What is the story of the old-world landowners. Analysis of Gogol's story "Old World Landowners

Topic: "Old World Landowners". Ideological and artistic originality of the story.

1. To acquaint students with the ideological and artistic features of the story "Old World Landowners".

2. To form the ability to analyze a literary text, to characterize literary characters; develop skills of self - and mutual control.

3. To cultivate an attentive attitude towards each other, mutual respect on the example of the heroes of the story.

Methodological techniques: text analysis; conversation; commented reading; drawing up a plan, accent reading, making a cluster.

Equipment: portrait; the texts of the "Old World Landowners"; drawings of students, TSO.

During the classes

I.Organizational moment

I want to start our lesson by asking: “How often do you remember your grandparents? With what feelings do you remember them? " And here is how he wrote on this topic in the story "Old World Landowners".

How do you understand the title of the story? ( The combination of the words "old" and "light" tune in to the perception of a work about former times, perhaps patriarchal, the story is about representatives of the older generation).

What should you and I find out in our lesson? ( What did Gogol want to tell us about in The Old World Landowners? What is the main idea of ​​the story, images, artistic features?)

We will work with you in groups, everyone will have the opportunity to prove themselves.

II. Board decoration

“... Now I live in a village, exactly as described by the unforgettable Karamzin. It seems to me that he copied a Little Russian village: so bright and similar to the local nature. " From a letter

Pushkin described the story "Old World Landowners" as "a humorous, touching idyll that makes you laugh through tears of sadness and tenderness."

III.Conversation

We continue to get acquainted with creativity. We are familiar with some romantic works early creativity Gogol.

Name them. ( Students name stories from "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka").

What are their features? ( These are works that combine the realistic and the fantastic, built on the national flavor, written with humor in a special, fantastic language.).

And today we will get acquainted with another work that reveals another facet of talent in a new way - "Old World Landowners". It is quite difficult to determine belonging to a certain direction in literature - the story is built on real life events, but it is very clearly visible sentimental-idyllic ( write on the board) tradition in the spirit of Karamzin, there are also elements of the fantastic in the spirit of early Gogol.

(Pay attention to the board - slide).

1. First published in the collection "Mirgorod" in 1835.

2. The description of the farm of old-world landowners is associated with Gogol's family estate - Vasilyevka, where he spent the summer of 1832. (the year the story was created).

3. Possible prototypes of the heroes of the story are the writer's grandfather and grandmother Afanasy Demyanovich and Tatyana Semyonovna Gogol-Yanovskiy.

IV.Work with text

Now let's turn to the text of the story. Listen to the beginning of the piece. What pictures do you see when you listen to this part of the story?

The beginning of the text before the words "But let's turn to the story" is read by the teacher... - What old people are we talking about at the beginning of the story? ( Afanasy Ivanovich Tovstogub and his wife Pulcheria Ivanovna)

- How do you imagine them?

On the board - a slide with an illustration for the story (portraits of old people).

- Find a description of the old people. What are the key words in their description? ( always smiled; so much kindness; kind face; with pleasure; calm, clear life).

Explain the meaning of words or phrases:

- bucolic life (idyllic, peaceful, simple life in the bosom of nature (by the name of the cycle of poems by the Roman poet Virgil "Bucolics"));

- Philemon and Baucis (v Greek mythology pious spouses who lived to a ripe old age, to whom the gods, as a reward for their mutual love and hospitality, bestowed simultaneous death, turning them into two fused trees);

- camlet (vintage thick woolen fabric);

- Ward (the name of many administrative institutions; there were government, civil and other chambers.);

- companions (regiments of light cavalry in the Ukrainian army, formed from volunteers. In 1776. were converted to regular parts);

- seconds major (junior officer rank in the Russian army from the beginningXVIII century abolished in 1797.)

GROUP WORK

Students answer the questions on the flashcards. Evaluation criteria - completeness, coherence of the answer, depth of penetration into the author's intention.

1 GROUP

2 GROUP

a) cooking;

3 GROUP

3. made fun of your spouse? Re-enact a fire conversation.

4. Why didn't anyone on the estate seriously suffer from gluttony?

4 GROUP

4 How does this characterize her?

When answering, use quotes from the text.

5 GROUP

When answering, use quotes from the text.

Evaluation paper:

Evaluation criteria		connectivity	Citation	final grade

V.conclusions

Students in groups fill in the blank cells of the conceptual wheel of qualities that characterize the old-world landowners, then put them on the board.

So, you and I realized that in the way of life of old-world landowners, with all their "down-to-earth", gluttony, inability to manage, there is so much naivety, kindness, sincerity, touching concern for each other that describing the life and death of old people evokes a feeling of tenderness and pity. Their flaws, compared to the overwhelming power of love and rejection of evil, seem like ridiculous quirks. It is no coincidence that Gogol mentions the Greek Philemon and Baucis: the idyllic life that Gogol so missed in St. Petersburg emerges in the images of the old-world landowners.

Vi.Lesson summary

What did the story "Old World Landowners" teach you?

What are the ideological and artistic features of the story?

Under the record ( on the board - slide):

1. The story is clearly visible sentimental-idyllic tradition in the spirit of Karamzin.

2. In the images of the old-world landowners, Gogol shows the all-consuming power of love.

3. The story contains archaic words that give it a special flavor.

4. The description of the life of the landowners reveals a special sense of humor characteristic of Gogol.

Vii.Evaluation

VIII.Homework

To choose from:

1. Write a mini-essay on the topic "What features of the life of old-world landowners speaks with humor?"

2. Tell about your grandparents, quoting the story. (Writing)

3. Individual tasks (messages about creativity).

Materials for working with cards

1 GROUP

1. Tell, using quotes, about the peculiarities of life and family structure of the old-world landowners. (Description of rooms, habit of warmth, room of Pulcheria Ivanovna, description of furniture.)

2. What role does the description of the singing doors play in the story?

3. With what feeling does Gogol describe the girl's?

2 GROUP

1. Tell, using quotes, about the economic concerns of Pulcheria Ivanovna:

a) cooking;

b) one-time audit of their forests (loss of oak trees);

2. Why, with such theft of the courtyards, the thefts seemed invisible?

3 GROUP

1. Tell, using quotes, about the daily routine of the elderly.

2. What was the main thing in their life?

3. made fun of your spouse? Read the role of the fire conversation.

3. Why did no one on the estate seriously suffer from gluttony?

4 GROUP

1. What role did the gray cat play in the fate of Pulcheria Ivanovna?

2.Why did Pulcheria Ivanovna take the cat's disappearance so?

3. What orders did the landowner give before her death?

4. How does it characterize it?

5 GROUP

1.How did Afanasy Ivanovich behave at the funeral? When did he realize the loss?

2. What became the main thing for Afanasy Ivanovich after the death of Pulcheria Ivanovna?

3. In what ways are the circumstances of the death of Afanasy Ivanovich and his wife similar?

4. What happened to the estate after the death of the elderly?

(Use quotes when answering.)

Evaluation paper:

Evaluation criteria		connectivity	Using quotes	final grade
Additional answer (per lesson)

Evaluation paper:

Evaluation criteria		connectivity	Using quotes	final grade
Additional answer (per lesson)

Evaluation paper:

Evaluation criteria		connectivity	Using text	final grade
Additional answer (per lesson)

Gogol begins his story about the touching life of the most virtuous old men with a lyrical digression, which introduces us into the world of the writer's soul. Together with him, we experience the writer's exciting memories, we begin to understand those spiritually and moral preferences with which he approaches in assessing human existence. What is so dear to Gogol?

Sometimes he wants to "go for a minute into the sphere of this unusually secluded life", where "life ... is so quiet, so quiet that you forget for a minute and think that passions, desires and restless offspring of an evil spirit that disturb the world do not exist at all ..." ... And it already seems that together with Gogol we see a "low house with a gallery"; behind him - "fragrant bird cherry, whole rows of low fruit trees; in front of the house there is a spacious courtyard, a cart with melons, ... a harnessed ox lying lazily near the barn ... ". "All this for me," the author writes, "has an inexplicable charm, perhaps because I no longer see them and that we are sweet for everything that we are apart from." And all this is called a small homeland. And this feeling of a small homeland is so familiar to each of us who, at least for a short time, was separated from it.

It is worth noting that Gogol's contemporaries interpreted the story ambiguously. "Furious Vissarion" condemned Gogol's old men, calling them "two parodies of humanity for several decades, they drink and eat, eat and drink, and then, as is customary since ancient times, they die." And he himself was surprised: "but why is this charm? ...". Pushkin will call the story "a playful, touching idyll". Time, they say, is the best judge and evaluator. Comparing statements about a great work, re-reading a familiar story, but with today's eyes, I try to understand for myself: whether something new has been revealed in a familiar text and what exactly. It seems to me that small in volume, but great in main idea in it, the story makes today's reader think about the eternal problem for all times - the problem of old age, the frailty of life. After all, it is no coincidence that when you read a story, you remember the old people Bazarovs, who remained alone in their old age. “Two already decrepit old men come to the grave of their son. Supporting each other, they walk with a heavy gait. " Left alone like a finger to each other forever.

The lovely details of the life of the most virtuous old men of the Gogol story also touch our souls. And the more touching for us these "cute details", because they have no children, and it's good that they are for each other. And Pushkin was right when he called the life of simple old-world landowners "a playful idyll." Is it bad when old people live in complete harmony of their being? Is it possible to blame them for not striving for the highest spiritual values, they live only by bread alone, that their life is poor, they enjoy their almost inaudible happiness? Of course, their life from a high spiritual height cannot be called ideal, especially in the gastronomic sense - you cannot make a cult out of food. But I can't stand a conviction for them. It is rightly said that a morally healthy society is one in which there are no abandoned children and lonely old people. Gogol's old men are not alone. Moreover, the story of their lives leads us to deep reflections on such a moral value as love.

What is stronger above us: passion or habit? According to G. Belinsky, the only human feeling that moved and enlivened the lives of Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna, gave a kind of "poetry to their vulgar and absurd life": this feeling is a habit. But the whole story of their life is a love story.

Of course, over the years passions have subsided, they were replaced by deep affection (in the words of the author - a habit). But this is the result of a long, faithful and tender love. Isn't that what the story is about? “It was impossible to look without participation at their mutual love. They never said "you" to each other, but always "you": you, Afanasy Ivanovich; you, Pulcheria Ivanovna ... ". Minor pronoun "you". But it already gives a different shade to human relations: a special sincerity and unusual feelings. Isn't Afanasy Ivanovich's love for Pulcheria Ivanovna evidenced by the fact that, having married thirty years and not having received the consent of his relatives, he "took away Pulcheria Ivanovna quite deftly." Involuntarily, the thought arises: how it was necessary to love in order to get married against the will of the parents, not to cool down to each other until old age. This is their charm.

