Solzhenitsyn's story addresses various issues. Matrona's house is the Little Motherland. He is the epitome of a long and difficult life. The death of Matryona is very symbolic. Having given away part of the yard, she lost part of herself. Indirectly, Fadey and his desire to profit from someone else's grief are to blame for the death of Matryona. The author is convinced that malice and self-interest ruined the hut and its owner, Matryonin Dvor - these are special devices of life, the inner world, which was close and understandable only to the main character herself. The heroines are inextricably linked with this place, because all life has passed in it. Matryonin's yard is the embodiment of habitual experiences for any rural person, the character arranges his life with difficulty, but I am guided only by kindness and honesty. Thus, when the house collapses, its resident also dies.
The story "Matryonin Dvor" deals with the theme of compassion.
The true value of a person is the ability to sympathize and be kind. Matryona is always helping others, she saw this as her life goal. She lived not to satisfy her own needs, but for the good of others. She lived in this village all her life, a visiting teacher cared Worried about her. How, even after her death, people did not appreciate the dignity of Matryona's soul. Matryona, the author embodies the moral ideal, the fullness of human compassion and mercy. In her actions, the heroine did not pursue selfish goals and personal interests. He helped others to go with a pure heart, so Matryona sacrifices everything for the sake of her neighbors and relatives, without demanding anything in return.
Updated: 2018-05-05
Attention!
Thank you for your attention. Useful material on the topic
If you notice an error or typo, highlight the text and press Ctrl+Enter.
Thus, you will provide invaluable benefit to the project and other readers.
Moral problems of the story "Matryona Dvor".
Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 in a wealthy and educated peasant family. He was raised by his mother (his father died in a hunting accident when his son was 6 months old). The future writer joins the Komsomol, simultaneously studies at two institutes: At the Rostov University in physics and mathematics and in absentia at the Moscow Institute of Philosophy and Literature; dreams of becoming a writer. October 18, 1941 he was drafted into the army. After accelerated training at the officer school - the front. From Orel to East Prussia. Received combat awards: the Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree and the Order of the Red Star. But military everyday life does not kill observation and spiritual work. There are doubts about the official interpretation of the history of the revolution and Russia. He thoughtlessly shared them in a letter with a friend. Both were arrested in 1945. Solzhenitsyn received 8 years in labor camp (first in the Moscow region, and then in Central Asia). He went through all the circles of the camp hell, witnessed the uprising in Ekibastuz, was exiled to an eternal settlement in Kazakhstan. Sentenced by doctors to death from cancer, Solzhenitsyn suddenly recovers. He regards his recovery as God's gift in order to convey to people everything that he saw, heard, learned. Major works: "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", "The Gulag Archipelago", "The Cancer Ward", "Matryona Dvor" ... Nobel Prize Winner 1970. Expelled from the country. Creates the novel "Red Wheel" about the history of Russia. He returned to the country in 1994.
"Matryona Dvor" was published in 1963. in the first issue of Novy Mir. This story is completely authentic and autobiographical. The story is told on behalf of Ignatich (the author's patronymic is Isaevich), who returns from exile, enriched by the tragic experience of camp life, and dreams of getting lost "in the very interior of Russia - if there was such a place, lived" with its possible goodness and silence. The narrator leading the narration is an intellectual teacher, constantly writing “something of his own” at a dimly lit table, put in the position of an outside observer-chronicler, trying to understand Matryona and everything “that is happening to us.”
It would seem that the narrator managed to find such a patriarchal Russia in the village of Talnovo, 184 km from Moscow. This precision is important. On the one hand, this is the center of Russia (it is not for nothing that Moscow is mentioned), on the other hand, the remoteness, the wilderness of the regions described in the story (they are located much further than 101 km) is emphasized. And the cockroach dominance in Matryona's house gives rise to associations with the Tmutarakan - an obvious distance. The juicy Russian folk language is still preserved here (in the names of villages and phrases of peasants), but the ridiculous name of the station - Peat product - already cuts the ear. This inconsistency already contains a contrast life And being.
The hero chose the house of Matrena Vasilievna Grigorieva, whose fate focused the fate of thousands of Russian peasant women, or rather, of all of Rus'. The creation of the image of Matryona takes place, as it were, gradually, first from the description of her simple life and her habits, together with the author, we draw conclusions about the uniqueness and exclusivity of this woman. Then her own memories are connected, recreating both her biography and the life of the village. The pace of the narration is accelerated, dramatized. Finally, the climax comes - the destruction of the house - and the denouement - the death of the heroine. In the final part, the true image of the heroine seems to appear, emerges from the mind of the narrator against the background of folk life described on the basis of folklore (lamentations, chants, funerals, commemorations). Thus, the character of the heroine against the backdrop of the life of the village, and, therefore, of Russia itself, is revealed gradually, in steps.
In the end, it turns out that life did not justify the hero's hopes for a return to primordially Russian moral values. Collective farmers for the most part unfriendly. Let us recall at least the disapproving reviews about the character of Matryona (after her death) by one of her sisters-in-law. The woman blamed the sufferer even for free help to others, although she herself shamelessly used this help.
Villagers selfish beyond measure. For the Russian peasantry, thrift has always been in honor, but in the person of Thaddeus, the former fiance of Matryona, it takes on truly terrible, inhuman forms. For the sake of several dozen logs, he sacrifices the lives of Matrena and his son and brings his daughter's husband to trial.
