Rasputin in the school curriculum. Works by Rasputin Valentin Grigorievich: “Farewell to Matera”, “Live and Remember”, “Deadline”, “Fire. The Red Book of Russian Life in the story The Last Term

In creating a national spiritual culture different nations a special role belongs to fiction and, first of all, writers who consciously work in line with the traditions of Russian classics, in whose works one can find a wide variety of connections with their predecessors.

This is exactly what the modern writer Valentin Grigorievich Rasputin is, widely known in our country and abroad. He was born in 1937 in the village of Ust-Uda, located on the banks of the Angara River, three hundred kilometers from Irkutsk. The beauty of the taiga region fostered in the future writer a tender love for nature. After graduating from a rural high school in 1954, Rasputin entered Irkutsk University in the department of history and philology. The beginning of his journalistic activity dates back to this time.

Since the beginning of the 80s, Rasputin sees his main task as a writer in the fight for the preservation of nature and spiritual rebirth people. One of its main themes is the theme of memory, the theme of preserving the moral experience of previous generations. It is the theme of morality that he reveals in his story The Last Deadline. With Rasputin's story, the mystical principle returned to literature: the problems of life and death appeared in an eternal, timeless dimension. This was a turn to the traditions of Russian classics of the 19th century century. The work of V. Rasputin revealed to the world the most profound processes taking place in the country, in society, in the souls of our people.

The Red Book of Russian Life in the story The Last Term

The plot of Rasputin's story The Last Deadline is very simple. Old woman Anna dies. According to a telegram from his son Mikhail, they are coming to the funeral eldest daughter village Varvara, city middle daughter Lyusya and son Ilya, who has lost his face. Only the youngest and beloved daughter of the old woman Anna, Tatyana, or Tanchora, as her mother always called her, was the only one of all the children who did not come, and there was no word of her. Delighted by the arrival of the children, the mother unexpectedly came to life for them. Varvara, Ilya and Lyusya, having stayed for three days and wishing their mother to live a long time, leave parents' house, and at night the old woman died.

The central image of the work has long been ripening in the work of V. Rasputin. The prototype of the old woman Anna was V. Rasputin’s grandmother Maria Gerasimovna. The writer prepared and trained for its literary embodiment from his very first works. The features of the old woman Anna can already be discerned in the early, independent story-essay And Ten Graves in the Taiga, in the mournful image of a mother who gave birth fourteen times, and only two... remained alive. The colors for the portrait were carefully selected, and their appropriateness and accuracy were checked in the sketches; We find the touches of the future image in details seen before and even embodied in phrases that will later form almost unchanged into the fabric of the story: The old woman was not afraid of death, she knew that she could not be saved from death. She fulfilled her human duty... Her family continues, and will continue - she was a reliable link in this chain, to which other links were attached... At night, the old woman died.

Old Woman Anna is the image of an old Russian woman who remembers life before the revolution, who survived several wars, gave them several of her children, and gave all of herself to them, the children. Giving to children means giving to the world, society, country - that’s why this image is so close to us.

Anna has exhausted her life and with light soul meets death, which she had thought about many times... and knew it as she knew herself - no, she is not afraid to die, everything has its place. Enough, I've profited, I've seen enough. She has nothing more to spend in herself, she has spent everything - empty. It was spent to the very bottom, boiled away to the last drop.

All she knew was: children who needed to be fed, watered, washed, prepared ahead of time so that they had something to drink, and fed tomorrow. Looking back now on these years from her death's threshold, she does not find much difference between them - all of them, urging each other on, passed in the same hurry: ten times a day the old woman lifted her head into the sky to see where the sun was, and realized - already high, already low, and she still hasn’t managed to get things done. It’s always the same thing: the children were fussing, the cattle were screaming, the garden was waiting, and also work in the field, in the forest, on the collective farm - an eternal whirlwind in which she had no time to breathe and look around, to hold the beauty of the earth and sky in her eyes and soul . “Hurry, hurry,” she urged herself, pouncing first on one thing, then on another, and no matter how much they did, there was no end in sight....

Having given her entire life to her children, having spent all her strength on them and now not being able to even get out of bed, the old woman is most worried that she has become a burden to Mikhail and his family. Snatching from distant girlish years the memory of a young, bright, beautiful nature and regretting for a moment that this beauty remained without her, she immediately shamed herself: she would be good if she wanted everything in the world to grow old and die with her. Bedridden, waiting for her hour of death, in her last minutes she worries about her friend Mironikha - has something happened to her? One strikes like a finger.

