Russian natural-philosophical prose of the second half of the 20th century: tutorial Smirnova Alfiya Islamovna

1. Plot - composition - genre, creative history ("Tsar-fish" by V.P. Astafiev)

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

To reveal the genre essence of "King-fish", it is necessary to understand compositional logic works, to reveal its connection with plot construction. The unity of the work is based on a system of cross-cutting motives pervading the story. The first part of the "King Fish" contrasts with the second (the principle of antithesis is used by the author in a wide and varied way), each of them is based on its own principle of construction. The chapters of the first part are closely interconnected with each other. through images(including the image of the hero-narrator), single place of action, alternating lyrical and journalistic started. Some of the chapters are “fastened” by plot links (the end of one chapter and the beginning of another), and such as “The Lady”, “At the Golden Hag”, “The Fisherman Rumbled”, “King-Fish”, the similarity of the plot “scheme” is characteristic of them a stable type of construction of the plot, associated with a purely “poaching” situation, is a collision with the fish supervision (or the expectation and fear of this meeting). In each individual case, events under similar circumstances and situations (poaching) develop differently. In the second part of the book, the chapters are fastened into a single narrative. the image of Akim. The fragmentary nature of the construction allows not to consistently present the history of Akim’s life, but only to highlight certain moments of it from a certain angle: childhood and youth (“Ear on Boganid”), work in a geological exploration team, a fight with a bear (“Commemoration”), a trip to the white mountains ("Dream of the White Mountains").

However, both parts of the work, contrasting with each other, are not isolated from each other and together form a single whole. fabulous the chapters of "King-fish" are connected mainly by the chronology of the life of the narrator (the first part of the book, the chapters "Turukhan Lily" and "There is no answer for me" from the second part) or Akim (the second part of the book). Each chapter reveals a special type of relationship between man and nature. The first one, Boye, depicts the ordeal that fell to the lot of Kolya and his partners, who went to Taimyr to hunt fox, but found themselves without a common cause. Their campaign almost ended tragically. In this chapter are born motives for retribution and salvation. The Drop chapter presents a very different type of relationship and a different way of storytelling. Communication with nature, the feeling of oneness with it allows the hero-narrator to feel happy. This chapter contrasts with the first (“Boie”). Following the “Drop”, the author placed the chapter “Not enough heart”, which, due to censorship, was not included earlier in the narrative in the stories “Tsar-fish” and was first published in 1990 as an independent story (Our contemporary. 1990. No. 8). In the chapter "Not enough heart", as in "The Drop", the voice of the hero-narrator is openly heard, but in tone this chapter is antithetical to "The Drop": instead of a lyrical tone, it is tragic. And its beginning testifies to the opposition of “light” to “dark”: “After all these amusing stories, after happy holiday given to us light the river Oparikha, just right to recall one old story, for which I will delay a little and remember the past, so that it is clearer and more visible where we lived and what we knew, and why we were so successful in moving towards what I have already told and what else remains to be told” (Astafiev 2004: 92). The title of the chapter “Not enough heart” is symbolic, since in it we are talking about escaped prisoners and about one meeting that took place in the late thirties in the taiga. The tragedy of the story of the Lame is that after all the trials that have fallen to his lot, hell will seem like paradise. This chapter, like “The Dream of the White Mountains”, is a “text within the text”, on the one hand, introducing new accents into the understanding of the main theme and enhancing the overall tone of the narration in the stories, on the other hand, its inclusion in the work is additional” confirmation” of his compositional logic and principles of organization of the artistic whole.

The following chapters after "Not enough heart" - "The Lady", "At the Golden Hag", "The Fisherman Rumbled" - are devoted to the image of poaching fish. They are arranged according to the degree of growth of the main conflict of the work, which will culminate in the chapter "King-fish". If Damka is a “junk” little man and, like other Chushans, poachers, then the Commander is already capable of committing murder for profit, although some glimpses of the human in him have been preserved. Rumbled is an extreme degree of human degradation.

In these three chapters payback motive, outlined in the first, goes into subtext. The story of Kolya's stay with his partners in Taimyr (chapter "Boye") contains an instructive meaning and one of the most important thoughts for the whole work: a person is not allowed to enter into a confrontation with nature on an equal footing, she punishes for it. Kolya and his partners frivolously overestimated their strength and paid the price for it. Finding themselves without joint work (fishing), enclosed in space huts, among alien elements, they almost lose their minds, being unable to change their fate, break the lingering silence around, interrupt the endlessly stretching, almost stopped time for them, resist the slow attenuation of their life , are close to committing a murder, but are saved by caring for their "neighbor" - sick Kolya. Through awakening in a human being, salvation comes to him. This is how it is done in the chapter salvation motive.