Some improvement in the situation of a lonely and sick woman - she managed to retire for her husband and even sew a coat (perhaps the first in her life) from an old railway overcoat donated by a familiar machinist - does not evoke approval in her fellow villagers, but black envy. Even relatives from somewhere appeared overnight. “But where does she get so much money alone?”
For health reasons, Matrena was taken out of the collective farm, thereby depriving even meager assistance (like hayfields). But to order to come to the cleaning of manure with your pitchfork are not considered shameful. And, as if in passing, we find out that working on a collective farm “neither to a post, nor to a railing” is not at all the same as working “by oneself”, when time was lost. And it is no longer surprising that there are no shovels and pitchforks on the collective farm. This is just a consequence of general laziness and unwillingness to work "for sticks".
Happened in the village theft. So at the blessing of water, Matryona's pot of holy water disappeared, which terribly upset the old woman. But neither she nor the rest of the villagers considered dragging peat from the developments to be theft. It was the same trade necessary for life as picking mushrooms and berries, only a little more dangerous - they could catch. At first glance, it is strange and completely immoral: to steal from your people's power ...
Only the peasants could not recognize this power as theirs. In essence, the life of the peasants was not much different from the existence of camp prisoners. They had no real money, they worked for workdays - check marks in a notebook, ate from small unfertilized vegetable gardens and had no right either to mow good grass for livestock in time, or to stock up on fuel for the winter.
At the same time, anyone who had even a little authority squeezed everything out of the people and the land. The chairman of the collective farm, Gorshkov, thoughtlessly cut down forests for the sake of the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, the head of the peat extraction provided all the district authorities with fuel ...
Most of all pestered the villagers bureaucracy. After all, for any piece of paper or a squiggle in it, you had to go to the authorities in "social security from Talnov twenty kilometers to the east, the village council - ten kilometers to the west, and the village council - to the north in an hour's walk." Each walk (often in vain) is a day. There is nothing surprising in the fact that, not seeing care for themselves, people lost faith in themselves and in the need to comply with moral and human laws. Of these, who feed the whole country with their labor, and therefore should have special pride, they made slaves for so long and diligently that most of the peasants really acquired a completely slavish psychology and corresponding morality.
And all this was revealed - not suddenly, gradually - to the narrator by his mistress, a simple Russian peasant woman, a silverless woman, a white crow, a prophet on whom not only the village, but the whole earth stands. Her life is like that of a saint. She does not serve people, but serves from the bottom of her heart. In this woman, Ignatich finds the highest traits of Russian spirituality, for which he yearned. But here is the death of Matryona - terrible and at the same time reduced to the ordinary by the attitude of fellow villagers - does not at all resemble the repose of the saint. Like many things in Solzhenitsyn's works (titles, names, etc.), this death is very symbolic. The symbol of spirituality is literally crushed by a speeding train - the image of a new developing industrial state. The worst thing is that these two symbols could exist in parallel and, perhaps, even get closer, if not for the self-interest and irresponsibility of people, not for the indifference and inactivity of the authorities.
Here are collected the most pressing problems related to compassion, which are touched upon in the texts from the variants of the Unified State Examination in the Russian language. Arguments related to these issues can be found under the headings in the table of contents. You can also download a table with all these examples.
- An example of mercy for animals clearly demonstrates the work Yuri Yakovlev "He killed my dog". The boy Sasha (nicknamed Tabor), in a conversation with the school director, talks about a dog that he picked up, abandoned by past owners. In the dialogue, it turns out that Sasha was the only one who cared about the life of a homeless animal. However, no one treated the dog harder than the boy's father. He - as Sasha calls his father - killed the dog while he was not at home. For a compassionate child, this cruel and unjust act was a psychological blow, the wound from which will never heal. However, we may wonder how great is the power of his sympathy, even if such relationships in the family did not eradicate in him the ability to give a helping hand.
- Gerasim, the hero, showed true mercy to the animal. He rescued a small dog stuck in the mud of the river. With great trepidation, the hero takes care of a small defenseless creature, and thanks to Gerasim Mumu, he turns into a “good dog”. The deaf-mute janitor fell deeply in love with the animal he had saved, and Mumu responded to him in the same way: she ran after him everywhere, caressed him and woke him up in the morning. Mumu's death left an indelible mark on the hero's soul. He experienced this event so painfully that he could never love anyone again.
Active and passive compassion
- The authors of many works included in the world and domestic classics endow their heroes with values that correspond to the ability to sympathize. Leo Tolstoy in the novel "War and Peace" endows her beloved heroine, Natasha Rostova, not only with compassion, but also with kindness, a desire to help those in need. In this regard, the scene in which Natasha asks her father to donate the property of their family in order to take the wounded out of besieged Moscow on carts is indicative. While the governor of the city was throwing bombastic speeches, the young noblewoman helped her fellow citizens not in word, but in deed. (Here's another )
- Sonya Marmeladova in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment" it is out of compassion that he sacrifices his own honor and suffers for the poor children of Katerina Ivanovna. The young girl is endowed with the gift of empathy for the pain and need of others. She helps not only her family, her drunken father, but also the protagonist of the work, Rodion Raskolnikov, showing him the path to repentance and redemption. Thus, the heroes of Russian literature, endowed with the ability for sympathy and mercy, demonstrate at the same time their readiness to sacrifice themselves.