Ordinary people, modest old-world landowners. Something evokes our affection, something is not accepted by us. They do not strive for the highest spiritual values, they do not even see icons, they do not pray in the old way. They are stealing from them, and the centennial oaks around are cut down. The economy is run patriarchally, to the best of its ability. Afanasy Ivanovich generally did little to farm. And "the economy of Pulcheria Ivanovna consisted of incessantly unlocking and locking the pantry, in salting, drying, boiling ... Under the apple tree, fire was always spread out, and the cauldron or copper basin was almost never removed from the iron tripod ...". Two centuries have passed since the time of Gogol, but such a vivid picture appears before our eyes. And after all, today, is it not that economic bustle that grandfathers and grandmothers are busy with in rural outbacks? And how can this be called vulgarity, filth, animal and ugly life. Normal, old man's life, called the idyll of Russian life.

VG Belinsky accuses the old people of spiritual poverty, "two parodies of humanity" who only "eat and drink, drink and eat." And Gogol tells in detail about the breakfasts, lunches and dinners of the spouses, coloring his story with a special light condescending - ironic feeling. "And what, Pulcheria Ivanovna, maybe it's time to eat something?" - this question occupied Afanasy Ivanovich, suffering from an exorbitant appetite, every hour. And then there appeared "shortbreads with bacon, ... then pies with meat, ... then salted mushrooms, then dumplings with berries." Condescendingly - an ironic smile appears with us. In our fast-paced age, when the most tangible shortage is the lack of time, it is difficult to imagine that everything can be closed on saturation with "daily bread". But it must be remembered that Gogol's old men did everything according to the old hospitable custom. Here another thing is important: how attentively - dearly Pulcheria Ivanovna loves her husband, how touchingly - affectionately she cares about him. She feeds him not only in the intervals between breakfast and lunch, lunch and dinner. She feeds him in the middle of the night.

“But the old people seemed to me the most interesting when they had guests. These kind people, one might say, lived for the guests ... This hospitality and readiness were so meekly expressed on their faces ... They were a consequence of the pure, clear simplicity of their kind, ingenuous souls ... ". And this is not only a story about hospitable old people, behind them one can feel the author, who so fondly remembers his parents.

Nice, kind old people lived a calm and secluded life, sat on the village balcony, listening to "when the beautiful rain makes a luxurious noise, slaps on the leaves, flowing down in babbling streams", watching the appearance of a rainbow. They lived without causing harm to anyone, not defiling their love with either rude words or reprehensible actions. Even such a detail as a huge stove, which was in every room (the old people were very fond of warmth), personifies a long lived life. A stove that creates an atmosphere of comfort and special, kind, warm relations.

“But the most remarkable thing about the house was the singing doors. I know that many people hate this sound very much; but I love him very much, and if it happens to me sometimes to hear the creak of doors here, then I will suddenly smell like a village ... ”. The sound, of course, is unpleasant, but it is dear as a memory. The sound emanating from there, from a small homeland, reminiscent of parental home, parents. And this sound is very dear to the writer. The filial memory of the writer who keeps these memories is noble. And we get the opportunity to wider, deeper understand the writer who gave us unforgettable heroes.

“… .And my God, what a long string of memories then conjures up to me!”. What a nostalgic - quivering feeling in this exclamation.

Lovely, kind old men with their chests, drawers, drawers and chests, many knots and bags of seeds, many balls of colored wool, scraps of old dresses. How dear you are to us as a memory - the memory of our grandmothers, who, like you, collect everything, although sometimes they do not know what it will be used for later.

Like Pulcheria Ivanovna, our grandmothers believe that a black cat, a voice calling behind, is not good.

You read the story anew, and suddenly you want to look not only at the life of old people, but also at your own, remember your grandparents, think about your attitude towards them, parents.

But the life of this peaceful corner has changed. How touching are the last hours of the dying Pulcheria Ivanovna! As before, she asks her adored Afanasy Ivanovich to fulfill her last order: “to bury near the church fence”, “to put on a gray dress”.
She is sure that even after death they will be inseparable, "we will see you soon in the next world." Even before dying, Pulcheria Ivanovna thinks not of herself. She only regrets about one thing, that she does not know who to leave, who will look after her adored old man.

The poor old woman thought not of her soul, "she thought only of her poor companion, with whom she spent her life and whom she now left alone and homeless." The love of Afanasy Ivanovich was no less strong. When Pulcheria Ivanovna was gone, when he saw that his room was empty, “he sobbed, sobbed violently, sobbed inconsolably, and tears, like a river, flowed from his dull eyes.” These pages do not need comment.

And five years later, the time of grief did not take away the loss. "I have never seen such terrible outbursts of mental anguish, such a frenzied, scorching melancholy ...". Such was the intensity of Afanasy Ivanovich's inconsolable grief. And such is the author's compassion for him.

And five years later, the voice heard by Afanasy Ivanovich was, by his spiritual conviction, the voice of Pulcheria Ivanovna, calling him to her. Afanasy Ivanovich's last wish was to bury him near his Pulcheria Ivanovich.

So simply and amazingly artistically, Gogol connected the theme of love with the theme of death in his story. The death of the heroes did not part, it promises them a new meeting, because love lives forever and beyond death, in the memory of those whom it amazed. In the memory of Gogol, and now - in ours. Nothing disturbed the harmony of life of the old-world landowners. And in this harmony the writer saw the meaning of the history and fate of Russia.

In "Old World Landowners" Gogol ridiculed the insignificant animal life of the inhabitants of the landowners' nests, which was reduced only to physiological functions. Gogol exposes the absurd meaninglessness of such a life, "where not a single desire flies over the palisade of the courtyard." The whole story is permeated with longing for a genuine, healthy social life of people.

In the story, Gogol completely denies the meaningless life of people. And the warmth, which, it seems, is fanned by the story of the life of "good old men" - a bitter mockery of them, which cannot be overlooked. Analyzing the story "Old World Landowners", it is worth pointing out Gogol's ambivalent attitude to his heroes: on the one hand, the merciless exposure of their vulgarity and ugliness, on the other hand, one feels a sense of participation in them. In this, however, there is no contradiction that some critics found in Gogol's story, explaining it by the writer's desire to poeticize the worthless life of representatives of his class. The meaning of Gogol's ambivalent attitude to his heroes lies in his humanism, in his views on man, on his position in specific socio-historical conditions. And this is the main idea of ​​the story.

It is with this meditation that the lyricism of the story is connected. Gogol, with an amazing power of talent, showed how people are vulgarized and killed in the conditions of the ugly life of modern society. According to Belinsky, Gogol "found a human feeling in a vulgar and absurd life." Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna are golden people in their spiritual properties. And the writer is deeply sympathetic to the best qualities of his characters. These kind people, - we read in the story, - one might say, lived for guests. Whatever they had the best, it was all carried out. They vied with each other to treat you to everything that only produced their economy. But what pleased me most of all was that in all their helpfulness there was no cloying. "Old World Landowners" is not only a bright accusatory, satirical work, but also a lyrical story of love.

That is why Pushkin subtly noted that the story makes you "laugh through tears of sadness and affection." NV Stankevich wrote in a letter to one of his friends: “I read one story from Gogolev“ Mirgorod ”- it’s lovely! (Old-fashioned landlords, ”as it seems to be called). Read it! How the wonderful human feeling is captured here in an empty, insignificant life. " It was the noble feeling of betrayed love that made its way through the all-consuming vulgarity of philistine life that made Stankevich so highly appreciate this story, call it "charm." The story had the same impression on Belinsky, who, after reading it, exclaimed: “O poor humanity! wretched life! And yet you still feel sorry for Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna! You cry for them, for them, who only drank and ate and then died! ... ”. It is not the "miserable life" that makes Gogol feel sorry for him, but the man in his tragic position: the best human qualities were buried in the depths of a meager base existence. With indignation and grief, Gogol portrays contemporary Russia, in which the mighty force of the "lively people" is hidden, suppressed, depicts the worthlessness of human characters, the lie of social relations. The greatest sadness about a person, "invisible tears" and the smashing laughter of satire - this is what characterizes Gogol's humanism.

Heroes of the story

Afanasy Ivanovich Tovstogub

Pulcheria Ivanovna Tovstogub - his wife

also mentioned

Favorite cat of Pulcheria Ivanovna.

Yavdokha - housekeeper

Nichipor - salesman

courtyard girls

room boy

Plot

Afanasy Ivanovich Tovstogub and his wife Pulcheria Ivanovna are two old men of the "past century", tenderly loving and touchingly caring for each other. Afanasy Ivanovich was tall, always wore a sheepskin coat of lamb, and almost always smiled. Pulcheria Ivanovna almost never laughed, but "so much kindness was written on her face and in her eyes, so much willingness to treat you with everything that was best for them, that you would probably find a smile already too cloying for her kind face." Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna live in solitude in one of the remote villages, called Old World in Little Russia. Their life is so quiet that to a guest who accidentally drove into a low manor house, immersed in the greenery of the garden, the passions and disturbing worries of the outside world will seem to not exist at all. The small rooms of the house are filled with all sorts of gizmos, the doors are singing in different ways, the storerooms are filled with supplies, the preparation of which is constantly occupied by the courtyards under the direction of Pulcheria Ivanovna. Despite the fact that the farm is robbed by the clerk and lackeys, the blessed land produces everything in such quantity that Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna do not notice the theft at all.

The old people never had children, and all their affection was concentrated on themselves. One cannot look without participation at their mutual love, when with extraordinary care in their voice they turn to each other to “you”, warning each desire and even an unspoken affectionate word. They love to treat - and if it were not for the special properties of the Little Russian air, which helps digestion, then the guest, no doubt, after dinner would be lying on the table instead of a bed. Old people love to eat themselves - and from early morning until late at night you can hear Pulcheria Ivanovna guessing the desires of her husband, in a gentle voice offering one or the other food. Sometimes Afanasy Ivanovich loves to make fun of Pulcheria Ivanovna and suddenly start talking about a fire or a war, forcing his wife to be frightened in earnest and be baptized so that her husband's speech could never come true. But after a minute, unpleasant thoughts are forgotten, the old people decide that it's time to have a bite, and a tablecloth and those dishes suddenly appear on the table, which Afanasy Ivanovich chooses at the suggestion of his wife. And quietly, calmly, in the extraordinary harmony of the two loving hearts days go by.

