The novel by Mikhail Dmitrievich Chulkov (1743-1792) "The Good-Looking Cook, or the Adventures of a Depraved Woman" was published in 1770. , a year after the publication of "Letters of Ernest and Doravra". In its genre model, "The Good-Looking Cook" combines the tradition of the adventurous-rogue travel novel with the tradition of the psychological novel: the form of narration in "The Good-Looking Cook" - Martona's autobiographical notes - is close to the epistolary form with its personal character, the lack of a moralistic author's voice and the way of creating the character of the heroine in her self-disclosure. However, having inherited the pan-European scheme of the development of the novel's narration, Chulkov made sure to fit a number of recognizable signs of national life within the framework of this scheme.
His heroine Martona, whose character is generally correlated with the image of picaro, the hero of the rogue novel of Western Europe, is the widow of a sergeant killed near Poltava - thus, the action of the novel receives an initial historical link: the Battle of Poltava was in 1709 - however, later in the novel a clear anachronism arises, since the "ode to Mr. Lomonosov" is mentioned (and the first ode to Lomonosov, as you know, was written in 1739, and by that time the 19-year-old Martone at the beginning of the novel should have turned 49 years old, which is in no way combined with the plot novel) - but, nevertheless, the initial stage in Martona's biography is attributed to the Peter's era, and this makes us see in the character of the proactive, active and rogue heroine a certain reflection of the general revival of individual initiative, which marked the era of state reforms.
The beginning of the action of the novel finds Martona in Kiev. The vicissitudes of fate later throw her to Moscow. The novel mentions a journey on foot, which Martona undertook not entirely of her own free will; however, the circumstances of this particular “adventure” are not revealed in the novel, and the plot-forming motive of the journey in “The Good-Looking Cook” appears in its metaphorical aspect of the “life's journey”. The Moscow period of the heroine's life also has its own topographical references: Martona lives in Nikola's parish on chicken legs, her lover Akhal lives in Yamskaya Sloboda, the duel between Akhal and Svidal because of Martona's favor takes place in Maryina Roshcha, and all this gives Chulkov's novel an additional household reliability.
And in the very image of Martona, in the means that Chulkov uses to convey the warehouse of her character, the writer's desire to emphasize the national origin is noticeable. Martona's speech is richly endowed with proverbs and sayings; She tends to explain all the events of her life with the help of common human wisdom, recorded in these aphoristic folklore formulas: "Shey-de-widow has wide sleeves, there would be where to put unrealistic words", "on a red flower and a bee flies", "wealth gives birth to honor", "Hitherto Makar dug ridges, but now Makar got into the governor", "the bear is wrong that ate the cow, and the cow that wandered into the forest is wrong." These and many other proverbs, generously scattered in the novel's narrative, form the national basis of the heroine's character. Democratic origin makes Martona an organic bearer of the national folk culture and the type of national consciousness embodied in the folklore genre. So the genre model of the novel in general and the character of the heroine in particular is a combination of the traditional features of the European novel, which is identical in its aesthetic nature, with an attempt to Russify them, which was successful for that era.
In this concretized national-historical, geographical, topographic and mental context, in which the story of the democratic heroine of the novel is placed, the functions of the traditional everyday descriptive motives for Russian literature are modified, due to which a reliable image of material life is created. The story of the heroine-adventurer is surrounded by a dense halo of everyday-descriptive motives of food, clothing and money, which accompany literally every plot turning point in the novel and the turn of the heroine's fate; the swings from unhappiness to well-being and vice versa unconditionally bring to life these base and satirical motives in genesis:
Everyone knows that we received a victory at Poltava, where my unfortunate husband was killed in a battle. He was not a nobleman, had no villages behind him, therefore, I was left without any food \u003c…\u003e. At that very time, I inherited this very proverb: "Shey-de-widow have wide sleeves, there would be where to put unrealistic words."
It is easy to see how the function of everyday-descriptive motives in Chulkov's novel changes: for all their apparent traditionality, they cease to be a means of discrediting the heroine, while maintaining the function of modeling the image of a reliable environment. From a means of satirical denial of character, everyday descriptive motives are transformed into an artistic method of explaining this character. Passion for the material, which Martona is obsessed with at the beginning of the novel - “I would have agreed then to die rather than part with my estate, so much I respected and loved him” (264) - is not Martona's fundamental perverse property; she is inspired by the very conditions of her life, her poverty, lack of support in life and the need to somehow support this life; as the heroine herself explains this property, “I firmly knew this proverb that“ wealth gives rise to honor ”. So already at the very beginning of the novel, its fundamentally new aesthetic orientation was set: not so much to assess the character as virtuous or vicious, but to explain it by showing the reasons that affect its formation and formation.
A demonstrative rejection of moral assessments and the desire for objectivity of the image, which unite the author's position of Chulkov, who gave the heroine herself the story of her stormy life and dubious profession, with the position of the heroine, who calls things by their proper names throughout the story, was declared at the very beginning of the novel:
I think many of our sisters will call me immodest; but as this vice is for the most part akin to women, then not wanting to be called modest against nature, I embrace it eagerly. When he sees the light, when he sees it, he will disassemble it, and when he disassembled and weighed my affairs, let him name me as he pleases.
Such a position, new in itself, should have been perceived even more acutely due to the fact that both the heroine and the story of her life were an unprecedented phenomenon for Russian literature. A woman of easy virtue and the petty nobles around her, bribe-taker judicial officials, thieves, swindlers and rogues - Russian literature had never seen such heroes before Chulkov, at least in a national novel. The subject of the narration itself, as it were, pushed the writer to an overt didactic moralizing, and the fact that in "The Good-Looking Cook" the moralistic pathos does not have declarative forms of expression, but is hidden in the system of artistic images and in Martona's special, dryish, protocol-precise manner of life description, was of decisive importance for the gradual formation of new aesthetic criteria for Russian fine literature. The aspiration of the new generation of Russian writers not to model, but to reflect life in a work of fine literature, not to evaluate, but to explain character, determined two fundamental postulates that govern the narrative of the "depraved woman" about her sailing on the sea of \u200b\u200blife.
First of all, this is the idea of \u200b\u200bmobility, fluidity, changeability of life and the corresponding idea of \u200b\u200bthe incessant evolution of character. The dynamic concept of life, declared by Chulkov in the author's preface to the novel:
Everything in the world is rotational; so, this book is now, it will stay for a while, finally decay, disappear and disappear from everyone's memory. A person will be born to survey glory, honor and wealth, taste joy and joy, go through troubles, sorrows and sadness ‹…›.
finds its reinforcement in a similar statement by Martona, who is guided by the same idea of \u200b\u200b"rotation" in her perception of the world:
I was always of the opinion that everything in the world is impermanent; when the sun has an eclipse, the sky is constantly covered with clouds, the time changes four times in one year, the sea has an ebb and flow, fields and mountains turn green, then turn white, birds shed, and philosophers change their systems - then like a woman who is born to change, you can love him until the end of her century.
As a result, the life reflected by the author and told to the reader by the heroine, who are equally guided by a dynamic idea in their perception of the world, appears as a kind of self-propelled reality. Martona's position in life is rather passive than active: for all her active initiative, the heroine Chulkova is able to build her own destiny only to a certain extent, she is too dependent on the circumstances to which she is forced to adapt in order to defend her individual private life in the fight against fate and chance. The entire biography of Martona in the social sense is built as a continuous chain of ups and downs, changes from poverty to wealth and vice versa, and all these changes do not occur at the request of the heroine, but in addition to him - in this respect, the heroine Chulkova can really be likened to the sailor who wears on the stormy waves of the sea of \u200b\u200blife.
As for the moral character of Martona, a more complex picture is created here, since the factual, everyday-descriptive manner of narration and the personality of the democratic heroine herself excluded the possibility of an open psychological analysis. The spiritual path of Martona, the changes occurring in the character of the heroine, is one of the earliest examples of the so-called "secret psychology", when the process of changing the character itself is not depicted in the narrative, but can be determined by comparing the starting and ending points of evolution and reconstructed based on the changing the heroine's reactions in similar circumstances.
And here it is important that Martona in her autobiographical notes appears simultaneously in two of her personal incarnations: the heroine of the narrative and the narrator, and between these two stages of her evolution there is an obvious temporal and latent moral gap. Martona the heroine appears before the reader in the present time of her life, but for Martona the narrator this stage of her life is in the past. This time gap is emphasized by the past tense of the narrative, especially noticeable in the objective, moral characteristics that the heroine Chulkova gives herself:
‹…› People like me then have no friends; the reason for this is our immoderate pride. (269); \u003c…\u003e Virtue was unknown to me from afar (272); \u003c…\u003e I did not know what gratitude was in the world, and I never heard of it from anyone, but thought that it was possible to live without it (273); My conscience did not bother me in the least, for I thought that there were people in the world who were much more courageous than me, who would do more bad things in one minute than I did in three days (292); Was it possible then in me to be philanthropic, about this, I’m tea, the mister reader wonders (296).
From the frank auto-characteristics accompanying the equally frankly described morally dubious actions, an unsympathetic moral image of a woman-adventurer grows, least of all concerned about observing the rules of universal humanistic morality. But this Martona, presented to the reader in the present tense of reading the novel, is for Martona, the author of autobiographical notes, “Martona then”. What is Martona now, from what moral positions she tells about her stormy and immoral youth - nothing is reported to the reader about this. But, incidentally, the novel itself contains guidelines by which it is possible to reconstruct the general direction of changes in the character of the heroine, and the fact that she is changing is evidenced by the leitmotif of the narrative about her life. The story about the next incident in her life is strictly accompanied by a conclusion of the final nature. Martona gains life experience in front of the reader, drawing laconic conclusions from lengthy descriptions of the facts of her biography.
Having entered the service of the clerk of the court and looking around in his house, she immediately reports: "At this time I learned that all the clerks use bribes in the same way as their master." (276). Deceived by his lover Akhal, who fled from her with money jointly stolen from an old and wealthy lieutenant colonel, Martona enriches her experience with two more observations:
And although I saw further than they thought of me, I could not make out his [Ahal's] pretense, and in this case I really learned that no matter how sharp and intricate a woman was, she was always subject to the deceptions of a man, and especially at that time when she is passionate about them (294).
In this case, I explained that he [Akhal] had more need for my lover's belongings than for me, and was seduced not by my beauty, but by gold pieces and pearls (296).
Finally, hearing about the imaginary death of Svidal, whom she, unnoticed for herself, managed to truly fall in love, Martona reports her discovery as follows:
In this case, I knew directly that that was a real passion of love. Hearing about the death of Svidal, the blood in me cooled down, my larynx dried up, and my lips were parched, and I forcefully uttered my breath. I thought that I had lost all the world when I lost Svidal, and the deprivation of my life seemed like nothing to me then. ‹…› I was ready to endure everything and proceed without timidity to death, only to pay Svidal for the loss of his life, which was the reason I, of all the unhappy in the world (304-305)
- and this is said by the same Martona, who ten pages earlier had not lamented the death of a hussar lieutenant colonel, the reason for which was her unsuccessful escape with Akhal.
Gradually, but constantly gaining life experience, latently motivates changes in the character of the heroine, which are almost imperceptible throughout the narrative, but are obviously revealed in a comparison of the initial and final positions of the heroine in similar plot situations. These changes are especially evident in Martona's attitude to love: the professional priestess of free love and the venal woman who ties the novel to its finale becomes simply a loving woman; and if the story of her relationship with Sveton, one of the first lovers, is full of commercial terminology, then in the message about her declaration of love with Svidal, the motive of bargaining appears in the opposite meaning:
This first meeting was with us by bargaining, and we did not talk about anything else as we concluded a contract; he [Sveton] traded my charms, and I yielded them to him for a decent price, and we then pledged with receipts \u003c…\u003e (268).
Thus, I really learned that he [Svidal] is alive and loves me as much as I love him, or perhaps less, in which we did not dress ourselves up, but fell in love with each other without any bargaining (305).
Greedy and selfish, ready to die for her material wealth at the beginning of the novel, at the end of the novel Martona becomes simply a calculating and prudent woman:
This wealth did not amuse me, for I had already seen enough of it, but I took more care and determined to stock up for the right occasion (307).
Finally, tough and ungrateful - not because of the vicious nature of her character, but because of the harsh circumstances of her life, Martona discovers different feelings in herself in the novel's finale: the news of Ahal's suicide makes her sincerely regret the lover who deceived her:
Akhalev's bad deed against me was completely eradicated from my memory, and only his good deeds seemed vividly in my memory (321).
From these comparisons, which were not emphasized in any way by Chulkov in his novel, but entirely devoted to the attention and thoughtfulness of the reader, the general direction of the heroine's moral evolution becomes clear: if her event biography is a chaotic wandering by the will of circumstances, fate and chance, then Martona's spiritual path is directed towards the side of growth and moral improvement. Thus, the dynamic picture of the world in Chulkov's novel is complemented by the dynamic spiritual life of the heroine, the genre model of the adventure novel of adventures and wanderings is combined with the model of the novel - the education of feelings.