Lack of compassion and its consequences
- Essay by Daniil Granin "On Mercy" reveals this issue. The hero talks about how he fell near his house in the city center, and not a single person helped him. The author, relying only on himself, rises and goes to the nearest entrance, and then - home. The story that happened to the narrator prompts him to think about the reasons for the insensitivity of passers-by, because not even a single person asked him what happened to him. Daniil Granin talks not only about his case, but also about doctors, stray dogs, and the poor. The author says that the feeling of compassion was strong in the war and post-war years, when the spirit of the unity of the people was especially strong, but gradually disappeared.
- In one from the letters of D.S. Likhachev To young readers, the author talks about compassion as a care that grows with us from childhood and is a force that unites people. Dmitry Sergeevich believes that a person's concern, directed only at himself, makes him an egoist. The philologist also claims that compassion is inherent in moral people who are aware of their unity with humanity and the world. The author says that humanity cannot be corrected, but it is possible to change oneself. Therefore, D.S. Likhachev is on the side of active goodness. (Here are some more relevant ones.
- In the story "Matryonin Dvor" by the Russian writer A.I. Solzhenitsyn the image of Matryona embodies the concept of sacrifice and altruism. All her life, Matrena lived for others: she helped her neighbors, worked on a collective farm, and did hard work. The episode with the chambermaid reveals the highest degree of her willingness to sacrifice her own for the good of others. The heroine loved her house very much, the narrator said that for Matryona to give the house meant "the end of her life." But for the sake of her pupil, Matryona sacrifices him and dies, helping to drag the logs. The meaning of her fate, according to the narrator, is very important: the whole village rests on people like her. And, undoubtedly, the self-sacrifice of the righteous woman is evidence of a feeling of compassion for people, inherent in a woman in its highest degree.
- Avdotya Romanovna Raskolnik, heroine novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment", is one of the heroes-altars in this work. Dunya is ready for any sacrifice for the sake of her loved ones. To save her older brother and mother from poverty, the girl first goes to work as a governess in Svidrigailov's house, where she suffers resentment and shame. Then he decides to "sell himself" - to marry Mr. Luzhin. However, Raskolnikov convinces his sister not to do this, because he is not ready to accept such a sacrifice.
- The ability to sympathize and active, active good makes a person happy. Gerasim from story by I.S. Turgenev "Mumu", saving a little dog, not only does good, but also finds a true friend. The dog, in turn, also becomes attached to the janitor. Undoubtedly, the ending of this story is tragic. But the very situation of saving the animal, prompted by the sensitive heart of Gerasim, clearly shows how a person can become happy by showing mercy once and giving his love to another.
- In the story of D. V. Grigorovich "Gutta-percha boy" Only the clown Edwards sympathized with the little boy Petya from the entire circus troupe. He taught the boy acrobatic tricks and gave him a dog. Petya was drawn to him, but the clown could not save him from the hard life under the guidance of the cruel acrobat Becker. Both Petya and Edwards are two deeply unhappy people. There is no mention of helping the boy in the work. Edward could not provide a happy life for the child, because he suffered from alcohol addiction. And yet, his soul is not devoid of sensitivity. At the end, when Petya dies, the clown falls into even more despair and cannot control his addiction. Interesting? Save it on your wall!
Self-sacrifice out of mercy
Consequences of Compassion and Indifference
The history of the creation of Solzhenitsyn's work "Matryonin Dvor"
In 1962, the Novy Mir magazine published the story One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which made Solzhenitsyn's name known throughout the country and far beyond its borders. A year later, in the same journal, Solzhenitsyn published several stories, including “Matryona Dvor”. Postings have stopped at this point. None of the writer's works were allowed to be published in the USSR. And in 1970 Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Initially, the story "Matryona Dvor" was called "A village does not stand without the righteous." But, on the advice of A. Tvardovsky, in order to avoid censorship obstacles, the name was changed. For the same reasons, the year of action in the story from 1956 was replaced by the author with 1953. "Matrenin Dvor", as the author himself noted, "is completely autobiographical and reliable." In all the notes to the story, the prototype of the heroine is reported - Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova from the village of Miltsovo, Kurlovsky district, Vladimir region. The narrator, like the author himself, teaches in the Ryazan village, living with the heroine of the story, and the narrator's patronymic - Ignatich - is consonant with A. Solzhenitsyn's patronymic - Isaevich. The story, written in 1956, tells about the life of a Russian village in the fifties.
Critics praised the story. The essence of Solzhenitsyn's work was noted by A. Tvardovsky: “Why is the fate of the old peasant woman, told on a few pages, of such great interest to us? This woman is unread, illiterate, a simple worker. And yet her spiritual world is endowed with such qualities that we talk with her as with Anna Karenina. After reading these words in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Solzhenitsyn immediately wrote to Tvardovsky: “Needless to say, the paragraph of your speech referring to Matryona means a lot to me. You pointed to the very essence - to a woman who loves and suffers, while all the criticism scoured all the time from above, comparing the Talnovsky collective farm and neighboring ones.
The first title of the story “A village is not worth without the righteous” contained a deep meaning: the Russian village rests on people whose lifestyle is based on the universal values of kindness, labor, sympathy, and help. Since a righteous person is called, firstly, a person who lives in accordance with religious rules; secondly, a person who does not sin in any way against the rules of morality (the rules that determine the mores, behavior, spiritual and spiritual qualities necessary for a person in society). The second name - "Matryona Dvor" - somewhat changed the angle of view: moral principles began to have clear boundaries only within the Matrenin Dvor. On a larger scale of the village, they are blurred, the people around the heroine are often different from her. Having titled the story "Matryona's Dvor", Solzhenitsyn focused the readers' attention on the wonderful world of the Russian woman.
