The real and fantastic story of Gogol's nose. Fantastic and real in the story "nose". Essay on the topic: real and fantastic in Gogol’s story “The Nose. Combining reality and fiction

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Real and fantastic in the story

Gogol's fiction occupies a special place in Russian literature of the 19th century. It was created on an everyday, prosaic basis. The story “The Nose” is included in the third cycle of the author’s St. Petersburg works and, perhaps, is the most absurd and at the same time socially significant. The capital of the Russian Empire and the lives of ordinary people holding a variety of positions open before the reader. The story is full of satire, grotesque and original unexpected turns.

In this work, the author reached the pinnacle of his skill in depicting the real and the fantastic. The relationships between officials, St. Petersburg itself with its palaces, wide avenues and the Neva, and the details of everyday life and communication were and remain real. And the fantastic part is the fact that he lost his nose, which went for a walk on its own. This turn is masterfully described by Gogol, since the grotesque was one of his most favorite techniques. Waking up early in the morning, Major Kovalev did not find his nose in place, but the barber Ivan Yakovlevich found it in his bun.

Aren't these miracles? According to the story, Nose, dressed in human clothes, went to travel around St. Petersburg, even going to the Kazan Cathedral to pray. He was dressed in a uniform embroidered with gold, suede trousers and a hat with a plume, like a state councilor. Everyone whom Kovalev turns to for help considers him, to say the least, abnormal. The newspaper refuses to print an advertisement about the missing nose. The private bailiff says that a decent person’s nose would not be stolen and refuses to take up his case.

The police finally managed to intercept his nose when he was heading to Riga with a false passport. Kovalev's joy knew no bounds. However, the nose stubbornly refused to return to its original place. Even the called doctor does not take on this ridiculous task. One way or another, in April the nose finally fell back into place, which the major was infinitely happy about. Thus, we can conclude that fantasy and reality in many of Gogol’s works go hand in hand and serve only to outline the absurdity of social relationships.

Description

Fiction is a special form of reflecting reality, logically incompatible with the real idea of ​​the world around us. It is widespread in mythology, folklore, art and expresses a person’s worldview in special, grotesque and “supernatural” images.
In Gogol’s story “The Nose,” the carrier of fantasy is completely removed—the personified embodiment of unreal power. But the fantasticness itself remains. Hence the impression of mystery from the story. Even stunning strangeness.

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Fiction is a special form of reflecting reality, logically incompatible with the real idea of ​​the world around us. It is widespread in mythology, folklore, art and expresses a person’s worldview in special, grotesque and “supernatural” images.

In Gogol’s story “The Nose,” the carrier of fantasy is completely removed—the personified embodiment of unreal power. But the fantasticness itself remains. Hence the impression of mystery from the story. Even stunning strangeness.

The list of attempts to find the reason for the mysterious behavior of Kovalev’s nose could form a large and curious list. The answer has not yet been found. And it’s unlikely to succeed. Perhaps, there is more meaning in the words of Kovalev himself: “And let them be cut off in the war or in a duel, or I myself was the cause; but he disappeared for nothing, for nothing, he disappeared for nothing, not for a penny!...”

The meaning of the events of “The Nose” is their unprovoked nature. There is no direct culprit. No stalker. But the persecution itself remains.

The unusualness of Gogol's story comes into play in its relationship to mystery. Romantic fiction is inseparable from mystery, from the poetics of mystery. Usually the story begins with some strange inexplicable event, that is, the reader is confronted with a mystery from the first lines. The tension of the mystery increases more and more until the will or influence of the bearer of fantastic power is finally revealed in the mysterious. In works with veiled fantasy, a similar process of identifying fantasy with supernatural power takes place, with the difference that the possibility of a second (“real”) reading remains. In those cases when the fantastic plan gave way to the real during the narrative, the removal of the mystery also occurred with the help of real-causal (sometimes even everyday) explanations.

How does Gogol's story relate to these different forms of the existence of mystery?

“The Nose” belongs to those works that present the reader with a mystery literally from the first sentence. “On March 25th, an unusually strange incident happened in St. Petersburg.” If it’s extraordinary, does that mean there will be an explanation, a solution? The nose behaves as befits a “significant person” who has the rank of state councilor: he prays in the Kazan Cathedral, walks along Nevsky Prospect, visits the department, makes visits, and plans to leave for Riga using someone else’s passport. No one, including the author, is interested in where it came from. Any, even the most delusional, assumption is not excluded. The main thing is something else – the “two-facedness” of the nose. According to some signs, this is definitely the real nose of the collegiate assessor Kovalev, but the second “face” of the nose is social, which is higher in rank than its owner, so they see the rank, but not the person. In one place, Gogol simultaneously plays with both faces of the nose: the policeman, “who at the beginning of the story stood at the end of the St. Isaac’s Bridge” (that is, when the nose, wrapped in a rag, was thrown into the water), says that “at first he mistook him for Mr. . But, fortunately, I had glasses with me, and I immediately saw that it was a nose,” etc. No artist can illustrate this metamorphosis, because he is obviously called upon to make visible what should remain elusive and unexplained. The fiction of “The Nose” is a mystery that is nowhere and is everywhere.

The mystery reaches its climax, but there is still no solution. Finally, in the finale, where there was the last opportunity to reveal the cards, the narrator suddenly steps aside and begins to be amazed along with the reader: “Perfect nonsense is being done in the world. Sometimes there is no credibility at all.”