A sad event forever changes the life of this peaceful corner. Pulcheria Ivanovna's beloved cat, usually lying at her feet, disappears in the large forest behind the garden, where wild cats lure her. Three days later, knocking off her feet in search of a cat, Pulcheria Ivanovna meets her pet in the garden, emerging from the weeds with a pitiful meow. Pulcheria Ivanovna feeds the runaway and thin runaway, wants to stroke her, but the ungrateful creature rushes out the window and disappears forever. From that day on, the old woman becomes thoughtful, boring and suddenly announces to Afanasy Ivanovich that it was death that came for her and they were soon destined to meet in the next world. The only thing the old woman regrets is that there will be no one to look after her husband. She asks the housekeeper Yavdokha to take care of Afanasy Ivanovich, threatening her entire family with God's punishment if she does not fulfill the lady's order. Afanasy Ivanovich tries to distract his wife from these thoughts, but in vain.

Pulcheria Ivanovna dies. At the funeral, Afanasy Ivanovich looks strange, as if he does not understand all the savagery of what happened. When he returns to his house and sees how it has become empty in his room, he sobs strongly and inconsolably, and tears, like a river, flow from his dull eyes.

Five years have passed since that time. The house is decaying without its mistress, Afanasy Ivanovich is weakening and is bent twice against the previous one. But his melancholy does not diminish over time. In all the objects surrounding him, he sees the deceased, tries to pronounce her name, but halfway through the word, convulsions distort his face, and the cry of a child breaks out of an already cooling heart.

Strange, but the circumstances of the death of Afanasy Ivanovich resemble the death of his beloved wife. When he slowly walks along the path of the garden, he suddenly hears someone behind him utter in a clear voice: "Afanasy Ivanovich!" For a minute his face brightens up, and he says: "This is Pulcheria Ivanovna calling me!" He obeys this conviction with the will of an obedient child. "Lay me down next to Pulcheria Ivanovna" - that's all he says before his death. His wish was fulfilled. The manor's house was empty, the good was taken away by the peasants and finally blown down the wind by a distant relative-heir who had arrived.

The writer reflected in the story "Old World Landowners" the disintegration of the old, patriarchal landlord life. With irony - now soft and sly, now with a tinge of sarcasm - he depicts the life of his "old men of the past century", the senselessness of their vulgar existence. The days of Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna pass dimly and monotonously, not a single desire of them "flies over the palisade that surrounds the small courtyard." No glimmer of spirituality can be suspected in these people. The world in which the heroes of the Gogol story live is small. It is completely enclosed by the boundaries of their small and steadily declining estate. Tovstogubs are engaged in subsistence farming. It completely satisfies all their simple needs. And these people do not have any motivation to get things done, to make the land bring more income. They have no interests and no worries. The life of Afanasy Ivanovich Pulcheria Ivanovna flows idly and serenely. And it seems to them that the whole world ends behind the palisade of their yard. Everything that is there, behind the palisade, seems to them strange, distant and infinitely alien. Gogol draws the interior of the house where the Tovstogubs live. Note one detail here. Several paintings hang on the walls of their rooms. What is depicted on them is the only reminder in this house that there is some kind of life outside of it. But, Gogol notes, "I am sure that the owners themselves have long forgotten their content, and if some of them had been carried away, they probably would not have noticed it." Among the paintings are several portraits: some bishop, Peter III, Duchess of Lavalier. The senseless speed of these portraits reflects the senselessness of the existence of these masters. Gogol laughs at the ingenuous life of his heroes. But at the same time, he pities these people, bound by bonds of patriarchal friendship, quiet and kind, naive and helpless. Pushkin praised this story as "a humorous touching idyll that makes you laugh through tears of sadness and affection." Of course, the idyll here is humorous and, in essence, ironic. While sympathizing with his heroes, the writer at the same time sees their emptiness and insignificance. The idyll ends up being imaginary. The story is permeated with light, kind, human sympathy and its heroes. They really could become people in a different reality! But who is to blame that they did not become them, that the human in them is crushed and belittled? The story is imbued with a sad smile that the life of the old-world landowners turned out to be so empty and worthless. The humanistic meaning of this story is multifaceted: it is expressed both in the writer's feeling of deep sympathy for his heroes, and in the condemnation of the conditions of social life that made them what they are. But the same reality could turn a person into a soulless huckster, who fought "the last kopeck from his fellow countrymen" and made a fair amount of capital on this hefty business. Gogol's pen acquires a scourging satirical force when he passes from patriarchal old men to those “Little Russians who tear themselves out of tar, traders, fill the chambers and public places like locusts, tear the last penny from their fellow countrymen, flood Petersburg with sneakers, finally make capital ... "" Old World Landowners "developed that tendency of Gogol's creativity, which was first outlined in the second part of" Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka "- in the story" Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt. " But the "Old World Landowners" marked the next and more mature stage in artistic development Gogol. The pettiness and vulgarity of Gogol's heroes grew already here into a symbol of the stupid meaninglessness of the entire dominant order of life. The feeling of love, friendship, emotional attachment characteristic of the heroes of "Old World Landowners" becomes worthless, even to some extent vulgar - because a wonderful feeling is incompatible with the empty, ugly life of these people. The originality of the Gogol story was subtly noticed by N, V. Stankevich, who wrote to his friend Ya. M. Neverov: “I read one story from Gogolev“ Mirgorod ”- it’s delight! ("Old-fashioned landowners" - that is what it seems to be called). Read it! How the wonderful human feeling is captured here in an empty, insignificant life! " The essence of the matter, however, is that this "wonderful human feeling" itself also turns out to be not real, imaginary. Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna are affectionately attached to each other. They seem to love each other. But Gogol complicates this impression by thinking that the force of habit prevails in the relations of the heroes of the story: “Whatever it was, but at this time all our passions against this long, slow, almost insensitive habit seemed childish to me”. The lines quoted have attracted the attention of contemporary writer criticism. Shevyrev took up arms against them, noting that he really did not like in the story "the murderous thought of a habit, which seems to destroy the moral impression of the whole picture." Shevyrev said that he would blot out these lines. Belinsky came out in their defense. He wrote that he could not understand "this fear, this shyness before the truth." The mention of habit did indeed destroy the "moral impression" originally created by Gogol's "idyll." But this impression should have been destroyed, according to the writer. No illusions! Even in the environment in which it seemed that the high human feeling of the heroes of the story could manifest itself, it is distorted there too. In artistic terms, "Old World Landowners" are very noticeably different from the romantic stories "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka." The poetics, and the very style of this work, very clearly testified to the ripening in Gogol of a new outlook on life and on art. The principles of depicting characters and their everyday living conditions, the life of the "Old World Landowners" - all of this foreshadowed the mighty gaze of Gogol's realistic creativity and opened a direct path to "Dead Souls".

What is this book about?

The elderly Little Russian landowners, husband and wife Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna Tovstogubs, live in perfect harmony and lead a hospitable economy. A bad omen frightens Pulcheria Ivanovna, and she dies - the idyll comes to an end, the husband briefly experiences his girlfriend. Gogol's most touching story opens the Mirgorod cycle, immediately setting him a double tone and reminding him of the blessed Arcadia, into whom, alas, death has also penetrated.

Nikolay Gogol. 1834 year. Lithograph by Alexey Venetsianov

When was it written?

In 1832, after a five-year absence, Gogol visited his homeland - the village Vasilyevka Gogol's family estate was founded at the end of the 18th century on the Kupchinsky farm. The farm was renamed Vasilyevka, after Gogol's father, Vasily Afanasyevich. Today the family estate has become a museum-reserve of Gogol, and the village itself was named Gogolevo ⁠ Mirgorodsky district of Poltava province. The impressions of this trip formed the basis of the "Old World Landowners", on which the writer was working, apparently, at the end of 1833 - beginning of 1834 (more accurate dating is difficult). At the same time he was engaged in historical research, which would turn into an article "A Look at the Compilation of Little Russia" - according to Gogol's plan, it was supposed to be only an introduction to the big "History of Little Russia", but that was the end of it: in the spring of 1834 the writer lost interest in this idea and focused on "Mirgorod". By this time, Gogol was a history teacher at the women's Patriotic Institute The Institute was founded in St. Petersburg in 1822. It was founded on the basis of a school for girls-orphans, which was in charge of the St. Petersburg Women's Patriotic Society. It was under the patronage of Empress Elizaveta Alekseevna, and then Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, wife of Nicholas I. After the revolution, the Patriotic Institute was closed, in its place was located the Energy College. In 2006, the building was transferred to the Higher School of Economics. ⁠ and the successful author of Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka; readers are wondering if he would write a new part of Evenings, but Gogol refused this “quite deliberately, referring to this book as a past stage " 1 Eikhenbaum B. M. Comments // Gogol N. V. Complete Works: In 14 volumes. V. 2. Mirgorod / Ed. V.V. Gippius. M .; L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1937.S. 683. ⁠ ... Despite the fact that the subtitle of Mirgorod will be Tales Serving as a Continuation of Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka, Gogol separated the second collection from the first - as more “everyday”, more diverse in genre, simply more mature.

House of Doctor Trokhimovsky in Sorochintsy, where Gogol was born. From the album of artistic phototypes and heliogravures "Gogol at Home". 1902 year

Yanovshchina (Vasilyevka). Part of the village adjacent to the estate of Nikolai Gogol. From the album of artistic phototypes and heliogravures "Gogol at Home". 1902 year

How is it written?

"Old World Landowners" is Gogol's variation on the theme of idyll: a genre in which the main thing is a description of a serene and patriarchal life. Accordingly, the story is full of idealization: the entire economy of the old-world landowners is full of "inexplicable charm", even if we are talking about things that are completely everyday and even "low". For example, "Old World Landowners" is the most extensive and poetic of Gogol's hymns to food. At the same time, there is a lot of irony in the story - moreover, it is more connected not with the heroes of the story, but with literature, the rules of which Gogol undermines: for example, a cat that ran away from Pulcheria Ivanovna to wild forest cats, “has accumulated romantic rules that poverty with love is better chambers ". Such comments are visible signs of the presence of the narrator in the story: on the one hand, “his man,” a good friend of Tovstogubov, and on the other, a representative of the outside world. As a result, "Old World Landowners" is both a poeticization of pastoral life and a statement of its inevitable death.