Genus, genre, creative method of the analyzed work
Solzhenitsyn once remarked that he rarely turned to the short story genre, for “artistic pleasure”: “You can put a lot in a small form, and it is a great pleasure for an artist to work on a small form. Because in a small form you can hone the edges with great pleasure for yourself. In the story "Matryona Dvor" all facets are honed with brilliance, and meeting with the story becomes, in turn, a great pleasure for the reader. The story is usually based on a case that reveals the character of the protagonist.
Regarding the story "Matryona Dvor" in literary criticism, there were two points of view. One of them presented Solzhenitsyn's story as a phenomenon of "village prose". V. Astafiev, calling "Matryona Dvor" "the pinnacle of Russian short stories", believed that our "village prose" came out of this story. Somewhat later, this idea was developed in literary criticism.
At the same time, the story "Matryona Dvor" was associated with the original genre of "monumental story" that was formed in the second half of the 1950s. An example of this genre is M. Sholokhov's story "The Fate of a Man".
In the 1960s, the genre features of the “monumental story” were recognizable in A. Solzhenitsyn’s Matrenin Dvor, V. Zakrutkin’s The Human Mother, and E. Kazakevich’s In the Light of Day. The main difference of this genre is the image of a simple person who is the custodian of universal human values. Moreover, the image of a simple person is given in sublime colors, and the story itself is focused on a high genre. So, in the story "The Fate of a Man" features of the epic are visible. And in the "Matryona Dvor" the emphasis is on the lives of the saints. Before us is the life of Matrena Vasilievna Grigorieva, the righteous and great martyr of the era of "solid collectivization" and the tragic experiment on the whole country. Matryona was portrayed by the author as a saint ("Only she had fewer sins than a rickety cat").
The subject of the work
The theme of the story is a description of the life of the patriarchal Russian village, which reflects how flourishing egoism and rapacity disfigure Russia and "destroy communications and meaning." The writer raises in a short story the serious problems of the Russian village of the early 50s. (her life, customs and mores, the relationship between power and a working person). The author repeatedly emphasizes that the state needs only working hands, and not the person himself: “She was lonely all around, but since she began to get sick, she was released from the collective farm.” A person, according to the author, should mind his own business. So Matryona finds the meaning of life in work, she is angry with the unscrupulous attitude of others to business.
An analysis of the work shows that the problems raised in it are subordinated to one goal: to reveal the beauty of the Christian Orthodox worldview of the heroine. On the example of the fate of a village woman, to show that life's losses and suffering only more clearly show the measure of the human in each of the people. But Matryona dies - and this world collapses: her house is pulled apart by a log, her modest belongings are greedily divided. And there is no one to protect Matryona's yard, no one even thinks that with the departure of Matryona, something very valuable and important, not amenable to division and primitive everyday assessment, passes away. “We all lived next to her and did not understand that she is the same righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand. No city. Not all our land." The last phrases expand the boundaries of the Matrona Court (as the personal world of the heroine) to the scale of humanity.
The main characters of the work
The main character of the story, as indicated in the title, is Matrena Vasilievna Grigorieva. Matrena is a lonely destitute peasant woman with a generous and disinterested soul. She lost her husband in the war, buried six of her own and raised other people's children. Matryona gave her pupil the most precious thing in her life - the house: "... she did not feel sorry for the upper room, which stood idle, as well as neither her labor nor her goodness ...".
The heroine has endured many hardships in life, but has not lost the ability to empathize with others, joy and sorrow. She is disinterested: she sincerely rejoices in someone else's good harvest, although she never has it on the sand herself. All the wealth of Matrena is a dirty white goat, a lame cat and large flowers in tubs.
Matryona is a concentration of the best features of the national character: she is shy, understands the "education" of the narrator, respects him for it. The author appreciates in Matryona her delicacy, the absence of annoying curiosity about the life of another person, hard work. For a quarter of a century she worked on a collective farm, but because she was not at a factory, she was not entitled to a pension for herself, and she could only get it for her husband, that is, for the breadwinner. As a result, she never received a pension. Life was extremely difficult. She got grass for a goat, peat for warmth, collected old stumps turned out by a tractor, soaked lingonberries for the winter, grew potatoes, helping those who were nearby to survive.
Analysis of the work says that the image of Matryona and individual details in the story are symbolic. Solzhenitsyn's Matryona is the embodiment of the ideal of a Russian woman. As noted in critical literature, the appearance of the heroine is like an icon, and life is like the lives of saints. Her house, as it were, symbolizes the ark of the biblical Noah, in which he escapes from the global flood. The death of Matryona symbolizes the cruelty and meaninglessness of the world in which she lived.
The heroine lives according to the laws of Christianity, although her actions are not always clear to others. Therefore, the attitude towards it is different. Matryona is surrounded by sisters, sister-in-law, adopted daughter Kira, the only friend in the village, Thaddeus. However, no one appreciated it. She lived in poverty, wretchedly, lonely - a "lost old woman", exhausted by work and illness. Relatives almost did not appear in her house, everyone condemned Matryona in chorus that she was funny and stupid, she worked for others for free all her life. Everyone mercilessly took advantage of Matryona's kindness and innocence - and unanimously judged her for it. Among the people around her, the author treats her heroine with great sympathy; both her son Thaddeus and her pupil Kira love her.