Lady, Rumbled and Commander - each in their own way pays for their chosen way of life: one loses his own name and acquires a dog nickname in return, the other is forced to live far from his homeland and relatives and yearn for them all his life, being deprived of the opportunity to return there; the third, the Commander, loses through the fault of the "land poacher" his beloved daughter Taika, the only creature to whom the hardened soul of the Commander "responded" best in her. In the central chapter for the whole book, "King-fish" motives for retribution and salvation receive further development and are openly realized in the fate of Ignatich, being saturated with philosophical meaning thanks to the parable underlying the chapter.

The final chapter talks about the different types of poaching. The place of the chapter "The Black Feather Flies" as the final chapter in the first part is quite natural. It is no accident that the author changed its location in a separate edition. In the magazine version, it came after the chapter "Commemoration" before "The Turukhanskaya Lily" (according to the sketchy nature of the chapter, "The Black Feather Is Flying" and "The Turukhanskaya Lily" are close to each other). In the chapter “The Black Feather Flies”, a kind of summary of the topic of poaching is summed up and a warning is given, expressed, in contrast to the chapter “Tsar-Fish”, in the form of a direct author’s appeal: “... I am afraid when people unbelt in shooting, even at the beast, on a bird, and in passing, effortlessly, shed blood. They do not know that they themselves imperceptibly cross that fatal line beyond which a person ends ... ".

The second part, which opens with the chapter "Ear on Boganid", draws a completely different type of relationship between man and nature, personified in the image of Akim's mother. Here the natural-philosophical concept of V. Astafiev gets deeper. The idea of ​​the unity of man and nature, presented in the chapter "The Drop" openly in the lyric-journalistic, philosophical segments of the text, in the chapter "Ear on Boganid" is melted down into an artistic image that embodies the ethical credo of the writer. Connections with nature dictate and determine the nature of relationships among people - this is one of the main thoughts of both the chapter of "Ear on Boganid" and the whole work.

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

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

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

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

The main motives of the work in the penultimate chapter receive their logical conclusion. The chapter "The Dream of the White Mountains" is final. It “resonates” with the first chapter of Boye: the similarity of situations (isolation from the human world in the natural elements), the identity of the embodiment of the chronotope, the completion motives for retribution, salvation, which began in the chapter "Boie". Akim and Elya, like other heroes of the work, are "tested" by those forces of nature over which man has no power. The climax in the construction of the plot of the chapter is the image of their attempt to get out of the snow captivity. Their path to salvation, which has become the road to people, ends happily. So embodied in the chapter salvation motive.

Gets completed in the chapter "Dream of the White Mountains" and payback motive, revealing on the fate of Goga Gertsev. It seems to be quite legitimate to speak of this chapter as a “work within a work”, since many artistic realities, presented fragmentarily in chapters-stories, found a more complete “interpretation” in it.

Critics have already written about the “conscious” internal connection of the chapter “The Dream of the White Mountains” with M. Lermontov’s “Hero of Our Time” (See: Marchenko 1977), reminiscences from which are contained in Gertsev’s diary and in his characterization in the work. The comparison of Goga with Pechorin serves satirical purposes, revealing the pretentiousness and borrowing of Hertsev's philosophy. His accidental death in the taiga pay, which inevitably had to overtake Goga. He despises people. Akim is a "stinker" for him. Family ties with parents, his own child do not matter to him. He is also untenable in love, treating women (the librarian Lyudochka, Elya) consumeristically.

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

You can return to the same places, but it’s impossible to go back”), which in meaning echoes the words from Ecclesiastes that conclude the chapter: “Everything has its hour and time for every work under heaven ...”.

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

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

To understand the poetics of "King-fish" is important creative history a work that clarifies issues related to the structure of the text. In the process of analyzing the narrative in the stories, we touched on some moments of this story, structural transformations of the text. Let us dwell in more detail on the very process of creating and finalizing the work after its first publication.