The function of rumors also changes in the story. “Meanwhile, rumors about this extraordinary incident spread throughout the capital and, as usual, not without special additions... Soon they began to say that the nose of the collegiate assessor Kovalev was walking along Nevsky Prospekt at exactly 3 o’clock... Someone said that the nose allegedly was in Junker's store... Then a rumor spread that it was not on Nevsky Prospekt, but in the Tauride Garden...", etc. “The rumors are placed in an unusual context. They do not serve as vehicles for veiled fiction. But they are given and not against the backdrop of science fiction that has just been cancelled. The rumors appear against the backdrop of a fantastic incident presented as reliable. This makes the picture more complicated. Gogol skillfully retained the power of mystery, ridiculing the authors of rumors, he discovered in life something even more incorrect and fantastic than what any version or any rumor could suggest.

The subtlest irony of Gogol's story is that it constantly plays on the expectation of a solution to the romantic mystery, parodying its poetics and luring the reader further and further into a trap. With one blow, Gogol breaks with all possible forms of removing the romantic secret. And this is logical: after all, he eliminated the bearer of fantasy, the identification of which involved revealing the secret. At the same time, Gogol is far from removing the mystery with a real plan, with the help of real-causal motivations.

This story was a kind of apotheosis of the glorification of the nose as such in Gogol’s work. The writer often (so often that it seems a little strange) resorted to depicting this organ throughout his literary career. It is precisely this problem that Vladimir Nabokov focuses on in his article about Gogol. It turns out that the writer’s nose plays a significant role. The image of the nose, the idea of ​​the nose, everything connected with this organ haunted Nikolai Vasilyevich until his death. In Nabokov’s description of the writer’s illness and his death, the nose is endowed with some fatal, fatal properties.

What is the further fate of the development of Gogol's fiction? This question is part of another: are there elements in Gogol’s non-fantastic works that are adequate or close to the forms of fiction considered?

Refraining from general conclusions for now, let us note only one thing. Such elements can no longer be explained by the concept of miracle or mystery, arising from the direct intervention of the bearer of fiction, from its influence from the past, or from some unknown cause. They are no longer located in the plane of the surreal, but rather of the strange and unusual.

But what exactly interested Pushkin so much in such a primitive, at first glance, work? What features of it provoked the poet’s sincere delight?

The fact is that Nikolai Vasilyevich’s story, with its intricate plot, entirely based on a completely fantastic incident, exposes many of the vices of the author’s contemporary society.

People's lives are fully revealed here using the techniques of satire and grotesque, literally screaming about Gogol's attitude towards people and their vices. It is also noteworthy that the grotesque here is often built on a combination of real signs of life and their fantastic perception, which speaks of the author’s unusually developed writing skills. In this regard, when reading the text of a work, we mentally distinguish the signs described above, but we cannot clearly separate them: they seem to be intertwined, hiding in one another, but still “do not give themselves away.”

However, through this system one can still discern the main thoughts of Nikolai Vasilyevich. Which ones exactly? From the very beginning of the story, Gogol describes gray, gloomy Petersburg with its center, Nevsky Prospekt, along which all sorts of people invariably scurry about. And here is the main character, Major, as he calls himself, Kovalev, a dandy and a fashionista, looking for a “warm place” in the capital that corresponds to his freshly invented rank. There is nothing fantastic in this situation - sheer prose of life!

The most interesting thing begins a little later. A series of unusual and even strange, in my opinion, events lead to an outcome that is absolutely fantastic in every sense. This includes the barber’s discovery of a human, and very familiar, nose in his own breakfast, and attempts to get rid of it, which were not crowned with success for objective reasons, and the posting of a missing person’s notice in the local newspaper, and, in the end, Kovalev’s meeting with his own nose. However, the disappearance is no longer the same - the modest, seemingly meaningless nose of a minor official himself has become nothing other than a state councilor, an official of the highest rank.

Such an unexpected move is filled with revealing, castigating irony - satire - Gogol directly expresses his attitude towards the bureaucracy. Kovalev, who tried with all his might to elevate himself at the expense of a fictitious rank, as it seems to the character, worth his personality, remains “with a nose,” although in fact it is precisely he who lacks it.

Using this technique and the combination of two worlds, fantastic and real, Nikolai Vasilyevich tries to convey to the reader the idea of ​​​​the insolvency of the existing bureaucratic system, where everyone, under the mask of good nature, hides a callous, hypocritical and insidious personality by nature.

One of the most common and
leading to the biggest
disasters of temptations
there is a temptation to say:
“Everyone does it.”

L.N. Tolstoy

Lesson objectives:

Educational:

• learn to analyze text through subject details;
• consolidate students’ ideas about plot, composition, episode, grotesque.

Developmental:

• develop the ability to determine the boundaries of an episode;
• find causal connections between episodes;
• develop verbal communication skills.

Educational:

• develop a sense of responsibility for your actions.

Brief information about the publication of the story by N.V. Gogol “The Nose” (1836).

In 20-30 years. In the 19th century, the theme of the “nose” gained unexpected popularity. Impromptu and feuilletons, stories and vaudevilles, panegyrics and lyrical opuses were dedicated to the nose. Not only third-rate journalists, but even famous writers, such as Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, N.V. Gogol, wrote about the nose. The supposed lightness of “The Nose” gave it the reputation of Gogol’s most mysterious work.

Today’s lesson is an attempt to unravel what idea the writer encrypted in the story about Major Kovalev’s unfortunate nose.

1) Who is Kovalev?

2) For what purpose did Kovalev come to St. Petersburg?

3) What is Kovalev’s portrait?