Vladimir Orlovsky. View in Ukraine. 1883 Rybinsk State Historical-Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve

What influenced her?

First of all - direct Little Russian impressions and memories. In particular, the possible prototypes of the heroes of the story were called the grandfather and grandmother of Gogol and one of his acquaintances from the Mirgorod old people - the Zarudny family or the Brovkovs 2 Eikhenbaum B. M. Comments // Gogol N. V. Complete Works: In 14 volumes. V. 2. Mirgorod / Ed. V.V. Gippius. M .; L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1937, p. 698. ⁠ ... Gogol took the story of the cat that frightened Pulcheria Ivanovna from the story of his friend, the great actor Mikhail Schepkin ⁠ : A similar incident happened to his grandmother. Shchepkin, having read the story, jokingly said to Gogol: "And the cat is mine!" - to which Gogol replied: "But my cats!" (he had in mind the wild forest cats, to which the landowner's cat ran away in the story). The ruin of the Tovstogubs' estate is an echo of Gogol's trip to Vasilyevka: "I confess, I was very sad to look at my mother's upset estate."

The most important literary pretext of the "Old World Landowners" is the myth of Philemon and Baucides, told by Ovid in "Metamorphoses"; perhaps Gogol also takes into account the interpretation of this myth in Goethe's Faust. The idyllic mood that permeates the story is a tribute to sentimentalism, including Karamzin's prose. Researcher Alexander Karpov notes another layer of pretexts - works about "afterlife love", "love after death", such as Zhukovsky's ballads, stories Mikhail Pogodin ⁠ "Adele" and Nikolay Polevoy Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy (1796-1846) - literary critic, publisher, writer. From 1825 to 1834 he published the Moscow Telegraph magazine; after the authorities closed the magazine, Polevoy's political views became noticeably more conservative. Since 1841 he published the journal "Russian Bulletin". ⁠ "Bliss of Madness" Egor Aladin Yegor Vasilievich Aladin (1796-1860) - prose writer, poet, translator, publisher. Member of the Patriotic War of 1812. He published several books of prose, collaborated with Otechestvennye zapiski. In 1825-1833 and 1846-1847 he published one of the most popular Russian almanacs - "Nevsky Almanac", where Nikolai Polevoy, Vyazemsky, Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, Bulgarin and others were published. For a long time Aladin tried to get Pushkin into his publication, he at first sent him insignificant impromptu, but then agreed to cooperate for a high fee: excerpts from the Bakhchisarai Fountain, Boris Godunov, Eugene Onegin appeared in the Nevsky Almanac (with the latest publication a well-known incident is connected: the publisher accompanied Tatyana's letter to Onegin with an erotic illustration of Alexander Notbek, to which Pushkin responded with an evil epigram). In 1829-1830, Aladin, together with Orest Somov and Anton Delvig, also published the almanac "Snowdrop". ⁠ "Marriage by of death" 3 Karpov A. A. "Athanasius and Pulcheria" - a tale of love and death // The Gogol Phenomenon: Proceedings of the Jubilee Intern. scientific. conf., dedicated. 200th anniversary of the birth of N.V. Gogol / Ed. M. N. Virolainen and A. A. Karpova. SPb .: Petropolis, 2011.S. 151-152. ⁠ ... All these works are emphatically romantic, but the relationship of "Old World Landowners" with romantic literature can be described as a mild ironic decline. For example, when we read that the widowed Afanasy Ivanovich “often lifted ... a spoonful of porridge [and], instead of bringing it to his mouth, brought it to his nose,” we recall the behavior of Khan Girey, who lost Maria, from Pushkin’s “Bakhchisarai Fountain”: “He often in fatal slashes / Raises the saber, and with a sweep / Immobilized suddenly remains, / Looks with madness around…" 4 Karpov A. A. "Athanasius and Pulcheria" - a tale of love and death // The Gogol Phenomenon: Proceedings of the Jubilee Intern. scientific. conf., dedicated. 200th anniversary of the birth of N.V. Gogol / Ed. M. N. Virolainen and A. A. Karpova. SPb .: Petropolis, 2011.S. 163-164. ⁠ This place seemed inappropriate to the comic critics of Pushkin, and for this reason it was probably remembered by Gogol - reducing Pushkin's pathos, he linked the widower's absent-mindedness with his former prowess (Afanasy Ivanovich, in order to scare his wife, liked to say that he would go to war).

The story was published in the collection "Mirgorod" at the end of February 1835. Almost simultaneously with Mirgorod, the collection Arabesques was published, which included historical, literary and art history articles, the beginning of the unfinished novel Hetman, and three stories from the cycle that would later be called Petersburg Tales: Portrait, Nevsky Prospect and "Diary of a Madman". This double publication dramatically changed the idea of ​​Gogol for readers who had previously only known "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", and created for him, in fact, new reputation... In the re-editions of Mirgorod in 1842 and (posthumously) in 1855, minor copyright amendments were made to the story (while Gogol seriously ruled “Viy”, and “Taras Bulba” reworked almost completely).

Collection of stories "Mirgorod". 1835 year

How was she received?

The stories of Mirgorod were received in different ways: if Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich evoked criticism for being “dirty” and earthy, then “Old World Landowners” and “Taras Bulba” were liked by almost “absolutely all tastes and all different temperaments” (as Gogol himself wrote to Zhukovsky). It was at this time that a heated debate was going on in Russian criticism about what should be understood by nationality in literature. Conservatives wrote approvingly about the "Old World Landowners" Senkovsky Osip-Yulian Ivanovich Senkovsky (1800-1850) - writer, editor, orientalist. In his youth he traveled to Syria, Egypt and Turkey, published travel sketches about him. Upon his return, he got a job as a translator at the Foreign College. From 1828 to 1833 he served as a censor. Senkovsky founded one of the first mass journals - "Library for Reading", edited it for over ten years. He wrote short stories and journalism under the pseudonym Baron Brambeus. ⁠ and Shevyrev Stepan Petrovich Shevyrev (1806-1864) - literary critic, poet. He took part in the circle of "wisdom", the publication of the magazine "Moskovsky Vestnik", was a close friend of Gogol. From 1835 to 1837 he was a critic of the Moscow Observer. Together with Mikhail Pogodin he published the Moskvityanin magazine. Shevyrev was known for his conservative views, it is he who is considered the author of the phrase "decaying West". In 1857, a quarrel occurred between him and Count Vasily Bobrinsky due to political differences, which ended in a fight. Because of this incident, Shevyrev was fired from service and expelled from Moscow. ⁠ ... Pushkin, responding in 1836 to the second edition of Evenings on a Farm ..., wrote about Gogol's new works: "... With greed everyone read ..." Old World Landowners ", this humorous, touching idyll that makes you laugh through tears of sadness and emotion ... " Nikolay Stankevich Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich (1813-1840) - publicist, poet, thinker. In the 1830s, Stankevich, a student at Moscow University, gathered around him a group of like-minded people with whom he discussed issues of German philosophy. Among the participants in the "Stankevich circle" were Vissarion Belinsky, Alexey Koltsov, Ivan Turgenev, Konstantin Aksakov, Mikhail Bakunin. Stankevich is the author of several poems and the tragedy "Vasily Shuisky", he planned to write his textbook on world history, but died of consumption at the age of 26. ⁠ admired: "How the wonderful human feeling is captured here in an empty, insignificant life!" Mikhail Pogodin Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin (1800-1875) - historian, prose writer, publisher of the Moskvityanin magazine. Pogodin was born into a peasant family, and by the middle of the 19th century he became such an influential figure that he gave advice to Emperor Nicholas I. "Moskvityanine" were published by Gogol, Zhukovsky, Ostrovsky. The publisher shared the views of the Slavophiles, developed the ideas of Pan-Slavism, and was close to the philosophical circle of all-wise. Pogodin professionally studied the history of Ancient Russia, defended the concept according to which the foundations of Russian statehood were laid by the Scandinavians. He collected a valuable collection of Old Russian documents, which was later bought by the state. ⁠ called the story "a beautiful idyll and elegy." The most famous and authoritative review belongs to Belinsky: in the article "On the Russian Story and the Stories of Gogol," published in two issues of Telescope, he insisted both on the writer's nationality and on the fact that he was not just a humorist. A long passage is devoted to the "Old World landowners" in the article:

Take his "Old World Landowners": what's in them? Two parodies of humanity have been drinking and eating, eating and drinking for several decades, and then, as is customary since ancient times, they die. But why is this charm? You see all the vulgarity, all the filth of this life, animal, ugly, caricature, and meanwhile you take such a part in the characters of the story, laugh at them, but without anger, and then weep with Philemon about his Baucis, sympathize with his deep, unearthly sorrow and be angry with the villainous heir who squandered the fortune of two simpletons!

Belinsky sees the reason for "this charm" in the fact that Gogol correctly "found a human feeling that moved and revived his heroes": a habit - and found poetry in a habit (and since the habit should be familiar to readers in one way or another, they will feel something in Tovstoguby that kindred). Belinsky's review also gave rise to the "sociological" tradition of evaluating the "Old World Landowners" (exposing the "animal, ugly, caricatured" life), which will culminate in early Soviet criticism. Belinsky himself, who could not approve of "animal life" in any way, wrote: "Oh, Mr. Gogol is a true sorcerer, and you cannot imagine how angry I am with him for the fact that he almost made me cry about them, who they just drank and ate and then they died! " He noted with sad irony that in the insignificant dialogues of Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulcheria Ivanovna about the squeezed chair and dried pears - "the whole person, his whole life, with its past, present and future."

Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolai Gogol. Drawing by Boris Lebedev. 1947 year

After Gogol's death, the "Old World landowners" were interpreted in accordance with the critical fashion: if the pre-revolutionary critics saw in the story a touching idyll, and in Tovstogubs - the characters of the kind provincial nobles close to the "people", then for the early Soviet critics they were "negative" characters embodying backwardness, sluggishness, gloominess of life in patriarchal Russia, the triumph of landlord exploitation. Later researchers return to the genre nature of the story, inscribing it in the context of world romanticism; in the 1990s, the "Old World Landowners" are written about as a Christian story, in which righteous love pleasing to God is shown.

"Old World landowners" became the subject of literary reflection: for example, gastronomic and idyllic motifs very similar to Gogol's are found in Gaito Gazdanov's novel "The Story of a Journey" (1935) 5 Aleksandrova EK Old-world landowners in Paris: "gastronomic" parody of Gaito Gazdanov // Russian literature. 2012. No. 4. S. 199-206. ⁠ ... In 1998, the playwright Nikolai Kolyada wrote the play "Old World Landowners" based on Gogol's story; the third character of this play is Gogol himself, the Guest who comprehends the world of Tovstogubs, actively participates in his life and weeps over him. (In addition, Kolyada wrote other plays based on Gogol's motives: Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt, Korobochka and Dead Souls.)