The image of Matryona is contrasted in the story with the image of the cruel and greedy Thaddeus, who seeks to get Matryona's house during her lifetime.
Matryona's courtyard is one of the key images of the story. The description of the courtyard, the house is detailed, with a lot of details, devoid of bright colors. Matryona lives "in the wilderness." It is important for the author to emphasize the inseparability of the house and the person: if the house is destroyed, its mistress will also die. This unity is already stated in the very title of the story. The hut for Matryona is filled with a special spirit and light, the life of a woman is connected with the "life" of the house. Therefore, for a long time she did not agree to break the hut.
Plot and composition
The story consists of three parts. In the first part, we are talking about how fate threw the hero-narrator to the station with a strange name for Russian places - Peat product. A former prisoner, now a school teacher, longing to find peace in some remote and quiet corner of Russia, finds shelter and warmth in the house of an elderly and familiar life Matrena. “Maybe, to someone from the village, who is richer, Matryona’s hut didn’t seem well-lived, but we were quite good with her that autumn and winter: it didn’t leak from the rains and the cold winds blew the stove heat out of it not immediately, only in the morning , especially when the wind was blowing from the leaky side. In addition to Matryona and me, they also lived in the hut - a cat, mice and cockroaches. They immediately find a common language. Next to Matryona, the hero calms down with his soul.
In the second part of the story, Matrena recalls her youth, the terrible ordeal that befell her. Her fiancé Thaddeus went missing in World War I. The younger brother of her missing husband, Yefim, who was left alone after death with the younger children in his arms, asked her to woo her. She took pity on Matryona Efim, married an unloved one. And here, after three years of absence, Thaddeus himself unexpectedly returned, whom Matryona continued to love. The hard life did not harden Matrena's heart. In worries about daily bread, she went her way to the end. And even death overtook a woman in labor worries. Matryona dies helping Thaddeus and his sons to drag part of their own hut bequeathed to Kira across the railroad on a sleigh. Thaddeus did not want to wait for the death of Matryona and decided to take the inheritance for the young during her lifetime. Thus, he unwittingly provoked her death.
In the third part, the tenant learns about the death of the mistress of the house. The description of the funeral and commemoration showed the true attitude of people close to her towards Matryona. When relatives bury Matryona, they cry more out of duty than from the heart, and think only about the final division of Matryona's property. And Thaddeus doesn't even come to the wake.
Artistic features of the analyzed story
The artistic world in the story is built linearly - in accordance with the life story of the heroine. In the first part of the work, the whole story about Matryona is given through the perception of the author, a man who has endured a lot in his lifetime, who dreamed of "getting lost and getting lost in the very interior of Russia." The narrator evaluates her life from the outside, compares it with the environment, becomes an authoritative witness of righteousness. In the second part, the heroine talks about herself. The combination of lyrical and epic pages, the chaining of episodes according to the principle of emotional contrast allows the author to change the rhythm of the narration, its tone. In this way, the author goes to recreate a multi-layered picture of life. Already the first pages of the story serve as a convincing example. It is opened by the beginning, which tells about the tragedy at the railway siding. We learn the details of this tragedy at the end of the story.
Solzhenitsyn in his work does not give a detailed, specific description of the heroine. Only one portrait detail is constantly emphasized by the author - Matryona's "radiant", "kind", "apologising" smile. Nevertheless, by the end of the story, the reader imagines the appearance of the heroine. Already in the very tonality of the phrase, the selection of “colors”, one can feel the author’s attitude towards Matryona: “From the red frosty sun, the frozen window of the canopy, now shortened, flooded a little pink, and Matryona’s face warmed this reflection.” And then - a direct author's description: "Those people always have good faces, who are at odds with their conscience." Even after the terrible death of the heroine, her "face remained intact, calm, more alive than dead."
Matryona embodies the national character, which is primarily manifested in her speech. Expressiveness, a bright individuality gives her language an abundance of colloquial, dialectal vocabulary (hurry up, kuzhotkamu, summer, lightning). The manner of her speech is also deeply folk, the way she pronounces her words: “They began with some kind of low warm murmur, like grandmothers in fairy tales.” “Matryonin Dvor” minimally includes the landscape, he pays more attention to the interior, which appears not by itself, but in a lively interweaving with the “inhabitants” and with sounds - from the rustling of mice and cockroaches to the state of ficuses and a rickety cat. Every detail here characterizes not only the peasant life, Matryonin's yard, but also the storyteller. The voice of the narrator reveals in him a psychologist, a moralist, even a poet - in the way he observes Matryona, her neighbors and relatives, how he evaluates them and her. The poetic feeling is manifested in the author's emotions: "Only she had fewer sins than a cat ..."; “But Matryona rewarded me ...”. The lyrical pathos is especially obvious at the very end of the story, where even the syntactic structure changes, including paragraphs, translating the speech into blank verse:
“The Veems lived next to her / and did not understand / that she is the same righteous man, / without whom, according to the proverb, / the village does not stand. /Nor the city./Nor all our land.
The writer was looking for a new word. An example of this is his convincing articles on language in Literaturnaya Gazeta, Dahl's fantastic commitment (the researchers note that about 40% of the vocabulary in the story Solzhenitsyn borrowed from Dahl's dictionary), ingenuity in vocabulary. In the story "Matryona's Dvor" Solzhenitsyn came to the language of preaching.