4) Why did Kovalev walk along Nevsky Prospect every day and pay visits to his acquaintances?

5) Why, being a collegiate assessor, does he call himself a major?

6) Name the details that convince the reader of the reality of what is happening:

• name the time of action (March 25th - loss of the nose, April 7th - return of the nose);
• name the location (St. Petersburg is the capital of the Russian state. Kovalev lives on Sadovaya Street. The Barber lives on Voznesensky Prospekt. The meeting with the Nose took place in the Kazan Cathedral. Nevsky Prospekt of the capital is a kind of stage on which everyone plays their role);
• name the hero of the story (Kovalyov is a petty employee who dreams of a vice-governor’s position).

7) Why did Gogol need to convince everyone of the reality of what was happening? (Kovalyov himself does not see anything fantastic in what happened - no pain, no blood from the loss of his nose. And we, readers, also perceive fantasy as reality. Bringing the situation to the point of absurdity, Gogol expands the scope of the story that happened “in the northern capital of our vast state", to the history of all of Russia. And not only. The philosophical meaning of the story is addressed to descendants.

What does N.V. Gogol warn us about? What kind of mask do we wear in society? What are we hiding underneath? Does a person’s inner content correspond to his actions?

Group I of students works with questions on the card.

1. How do others react to the misfortune that happened to Kovalev?
2. Who did Kovalev turn to first about his missing nose? Why not see a doctor?
3. Why do you think so many people are drawn into this story?

II group of students:

1. Tell us about the advertisements in the newspaper.
2. What is their absurdity?
3. Why do you think Gogol is distracted from the main plot and sets out in detail the content of these announcements?

III group of students:

1. What is the composition of the story?
2. Why does the story begin with Chapter I, which tells the story of the barber Ivan Yakovlevich?
3. What inconsistencies have you found in the barber's behavior?
4. What does Ivan Yakovlevich have in common with Kovalev?
5. Why doesn’t Ivan Yakovlevich have a last name?

1. Did Kovalev's behavior change after the loss of his nose and after its return?
2. How do you understand the phraseology “Stay with your nose”?
3. What does the author do to destroy the mask of “decency” of the society he depicts?
4. What does Gogol warn us about?
5. Why does the author create a grotesque situation?
6. Why did Gogol introduce a fantastic plot into a completely realistic narrative?

Creating a grotesque situation, N.V. Gogol shows the ordinary in an unusual light, what everyone is accustomed to and does not notice - he tears off the mask from the ugly phenomena of reality.

Calls on the reader to look into his soul and answer, first of all, to himself, whether his behavior, his mental makeup corresponds to generally accepted norms of morality and morality.

Kovalev is not who he claims to be: not a real major, not suitable for the vice-governor’s position, and insincere with his acquaintances. He becomes honest, active, ready to cry only when trouble happens to him, when he loses his nose.

And when the nose returned, its old mask returned: the same habits, the same acquaintances. It took the intervention of evil spirits to tear off his mask and reveal his true face.

All heroes have a mask: the barber, the private bailiff, the doctor, the police chief - all of Russia... Beneath the external decency lies indifference, deceit, rudeness, bribery, servility, vanity, flattery, envy. To tear off the mask from the vices of society is N.V.’s task. Gogol.

What does the author do to destroy this convention, to tear off the mask of “decency” from society? He too...puts on the Mask. The mask of a naive and simple-minded narrator, surprised by what happened, even at the end of the story, reproaching himself for the fact that such an absurdity became the subject of his story. And this technique allows N.V. Gogol satirically outlines the vices of contemporary Russia.

What is the main idea encrypted in the story “The Nose”? What does Gogol warn us about? What literary device helps Gogol create an unusual situation? Grotesque is an artistic technique with which the author depicts people and events in a fantastically exaggerated, ugly-comic form.

2009 is the year when the entire literary country will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great writer.

This work was prepared primarily to help students and is a literary analysis of works that reveal the basic concepts of the topic.

The relevance of the topic is demonstrated by the selection of works by the great Russian science fiction writer.

This work is dedicated to the works of N.V. Gogol - “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, “Nose”, “Portrait”. To understand Gogol’s method of presenting a text, where the main role is played by fantastic plots and images, it is necessary to analyze the structure of the work.

The selection of texts is based on the “school curriculum +” principle, that is, a small number of texts necessary for general humanitarian development are added to the school curriculum

This work is based on sections from the book by Yu. V. Mann “Gogol’s Poetics”.

The purpose of the work: to understand, see the complexity and versatility of the writer, to identify and analyze the features of poetics and various forms of the fantastic in his works.

In addition to materials devoted to Gogol’s work, the work contains a kind of literary glossary: ​​for the convenience of the student, the main terms and concepts are highlighted for each work.

We hope that our work will help students explore works from the point of view of a fantastic worldview.

Fiction in literature is the depiction of implausible phenomena, the introduction of fictional images that do not coincide with reality, a clearly felt violation by artists of natural forms, causal relationships, and laws of nature.

The term fantasy comes from the word “fantasy” (in Greek mythology, Phantasus is a deity who causes illusions, apparent images, brother of the god of dreams Morpheus).

All works of N.V. Gogol, in which fantasy is present in one way or another, are divided into two types. The division depends on what time the action of the work belongs to - the present or the past.

In works about the “past” (five stories from “Evenings” - “The Missing Letter”, “Evening on the Eve of Ivan Kupala”, “The Night Before Christmas”, “Terrible Revenge”, “Enchanted Place”, as well as “Viy”) there is fantasy has common features.