In 1979, director David Karasik staged a television play based on the Old World Landowners, and in 2008 a short puppet cartoon by Maria Muat entitled “He and She” was filmed based on the story.

Television show "Old World Landowners". Directed by David Karasik. 1979 year. Cast - Nikolay Trofimov and Lyudmila Zhukova

What does "old world" mean?

"Old World" means, in fact, "belonging to the" old world "- patriarchal, untouched by the ruinous civilization, observing the laws of hospitality commanded by the ancestors. It is gratifying for the narrator to remember the faces of the kind "old men and old women" who always warmly welcome the guest "in the noise and crowd among fashionable tailcoats": these fashionable Petersburg tailcoats are a "new world", where man is a wolf to man. The “old world” is characterized by a desire to remain in its place: Tovstogubs are representatives of one of the “national, simple-hearted and at the same time rich families, which always constitute the opposite of those low Little Russians who are ripped out of tar, hucksters, fill, like locusts, chambers and public places, rip the last kopeck from their own countrymen, flood Petersburg with snitches, finally make money and solemnly add to their surname ending in O, syllable in". Gogol here denounces not the Ukrainian origin of the new Petersburgers, but precisely their desire to break away from their roots.

These roots are not just provincial, but also rural: the landowners are connected with the land (which is perceptible in English translation the title of the story is "The Old World Landowners"). At the beginning of the story, Gogol gives a detailed exposition of a typical "old-world" economy:

From here I can see a low house with a gallery of small blackened wooden posts, walking around the whole house, so that during thunder and hail it would be possible to close the shutters of the windows without getting wet in the rain. Behind it there are fragrant bird cherry trees, whole rows of low fruit trees, cherries sunk by the crimson and the plums covered with lead mat by the yahon sea; a spreading maple tree, in the shade of which a carpet is spread for rest; in front of the house there is a spacious courtyard with low fresh grass, with a well-worn path from the barn to the kitchen and from the kitchen to the manor's chambers; a long-necked goose drinking water with young and tender, like down, goslings; a palisade, hung with bundles of dried pears and apples and ventilated carpets, a cart with melons standing near the barn, a harnessed ox lying lazily near it - all this for me has an inexplicable charm, perhaps because I no longer see them and that we love everything that we are apart from.

"Old World" is also emphasized by those portraits that hang on the wall at the Tovstogubs: Peter III, Duchess of Lavalier Louise-Françoise de la Baume Le Blanc (1644-1710) - favorite of Louis XIV, nun. In her youth, she became the maid of honor of the Duchess of Orleans, met King Louis XIV, became his favorite and gave birth to four children from him. Soon the king had another beloved - the Marquis de Montespan. In 1675, the duchess went to a monastery and lived there until the end of her life. The central heroine of the novel by Alexandre Dumas "The Viscount de Bragelon, or Ten Years Later". ⁠ and "some kind of bishop." The first two images, referring to the “great” and “gallant” centuries, refer to the heroes' past youth, the third - rather to patriarchy and “eternal peace”.

Louise-Françoise de la Baume Le Blanc (Duchess de Lavalier). Illustration from the book “Louise de Lavalier and early years life of Louis XIV ". 1908 year. The portrait of the king's mistress hangs in the house of the Tovstogubs

Unknown artist. Portrait of Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich. Mid-18th century. The author of the original is Fyodor Rokotov. State Hermitage. The portrait of Peter III is also in the house of the Tovstogubs

What place do the "Old World Landowners" occupy in "Mirgorod"?

The common place of Gogol studies is the contrasting composition of Mirgorod as a single collection. "Mirgorod" is divided into two parts: the first combines "Old World Landowners" and "Taras Bulba", the second - "Viy" and "The Tale of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich." Sentimental idyll coexists with patriotic heroism, "Gothic" horror - with satire. There are different interpretations of these comparisons - from the "vulgar sociological" (Soviet gogolist Nikolay Stepanov Nikolai Leonidovich Stepanov (1902-1972) - literary critic. He worked at the Gorky Institute of World Literature, taught at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute. He was a specialist in literature of the 18th and 19th centuries and Soviet poetry. Collected works of Ivan Krylov were published under the editorship of Stepanov (based on Krylov's fables Stepanov defended his dissertation), Velimir Khlebnikov, Nikolai Gogol. Stepanov wrote several books about Gogol ("Gogol. The Creative Way", "The Art of Gogol the Playwright") and a biography of the writer in the ZhZL series. ⁠ declared about “petty money-grubbing”, who in “Taras Bulba” was opposed by “the sphere of people's life”; another researcher, Alexander Dokusov, wrote that the old-world landowners "belong to the world of evil") to a purely literary, genre: comparing such dissimilar texts, Gogol tries his own possibilities and expands the boundaries of Russian prose.

But, in addition to contrasts, in "Mirgorod" there are important roll-overs between stories, again interpreting different motives and themes in different ways. Particular attention should be paid to the proximity of "Old World Landowners" and "Taras Bulba". Alexander Herzen wrote that Taras Bulba and Afanasy Ivanovich share the same traits: simplicity and gracefulness 6 Herzen A.I.On the development of revolutionary ideas in Russia // Herzen A.I. Collected works: in 30 volumes.Vol. 7.P. 228. ⁠ ... This observation can be correlated with the antique subtext of the whole "Mirgorod": the old people of Tovstoguba remind of bucolic peasants as Bulba does about Greek and Roman heroes. Much in "Landowners" has something in common with "Taras Bulba": for example, Afanasy Ivanovich scares his wife with a joking intention to go to war, and Bulba (having scared his wife in the same way) goes to war.

With "Viy", the "Landowners" have a demonological motive in common: the very call from nowhere, which, according to the belief of the "common people", portends a quick death, is an omen of much larger, physically manifested horrors of the story of Home Brutus and the dead panel. Finally, the idyllic beginning of "Old World Landowners" contrasts not only with their finale, which shows the decline of the old-world economy, but also with the finale of the last story of the collection - "Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich " 7 Esaulov I. A. The spectrum of adequacy in the interpretation of a literary work ("Mirgorod" by N. V. Gogol). M .: RGGU, 1995.S. 8. ⁠ ... Instead of the joy and abundance of the Little Russian summer, there is a “bad time” of autumn: “Again the same field, dug in places, black, in places green, wet jackdaws and crows, monotonous rain, teary sky without a gap. "It's boring in this world, gentlemen!" In the last story of Mirgorod, Gogol finally destroys the world that he lovingly created in the Old World Landowners, and before that in Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka. In this regard, it is tempting to assume (as the researcher Vladimir Denisov 8 Denisov V. D. City and the world: about the collection of N. V. Gogol "Mirgorod" (1835) // Culture and text. 2014. No. 4. S. 14-34. ⁠ ) that the name "Mirgorod" is not only a specific toponym, but also a reference to the well-known Catholic formula urbi et orbi ("city and world"); that Mirgorod is a world-city in which there is a place for different people and ways of living and which has its beginning and end.

Girls from Poltava region in festive outfits. Photo by Samuil Dudin. 1894 year

In the House. Kherson province, Elisavetgrad district. Photo by Samuil Dudin. 1894 year

How is the myth of Philemon and Baucis played out in "Old World Landowners"?

“If I were a painter and wanted to depict Philemon and Baucis on the canvas, I would never have chosen another original besides them. Afanasy Ivanovich was sixty years old, Pulcheria Ivanovna was fifty-five, ”Gogol writes. The source of the myth of Philemon and Baucides is Ovid's Metamorphoses. Before Gogol, Russian sentimentalists, in particular, turned to this story - Nikolai Karamzin, Mikhail Muravyov, Ivan Dmitriev (to the latter, Gogol wrote from Vasilyevka that he now lives “in a village, exactly as described by the unforgettable Karamzin”).

According to Ovid, Philemon and Baucis lived in the Phrygian city of Tiana. The aged husband and wife, who loved each other tenderly, were the only ones who sheltered the two pilgrims - it turned out that Jupiter and Mercury were hiding under the guise of pilgrims. The old men were ready to slaughter the only goose for the guests. Touched by the hospitality of the owners, the gods drowned all the houses in the area, except for the house of Philemon and Baucis - their hut turned into a temple to Jupiter, and the old men asked the thunderer to leave them at this temple as priests and grant them the opportunity to die at the same time. Their wish was granted:

Suddenly he saw Philemon: dressing in the greenery of Baucides;
Sees Baucis: the old man Philemon dresses in greenery.
Their chilled faces were crowned with tops of the face.
They quietly exchanged greetings. "Goodbye,
My husband!" - "Farewell, O wife!" - so they said together, and immediately
Their mouths were covered with foliage. And now an inhabitant of Tiana
Two trunks will show you, from a single grown root.

per. S. Shervinsky

The "old-world landowners" are both similar and different from this myth. On the one hand, we have a loving and welcoming couple (hospitality is the main feature of the Tovstogubs). According to Ivan Esaulov's observation, Ovid also refers to the common patronymic of the spouses Tovstogubov (Ivanovich, Ivanovna), which reminds of the common root of the trees into which Philemon and Baucis 9 Esaulov I. A. The spectrum of adequacy in the interpretation of a literary work ("Mirgorod" by N. V. Gogol). M .: RGGU, 1995.S. 27. ⁠ ... On the other hand, Tovstogubs, unlike the poor Philemon and Baucis, are well-to-do owners, and they are not given the blissful fate of simultaneous and easy death. Perhaps Gogol was influenced by the second part of Goethe's Faust, published in 1832, shortly before Gogol's work on Mirgorod began. In the last act, Faust plans, in order to achieve the glory and gratitude of humanity, to build a huge dam, so that "at any cost at the bottom of the abyss / Piece of land win back " 10 Per. B. Pasternak ⁠ - but he is hindered by the hut of the elderly spouses Philemon and Baucis standing at the construction site, who do not agree to leave their home. Faust asks Mephistopheles to deal with the problem - as a result, Philemon and Baucis, to the horror of Faust, die. An echo of this rationalizing violence can be an attempt by a distant relative of the Tovstogubs to restore order in their estate after the death of the elderly - an attempt that ended, as we recall, with the complete collapse of the estate. By the way, researchers see another Goethean parallel with the "Old World Landowners" - the poem "Hermann and Dorothea" (1797).