By chance, this ideological and artistic concept of the novel as a mirror of life itself in its constant and endless movement and renewal found another way of its artistic expression in Chulkov's novel. The text of the novel that has come down to us ends with a scene of a meeting between a dying of remorse for the alleged murder of Svidal Ahal and his imaginary victim, followed by the phrase: "End of the first part." And it is still not clear whether the second part of the novel was written, but for some reason was not published by Chulkov, or it was not at all: thus, it is not known whether Chulkov's novel is finished or not. From the point of view of a purely plot, it is cut short in mid-sentence: it is not known whether Akhal's suicide attempt succeeded, it is not clear how the relationship between Martona, Ahal and Svidal will develop, and, finally, what does “beautifying a cook” have to do with it, since Martona's service as a cook is sparingly mentioned in one of the initial episodes of the novel, and further this line does not find any continuation. However, from an aesthetic point of view, and that for a writer of the 18th century. no less, and perhaps more importantly, didactic, in the novel "Appreciating the Cook" all the most important has already happened: it is obvious that Martona has changed, and changed for the better, and the woman writer is already a completely different person, from a height of his life experience, capable of objectively understanding and describing himself, despite all the delusions of his difficult and stormy youth.
Regardless of whether Chulkov had or did not have the intention to finish the second part, and whether the final phrase of the novel is a deliberate hoax or evidence of the incomplete implementation of the plan, the fact remains: the novel saw the light of day and reached the reader in the very form in which we read it now. And in this sense, the external fragmentariness, plot cut-off of the novel "The Pretty Cook" became an aesthetic fact of the history of Russian literature and a significant factor that determined the idea of \u200b\u200bRussian readers (and, importantly, writers) about the genre of the novel. The absence of a plot end, an open perspective, the possibility of further movement, the feeling of which is given by the external incompleteness of the novel, gradually began to be realized as an integral feature of this genre, an artistic device that formally expresses the idea of \u200b\u200bthe novel's lifelikeness, formalizes it as a self-driving reality. We will see the same device in yet another experience of the novel, "A Knight of Our Time" by Karamzin; Needless to say, he will find his final embodiment in Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin", where he will finally establish himself in his status as a deliberately used artistic device and a deliberately achieved aesthetic effect? With all the aesthetic imperfection of the Russian democratic novel of the 1760s and 1770s. its prototypical significance for the history of Russian prose of the classical period cannot be overestimated. It is here, in these early experiments of the Russian novel, that there is a whole scattering of semi-conscious discoveries and discoveries that are to be formed into a coherent genre system and sparkle with a new brilliance under the pen of the great Russian novelists of the 19th century.
Summing up the conversation about the patterns of the formation of Russian prose, which loudly declared itself in journalism and novelism of the 1760-1770s, it is necessary to note the incredible productivity of documentary genres and forms of narration in the first person in both varieties of Russian prose of this time. And in satirical journalism, and in fiction 1760-1770. imitation of a document, epistolary, autobiographical notes, travel notes, etc. absolutely prevail. And this is a fundamentally important factor that determines the new aesthetic relations between art and reality.
It is at this moment that Russian literature realizes itself as life and seeks to become like life in its forms. In turn, life agrees to recognize literature as its reflection, generously endowing it with its attributes - endless variability, constant movement and development, polyphony of different views and points of view expressed by literary personalities and characters ranging from Empress Catherine to a handsome cook. And the time is not far off when the reverse process will arise in Russian narrative prose - life-building, the attitude towards life and one's own biography as a kind of aesthetic activity, the desire to liken the empirical life of a private person to a generalized aesthetic fact.
This naturally stimulated the flourishing of various literary forms of manifestation of the author's individuality in the hitherto declarative-impersonal texts of Russian literature of the 18th century. And, of course, it is deeply natural that the process of promoting the author's personality into the system of artistic images of the text was clearly embodied in the genre of a lyric-epic poem, combining the objectivity of a narrative epic with lyrical subjectivism.
O. A. Yakovleva
ABOUT GENRE FEATURES OF THE PLUTOVSKY NOVEL (ON THE MATERIAL OF THE NOVEL M.D. CHULKOV "GREAT COOK")
In the 60s and 70s. In the 18th century, the Russian Enlightenment entered its most radical period of development. The process of democratization of fiction is intensifying, which to a greater extent embraced the work of those writers whose aesthetic attitudes were directed against the artistic principles of classicism. In terms of genres, the struggle with the canons of classicism was waged in prose and drama: in the genres of the story, novel, comic opera, and tearful drama. The development of prose genres and the strengthening of realistic tendencies are especially characteristic of this process. Thus, the genre of the novel began its literary life in Russia precisely in the second half of the 18th century.
In literary criticism, disputes about the time of the emergence of the novel genre do not stop. D.V. Zatonsky in his work "The Art of the Novel and the 20th Century", having subjected to a thorough analysis various points of view on the problem of the origin of the novel, concludes that it should be solved historically. He notes: "A genre is not a direct product of one or another class ideology (which therefore has" property rights "to it), but rather the brainchild of a social formation as a whole.
From the same positions M. Bakhtin approaches the study of the novel genre. “The novel, - writes MM Bakhtin, - became the leading hero of the drama of the literary development of the new era precisely because it best of all expresses the tendencies of the formation of a new world, because this is the only genre born of this new world and in everything natural to it”. However, it must be said that M. Bakhtin does not enclose the novel in the rigid boundaries of the bourgeois era. He writes: "The novel is an emerging genre ... The genre backbone of the novel is far from solidified."
Thus, according to Bakhtin, the main difference between the genre of the novel and other genres and, above all, from the epic, is that it changes before our eyes. In his work, other, more essential features are named that distinguish the novel and the epic. The epic narrated about the past, a great, irreversible and completed time. The subject of the novel is present, fluid, continuous, changeable, presented in close proximity and subject to immediate author's assessment. But, Bakhtin continues, "to depict events on the same value-temporal level with oneself and with one's contemporaries (and, consequently, on the basis of personal experience and fiction), is to make a radical revolution: to step from the epic world into the novel."
The need for a historical study of the novel genre of M.M. Bakhtin also explains the diversity of its varieties and makes an attempt at a historical classification of these varieties, which is based on the principle of constructing the image of the protagonist: a novel of wanderings, a novel of trials, a biographical (autobiographical) novel, a novel of education.
Close to M. Bakhtin in his judgments about the novel and V. Kozhinov, the author of the book "The Origin of the Novel." He separates the origin of the novel from the classical epic and from the narrative forms of antiquity and the Middle Ages similar to the novel. “The novel,” he writes, “appears anew at the beginning of the bourgeois epoch, as if from scratch. And it appears in the form of a picaresque. " Thus, the rogue novel is historically the first novel form.
The rogue novel in literary criticism is considered as one of the genre modifications of the adventure novel, which include: adventurous confessional, adventure heroic, adventurous everyday and adventurous rogue. The named modifications of the adventure novel are combined into one genre variety due to the presence of common genre-forming features.
Consider M.D. Chulkov's "The Good-Looking Cook" from the point of view of the realization in it of the genre-forming features of the adventurous rogue novel.
Scholars, first of all, note that artistic time in all varieties of the adventure novel is historical. Time manifests itself not only in the customs and tastes of the characters. There are more direct ways of timing events. For example, a historical person may act as an episodic character, or an indication of a historical
event. So, the main character of the novel M.D. Chulkova "The Good-Looking Cook" Martona begins the story of her adventures with a message about the death of her husband in the battle near Poltava. The reader can make a conclusion about the time of action in the novel: the Battle of Poltava took place in 1709.
The main feature of an adventure novel is found in the very genre designation - adventurousness (in terms of the plot, this is the main characteristic). The emblem of adventurousness is the presence of the word "adventure", "adventure" or, as in our case, "adventure" in the very title of the work: "Becoming a Cook, or the Adventure of a Depraved Woman."
A gamble is a kind of event. Yu.M. Lotman in his work "The structure of a literary text" gives the following definition to this concept: "An event in the text is the movement of a character across the border of the semantic field." Therefore, an extremely sharp movement of the character across this border can be called an adventure. Thus, an adventure is an “extraordinary” event that goes beyond the boundaries of the norm of existence.
Events of this kind lead to a rapid change in the situations in which the hero of the novel finds himself. Note that in the novel of the Enlightenment, adventurousness is associated with events and characters that do not go beyond the limits of authenticity. This allows researchers to assert that in the adventure novel of the 18th century "reality is reproduced in the forms of life itself."
The life of the main heroine of the novel "The Good-Looking Cook" is a series of ups and downs that began in Kiev and ended in Moscow. Martona reports on the death of her husband and describes the plight of a nineteen-year-old sergeant's widow. One "honest old woman" took part in her fate, who took her under her protection and found a young man for her to amuse. And the heroine's life changed. The young man turned out to be the butler of one gentleman and "spent money without stopping." Martona "began to be mistress." Soon, in one evening, fate "changed" again: the master of her former beloved Sveton himself won her favor. Happiness lasted a week, "for there is nothing more fickle." Father Sveton's illness required leaving for the village. It was decided to go together, and to settle Marton with a neighbor. In the middle of the journey, Sveton admitted that he was married. And Martona realized that her misfortune was close: she was afraid not of losing her lover, but of the reception "which our noble wives are being treated to our brothers for kidnapping their husbands." The premonition did not disappoint, and soon the heroine found herself in an open field. Martona makes a trip to Moscow, the description of which is omitted, since "nothing important happened to me."
For the genre characteristics of the novel, it is interesting to note the following detail. Martona indicates that she arrived in Moscow on Wednesday, “and this day is signified with us by the ancient pagan god Mercury; Mercury was the god of cheating ... as if with his help I decided to be a cook for the secretary. " Soon she found a new lover - the clerk, and as soon as the admirers of the lady secretary began to look in her direction, she again found herself on the street.
But the misfortune did not last long. The very next day a pimp came to see her and assigned Marton to be the housekeeper in the house of a rich retired lieutenant colonel who had lost his wife eight days ago. In one hour she got power in the house, and “about two hours later, the command over the owner,” who turned out to be passionately in love with her.
Soon Martona embarked on a new adventure. The young man Akhal achieved her inclination. At first, he visited the lieutenant colonel's house, supposedly disguised as Martona's sister, and then it was decided to flee, having first robbed the benefactor. However, Akhal deceived his beloved and fled with all his belongings himself. And again Martona is on the street without a livelihood. But worry about her own destiny forces her to take risks, and she goes to her benefactor. The fear was not justified: the lieutenant colonel received her with tears of joy and forgiveness. Everything returned to its place, but not for long. The lieutenant colonel died, his sister inherited the estate, and Martona was imprisoned. And this is not the end of the adventure.
Another system-forming feature of the adventurous rogue novel of the Enlightenment is its central character. This is a picaro hero, a rogue hero and an adventurer. In the novel by M.D. Chulkov, he is embodied in the image of Martona.
The adventures (and misadventures) of a character can be the result of his own activity, but they can also be the product of life situations, the result of external forces. The picaro hero is not born a perfect rogue. Educational novelists have shown how social conditions and environment influence the moral evolution of the characters in their books. However, within the framework of individual situations, they are given the opportunity to choose one or another line of behavior and thus show their vital activity. M.G. Sokolyansky notes: "If the hero manifests himself actively, only then can we talk about adventurousness as a quality inherent in the character and the novel as a whole."
In adventure novels, there is often a "test idea." Recall that M. Bakhtin, classifying novels according to the principle of constructing the image of the protagonist, among other varieties singled out the novel of the test of the hero, which has the following features:
1) the plot is based on deviations from the normal social and biographical course of the heroes' lives, on such events and positions that are not in a typical, normal, ordinary human biography. The romance ends when events return to normal;
2) time is devoid of historical localization, that is, attachment to a certain historical epoch, connection with certain historical events and conditions (which is not typical for an adventure novel);
3) The novel of the test focuses on the hero. The surrounding world and minor characters in most cases turn into a background for the hero. There is no genuine interaction between the hero and the world: the world is not able to change the hero, he only tests him, and the hero does not affect the world.
M. Bakhtin notes that the novel was tested in the XVIII - XIX centuries. lost its purity. However, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe test played a significant role in the subsequent history of the novel, as it allowed "to combine acute adventurousness with deep problematic and complex psychology."
Despite the fact that our heroine is never placed in a situation of choice, temptation, or trial, she is indirectly exposed to it. Martone needs to survive, and when circumstances offered her a way to survive, she, without thinking about morality, easily used it. The author does not try to deeply reveal the psychology of the heroine. In this case, he is interested in the fate of a woman from democratic strata who has not received a moral upbringing, who has faced a base way of life and who has not stood on the path of virtue.
Martona firmly knew that "wealth gives rise to honor", and in what way wealth is achieved - it does not matter. Chulkov leads the reader to the idea that social conditions, the powerless position of a woman are to blame for everything: "... I was left without any food, I bore the title of sergeant's wife, but I was poor"; “I didn’t know how to get around the people and couldn’t find a place for myself, and so I did so freely because we are not assigned to any positions”; “The whole world fell on me and in my new life he hated me so much that I didn't know where to lay my head”; "Everyone talked about me, blamed and denigrated me with things that I did not know at all."