Labor in all the works of V. Rasputin is a vital matter, question number one is that, even saying goodbye to life, the old woman Anna argues... with Mironikha, more out of resentment, almost jealousy: Mironikha is able to follow a cow, but she is not. Accustomed to the whole world to greet both misfortune and celebration, personal experience Convinced of the effectiveness of collective work, having learned the value of mutual assistance and good neighborliness, the heroes of the Last Term do not fence off their souls from the misfortune of others.

Reflecting on his dying mother, Mikhail says: We don’t have a father, and now my mother will move, and everyone, and alone. Not small ones, but alone. Let’s say that our mother has been of no use for a long time, but it was believed that it was her turn first, then ours. It seemed to be blocking us, so we didn’t have to be afraid. Now live and think... It seems like I came to an empty place, and I can see you all around. But the mother not only shielded them, she also saved the family.

Death is the same heroine of the book as Anna. She looks into their faces, listens to their simple wills, looks at their lives and accepts them carefully with maternal love.

In the story The Last Term we find the family on the verge of final disintegration. Or rather, it has already fallen apart today. Of the many children of the old woman Anna, only Varvara visits her when she needs potatoes or something else, but the rest seem to not exist in the world.

They gather - and not all of them - at the mother's deathbed. And in the fact that the only topic for conversation remained their childhood memories, and in the way the brothers vainly try to restore contact through a bottle, and the sisters, calming their own consciences, reproach each other for spiritual callousness. The family has been gone for a long time, the only thing that somehow still holds it together is the mother. But when old woman Anna dies, they can no longer be brought together.

And what’s even more terrible is that the children were drawn to their mother not by love, not by the desire to see her off on her last journey, but by the fear that they would be condemned in the same way as they condemn Tanchora, the most beloved daughter of the old woman Anna, who never came to her dying mother. There is something touching in how patiently, but also stubbornly Anna waits for her youngest, most beloved daughter. The only thing missing is Tatiana; Tanchora,” the old woman said pleadingly; So Tatyana is not going now... She... will see her in a dream, or something else...; And so Tanchora left and disappeared. She cannot say goodbye to this earthly daughter without meeting her - at least mentally.

In a short period of time, the moral essence of four adults is exposed, which can hardly be called healthy.

Valentin Rasputin in the story The Last Time wrote the Red Book of Russian life. The Red Book of Rasputin is hot and disturbing, and it hurts in the heart, but there is pain for death, and there is pain for healing. The soul of the Russian man was revealed to the writer, like no one else. The author does not complicate, does not artificially tie up life, he tries to untie its knots, to lead his hero out of the labyrinth.

The theme of memory in the work Live and Remember

With the greatest severity moral issues set by the writer in his story Live and Remember. The work was written with the author’s deep knowledge of folk life and psychology. common man. The author puts his heroes in difficult situation. The young guy Andrei Guskov fought honestly almost until the very end of the war. Among the scouts he was considered a reliable comrade; the most desperate guys took him with them in order to back up each other. He fought like everyone else - no better and no worse. The soldiers valued him for his strength - stocky, wiry, strong. Life during the war was very difficult at times, but no one complained because everyone got it equally. And they, who fought from the first days of the war, endured and endured so much that I wanted to believe: there must be a special pardon for them, given by fate, death must recede from them, since they have managed to protect themselves from it until now.

Big and small homeland in Farewell to Matera

The heroes of V. Rasputin's prose are simple people from the village, connected by all roots to their native land, natural in their worldly wisdom and invariably decent in their life ideas. Thus, in the story Farewell to Matera, a wonderful image of the old woman Daria is depicted, whose sense of clan and responsibility to her ancestors is heightened to the limit. The story is structured in such a way that we gradually enter the space of Matera and its history, which allows us not only to get used to the time and place of action, but also to become close to them. The first chapter is dedicated to the island and the village. It's like a bird's eye view, a kind of general portrait. In the second chapter we get acquainted with the main character works, “the oldest of the old women” Daria, and other inhabitants of the island, and we get to know each other not superficially, but immediately plunging into their life, worries, and destinies. We begin to guess how they lived, we see what they are like and what is valuable to them. Here begins in the narrative that close intertwining of their lives and the fate of Matera, which will be traced and deepened throughout the entire work. Sitting at the samovar, the old women talk, of course, first of all about the upcoming changes - and do not see anything good in them. Nastasya is openly sad: “I’ll die of melancholy there in one week. In the middle of strangers! Who replants an old tree?!” For Sima, who is new to the island, it’s even worse: “Sima had no property, no relatives, and she had only one way left - to the Nursing Home.” Daria steels herself: she doesn’t have the character to throw her feelings out. Daria's influence on her fellow villagers is great and deserved.