In principle, the combination of Little Russian Eden with ancient culture in the case of Gogol is quite explainable by his biography - his studies at the Nizhyn Gymnasium of Higher Sciences, where they studied the works of the ancients. But, one way or another, by pointing to the Ovidian source, Gogol mutes its influence. So, with the "noble", antique names of heroes (Athanasius and Pulcheria), there is a "physiological" surname Tovstogub. Such a contrast compels the reader to make "an effort to distinguish manifestations of deep feelings behind the" crust of earthlyness "in order to see Athanasius in Tovstogub, in Tovstogubikha - Pulcheria " 11 Karpov A. A. "Athanasius and Pulcheria" - a tale of love and death // The Gogol Phenomenon: Proceedings of the Jubilee Intern. scientific. conf., dedicated. 200th anniversary of the birth of N.V. Gogol / Ed. M. N. Virolainen and A. A. Karpova. SPb .: Petropolis, 2011.S. 159. ⁠ .

It is worth noting that the Tovstogubs were not Gogol's first elderly couple: in the preface to Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, the narrator, Rudy Panko, talks about himself and “his old woman,” a childless and hospitable couple. Gogol during the "Evenings", of course, more naturally correlated himself with the Little Russian idyll - so much so that he was ready to reincarnate in her "genius of the place."

Peter Paul Rubens. Jupiter and Mercury in Philemon and Baucis. Around 1620-1625. Vienna Museum of Art History

What is remarkable about the garden of old-world landowners?

The most famous garden in Gogol's prose is Plyushkin's garden. The neglected Plyushkinsky garden is beautiful, because nature and art worked equally to create it. In "Old World Landowners" nature and art have a different, but also symbiotic relationship. On the one hand, the farm of the active Pulcheria Ivanovna was “completely similar to a chemical laboratory” (“A fire was always spread out under the apple tree, and the cauldron or copper basin with jam, jelly, pastille made with honey and sugar was almost never removed from the iron tripod and I don’t remember what else. ”Under another tree the coachman was always driving lembike Tank for distillation and purification of vodka. ⁠ vodka for peach leaves, for bird cherry blossom, for centaury, for cherry pits "); on the other hand, arrears were constantly discovered due to oversight or simply theft - but "the blessed land produced everything in such a multitude" that the economy always prospered. Before us is a kind of model of paradise - and it is important that Gogol, describing the Tovstogubs' garden, describes, as it were, all such gardens, all the farms of old-world landowners in general: for the palisade surrounding a small courtyard, for the fence of a garden filled with apple trees and plums, for the village huts that surround it, staggering to the side, shaded by willows, elderberries and pears. " Later, such generalizations would be adopted by the natural school, but Gogol wanted to show not the typical, but the ideal. Here time seems to disappear: researcher Vladislav Krivonos notes that the narrator enters the garden "for a minute", but the minute stretches out very much for a long time 12 Krivonos V. Sh. Place and plot in Gogol's "Old World Landowners" // Domestic literature as a factor in the preservation of Russian identity in the global world: Materials of the All-Russian. scientific-practical conf. Samara, 2017.S. 106. ⁠ .

Under the apple tree fire was always spread out, and the cauldron or copper basin with jam, jelly, marshmallow, made with honey, sugar and I don't remember what else was almost never removed from the iron tripod

Nikolay Gogol

Yuri Lotman in his work "Artistic space in Gogol's prose" explains that the most important property of the garden of old-world landowners is its "Fenced off" 13 ⁠ : this is a reserved corner, as Eden should be, an earthly paradise. According to Lotman, the core of this world is the Tovstogubs' house, surrounded by rings, “border belts”: a courtyard, a palisade, a garden, a village (inside the house there are also “border guards” - the famous “singing” doors). Trouble comes to the Tovstogubs' house from the only place where this border breaks: from the wild forest, which directly communicates with the garden, from the "hole under the barn" through which it escapes into this forest cat 14 Virolainen MN Peace and Style ("Old World Landowners" by Gogol) // Voprosy literatury. 1979. No. 4. S. 125-141; Weisskopf M. Ya. Gogol's plot: Morphology. Ideology. Context. M .: RGGU, 2002.S. 347. ⁠ ... Unlike other Tovstogub forests, in which the clerk mercilessly cut trees for his own benefit, this forest was "completely spared by the enterprising clerk": he was afraid that Pulcheria Ivanovna would hear the sound of an ax. Paradoxically, what should be the norm (the clerk does not cut the master's forest) turns into an anomaly and leads to the death of the owners (wild cats are found in this forest, luring the landlord's cat to him). The death of Pulcheria Ivanovna, who fulfills the traditional role of the guardian of the home hearth 15 Sintsova S. V. Gender issues in N. V. Gogol's story "Old World Landowners" // Bulletin of Nizhny Novgorod University im. N.I. Lobachevsky. Literary criticism. 2009. No. 6. P. 93. ⁠ , launches the process of destruction of her entire economy - after the death of Afanasy Ivanovich, whom she seems to be punishing to follow her, the matter is completed very quickly. Borders collapse, and the garden falls into desolation: the estate is taken over by an "alien" world. But for their own - that is, for the guests for whom the old-world landowners lived - these boundaries were, of course, permeable, and the garden reminded of the possibility of a different, reserved life.

Vladimir Makovsky. They make jam. 1876 State Tretyakov Gallery

Why do Tovstogubs eat so much?

The food associated with the hearth is almost the semantic center of the "Old World Landowners". There is food here, everyday and special - for the guests, which is presented as in a parade:

These are fungi with thyme! it is with carnations and nuts!<…>Here are these fungi with currant leaves and nut nuts! But these are big herbs: for the first time I boiled them in vinegar; I don't know what they are; I learned a secret from Ivan's father. In a small tub, first of all, you need to spread the oak leaves and then sprinkle with pepper and saltpeter and add whatever color happens to you, so take this color and spread it up with the tails. And these are pies! these are cheese pies! this is with urda! but these are the ones that Afanasy Ivanovich loves very much, with cabbage and buckwheat porridge.

According to Andrei Bely, Afanasy Ivanovich “took food nine times in day" 16 Mann Yu. V. Poetics of Gogol. Variations to the theme. M .: Coda, 1996. C. 145. ⁠ ... Yuri Mann writes that in the images of food here “there is no aggressive, predatory connotation (cf. the devouring of food by Sobakevich). It's almost idyllic and plant-based absorbing, chewing and digestion " 17 Mann Yu. V. Poetics of Gogol. Variations to the theme. M .: Coda, 1996. C. 146. ⁠ ... He also speaks of "openness and hospitality", which Tovstogubs associate with food. This, of course, is connected with the ancient laws of hospitality: food is responsible for the whole house of old-world landowners. This rule is strengthened by the fact that the world of Tovstogubs is small and closed, so some pies with cheese take a serious place 18 Lotman Yu.M. Artistic space in Gogol's prose // Lotman Yu.M. At the school of the poetic word: Pushkin. Lermontov. Gogol. M .: Education, 1988.S. 251-292. ⁠ .

Gogol's mild comic here is that the Rabelaisian feasts that Tovstogubs arrange for guests and their small household are, as it were, disproportionate - but Gogol immediately found an explanation for this: hospitality is linked to the idea of ​​“heaven on earth” where everything will be born in abundance. "However, I think that the air itself in Little Russia does not have some special property that helps digestion, because if someone here decided to eat in this way, then, no doubt, instead of a bed, he would find himself lying on the table." On the contrary, for Tovstogubs, it is precisely the refusal of food that is associated with death: in the mood for a quick death, Pulcheria Ivanovna refuses to eat. The only treatment that Afanasy Ivanovich can offer her: "Maybe you would have something to eat, Pulcheria Ivanovna?" It may be worth remembering here that shortly before his death, Gogol also refused to eat. Food in Gogol's world is vitality; hunger is death. So it is, in fact, in life, but Gogol, like many things, exaggerates. Moreover, for old-world landowners, talking about food is a kind of conversation about love, the language in which they can express their feelings. It is food - miniatures Crushed potato pancakes with cottage cheese. ⁠ with sour cream - for the widower it becomes a living reminder of the deceased. The modern researcher sees here an echo of the romantic idea that the main thing is fundamentally inexpressibly 19 Karpov A. A. "Athanasius and Pulcheria" - a tale of love and death // The Gogol Phenomenon: Proceedings of the Jubilee Intern. scientific. conf., dedicated. 200th anniversary of the birth of N.V. Gogol / Ed. M. N. Virolainen and A. A. Karpova. SPb .: Petropolis, 2011.S. 161-162. ⁠ .

Pyotr Boklevsky. Pulcheria Ivanovna. Illustration for the story "Old World Landowners". 1887 year

Yu.A. Porfiriev. Afanasy Ivanovich. Illustration for the story "Old World Landowners". 1946 year

What kind of war was Afanasy Ivanovich going to go to?

According to the mentions of wars, one can roughly date the action of the "Old World Landowners". It happens after 1815 year In 1815, Napoleon I again became the French emperor, but only for a hundred days. After the lost battle of Waterloo, he was forced to abdicate the throne a second time. ⁠ probably in the early 1820s - because the guest tells Afanasy Ivanovich rumors that "the Frenchman secretly agreed with the Englishman to release Bonaparte to Russia again." (Let's leave aside the death of Bonaparte in 1821 - it is not necessary that the Mirgorodsky district soon found out about this, and the ratio of the narrator to the author: the narrator is clearly older than Gogol, who at the time of writing the story is 24 years old.) At the same time, 55-year-old Pulcheria Ivanovna remembers how “the Turks were in our captivity”: the captive “Turkenya”, who had learned the mistress to salt mushrooms in a special way, lived with the Tovstogubs after Russian-Turkish war of 1787-1791 War between Russia and the Holy Roman Empire on the one hand and the Ottoman Empire on the other. The Ottoman Empire planned to regain the lands that had been ceded to Russia after the Russian-Turkish war of 1768-1774, including the Crimea, but could not do this - the new war ended with the victory of Russia. The Ottoman Empire signed the Yassy Peace Treaty, according to which it had to cede Crimea to Russia forever and pay an indemnity of 7 million rubles. However, Empress Catherine II refused the money, citing the poor economic condition of the enemy. ⁠ - 25 years before the events of the story. Finally, Pulcheria Ivanovna inspects her forests, sitting in a droshky pulled by horses "who served in the militia" - that is, "in the militia formed in Russia during Russian-Prussian-French war War of France against the coalition from Russia, Prussia and Great Britain. Prussia began the war after Napoleon refused to withdraw his troops from German lands. The war ended with the conclusion of the Peace of Tilsit between Napoleon and Alexander I, according to the terms of the peace, the territory of Prussia was cut, Russia recognized all the conquests of France and joined the continental blockade of England, and France stopped supporting Turkey in the war with Russia. ⁠ 1805-1807 due to the threat of invasion of Napoleonic troops into the country and disbanded shortly after the conclusion of Tilsit the world " 20 Guminsky V.M. Gogol, Alexander I and Napoleon // Our contemporary. 2002. No. 3. S. 216-232. ⁠ ... Ivan Nikiforovich from another Gogol story also served in the police - for this he bought a gun "from Turchin", which caused discord between friends.