The meaning of the work
“There are such born angels,” Solzhenitsyn wrote in the article “Repentance and Self-Restriction”, as if characterizing Matryona, “they seem to be weightless, they seem to glide over this slurry, without drowning in it at all, even touching its surface with their feet? Each of us met such people, there are not ten or a hundred of them in Russia, they are the righteous, we saw them, we were surprised (“eccentrics”), we used their kindness, in good moments we answered them the same, they dispose, - and immediately sank back to our doomed depths."
What is the essence of Matrona's righteousness? In life, not by lies, we will now say in the words of the writer himself, uttered much later. Creating this character, Solzhenitsyn places him in the most ordinary circumstances of rural collective farm life in the 1950s. The righteousness of Matrena lies in her ability to preserve her humanness even in such inaccessible conditions for this. As N.S. Leskov wrote, righteousness is the ability to live “without lying, without deceit, without condemning one’s neighbor and without condemning a biased enemy.”
The story was called "brilliant", "a truly brilliant work." In reviews of him, it was noted that even among Solzhenitsyn's stories he stands out for his strict artistry, the integrity of the poetic embodiment, and the consistency of artistic taste.
The story of A.I. Solzhenitsyn "Matryona Dvor" - for all time. It is especially relevant today, when the issues of moral values and life priorities are acute in modern Russian society.
Point of view
Anna Akhmatova
When his big thing came out (“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”), I said: all 200 million should read this. And when I read Matrenin Dvor, I cried, and I rarely cry.
V. Surganov
After all, it’s not so much the appearance of Solzhenitsyn’s Matryona that evokes an internal rebuff in us, but the author’s frank admiration for beggarly disinterestedness and no less frank desire to exalt and oppose it to the rapacity of the owner, nesting in those around her, close to her.
(From the book The Word Makes Its Way.
Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn.
1962-1974. - M.: Russian way, 1978.)
This is interesting
On August 20, 1956, Solzhenitsyn left for his place of work. There were many such names as "Peat product" in the Vladimir region. Peat product (the local youth called it "Tyr-pyr") - was a railway station 180 kilometers and a four-hour drive from Moscow along the Kazan road. The school was located in the nearby village of Mezinovsky, and Solzhenitsyn had a chance to live two kilometers from the school - in the Meshchera village of Miltsevo.
Only three years will pass, and Solzhenitsyn will write a story that will immortalize these places: a station with a clumsy name, a village with a tiny bazaar, the house of the landlady Matryona Vasilievna Zakharova, and Matryona herself, a righteous woman and a sufferer. A photograph of the corner of the hut, where the guest will put a cot and, having pushed aside the master's ficuses, will arrange a table with a lamp, will go around the whole world.
The teaching staff of Mezinovka consisted of about fifty members that year and significantly influenced the life of the village. There were four schools here: primary, seven-year, secondary and evening for working youth. Solzhenitsyn received a referral to a secondary school - it was in an old one-story building. The academic year began with the August teachers' conference, so, having arrived in Torfoprodukt, the teacher of mathematics and electrical engineering of grades 8-10 managed to go to the Kurlovsky district for a traditional meeting. “Isaich,” as his colleagues dubbed him, could, if desired, refer to a serious illness, but no, he did not talk about it with anyone. We only saw how he was looking for a birch chaga mushroom and some herbs in the forest, and briefly answered questions: “I make medicinal drinks.” He was considered shy: after all, a person suffered ... But that was not the point at all: “I came with my goal, with my past. What could they know, what could u tell them? I sat with Matryona and wrote a novel every free minute. Why am I talking to myself? I didn't have that style. I was a conspirator to the end." Then everyone will get used to the fact that this thin, pale, tall man in a suit and tie, who, like all teachers, wore a hat, coat or raincoat, keeps his distance and does not get close to anyone. He will remain silent when a document on rehabilitation comes in six months - just the school head teacher B.S. Protserov will receive a notification from the village council and send a teacher for help. No talking when the wife starts arriving. “What is it to whom? I live with Matryona and I live. Many were alarmed (isn't it a spy?) that he goes everywhere with a Zorkiy camera and shoots something completely different from what amateurs usually shoot: instead of relatives and friends - houses, wrecked farms, boring landscapes.
Arriving at the school at the beginning of the school year, he proposed his own methodology - giving all classes a control, according to the results he divided the students into strong and mediocre, and then worked individually.
In the lessons, everyone received a separate task, so there was neither the possibility nor the desire to write off. Not only the solution of the problem was valued, but also the method of solution. The introductory part of the lesson was shortened as much as possible: the teacher spared time for "trifles". He knew exactly who and when to call to the board, who to ask more often, who to entrust with independent work. The teacher never sat at the teacher's table. He did not enter the class, but burst into it. He ignited everyone with his energy, knew how to build a lesson in such a way that there was no time to be bored or doze off. He respected his students. Never shouted, never even raised his voice.
And only outside the class Solzhenitsyn was silent and withdrawn. He went home after school, ate the “cardboard” soup prepared by Matryona and sat down to work. The neighbors remembered for a long time how inconspicuously the guest lodged, did not arrange parties, did not participate in fun, but read and wrote everything. “She loved Matryona Isaich,” used to say Shura Romanova, the adopted daughter of Matryona (in the story she is Kira). - Sometimes, she will come to me in Cherusti, I persuade her to stay longer. "No," he says. “I have Isaich - he needs to cook, heat the stove.” And back home."