“Old woman Daria, tall and lean...”; she has “a stern, bloodless face with sunken cheeks”; “Despite the years, the old woman Daria was still on her own two feet, in control of her hands, doing all she could and still quite a lot of housework. Now my son and daughter-in-law come to the housewarming party once a week, or even less often, and the whole yard, the whole vegetable garden on it, and in the yard there is a cow, a heifer, a winter calving bull, a pig, a chicken, a dog.”

Everything in her household is strong and harmonious, tidy and well-groomed. And it started for a long time, and continues without hesitation, according to routine. Matera taught people to be unhurriedly efficient, to work that connects the past and the future into the knot of the present. But before that, the people themselves cultivated this land, inhabited it, took care of it. The mothers have long become one whole, and therefore the beginning discrepancy between the mood of the mothers and nature, which does not yet know about the impending disaster, and if it does, then the only way it can respond is with its equanimity, is especially acutely perceived. The old women were already reflecting on the heartbreaking news, and in the nature of the island there was still “grace all around, such peace and tranquility, the greenery shone so thickly and freshly before their eyes, rising even more, raising the island above the water, rolling on the stones with such a clear, cheerful ringing.” Angara, and everything seemed so strong, eternal, that you couldn’t believe in anything - neither moving, nor flooding, nor parting.” Old women seem to take on the pain of nature, giving it recent months stay natural. Such moral qualities and feelings as nobility, loyalty, respect, pride, love, shame do not exist in the abstract - they must be confirmed by actions, and, as you know, it is actions, deeds, and not words and good intentions that prove what kind of person is and what are its principles. In this

In a sense, human memory - as the custodian of the moral experience of previous generations - plays a primary role. And without a person’s feeling of connection with the past, memory becomes flawed and incomplete. In Daria's "Farewell to Matera" this sense of clan, responsibility to ancestors, personal significance as a responsible unit that cannot be replaced by anyone else is exacerbated to an even greater extent. Or rather, it is predominant in her, and all other goals and actions are linked primarily to this. Telling her son about the devastation that happened at the cemetery, she talks about it as the biggest misfortune at that time: “And they will ask me. They will ask: how did I allow such rudeness, where were I looking? They will say they relied on you, but you? And I have nothing to answer. I was here, it was up to me to watch. And it’s like I’m also to blame. And it would be better for me not to live to see this.” She perceives this precisely as a misfortune because there has been an invasion into her previously harmonious relationship with the world, into what is called a worldview, and it happened at one of the most painful points. If she resigned herself, then everything else could lose its meaning, crumble, and droop.