Pulcheria Ivanovna was most entertaining for me when she brought the guest to a snack

Nikolay Gogol

"The upcoming war", with talks about which the guest entertains Afanasy Ivanovich, is hardly any specific: after 1814 Russia did not participate in wars with foreign powers for more than ten years (except for the Caucasian War, which began in 1817). Only in the summer of 1826 did Russo-Persian War The war was started by Persia in 1826 to revise the terms of the peace treaty concluded after the Russo-Persian War of 1804-1813. The attack on Russia was supported by Great Britain. Two years later, after a series of military setbacks, Persia was forced to negotiate peace. As a result of the war, part of the Caspian coast and Eastern Armenia passed to Russia, Persia paid an indemnity in the amount of 20 million rubles, while Russia, after paying the indemnity, withdrew its troops from South Azerbaijan. ⁠ - Persia wanted to take revenge for the defeat in previous conflict Russian-Persian War of 1804-1813. Persia started the war after the annexation of Eastern Georgia to Russia. In the winter of 1806-1807, Russia entered into an armistice because of the outbreak of the Russian-Turkish war, but military operations soon resumed. The war with Persia ended with the victory of Russia - Russia received the exclusive right to keep the fleet in the Caspian Sea, Persia recognized Eastern Georgia as Russian possession ⁠ in 1813. In "Old World Landowners", apparently, we have the same idle rumors as in "Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich": there Ivan Ivanovich tells his friend that "three kings have declared war on our king" and "want us to everyone accepted the Turkish faith ”(echo of numerous wars with the Ottoman Empire, the anti-Napoleonic coalition and the creation of the Holy Alliance).

“I myself am thinking of going to war; why can't I go to war? " - says Afanasy Ivanovich Tovstogub. He, of course, is not liable for military service: after a short military career, he enjoys the privileges Manifesto on the Liberty of the Nobility Decree of Peter III of 1762. According to him, the nobles were exempted from compulsory military and civil service and received the right to freely travel abroad. During the war, the state could require a nobleman to enter the service. If at that time he was abroad, he should have immediately returned to Russia, otherwise his possessions were confiscated by the state. ⁠ granted by Peter III (the same sovereign whose portrait hangs in the house of the old-world landowners). Conversations about war are interestingly combined with the infantilism of Afanasy Ivanovich, which Gogol constantly emphasizes. Afanasy Ivanovich is not included in the issues of the economy and is entirely dependent on the care of his wife, who feeds him, like a caring mother 21 Sintsova S. V. Gender issues in N. V. Gogol's story "Old World Landowners" // Bulletin of Nizhny Novgorod University im. N.I. Lobachevsky. Literary criticism. 2009. No. 6. P. 92. ⁠ ... He listens to the guests with a curiosity that "is somewhat like the curiosity of a child." Pulcheria Ivanovna, dying, says: "You are like a little child: you need to be loved by the one who will take care of you." Afanasy Ivanovich, frightened by his wife's foreboding, "weeps like a child." Hearing the call, as it seems to him, of his deceased wife, he submits to his own death "with the will of an obedient child." In this context, it is necessary to perceive the husband's joking at his wife, including threats to go to war: this is how children like to scare their parents, and sometimes they speak seriously. Didn't Leo Tolstoy keep "Old World Landowners" in his head when he wrote the scene in which Petya Rostov first talks to his parents that he is going to go to war?

Arkhip Kuindzhi. Evening in Ukraine. The year is 1878. State Russian Museum

Why did Pulcheria Ivanovna take the cat for death?

Pulcheria Ivanovna's favorite, a pampered gray cat, runs to the forest cats, three days later she returns emaciated - and after eating, she runs back into the forest. This trivial incident makes Pulcheria Ivanovna draw an unexpected conclusion: "It was my death that came for me!"

In fact, such an incident happened with the grandmother of the famous actor Mikhail Schepkin Mikhail Semyonovich Schepkin (1788-1863) - actor. He began his career with a home serf theater, played in the Poltava theater. In 1822 he received his freedom and in the same year, by invitation, he moved to Moscow, where he served at the Maly Theater until the end of his life. Shchepkin played Famusov in Woe from Wit, Gorodnichy in The Inspector General. Especially for him, Belinsky wrote the play "Fifty-year-old Uncle, or Strange Disease", and Turgenev wrote the play "Freeloader". Known primarily for his comic roles, Shchepkin also played tragic roles: for example, he played Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. The Higher Theater School in Moscow, one of the main Russian educational institutions for actors, is named after Shchepkin. ⁠ , descended from serfs, - Gogol borrowed this anecdote from Shchepkin. Pulcheria Ivanovna's conviction has folklore roots. A similar belief is recorded in the "Poetic views of the Slavs on nature" Alexander Afanasyev Alexander Nikolaevich Afanasyev (1826-1871) - historian, literary critic, collector of folklore. He served in the Moscow Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Afanasyev collected his own library of old Russian books and manuscripts, published articles about Slavic mythology in the magazines Sovremennik and Otechestvennye zapiski. Published by Afanasyev, the collection "Russian Folk Legends" was banned by censorship, stories from this collection, as well as "Cherished Tales" of erotic content Afanasyev sent abroad. After the search, he was fired from the archive. From 1865 to 1869 Afanasyev published his main three-volume work "Poetic views of the Slavs on nature." In the last years of his life he worked on a collection of Russian fairy tales. He died of consumption. ⁠ : “Czechs and Little Russians say that Death, assuming the form of a cat, scratches at the window, and whoever sees her and lets her into the hut must die in the shortest possible time time" 22 Afanasyev A.N. Poetic views of the Slavs on nature: In 3 volumes. 55. ⁠ ... The appearance of a cat - bad omen and in some other cultures. According to the remark Vladimir Toporov Vladimir Nikolaevich Toporov (1928-2005) - linguist, literary critic. He worked at the Institute of Slavic and Balkan Studies. Toporov was engaged in comparative historical linguistics, the study of folklore, semiotics (Toporov is one of the founders of the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school). Introduced the concept of "Petersburg text" into literary criticism. Together with the linguist Vyacheslav Ivanov, he developed the theory of the "main myth" - the plot of the fight between the Thunder God and the Serpent. He studied Sanskrit, Pali language, ancient Indian epic. He was the first to translate into Russian from the Pali language "Dhammapadu", a collection of sayings of the Buddha. ⁠ , “In lower mythology, the cat acts as the embodiment (or assistant, member of the retinue) of the devil, unclean strength " 23 Myths of the peoples of the world: Encyclopedia. In 2 volumes.Vol. 2.M .: Soviet encyclopedia, 1992. P. 11. ⁠ ... Hence the idea of ​​the devilish beginning in black cats: in Russian literature it is most fully shown in The Master and Margarita, and Gogol could have been familiar at least from Hoffmann's Golden Pot; in fact, a black cat-witch appears in Gogol's "May Night".

The old woman thought. "It was my death that came for me!" - she said to herself, and nothing could dispel her

Nikolay Gogol

On the other hand, among Christians, especially among the Old Believers, a cat is a "pure" animal (as opposed to a dog), which is what Pulcheria Ivanovna says: will do evil. " But it is precisely this “quiet creation” that escapes into the neighboring forest, where he associates with robber forest cats, whom Gogol calls “a gloomy and wild people”: we have a typically Gogolian ambivalence, generally speaking, inherent evil spirits(here you can also recall the lady from "Viy" - a beautiful girl and a disgusting old witch).

Ivan Esaulov, emphasizing the importance of borders in "Old World Landowners", notes that a runaway cat enters the wild "big world" outside the confined idyllic space of the Tovstogub estate - and, returning, becomes a herald of death just from this "big the world " 24 Esaulov I. A. The spectrum of adequacy in the interpretation of a literary work ("Mirgorod" by N. V. Gogol). M .: RGGU, 1995.S. 38. ⁠ ... A skinned, emaciated animal running wild with its mistress is the complete opposite of the spoiled cat that Pulcheria Ivanovna knew: other world), she "becomes infected" with the otherworldly and becomes in fact the bearer of death. This is quite in the logic of syncretic, magical, folklore consciousness - and the fact that Pulcheria Ivanovna takes the belief seriously indicates her belonging to the patriarchal / pastoral world, despite her noble status (again, remember that Mikhail Schepkin's grandmother was a serf).

Directly to popular belief Gogol refers back when he talks about the foreshadowing of the death of Afanasy Ivanovich, who suddenly heard Pulcheria Ivanovna calling him:

You, no doubt, have ever heard a voice calling you by name, which the commoners explain by the fact that the soul yearned for a person and calls him, and after which death is inevitable. I confess that this mysterious call has always been terrible to me. I remember that as a child I often heard him: sometimes, suddenly, behind me, someone clearly pronounced my name.

It should be noted that in two "everyday" stories of Mirgorod - "Old World Landowners" and "Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich" - a zoological trifle becomes an impulse for the development of action. But if the quarrel over the word "gander" is a frankly absurd story and (in the Bakhtin sense) carnival, then there is something very touching in death over a cat, as in the whole story.

The cat is in an affectionate mood. Engraving from Charles Darwin's The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. 1872 year

Universal History Archive / Getty Images

Why does Afanasy Ivanovich not show emotions at the funeral of Pulcheria Ivanovna?

The death of Pulcheria Ivanovna kind of "turns off" Afanasy Ivanovich from the world of the living. At his wife's funeral, he “looked at everything… insensibly,” “looked at everything strangely,” sheds “some insensible tears” over the coffin, and after the burial he says: “So you already buried her! why?!" Emotions overtake him only upon returning from the funeral: “But when he returned home, when he saw that his room was empty, that even the chair on which Pulcheria Ivanovna was sitting was taken out, he sobbed, sobbed strongly, sobbed inconsolably, and tears like a river flowed from his dull eyes. " Since then, grief has not left him.