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

V. Astafiev is one of those writers who are not satisfied with what they have written once and after years again return to their creation, finalizing it. The story "The Shepherd and the Shepherdess" was subjected to especially careful editing, he "rewrote" it five times. “A worthy writer,” according to the writer in the book The Staff of Memory, “will always find something to remake, for there is no limit to perfection” (Astafiev 1980: 174). It is interesting to compare the first, magazine, publication of "Tsar-Fish" ("Our Contemporary". 1976. No. 4-6) and subsequent ones, of which we will focus on the publication of the work in the first collected works of V.P. Astafieva (Astafiev V. Sobr. cit.: In 4 vols. T. 4. M., 1981). When comparing the two versions of "Tsar-fish", attention is drawn to those changes that are caused by the desire to introduce as much as possible, in the words of V. Astafiev, "writing discipline" into the artistic, in particular compositional, book structure. In a separate edition, the narrative was supplemented with a new chapter "Lady" (withdrawn from the magazine for censorship reasons) and acquired a two-part composition. Some chapters have been changed. The chapter "The Black Feather Flies", which was located in the magazine version after the chapter "Commemoration", moved, taking its place after the chapter "King-fish", thus becoming the final chapter of the first part. Here is how the construction of the work looks like in a magazine and a separate edition:

Journal publication

(Our contemporary. 1976. No. 4–6)

At the golden hag

Rybak Rumbled

king fish

Ear on Boganid

black feather flying

Tour u ha ne ka ya lily|

Dream of white mountains

I don't have an answer

standalone edition

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

Part I

At the golden hag

Rybak Rumbled

king fish

black feather flying

Part II

Ear on Boganid

Tour ear not ka ya lily

Dream of white mountains

I don't have an answer

For a holistic perception of the work, the very idea of ​​dividing it into two parts is fruitful - the combination of chapters-stories into parts within the whole confirms the idea that we are not dealing with a collection of stories, not with disparate stories and short stories, united only by a common theme, title and image hero-narrator, but with a complete artistic phenomenon. At the heart of this phenomenon lies the ordered subordination of chapters, internal compositional logic. The inclusion in the book of a new chapter "The Lady" and its place in the artistic structure of the work, as well as partial changes in the architectonics, are motivated by considerations of an ideological and aesthetic order.

Work on the "Tsar Fish" was not limited to just rearranging the chapters. It has a multifaceted character and is conducted at different levels: compositional, semantic, stylistic, syntactic, morphological, phonetic. Almost every page or piece of text bears the stamp of the author's revision, multi-purpose in its focus. Let's consider various aspects of creative development (and often - and processing) of the work by V. Astafiev.

Composition Perfection The “King-Fish” manifests itself not only on the scale of the entire book, but also on local segments of the text, within one chapter or even compositional form (description, narration, dialogue, etc.). Particularly large editing, reflecting the writer's desire to strengthen the logic and chronological sequence of the narrative, was subjected to the chapter "The Dream of the White Mountains". The nature of its revision can be judged by a large excerpt, which in the journal version was a continuous text and had a different structure. In a separate edition, this passage is divided into three parts, and some paragraphs are reversed.

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

1. "Full, quiet autumn lay in the taiga." Next comes the editing of the first major passage (the first section) (Astafiev 1981: 315).

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

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

The most significant changes are contained in the first section, devoted to the preparation of Akim for leaving the winter hut. He makes reserves for the winter, each action of Akim, the sequence of actions, is full of special meaning and significance. While finalizing the text, the author draws with the utmost scrupulousness the thoroughness with which Akim prepares for the campaign, conveys the smallest details of the life of the winterers, the difficulties that they have to overcome.

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

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

Journal publication

"At the time when Ende

swiftly

rolled down the slush,

soldering in front of your eyes

banks of the river,

erasing her curve

strip from the ground, as if

handwriting from a notebook

student rubber.

Akim shirkap puchkovy

pipoy firewood and before

shirked. that epya

once said…”

(Astafiev 1976: 6. 33).

standalone edition

"At the time when Ende

swiftly

rolled down the slush,

soldering in front of your eyes

banks of the river,

erasing her curve

a strip of land

handwriting from a notebook

student rubber.

Elya was between

life and death, and

stocks were to be made

lack of time But as soon as

she recovered a little

and you can leave her

in a hut for a couple with Rozka ... "

(Astafiev 1981: 316).

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

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

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

Improving the text, V. Astafiev seeks to strengthen authenticity depicted, which is connected with the very essence of the writer's creative method, in which the journalistic way of reflecting the world plays an essential role. This is clearly visible, in particular, on that one - very significant! - processing (precisely compositional), which was subjected to another large fragment of the "Dream of the White Mountains", dedicated to the diaries of Goga Gertsev, which begins in the journal with the question: "Why, why did they beckon Elya and Akim to them?" The compositional rearrangement inside it is motivated by the fact that in the original version, Eli's insight is unnecessarily accelerated, lightened and premature: Elya wants to understand what happened, what she experienced, and right there - literally in a few lines! - the answer was found, in fact, a sentence to oneself, which is pronounced "without regret, and even without grief, with disarming surprise." In order to avoid simplifying the character of Eli and at the same time simplifying the main conflict of the chapter, to achieve the utmost psychological authenticity, V. Astafiev, compiling a fragment of the text compositionally, reproduces events as they should have happened in life itself, in accordance with the logic of the characters’ behavior, the logic of the development of their characters .