Here is the old woman Daria, her fifty-year-old son Pavel and his son, Daria’s grandson Andrei. Daria remembers her father’s behest to the letter: “Live, this is what you have to live for. You will wallow in grief, in evil, you will be exhausted, if you want to come to us - no, live, move, to hook us more firmly with the white light, to prick us in it.” what we were"; she sacredly honors the memory of those who have passed away and thereby achieves an internal feeling of fulfillment of duty to them, for she knows that “you live nothing at all, because you wouldn’t live well, you wouldn’t think about what kind of memory will remain of you. And memory, it remembers everything, he holds everything, he won’t drop a single grain. Every day, plant flowers on the grave, they’ll trample on everything.” she insists on preserving and then moving the graves to a new location. Her son, Pavel, is less determined; he understands his mother, but what worries her is not the most important thing for him: having promised to fulfill her request, he never will. And Andrei doesn’t even understand what we’re talking about, whether the grandmother is seriously starting such a strange conversation, in his opinion. It is not difficult for him to decide to go build exactly the dam, because of which the island will be flooded; he is attracted and inspired by the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution, progress, in comparison with which Matera is just a special case, a grain of sand. Their truly philosophical argument with the grandmother, apparently, leaves something in his mind, but still it is no longer possible to convince him. The point is not that progress is bad - no, it is good, it is necessary. The question is how morally secure it is, how much the human soul and the person himself are taken into account not as an appendage of progress, but as a consumer of its achievements. Andrei, who proves the need for a hydroelectric power station, as if casually dropping: “Is this Matera of much use?” comes to an accusation that characterizes him quite eloquently as a child of morally unsecured progress. “For some reason you only think about yourself, and even then, you think more with your memory, you have accumulated a lot of memory,” he throws out to his grandmother and father, confident that he is right, that memory is bad, without it better. Maybe it’s better for someone, yes - stronger, won’t it be torn out without it, like a blade of grass without a root, by the first wind, won’t it be carried anywhere? Here you can answer Andrei with his grandmother’s earlier thoughts about conscience: “... they remember it without a path at every word, they have worn out so much of Christ, there is no living place left. It seems that they are incapable of owning it... There are more people, and conscience, come on, it’s the same - so they thinned it out, not for themselves, not for demand, it would be enough for show.” She protects blood ties with small homeland, knows her worth.

The fire is the last act of tragedy, the destruction of the former moral order.

The story Fire occupied a special place in the literature of the mid-80s. The story Fire looks like the last act of tragedy, the destruction of the former moral order, the defeat of the former natural-patriarchal man. But in vain, apparently, some critics see in the story only a continuation and final note in the funeral prayer of Valentin Rasputin, an artistic verdict on this inhuman communist system that ruined old Russia. Here the bearers of the moral principles of the former Matera with their conscience, deep understanding of the soul, kindness and being, the spiritually and morally fallen, criminals with female names, destroying everything around them. The main character of the story, Ivan Petrovich, is amazed at one depressing change in his fellow countrymen: everyone loves to remember their past highly moral life, they are ready to pray for their past, but suddenly they so easily betray their own memories before the onslaught of the Arkharovites. People, faced with some kind of unprecedented rally, holding on not to the best, but as if to the worst person, were confused and tried to stay away from the Arkharovites. There were hundreds of people in the village, and a dozen seized power - this is what Ivan Petrovich could not understand - this insightful alarm no longer applies only to the village of Sosnovka, but to all of Russia in the 80-90s. How so? So many prayers for the salvation of Russia, so many soul-powerful memories of a past life according to conscience, and such timidity in front of dirty tricks? And such a lingering distrust of the state, alienation from it? Why can a dozen half-humans, who have conspired and united for no good reason, manipulate hundreds?

Then the writer did not know the answer to this question. But what happened during the fire? A very significant event. One of the key characters, both in the Fire and in everything art world Rasputin, the mute hero Misha Hampo, the most conscientious hero, assigned to guard the property saved from the fire, suddenly abandoned the principle of non-resistance. Even realizing how unequal his strength alone was in front of the Arkharovites, raining blows both from the side and in the back, he did not save himself: at the cost of his life he stopped the evil, twisted it into three deaths... The plot of the story, as always with Rasputin, simple: in the village of Sosnovka on the banks of the Angara, Orsovo warehouses are burning. People are trying to save something from the fire. Who are these people, how do they behave in this situation, why do they commit this or that act? The writer is interested in precisely this, that is, a person and everything that happens to him - and this cannot but worry all of us. After all, something happens to a person if his soul does not find peace, rushes about, hurts, groans. What happens to him, and who is to blame, and what are the reasons? All these questions seem to be hovering over Sosnovka, which smells of fire smoke, demanding an answer. Central character the story is the driver Ivan Petrovich Egorov. But the main character can be called reality itself: the long-suffering land on which Sosnovka stands, and the stupid, temporary, and therefore initially doomed Sosnovka, and Egorov himself as an integral part of this village, this land - also suffering, doubting, looking for an answer.

“And before Ivan Petrovich felt that his strength was running out, but never before like this: the edge, and that’s all,” is the first phrase of the story, as if warning that the action will take place in an extreme situation, at the limit, on the verge of breaking. What happened to this strong, smart and kind person, why was he so tired that for him “the edge just opened up, the edge - there was nowhere else to go,” “and it was hard to believe in tomorrow,” and “I didn’t want anything, like in the grave,” and even an unusual, unnatural desire for him appeared: “Let it be a long, long night, without measure and order, so that some can rest, others can come to their senses, and others can sober up...”?

