Nice meeting. Zoshchenko

The work of Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko is original. He was the creator of an original comic novel, continuing the traditions of Gogol, Leskov, and early Chekhov in new historical conditions. Zoshchenko created his own completely unique artistic style. The heyday of the writer's talent was in the twenties. The basis of Zoshchenkov's creativity in the twenties is humorous everyday life. The author writes about drunkenness, about housing issues, about losers offended by fate. The dominant motif is discord, everyday absurdity, some kind of tragicomic inconsistency of the hero with the tempo, rhythm and spirit of the times.

In the story “Meeting,” the hero talks about himself, about an incident that he remembers. In the foreground is a man very pleased with himself: “I’ll tell you frankly: I love people very much.” But he immediately declares that “he has not seen selfless people,” thereby refuting what was just said.

The story is told in a conversational style. He is characterized by short sentences, often dismembered, incomplete: “And I was walking, you know, from Yalta to Alupka. On foot. Along the highway"; “I walked another mile. I'm tired of it. I sat down on the road. Sitting. Resting". A characteristic feature of the conversational style are introductory words and sentences: “do you know”, “you know”, “you can say”, “they say”, “I think”, “maybe”. Also an integral part of this style is dialogue.

The characters’ language is full of vernacular, “reduced” vocabulary, there are many grammatical irregularities in their speech: “I’m thinking about him,” “even beauty doesn’t come to mind in this heat”; “Here, I think, damn, I’m attached,” “I’m tired,” “pushed,” “always,” “alive.”

Speech can say a lot about a person. From the hero’s conversation, we understand that in front of us is a narrow-minded and not very literate person. He wants to appear higher in the eyes of others and his own. To do this, he uses “beautiful” words: “bright personality”; “with all my love for people,” “beauty, one might say, unearthly”; “you turn away from the panorama”, “mercy”, “very noble of him”, “your heart tells you.” All these expressions are cliches; there is nothing behind them. Has a person already become a bright person by showing him the short way to Alupka? This turns out to be “very noble of him.” And all the delights of the “unearthly beauty” that the hero supposedly admires are also just empty words for him. But he thinks about something else: the heat, the deserted road, on which, God forbid, he meets a stranger. Our hero is a coward, he runs away from the boy: “If only I could reach Alupka alive,” I think.

The hero's speech is empty, devoid of content. He calls a short meeting with a fellow traveler friendship. According to him, the boy “turned out to be a very nice person.” But he adds: “Food eater.” As if that's what makes a person likable. The word “foodie” is repeated: “I’ve been thinking about this foodie all evening.”

Language reveals the true essence of the hero, reveals his true face. In fact, he doesn’t trust anyone, not even a “bright personality” - a fellow traveler: “Who knows - what thoughts he had when he was doing his selfless deed.” He thinks about this all the time. He repeats : “Who knows - maybe he really wanted to smoke? Maybe he wanted to shoot a cigarette from me? Or maybe he was bored and was looking for a fellow traveler?” The hero does not even trust himself: “I can’t decide what he was thinking back then.”

Zoshchenko’s hero wants to keep up with progress, he hastily assimilates modern trends, hence the addiction to fashionable names and political terminology, hence the desire to affirm his “proletarian” inside through bravado, rudeness, ignorance, and rudeness. Behind the funny words and incorrect grammatical phrases, we see the characters’ gestures, the tone of their voice, their psychological state, and the author’s attitude toward what is being told. With his manner of storytelling, with a short, extremely concise phrase, M. Zoshchenko achieved what others achieved by introducing additional artistic details.

Time passes, but people often waste their lives on trifles, value empty things, live in petty interests, and do not trust anyone. The author calls for abandoning petty evil that disfigures and cripples life.

The autobiographical and scientific story “Before Sunrise” is a confessional story about how the author tried to overcome his melancholy and fear of life. He considered this fear to be his mental illness, and not at all a feature of his talent, and tried to overcome himself, to instill in himself a childish, cheerful worldview. To do this (as he believed, having read Pavlov and Freud) it was necessary to overcome childhood fears and overcome the dark memories of youth. And Zoshchenko, recalling his life, discovers that almost all of it consisted of dark and difficult, tragic and stinging impressions.