The heroine makes her choice once. When the "honest old woman" found her a young man "for amusement," she "at first seemed stubborn, but two days later she willingly decided to follow her advice and completely forgot her sorrow." And then, in all her adventures, Martona pursued one goal - to survive.
To reveal the character of the heroine, it is important that Martona appears before the reader simultaneously in two guises: the heroine of the narrative proper and the narrator, and there is an obvious temporal and moral gap between them. The time gap is emphasized by the elapsed tense of the story. The changes in the moral character of Martona are almost imperceptible throughout the story.
The general direction of changes in her character can be determined thanks to the leading narrative technique: the story of the next incident in Martona's fate is accompanied by the final conclusion. So, being deceived by Akhal, she draws the following conclusions: “And although I saw further than they thought of me, I could not make out the pretense of it, and in this case I really learned that no matter how sharp and intricate a woman was, she was always subject to deception
men, and especially at a time when she is passionate about them ”; "In this case, I explained that he had more need for my lover's belongings than for me, and was seduced not by my beauty, but by gold pieces and pearls."
Moral changes become obvious when comparing the initial and final positions of the heroine in the same type of plot situations. They are especially evident in Martona's attitude to love: if the relationship with Sveton, one of the first lovers, was the result of a commercial deal, then the declaration of love with Svidal, the last lover, did not imply any bargaining. Consequently, Martona's spiritual path is directed towards moral perfection. This is how the genre model of the adventure novel is combined with the model of the parenting novel.
As for Martona's position in life, she is more passive than active: for all her initiative, the heroine is too dependent on the circumstances to which she is forced to adapt. However, as for a real picaro hero, failure for her is not a tragedy, but a reason to start a new adventure.
The confessional form of the novel does not fulfill its direct purpose - it does not serve to ease the hero's soul or to edify the reader. It is important for Chulkov that the reader understands his heroine, and then gives her an assessment: “He sees the light, when he sees it, he disassembles it; and having examined and weighed my deeds, let him name me whichever he pleases ”. However, the didactic goal of M.D. Chulkov nevertheless achieved: his heroine has changed, and for the better.
The text of the novel that has come down to us ends with the phrase: "End of the first part." It has not yet been established whether the second part of the novel was written. Nevertheless, the cut-off of the plot became an aesthetic fact of the history of Russian literature. The absence of a plot end, an open perspective, the possibility of further movement have become an integral feature of this genre. The meaning of the democratic novel 1760-1770 It is impossible to overestimate, since it is in it that the finds and discoveries are laid, which are to be formed into a harmonious genre system of the classic Russian novel.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC LIST
1. Bakhtin M.M. Epic and novel. On the methodology of the study of the novel // Questions of literature. 1970. No. 1.
2. Bakhtin M.M. Aesthetics of verbal creativity. Moscow: Art, 1979.
3. Zatonsky D.V. The art of the novel and the 20th century. M .: Hood. liter, 1973.
4. Kozhinov V. The origin of the novel. M .: Soviet writer, 1963.
5. Lotman Yu.M. The structure of the literary text. Moscow: Art, 1970.
6. Sokolyansky M.G. Western European novel of the Enlightenment. Kiev - Odessa: Vishcha school, 1983.
7. Chulkov M.D. The Good-Looking Cook, or The Adventures of a Depraved Woman: A Reader on Russian Literature of the 18th Century / comp. A.V. Kokorev. M .: Education, 1965.S. 587-607.
1. Poetics, problems and genre originality of the novel by M.D. Chulkova "A handsome cook, or the adventures of a depraved woman."
Poetics and genre originality
novel by M.D. Chulkova "Good-looking cook"
The novel by Mikhail Dmitrievich Chulkov (1743-1792) "The Beautifull Cook, or the Adventures of a Depraved Woman" was published in 1770, a year after the "Letters of Ernest and Doravra" was published. In its genre model, "Pretty Chef" combines the tradition of an adventurous rogue travel novel with the tradition of a psychological novel: the narrative form in "Pretty Chef" - Martona's autobiographical notes - is close to the epistolary form with its personal character, lack of moralistic authorial voice and the way of creating the character of the heroine in her self-disclosure. However, having inherited the common European scheme for the development of the novel's narrative, Chulkov made sure to fit a number of recognizable signs of national life into the framework of this scheme.
His heroine Martona, whose character is generally correlated with the image of picaro, the hero of the rogue novel of Western Europe, is the widow of a sergeant killed near Poltava - thus, the action of the novel receives an initial historical link: the Battle of Poltava was in 1709 - however, later in the novel a clear anachronism arises, since the "ode to Mr. Lomonosov" is mentioned (and the first ode to Lomonosov, as you know, was written in 1739, and by that time the 19-year-old Martone at the beginning of the novel should have turned 49 years old, which is in no way combined with the plot novel) - but, nevertheless, the initial stage in Martona's biography is attributed to the Peter's era, and this makes us see in the character of the proactive, active and roguish heroine a certain reflection of the general revival of individual initiative, which marked the era of state reforms.
The beginning of the action of the novel finds Martona in Kiev. The vicissitudes of fate later throw her to Moscow. The novel mentions a journey on foot, which Martona undertook not entirely of her own free will; however, the circumstances of this particular “adventure” are not revealed in the novel, and the plot-forming motive of the journey in “The Good-Looking Cook” appears in its metaphorical aspect of the “life's journey”. The Moscow period of the heroine's life also has its own topographical references: Martona lives in Nikola's parish on chicken legs, her lover Akhal lives in Yamskaya Sloboda, the duel between Akhal and Svidal because of Martona's favor takes place in Maryina Roshcha, and all this gives Chulkov's novel an additional household reliability.
And in the very image of Martona, in the means that Chulkov uses to convey the warehouse of her character, the writer's desire to emphasize the national origin is noticeable. Martona's speech is richly endowed with proverbs and sayings; She tends to explain all the events of her life with the help of common human wisdom, recorded in these aphoristic folklore formulas: "Shey-de-widow has wide sleeves, there would be where to put unrealistic words", "on a red flower and a bee flies", "wealth gives birth to honor", "Hitherto Makar dug ridges, but now Makar got into the governor", "the bear is wrong that ate the cow, and the cow that wandered into the forest is wrong." These and many other proverbs, generously scattered in the novel's narrative, form the national basis of the heroine's character. Democratic origin makes Martona an organic carrier of the national folk culture and the type of national consciousness embodied in the folklore genre. So the genre model of the novel in general and the character of the heroine in particular is a combination of the traditional features of the European novel, which is identical in its aesthetic nature, with an attempt to Russify them, which was successful for that era.
In this concretized national-historical, geographical, topographic and mental context, in which the story of the democratic heroine of the novel is placed, the functions of the traditional everyday descriptive motives for Russian literature are modified, due to which a reliable image of material life is created. The story of the heroine-adventurer is surrounded by a dense halo of everyday-descriptive motives of food, clothing and money, which accompany literally every plot turning point in the novel and the turn of the heroine's fate; the swings from unhappiness to well-being and vice versa unconditionally bring to life these low and satirical motives in genesis:
Everyone knows that we received a victory at Poltava, where my unfortunate husband was killed in a battle. He was not a nobleman, did not have villages behind him, therefore, I was left without any food<...>... At that very time, I inherited this very proverb: "She-de-widow have wide sleeves, there would be where to put unrealistic words."
It is easy to see how the function of everyday-descriptive motifs in Chulkov's novel changes: for all their apparent traditionality, they cease to be a means of discrediting the heroine, while maintaining the function of modeling the image of a reliable environment. From a means of satirical denial of character, everyday descriptive motives are transformed into an artistic method of explaining this character. The passion for the material, which Martona is obsessed with at the beginning of the novel - "I would have agreed then to die rather than part with my estate, I respected and loved him so much" (264) - is not Martona's fundamental perverse property; she is inspired by the very conditions of her life, her poverty, lack of support in life and the need to somehow support this life; as the heroine herself explains this property, “I firmly knew this proverb that“ wealth gives rise to honor ”(266). So already at the very beginning of the novel, its fundamentally new aesthetic orientation was set: not so much to assess the character as virtuous or vicious, but to explain it by showing the reasons that affect its formation and formation.
A demonstrative rejection of moral assessments and the desire for objectivity of the image, which unite the author's position of Chulkov, who gave the heroine herself the story of her stormy life and dubious profession, with the position of the heroine, who calls things by their proper names throughout the story, was declared at the very beginning of the novel:
I think many of our sisters will call me immodest; but as this vice is for the most part akin to women, then not wanting to be called modest against nature, I embrace it eagerly. When he sees the light, when he sees it, he will disassemble it, and after disassembling and weighing my affairs, let him name me as he pleases (264).
Such a position, new in itself, should have been perceived even more acutely due to the fact that both the heroine and the story of her life were an unprecedented phenomenon for Russian literature. A woman of easy virtue and the petty nobles around her, bribe-taker judicial officials, thieves, swindlers and rogues - Russian literature had never seen such heroes before Chulkov, at least in a national novel. The subject of the narration itself, as it were, pushed the writer to an overt didactic moralizing, and the fact that in "The Handsome Chef" the moralistic pathos does not have declarative forms of expression, but is hidden in the system of artistic images and in Martona's special, dryish, protocol-accurate manner of life description, was of decisive importance for the gradual formation of new aesthetic criteria for Russian fine literature. The aspiration of the new generation of Russian writers not to model, but to reflect life in a work of fine literature, not to evaluate, but to explain character, determined two fundamental postulates that govern the narrative of the "depraved woman" about her sailing on the sea of \u200b\u200blife.
First of all, it is the idea of \u200b\u200bmobility, fluidity, changeability of life and the corresponding idea of \u200b\u200bthe incessant evolution of character. The dynamic concept of life, declared by Chulkov in the author's preface to the novel:
Everything in the world is rotational; So, this book is now, it will stay for a while, finally decay, disappear and disappear from everyone's memory. A person will be born, contemplate glory, honor and wealth, taste joy and joy, go through troubles, sorrows and sadness<...>(261).
finds its reinforcement in a similar statement by Martona, who is guided by the same idea of \u200b\u200b"rotation" in her perception of the world:
I was always of the opinion that everything in the world is impermanent; when the sun has an eclipse, the sky is constantly covered with clouds, the time changes four times in one year, the sea has an ebb and flow, fields and mountains turn green, then turn white, birds shed, and philosophers change their systems - then like a woman who is born to change, you can love him until the end of her century (286).
As a result, the life reflected by the author and told to the reader by the heroine, who are equally guided by a dynamic idea in their perception of the world, appears as a kind of self-propelled reality. Martona's position in life is rather passive than active: for all her active initiative, the heroine Chulkova is able to build her own destiny only to a certain extent, she is too dependent on the circumstances to which she is forced to adapt in order to defend her individual private life in the fight against fate and chance. The entire biography of Martona in the social sense is built as a continuous chain of ups and downs, changes from poverty to wealth and vice versa, and all these changes do not occur at the request of the heroine, but in addition to him - in this respect, the heroine Chulkova can really be likened to the sailor who wears on the stormy waves of the sea of \u200b\u200blife.
As for the moral character of Martona, a more complex picture is created here, since the factual, everyday-descriptive manner of narration and the personality of the democratic heroine herself excluded the possibility of an open psychological analysis. The spiritual path of Martona, the changes occurring in the character of the heroine, is one of the earliest examples of the so-called "secret psychology", when the process of changing the character itself is not depicted in the narrative, but can be determined by comparing the starting and ending points of evolution and reconstructed based on the changing the heroine's reactions in similar circumstances.
And here it is important that Martona in her autobiographical notes appears simultaneously in two of her personal hypostases: the heroine of the narrative and the narrator, and between these two stages of her evolution there is an obvious temporal and hidden moral gap. Martona the heroine appears before the reader in the present time of her life, but for Martona the narrator this stage of her life is in the past. This time gap is emphasized by the past tense of the narrative, which is especially noticeable in the objective moral characteristics that Chulkova's heroine gives herself:
<...> people like me then have no friends; the reason for this is our immoderate pride. (269);<...> virtue was unknown to me from afar (272);<...> I didn’t know what gratitude was in the world, and I didn’t hear about it from anyone, but thought that it would be possible to live without it (273); My conscience did not bother me in the least, for I thought that there were people in the world who were much more courageous than me, who would do more bad things in one minute than I did in three days (292); Was it possible then in me to be philanthropic, about this, I’m tea, the mister reader wonders (296).
From the frank auto-characteristics accompanying the equally frankly described morally dubious actions, an unsympathetic moral image of a woman-adventurer grows, least of all concerned about observing the rules of universal humanistic morality. But this Martona, who appears before the reader in the present tense of reading the novel, is for Martona, the author of autobiographical notes, "Martona then." What is Martona now, from what moral positions she tells about her stormy and immoral youth - nothing is reported to the reader about this. But, incidentally, the novel itself contains guidelines by which it is possible to reconstruct the general direction of changes in the character of the heroine, and the fact that she is changing is evidenced by the leitmotif of the narrative about her life. The story about the next incident in her life is strictly accompanied by a conclusion of the final nature. Martona gains life experience in front of the reader, drawing laconic conclusions from lengthy descriptions of the facts of her biography.
