a fairy tale it was easier for the author to communicate with the people, because its language is understandable to everyone. In order to verify this, let’s take a closer look at the fairy tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
Main part
Among the enormous literary heritage of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, his fairy tales are very popular. It is in them that the traditions of Russian folklore can be most clearly traced. Fairy tales are the result of the author’s many years of life observations, as they were created at the final stage of his life and creative path. Of the 32 tales, 28 were created within four years, from 1882 to 1886. The writer conveyed them to the reader in an accessible and vivid artistic form. He took words and images for them from folk tales and legends, in proverbs and sayings, in the picturesque talk of the crowd, in all the poetic elements of the living folk language. Shchedrin wrote his fairy tales for ordinary people, for the widest circles of readers. It is no coincidence that the subtitle was chosen: “Fairy tales for children of a fair age.” These works were distinguished by true nationality.
What brings Shchedrin’s fairy tales closer to folk tales and how do they differ from them? Let's try to figure it out. In Shchedrin's fairy tales we see typical fairy tale beginnings (“Once upon a time there were two generals...”, “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state there lived a landowner...”), which give the tales a special, some kind of fantastic flavor; sayings (“at the command of a pike”, “neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen”); phrases characteristic of folk speech (“thought-thought”, “said-done”); syntax and vocabulary close to the folk language; exaggeration, grotesque, hyperbole. For example, one of the generals eats the other; The “wild landowner,” like a cat, climbs a tree in an instant, a man cooks a handful of soup. As in folk tales, a miraculous incident sets the plot in motion: two generals “suddenly found themselves on a desert island”; By the grace of God, “there was no man in the entire domain of the stupid landowner.” The use of proverbs and sayings is another feature of Shchedrin's fairy tales, which, naturally, indicates their nationality, their originality. A distinctive feature of the allegory of Saltykov’s fairy tales is the author’s use of periphrasis (“Bear in the Voivodeship,” “Dried Roach,” “Patron Eagle”).
But, at the same time, the tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is not the speech of a folk storyteller. These are philosophical and satirical tales. They are about life, about what the writer saw and observed in reality. The difference between Saltykov-Shchedrin’s fairy tales and folk tales is that they often intertwine the fantastic not only with real events, but even with historically reliable ones.
To verify this, you can compare Shchedrin’s fairy tales with Russian folk tales and note the common and distinctive features in them.
Tales of Saltykov-Shchedrin | Tales of the Russian people |
|
Common features | Initiation | Initiation |
Distinctive features | Satire There is no positive hero | Humor Victory of good over evil |
Emphasizing the connection between the fairy tale and reality, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin combined elements of folklore speech with modern concepts. The author used not only the usual opening (“Once upon a time...”), traditional phrases (“neither to say in a fairy tale, nor to describe with a pen,” “began to live and get on with life”), folk expressions (“he thinks in a thought,” “mind the chamber "), colloquialisms ("despite", "destroy"), but also introduced journalistic vocabulary and foreign words. He enriched folklore stories with new content. Folk tradition M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin follows in fairy tales about animals, when in an allegorical form he ridicules the shortcomings of society! He created images of the animal kingdom: the greedy Wolf, the cunning Fox, the cowardly Hare, the stupid and evil Bear. Despite the fact that the reader knew these images well from Krylov’s fables, Shchedrin, with the help of familiar characters, revealed the complex problems of our time, introducing topical political themes into the world of folk art.
Relying on folk wisdom, using the riches of folk speech, Russian folklore, imbued with purely folk humor, the writer created works whose purpose was to awaken in the people their great spirit, their will and strength. With all his creativity M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin strove to ensure thatso that “children of a fair age” mature and cease to be children.
Thus, having enriched the tale with new satirical techniques, Saltykov-Shchedrin turned it into a tool of socio-political satire.
The satirist does not parody folklore expressions and contemporary living, folk speech, but adapts them to solve his own artistic problems, which has become a characteristic feature of the author’s style. Saltykov-Shchedrin did not copy the structure of a folk tale, but introduced something new into it.
Conclusion
M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is a great Russian writer. His tales are a magnificent monument to the past. Not only the types created by this author, but also winged words and expressions are still found in our everyday life. The images of his works have firmly entered the life of the Russian people, become household names and live on for centuries.
Conclusion
Having analyzed the tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, in accordance with the purpose of our work, I came to the following conclusions:
1. The language of the writer’s fairy tales is deeply folk, close to Russian folklore.
2. The folklore basis of fairy tales attracted the attention of the reading masses. “Fairy Tales” by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin awakened the political consciousness of the people, calling them to fight injustice and human vices.
3. The testing I conducted among my classmates showed:
Most children read with interest the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin.
Application:
1. Test.
1. What explains M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s choice of the fairy tale genre?
a) the desire to escape life’s verisimilitude;
b) the desire to overcome censorship barriers;
c) a passion for allegorical writing;
d) the popularity of fairy tales as a favorite genre
propaganda literature;
2. What do the fairy tales of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin have in common with folk tales?
a) fairy tale plot
b) based on realities of life
c) popular ideas about good and evil
d) traditional fairy tale techniques
d) socially sensitive issues
f) images of animals typical of folk tales
3. How does the “Shchedrinskaya” fairy tale differ from the folk tale?
a) evil is not always punished in the finale
b) the use of sarcasm and satire
c) interpretation of characters
d) introduction of images atypical for folk tales
4. Who is ridiculed in the fairy tales of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin?
a) government
b) revolutionary democrats
c) ordinary people
d) liberals