In the book version, the story about the diaries of Goga Gertsev begins with Elya listening to them in Akim’s reading for long evenings: -gornushki, in a hut tidied up from all sides squeezed by taiga and darkness, Elya listened to Gertsev's diaries, trying to understand something, albeit belatedly, to figure out what and why happened to her ”(Astafiev 1981: 329). Further, the diaries themselves are characterized, and then the question is quite justified: why, why did Gertsev's diaries beckon to themselves? After all, he "always kept his morals in sight." Eli's confession of his own mistakes is missing here. Everything is much more difficult for her. In order to understand herself, to understand (at least now!) Gog, with whom she so recklessly embarked on an unknown path that became his last, she needed to get to know the owner of the diaries better, to understand the way of thinking and the philosophy that Gertsev professed, to find out life goals. After a different Goga appeared in the diaries compared to how she knew him, Eli's confession - "I messed up something in my life ..." - sounds almost tragic. And it is pronounced Elei quite differently. Before us is the path of mistakes that she walked. Thanks to the meeting with Akim, acquaintance with Gertsev's diaries, the situation (on the verge of death) in which she found herself, Elya understands the falsity of this path, evaluates it from the standpoint of an adult who has finally realized responsibility for his actions. And this is a visible result, the result of Eli's growing up, a step on the way to her spiritual insight.

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

Many changes in the journal text "Tsar Fish" are associated with the introduction of new material into the artistic fabric of the work, enriching the content of the book, expanding the boundaries of the narrative. This trend of meaning "saturation" text is implemented in a system of inserts, different in volume and nature. There are small inserts introduced for the purpose of explanation or clarification. In the magazine edition in the chapter “Boie” it is said about the lemming without any explanation, and in the book edition an explanation is given: “... That is the scientific name of the pied mouse - the smallest and most evil animal in the north; for all living things in the tundra, pied beetle is food ... ”(Astafiev 1981: 22).

And here is an example of a different kind from the chapter "At the golden hag." A small insert was made after the words that the Chushans perceive all laws with cunning: “... if the law protects from adversity, helps to strengthen financially, snatch for drinking, they willingly accept it”, but if it infringes them in some way, they pretend to be orphans . “Well, if they already pin it to the wall and don’t get out,” continues V. Astafiev in a separate publication, “a silent, long siege begins, with starvation, quiet glanders, the Chushan people achieve their goal: what needs to be bypassed - they will bypass, what they want to get - they will get who they need survive from the village - they will survive ”... (Astafiev 1981: 89). This is an important additional touch in the collective image of the Chushan, which characterizes his socio-psychological appearance.

Significant changes have been made to the Fisherman Grohotalo chapter. Recreating the past of this poacher, V. Astafiev seeks to tell about the events that took place in reality with maximum reliability. The introduction of additional details of Grokhotalo's biography concretizes his image, explains how the native of Ukraine ended up in the North and why he did not go on vacation to his homeland, which he yearned for (in the magazine version, this remained unclear, how the measure and degree of Grokhotalo's guilt was not entirely clear).

New details and facts included in the text of the work are accompanied by its additional processing. The part of the chapter that tells about the end of this ill-fated for Grokhotalo and tragic for the Commander (his daughter died) day is also being reworked. V. Astafiev added a capacious detail, which again serves to concretize the moral image of the Chushan people. When the Commander was looking for the killer of his daughter, and Grokhotalo was destroying home belongings, “some kayakers were drowning on the Yenisei” (Astafiev 1981: 121). This message fills the passage under consideration with new content, deepens the author's assessment of what is depicted. In the book version of "King-Fish", in accordance with the genre setting, the journalistic "stream" is intensified, helping to more clearly identify the author's position. This is typical, in particular, for the chapter "The Black Feather Flies". The magazine editorial said that fashionistas adapted swan down for outfits, "especially for winter muffs." In a separate edition, the author, without limiting himself to stating a fact, gives him a journalistic assessment (See: Astafiev 1981: 165).