Having entered the service of the clerk of the court and looking around in his house, she immediately reports: "At this time I learned that all the clerks use bribes in the same way as their master." (276). Deceived by his lover Akhal, who fled from her with money jointly stolen from an old and wealthy lieutenant colonel, Martona enriches her experience with two more observations:
And although I saw further than they thought of me, I could not make out his [Ahal's] pretense, and in this case I really learned that no matter how sharp and intricate a woman was, she was always subject to the deceptions of a man, and especially at that time when she is passionate about them (294).
In this case, I explained that he [Akhal] had more need for my lover's belongings than for me, and was seduced not by my beauty, but by gold pieces and pearls (296).
Finally, hearing about the imaginary death of Svidal, whom she, unnoticed for herself, managed to truly fall in love, Martona reports her discovery as follows:
In this case, I knew directly that that was a real passion of love. Hearing about the death of Svidal, the blood in me cooled down, my larynx dried up, and my lips were parched, and I forcefully uttered my breath. I thought that I had lost all the world when I lost Svidal, and the deprivation of my life seemed like nothing to me then.<...> I was ready to endure everything and proceed without timidity to death, only to pay Svidal for the loss of his life, which was the reason for me, of all the unhappy in the world (304-305) -
and this is said by the same Martona who, ten pages earlier, had not lamented for a second about the death of the hussar lieutenant colonel, which was caused by her unsuccessful flight with Akhal.
Gradually, but constantly gaining life experience, latently motivates changes in the character of the heroine, which are almost imperceptible throughout the narrative, but are obviously revealed in a comparison of the initial and final positions of the heroine in similar plot situations. These changes are especially evident in Martona's attitude to love: the professional priestess of free love and the venal woman who ties the novel to its finale becomes simply a loving woman; and if the story about her relationship with Sveton, one of the first lovers, is full of commercial terminology, then in the message about her declaration of love with Svidal, the motive of bargaining appears in the opposite meaning:
This first meeting was with us by bargaining, and we did not talk about anything else as we concluded a contract; he [Sveton] traded my charms, and I conceded them to him for a decent price, and then we pledged with receipts<...> (268). Thus, I really learned that he [Svidal] is alive and loves me as much as I love him, or perhaps less, in which we did not dress ourselves up, but fell in love with each other without any bargaining (305).
Greedy and selfish, ready to die for her material wealth at the beginning of the novel, at the end of the novel Martona becomes simply a calculating and prudent woman:
This wealth did not amuse me, for I had already seen enough of it, but I took more care and determined to stock up for the necessary occasion (307).
Finally, tough and ungrateful - not because of the vicious nature of her character, but because of the harsh circumstances of her life, Martona discovers in herself other feelings in the novel's finale: the news of Ahal's suicide makes her sincerely regret the lover who had deceived her:
Akhalev's bad deed against me was completely eradicated from my memory, and only his good deeds appeared vividly in my memory (321).
From these comparisons, which were not emphasized in any way by Chulkov in his novel, but entirely devoted to the attention and thoughtfulness of the reader, the general direction of the heroine's moral evolution becomes clear: if her event biography is a chaotic wandering by the will of circumstances, fate and chance, then Martona's spiritual path is directed towards the side of growth and moral improvement. So the dynamic picture of the world in Chulkov's novel is complemented by the dynamic spiritual life of the heroine, the genre model of the adventure novel of adventures and wanderings is combined with the model of the novel - the education of feelings.
By chance, this ideological and artistic concept of the novel as a mirror of life itself in its constant and endless movement and renewal found another way of its artistic expression in Chulkov's novel. The text of the novel that has come down to us ends with a scene of a meeting dying of remorse for the alleged murder of Svid-la Ahal with his imaginary victim, after which there is the phrase: "End of the first part." And it is still not clear whether the second part of the novel was written, but for some reason was not published by Chulkov, or it was not at all: thus, it is not known whether Chulkov's novel is finished or not. From the point of view of a purely plot, it is cut short in mid-sentence: it is not known whether Akhal's suicide attempt succeeded, it is not clear how the relationship between Martona, Ahal and Svidal will develop, and, finally, what does “beautifying a cook” have to do with it, since Martona's service as a cook is sparingly mentioned in one of the initial episodes of the novel, and further this line does not find any continuation. However, from an aesthetic point of view, and that for a writer of the 18th century. no less, and perhaps more importantly, didactic, in the novel "Appreciating the Cook" all the most important has already happened: it is obvious that Martona has changed, and changed for the better, and the woman writer is already a completely different person, from a height of his life experience, capable of objectively understanding and describing himself, despite all the delusions of his difficult and stormy youth.
Regardless of whether Chulkov had or did not have the intention to finish the second part, and whether the final phrase of the novel is a deliberate hoax or evidence of the incomplete implementation of the plan, the fact remains: the novel saw the light of day and reached the reader in the very form in which we read it now. And in this sense, the external fragmentariness, plot cut-off of the novel "The Pretty Cook" became an aesthetic fact of the history of Russian literature and a significant factor that determined the idea of \u200b\u200bRussian readers (and, importantly, writers) about the genre of the novel. The absence of a plot end, an open perspective, the possibility of further movement, the feeling of which is given by the external incompleteness of the novel, gradually began to be realized as an integral feature of this genre, an artistic device that formally expresses the idea of \u200b\u200bthe novel's lifelikeness, formalizes it as a self-driving reality. We will see the same device in yet another experience of the novel, "A Knight of Our Time" by Karamzin; Needless to say, he will find his final embodiment in Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin", where he will finally establish himself in his status as a deliberately used artistic device and a deliberately achieved aesthetic effect? For all the aesthetic imperfections of the Russian democratic novel of the 1760-1770s. its prototypical significance for the history of Russian prose of the classical period cannot be overestimated. It is here, in these early experiments of the Russian novel, that there is a whole scattering of semi-conscious finds and discoveries, which are to be formed into a coherent genre system and sparkle with a new brilliance under the pen of the great Russian novelists of the 19th century.
Summing up the conversation about the patterns of the formation of Russian prose, which loudly declared itself in journalism and novelism of the 1760-1770s, it is necessary to note the incredible productivity of documentary genres and forms of first-person narration in both varieties of Russian prose of this time. And in satirical journalism, and in fiction 1760-1770. imitation of a document, epistolary, autobiographical notes, travel notes, etc. absolutely prevail. And this is a fundamentally important factor that determines the new aesthetic relations between art and reality.
It is at this moment that Russian literature realizes itself as life and seeks to become like life in its forms. In turn, life agrees to recognize literature as its reflection, generously endowing it with its attributes - endless variability, constant movement and development, polyphony of different views and points of view expressed by literary personalities and characters ranging from Empress Catherine to a handsome cook. And the time is not far off when the reverse process will arise in Russian narrative prose - life-building, the attitude towards life and one's own biography as a kind of aesthetic activity, the desire to liken the empirical life of a private person to a generalized aesthetic fact.
This naturally stimulated the flourishing of various literary forms of manifestation of the author's individuality in the hitherto declarative-impersonal texts of Russian literature of the 18th century. And, of course, it is deeply natural that the process of promoting the author's personality into the system of artistic images of the text was clearly embodied in the genre of a lyric-epic poem, combining the objectivity of a narrative epic with lyrical subjectivism.
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Mikhail Chulkov
The Fitting Cook, or the Adventure of a Depraved Woman
Part I
His Excellency the real chamberlain and various orders cavalier
Much merciful my sovereign
Your Excellency
Your Majesty!
Everything that is in the world is made of decay, therefore, and this book I ascribe to you is made of decay. Everything in the world is rotational; and so this book is now, it will remain for a while, finally decay, disappear and be remembered by everyone. A person will be born, contemplate glory, honor and wealth, taste joy and joy, go through troubles, sorrows and sorrows; similarly, this book came into being in order to carry away a certain shadow of praise, negotiations, criticism, indignation and reproach. All this will come true with her, and finally will turn to dust, like the person who praised her or denigrated her.
Under the guise and title of the book, my desire is to entrust myself under the patronage of your Excellency: a desire common to all people who do not have royal portraits in them. People worthy are produced, therefore, your reason, your virtues and condescensions have elevated you to this high degree. You are akin to showing favors to the poor, and I am comfortable deserving them with all diligence. Who you are, society will know about it when it has the happiness of using your blessings.
Your Excellency the Gracious Sovereign, the lowest servant
The writer sowing books.
Advance notice
Neither beasts nor beasts of science understand,
Neither fish nor bastards can read.
Flies do not argue about verses
And all the flying spirits.
They speak neither in prose nor verse,
It so happened that they did not even look at the book.
For this reason, visible
My beloved reader,
Of course there will be a man
Which all his life
Works in sciences and deeds
And above the cloud the concept is bridging.
And as if he didn't have that in his thoughts,
That there is a limit to his reason and will.
I leave all the creatures
To you, oh man! I incline my speech,
You are a reader
Dealer,
Scribe.
And you know a lot to say a word,
You don't know how to take books upside down, of course,
And you will begin to examine her from the head,
And you will see in her all my art,
Find all my errors in it,
But only you, my friend, don't judge them harshly,
Mistakes are akin to us, and weaknesses are decent
The mistakes of all mortals are common.
Since the beginning of the century, although we wander in the sciences,
However, we do not find such a sage,
Who would not have made mistakes in the whole century,
At least he knew how to dance,
And I am not taught either to tune or dance,
So, therefore, I can also miss.
Comely cook
I think that many of our sisters will call me immodest; but as this vice is for the most part akin to women, then, not wanting to be called modest against nature, I embrace it eagerly. He sees the light, when he sees it, he disassembles it; and having examined and weighed my deeds, let him name me whichever he pleases.
Everyone knows that we received a victory at Poltava, where my unfortunate husband was killed in a battle. He was not a nobleman, had no villages behind him, therefore, I was left without any food, bore the title of sergeant's wife, but I was poor. I was then nineteen years old, and for that reason my poverty seemed to me even more intolerable; for I did not know how to get around the people, and could not find a place for myself, and so I did so freely because we are not assigned to any positions.
At that very time, I inherited this proverb: "Shey-de, widow, wide sleeves, it would be where to put unrealistic words." The whole world threw itself over me, and so much in my new life he hated me that I did not know where to lay my head.
Everyone talked about me, blamed and denigrated me with things that I did not know at all. Thus, I fell into tears; but an honest old woman, who was known to the whole city of Kiev, for I was then in that city, took me under her protection, and she regretted my misfortune so much that the next morning she found a young and handsome man for my amusement. At first I seemed to be stubborn, but after two days I willingly began to follow her advice and completely forgot my sadness, which I felt inaccessibly for two weeks after the death of my husband. This man was more young than good, and I am handsome enough, but "a little red flower and a bee flies." He was some gentleman's butler and spent money without stopping because it was directly from the master's, and not his own. Thus, they were proof of his love for me and served as an eternal pledge. Soon, almost the entire guesthouse learned that I was a great hunter to buy the necessary things and trifles, and every minute, our belongings almost grew in our house and the estate arrived.
I firmly knew this proverb that "wealth gives rise to honor." So I hired a maid and began to be a mistress. Whether I knew how to command people or not, I don’t know about that myself, and I didn’t need to go into such a trifle then, but it was enough that I didn’t want to start anything myself, and rode my servant like a fool on a donkey. Mister valet himself wanted to dominate no less than me, for the sake of it he hired a boy to serve him when he was talking with me, and he visited me hopelessly, therefore, our dominion was not interrupted for a minute, and we shouted at the servants like that , as on their own, beat and scolded them, as much as we wanted, according to the proverb: "Why is this pain when the fool has the will." Yes, we acted in such a way that “they beat us with a truncheon and paid in rubles”.