The story contains about a hundred small chapter-stories, in which the author goes through his dark memories: here is the stupid suicide of a student of the same age, here is the first gas attack at the front, here is an unsuccessful love, but here is a successful love, but quickly became boring... Home the love of his life is Nadya V., but she gets married and emigrates after the revolution. The author tried to console himself with an affair with a certain Alya, an eighteen-year-old married person of very easy rules, but her deceit and stupidity finally tired of him. The author saw the war and still cannot recover from the effects of gas poisoning. He has strange nervous and heart attacks. He is haunted by the image of a beggar: more than anything in the world he is afraid of humiliation and poverty, because in his youth he saw to what meanness and baseness the poet Tinyakov, depicting a beggar, had reached. The author believes in the power of reason, in morality, in love, but all this is collapsing before his eyes: people are falling down, love is doomed, and what kind of morality is there - after everything that he saw at the front during the first imperialist and civilian years? After the hungry Petrograd of 1918? After the cackling audience at his performances?

The author tries to look for the roots of his gloomy worldview in childhood: he remembers how he was afraid of thunderstorms, water, how late he was weaned from his mother’s breast, how alien and frightening the world seemed to him, how the motif of a menacing hand grabbing him was persistently repeated in his dreams... It’s as if the author is looking for a rational explanation for all these children’s complexes. But he cannot do anything about his character: it was his tragic worldview, sick pride, many disappointments and mental traumas that made him a writer with his own, unique point of view. In a completely Soviet way, waging an irreconcilable struggle with himself, Zoshchenko is trying to convince himself on a purely rational level that he can and should love people. He sees the origins of his mental illness in childhood fears and subsequent mental overstrain, and if something can still be done about fears, then nothing can be done about mental overstrain and the habit of writing. This is the way of the soul, and the forced rest that Zoshchenko periodically arranged for himself does not change anything here. Speaking about the need for a healthy lifestyle and a healthy worldview, Zoshchenko forgets that a healthy worldview and continuous joy of life are the lot of idiots. Or rather, he forces himself to forget about it.

As a result, “Before Sunrise” turns not into a story about the triumph of reason, but into a painful account of the artist’s useless struggle with himself. Born to compassion and empathy, painfully sensitive to everything dark and tragic in life (be it a gas attack, the suicide of a friend, poverty, unhappy love or the laughter of soldiers slaughtering a pig), the author tries in vain to convince himself that he can cultivate a cheerful and cheerful worldview. . With such a worldview it makes no sense to write. Zoshchenko’s entire story, its entire artistic world, proves the primacy of artistic intuition over reason: the artistic, novelistic part of the story is written excellently, and the author’s comments are only a mercilessly honest report on a completely hopeless attempt. Zoshchenko tried to commit literary suicide, following the orders of the hegemons, but, fortunately, did not succeed. His book remains a monument to an artist who is powerless before his own gift.

Zoshchenko's story "Meeting" was published in 1928 in the book "Days of Our Lives", published in the library of the magazine "Behemoth".

Literary direction and genre

Mikhail Zoshchenko is a realist writer. His tiny stories reveal the characters of simple, unsophisticated Soviet people, whom the writer treats very warmly. In this story, the hero-narrator is subjected to satirical ridicule: he is selfish and cowardly, does not believe in the best human qualities. Of course, criticism is directed not at the “little man”, but at the system that cripples souls. On the other hand, using the example of a hero-fellow traveler, the writer shows that a person cannot be spoiled if he himself does not want it.

Issues

In the story “Meeting” Zoshchenko raises the problem of human unselfishness. His hero doubts the existence of such a thing, but the author himself does not doubt it. For the author, the problem is that others are suspected of bad qualities by those who themselves have them.

In the story, Zoshchenko explores the nature of the appearance of complexes in “little people”, tries to understand why bad and good people “turn out”, how positive and negative qualities are formed.

Heroes of the story

The narrator in this work is not identical to the author. Moreover, the author does not sympathize with his hero. The personality of the narrator should have aroused disgust and indignation in the reader. But the author awakens this feeling gradually.

The narrator's first statement about love for people should have endeared him to the reader. The statement that the narrator has not seen selfless people is controversial and requires proof. At the beginning of the story, the narrator behaves naturally: he admires the Crimean beauties and languishes from the heat.