He was tired of disbelief, he suddenly realized that he could not change anything. He sees that everything is going wrong, that the foundations are crumbling, and cannot save or support. More than twenty years have passed since Yegorov moved here to Sosnovka from his native flooded Yegorovka, which he now remembers every day. During these years, before his eyes, drunkenness developed like never before, former community ties almost disintegrated, people became, as if strangers to each other, embittered. Ivan Petrovich tried to resist this - he himself almost lost his life. And so I submitted my resignation from work, decided to leave these places, so as not to poison my soul, not to darken my remaining years with daily grief. There are a few days left to work.

It was during these sad reflections that Ivan Petrovich, who had barely entered the house, was overtaken by shouts: “Fire! The warehouses are burning!” And it was no coincidence that the driver felt “as if screams were coming from the depths” - his soul was also on fire. This is how they will go through the entire story - two fires, connected one to the other by internal logic. From chapter to chapter, Rasputin will force the reader to move his anxious gaze from one glow to another and until the last page, until the final line, he will not give a break, will not reduce the tension, because everything here is important. Fire consumes quickly and forever - you must have time to see what it consumes, see and remember. It is unlikely that warehouses located capital letter“G,” they flared up by accident: “It started in such a place that, having caught fire, it would burn without a trace.” There could be many reasons for this. For example, hide thefts, shortages, cover your tracks. If in Rasputin’s first story Maria could have suffered cruelly for just a thousand rubles and, moreover, innocently, now no one wanted to pay for tens or hundreds of squandered thousands.

Such big fire has never happened in the entire history of Sosnovka - the fire could spread to the huts and burn out the village, this was the first thing Yegorov thought about, rushing to the warehouses. But there were other thoughts in other heads. If anyone had told Ivan Petrovich about them a decade and a half ago, he wouldn’t have believed it. It would not fit into his mind that people can profit from trouble without fear of losing themselves, their face. Even now he didn’t want to believe it. But already - I could. Because everything was leading up to this. Sosnovka itself, no longer in any way similar to the old Yegorovka, was conducive to this. And things were tight in the old village: doomed to await death, to be flooded, it was paralyzed - no one was building, the timber industry was luring young people away; but Sosnovka... Uncomfortable and unkempt, and neither urban nor rural, but a bivouac type, it was as if they were wandering from place to place, stopped to wait out the bad weather and rest, and ended up stuck. But we were stuck waiting for the command to move on, and therefore - without putting down deep roots, without cleaning up and settling down with an eye on children and grandchildren, but just to fly through the summer, and then winter through the winter. "Everything here resembled a temporary shelter - and streets broken by technology, and dirt, and a club in a public bathhouse. “The same people who in their old villages, from where they came here, could not imagine life without greenery under their windows, did not even display front gardens here.” Because everything is temporary: why put down roots if they later choose a forest here, and then you have to wander further in the neighborhood of Berezovka: the timber industry enterprise left, cutting everything down, and it was empty - “only frenzied tourists, blowing smoke through the doors, set fires in the fire.” fires at home."

People who were accustomed to constant grain-growing work in one place were unable to settle down in the new village. But it’s not so bad that they didn’t take root. The trouble is that they began to adapt, to adopt the worst. Yes, and there was someone: the forestry industry selected more than a hundred thousand cubic meters of wood a year, labor was needed, so seasonal workers came here, people without a stake, without a yard, so - tumbleweeds. Over the course of four years, almost as many people died in Sosnovka due to drunken shooting and stabbing as in the six villages that merged into Sosnovka during the war. Then, having learned about this, Ivan Petrovich gasped in shock. Now he had another tragic opportunity to see why this could happen.