Mikhail Chulkov
The Fitting Cook, or the Adventure of a Depraved Woman
Part I
His Excellency the real chamberlain and the knight of various orders Much merciful my sovereign [*] [*] - Here his name will not be for the reason that not to be mistaken. Books are attributed to people, depending on their content and the addition of those people to whom they are brought. I have seen quite a few such books that were offered to noble gentlemen, but instead of increasing their virtues, they served them as satire. As if someone, wanting to praise his patron, but not knowing the sense and moderation in praise, scolded him very absurdly. And so, fearing this and, moreover, not knowing the kindness of the book I have written, I do not attribute it to anyone. The title of Excellency adorns a person, for that sake I also put him to decorate my book, but not wanting to decorate it with Excellency, but with only those letters from which this word is typed and printed; and the next letter I bring to every highly superior and highly virtuous gentleman, general, chamberlain and cavalier, whom I always wish to snatch from my sincere heart with good qualities, indulgence and mercy. Your Excellency Your Majesty! Everything that is in the world is made of decay, therefore, and this book I ascribe to you is made of decay. Everything in the world is rotational; and so this book is now, it will remain for a while, finally decay, disappear and be remembered by everyone. A person will be born, contemplate glory, honor and wealth, taste joy and joy, go through troubles, sorrows and sadness; similarly, this book came into being in order to carry away a certain shadow of praise, negotiations, criticism, indignation and reproach. All this will come true with her, and finally will turn to dust, like the person who praised her or denigrated her. Under the guise and title of the book, my desire is to entrust myself under the patronage of your Excellency: a desire common to all people who do not have royal portraits in them. People worthy are being produced, therefore, your reason, your virtues and condescensions have elevated you to this high degree. You are akin to showing favors to the poor, and I am comfortable deserving them with all diligence. Who you are, society will know about it when it has the happiness of using your blessings. Your Excellency the Gracious Sovereign, the lowest servant The writer sowing books.Advance notice
Neither beasts nor beasts of science understand, Neither fish nor bastards can read. Flies do not argue about verses among themselves And all the flying spirits. They speak neither in prose nor verse, It so happened that they did not even look at the book. For this reason, visible My beloved reader, Of course there will be a man Which all his life Works in sciences and deeds And above the cloud the concept is bridging. And as if he didn't have that in his thoughts, That there is a limit to his reason and will. I leave all the creatures To you, oh man! I incline my speech, You are a reader, a dealer, a scribe. And you know a lot to say a word, You don't know how to take books upside down, of course, And you will begin to examine her from the head, And you will see in her all my art, Find all my errors in it, But only you, my friend, don't judge them harshly, Mistakes are akin to us, and weaknesses are decent The mistakes of all mortals are common. Since the beginning of the century, although we wander in the sciences, However, we do not find such a sage, Who would not have made mistakes in the whole century, At least he knew how to dance, And I am not taught either to tune or dance, So, therefore, I can also miss.Comely cook
I think that many of our sisters will call me immodest; but as this vice is for the most part akin to women, then, not wanting to be called modest against nature, I embrace it eagerly. He sees the light, when he sees it, he disassembles it; and having examined and weighed my deeds, let him name me whichever he pleases. Everyone knows that we got a victory at Poltava] in which my unfortunate husband was killed in battle. He was not a nobleman, had no villages behind him, therefore, I was left without any food, bore the title of sergeant's wife, but I was poor. I was then nineteen years old, and for that reason my poverty seemed to me even more intolerable; for I did not know how to get around the people, and could not find a place for myself, and so I did so freely because we are not assigned to any positions. At that very time, I inherited this proverb: "Shey-de, widow, wide sleeves, there would be where to put unrealistic words." The whole world threw itself over me, and so much in my new life he hated me that I did not know where to lay my head. Everyone talked about me, blamed and denigrated me with things that I did not know at all. Thus, I fell into tears; but an honest old woman, who was known to the whole city of Kiev, for I was then in that city, took me under her protection, and she regretted my misfortune so much that the next morning she found a young and handsome man for my amusement. At first I seemed to be stubborn, but after two days I willingly began to follow her advice and completely forgot my sadness, which I felt inaccessibly for two weeks after the death of my husband. This man was more young than good, and I am handsome enough, but "a little red flower and a bee flies." He was some gentleman's butler and spent money without stopping because it was directly from the master's, and not his own. Thus, they were proof of his love for me and served as an eternal pledge. Soon, almost the entire guesthouse learned that I was a great hunter to buy the necessary things and trifles, and every minute, our belongings almost grew in our house and the estate arrived. I firmly knew this proverb that "wealth gives rise to honor." So I hired a maid and began to be a mistress. Whether I knew how to command people or not, I don’t know about that myself, and I didn’t need to go into such a trifle then, but it was enough that I didn’t want to start anything myself, and rode my servant like a fool on a donkey. Mister valet himself wished to dominate no less than me, for the sake of it he hired a boy to serve him when he was talking with me, and he visited me hopelessly, therefore, our dominion was not interrupted for a minute, and we shouted at the servants like that , as on their own, beat and scolded them, as much as we wanted, according to the proverb: "Why this pain, when the fool has a will." Yes, we acted in such a way that "they beat us with a truncheon and paid in rubles." The more a woman has adornments, the more she wants to wander around the city, and from this many of our sisters deteriorate and fall under bad consequences. I was pleased with everything, and every clear day I was at gulbisches, many recognized me and many wanted to make acquaintance with me. Once close to midnight there was a man knocking at our gates who did not ask so much, but rather wanted to break in by force. We would not have let him in, but our strength was not enough, and then we did not have a valet; Thus, I sent a servant to unlock, my old woman was preparing to meet him and ask him, and then I hid and thought that maybe Paris had come for Elena because I was an enviable woman in that city; or at least that's what I thought of myself. They opened the gates for them, and they went into the upper room, two, one of them seemed to be a servant, and the other a master, although he was dressed worse than the first. Without saying a word, he sat down at the table and, after sitting for a while, took out a snuffbox sprinkled with diamonds. My old woman immediately surveyed her, from which her cowardice changed into joy, and she ceased to regard these people as enemies of our kind. This young and handsome man asked her if Marton lived here, and that was my name, to which she replied: “I don’t know, but I’ll ask my master.” And so, coming running to me, she said that I would appear to them and that the golden snuffbox assured her of some happiness, and, moreover, she uttered this proverb: "I am not without eyes, I see myself." In such cases, I was not a mistake, and to my happiness that I was not yet undressed, thus I appeared to my new Adonid[ *] with a solemn face and a noble bump, and the truth is to say that he was mistaken, although not for Venus, but for a mediocre goddess, according to the sentence: "They meet by dress, but according to their mind they see it off." The very first time he seemed so gentle to me that, to please him, I would have willingly left the valet, and when he gave me that snuffbox, it seemed to me despicable to have a message with a slave. From the gold and diamonds gift, I concluded that this person is not of an ordinary family, and I was not mistaken. He was the master, and the master is not the last. This first meeting was with us by bargaining, and we did not talk about anything else, how we concluded a contract, he traded my charms, and I gave them to him for a decent price, and then we pledged receipts, in which love was an intermediary, and my landlady witness; and as such contracts are never announced in the police, he remained with us and without any order, inviolable. The gentleman decided to visit me often, and I promised to receive him at all times, and so we parted. [*] - Adonides - Adonis is the son of the Cypriot king, equal in beauty to the immortal gods; beloved of Aphrodite (Greek myth.). Upon his exit, Venus was not so much happy about the apple given to her as I admired the snuffbox presented to me. I turned it over in my hands as much as I wanted, showed it a hundred times to the old woman, the servant and the servant, and when I said anything, I always indicated with a snuffbox and did all the examples with it. And when this extraordinary joy allowed me to calm my mind, enraged with the gift, and limbs tired from immoderate antics, then I put it on the table opposite the bed and fell asleep; but nevertheless, even in a dream, she was vividly presented to me according to the proverb: "He who has not seen anything new is glad for the worn one." To tell the truth that the snuff-box was somewhat damaged; but for me it seemed new, for I didn’t have such things in my life and never hoped to have them. At ten o'clock in the morning my old red tape came to me; I confess that so soon my conscience was ripe to discourage him, and not wanting to have company with him, I pretended to be sick; but I forgot to take a present dear to me from the table, and as soon as he saw it, he took it in his hand and, looking a little, asked me where I got such a thing; I told him what I bought. - Wait, my lady, - he said to me, - I will change with you in a different way. This is my master's snuffbox, and he just lost it yesterday at cards, as he told me himself, so soon you have nowhere to buy it, and it was given to you by some kind of moto, then it will become. Until now, I thought that I was only familiar to you, but now I see that the whole city visits you in turn. I will immediately show everyone how magnificent you are, now I will go and, bringing the horses, I will cover you to the thread, make money from something else, and return mine to every drop. Having said this, he went away and left me in terrible fear; we didn't know what to do then, we had nowhere to run, and there was no one to protect us; for people like me then have no friends, the reason for this is our immoderate pride. And so they decided to wait for the inevitable misfortune and parting with our dominion. I still didn't hope for a new lover so much and thought that when he saw me poor, he would, of course, leave me. Any foresight was bad for us then, and I would have agreed then better to die than to part with my estate, I respected and loved him so much. Half an hour later, a new lover came to me, to my greater misfortune; what should i do? I was then all in disarray, death was approaching me, and yet a new person should be a witness to my misfortune and abuse. Seeing me in tears, he became attached to me and began to ask me questions; I did not answer him and threw myself into bed. At that very time, the valet entered the courtyard and, walking into the room, shouted: "I will change with you!" But when he saw the man standing by my bed, he grabbed his hat from his head and was very frightened, so that he could not speak another word. My new lover asked him with whom he had a falling out and why he had come to such a place. His cowardice did not allow him to express himself properly, and so he lied two or three times without rules, and when the gentleman shouted at him to go home, then the matter ended. In one minute, as a great mountain fell from my shoulders, and it seemed to me that a terrible cloud of my troubles passed so quickly that it did not have time to close even the sun. It was not difficult for me to make out that I had exchanged a servant for a master, and I knew completely that the wrath of the valets at that time was not dangerous when his master was holding my side. I had to completely change my clothes, that is, turn from fear into unspeakable joy, and as I often read the book "Woman's Subterfuges" and tried hard to learn them, this transformation did not seem very tricky to me. I began to groan little by little, as if I was still learning to relax in case of need, and told Svetonu, that was the name of my lover, that I had a seizure. It was then that I recognized his favor and zeal for me. In one minute he sent for a doctor, who, although he had arrived, was completely unnecessary for me, and Monsieur Sveton, and in one word, was convenient to heal me from the most severe fever. From that time on, he assigned me two of his own people at my service, sent me on the same day a silver service, or simply dishes; and the very first time I sat down to eat with my old woman, who, to articulate the truth, did not know how to sit down with her face and take up a spoon, and even then I was a little smarter than it, then uttered this proverb to myself: "Doseleva Makar ridge dug, and now Makar got into the governor ". Happiness does not give an account of his affairs to anyone, freely welcome him and the donkey as governor, and make the owl a voivodship comrade. My Adonides was a secular man and he really knew how he behaved in matters of love. In the morning he sent his valet to me, and my former lover - which he did not know - with gifts. He brought me a whole load of women's attire, and bowed to me like his mistress, and not like his mistress, and when I asked him to sit down, he answered me very politely that this honor was very much for him. It was very wonderful to me that one night made me mistress and mistress over my former commander. I accepted the gifts with an important and noble air, as befits the mistress of a noble gentleman, and, taking a semi-imperial out of my pocket, gave it to the valet, who took it from me and sighed very sincerely, then asked me to hear something from him in private, and when we went into another room, he knelt in front of me and said the following: - My sovereign! now, I am no longer the one who intended to rob you of everything, I concede everything to you, possess it according to the proverb: "Money is iron, clothes are perishable; but the skin is dearer to us." I ask you for only one mercy, do not tell my master that I was familiar to you; and in gratitude for that, I will hold your side and help you destroy it to the end. I confess, no matter how shameless and avaricious I was, however, such valet's zeal for my master seemed to me unsuitable. However, virtue was unfamiliar to me even from afar, and so in a few words my former lover and I agreed to squander his master; however, not being able to put our intentions into action, according to the proverb: "It is not always Maslenitsa for a cat, there is also a great fast." And what prevented, you can see further, if the reader is not bored with reading my adventure. For about a week I enjoyed Venus's dignity and would not exchange my lot for any treasure in the world; but as everyone knows that happiness is short-lived and there is nothing more impermanent, then my fortune slipped and went in a completely different order. Sveton received a letter from his father, who wrote to him that he would be very soon because his father felt much weak and desperate in this life. This letter brought my lover into such thoughtfulness that he did not know what to do with me; his paternal illness was sensitive to him, but parting with me exceeded it indescribably. Love tenderness gave way for a while to inventions; These began about me, about me and ended, I was the subject of Svetonov's concern, and I alone consoled him in this sadness, and he would have willingly wanted to lose his father, just not to be separated from me. "A good horse is not without a rider, but an honest man is not without a friend." Neighbor Svetonov, seeing him in great sorrow, offered him such a means: Svetona to go with me and, having brought me, leave in his village, which is only six miles from the Svetonov villages; and he will write to his brother about accepting me and about treating me and will call me close wife’s relatives, and that Sveton can visit me there whenever he pleases, without any insanity. As suggested, it was done, and for such a good invention my lover gave his neighbor a ring at the cost of five hundred rubles. On the same day we got together and drove off. My pet did not want to follow me, and so I left her in her place, and rewarded her as generously as was necessary for the mistress of a noble master; but I parted with her without tears, for I did not know what gratitude was in the world, and I didn’t hear about it from anyone, but thought that it was possible to live in the world without her. In the middle of our journey, Sveton announced to me that he was married, and he recently married, and assured me that he did not love his wife, the reason is that parents often marry their children not to those whom the children want, but agree among themselves and force them besides, children, which is why there is rarely agreement between husband and wife. Sueton assured me that the same was done to him; However, this statement cost me good