The reader is even ready to forgive the narrator for his reluctance to meet a passerby on a deserted road. And yet there is already something unattractive in this fact: the narrator is somehow overly cautious. First of all, he thinks: “You never know what happens. There’s a lot of temptation.” It seems that the narrator himself is afraid of being tempted. Later, he shows cowardice by running away from a lonely person. The narrator stops from exhaustion, and not at all because he hears a word that a robber would hardly have used: “Stop! Comrade!"

The second hero of the story is truly an altruist, a selfless person. The reader does not doubt this, unlike the hero-narrator. The reader sees the fellow traveler through the eyes of the narrator. This man is dressed sparsely, has sandals on his feet, and “a net instead of a shirt.” Later it turns out that the narrator’s interlocutor is a “food worker,” that is, he works in the food industry. Apparently he's local, which is why he uses netting as clothing. He contrasts himself with tourists who “always get confused here.”

The only benefit that the “food worker” gets when he catches up with the narrator on the hot highway is a cigarette. There is also an intangible benefit - it’s more fun to go together.

Both of these benefits are obviously not considered by the disinterested food traveler who runs after a stranger only because it is “hard to watch” him going the wrong way.

But the narrator is able to evaluate a person only from the point of view of benefit. After all, the runner suffered a loss, not to mention the fact that he was going the wrong way: he ran, was out of breath, and tore his sandals.

The main character has not yet seen a selfless person, so this thought torments him later, when he returns to Leningrad.

Both heroes are simple people, “little people”, as evidenced by their speech, which is equally incorrect, full of vernacular: the dog knows him, the bastard, has become attached, instead, shashe (highway), always, whole, shoot a cigarette. But the narrator treats his fellow traveler with some disdain. He already knows the word “highway” and other smart words - “panorama”, “sympathies”.

The narrator's speech is poor, there are not enough words even to describe the Crimean nature: blue sea, damn mountains, eagles fly, ships sail, unearthly beauty.

Plot and composition

The story describes one event in the hero’s life - a meeting with the only, from his point of view, unselfish person, a “bright personality.” About a third of the short story is devoted to discussions about this meeting.

The story begins with the narrator declaring: “I’ll tell you frankly: I love people very much.” The reader assumes that the narrator is an open and sincere person. But the entire subsequent narrative contradicts this assumption. Some researchers even believe that the author’s own voice is heard in the first sentence.

The narrator, vacationing in Crimea, meets a random passer-by on the road from Yalta to Alupka. He runs away, afraid of running into a stranger in a desert area. The passer-by persistently pursues the narrator with one goal: to report on a shorter and shady road.

The story ends, as it began, with discussions about selflessness, in which the narrator does not fully believe.

Artistic originality

In a tiny story, the hero managed to fit three voices at once - the author, the narrator and the fellow traveler. Each of them is recognizable. The author represents the highest justice, he is a questioning voice, looking for selfless people. The narrator strives with all his might to be good, as he understands it. But his aspirations seem insincere. So, the beautiful landscape quickly ceases to interest him. The narrator discovers fears and doubts that torment him and destroy his spiritual harmony. The “foodie” is more harmonious. Despite poverty and illiteracy, he is internally free. This is Zoshchenko’s favorite type of people who maintain nobility and remain “bright personalities” regardless of the circumstances.

A very funny story happened to me on transport this fall.

I was going to Moscow. From Rostov. The mail and passenger train is approaching at six forty-five in the evening.

I'm getting on this train.

There aren't too many people. Even in extreme cases, you can sit down.

Please make room. I sit down.

And now I look at my fellow travelers.

And it’s time, I say, in the evening. Not that dark, but a little dark. Generally twilight. And they still don’t give fire. Wires are saved.

So, I look at the surrounding passengers and see that the company they have chosen is quite nice. I see they are all nice, not pompous people.

One of them is without a hat, a long-maned fellow, but not a priest. He's such an intellectual in a black jacket.

Next to him is wearing Russian boots and a uniform cap. So mustachioed. Not an engineer. Maybe he is a zookeeper or an agronomist. Only, apparently, a very sympathetic soul. He holds a penknife with his hands and with this knife he cuts the Antonov apple into pieces and feeds it to his other neighbor - the armless one. So next to him, I see an armless citizen riding. Such a young proletarian guy. Without both hands. Probably a disabled worker. It's very sad to see.