The lodger also became attached to the lost old woman, cherishing her disinterestedness, conscientiousness, cordial simplicity, a smile that he tried in vain to catch in the camera lens. “So Matryona got used to me, and I to her, and we lived easily. She did not interfere with my long evening classes, did not annoy me with any questions. There was absolutely no woman's curiosity in her, and the lodger did not stir her soul either, but it turned out that they opened up to each other.
She learned about the prison, and about the serious illness of the guest, and about his loneliness. And there was no worse loss for him in those days than the ridiculous death of Matryona on February 21, 1957 under the wheels of a freight train at the crossing of one hundred and eighty-four kilometers from Moscow along the branch that goes to Murom from Kazan, exactly six months after the day he settled in her hut.
(From the book of Lyudmila Saraskina "Alexander Solzhenitsyn")
Matrenin yard is poor, as before
Solzhenitsyn's acquaintance with "condo", "interior" Russia, in which he so wanted to be after the Ekibastuz exile, a few years later was embodied in the world-famous story "Matryona Dvor". This year marks 40 years since its inception. As it turned out, in Mezinovsky itself, this work by Solzhenitsyn became a second-hand rarity. This book is not even available at Matrenin Dvor itself, where Lyuba, the niece of the heroine of Solzhenitsyn's story, now lives. “I had pages from a magazine, the neighbors once asked when they began to study it at school, and they didn’t return it,” complains Lyuba, who today brings up her grandson on disability benefits in the “historical” walls. She inherited Matryona's hut from her mother, the youngest sister of Matryona. The hut was moved to Mezinovsky from the neighboring village of Miltsevo (in Solzhenitsyn's story - Talnovo), where the future writer lodged with Matryona Zakharova (with Solzhenitsyn - Matryona Grigorieva). In the village of Miltsevo, for the visit of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1994, a similar, but much more solid house was hastily erected. Shortly after the memorable arrival of Solzhenitsyn, the countrymen uprooted window frames and floorboards from this unguarded building of Matrenina, standing on the outskirts of the village.
The "new" Mezin school, built in 1957, now has 240 students. In the unpreserved building of the old one, in which Solzhenitsyn taught lessons, about a thousand studied. For half a century, not only the Miltsevskaya river became shallow and the peat reserves in the surrounding swamps became scarce, but also the neighboring villages were empty. And at the same time, Solzhenitsyn's Thaddeus did not disappear, calling the good of the people "ours" and considering that losing it is "shameful and stupid."
The crumbling house of Matryona, rearranged to a new place without a foundation, has grown into the ground for two crowns, buckets are put under a thin roof in the rain. Like Matryona, cockroaches are in full swing here, but there are no mice: there are four cats in the house, two of our own and two that have nailed it. Lyuba, a former foundry worker at a local factory, like Matryona, who once straightened out her pension for months, goes to the authorities to extend her disability allowance. “No one but Solzhenitsyn helps,” she complains. “Somehow one came in a jeep, called himself Alexei, examined the house and gave money.” Behind the house, like Matryona, there is a garden of 15 acres, on which Lyuba plants potatoes. As before, mint potatoes, mushrooms and cabbage are the main products for her life. In addition to cats, she doesn’t even have a goat in her courtyard, which Matryona had.
So lived and live many Mezinovsky righteous. Local historians write books about the stay of the great writer in Mezinovsky, local poets compose poems, new pioneers write essays “On the difficult fate of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel laureate”, as they once wrote essays about Brezhnev’s “Virgin lands” and “Small land”. They are thinking of resurrecting the museum hut of Matrena on the outskirts of the deserted village of Miltsevo. And the old Matrenin yard lives the same life as it did half a century ago.
Leonid Novikov, Vladimir region.
Gang Yu. Service of Solzhenitsyn // New time. - 1995. No. 24.
Zapevalov V. A. Solzhenitsyn. To the 30th anniversary of the publication of the story "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" // Russian Literature. - 1993. No. 2.
Litvinova V.I. Don't live in lies. Methodological recommendations for the study of A.I. Solzhenitsyn. - Abakan: KhSU publishing house, 1997.
MurinD. One hour, one day, one life of a person in the stories of A.I. Solzhenitsyn // Literature at school. - 1995. No. 5.
Palamarchuk P. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Guide. - M.,
1991.
SaraskinaL. Alexander Solzhenitsyn. ZhZL series. - M .: Young
guard, 2009.
The word makes its way. Collection of articles and documents about A.I. Solzhenitsyn. 1962-1974. - M .: Russian way, 1978.
ChalmaevV. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Life and work. - M., 1994.
Urmanov A.V. Works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. - M., 2003.
The action of the story by A.I. Solzhenitsyn takes place in the mid-1950s. the last century. The story is told in the first person, a kind of person who dreams of living in the outback of his native country, in contrast to those intending to quickly move to the bustling cities of his compatriots. This fact is explained by a long stay in prison, a desire to move away from society, solitude and peace.
Story line
To realize his intention, the character goes to the place "Peat Product" to teach at a high school. Boring barracks and dilapidated five-story houses do not attract him at all. As a result, having found shelter in the remote village of Talnovo, the hero will meet a lonely woman who has lost her health, Matryona.
By no means a prosperous household in a nondescript hut is made up of a shaggy cat abandoned by the former owner, a mirror darkened with time and a pair of posters that attract prying eyes, illustrating the sale of books and productivity.
contrasts
Focusing on these items of unpretentious interior, the author tries to convey to the reader the key problem of the past - the bravado of the official chronicle of events solely for show and the gloomy reality of the impoverished hinterland.