The food warehouse was burning with all its might, “almost the entire village came running, but it seems that no one has yet been found who could organize it into one reasonable, solid force capable of stopping the fire.” Because the authorities, except perhaps Boris Timofeevich Vodnikov, the head of the site, are also alien, recent, consider temporary, and even that one is not in place. And the fire truck has been dismantled for parts, and the fire extinguishers are not working. It’s as if no one really needs anything at all. Ivan Petrovich, his friend from Yegorovka Afonya Bronnikov, and tractor driver Semyon Koltsov - that’s almost all who came running to put out the fire. The rest, as it were, put out the fire, but mostly helped the fire, because they also destroyed, finding their own pleasure and self-interest in this. When Vodnikov shouted to the Arkharovites: “Break it!”, they immediately rushed to do it: “this work was for them.” The point is not that in a fire you really have to break a lot - and there is no time to think about it: Egorov also knocks down the fence and breaks off the boards. The essence is in the feeling with which it is done. The Arkharovites break with inspiration, “as if all their lives they had been doing nothing but breaking locks.”

Arkharovtsy... After the publication of "Fire" this word came into use again - as a synonym for evil, aggressive indifference, disregard: as long as I feel good, for this "good" I will do anything with everyone. There are several of them in the story, Arkharovites, from the leader Sashka the Ninth to Sonya. And everyone, as expected, has a name. But we remember them not by name, but as a certain phenomenon, together, and Rasputin suggests what the essence is: “All sorts of people came, but there were no such people as the current ones. These appeared immediately as a force organized into one, with their own laws and seniority “We tried to break them, but it didn’t work.” It was truly a force, and based “not on the best, but as if on the worst in a person.” She was able to become such because she did not see any obstacles or resistance. For, as Ivan Petrovich correctly guesses, into whose mouth the writer puts his innermost thoughts, “people scattered all over themselves even earlier, and the Arkharovites only picked up what was lying around unused.”

And an unjust force that has seized unjust power, as is known, must confirm its advantage, which is what the Arkharovites did. As soon as the forester Andrei Solodov fined the timber industry enterprise for high stumps, as a result of which the Arkharov residents’ wages were delayed, they burned down the Solodov bathhouse, and then Solodov “lost the forestry mare, the only hard worker in the entire village, on which half of the vegetable gardens were plowed, and which was in the forestry business irreplaceable. Only in the spring did her bones melt in the thicket; a rotting rope lay nearby.” As soon as Ivan Petrovich himself expressed dissatisfaction with the work and behavior of the “organization brigade” several times, he began to discover either sand in the engine of his car, or a cut hose, or even just managed to remove his head from under the counter, when “a heavy metal support suddenly It broke off and broke off, although, installed and tilted inward, it should not have gone back and never went. From the side where the forest was dumped, two Arkharovites were fussing.

Even Vodnikov himself, their boss, “after payday, he secretly carried a couple of bottles in his canvas bag to the cutting site... And they learned to accept it as expected...”

But it was not so much the Arkharovites who were blamed by the same Yegorov, who was trying to understand what was happening, but his fellow villagers - why did they resign themselves, give in, allow themselves to be treated so disrespectfully? “Ivan Petrovich thought: the world does not turn over right away, not in one fell swoop, but just like ours: it was not supposed to, not accepted - it became, it was supposed and accepted, it was impossible - it became possible, it was considered a shame, a mortal sin - revered for dexterity and valor."

And this internal fire, invisible to anyone around, in the hero’s soul is not worse than the one that destroys warehouses. Clothes, food, jewelry, and other goods can then be replenished and reproduced, but it is unlikely that faded hopes will ever be revived, and the scorched fields of former kindness and justice will begin to bear fruit again with the same generosity. After all, it was not on their own that a dozen Arkharovites seized power - it means that there is something behind them that gives them strength, secretly supports and inspires them. This “something” is a system aimed only at the immediate and requiring only immediate results. What soul, what graves of ancestors, what conditions for grandchildren? All this for the Arkharovites, and not only for them, is empty talk, they don’t pay for it, but for them the main criterion, the main measure of values ​​is the ruble. When Ivan Petrovich, concerned about the fact that they are spoiling equipment, destroying it, using it for their own needs, drinking and stealing, is told that all this is not the main thing, the main thing is to carry out the plan, he is rightly indignant: “A plan, you say? A plan?!” Yes, it would be better if we lived without him!.. It would be better if we made a different plan - not just for cubic meters, but also for souls! . Remember how it was... well, even five years ago..." However, his indignation is doomed to misunderstanding. That is why Ivan Petrovich feels terrible ruin within himself, because he was unable to fully realize this creative energy given to him - contrary to logic, there was no need for it, it ran into a blank wall that refused to accept it. That is why he is overcome by destructive discord with himself. His soul yearned for certainty, but he could not answer it, what is now true for him, what is conscience, because he himself, against his will, torn out, uprooted from the microcosm of Yegorovka, where everything helped him find harmony, is no longer able connect the external and internal: they fell apart like two hemispheres, revealing emptiness in the middle. It is no coincidence that when, celebrating the thirtieth anniversary life together, Ivan Petrovich and his wife Alena went to see their son Boris on Far East, there for the first time in for many years his soul rested: he again saw the unity of man and nature, “looked into people’s faces, not spoiled by drunkenness,” and realized that “life here did not feel strained, more order was visible here, and this order was not maintained by shouting and fines.” , but on the long-established communal law."

