Paustovsky, "Squeaky floorboards": a summary

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The age-old painful theme of Russian literature - how a forest (garden) was cut down - continued by K. G. Paustovsky in "Squeaky Floorboards".

The forest is alive. Who will be surprised by this? But Paustovsky's forest is sometimes so deliberately alive that it gives a colossal impetus to the director of the school film studio in his fantasies and philosophical reflections. Indeed, ideal metaphors do little to inspire creativity.

Can't interfere with legitimate gain

Composer Tchaikovsky creates, secluded in a manor surrounded by forest. The forester Vasily brings bad news. The visiting merchant Troshchenko, the new owner of the lands "profaned" by the landowner, decided: the forest is under the axe. Tchaikovsky rushes to the governor. He shrugged his shoulders: we cannot interfere with the benefits of legitimate property. The composer is trying to buy the forest. He offers the merchant a bill of exchange against tomorrow's masterpieces. He demands cash. They are not here. The forest is tirelessly felled. But Troshchenko suddenly finds himself at the threshold of the house, where the music sounded yesterday. Changed your mind? Big cut gone wrong? But the composer has already left. To Moscow. And then - and inPetersburg? To the capital, to the Sovereign Emperor with a petition? May be. Final - open.

This could be the scenario of a potential film "Squeak" with philosophical overtones based on Paustovsky's "Squeaky Floorboards".

Tchaikovsky's Thoughts

In the course of the development of the theme of the ax hanging over the forest, the author reads the thoughts of the composer. And he looks insincere when he talks about the "educational impact" of nature and connects the conservation of the forest with the power of the state. "To express the poetry of the country." "Save a Corner of the Earth" “Descendants will never forgive us…”. There are several inflated places in the story about the desecrated beauty of the earth and the mighty influence of forests. The point is not that the composer could not think about the fate of his descendants. He could very well. But he probably didn't think of them in a pompous way that precludes personal experience.

Higher people

It is no less strange how he sees the meaning of creativity - through the eyes of Tchaikovsky - Paustovsky in "Squeaky Floorboards". The composer's favorite poet is Pushkin. All musical compositions already written are a tribute to Alexander Sergeevich, people and friends. And the tribute, as noted, is not rich. There is probably a reader who is not bored with passages of this kind. You can't look at icons with boredom. Recall Chernyshevsky's novel. Read "What to do?" boring but interesting. We are aware that there are no superior people. But we really need them. Not like shepherds, no. But as those who decide the question of the meaning of life. A question that torments every living person. We need the confidence of classicism and the romantic impulsesimultaneously. To never doubt: duty is the pinnacle of happiness. And what life really is, we know well.

Squeaky Life

Paustovsky's "Squeaky Floorboards" has more than one floorboard creaking. The maid's dress in the governor's house is starched to a creak. “The existing legal provisions do not give an opportunity,” the owner of the house says creakingly and lives creakingly. And the servants creak. Troshchenko, an impudent merchant from Kharkov, who started all this felling, walks in creaky boots. He strikes the trunk with the butt of an ax - the tree sings, and he hears his song, the one that merges with the sound of coins. And the music … There is no trace of it. The ferry also creaks at the crossing on the way home after a useless visit to the governor. Life obeys the creak of five shaky floorboards, which the protagonist of Paustovsky's story "Squeaky Floorboards" is trying so diligently to bypass in his house.

Where does music come from?

This is one of the key questions of the piece.

When the American science fiction writer Robert Sheckley was asked where he gets his stories, he wittily replied: they say, if you knew where, he would have scored more. Tchaikovsky in Paustovsky's story "Squeaky Floorboards" gives a different answer to a similar question from an enthusiastic student: there is no secret. And there is work. Such an answer was given either for educational purposes, or out of embarrassment. But yes, the story has it: work, work, work. Not sparing yourself. Like an ox. Like a day laborer. Hence the inspiration. Is it?