At the same time, the master of the word contrasts the rich spiritual world with the peasant woman who performs overwork on the collective farm. Having worked almost all of her best years, she did not receive a pension from the state either for herself or for her when she lost her breadwinner.
Personal qualities
Attempts to gain at least some penny turn into obstacles from the bureaucratic apparatus. Despite the misunderstanding of those around her and the dishonest actions of the ruling authorities, she manages to maintain humanity, a sense of pity and compassion for people. Surprisingly humble by nature, she does not require additional attention and excessive comfort, sincerely rejoicing in her acquisitions.
Love for nature is expressed in the careful cultivation of numerous ficuses. From further descriptions of Matryona's life, it is known that she could have avoided a lonely fate, because the dwelling was built for children and grandchildren. Only in the 2nd part is the fact of the loss of her six children revealed. She waited 11 years from the war for her husband after declaring him missing.
Summarizing
The image of Matrena embodies the best features of a Russian woman. The narrator is impressed by her good-natured smile, incessant work in the garden or when going to the forest for berries. The author speaks unflatteringly about her surroundings. The replacement of a worn-out railway overcoat with a coat and the pension received cause noticeable envy among the villagers.
In his work, the writer draws attention to the extreme plight of the peasants, their bleak existence with their own meager food and lack of money to feed livestock. At the same time, the unfriendly attitude of each of the people living close to each other is clearly manifested.
Analysis of the story Matryonin yard Solzhenitsyn
The story of Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn tells about a man who wanted to get lost in the depths of Russia. Moreover, the hero wanted a truly calm, almost reclusive life. He wanted to be a school teacher. And he succeeded. But in order to work at the school, he needed somewhere to live. He walked through the whole village and looked into every hut. Everywhere was tight. So he had to settle in a large and spacious hut of Matryona Vasilievna. The situation in the hut was not the best: cockroaches, mice, a three-legged cat, an old goat and neglect of the building - all this seemed scary at first. But over time, the hero got used to and got used to Matrena Vasilievna.
The writer describes the mistress of the hut as an old woman of about sixty. She walked in torn things, but she loved them very much. She had only one old, shabby goat from her household. Matryona Vasilievna appears to the reader as an ordinary, but at the same time mysterious woman. She is mostly silent, does not tell anything, and does not ask the hero for anything. Only once did Matryona tell a piece of her life to the hero. How she was going to marry one brother, and married another, because she did not wait for her first brother after the war. Everyone thought he was dead. And so Matrena Vasilievna married her second brother. He was younger than her by a year. But Yefim never laid a finger on Matryona. Arriving from the war, the older brother scolded to cut them down, but soon calmed down and found himself a wife with the same name. This is where her story ended. And then she told all this because Thaddeus came to her to talk with Antoshka's school teacher, who lived with Matryona.
Matrena Vasilievna is presented to the reader in such a way that one wants to feel sorry for her and help her. She had no children. It so happened that they died after three months of life. And so it happened that Vasilievna took one of her brother-in-law's daughters to bring up. The girl's name was Kira. Raised and married Matrena Vasilievna daughter. It was Kira who, at least sometimes, helped Matryona, and so the woman herself tried to survive. She, like all the women in the village, stole peat from the swamps to keep warm in cold winters. And she ate what "God will send." Matrena Vasilievna was a simple-hearted and kind person, she never refused help and did not take anything if she helped.
The hut in which the heroine of the story lived, Vasilyevna bequeathed to Kira. So the day came when they came to dismantle half of the hut, Matryona grieved a little and went to help load the boards. She was like that, Matrena Vasilievna, she always took on men's work. On this day, disaster struck. When the boards were transported on sledges across the railway, then the train crushed almost all of them.
Somehow not everyone really grieved about Matryona Vasilievna. Maybe from the fact that it is so accepted among people that it is necessary to shed tears for the dead, only for this reason it seems like people were crying. But the reader will not see sincerity in these tears. Everyone cries just because it's supposed to. Only the adopted daughter truly grieved for Matryona Vasilievna. She sat aside at the wake and quietly wept.
After the death of Matryona Vasilievna, everyone only thought about who would get what from her very poor property. The sisters shouted loudly about who would get what. Many others expressed what Vasilievna had promised to whom. Even the brother's husband thought that the boards that remained intact should be taken back and put into action.
In my opinion, AI Solzhenitsyn wanted to tell the story about a simple Russian woman. It is about one that is not noticeable at first glance, but if you get to know and talk better with her, then her whole multifaceted soul will be revealed. The author of the story wanted to talk about a strong female character. When, enduring hardships and misfortunes, falling, but rising again, a Russian woman always remains strong in spirit and does not get angry at simple everyday trifles. It is these people, inconspicuous and not requiring much, like Matrena Vasilievna, who make our life easier. When such a person does not become near, it is then that people realize the loss and the importance of the presence of this particular person nearby. In my opinion, the author perfectly chose the words at the end of the story “... a righteous man, without whom, according to the proverb, the village does not stand. Neither city. Not all our land."
Love in a person's life means a lot. We can say that all human life consists of love. Out of love for friends, for family, for the motherland, for pets, for oneself, for a loved one.
Hurry to do good deedsEvery person in his life encounters kindness towards himself or others. Kindness is what makes our society more humane and compassionate in an effort to give joy to people around us, to show sincere feelings.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol in his story "Taras Bulba" describes in detail not only everything that happened in the Zaporizhzhya Sich, but also each of the unique individuals.