pills, and from that in two days I lost so much weight, as if I had been in a fever for a month. I was not sad that I would lose my lover, but I was afraid of nothing, which was much more terrible than a love separation. I could, or felt able to endure three separations from my lover in one day, rather than one such reception, which our noble wives treat to our brothers for kidnapping their husbands; but my heart had a direct presentiment of such a storm, and I would gladly agree to go back rather than follow Sveton, but he, loving me, unfortunately, very much, did not want to hear about it and persuaded me that my wife should obey him and take everything for good, that only he wants. Such a song would be pleasant to me in the city, but then the closer I got to the village, the more fear multiplied in me hour by hour, according to the proverb: "The cat knows whose meat she ate." Finally they brought me to the place assigned to me, where I was received with great joy, for the brother of the one who wrote the letter thought, too, that I was his wife's relatives. Thus, I thanked Sveton that he made me a camaraderie on the road, and remained here for everyone. The next morning, before dawn, my lover came to visit me, he made me extremely happy, saying that his father had completely recovered and that we would very soon go back to the city. “My wife wants to go with me,” he said to me again, “but it’s no wonder to redo it, like twice two is four, and she will stay here again. Thus, getting ready for the journey again, we had a very frequent meeting, and the truth is to say that Mister Sveton was more with me than he was at home, which finally made me the cause of my misfortune. My wife did not hesitate to suspect her roommate and, having escaped from the people, although they were firmly ordered to tell about my stay, she sent for the owner of the house in which I was, and without further ado, immediately disassembled my dignity and agreed with the owner to find out completely for the fact that he already suspected me, according to the proverb: "You can't hide an awl in a sack" or: "You can see a falcon even in flight." At some time, when we were sitting alone with Sveton and due to human weakness we entered into love, at that very time the closet opened, which, for my misfortune, stood in that room, a woman came out of it and said to us: "Good hour, my friends ! " My lover jumped off, and I jumped up, he left the room, and I endured a dozen blows with my palm on my cheeks; this was the beginning; and I will not tell about the end out of courtesy to myself. It was enough that I soon appeared in an open field, having nothing and without a guide. I was bitter then, and I directly felt my misery, which surrounded me from all sides, but what could I do? "The bear that ate the cow is wrong, and the cow that wandered into the forest is also wrong." Forests and fields were unfamiliar to me, they were not lovers to me, they were not seduced by my beauty and they did not give me anything, therefore, I was in extreme poverty. Towards evening I came across a certain village, where I was forced to exchange silk dress for peasant clothes; for my conscience was tempted to travel to one, and at that time I had not yet taken root in it. Thus, I equipped myself with patience and those clothes and set off on my way. On the way, nothing important happened to me, excluding the fact that I was an important poor one of the important poor, but not everyone reads such descriptions eagerly. The rich are afraid of impoverishment, but the poor are already bored with it. So, I set aside the interpretation of my path; but I will talk about what can amuse the reader. According to the calendar signs, I arrived in Moscow on Wednesday, and this day is designated here by the ancient pagan god Mercury; Mercury was the god of trickery, so it was as if with his help I had become a cook for the secretary. Another cheerful person will say that he has caught fire to the hay; however, it is often possible to make mistakes. The secretary was a devout man; he never got up and went to bed without praying to God, before lunch and before dinner he read ordinary prayers aloud and always washed his hands, never missed a single Sunday and was always at mass, and on the twentieth holidays he went to deliver obeisances or received them himself from petitioners. Every morning he stood for two hours in prayer, while his wife at that time in the front room practiced bribes and received all kinds of things. When they sat down to drink tea, their little son gave him a register of the names of all the people who were with him that morning, and who brought what and how much, thus, depending on the amount of the bringing, he decided the affairs in the order. At that time I learned that all the secretaries use bribes in the same way as their master. When he goes to the order, his partner begins to review the gifts, takes many for herself, and divides the servants with others. In one week, I received scarves with eight, turning off the pretzels and apples, which we were content with every day. At first, the secretary's wife fell in love with me, because "a fisherman sees a fisherman far in the reach." She was a compliant woman and more often she cheated on her husband than she tried to observe loyalty to him, which, to tell the truth, he did not intently demanded for the fact that he observed income more than his honesty; for he thought that even without honor his house could be as abundant as a cup full. In addition to this meritorious talent, his spouse adhered to various wines, which she never needed, therefore, she was only sober when she got out of bed in the morning. I did not have this vice behind me, and so I could not make her company in this; but in all other respects she was her confidante. My happy state was completely out of my head, but it reminded me of it by an illiterate clerk who lived with a secretary in a house for correspondence with a black man. It was very surprising to me that he, not knowing how to read and write, knew how to fall in love with me, and I used to think that love never enters the clerk's hearts. He was wonderful in the position of a clerk, but in the position of a lover he seemed even weirder to me. He recognized love, but only did not know the one from which to grab hold of it and how to stick to it. Firstly, he started winking at me and nodding his head, I understood his intention and began to laugh at him. Wanting first to get to know his mind, I asked him three tasks so that he would solve these for me: who is smarter than everyone in the city, who is more learned and who is more virtuous. The next morning he explained to me as follows: - I do not find anyone smarter than our secretary, who will solve all matters without stopping and always report on them in order; and there is no more learned solicitor who reads almost all the decrees by heart and often silences the judges; Who is the most virtuous of all, I do not know about this, but I think that many of the clerical tribe will not tell you about this; for we rarely hear of virtue. After listening to him, I grinned, and he continued to say: - What, do you think that poets are smarter than all people with their quotes and dots? If they had gotten to us in the order, they would have forgotten to put points when they would have had enough with them without bread. And the other day I don’t know how they brought to us the ode of some Lomonosov, so we could not disassemble it with all orders; but what more to say, the secretary himself said that this is nonsense and it is not worth the last stationery. This is how my lover interpreted about learned people, and I would have tea, he would not have given the first of them a place in his copyists. He soon realized that his mind was not to my taste, and I didn't like it, so he tried to please with gifts. Why, for the sake of it, he began to diligently rewrite the affairs, and to tell the truth, he gave me enough for his condition; for he always took a triple price for any correspondence, and they say that this is how it is done with them: when a clerk is under the auspices of a secretary, he gets three times for everything about everything. At this time, I pushed about Sveton and sometimes, comparing the clerk with him, I cried bitterly, and this was because I was stupid, and now our sisters are doing wrong, they always want to lose a noble lord rather than find another soon and start to get along again, and for this reason, not a single of our sister, that is, the same good-looking cook like me, in the whole state will not find a faithful one who does not want to suddenly have three or four lovers. With the care and work of the clerks, I had on myself a cleaner dress, and so the admirers who came to see the lady secretary began to look at me more affectionately than at the hostess, which she did not like very much; thus, she refused me her service. Coming out of this house, I did not grieve much; for there was no one to part with, therefore, I did not lose anything. The next day a porter came to see me, from his face I saw that he had found a fair place for me, and for him it was profitable because what the place was, such was the payment for finding it. He told me to tidy up better, because where I will live, my services are not needed, but a person is needed. I can say that I knew how to dress, as long as there was something; Having dressed up pretty well, we set off, and when we came to that courtyard, he ordered me to stand at the gate, and he himself went to notify the owner of my coming and ask him if I could come in to him, and then ran out very soon and told me to follow me. When I entered the room, I saw a man of perfect years, who had a long curly mustache and an aquiline nose. He was a retired lieutenant colonel serving in the hussar regiments. Then he sat in an armchair and counted silver money; When he saw me, he got up a little, said to me: "Hello, madam," and asked me to sit down, then ordered the servant to heat some water for tea and began to talk to me. “I am a widow, madam, and it will be about eight days since my wife died, but I’m old enough, and I’m still in my seventh decade, so looking after the house is a great burden for me. I certainly need a woman of such age as you, so that she can look everywhere, that is, in the pantry, in the cellar, in the kitchen and in my bedroom, and I already, really, not old enough to drag around all these places every day. I do not rely on servants, although I also have a cook, but she is over forty years old, therefore, she is not as agile as a young lady, and can look through a lot. As for the payment, I do not intend to dress at all, but depending on the services, I will thank you too, after all, I don’t live for Ared's eyelids, but how I die, then everything will remain, and I don’t know at all who, for I am a foreign person. and here I have no relatives. And when my overseer comes to my heart, then I will make her the heiress of my entire estate. I have heard, madam! - he added, - that you are looking for such a place, then if you like, please stay in my house, I will be extremely glad to you and I have no doubt that you do not know very well about home economy. I was not so stupid as to try to excuse myself from such an offer. I liked the old man's estate, and I immediately began to please him with money. When I agreed to this, he gave the breeder five rubles of money, and a little more home reserve for looking for a warden to his heart; I noticed this from the eyes and from the generosity of the colonel. I told him that I needed to go and move my little estate, but he did not want to agree to that and said that I did not need anything. “Here are the keys for you, madam, from all of your wife’s dress, it will certainly fit you, use it as you please, but it will be enough. Thus, in one hour I took over the power in the house and all his estate in my hands, and about two hours later I received a command over the owner, for he did not hesitate to open up to me that he was extremely in love with me and that if I leave him, - - he said to me, - then he, before living a century, will die. The greed for outfits allowed me to hesitate for a little while, I went through the chests, in which I found a rather hefty dress; but most of all pearls, which I have never seen or had on myself. Overjoyed at this and forgetting decency, on the very first day she began to change it in her own way, and Mr. Hussar Lieutenant Colonel, putting on glasses, helped me in my work and, choosing large grains, gave me to be lowered and kissed my hands. When the time was ripe for lunch, I dined with him, dined with him, and after supper was with him. Our days passed in great pleasure on the part of my lover; to say the truth, and I was not unhappy: wealth amused me, according to the proverb: "Although gold does not speak, it does a lot of good." But his old age worried me a little; however, I endured it patiently like a generous and constant woman. However, I was not allowed to leave the house anywhere; perhaps only to church, and even then very rarely, but on some twentieth holidays. This seemed to me a little disgusting because a woman of the age I was then didn’t so much need food as needed a walk, and I was happy with everything; and in great pleasure, domestic bondage is greater than a strong prison. We then lived with Nikola (which is on chicken legs). Thus, during the feast, I got ready for Mass and dressed up as splendidly as I liked, and so, looking at my old lover, I came to church and stood here, where the boyars usually become. And as the lieutenant colonel saw me off with great courtesy, everyone did not dare to press me down or disturb me in any way, even the dress and respect of my lover made me a great mistress. And I, so as not to drop the respect of people to me, looked at everyone proudly and did not say a word to anyone. Near the right choir stood I don't know some young fellow; he was very handsome, and not badly dressed. He did not take his eyes off me during the whole mass, and in good times he sometimes made me such signs that are known only to us, and even to jealous husbands and lovers. My old man noticed this and, do not wait for the end of the mass, he came up to me and called me_ very politely to go home. This was shown to me very indecently, and so I did not agree with his request. My lover, fearing to anger me, was forced to stay until the end; however, he did not leave me and stood beside me. I noticed, but I think that others did not miss to do the same; the appearance of my lover's face changed every minute, sometimes he seemed pale as if he were preparing for a battle, sometimes it threw him into a fever, and he became redder than crimson, sometimes his face was covered with cold sweat and, in a word, he was in such a mess, as if the person would be crazy. At the end of the Mass, he took my hand so tightly that I was forced to remind him of my pain. His hand was shaking so violently that I was also in motion. And so we came home in such an indescribable mess. As soon as we entered the room, the lieutenant colonel told me the following: - No, madam, I know little to disassemble female beauty and charms; you are more beautiful than I thought of you; in what you can excuse me. Truly, you are the Russian Elena, and what they say about Venus, I do not believe such nonsense. All suckers are going to be Paris and sell their eyes on you. Fate rescue me, so that the fate of the unfortunate Menelaus does not follow with me. However, as much as my strength will be, I will resist these kidnappers. I have reason, strength and wealth, but that they will help me if you, beautiful, will not feel for me the same love that I have for you. At this word, he threw himself on his knees in front of me and burst into tears. Thus, I was forced to assume the position of a passionate mistress, lifted him from my knees and, as a sign of my assurance, kissed him on the lips and said to him like this: - My dearest, is it possible that I was unfaithful to you and cheated at the very beginning of my ardent love; death alone will separate me from you; but even in the grave I will remember your respect for me. In your pleasing I am denied from the whole world of men, and no one can deceive me, calm down, my dear! Your faithful and unhypocritical mistress, Map-top, asks you with tears. Having heard this, my toothless Adonid calmed down a little; however, the young man's glances at me cost him so much that, without having dinner, he went to bed and woke up half an hour five times and shouted sometimes: "I'm sorry," sometimes with all his might: "wait," and sometimes: "I am lost"; for he dreamed that I was kidnapped or I betrayed him. A few days later a man came to our house and asked the lieutenant colonel to take him to his service. The old man refused him the first time, but the man became very strong and vomited himself with all his might. Taking out the Iashport, I wanted to show it to the lieutenant colonel and said that no honest person has as many certificates as approx. His words seemed to me quite intelligible, for whoever intends to feed his head with something must certainly be diligent in order to know art perfectly. Thus, I took from him to look at the certificates and, sorting through these, I found between them a letter signed in my name, I took it out carefully and the floor came to life in my pocket, and I gave the certificates back to the servant and told him to come tomorrow morning and we will think whether to accept it or not. Although I was not a great hunter to cheat on my lovers, our innate inconstancy did not allow me to hesitate any longer, went to another room, opened the letter and found the following explanation in it. "My sovereign! To love someone is not in our power. Everything beautiful in the world attracts our feelings and reason. You are beautiful, and for this you filled my heart when I first saw you in church, it seemed to me then, that your beautiful eyes spoke instead of your heart. ”So, having made sure of this, I dared to express myself to you, in the undoubted hope that although you did not love me, perhaps you don’t hate me at all.Admirer of your beauty Akhal ".