But he eats with such gusto. And, since he has no hands, he cuts it into slices for him and feeds it into his mouth at the tip of a knife.

This, I see, is a humane picture. A plot worthy of Rembrandt.

And opposite them sits an elderly, gray-haired man in a black cap. And he, this man, grins.

Maybe they had some funny conversation before me. Only apparently, this passenger still can’t cool down and keeps laughing from time to time: “he-e” and “he-e.”

And I was very intrigued not by this gray-haired one, but by the one with no arms.

And I look at him with civil sorrow, and I am very tempted to ask how he went so crazy and how he lost his limbs. But it’s awkward to ask.

I think I’ll get used to the passengers, talk to them and then ask.

I began to ask the mustachioed subject extraneous questions as he was more responsive, but he answered gloomily and reluctantly.

Only suddenly the first intelligent man with long hair gets involved in a conversation with me.

For some reason he reached out to me, and we started talking about various light topics: where are you going, how much is cabbage, and whether you have a housing crisis today.

He says: “We don’t have a housing crisis.” Moreover, we live on our estate, on an estate.

“And what,” I say, “do you have a room or a doghouse there?” “No,” he says, “why a room?” Take it higher. I have nine rooms, not counting, of course, the people's rooms, sheds, latrines, and so on.

I say: “Maybe you’re lying?” Well, I say, you weren’t evicted during the revolution or is this a state farm? “No,” he says, “this is my family estate, a mansion.” “Yes,” he says, “come to me.” I sometimes host evenings. There are fountains splashing all around me. Symphony orchestras play waltzes.

What are you, - I say, - I'm sorry, will you be a tenant or are you a private person? “Yes,” he says, “I’m a private person.” By the way, I am a landowner.

That is, - I say, - how, may I understand you? Are you a former landowner? That is, I say, the proletarian revolution swept away your category. “I,” I say, “I’m sorry, I can’t figure anything out in this matter.” We have, I say, a social revolution, socialism - what kind of landowners we can have.

But, he says, they can. “Here,” he says, “I’m a landowner.” “I,” he says, “managed to survive through your entire revolution.” And,” he says, “I don’t care about everyone - I live like a god.” And I don’t care about your social revolutions.

I look at him in amazement and really don’t understand what’s what. He says: “Yes, you come and you’ll see.” Well, if you want, we’ll come to my place now. “You will meet a very luxurious lordly life,” he says. Let's go. You'll see.

“What the hell,” I think. Should I go and see how it survived through the proletarian revolution? Or he's lying."

Moreover, I see that the gray-haired man is laughing. Everyone laughs: “heh” and “heh.”

Only I wanted to reprimand him for inappropriate laughter, and the mustachioed man, who had been slicing an apple earlier, put his penknife on the table, finished the rest and said to me quite loudly: - Stop talking to him. These are mental. Don't you see, or what? Then I looked at the whole honest company and saw - my fathers! But these are really crazy people traveling with a watchman. And the one with long hair is abnormal. And who laughs all the time. And armless too. He's just wearing a straitjacket - his hands are twisted. And you can’t immediately tell what he’s doing with his hands. In a word, crazy people are coming. And this mustachioed one is their watchman. He transports them.

I look at them with concern and get nervous - I also think, damn them, they will strangle them, since they are mental and are not responsible for their actions.

Only suddenly I see - one abnormal person, with a black beard, my neighbor, looked with his cunning eye at a penknife and suddenly carefully takes it in his hand.

Then my heart skipped a beat and a chill went through my skin. In one second I jumped up, fell on the bearded man and began to take the knife away from him.

And he puts up desperate resistance to me. And he tries to bite me with his crazy teeth.

Only suddenly the mustachioed guard pulls me back. He says: “Why did you fall on them, really, you’re not ashamed.” This is their knife. This is not a psychic passenger. These three are, yes, my mental ones. And this passenger is just driving, just like you. We borrowed a knife from them - we asked. This is their knife. Shame on you! The one I crushed says: “I gave them a knife, and they attack me.” They choke you by the throat. Thank you - thank you. What strange actions on their part. Yes, maybe it's mental too. Then, if you are a watchman, you keep a better eye on him. Avon pounces and strangles him by the throat.

The watchman says: “Or maybe he’s also psychic.” The dog will figure it out. Only he is not from my party. Why should I watch him in vain? There is nothing to tell me. I know mine.

I say to the strangled man: “I’m sorry, I thought you were crazy too.”

“You,” he says, “thought.” Indian roosters are thinking... The bastard almost strangled him by the throat. Don't you see that their crazy look and mine are natural?

No, I say, I don’t see it. On the contrary, I say, you also have some kind of cloudiness in your eyes, and your beard is growing like an abnormal person’s.

One psychic - this same landowner - says: - If you pull his beard, he will stop talking abnormally.

The bearded man wanted to shout guard, but then we arrived at the Igren station, and our psychics and their guide came out.

And they came out in a fairly strict order. Just now the armless man had to be pushed slightly.

And then the conductor told us that at this Igren station there is a home for the mentally ill, where such mental patients are often taken. So, how else to transport them? Not in a dog warmer. There's nothing to be offended about.

Yes, I’m actually not offended. It was stupid, of course, that I started talking like a fool, but nothing! But the one I crushed was really offended. He looked at me gloomily for a long time and watched my movements with fear. And then, not expecting anything good from me, he moved with his things to another department.

Please.

Zoshchenko meeting summary All our dignity lies in thought. It is not space or time, which we cannot fill, that elevates us, but it is she, our thought. Let us learn to think well: this is the basic principle of morality. Mikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko was the son of a hereditary nobleman, artist Mikhail Ivanovich Zoshchenko and Elena Iosifovna, who was interested in acting and literature before her marriage. The future writer and satirist was born on August 10, 1894 in St. Petersburg. From an early age, the boy, echoing his mother, became interested in literature. The first “tests of writing,” as Zoshchenko himself recalls, were made at the age of seven, and the first story “Coat” appeared already in 1907. Zoshchenko meeting summary After graduating from high school in 1913, Mikhail Mikhailovich entered the law department of St. Petersburg University, but, without even completing the first year, he volunteered for the front. During the First World War, Zoshchenko commanded a battalion, became a holder of the Order of St. George, was wounded, and was also poisoned by enemy gases, which led to serious heart disease. Returning to St. Petersburg, Zoshchenko would write a number of stories (“Meshchanochka,” “Marusya,” “Neighbor,” etc.) After the revolution, Mikhail Mikhailovich took the side of the Bolsheviks. The beginning of the 20s became the most difficult period in his life for the writer. Injuries and heart disease made themselves felt. Poor health was aggravated by the constant search for income. During this period, Zoshchenko changed several professions, ranging from a shoemaker and an actor to a policeman. Nevertheless, his literary life during this period was in full swing. In 1919, Zoshchenko attended creative lectures conducted by K.I. Chukovsky. During the same period, he wrote his first published stories: “War”, “Female Fish”, “Love”, etc. After their release, Zoshchenko gained enormous popularity among Soviet citizens. His stories were read at work, at home, he was quoted, turning some of his lines into “catch phrases.” Having received thousands of letters from fans, Zoshchenko came up with the idea of ​​​​combining all these letters into one book, in which, as it seemed to him, he could show the true “living” country, with its various thoughts and experiences. But the book, published in 1929, did not evoke any emotions in readers other than disappointment, since they were once again expecting something funny and interesting from Zoshchenko. In the 30s, the writer travels around the Soviet Union, sees how prisoners are treated in the camps, which leaves a strong imprint on Zoshchenko’s vulnerable psyche. Zoshchenko meeting summary In order to get rid of the oppressive feeling, Mikhail Mikhailovich writes “Youth Returned,” a poem, followed by the publication of the work “The Blue Book” in 1935. The latest work causes a storm of negative reviews in high circles, which makes the writer understand that he should not go beyond the permitted limits. From that time on, Zoshchenko’s creativity was expressed only by publications in the children’s publications “Hedgehog” and “Chizh”. After the government decree of 1946, Zoshchenko, like many of his other talented contemporaries, began to be persecuted in every possible way, which led to an exacerbation of mental illness, which prevented Mikhail Mikhailovich from working normally. The beloved satirist of Soviet citizens died in July 1958. Zoshchenko meeting summary Even if there is no benefit for a person to lie, this does not mean that he is telling the truth: they lie simply for the sake of lying.