In Sosnovka, no one is responsible to anyone, moral obligations are illusory, or even completely absent. The same Arkharovites have nothing to treat with respect here - nothing connects them with this land - so they turn off to the cemetery, are rude and threaten the villagers, steal everything that is in bad shape.

“Why is this being done, Ivan?! What’s being done?! They’re dragging everyone away!” - Yegorov’s wife, Alena, exclaims in fear, not understanding how such people can burn to the ground along with the fire human qualities as decency, conscience, honesty. And if only the Arkharovites dragged everything that caught their eye, but their own, Sosnovskys, too: “The old woman, for whom nothing like this had ever been seen, was picking up bottles thrown out of the yard - and, of course, not empty ones”; the one-armed Savely carried sacks of flour and cereal straight to his own bathhouse. Fire... Why is this being done? Why are we like this? - Uncle Misha Hampo could have exclaimed after Alena, if he could speak. But why are there so few of them who are indignant? L as much as there is. How much is left? After the fire and another one, on Hampo, there were fewer.

Uncle Misha Hampo seemed to have moved into “Fire” from “Farewell to Matera” - there he was called Bogodul. It is not for nothing that the author emphasizes this, calling the old man “Egorov’s spirit.” He, just like Bogodul, hardly spoke, was just as uncompromising and extremely honest. He was considered a born watchman - not because he loved this work, but simply “that’s how he was cut out, out of hundreds of hundreds of rules inaccessible to his head, he made the first rule: do not touch someone else’s. All the inconveniences of the world and its disorder he, perhaps, with There was only one connection: they were touching.” But touching it means depriving a person of part of his life: after all, he worked to acquire a thing, spent energy and health. Alas, even Uncle Misha, who is like the most big trouble perceived theft, he had to accept it: he was the only one guarding, but almost everyone was dragging him. During the fire, he conscientiously, as always, guarded the things taken out of the warehouse and piled in the yard. And, seeing someone trying to throw a bundle of colored rags over the fence, he rushed after the thief. “Hampo had just managed to see who it was and what, when a blow fell on him from the side... And again and again he was hit with something heavy - not with his hands. Uncle Misha kept stretching his head to see who was hitting, but nothing could not lift it and only put out his right hand, which was not under his control, trying to defend himself. And they kept beating and beating him, they kept beating and beating him...” In this terrible fight between Hampo and the Arkharovites, Uncle Misha strangled one of them, Sonya, but also he himself was killed with a mallet. He followed his basic principle. What did they follow? Also principles? In this case, when and on what basis did these “principles” appear, why did the impunity that encouraged them flourish? The story gives an unequivocal answer to these questions: the guilt is permissiveness, violation of elementary justice. When a person was told to his face that something did not exist, while it existed, it meant that he, that person, was openly preferred to something else. So how will he respond? In “Fire,” a guy who saw a burnt Ural motorcycle, which he had been shopping for for a long time, is indignant: “After all, there was a Ural! Who was it for?! Who was it hidden for?!” And Ivan Petrovich himself, when he first got inside the warehouse, was amazed at the abundance - sausage circles, butter, red fish. “It was, then! It was after all! - and where did all this go?.. And Ivan Petrovich grinned or pushed himself, burned by the thought that in this place he had to grin at his own foolishness: and the cars from the regional center, from there, from here, everyone every day turning up to Ors?.. There are so many careless people and paraphernalia in the world! And how did it happen that we surrendered to their mercy, how did it happen?!” This whole story is a conflict that has yet to be seriously considered and studied. literary criticism: conflict of one and many, memory and unconsciousness, deep, truly popular and superficial, temporary, selflessness and greed, mercy and cruelty.