Your servant Svidal. "
After reading this letter, Ahal turned pale, apparently cowardly, because he was very inexperienced in the appointed duels, and this happened to him for the first time in his entire life. However, having mustered at least the last of his strength, he told the servant that he would please his master as he pleased and, after sitting with me very little, parted with me without any loving ceremonies and rode away from me very embarrassed and in great cowardice. I must admit that their appointed duel both me and my supervisor put me in a fair movement, we did not know what to do then, where to run and where to hide, because I already knew what it was like to sit in prison behind strong guards. We cried all night and did not sleep at all, I was afraid of the worst from that consequence and from my sincere heart felt sorry for Svidal, by which I learned that I fell in love with him. Two unexplained passions tormented my heart and did not give me peace for a minute, and when the hour came at which their battle was supposed to take place, I lost all my senses, threw myself into bed unconscious and was in this unconsciousness for two hours or more. All our household, standing beside me, wept, they pitied me and were afraid of their own destruction, in a word, our house was then filled with weeping and sobbing, and I was without memory. However, although I was not quite good behavior, in this case I have no doubt that many virtuous people would think I was pitiful and worthy of their help. At the beginning of twelve o'clock, Akhal ran into my room and, grabbing my hand, pulled me out of bed. He could hardly hold his breath and was in great cowardice, threw himself on his knees in front of me and spoke like this: - My sovereign! without entering your state, I loved you extremely, my shortcomings were the reason that I deceived you, but after leaving you, I learned then that I could not be calm without you, for that sake I returned to Moscow and Having learned that you are in misfortune, I tried my best to help you, which I succeeded. Finally, I made sure to fulfill my promise to you and intended to marry you; but unmerciful fate deprives me of this pleasure, at the same hour I must leave Moscow and then all of Russia. I am an unhappy person and now I am subject to cruel torture. Forgive me, lovely, forever, I shot Svidal. At this word I fainted, and I fell into bed, but he, having kissed my hand, left me hastily with great tears and grief, attributing my fainting to my parting with him. In this case, I knew directly that that was a real passion of love. Hearing about the death of Svidaleva, the blood in me cooled down, my larynx dried up and my lips were caked, and I forcefully pronounced my breath. I thought that I had lost all the world when I lost Svidal, and the deprivation of my life seemed like nothing to me then, I was quite ready to follow him to the underworld. Any misfortune in my mind could not equal this misfortune of mine. The keys opened from my eyes, and tears rolled down my face without any restraint, he seemed very alive to me, all his charms, tenderness and courtesy dwelt in my eyes relentlessly, I was torn without any mercy, and unquenchable sorrow ate my suffering heart. Any death then was no longer scary to me, and I was ready to endure everything and proceed without timidity to death, only to pay Svidal for the loss of his life, which was the cause of me, of all the unhappy in the world. My warden many times approached me and advised me to flee the city, but I did not so much think about my own death as regretted the death of Svidaleva. I spent that day and the next night in the most excruciating anxiety, and I was completely desperate in my life. In the morning I lay in bed in great disorder and imagined the dead Svidal. Suddenly he appeared before me and, rushing to me, kissed my hands. How much my strength was, I screamed and fell into unconsciousness. All my family members rushed to me and assured me that Svidal was standing in front of me not dead, but alive, and that this was not a ghost, but a true reality. How difficult it was for me to come out of great despair into excessive joy, I felt it in my insides, from which I could not for a long time afterwards. Jumping out of bed, she threw herself into his arms, but even then I could not believe that he was alive in front of me; however, in such cases the assurance is made soon. He began to speak and assure me of his love, and the dead never express such passion. Thus, I really learned that he is alive and loves me as much as I love him, or perhaps less, in which we did not dress up with him, but fell in love with each other without any bargaining. In this case, I will not describe our admiration so that unnecessary will be included in all the details of words, actions and movements that are performed in unconsciousness of love, and many have already made sure by various experiments that after a few time the passion of the admired person completely disappears and completely forgets everything. what the lover then said, just like a sick man after a fever or a madman coming to his senses. There is only one position from the beginning of the world, and it compels us to do good, for that not everyone is sweet, and so we have done arbitrarily different positions that oblige us to do everything. Of these positions I chose one, according to which I asked my lover how he was freed from death, to which he answered me with these words: - Direct love is always associated with jealousy, they, copulating together, made me shrewd and reasonable. First, I was looking for an opportunity to quarrel with Akhal; and as I succeeded, I, in order to avenge myself, decided to transfer with him on swords, but in this case a very fair invention was at work. I was only afraid that he would not give up the fight. Yesterday, at the hour appointed from me, I was already waiting for him in the grove, and as soon as he arrived and, leaving the carriage about five hundred paces, came to me in the grove, I, taking out my sword, ordered him to get ready, which he started with great cowardice, but I, giving him indulgence and wanting to better deceive him, told him that he would not deign to transfer with me on pistols. He more readily agreed to this, for he shoots extremely well. Thus, I took out of my pocket two pistols, completely made, only loaded without bullets, which in cowardice he could not notice, I gave one to him, and kept the other with me and, having moved some distance, gave each other signs for battle and both fired together. I fell and pretended to be shot. My servants rushed to me and began to howl and shout as ordered. Akhal thought that he had really shot me, threw himself into the carriage and left the city yesterday evening. After his words, we began to laugh, and after laughing we thanked fate for her indulgence towards us. Thus, I got to Svidal in his full will, and he rejoiced more than the vain leader about the conquest of the enemy's fortress, while Akhal, I think, at that time was driving his horses and leaving from his imaginary death. My lover read nowhere that Cupid gilded his arrows and with this cunning conquered the entire mortal generation, and for that in this century every heart wants to be pierced by a golden arrow, and in case of poverty, even the beauty itself is not very captivating. Thus, to confirm our mutual passion, he set me two thousand annual salary, excluding gifts and my other whims; moreover, he promised to give me a thousand rubles, if I give birth to a son and he will be like him, and so I began to pray to God, or even forgot that heaven is not obliged to bless our iniquities, even if, however, we started with prayer. This wealth did not amuse me; for I had already seen enough of it, but I tried to be more careful and determined to stock up for the necessary occasion. I identified a box in which I put clean ducks, so that in case of a change of happiness it would serve as a support for me. At this time, fate gave me a friend; she was a merchant's wife, but a noble's daughter, a very skillful woman and knew how to show the appearance of such a woman who has great wealth, but in fact she had a mediocre estate, but out of meekness and good economy, it was as if she did not want to confess enough. The merchant took her not for her name or for her dowry, but solely for her beauty, he loved her extremely; however, he lived with her in the pink chambers to preserve his own honor, and more life. His wife was sharp and capable of all sorts of inventions, which he feared so much as a pestilence, and in the first month after marriage he wanted to leave her willingly; she was one of those women who write novels and write warnings to these verses, for which many witty young people gathered for her, who for their good sciences and arts always visited her in the absence of her husband, and who was more searching than others, he looked for her rich rhymes. Thus, she is busy being a rhyme-making science, rarely slept with her husband. The first time I came to her, I found her very splendid, she was then sitting in bed, and next to her there were many scientists, of whom each had a written paper sticking out of his pocket, and they took turns reading their compositions before the meeting and relied on the taste and reasoning of the hostess. No wonder it seemed to me that the courteous gentlemen asked her for advice in this, but it seemed to me wonderful that she would take on everything, and praise and blaspheme any composition as she pleased; and when her husband entered, everyone stood up, paid homage to him, and fought into his soul as if this whole assembly were his true and sincere friends. I treated the hostess very kindly and without any distant courtesies, for we were with her of the same trade, and to begin our acquaintance for an hour and a half we talked so much that a whole school would not have learned it in a week. I found out who she was, and she notified about me in detail, and so we got to know her completely and called us sisters until the occasion came for us to get into trouble. The next day I was at her party and then I saw enough of various interludes. Her house seemed to me a dwelling place of love, and all people walked and sat in it in pairs. The weirdest of all seemed to me one old man who persuaded a thirteen-year-old girl to agree to marry him. How many he tried to persuade her with words, so many lured apples and oranges, which he very often took out of his pockets and gave her with great courtesy, and she, not understanding politics, devoured them so regularly, as if she had not seen them for ages. In the corner sat a fellow with his grandmother and talked very modestly. I wanted to praise this young man for the fact that he has respect for his ancestors and, in order to please his grandmother, leaves helpless amusements, but the hostess assured me that he was a lover, with a mistress. The young man assures her that he loves her extremely and, running away from the chronology, which is not very pleasant for elderly coquettes, says to her: - You, madam, are very pleasant, there can be no frivolity in you, and all those vices that are decent for youth; ripe summers have their price, and you will be the harness of my youth. He intended to marry her with the hope that this toothless Grace would not live in the world for more than a year, and that her sufficient dowry would make the young man a fair pleasure. The tall and pot-bellied fellow was the freer here of all, for the reason that, in case of need, he served the hostess with great pleasure; he laughed so loudly that he drowned out the bass hijacker. He was playing cards with a certain girl who was so obese that she looked very much like a skeleton. This was his bride, whom he, from the height of his wisdom, appointed to his bed. There, a gilded officer would turn around a judge's wife and teach her how to multiply. Inde the beauty pestered the pensive dandy and presented herself to him at his service. In the middle sat a small poetry-maker and shouted verses from the tragedy he had composed; sweat poured from him like hail, while his partner was wiping the floor officer with a white handkerchief. In short, I found a love school here, or a house of lawlessness. However, the hostess had an advantage over everyone. With whomever any gentleman begins his love, he will certainly end it with the mistress, because she was a woman of all praise worthy and loved her roommate much from afar. Svidal drove in for me, and having said goodbye to everyone like that, I went home; then the reasoning about women got into me. Many of us are extremely windy, and for this reason some learned people and gentlemen philosophers all hate us in general, however, according to my reasoning, I found that their blasphemy in itself does not mean anything, for gentlemen philosophers often played the fool for the delights of this sex. Socrates was almost the main enemy of our family; however, he could not do without marriage, and as a reward for his contempt for us, he had the most capricious wife, who ate his heart like rust would iron. I had a Little Russian in my service, an agile and helpful fellow; he threw out various things, such as: he swallowed knives and forks, released pigeons from eggs and passed a needle through his cheek, locked his lips with a lock, and so on, which led to the conclusion that he was a sorcerer. In the morning he told me that the maid of my acquaintance had revealed to him a certain secret, namely, since half a year already, her lady had been looking for such a person who would have worn out her husband, but that it was inconspicuous, and gave a hundred rubles for this, and asked my a servant to intervene in this matter. “I didn’t refuse,” he continued, “and I want to serve her. Hearing such an intention from him, I got scared and told him that I did not agree to this and, of course, I would announce his intention to all people. At this he chuckled and said: - You, of course, madam, are still a little tempted in the world and think that people become their enemies spontaneously. I know that it is difficult to answer for this, and for this, of course, I will not let myself into bad consequences, I intend to play a comedy, for the presentation of which I will receive one hundred rubles, while the innocent merchant will remain alive; I will start the first introduction today, please send me to them. I let him go, and he went, but it came to me that while playing this comedy I should have it myself and open it to Svidal, so that it wouldn’t happen out of such a thin state. As I thought I did. My servant came and brought fifty rubles, which he took from them for the preparation of poison, for he told them that the poison, which begins its effect in a week, becomes very expensive. Svidal asked him what he intends to do? - Make up poison, - he answered, - you will see that I am not the last physician, but having made it up, I will drink a glass of it in your presence, so that you do not fear bad consequences from that. And so he cooked some herbs and made that poison for about two hours, and when we asked him what he was doing, he told us that it was six kopecks and a half. Having poured it into a bottle, he drank the rest of it in front of us and said that if we take this composition in beer, then in five days for half an hour the person will get so angry that he will be ready to chop all his household, or whoever he gets, and after no harm will feel from that it will not. We believed him in that and sent him with the composition to my acquaintance, whom he gave instructions on how to act at a time when the poison given to him will act. On the fifth day in the morning, as we were told, the merchant went berserk and rushed at all his household, thus they tied his hands and feet and put him to bed. My acquaintance sent for all my relatives who were going to see her misfortune, to which I was invited. Svidal also wanted to see him, and so we both drove off. By the time we arrived, the poison had ceased to work, and the merchant was in his former mind; however, all people insisted that he was mad and that his reason was completely mad; he argued that he was in a sober mind; only no one believed it, and they did not want to untie him. Finally he began to ask them to release him, but out of regret for him they did not want to do this. Then he began to scold everyone and said that of course that day the whole world had gone crazy; thus, friends and relatives began to persuade him, and his wife, sitting opposite him, wept and ordered the people to hold him tight; he gnashed his teeth at her and wanted to bite her in half. His wife assured everyone that he was already hopeless, and for this she wanted to examine in front of everyone how many bills and other notes he had, and when they began to take the keys from him, he began to shout: "Help! Robbery! Robbing!" - and others; For this reason, many advised to fumigate him with the palm