In a separate edition, in a modified form compared to the journal publication, the final chapter also appeared. The author “finishes” it, stating the facts of mismanagement and slovenliness with documentary accuracy. In the year of the mass destruction of birds on the Siberian River Sym, which is described in the chapter, the procurement office accepted capercaillie for three rubles apiece, then for a ruble, then it stopped accepting altogether: there was no refrigerator, it was warm and drizzling, planes stopped flying.

The bird has sniffed in the warehouse. The stench floated throughout the village, the “goods” were written off, the losses were attributed to the elements, they hung a tidy sum on the neck of the state, and the capercaillie were loaded with dung forks into the bodies of cars and taken to a local pond, to a landfill” (Astafiev 1981: 172).

In the chapter “The Black Pen Flies”, the artistic and journalistic beginning is presented most vividly, therefore the “new” finale fits into the content of the chapter and sums it up, since it deals with the consequences of the “battle” of capercaillie in the fall of 1971.

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

Sometimes the inserts grow to entire pages, on which individual episodes, human destinies are detailed and concretized (the images of the "absent-minded poet" and Tikhon Pupkov from the chapter "The Dream of the White Mountains"), which helps the writer to reproduce a wide historical background, or to describe the moral character of which - a social group. In this regard, the fate of Paramon Paramonovich Olsufiev, Akim's mentor, a man who spent his whole life on the river (“Ukha on Boganid”), is indicative. In the magazine version of the work, it was said that the steamer "Trouble" was handed over for scrap. What happened to Paramon Paramonovich, the “biggest head of the travel situation” on the Bedovoi, remained unclear to the reader. In a separate edition, the author gives a biography of his hero, clarifying the historical realities. Olsufiev had a hard time parting with "Bedov" - he "had a stroke." After recuperating in the hospital, he sold sailor's ammunition for a pittance and went with his wife to Kazakhstan to the "heroic virgin lands" in order to start a new, "overland" life there.

The creative process of V. Astafiev is characterized by the desire to give psychological "full-bloodedness" to each, even episodic character, of which there are many in the narrative. An example of this kind of refinement is the story about paper wads (chapter "Commemoration"), which the writer needed in order to reproduce the course of the investigation itself, to strengthen the reliability of its presentation, to reveal the psychological detail of Petrun's appearance. The ending of the chapter "Commemoration" has also been changed, incorporating a lengthy insert, necessary for concretizing the life of a geological exploration team. If in the magazine version there were only two words about the fact that after the commemoration for Petrun "they went to work at the appointed time", then in a separate edition a detailed picture of the arrival of the party leader by plane in the detachment is drawn, replete with colorful household and production details.

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

"Tsar-fish" is a philosophical work. The chapter “Drop” is permeated with philosophical reflections, the chapter “Dream of the White Mountains” is saturated with philosophical overtones. Her heroes - Akim and Elya - find themselves in an unusual situation for themselves - they are isolated from the whole world around them, their space is limited by the hut, and behind the hut begins the element that is beyond their control, but on which they are dependent. For them, the concepts of "life - death" appear in all their nakedness. One has only to stop resisting, stop fighting for life, as death will come. This is the reality they face daily. In this situation, thoughts arise about the value of human life, about its meaning, embodied in the insert included in the book version. It begins with the question, did it become easier for people from the fact that they learned that there is no immortality?

The finale of the work has also been revised. Apparently the author used different translations Ecclesiastes. In a separate edition, the antithetical nature of the provisions of Ecclesiastes is more clearly presented, which is generally inherent in the figurative system and compositional structure of Astafiev's work.

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

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

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

trend towards language savings expressed in the fact that the writer eliminates turns, phrases, words that carry "excessive" information. Of the two synonymous words, in some cases the author leaves one. He replaces complex verb forms with simple ones, removes unnecessary words naming the actions of heroes in those cases when it is clear from the context that the hero will do this. V. Astafiev also crosses out the words that "slow down" the statement, bringing the language of the work closer to the colloquial one, giving the text dynamism and expression. In the book version, the author tends not to use plug-in constructions, changes the construction of the sentence from participle turnover, placing it after the word being defined.

There are many examples of this kind. In the linguistic structure of the entire work, an orientation towards live colloquial speech is manifested. It is no coincidence that criticism immediately drew attention to this feature of Astafiev's narrative. “... All this is from an oral tale,” Gleb Goryshin noted (Literaturnoe obozreniye 1976: 10, 52).

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

The process of the writer's work on the "Tsar Fish" is much more multifaceted and immeasurably richer than those summarized observations that are presented here. But the above facts also make it possible to judge that irresistible thirst for perfection, high demands on oneself and the writer's immense responsibility to his reader, which serve as the breeding ground for V. Astafiev's works.