The psychologist will say that Gogol accurately describes the initial stage of deep grief, the behavior of a person after a catastrophic shock. Yuri Mann in "Poetics of Gogol" writes that the reaction of Afanasy Ivanovich should seem strange to outsiders - distant relatives and fellow countrymen participating in the "collective ritual action" of the funeral, and even to readers story 25 Mann Yu. V. Poetics of Gogol. Variations to the theme. M .: Coda, 1996. C. 32-36. ⁠ ... In the usual funeral bustle, crying is mixed with laughter: “... Long tables were placed around the yard; kutia, liqueurs, pies covered them in heaps; the guests talked, cried, looked at the deceased, talked about her qualities ... ... The sun was shining, babies were crying in their mothers' arms, larks were singing, children in shirts were running and frolicking along the road. " Against the background of these "natural" and predictable reactions, the figure of Afanasy Ivanovich stands out sharply: this makes us watch him with increased attention - for one where there were two before. civilization " 26 Mann Yu. V. Poetics of Gogol. Variations to the theme. M .: Coda, 1996. C. 147.⁠ is needed just to shade the life of old-world landowners, to show its attractiveness and inaccessibility (after all, at the end of the story, the narrator watches the ruin of the estate).

The narrator, a confidant of his heroes, can make judgments on them (“Pulcheria Ivanovna was most interesting for me when she brought the guest to a snack”); he, like a good neighbor, follows their fate (he visits the widower - and thus gets the opportunity to tell about his life after Pulcheria Ivanovna). At the same time, this narrator is not fully a character: he also has the features of an "omniscient author" who is able to tell the reader, for example, the details of private conversations between spouses. He remains the god of storytelling. Such a dual role is parodied in the modern play by Nikolai Kolyada "Old World Landowners", where Gogol is a full-fledged character, but at the same time an outsider who can comprehend everything that is happening. At the same time, an involved and external position allows the narrator to involve other, alien contexts in his description: he compares Tovstogubov with Philemon and Bavkid, whom they have hardly ever heard of, and introduces an inserted story about a man who lost his beloved, twice tried to do away with himself, but then he was comforted. The opposite of this everyday story is Afanasy Ivanovich's "long, hot sorrow" - and for the narrator there is a reason to think about which is stronger - passion or habit.

Fedor Moller. Portrait of Nikolai Gogol. Early 1840s. State Russian Museum

What does the decline of the Tovstogub estate mean?

At the beginning of the story, the "exemplary economy" of the old-world landowners is contrasted with "a new, sleek structure, whose walls have not yet been washed by rain, the roofs have not been covered with green mold, and the porch, deprived of a tickle, does not show its red bricks." The "old-world" economy should have signs of antiquity and dilapidation. Romanticism inherits from sentimentalism a special attitude towards ruins, which at the same time remind of a high, currently inaccessible architectural ideal and demonstrate the harmonious co-creation of man and nature - co-creation through destruction. In "Old World Landowners" Gogol, with mild irony, lowers the pathos of the poetics of ruins - and demonstrates what real ruins are: after the death of the owners, in their estate you can see only "a bunch of collapsed huts, a dead pond, an overgrown moat in the place where a low house stood, - and nothing more". This collapse was accelerated by attempts, so to speak, of mechanical modernization: the heir to the estate, a distant relative of the Tovstogubs, nails numbers to the huts and buys "six beautiful English sickles" - philologist Ivan Esaulov considers 27 Esaulov I. A. The spectrum of adequacy in the interpretation of a literary work ("Mirgorod" by N. V. Gogol). M .: RGGU, 1995.S. 23. ⁠ it is no coincidence that after six months the finally ruined estate has take into custody The system of noble guardianship was established in 1775. Officials were supposed to manage the property of noble widows and orphans, find trustees for their estates. Often estates were arrested for misdemeanors - an estate was taken under guardianship if it was discovered that a nobleman was ruining his property, mistreating peasants, or demonstrating immoral behavior. ⁠ .

It is interesting that Gogol chooses just such a variant of eschatology for the estate of the old-world landowners - in the words of Eliot, "not an explosion, but a sob." Let's remember that Afanasy Ivanovich loved to joke on Pulcheria Ivanovna, frightening her with fire. In reality, the fire really devours their economy - but in a completely different way: “the palisade and the fence in the yard were completely destroyed, and I saw myself how the cook pulled out the sticks from it to light the stove, while she had to take two extra steps to get the brushwood heaped right there and then. Eden was destroyed not by a loud, scandalous and somewhat romantic catastrophe, but by everyday entropy - before us is the manifestation of realism as such.

Humboldt 28 Esaulov I. A. The spectrum of adequacy in the interpretation of a literary work ("Mirgorod" by N. V. Gogol). M .: RGGU, 1995.S. 25, 30.⁠. Gogol's tale was attributed to idylls throughout the history of its reading and study, starting with Pushkin. It was created “in an atmosphere of controversy over the genre of idyll, the beginning of which was it is supposed 29 Surkov E. A. On the idyllic in the "Old World landowners" N. V. Gogol // N. V. Gogol and the Slavic world (Russian and Ukrainian reception) / Ed. N. V. Khomuk. Tomsk, 2007. Issue. 1.S. 47-57. ⁠ the release of the book "Idylls of Vladimir Panaev" Vladimir Ivanovich Panaev (1792-1852) - poet, academician, high-ranking official (for some time Gogol served under his command). He wrote mostly poetic idylls; the only collection "Idylls of Vladimir Panaev" was published in 1820. Panaev did not like romantic writers, including Pushkin and Gogol; they reciprocated. ⁠ ... Such philologists as Dmitry Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky Dmitry Nikolaevich Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky (1853-1920) - literary critic, linguist. He taught at Novorossiysk, Kharkov, Petersburg and Kazan universities. From 1913 to 1918 he edited the journal "Vestnik Evropy". He studied the works of Gogol, Pushkin, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov. The most famous work of Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky was The History of the Russian Intelligentsia, published in 1907. He studied the syntax of the Russian language, as well as Sanskrit and Indian philosophy. ⁠ , Victor Vinogradov Viktor Vladimirovich Vinogradov (1895-1969) - linguist, literary critic. In the early 1920s he studied the history of church schism, in the 1930s he took up literary criticism: he wrote articles about Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Akhmatova. With the latter he was connected by many years of friendship. In 1929, Vinogradov moved to Moscow and founded his own linguistic school there. In 1934, Vinogradov was repressed, but released ahead of schedule to prepare for Pushkin's anniversary in 1937. In 1958, Vinogradov headed the Institute of the Russian Language of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was an expert on the part of the prosecution in the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel. ⁠ , Boris Eikhenbaum Boris Mikhailovich Eikhenbaum (1886-1959) - literary critic, textual critic, one of the main formalist philologists. In 1918 he entered the OPOYAZ circle along with Yuri Tynyanov, Viktor Shklovsky, Roman Yakobson, Osip Brik. In 1949 he was persecuted during the Stalinist campaign to combat cosmopolitanism. Author of the most important works about Gogol, Lev Tolstoy, Leskov, Akhmatova. ⁠ ... In fact, the idyllic chronotope of the "Old World landowners", as in Humboldt, is opposed to the "big world": they do not know world upheavals, they talk about war only as a joke, they do not travel far and try not to remember that once everything it was different. They eat a lot here - and the food, according to Bakhtin 30 Bakhtin M. M. Forms of time and chronotope in the novel. Essays on historical poetics // Bakhtin M. M. Collected works: In 6 volumes. V. 3. Theory of the novel. M .: Languages ​​of Slavic cultures, 2012.S. 474. ⁠ , an important part of the idyllic chronotope The indissoluble unity of a certain point in space and a certain moment in time. In literary criticism, the term began to be used thanks to Mikhail Bakhtin. ⁠ ... They do not want to change anything here, but the “blessed land” itself is responsible for ensuring that this closed system remains harmonious and viable.

I confess that this mysterious call has always been terrible to me. I remember that as a child I often heard him: sometimes, suddenly, behind me, someone clearly pronounced my name

Nikolay Gogol

At the same time, in "Old World Landowners" there is an important difference from the classical idyll: the death of heroes and the destruction of the patriarchal way of life, lovingly built in the first part of the story. What is demonstrated in this way? That a true idyll is impossible today? That it was never possible? Rather, the fact that everything has its own timeline, nothing will escape the "all-consuming time."

In a sense, the idyllic feeling, as interpreted by Gogol, is opposed to the romantic feeling. This is especially evident in two points. Firstly, Afanasy Ivanovich tries not to remember that he once managed to deftly take away Pulcheria Ivanovna, whom they did not want to marry him: such a romantic act is incongruous to his current state of peace. Secondly, speaking of the inconsolable grief of Afanasy Ivanovich, Gogol inserts a story about a young man whose beloved died unexpectedly; he twice tried to commit suicide, but in the end he was comforted and happily married. In contrast to this young man, Afanasy Ivanovich is unable to survive his loss - which makes the narrator think:

"God! - I thought, looking at him, - five years of all-consuming time - the old man is already insensitive, the old man, whose life, it seemed, had never been outraged by a single strong feeling of the soul, whose whole life, it seemed, consisted only of sitting on a high chair, of eating dried fish and pears, from good-natured stories - and such a long, such hot sadness! What is stronger above us: passion or habit? Or are all the strong impulses, all the whirlwind of our desires and seething passions - is only a consequence of our bright age and only for that one seem deep and crushing? "

In his "Irresistible Tambourine" Aleksey Remizov notes that the word "habit" here is just a replacement for the "big" word "love", which Gogol "was ashamed to use." But rather, we are not talking about embarrassment, but about the fact that the word “love” is assigned to romanticism, while “habit” (which, as Pushkin recalls, “is given to us from above” and replaces happiness) is precisely about equal, harmonious, an idyllic feeling, closer to the Christian ideal. Here you can recall the idea that instead of “I love” Russian women say “I’m sorry”, and the phrase of the aging Lizaveta Alexandrovna from “ Ordinary history"Goncharova:" Yes, I am very ... accustomed to you, "- Lizaveta Alexandrovna wanted just romantic love, but she was forced, not without bitterness, to admit that instead she fell into a" habit ". However, if for Goncharov "habit" is part of a complex moral equation that has no solution, then for Gogol it is, albeit not a problem-free, but a sign of idyllic harmony, which in one way or another is opposed to all other stories of Mirgorod.

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