of his hand and baptize every minute in order to drive away from him the unclean spirit that invisibly tormented him indescribably. The unhappy merchant did not know what to do then, he set to tears and began to cry very sadly. All of his tears corresponded; however, no one wanted to untie him, because his wife and all their household said that he had cut everyone and that there was no need to believe him in anything, for he was completely crazy. There was no deliverance for him in anyone, for that sake he began to ask the spiritual father. In one minute they sent for him, and when he came, they all left the room and left them two. Half an hour later, the priest came out and told everyone that he found him in a perfect mind and in proper memory. “And you needlessly treat him so harshly,” he said, “untie him, I assure you that he is not in the least distraught in reason. And so he left their house, laughing, perhaps, at their foolishness. All those who were here wanted to obey the priest's order unquestioningly, but only his wife opposed it and asked everyone with tears not to untie her husband, but they did not obey her and untied her. A man so grieved will surely forget all decency and set out to take revenge on his villain; the merchant rushed at his wife and, grabbing her by the hair, threw her to the floor. Everyone, no matter how many people there were, rushed at him and, despite neither his resistance, nor his request, they twisted him again and put him in bed, saying: "Now you won't deceive us, if you please rest quietly, otherwise you restless. " The merchant, seeing no way of his deliverance, fell silent and allowed misfortune to rage over him, about which he thought that after the evil time had passed, and that people, having come to reason, would recognize him as not crazy, so he put himself in submission to the raging fate. The time was already approaching for dinner, and the owner was still suffering in hemp chains, at last he was forced to admit that he was really going crazy, and now, thanks to fate, he returned to his former feeling; thus, he took an oath that he would not bother anyone else, and was released from being bound. It was fun then to watch him walk around the room in thought, and everyone was afraid to approach him and walked around him. What was it to him then, when all people considered him wrongly crazy? Finally they typed on the table and everyone sat down, there was not a single knife or fork on the whole table, for they feared that there would not be a good hour for him and he would not stab someone. At that very time, the guests arrived, they informed them in the hall about the owner's misfortunes, when they entered, they stood at the door and said to him from there: "Hello, my sir!", And they were afraid to approach him and, sitting down at the table, looked at him from surprise like a real fool. Annoyance was written on his face, he wanted to take revenge on his villain at this very moment, but he was afraid to be tied up again. Though he wanted to be informed about his fate, though little by little, and as soon as he asked: "Why did you consider me insane?", Then everyone rushed to knit him again, for they thought that again a whim had found him. Truly, he seemed to me to be sorry that, being the master of the house, he could not utter a word to his wife or his servants. Svidal, with the owners' permission, left the table for an hour and, having come from there, told the owner that he had a servant who was a great master of telling fairy tales: "Would you please, let him say one to disperse your restless thoughts." The owner was extremely happy about this and spoke with Svidal almost through tears. Svidal called our Little Russian and ordered him to tell, and when he left, he taught him what to say and how, and the servant had to carry out his order absolutely, and so he began his fairy tale, which not only everyone, but also me extremely surprised for the fact that I didn’t think about that at all, and Svidal did it out of regret for the owner, about whom he was already intolerably condolent.Story
- A certain wealthy merchant, having come at a perfect age and having neither a father nor a mother, decided to marry. He was not looking for a dowry, but was looking for a beauty and a virtuous one and so that she would be trained in all those arts and sciences that would make her a reasonable mother, a guardian mistress and a worthy wife of love, but as it is now very difficult to find such a woman, then he secretary, who was happy and good and knew that science by heart, which does not allow leaving a young man in need. However, she was not without a dowry and brought with her a lot of property, which consisted of invalid paperwork, lengthy demands and the unflattering hope that she would receive an inheritance after her uncle, who is now busy in Siberia, and if he dies without getting married, childless and not leaving behind a spiritual ... At this word, the master turned to the servant, said: - Perhaps for an hour - And then he said to Svidal: - My sir, this is my real story, and it would not be possible for the best writer to describe it so vividly. “If you please, listen,” Svidal said to him, “the end of it will be very pleasant for you, and your mistress will be reviled, but vices are always publicly punished, and I do this out of regret for you. I know that you are not crazy, be the boss in your house and order her to sit and listen. And my acquaintance was about to go out then, the owner ordered her to sit: - And if you did something wrong, then let your parents hear it, and now they are with us. Please go on, ”the master said to our servant,“ but I owe a lot to the mercy of your master, and I see that my madness is now coming out, which I am extremely happy about. - Their marriage was completed, and at half of the first month she got bored with her husband and began to calm her natural disgust towards him with some rhyme-weavers who visited her every hour. Although her roommate considered such a visit suspicious, he did not dare to tell her about it, for her noble blood was poured in her veins, so he was afraid of dishonoring her. Finally she met a certain mistress, who is called Martona, and with whom the Little Russian Oral was in the service. This servant knew various tricks, and for this he was revered as a sorcerer. The wife of that merchant persuaded him to poison her husband, and promised him one hundred rubles for that. Oral took it and announced this to his mistress, who, fearing a bad consequence, asked her servant what kind of poison he intended to make? And how he informed her that he did not intend to start such a godless business, but only wanted to receive the promised money and deceive the merchant's wife. And so, having made up the poison, he himself first drank a glass of poison before his mistress; therefore, it was the real proof that the poison is not harmful. The servant took fifty rubles from the lady of the merchant's wife for the composition of that poison: he made six kopecks and a half and gave it to her. She presented it to her husband with the intention that he would die; and when he got a fit, they tied him up and put him on the bed. And the end of my tale was done to you, master host: you know it, and all your guests, therefore, I will not finish telling you. After this, the owner jumped up from his seat and kissed our servant on the crown of his head, thanking him for saving him from death, and gave him another four hundred and fifty rubles, saying that: - Instead of one hundred rubles, now have five hundred for your virtue. As for my wife, I will say the rule given to us from the righteous: "Depart from evil and do good" - and I do not intend to take revenge on her at all for her iniquity. Will you be satisfied, madam, ”he said to her,“ I’ll buy you a village in your name: if you please go there and live there safely. I don’t need you, and I don’t intend to live with you anymore, and in order not to carry your honor, I will not talk about my misfortune anywhere. Thus ended the comedy in which my servant was the first character, and who was extremely pleased with the owner. The merchant intended to really buy the village for his wife and send her there, and thanked my lover for shaming his mistress. And so we parted with them that evening, although we did not think that for a long time, however, against our aspirations, forever. Our whole life is about spending time. Some people spend it in labors and in deeds useful to society, while others in idleness and trinkets, despite the fact that luxury and idleness, like two suckers of all vices, under the guise of sweetness, pour a malignant ulcer into our soul and body, inflict poverty and fatal diseases, and in love all people exercise at their leisure. Svidal was always free from civil matters; and I was not obliged to any position; therefore, we were idle people, or idle people - thus, not a single hour and not a single minute wasted practicing loving conversions. After a good time, I received a letter with the following content. "My sovereign! Nature brings a person into the world so that after experiencing different rotations of it, die, therefore, no one can escape this particular part. Happy is the person who dies safely and, without feeling any trouble, leaves this world without regret. And I am an unhappy mortal, depriving my friend of my life, through that I lost my mistress and now I am losing my life for the same reason ... Unbearable torment! Horror seizes me when I proceed to notify you of my misfortune. This very soon, and I dare to ask you to deign to see you for the last time. My servant will tell you where I am, waiting for you with impatience.Akhal ".
Although the persecutors of wisdom and confidants of Venus, gentlemen of the pettimeters[ dandies (from french petits-maitres). - Ed. ] , and they say that our sister's regret is not in the least akin, but I respect that in this case they are as knowledgeable as philosophers are in proving that there is a kiss. After reading this letter, I felt a terrible crush in myself. Akhalev's evil act against me was completely eradicated from my memory, and only his good deeds appeared vividly in my understanding. I cried about his death and regretted him as much as my sister regrets about her brother, who awarded her with a dowry and from whom not a drop is left to her. I sent immediately to notify Svidal of this, who, without delay, came to me and told me to get ready to go to Akhal in order to find him alive. Thus, very soon we gathered and rode both together, and the servant Akhalev was our guide. The place in which Akhal was located was twenty miles from Moscow, and when we started approaching him, Svidal got out of the carriage and told me to go alone, and he wanted to show himself to Akhal afterwards, and asked me and his servant to they did not tell Akhal that Svidal was alive; for he himself wanted to apologize to him and ask him for forgiveness for only a heinous and unintentional offense. As soon as I drove into the yard, I heard a terrible cry from all the household; for this was the Akhalev court, which he bought with my money. I thought that he had already died, my legs buckled, and then I was beside myself, as I was getting out of the carriage; however, they informed me that he was still alive. When I entered the room, it seemed to me very scary; it was upholstered, both the floor, the walls and the ceiling, and, in a word, everything with black flannel, the bed stood with the same curtain on which the white carving was laid, the table was also covered in black, and the other stood in front; on it was visible a cross, under which lay the skull of a human head and two bones, and in front of the icon stood a lamp. Akhal was sitting at the table and reading a book, he was wearing a black dressing gown and a black cap with a white twine: he was crying extremely sadly as he read. Hearing that I entered, he looked at me with great sorrow and, bursting into more tears, he spoke thus: - My sovereign, you see such a person who leaves this world and departs on a path unknown to him. Various imaginations torment my heart and an indomitable conscience, as the first judge of our deeds, makes it clear to me that I am disgusting to everyone in the world, having become a murderer spontaneously; the soul, struck by my hand, seems to me that it is standing at the throne of justice and asks the righteous revenge on me; So, warning the anger of fate, I punished myself for the atrocity I had done. Sit down, madam, I will tell you my misfortune. How I got down to the godless business and killed Svidal, you were informed about my tea, from someone; and I, being in the delusion of my mind, cannot tell you. Having said goodbye to you, I attempted to flee from my iniquity and to lose the place that vividly represented to me my villainy and threatened for that with correct and dishonorable punishment. I fled from the place, but I could not retire from the torment of my conscience: it followed me everywhere, everywhere tormented me and led me to repentance. Finally, a terrible fear fell on me, and when I fell asleep, Svidal, coming, woke me up and, standing in front of me, wept very bitterly. Terror seized me, and I had no rest day or night. Wherever I went, fear followed me, and finally my own shadow terrified me. Seeing no way for my deliverance, I undertook to end a revolting life and to be deprived of that light, which I hated, perhaps unfounded, and which justly hated me. I returned here, and as soon as I arrived, having established everything for my death, I drank the poison and considered myself already dead, and at the end of my life I see that I am still happy and can say goodbye to the one for which I lived and suffered. I assured you in my life that I love you, and at her death I confirm the same. Here's a fortress for this yard, which I bought with your money; and it is written in your name, here is my spiritual one for you; I am without birth and have refused all this property to you. By this I testify that you were nice to me. With these words, I could not refrain from tears and was no longer able to hide the secret that Svidal asked me about, and as soon as I intended to tell him about it, I saw that his face had changed, his eyes stopped, a terrible tremor entered all its members. He did not say another word and shook my hand very tightly. I thought that, of course, the last hour of his life was coming, and the poison he had drunk begins to take effect. Why did I scream for people to come in to us? At my voice he came to his senses a little and began to ask me for an apology that, perhaps, in something he disturbed me, and spoke already very vaguely, so that it was impossible to notice either the beginning or the end of his speech, and he seemed to me quite a desperate life. I asked his servants to try to find Svidal and notify him that Akhal was already leaving, and that he hurry to apologize to him. Hearing the name of Svidal, he came into a mess; horror embraced him and the mind, which did not support him, had completely left him. In a great frenzy he spoke thus: - Terrible shadow! though at my last breath, leave me alone. I know that your vengeance is just, your anger is just, and your murderer is worthy of any punishment from you. I tremble and dare not look at you without great horror. You appear to me in blood, without breath and without a voice. All this I have taken away from you, for all the reason I am worthy of all torture in hell. I am ready for all the torments that only you and the fate saddened by me please. I am disgusting to myself and for this I myself have stopped my hated days and I regret that cruel death is still slow to tear my soul out of me with torment. I am already ready and everything is established for that. Everyone, no matter how many of us was here, tried to give him help. I cried inconsolably, and his servants roared indescribably, for he was a merciful lord before them. I sent for doctors, but I was told that it was forbidden for them not to bring him to him under a curse, and that they had given him an oath to do so; therefore, what came to my mind, I used it. He somewhat regained his senses and asked me not to labor in giving him help - "for it is no longer necessary for me," he said. At that very time, Svidal came in very hastily. As soon as the almost insensitive Akhal saw him, he jerked out of our hands and fell into a terrible frenzy; he struggled and torn, shouted as much power allowed him, and looked completely like a madman. How much of our strength we held, we held him and finally covered him with a blanket so that he would gather some of his wasted mind and lose the horror that he felt when he saw Svidal killed by him, as he thought about it and imagined that his villainy was higher than any lawlessness. light. End of the first partPancake. Etching by P. N. Chuvaev. Second half of the 18th century
State Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin.