Characteristics of a literary hero
One of the inhabitants of the rooming house, whose real name is unknown to the reader. In the past, he was an actor, played on stage under the pseudonym Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky. Now he is a drunkard who has sunk to the very bottom of life. He often recalls his past, tries to quote the classics, but he manages to remember little. Luke consoles A., telling him about the free hospital for alcoholics. A. hopes, stops drinking and starts saving money for the trip. But his life ends tragically. He hanged himself when he realized that he could hardly escape.
Essay on literature on the topic: Actor (At the bottom of Gorky)
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- M. Gorky's play "At the Bottom" is an innovative literary work. In the center of it are not so much human destinies as a clash of ideas, a dispute about a person, about the meaning of life. The core of this dispute is the problem of truth and lies, the perception of life as it is Read More ......
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- Truth is the god of a free man. M. Gorky, “At the Bottom” Gorky's play “At the Bottom” became a notable phenomenon in Russian literature of the early 20th century. What explains its exceptional success? A strong impression on the viewer was made by the combination of an extremely realistic image of people who have reached the last degree Read More ......
- Luka Characteristics of a literary hero A notable phenomenon in Russian literature of the early 20th century was Gorky's play “At the Bottom”. What explains its exceptional success? A strong impression on the viewer was made by the combination of an extremely realistic image of people who have reached the last degree of squalor, despair and lack of rights, with Read More ......
- Vaska Pepel Characteristics of a literary hero Inhabitant of a rooming house, a hereditary thief. P. is the lover of the hostess' wife, Vasilisa. This is a very cruel woman who constantly pushes him to steal. But P. was tired of such a life. He wants to be an honest person. He falls in love with his sister Read More ......
- At the bottom, the piece contains, as it were, two parallel actions. The first is social and everyday and the second is philosophical. Both actions develop in parallel, not intertwined. There are, as it were, two planes in the play: external and internal. External plan. In an overnight stay owned by Read More ......
- M. Gorky entered Russian literature in the 90s of the XIX century and immediately aroused great interest among readers. The rich personal experience of wandering in Russia gave the writer abundant material for his works. Already in the early years, mainstream ideas are developed and Read More ......
- Gorky always thought about what controls a person, what values for him are above all, how freedom and love, goodness and truth, strength and justice are consistent. The play “At the Bottom” can rightly be called a philosophical drama. Gorky wrote: “The main question that Read More ......
Literary quotes in the speech of the Actor (based on the play by M. Gorky "At the Bottom")
Reminiscences, small quotes, references to works, literary heroes in the monologues of the characters in the play "At the Bottom" - a kind of author's technique that subtly reveals the character's character.
The actor is in place and cleverly includes small quotes from works of art, poetic lines in his speech, likens his life to the fate of Shakespeare's heroes, Beranger.
He repeatedly refers to "Hamlet", recalls "King Lear", quotes Beranger's poems, pronounces a line from Pushkin's "The Drowned Man" ("Our nets dragged a dead man"), attributing it to Beranger.
The literary associations that arise in the Actor not only speak of his theatrical past, but also give an idea of the hero's spiritual world, his painful thoughts about his fate.
Hamlet, King Lear, obviously, are dear to the Actor by the drama of their destinies, the nobility of characters, Beranger's poems - by sympathy for the outcasts and the destitute.
The Actor's appeal to Lear is full of meaning.
The actor wants to believe in the possibility of recovery and return to the stage. At the same time, there is no conviction that the hope is feasible. This internal struggle of faith and doubt is shown by M. Gorky with unusual subtlety. Let me give you a piece of text as an example.
"-Actor. I am leaving, leaving ... spring will come - and I am no more ... "
Here, I believe, we are not talking about leaving Kostylev's rooming house. This is where the idea of suicide comes in. Let's pay attention to the sentence "... I am no more ...". Not at all! The offer has not been completed. Can an Actor regret not being in a rooming house in the spring? But to establish yourself in the idea that life will continue to flow, and you will not be, is painfully difficult! And it’s not dirty bunks that rise in my memory, but what is dearest to a person: spring as the personification of life ...
But the actor drives away the thought of death. Maybe there is still hope for recovery? And he builds castles in the air: “You see, there is a hospital ... for drunkards ... An excellent hospital ... Light ... cleanliness, food ... everything is for nothing! ... - he says to Natasha. - I will find it, I will be cured and ... I will be again ... "
Then follow the words full of sad irony: "I am on the way to rebirth ... as ... the king ... Lear said!". At the cost of pain and suffering, Lear was reborn as a man. But, realizing the evil reigning in the world, Lear perishes from this evil.
Lack of understanding, discontinuity of speech well convey the influx of thoughts, confusion of the Actor's feelings.
Actor's analogies are significant, fraught with significant subtext. At the end of the second act, the Actor, shocked by the death of Anna, is looking for some kind of support, he calls Luka: “Old man! Over here, my faithful Kent…” Yes, Kent
loyal to Lear, but he could not prevent the death of the king ... Moreover, Kent even believes that the death of Lear will save him from further suffering.
There is little hope for the Actor in Luka if he remembers Kent...
It is important to pay attention to the following words of the Actor: "This pit will be my grave ... I am dying, weak and frail."
This is the accurately quoted beginning of Beranger's poem "The Old Tramp". The plot of this poetic novel is a sad story about how the life of a simple person has dramatically developed. The ability to work honestly proved futile. In order not to die of hunger, the tramp is forced to steal and rob. Summing up the results of a dramatic life, he speaks of the deceitfulness of bourgeois freedoms, calls for "revenge on people."
The actor recalls the "Old Tramp" when Satin talks about the illusory nature of his dream of returning to a new life.
"Satin. ...It's all the old man who screwed the Actor ... you understand, baron?
Baron. The old man is stupid...
Actor. Ignorant! Savages!... People without a heart! You will see - he will leave! "Fat, gloomy minds" ... (a line from Beranger's poem "Gastronomers") He - will find a place for himself ... where there is no .. no .. "
The actor, in all likelihood, has already decided to commit suicide. That's where this statement comes from. Yes, there is “nothing” there: no joy, no suffering.
The lines "this pit will be my grave", perhaps the final verdict
yourself.
And the “gloomy minds” whom the Actor calls on to “overeat” are satiated people, unable to create spiritual values, to experience the true joys of life.
The actor passes away as a hardened man who has not forgiven his offenses, just as the hero of Beranger's poem did not forgive them.
The Actor's appeal to artistic images, their comprehension enriches our understanding of him as a person who is acutely experiencing his fall.
The life of a beggar, a hunted person was surprisingly similar to the fate of many inhabitants of the Kostylev basement. His confession reinforced the impression of the hopelessness of their fate.
Life did not spare the tramp from the work of Beranger, she did not spare Kleshch, Tatarin and other "people of the bottom."
The fate of the heroes of the play "At the bottom" by Gorky
In the play "At the bottom" Gorky showed us the life of tramps who have lost: their own names, spiritual values, life guidelines. Only one of the heroes of the play - the owner of the rooming house - has a first name, patronymic and surname. Others have only a name or nickname. Already the poster gives us an idea of what social position the heroes of the play occupied before falling “to the bottom”. In the list of actors, seventeen heroes are presented, Only a few of them have a job (locksmith, policeman), and most only age, I want to elaborate on the fate of the Actor.
Only once in the play is the real name of the Actor-Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky mentioned. The first part of the surname is something small, inconspicuous, afraid to be seen. Zavolzhsky - something wide, great. His fate can be divided into two parts before and after the loss of his last name. Sverchkov is suitable for the first part, and Zavolzhsky for the second.
From some statements, we can guess about the past of the Actor. He says: "Hamlet is a good thing ... I played the gravedigger in it." This role is the second plan, which does not require a special acting gift. Did the actor have talent? I think he was a talented actor. Apparently, there was a moment when he could not “break through”, and this broke him. The actor says: “Talent is faith in yourself, in your strength.” He did not have enough faith in his own strength, and without this it is impossible to achieve success. The actor had to gather willpower into a fist in order to “rise” after the first failure and again go on the storm of acting heights. Instead of doing this, he began to pour vodka on his failures. Gradually, the Actor loses the good that was in him. Then he loses his own name, which is replaced by a nickname. Among the inhabitants of the rooming house, he considers himself a representative of the creative intelligentsia: dusting is not for him. After Luca told him about a hospital where you can recover from alcoholism, the Actor, it seemed to me, was infected with this idea. Then why didn't he bring it to life? I think that he no longer had the moral strength to get out of the hole he fell into. To do this, he needed more support. But could any of the inhabitants of the rooming house provide it? No. That is why the Actor will soon strangle himself. He just couldn't keep going like this. He had to choose: either to live like a human, or not to live at all. The first he could not bring to life, so he chose the second ...
The tragic fate of the Actor is typical: a person who has failed in his professional activities often breaks down in his personal life, rolls down an inclined plane, becomes an alcoholic and a homeless person. By inertia, he continues to consider himself what he was before the fall: an actor, a poet, an artist, and even a baron. Such people blame the whole wide world for their failures, but not themselves. Continuing to sink lower and lower, they indulge in dreams of returning to a past life without making any effort for this. And only those few for whom the aphorism: "Man - it sounds proud!" becomes a life attitude, they are able to find the strength to get out of the bottom of life.
Part 2. Linguistics and Literary Studies
O.V. Bogdanov
Saint Petersburg State University
CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE IMAGE OF THE ACTOR IN M. GORKY’S PLAY “AT THE BOTTOM”
The author of the work reconsiders the well-established tradition of perceiving the image, character and role of the Actor as a secondary character, only accompanying the main characters. However, as the researcher shows, the image of the Actor, on the one hand, turns out to be the forerunner of the image of Luke, anticipates the appearance of the wanderer hero on the stage and embodies a transitional step in the evolution of Gorky's Man. On the other hand, the article shows that the image of the Actor forms an alternative to the image of the ideologue Satin, refuting the rhetorical verbal maxims of the hero-reasoner about death, truth, soul.
Dramaturgy, M. Gorky, the play "At the bottom", the image of the Actor, the system of heroes, the ideological level.
The article offers a new concept of the image of Actor. Conceptual components of the image of Actor in the stage "paintings" by M. Gorky's "The lower depths" (1902) becomes the subject of the analysis in the article. The author of article revises steadily the tradition of image perception, the nature and role of Actor as a character of secondary importance in Gorky's play, merely accompanying the main characters without taking active part in main ideological disputes about Man, Truth and Lies. However, according to the researcher, the image of Actor, on the one hand, is the forerunner of the image of Luke; he anticipates the appearance of the wanderer character on the stage and embodies a transitional stage of the Gorky evolution of the Man - from Plato's cave and from the man-beast to the Christian Light and Purity. On the other hand, the article shows that the image of Actor forms an alternative to the image of the ideologist-character Satin and refutes Satin's verbal rhetorical maxims about death, truth, soul.
Drama, M. Gorky, play "The lower depths", the image of Actor, system of characters, ideological level.
Introduction
M. Gorky's play "At the Bottom" since its appearance on the stage (1902) and in print (1903) has invariably enjoyed the attention of critics. Well-known domestic researchers addressed its study (M. Gromov, I. Kuzmichev, A. Ovcharenko, Z. Paperny, V. Petelin, N. Primochkina, I. Revyakina, L. Spiridonova, A. Khanov, etc.). The text of the play seems to have been comprehensively studied. However, the new time gives rise to a new reading of the play. From the point of view of today, many components of the Gorky drama acquire new shades. Therefore, the purpose of this article was to consider the image of the Actor and his role, an attempt to find new facets of his representation.
The image of the Actor and his character in M. Gorky's philosophical "pictures" "At the Bottom", as a rule, are not considered in the system of the main ideological disputes of the drama, the function of the hero-actor is perceived as auxiliary. The character is assigned a secondary role, the purpose of which is to “debunk” one of the contrapuntal heroes-ideologists, in particular, the “lie” of the crafty (according to Gorky) Luka. However, close attention to the text of the play allows us to assert that the Actor is the conceptual and most consistent character of the play, making a decisive and decisive philosophical choice, developing in line with the humanistic traditions of Russian and world literature.
Main part
The word "actor" ("artist") in the metaconsciousness of the early twentieth century was accompanied by a symbolic meaning, and its motive complex sought to organize itself into a model of the world, in the center of which stood the creator-creator - the Man-Artist (as, for example, in A. Blok's poetry) . Unlike the “simple” heroes of the play “At the Bottom” by Anna or Kleshch, the naive romantic Nastya, the mundane dumpling vendor Kvashnya and other “wild” and “bottom” characters of the play, the Actor is involved in knowledge, enlightened and dedicated. He turns out to be conceptually connected with the central dualistic - ideological-philosophical - pair-controversy "Satin - Luka", entering into "unexpected" relations of comparison (Actor // Luka) and opposition (Actor ^ Satin) with the heroes-ideologists.
Already in the author's introductory remark, the Actor and Satin are given by the playwright not in a differentiated way, like other characters, but “in pairs”, in one line: “Satin and the Actor are approximately the same age; years under 40 ". When the Actor appears on the stage, his first remark is addressed to Satin ("One day they will completely kill you ... to death ..."). However, the pairing of these heroes is not a sign of the similarity of the characters, but rather an explication of their ideological and positional non-strict confrontation, which has not yet reached its climax in the assumption of the paired relationship "Satin - Luke".
Like other characters in the play, at the beginning of the action, the Actor appears dissolved in the atmosphere of a Platonic cave (in the introductory remark of the play it sounds: “A cellar that looks like a cave ...”), almost indistinguishable (seems to be organically dissolved) in the environment of cave “animal people ”,“ savages ”, inhabitants of Kostylev’s rooming house. However, from the very first remarks, like the hero-ideologist Satin, the Actor reveals a predilection for the word. Gorky outlines a certain juxtaposition of the reasoning hero and the invisible hero (according to the author's remark, the Actor appears on stage as "invisible"). Just as Satin plays with incomprehensible “inhuman” words, thereby gaining weight in the eyes of the roommates (and, within the framework of the entire dramatic action, paving the way for his future final monologue), so the Actor, invisible among other heroes, acquires his visible essence largely through the word . “Akter (loudly, as if suddenly waking up). Yesterday, in the hospital, the doctor told me: your body, he says, is completely poisoned by alcohol. . The word organism is in the shock phase of the utterance, accentuated by the syntactic structure of the sentence and the inaudible intonation of the character's speaking. The actor is drawn against the background of other "cave" heroes by acquiring the name of an organism - (yet) not a person, but a certain organism, as if beginning evolutionary development, in the process of scientific Darwinism or Gorky's "incarnation" claiming to become a Human. Therefore, in the next replica of the Actor, “Words, words, words!” are already heard, moreover, fertilized by a cultural extract. According to his memoirs: “In the drama Hamlet.<он>played the gravedigger." . And then the Actor pronounces the name of Ophelia and the provocative-projective (against the background of his future fate) phrase “Oh. remember me in your prayers! .. ". The actor - through his (former) involvement in the theater - in the Gorky dispute about Man opens the doors of the existential components of the "new time", the Renaissance (Shakespearean) postulate question "To be or not to be? ..", sets the philosophical coordinates of the ideological dispute.
Meanwhile, the perception of the image of Hamlet in the XIX - early XX centuries. repeatedly changed, acquired ambiguous and in its own way contradictory interpretations. Beginning in the 1880s, during the crisis of populism, Hamletism was presented as a philosophy of pessimism, inaction and phrase-mongering. It is no coincidence that the weak-willed, yearning, “Moscow Hamlet” coming to complete collapse, in the view of A.P. Chekhov, - “rotten rag, rubbish, sourness” (story-feuilleton “In Moscow”, 1891). Therefore, the chaos of an unformed being, an individual not yet embodied in a human form, appears in the alogism of the Actor's speech. The hero erroneously qualifies Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet as a drama; playing the role of a gravedigger, he reproduces Hamlet's monologue; sick with consumption, the character is fascinated by the poisoning of the body by drunkenness. In the course of the universal evolution (within the limits of the image of the Actor), the gross chaos has not yet turned into a harmonious cosmos,
but nevertheless, the image of the actor makes one foresee a new “Darwinian” stage - a premonition of a person - especially after (at first not quite clear, but) ambiguous words: “I say - talent, that's what the hero needs. And talent is faith in yourself, in your strength. .
There is no coveted (including Satin) strength in the “weak and frail” Actor, there is no deep understanding between Satin and the Actor - and this motive of proximity / dissimilarity is carried out by Gorky sequentially from the first dialogic remarks of the characters (act 1) until the last phrase Satin at the end of the play (act 4).
In the stage relationships of Gorky's "Noah's Ark", where "every creature is paired", the Actor is more of a correlation ideological pair to the wanderer Luka than to Sateen. As the text reveals, both before Luke's appearance on the stage and after his disappearance, it is the Actor who turns out to be the spokesman for a kind of counterpoint in relation to Sateen, Luke's personified "deputy". In a metaphorical sense, the Actor foreshadows the appearance on the stage of the wanderer-philosopher.
Natasha, the heroine “with a clean hand” (in the definition of Ashes), brings the old wise man to the stage of the new guest, the wise man. Vaska's words just sounded: “Where are they - honor, advise? You can’t put on your feet instead of boots. ” - contrapunc-turno respond in Luka's greeting: "Good health, honest people!" . Under-humans, half-beasts1, "wild" people dramaturgically collide Gorky with a newly appeared character in order to explicate, on the one hand, a new (albeit intermediate) stage of incarnation, on the other hand, to propose a possible/impossible, permissible/inadmissible, according to Gorky, the way of maturation of Man in man. The Christian symbolic tonality, previously dotted within the limits of the Platonic cave imagery, finds its complete character design, acquiring a personal embodiment in the character of Luke - it is no coincidence that the meaning of the name Luke is “light” (lat.). Conventionally, the darkness of Platonic "paganism" is replaced by the light of "Christianity".
Luka initially, from the first remarks, wins the location of the rooming-houses and is perceived as a hero with a vividly represented humanistic philosophy: "... in my opinion, not a single flea is bad: everyone is black, everyone jumps ...". The appeal to the folklore maxim, and soon the folk song “In the middle of the night you can’t see the way, the road ...”, which Luka sings, distinguish the character from the background of other heroes, giving him a special place. The time of the creation of the play and, as a result, frequent meetings with L. N. Tolstoy explicate an implicit, but deliberate indication of the personality and nature of the humanist writer’s convictions, set off the popular component of Tolstoy’s views, establish an ideological disposition (as a result, between the philosophy of all-acceptance and all-forgiveness Tol -
1 Practically each of the characters in the play at one time or another is called “goat”, then “pig”, then “dog”, then bears the “insect” surname (Tick), etc.
stoic and effective humanism of Gorky). The symbolic semantics of the sounding song accentuates the characters' philosophical search for a path in the middle of the night, "without the sun" (the play's first title).
With Luka, light enters the play, the action rises to a new level of plot organization, a kind of compositional ladder. The ideologically essential character-philosopher, by analogy with the Platonic dialogues of savage heroes, acquires the right to express his own judgments and present a variant of ideas about the good, the soul, Man. The hero does not become another "small" voice of the Babylonian pandemonium, but reveals an integral and capacious philosophy, which basically contains the ideological provisions of Tolstoyism (and, in a broader sense, Christianity).
The categories of the semantic field truth/truth in the presence of Luke begin to be actualized more insistently. Despite the fact that the name Luka becomes the basis of the ironic and derogatory pun "Luka is evil", nevertheless, he turns out to be the only character whose speeches have an impact on others.
In the course of the play, Luke addresses all the characters with words of sympathy and consolation. The words of the hero had the strongest impact on the Actor. In the space of the couple "Luka - Actor" the elemental religiosity and the "hidden" inner philosophy of the actor come through brighter. The words he uttered about talent, about "belief in yourself, in your strength." in comparison with the position of Luke, they make it possible to realize the absence in the Actor of an active talent for life or his personal weakness. The former actor Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky (a pseudonym in the spirit of A.N. Ostrovsky) honestly admits to Luka: “And now. it's over brother!<...>I, brother, died ... ". Under the influence of the wanderer's speeches, the Actor flares up for a moment1 next to Luka, recalls a forgotten poem about a madman, seeks (and not unsuccessfully) a job2, but inside himself he clearly realizes that he has lost the main sign of a person - "I drank my soul away, old man." - and understands the impossibility of conversion. “Why did he die? I didn't have faith... And in such a non-theatrical context, the concepts of soul and faith are read (including) in the paradigm of Christian ideas.
The Actor's favorite poem about the "holy truth" and the "golden dream", the image of a mad thinker who is able to illuminate the "whole world" left "without the sun", becomes a bright poetic dominant of the Actor's storyline and is peculiar -
1 Satin calls the Actor a "butt". If we imagine that we mean the stub of a candle, then the image turns out to be poetically capacious. The candle symbolizes the light in the darkness of life, embodies the image of the human soul and the transience of human life. In Christianity, a candle is a divine light, a symbol of Christ, grace, faith, piety, etc. The word-nickname "cinder", thus, brings numerous additional connotations to the image of the Actor.
2 Note that, like Luke, the work found by the Actor is sweeping. “Today I worked, chalked up the street.” The similar nature of the work of Luka (sweeping the floor in the rooming house) and the Actor (swept the street) is symptomatic.
apophatic, according to Gorky - the glorification / overthrow of the image of the madman Luke. The death of the Actor, according to the playwright, was supposed to serve as a signal of the lifelessness of the “false” consolations of the madman Luke and at the same time the philosophical provisions of Tolstoy (and Christianity in general).
However, the multitude of ideological predilections and the mixture of diverse theories to which Gorky appealed (paganism, Platonism, Christianity, Tolstoyism, Nietzscheanism, etc.) allow us to take a different look at the image, character and death of the Actor. The hero turns out to be a fundamentally intermediate character, bipolar, vacillating, in his fate an original synthesis of Platonism and Christianity is revealed.
On the one hand, according to Plato, poets and actors, in their copying and reproduction of reality, are doomed to the role of "unreliable imitators", i.e. people who are "weak" in their own way. But within the framework of the Platonic value system, the choice of death has always been seen as a strong act. On the other hand, within the framework of Orthodox ideas, suicide is unacceptable and condemned by the church. Meanwhile, Russian classical literature created a lofty tragic example of the suicide Katerina (Ostrovsky's Thunderstorm), and within this paradigm, the death of an Actor is a strong and conscious choice, an unwillingness to accept life soullessly, being deprived of soul and faith. Just as for Ostrovsky’s heroine, death was a gain of freedom and deliverance from the tyranny of the “dark kingdom”, so for the Actor, awakened by Luke’s speeches, suicide became a sign of the rebirth in him of a Man who is able to realize and not accept his own insignificance and smallness.
The actor is the only character among the overnight stays who understood himself and his place in the "bottom" world. After the resurrection of Beranger's poem in the Actor's memory, it seems that he himself is reborn (“I am on the way to rebirth.”). But at the same time he is aware of the opposite. The actor understands that the spark of madness, about which Plato wrote and which Berenger sang, has died out (that is why the image-metaphor “little cinder” appears in the text in relation to the actor). The muse of Melpomene left the Actor, depriving him of the gift of creative creativity, inspired creation.
Other characters seem to be stronger than the Actor - for example, Satin or the Baron - even understanding their position in the rooming house, they accept their "empty", reflected (according to Plato), "invisible", sleepy (according to Gorky) life. Even in the first act, Satin utters a thoughtful phrase about the deadness of the bottom - ". You cannot kill twice." About the Baron, Nastya says: "Be quiet ... if God has killed ...". However, for one and for the other, these aphoristically accurate diagnoses remain phrases - “words, words! ..”
Thus, it seemed that the ideologically planned departure of the Actor, which was supposed to signify the weakness of Luke's convictions, in fact, contrary to the author's intention, supported, if not the philosophy of patience of the Tolstoyan wanderer, then with all its definition.
division of the humanistic tradition of classical Russian literature. A conscious choice of death is possible only at the moment of the highest spiritual tension, and a weak hero, who has realized the death of his soul and the loss of faith, commits a strong act, preferring physical death to lasting spiritual death. In the finale, killing himself “to death”, the Actor refutes Sateen’s words “you can’t kill twice”, introducing his own understanding of true life (and truth) into the dialogue-argument. In the context of the Actor's death, the fates of the bunkhouses appear as Platonic "shadows", which are only reflections, imaginary silhouettes of true being on the sooty walls of the bunkhouse cave.
The death of the Actor resurrects the words spoken by one of the characters about the death of the “steam room” to the image of the actor Anna - “Why did a person live?”, Actualizing the main problem that was brought up for discussion by the writer at the end of the play. But the Actor's suicide (apart from the author's participation) discredits not Luke's position, but Sateen's. The words "Oh. ruined the song ... fool-cancer! against the backdrop of the lofty ideas of humanism and the exaltation of man, just heard from the lips of Sateen, they take on a shade of cynicism and indifference, and in the end - the phrase-mongering of the hero-ideologist.
The former convict Satin in Gorky becomes, if not the bearer, then the herald of a new philosophy. His image is written out with strokes, without visible corporality and materiality. Satin enters into a "wise conversation" with the characters, pronounces memorable, aphoristically catchy phrases, but does not take an active part in the events of the life of the rooming houses. In the course of the play, he only "shows" the characters, by one or another "incomprehensible" word at the subtext level, generating stereoscopy. Satin "provokes" the heroes with his Word to do things (this is especially true for the Actor - for example, Satin's ironic mention of the hospital, which is located "half a verst from the end of the world").
Among the heroes of the play, Satin is rather an observer, a contemplator, which, according to Plato-Gorky, makes him a philosopher-thinker, "a lover of wisdom." In essence, the only and fundamentally distinctive feature of Sateen's personality is his mind, recognized by the overnight stays. However, Satin's mind is Gorky, original. Satin does not accept Luke's "Christianized" position. For him, Tolstoy's forgiveness of Luke is unacceptable: “And if they once offended me and - for the rest of my life at once! How to be? Forgive? Nothing. No one..." But unlike other guests, Satin knows how to understand the impact of Luke's philosophy on the people of the bottom: "He ... acted on me like acid on an old and dirty coin ...". It is the latter - getting rid of corrosion - that becomes, according to Gorky, the condition for the awakening in Satin of the propagandist of the new philosophy: “Man is the truth!<.>Truth is the god of a free man!” .
In contrast to Gorky's later (self-)reflections, who argued that the "main question" of the play - about truth and compassion - in the course of creating
In the course of the play, he did not oppose Luke and Satine. According to the artistic ideology of the play, following the genesis of Gorky's thought, Luka is not Satin's antagonist, but his forerunner: “I understand the old man ... yes! He lied... but it's out of pity for you." . Another thing is that Satin, who appeals to the Man, does not accept the truth-pity. For the young Gorky, in contrast to the age-old tradition of Russian classical literature, despite the thousand-year history of religious movements, pity and compassion are offensive. Satin: “You have to respect a person! Do not pity ... do not humiliate him with pity ... ".
However, as Gorky would later explain, “out of consolation<.>Luke Satin made his conclusion about the value of every person ”(“ On Plays ”). Indeed, answering Satine's question." why do people live?”, Luka simply explains: “But people live for the best! the earth has never seen anything like it<.>He gives his appearance to the whole carpentry business ... and immediately moves the work forward twenty years ... So are all the others ... locksmiths, there ... shoemakers and other working people ... and all the peasants ... and even the gentlemen live for the best! Everyone thinks that he lives for himself, but it turns out that for the best!<.>live for the best person!” .
It is curious that Luke's "evolutionary system" serves as a prototype for the development of Gorky's own ideas. Just as a wanderer talked about the birth of a “better [man],” so the writer in “At the Bottom” develops the history of the evolution of ideas “for the better,” he has “a better philosophy.” At the turn of the century, this "best philosophy" for Gorky was the idea of the Proud Man, which is in close proximity to the theory of the superman by F. Nietzsche. Following Nietzsche, Gorky wants to show humanity awakened to a new life by the glorification of Man in man. And in this context, the final phrase of Sateen about the death of an ordinary person Actor “Eh. ruined the song ... fool-cancer! finds its ideological motivation and logical explanation: the position of the young playwright indicates the admissibility of such an attitude of the “strong” (according to Gorky) Satin to the “weak” Actor. The idea of the absolute value of human life combines at that time the philosophy of the outstanding German thinker of the late 19th century about the superman and the search for the image of the Proud Man by the young Gorky.
So, the character of the Actor and the role of his image in the system of heroes - on the steps of "incarnation" that Gorky offers in the play "At the Bottom" - turn out to be more significant and fundamental than is commonly believed. As a result, the image of the hero-actor, previously considered by critics as involved in the "bottom" and, it seems, organically dissolved in the milieu of lodging-house heroes, turns out to be fundamentally intermediate. On the way to Gorky's Proud Man, the Actor finds himself not on the step of a wild caveman (according to Plato), not on the highest step (superman, according to Nietzsche) or approaching it,
represented by Satin (the meaning of the name Konstantin is “solid”, “constant”), but at the level of the traditional humanistic (largely Christianized) worldview professed by the Tolstoyan wanderer Luke. The aesthetic and ethical constants of the Actor's image are developing in line with the humanistic traditions of world and domestic literature.
Literature
1. Gorky M. Selected works. M., 1986. S. 890-951.
2. Tikhonov A.N., Boyarinova L.Z., Ryzhkova A.G. Dictionary of Russian personal names. M., 1995.
3. Chekhov A.P. Full coll. op. and letters: in 30 t. M., 1974-1983. T. VII.
1. Gor "kii M. Izbrannye sochineniya. - Moscow, 1986, pp. 890-951.
2. Tihonov A.N., Boyarinova L.Z., Ryzhkova A.G. Slo-var" russkih lichnyh imen. Moscow, 1995.
3. Chekhov A.P. Full. sobr. soch. i letters: v 30 t. . Moscow, 1974-1983, Vol. VII.
YES. Efremova
Moscow State Institute (University) of International Relations STYLE FEATURES OF BIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL
Biographical novels as a genre-typological variety of biographical texts are considered from the standpoint of text linguistics. The article analyzes what characteristics of functional styles at the lexical, grammatical and compositional levels are manifested in the studied type of text. The study shows that the biographical novel cannot be unequivocally attributed to any functional style, since it reveals the features of scientific, journalistic and artistic styles.
Biographical novel, functional styles, lexical, grammatical, compositional features of functional styles, scientific, journalistic, artistic styles.
Biographical novel as a genre and typological kind of biographical text is considered from the tenets of text linguistics. The article shows the features of functional styles at the lexical, grammatical and composition levels that are observed in the studied text. The research posits that biographical novel cannot be definitely attributed to one functional style: scientific, publicistic or belles-lettres style.
Biographical novel, functional styles, lexical, grammatical, composition features of functional styles, scientific, publicistic, belles-lettres styles.
Introduction
The biographical novel is perhaps the most difficult type of biographical text in terms of defining its features and style. Domestic authors who were engaged in research in the field of biographical novels , , , , were mainly interested in the artistic originality of individual texts, and foreign linguists and literary critics attempted to create a guide for writing this type of text , , or to classify biography as a genre according to the formal content or historical criteria. The issue of the functional and stylistic status of biographical novels was not in the focus of their consideration, although it is a key one, as it sets the direction for their further study and needs to be addressed, so the purpose of this article is to contribute to solving this problem. This goal determines the formulation of a number of particular tasks: to identify criteria for highlighting various functional styles and to determine which of these
criteria meets the text of biographical novels. The texts of 50 biographical novels about personalities who worked in various fields of science, technology, public life, and art, written from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, served as the material for this study. to the present day.
Main part
To solve the problem of the functional and stylistic status of the text of biographical novels, first of all, it is necessary to find out by what criteria functional styles are distinguished. From the most common definition of this concept, given in the works of I.R. Galperin, A.V. Shvets, V.V. Gurevich, where it is defined as a historically developed variety of a national language that implements its main functions and is characterized by a set of certain linguistic features at all linguistic levels (phonological, lexical, morphological, syntactic) , , , it follows that the functional style is distinguished on the basis of the functional
In Maxim Gorky's play "At the Bottom" there is a character who plays a secondary role. The character of this Actor is a drunkard who does not even remember his name. The actor tells everyone that he once played on stage and even tries to quote famous works. The real name is unknown, because the Actor does not remember him due to the fact that he constantly drinks.
The actor says that when he performed, his stage name was Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky and he would very much like to return to that life. The Actor lives in a rooming house, in which, besides him, there are many more people who have suffered failures in this life. They live in poverty, scandals constantly take place in the rooming house and people change.
Luka gets into the rooming house and tries in every possible way to reassure the inhabitants of this institution. Luca tells the actor that there is a free clinic for drunkards where he can be helped and cured. The actor even tries to remember some quotes, but his mind is too clouded by alcohol. The actor decides to still try to change and tries not to drink, so that later he will go to the hospital.
Luka reassures the Actor, saying that he will be able to live as before and perform again. The actor is overwhelmed with hope and he is trying to save up money in order to get to this city where the hospital is located. Giving hope to the Actor, Luka tells him that he does not remember the name of that city, but he will definitely remember if the Actor does not drink for a couple of days.
Luka disappears as suddenly as he appeared, taking with him the hope of a complete cure for the Actor. The actor does not understand why he did this and also leaves. After some time, the Actor is found hanged, unable to bear the despair, he commits suicide. The actor did not survive the fact that at first he was given hope for a brighter future, and then just as sharply taken away.
The death of the Actor is very similar to the story that Luke told about a man who lost hope of finding a righteous land. Just like the Actor, his faith and hope were taken away from him, and he did not see the point in his existence.
Option 2
One of the secondary heroes of the work is the Actor, who does not remember his real name and introduces himself under the pseudonym Sverchkov-Zavolzhsky.
The actor, together with other characters of the play, lives in one of the doss houses in St. Petersburg, which, by coincidence of life circumstances, have gathered people of a lower social status.
The actor is depicted by the writer in the form of a fallen man, seriously and for a long time ill with alcoholism. In the past, a man was an artist, working on the stage, but at the moment, remembering his stage life, he hardly recites the literary quotations and poems that have remained in his memory. Continuous drunkenness has an adverse effect on the Actor's memory; he cannot remember not only his name, but also memorized texts and excerpts from his roles. The man is aware of this fact and repents that he voluntarily poisoned his body with alcohol.
One evening, a wandering old man named Luka settles in a doss house, sympathizing with all the miserable and unfortunate. Luke takes pity on the suffering Actor and tells him about the existence of a clinic where sick alcoholics are cured for free, but the old man does not remember in which city the hospital is located. The wanderer's story instills in the soul of the Actor the hope of getting rid of the disease and the opportunity to again feel the pleasure of acting, as Luke assures him of getting a happy chance for a complete cure.
The man is obsessed with the dream of finding the location of the hospital, for this he stops taking alcohol and begins to work occasionally in order to accumulate the amount necessary for the trip. Satin, a card swindler living in a rooming house, tries to reveal to the Actor the essence of Luka, who clouds the heads of unfortunate people with fictitious stories, but the Actor does not want to believe in the unfulfillment of his dream of a new future life.
But one day the old man suddenly disappears from the doss house, and along with his disappearance, the Actor's faith in a brighter future fades away. The man begins to understand that all the stories of the old man were only fantastic fiction.
Unable to bear the terrible disappointment and having lost the meaning of life that had just appeared, the Actor decides to commit suicide, a few days later the rooming house neighbors find him hanged.
The writer draws a parallel between the fate of the Actor and one of the stories told by Luka to the inhabitants of the rooming house, which described a man who had lost hope in finding a righteous land and the meaning of his future existence.
Composition Actor in Gorky's play At the Bottom
A play by A.M. Gorky "At the bottom" was written in 1902. The production of the play was allowed only in one theater - the Moscow Art Theater. Despite this, the play was a huge success.
All the action described in the work takes place in one of the St. Petersburg rooming houses. The inhabitants of this haven are people from the lowest society. Alcoholics, prostitutes, thieves and card cheats live side by side here. In the bulk, these are those who simply have nowhere else to go. Some of them live with the idea that it is still possible to change something for the better in their life. And someone has already given up for a long time and "goes with the flow."
One of the secondary characters in the play is the Actor. He, recalling his past life, says that he worked in the theater and even once played the role of a gravedigger in the play Hamlet. He tries to remember some verses and quotes, but his memory fails him all the time. He remembers his stage name, but can't remember his real name. An actor is a downcast man, drinking heavily, not working anywhere. He had long ceased to resist the circumstances that brought him to the rooming house. He begs for money for a drink from another inhabitant of the rooming house - the thief Vaska Pepla.
But now a new character appears - the wandering old man Luka. He is calm and reasonable. Communicating with the people inhabiting the rooming house, he tries not only to reconcile them among themselves. He wants to give everyone hope for a better future. Not everyone heeds his admonitions. He tells the actor that alcoholism is curable. And supposedly there is even a free hospital where they can cure this disease for free. That's just the city where this clinic is located, Luke allegedly forgot.
Satin, a card cheat, does not believe in Luke's stories. And the artist calls not to believe. Whether there really was such a hospital or not, the Actor grasped at the thought of a cure like a straw. The man began to live with the dream that he would be cured and begin to live in a new way. He even began to save money for a trip to the coveted city with a free hospital for alcoholics. But there was a fight in the hostel. Wanderer Bow disappeared as suddenly as he appeared.
The artist, supported by Luka, began to lose confidence in a bright and joyful future. And the "bottom" continued to tighten it more and more. Unable to cope with the situation, the Actor took his own life.
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