Higher powers openly interfere with the plot. In all cases, these are images in which the unreal evil principle is personified: the devil or people who entered into a criminal conspiracy with him. Fantastic events are reported either by the author-narrator or by a character acting as a narrator (but sometimes relying on a legend or on the testimony of ancestors - “eyewitnesses”: grandfather, “my grandfather’s aunt”).

All of these texts lack a fantastic backstory. It is not needed, since the action is homogeneous both in time captivity (the past) and in relation to fantasy (not collected in any one time period, but distributed throughout the work).

The development of Gogol’s fiction is characterized by the fact that the writer pushed the bearer of fiction into the past, leaving his influence, a “trace,” in modern time.

Gogol's fiction contains:

1. Alogism in the narrator’s speech. (“Portrait” - “First of all, he took up finishing the eyes,” “as if the artist’s hand was driven by an unclean feeling,” “You just hit him not in the eyebrow, but in the very eyes. Eyes have never looked into life like they they are looking at you”, etc.).

2. Strange and unusual in terms of what is depicted. Strange animal intervention in the action, bringing objects to life. (“Nose” - the nose is a living character, “Portrait” - “someone’s convulsively distorted face was looking at him, leaning out from behind the set canvas. Two terrible eyes stared directly at him, as if preparing to devour him; written on his lips there was a threatening order to remain silent")

3. Unusual names and surnames of characters. (Solokha, Khoma Brut, etc.; “Portrait” - in the first edition - Chertkov, in subsequent editions - Chatrkov).

Let us pay attention, first of all, to the fact that such concepts as “line and “border” appear quite often in the story. The semantics of the name Chertkov includes not only associations with the bearer of unreal (not existing in reality) force, with the devil, but also with the trait both in the artistic sense (stroke, stroke) and in a broader sense (border, limit).

This may be the boundary of age, separating youth and maturity from withering and old age, separating artistic creativity from mechanical labor.

Under the name of Chartkov lies lies, idealization, adaptation to the tastes and whims of his rich and noble customers; work without internal and creative insight, without an ideal; there is a self-exaltation of the hero, who destroys his spiritual purity, and at the same time his talent.

4. Involuntary movements and grimaces of the characters.

In folk demonology, involuntary movements are often caused by a supernatural force.

The story “The Nose” is the most important link in the development of Gogol’s fiction. The medium of fantasy has been removed, but the fantastic remains; the romantic mystery is parodied, but the mystery remains.

In “The Nose” the function of the “form of rumors” changes, which no longer serves as a means of veiled fiction, it acts against the background of a fantastic incident presented as reliable.

In “Portrait,” as in “Sorochinskaya Fair” and “May Night,” the fantastic is presented in such a way that supernatural forces in their “tangible” guise (witches, devils, etc.) are relegated to the background, “yesterday.” plan.

In today's time plan, only a fantastic reflection or some fantastic residue is preserved - the tangible result of strange events that took place in reality: “He saw how the wonderful image of the deceased Petromichali went into the portrait frame.”

Only this portrait passes into reality, and personified fantastic images are eliminated. All strange events are reported in a tone of some uncertainty. After the portrait appeared in his room, Chertkov began to assure himself that the portrait was sent by the owner, who found out his address, but this version, in turn, is undermined by the narrator’s remark: “In short, he began to give all those flat explanations that we use when we want, so that what happened would certainly happen the way we think” (but that it didn’t happen “the way” Chertkov thought is definitely not reported).

Chartkov’s vision of the wonderful old man is given in the form of half-sleep, half-waking: “he fell into sleep, but into some kind of half-oblivion, into that painful state when with one eye we see the approaching dreams of dreams, and with the other we see surrounding objects in a vague cloud.” It would seem that the fact that this was a dream is finally confirmed by the phrase: “Chartkov became convinced that his imagination presented him in a dream with the creation of his own indignant thoughts.”

But here a tangible “remnant” of the dream is revealed - money (as in “May Night” - the lady’s letter), which, in turn, is given a real-life motivation (in “the frame there was a box covered with a thin board”).

Along with dreams, such forms of veiled (implicit) fiction as coincidences and the hypnotizing effect of one character (here, a portrait) on another are generously introduced into the narrative.

Simultaneously with the introduction of veiled fiction, the real-psychological plan of Chertkov the artist emerges. His fatigue, neediness, bad inclinations, and thirst for quick success are noted. A parallelism is created between the fantastic and real-psychological concepts of the image. Everything that happens can be interpreted both as the fatal influence of the portrait on the artist, and as his personal capitulation to forces hostile to art.

In “Portrait” the epithet “hellish” is applied several times to Chertkov’s actions and plans: “the most hellish intention that a person has ever harbored was revived in his soul”; “a hellish thought flashed in the artist’s head” Here this epithet was correlated with Petromichali, a personified image of an unreal evil force (“The victims of this hellish spirit will be countless,” it is said about it in the second part).

So, in his searches in the field of fantasy, N.V. Gogol develops the described principle of parallelism between the fantastic and the real. Gogol's priority was prosaic, everyday, folklore and comic fiction.

We see that the writer, introducing in parallel with the “scary” comic treatment of “devilry,” implemented a pan-European artistic trend, and the devil from “The Night Before Christmas”, blowing on his burnt fingers, dragging after Solokha and constantly getting into trouble.

In “Portrait”, the religious painter says: “I have long wanted to give birth to the Antichrist, but he cannot, because he must be born supernaturally; and in our world everything is arranged by the Almighty in such a way that everything happens in a natural order.

But our land is dust before its creator. According to his laws, it must be destroyed, and every day the laws of nature will become weaker and therefore the boundaries that hold back the supernatural will become more criminal.”

Chertkov’s impressions of the portrait completely coincide with the words of the religious painter about the loosening of world laws. "What is this"? - he thought to himself. - “Art or supernatural, what kind of magic that peeks past the laws of nature?”

The Divine in Gogol’s concept is natural, it is a world that develops naturally.

On the contrary, the demonic is the supernatural, the world going out of its way.

By the mid-1930s, the science fiction writer especially clearly perceived the demonic not as evil in general, but as an alogism, as a “disorder of nature.”

The role of the fantastic backstory is played by the story of the artist’s son.

Some of the fantastic events are presented in the form of rumors, but some are covered by the introspection of the narrator, who reports the miraculous events as if they actually took place.

The fantastic and the real often go into one another, especially in art, because it does not simply depict life, but reveals, objectifying, what is happening in the human soul.

Gogol's fantastic story "The Nose". First of all, we note that the fantastic should not and cannot give illusions here. Not for a minute will we imagine ourselves in the position of Major Kovalev, whose nose was completely smooth. It would be a big mistake, however, to think that the fantastic is used here in the sense of an allegory or allusion in a fable or some modern pamphlet, in a literary caricature. It serves neither instruction nor denunciation here, and the author’s goals were purely artistic, as we will see in further analysis.

The tone and general character of the fantastic in the story "The Nose" is comic. Fantastic details should enhance the funny.

There is an opinion, very widespread, that “The Nose” is a joke, a kind of game of the author’s imagination and author’s wit. It is incorrect, because in the story one can discern a very specific artistic goal - to make people feel the vulgarity that surrounds them.

“Every poet, to a greater or lesser extent, is a teacher and preacher. If a writer doesn’t care and doesn’t want people to feel the same as he does, to want the same as he does, and to see good and evil where he is, he is not a poet, although he may be a very skillful writer. "(Innokenty Annensky "On the forms of the fantastic in Gogol").

Therefore, the poet’s thought and the images of his poetry are inseparable from his feeling, desire, his ideal. Gogol, when drawing Major Kovalev, could not treat his hero like a beetle that an entomologist would describe or draw: look at it, study it, classify it. He expressed in his face his animated attitude towards vulgarity, as a well-known social phenomenon that every person must take into account.

Vulgarity is pettiness. Vulgarity has only one thought about itself, because it is stupid and narrow and does not see or understand anything but itself. Vulgarity is selfish and selfish in all forms; she has arrogance, and fanaberia (arrogance), and arrogance, but there is no pride, no courage, and nothing noble at all.

Vulgarity has no kindness, no ideal aspirations, no art, no God. Vulgarity is formless, colorless, elusive. This is a muddy sediment of life in every environment, in almost every person. The poet feels the terrible burden of hopeless vulgarity in the environment and in himself.

“The fantastic is that drop of aniline that colors the cells of organic tissue under a microscope - thanks to the extraordinary position of the hero, we better see and understand what kind of person he was.” (Innokenty Annensky “On the forms of the fantastic in Gogol”).

Kovalev is neither an evil nor a good person - all his thoughts are focused on himself. This person is very insignificant, and so he tries in every possible way to enlarge and embellish her. “Ask, darling, Major Kovalev.” "Major" sounds more beautiful than "collegiate assessor". He does not have an order, but he buys an order ribbon; wherever possible, he mentions his secular successes and his acquaintance with the family of a staff officer and a civil councilor. He is very busy with his appearance - all his “interests” revolve around his hat, hairstyle, smoothly shaved cheeks. He is also especially proud of his rank.

Now imagine that Major Kovalev would have been disfigured by smallpox, that his nose would have been broken by a piece of cornice while he was looking at pictures through the mirror glass or at another moment of his idle existence. Surely someone would laugh? And if there were no laughter, what would be the attitude towards vulgarity in the story. Or imagine that Major Kovalev’s nose would disappear without a trace, so that he would not return to his place, but would continue to travel around Russia, posing as a state councilor. Major Kovalev's life would have been ruined: he would have become both unhappy and a useless, harmful person, he would have become embittered, he would have beaten his servant, he would have found fault with everyone, and maybe he would have even started to lie and gossip. Or imagine that Gogol would have portrayed Major Kovalev as reformed when his nose returned to him - a lie would be added to the fantastic. And here the fantastic only intensified the manifestation of reality, colored the vulgarity and increased the funny.

The detail of the impostor of the nose, which poses as a state councilor, is extremely characteristic. For a Caucasian collegiate assessor, the rank of civil councilor is something unusually high, enviable and offensive in its unattainability, and suddenly this rank goes to the nose of Major Kovalev, and not to the major himself, the rightful owner of the nose.

Here, in fantastic forms, a phenomenon very close to us and the most ordinary is depicted. The Greeks made him a goddess - Rumor, daughter of Zeus, and we call him Gossip.

Gossip is a condensed lie; everyone adds and adds a little, and the lie grows like a snowball, sometimes threatening to turn into a snowfall. In gossip, no one is often guilty individually, but the environment is always to blame: better than Major Kovalev and Lieutenant Pirogov, gossip shows that pettiness, empty thoughts and vulgarity have accumulated in a given environment. Gossip is a real substrate of the fantastic.

In general, the power of the fantastic in the story “The Nose” is based on its artistic truth, on its graceful interweaving with the real into a living, bright whole.

At the end of the analysis, we can define the form of the fantastic in “The Nose” as everyday.

And from this side, Gogol could not choose a better, more vivid way of expression than the fantastic.

We will take “Viya” as a representative of another form of the fantastic from Gogol. The main psychological motive of this story is fear. Fear comes in two forms: fear of the strong and fear of the mysterious - mystical fear. So here it is mystical fear that is depicted. The author’s goal, as he himself says in the note, is to tell the heard legend about Viya as simply as possible. The legend is indeed conveyed simply, but if you analyze this so naturally and freely developing story, you will see the complex mental work and see how immeasurably far it is from tradition. A poetic creation is like a flower: simple in appearance, but in reality it is infinitely more complex than any locomotive or chronometer.

The poet had, first of all, to make the reader feel that mystical fear that served as the mental basis of the legend. The phenomenon of death and the idea of ​​life beyond the grave have always been especially readily colored by fantasy. The thought and imagination of several thousand generations focused intently and hopelessly on eternal questions about life and death, and this intent and hopeless work left in the human soul one powerful feeling - the fear of death and the dead. This feeling, while remaining identical in its essence, changes endlessly in the forms and grouping of those ideas with which it is associated. We must be introduced into a region that, if not the one that produced the legend (its roots often go too deep), then at least supports and feeds it. Gogol points at the end of the story to the ruins, a memory of the death of Khoma Brut. Probably, these decayed and mysterious ruins, overgrown with forest and weeds, were precisely the impetus that prompted the imagination to produce the legend about Viya in this form.

The first part of the story appears to constitute an episode within a story. But this is only apparently - in fact, it is an organic part of the story.

Here we are presented with the environment in which the tradition was supported and flourished.

This environment is bursa. Bursa is a kind of status in statu*, Cossacks on the school bench, always half hungry, physically strong, with courage tempered with a rod, terribly indifferent to everything except physical strength and pleasure: scholastic science, incomprehensible, sometimes in the form of some unbearable appendage to existence , then transporting into the metaphysical and mysterious world.

On the other hand, the student is close to the people: his mind is often, under the crust of learning, full of naive ideas about nature and superstitions; Romantic vacation wanderings further maintain the connection with nature, with the common people and legend.

Khoma Brut believes in devilry, but he is still a scientist.

A monk, who had seen witches and unclean spirits all his life, taught him spells. His imagination was nurtured under the influence of various images of hellish torment, devilish temptations, painful visions of ascetics and ascetics. Into the environment of naive mythical legends among the people, he, a bookish person, introduces a bookish element - a written legend.

Here we see a manifestation of that primordial interaction between literacy and nature, which created the motley world of our folk literature.

What kind of person is Khoma Brut? Gogol loved to portray average, ordinary people, like this philosopher.

Khoma Brut is strong, indifferent, carefree, loves to eat heavily and drinks cheerfully and good-naturedly. He is a straightforward person: his tricks, when, for example, he wants to take time off from his business or run away, are rather naive. He lies without even trying; There is no expansiveness in him either - he is too lazy even for that. N.V. Gogol, with rare skill, placed this indifferent man at the center of his fears: it took a lot of horrors for them to finish off Khoma Brut, and the poet could unfold the whole terrible chain of devilry before his hero.

* State within a state (Latin).

The greatest skill of N.V. Gogol was expressed in the gradualness with which the mysterious is conveyed to us in the story: it began with a semi-comic ride on a witch and, with proper development, reached the terrible denouement - the death of a strong man from fear. The writer makes us experience step by step with Khoma all the stages of development of this feeling. At the same time, N.V. Gogol had two paths to choose from: he could go analytically - talk about the hero’s state of mind, or synthetically - talk in images. He chose the second path: he objectified the mental state of his hero, and left the analytical work to the reader.

From here came the necessary interweaving of the fantastic into the real.

Starting from the moment when the centurion sent to Kiev for Khoma, even the comic scenes (for example, in the chaise) are sad, then there is the scene with the stubborn centurion, his terrible curses, the beauty of the dead, the chatter of the servants, the road to the church, the locked church, the lawn in front of it , bathed in the moon, vain efforts to cheer herself up, which only further develop the feeling of fear, Khoma’s morbid curiosity, the dead woman wags her finger. Our tense feeling relaxes somewhat during the day. Evening - heavy forebodings, night - new horrors. It seems to us that all the horrors have already been exhausted, but the writer finds new colors, that is, not new colors - he thickens the old ones. And at the same time, no caricature, no artistic lies. Fear gives way to horror, horror to confusion and melancholy, confusion to numbness. The boundary between myself and the environment is lost, and it seems to Khome that it is not he who is speaking the spells, but the dead woman. Khoma's death is the necessary end of the story; If you imagine for a moment his awakening from a drunken sleep, then all the artistic meaning of the story will disappear.

In "Viya" the fantastic developed on mystical soil - hence its special intensity. A characteristic feature of the mystical in N.V. Gogol in general is the major tone of his supernatural creatures - the witch and the sorcerer - vengeful and evil creatures.

Thus, the first stage in the development of Gogol’s fiction is characterized by the fact that the writer pushed the bearer of fiction into the past, leaving his influence, a “trace,” in modern time.

The writer, parodying the poetics of romantic mystery, refused to give any explanation of what was happening.

Reading the works of N.V. Gogol, you involuntarily show your imagination, ignoring its boundaries between the possible and the impossible.

Turning to the works of N.V. Gogol, one can be a priori sure that we will find many elements of science fiction in it. After all, if the latter determined a whole type of folk culture, then, as emphasized by M. Bakhtin, its influence extends over many eras, almost right up to our time.

The story "The Nose" is one of the most fun, original, fantastic and unexpected works of Nikolai Gogol. The author did not agree to publish this joke for a long time, but his friends persuaded him. The story was first published in the Sovremennik magazine in 1836, with a note by A.S. Pushkin. Since then, heated debates have not subsided around this work. The real and the fantastic in Gogol's story "The Nose" are combined in the most bizarre and unusual forms. Here the author reached the pinnacle of his satirical skill and painted a true picture of the morals of his time.

Brilliant grotesque

This is one of N.V.’s favorite literary devices. Gogol. But if in early works it was used to create an atmosphere of mystery and mystery in the narrative, then in a later period it turned into a way of satirically reflecting the surrounding reality. The story "The Nose" is a clear confirmation of this. The inexplicable and strange disappearance of the nose from Major Kovalev’s face and his incredible independent existence separately from his owner suggest the unnaturalness of the order in which a high status in society means much more than the person himself. In this state of affairs, any inanimate object can suddenly acquire significance and weight if it acquires the proper rank. This is the main problem of the story "The Nose".

Features of realistic grotesque

In the late work of N.V. Gogol is dominated by realistic grotesque. It is aimed at revealing the unnaturalness and absurdity of reality. Incredible things happen to the heroes of the work, but they help to reveal the typical features of the world around them, to reveal the dependence of people on generally accepted conventions and norms.

Gogol's contemporaries did not immediately appreciate the writer's satirical talent. Only having done a lot for a correct understanding of Nikolai Vasilyevich’s work, he once noticed that the “ugly grotesque” that he uses in his work contains “an abyss of poetry” and “an abyss of philosophy”, worthy of “Shakespeare’s brush” in its depth and authenticity.

“The Nose” begins with the fact that on March 25, an “extraordinarily strange incident” happened in St. Petersburg. Ivan Yakovlevich, a barber, discovers his nose in freshly baked bread in the morning. He throws him off the St. Isaac's Bridge into the river. The owner of the nose, the collegiate assessor, or major, Kovalev, waking up in the morning, does not find an important part of the body on his face. In search of the loss, he goes to the police. On the way he meets his own nose in the garb of a state councilor. Pursuing the fugitive, Kovalev follows him to the Kazan Cathedral. He tries to return his nose to its place, but he only prays with “the greatest zeal” and points out to the owner that there can be nothing in common between them: Kovalev serves in another department.

Distracted by an elegant lady, the major loses sight of the rebellious part of the body. After making several unsuccessful attempts to find the nose, the owner returns home. There they return what was lost to him. The police chief grabbed his nose while trying to escape using someone else's documents to Riga. Kovalev's joy does not last long. He cannot put the body part back in its original place. The summary of the story "The Nose" does not end there. How did the hero manage to get out of this situation? The doctor can't help the major. Meanwhile, curious rumors are creeping around the capital. Someone saw the nose on Nevsky Prospekt, someone saw it on Nevsky Prospect. As a result, he himself returned to his original place on April 7, which brought considerable joy to the owner.

Theme of the work

So what is the point of such an incredible plot? The main theme of Gogol's story "The Nose" is the character's loss of a piece of his self. This probably happens under the influence of evil spirits. The organizing role in the plot is given to the motive of persecution, although Gogol does not indicate the specific embodiment of supernatural power. The mystery captivates readers literally from the first sentence of the work, it is constantly reminded of it, it reaches its climax... but there is no solution even in the finale. Covered in the darkness of the unknown is not only the mysterious separation of the nose from the body, but also how he could exist independently, and even in the status of a high-ranking official. Thus, the real and the fantastic in Gogol’s story “The Nose” are intertwined in the most unimaginable way.

Real plan

It is embodied in the work in the form of rumors, which the author constantly mentions. This is gossip that the nose regularly promenades along Nevsky Prospect and other crowded places; that he seemed to be looking into the store and so on. Why did Gogol need this form of communication? Maintaining an atmosphere of mystery, he satirically ridicules the authors of stupid rumors and naive belief in incredible miracles.

Characteristics of the main character

Why did Major Kovalev deserve such attention from supernatural forces? The answer lies in the content of the story "The Nose". The fact is that the main character of the work is a desperate careerist, ready to do anything for a promotion. He managed to receive the rank of collegiate assessor without an exam, thanks to his service in the Caucasus. Kovalev’s cherished goal is to marry profitably and become a high-ranking official. In the meantime, in order to give himself more weight and significance, he everywhere calls himself not a collegiate assessor, but a major, knowing about the superiority of military ranks over civilian ones. “He could forgive everything that was said about himself, but he did not forgive in any way if it related to rank or title,” the author writes about his hero.

So the evil spirits laughed at Kovalev, not only taking away an important part of his body (you can’t make a career without it!), but also endowing the latter with the rank of general, that is, giving it more weight than the owner himself. That's right, there is nothing Real and fantastic in Gogol's story "The Nose" makes you think about the question "what is more important - the personality or its status?" And the answer is disappointing...

Hints from a brilliant author

Gogol's story contains many satirical subtleties and transparent hints at the realities of his contemporary time. For example, in the first half of the 19th century, glasses were considered an anomaly, giving the appearance of an officer or official some inferiority. In order to wear this accessory, special permission was required. If the heroes of the work strictly followed the instructions and corresponded to the form, then the Nose in the Uniform acquired for them the importance of a significant person. But as soon as the police chief “logged out” of the system, broke the strictness of his uniform and put on glasses, he immediately noticed that in front of him was just a nose - a part of the body, useless without its owner. This is how the real and the fantastic intertwine in Gogol’s story “The Nose”. No wonder the author’s contemporaries were engrossed in this extraordinary work.

Many writers noted that “The Nose” is a magnificent example of fantasy, Gogol’s parody of various prejudices and people’s naive belief in the power of supernatural forces. Fantastic elements in the works of Nikolai Vasilyevich are ways of satirically displaying the vices of society, as well as affirming the realistic principle in life.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol is a completely unique writer, unlike other Russian masters of words. There is a lot of amazing and amazing things in his work: the funny is intertwined with the tragic, the fantastic with the real.

Reading Gogol's works, each time you become convinced that the basis of his works is comic. This is a carnival, when everyone puts on masks, displays unusual properties, changes places, and everything gets mixed up.

In the story “The Overcoat,” Gogol tells the story of the difficult life of the “little man” Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, whose life is subordinated to tradition and content with the automatism of his life. This work intertwines the comic and the tragic, the real and the fantastic. The story of his birth and the choice of the hero’s name make me smile. He got the position of an official whom no one ever respected or noticed. Only when his colleagues pestered him too much did he ask: “Leave me alone, why are you hurting me?” The author writes with bitterness about how much inhumanity there is in man, how much hidden ferocious rudeness and refined, cruel secularism are hidden. Bashmachkin’s poverty evokes, of course, sympathy, but the goal of his life (to buy a new overcoat) is too insignificant for a person. And then a happy day came: Akaki Akakievich’s dream came true. The colorless and resigned “little man,” whose life was reduced to fulfilling his position, felt like a hero in his new overcoat, and even received an invitation to visit a fellow official, where he was going to celebrate a joyful event. How little a person needs to be happy!

The theft of the overcoat turned into torment for the hero. He tried to find protection from the authorities, but “a significant person stamped his foot” - and Bashmachkin was thrown out. The callousness of a high-ranking official is disgusting.

Protected by no one, Akaki Akakievich dies. A creature disappeared and disappeared, no one was dear to anyone, no one was interested in it. Gogol depicted retribution in a fantastic way. The fantastic ending of the story is justified by the writer’s attitude towards his offended “brother”.

The dead man Bashmachkin appeared to a “significant person” on the street and took off his overcoat. This incident somehow softened the boss’s despotic temper; he even began to say to his subordinates less often: “How dare you, do you understand who is in front of you?” Gogol either sympathizes with his hero, or condemns him for the baseness of his goals, for his dumbness and slavish obedience.

In the story “The Overcoat,” I did not immediately determine exactly what was reality and what was fiction. The poverty and wretchedness of the life of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin is brought by the author to the point of absurdity and fantasy (walking along the street, he stepped very carefully on stones and slabs, almost did not touch them), as well as the ability of the “little man” to see characters in letters, and street - a country with people - letters and words. In contrast, a few days of noisy life after the death of Bashmachkin - a clear unreality - can always be an exorbitant fantasy and fear of one of the department officials, a significant person and the Kolomna watchman. Each individual character is the truth, but the totality of them, the society they form and the adventures that follow from this is their fantastic and implausible side.

In “The Overcoat,” if we talk about fooling associated with something unreal, there are rumors about the noisy life of Akaki Akakievich after death. The climax, leading to the denouement, in one case to the material death of Bashmachkin, and in the other case to the disappearance of his ghost, is the robbery scene. This scene is repeated twice. In both cases, the overcoat is taken away, but one robbery is completely real, and the other is associated with mysticism. In “The Overcoat” the world of things is of great importance in the development of the plot; they, one might say, are personified, personified. The most extraordinary incidents are associated with things. In “The Overcoat,” outerwear, the overcoat, becomes the ultimate dream. For Bashmachkin, this is not only a wardrobe item, but also an object of love. The new overcoat was the last dream to keep warm in the cold world of St. Petersburg - this symbol of the eternal hellish cold. The overcoat gives rise to conflict, the tragic grotesque develops into fantasy. In “The Overcoat,” the heroes of the work do not have their own faces, but things and material values ​​are animated. The general tone in “The Overcoat” is not very optimistic, despite the fact that Gogol’s irony is also present in the scene of Akaki Akakievich’s baptism.

In the work “The Overcoat” there are scenes of everyday life everywhere, laughter through tears, the comic is revealed here only with the advent of science fiction.

ki. The world of things and related incidents are a vivid addition to their spiritual life. For Bashmachkin, the overcoat is his world, love, dream, meaning of life. Bashmachkin could not bear the theft of his overcoat, the futility of his dream. And the kindly petty official, possessing spiritual strength and opposing the soullessness of society, dies.

Elements of the surreal and unusual are present in almost all of Gogol’s works. Hyperbole, grotesque, “veiled” and obvious fantasy helped the writer make the viewer and reader laugh, and with laughter, according to Gogol, all illnesses in society can be cured - both of the people and of individuals.

Review

In the essay about the hero of the story “The Overcoat,” the theme is fully and purposefully revealed, it is shown how reality and fantasy are intricately intertwined in the story of the unfortunate “little man” Akaki Akakievich Bashmachkin, for whom a new overcoat was the last dream to keep warm in the cold world of St. Petersburg - a symbol of eternal hell. cold. The material is strictly selected, the text of the story and its most significant facts are used correctly, revealing the role of fiction in a work of art. There are clear logical connections in the work.

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