Ivan Petrovich decides to leave Sosnovka and go to his son Boris in the Far East. As we remember, I have already submitted my application, gathered myself internally, and prepared Alena. But the fire that happened showed what all the Arkharovites taken together and their Ivans, who did not remember their kinship, were unable to bring it to - it showed that the earth itself was already in agony, it was filled with suffering, and if it did not have a defender, then it was difficult to say. what could happen. In the final chapter of the story, where we see the hero alone with nature, the idea is clearly heard that “no land is rootless,” that it depends on the person, on what kind of person he is. Moving further and further from the post-fire bustle and excitement of the village, observing the mountain, the forest, the bay, the sky, Egorov feels how “lightly, liberated and evenly he steps, as if he accidentally found his step and sigh, as if he had finally endured , on the right road." Will he come back? Will he leave Sosnovka forever? “The earth is silent, either as it meets or as it sees him off. The earth is silent. What are you, our silent land, how long are you silent? And are you really silent?” These questions end the story, similar to the painful question that life itself asks. No one will answer it except us. Time goes by, the earth is waiting, its judgment is approaching. Yes, “The smoke of the Fatherland is sweet and pleasant to us,” but not the smoke of a fire, but the smoke over a lived-in house in which both children and grandchildren live. Valentin Rasputin showed us the fire. We must think about the house ourselves, and not let it burn.

Ringing string of alarm, symbol of trouble - Money for Mary

When considering the topic of morality, you also need to pay attention to the first story by Valentin Rasputin, Money for Maria. His early prose- this is already a generic feature of all the writer’s works! - carried within itself a spirit of anxiety, an imminent collapse, a hidden catastrophism for the time being. In 1997, the writer admits: I began to hear ringing at night, as if they were touching a long string stretched across the sky, and it responded with a languid, clear, whining sound. I'm petrified: what's next?

What is this? - Or is my name already? A ringing string of anxiety, a symbol of fast-flowing life and misfortune, sounds already in the writer’s first story. In the first story, the trouble seems to be small, quite earthly: the saleswoman of the village store, Maria, had a shortage of a thousand rubles. Out of the simplicity of her soul, due to her close, almost family relationships with her fellow villagers and friends from her childhood, she sometimes did not sell goods aloofly, but often lent them, and was poor at counting. And then the auditor discovered a debt that horrified both Maria, her tractor driver husband Kuzma, and their children. The auditor, however, took pity on the heroine and gave the kind, inept Maria the opportunity to collect the missing money in five days... This failure in quiet life sharply raised the question: how will the soul of the people behave in relation to Maria? Will it show the full power of kinship? Discord has invaded, will harmony, righteous principles, conscience save?

Guilty without guilt, Maria says to her husband Kuzma: I remembered someone told me what the women there, in these prisons, do to each other. What a shame. I felt unwell. And then I think: I’m not there yet, but still here.

In general, the story Money for Maria with Kuzma walking around the huts with a hat, with a meeting on the collective farm, at which the chairman suggested that state employees simply sign the statement and loan the money to Kuzma to save Maria - it’s easier to refuse separately... . conversation without witnesses - looks like a domestic incident.

There is some kind of transcendental horror that takes possession of Maria in her plea: Don’t give me to them. But the main horror that seized both Maria and Kuzma, who were ready to turn over the whole earth, but not give up Maria, was something else: how easily people took advantage of Maria’s kindness, simplicity, and profligacy and how difficult, alas, they donated money to save her. The author showed Mary's grief from a moral point of view, and not from a national point of view.

The work of Valentin Rasputin is a phenomenon in world literature, and, like any phenomenon, it is unique, unique.

Conscience, guilt, memory are key moral categories in Rasputin's works. It is conscience that determines a person’s behavior, his fate, and his connection with people’s memory. Having read Rasputin’s stories, you will never forget them, there are so many bitter and fair words in them about human happiness and sorrow, about crimes against the moral laws that govern life, and which we do not always remember.

Critics will refer to his works more than once, give examples, and develop the writer’s thoughts. The main thing, of course, is the works themselves. They need to be read slowly, slowly, and thoughtfully. Rasputin's books deserve it. The writer himself says that “reading is work... The reader himself must participate in events, have his own attitude to them and even a place in them, feel the rush of blood from the movement.”