Where Ivan tea blooms

The secret is still there. Where is the music from? The "anthem" style of the story (in accordance with nature, the nourished folk power, the lyrical power of the forest side), it would seem, suggests a straightforward answer - from the forest. But by and large, it is not so important where Paustovsky and his hero find a source of inspiration. A secret is a secret. The main thing is that there is an alternative to the damned creaky life. There is harmony. And where is its source, think for yourself. Paustovsky gives his answer in "Squeaky Floorboards".

That carnation flowers resemble tufts of fluff, and the light falls in layers - the images say little about anything. They neither copy flowers and light nor show light and flowers as God created them. What is magnetism?

Modern man of the metropolis is unlikely to share the torment of those who cry over a felled birch. The man of the metropolis is not destined to know the road to Rudy Yar, which Tchaikovsky knows in every detail - past Ivan-tea blooming near the stumps, through a broken bridge and undergrowth. A man of the metropolis should not walk this road. The modern defender of nature measures the forests with the steps of usefulness and goes straight to moral utilitarianism. And Tchaikovsky remembers the forest path as only a child can remember it. And this painful fact overshadows the ugly prettiness in the form of shreds and layers. And deliberately sorrowful thoughts about the fate of the Russian state in connection with the desecrated nature.

This childish attitude has long been absent from the liberal governor with swollen eyes. It, this worldview, was reborn into a brazen commercial excitement with a merchantTroshchenko. What did Tchaikovsky offer in Paustovsky's "Squeaky Floorboards" to the businessman? Bills - perhaps under the "Queen of Spades" or "The Nutcracker". Instead of cash? Funny! So why not grow up? Necessary. Higher people who create indestructible values are not born. This is how Fenya grows up in Paustovsky's story "Squeaky Floorboards", who approached the composer's house with strawberries and listened. This is how Vasily, who raised this forest, grew up. And, let's think, there are also young people in the house of the liberal governor.

And if not, then it turns out to be a complete butchery. Like thieves, lumberjacks scatter from a falling pine. Who sent them to steal? Disharmonious people. And bad business executives, of course - first it would be necessary to cut down a small forest in order to give room for the fall of the giant pine. All of them are discordant. Even the columns on the governor's house are peeling. Another thing is the composer's house.

Home

He's cracked like an old piano. But he misses music. Waiting. And sings when the owner is at the piano. And the old chandelier responds. Resonances are subtle. This house, it is surrounded by a protective belt. Living wall. Warm and reliable.

Irony boomerang

The culmination of Paustovsky's story "Squeaky Floorboards" is a conversation between a businessman and a composer. The dialogue is built on irony. Moreover, the irony is reversed. Troshchenko gushes with aphorisms, which, it would seem, should slay the composer. The merchant's fur coat "is not lined with nobility", but he has money. The composer is a person "from the lofty spheres", but he does not know how to bargain. The merchant does not livein the "Empyreans", but he is in honor. Troshchenko agrees: yes, he is a Maklak. But who then is the one who came to bow to him, Maklak? The creator of the "air thing". After all, music is smoke. “Always with me” is a merchant about his mind. But why is not the petitioner funny, but the important merchant. The comic effect arises from the discrepancy between the scales of the personality. An insignificant merchant scoffs at a recognized genius with world fame. This is funny. The mere difference in "social status" is enough for comedy.

Historical Parallels

Everything agrees that the “musical” dried up house is a house in the village of Frolovsky near Klin. In the last years of his life, Tchaikovsky looked for one or the other "asylum". In one of his letters, he calls this place "paradise" - after the capitals and foreign travels. A neglected garden. Next is the forest. And such gave! The owner of the estate, which the composer rented, ordered to cut down the forest.

In biographical fiction, Tchaikovsky of that time appears … Well, we read the biographies of wonderful people. For whom are they written? For unremarkable people. Who, not without contentment, will think after reading: “Well, I’m not so petty, preoccupied, weak. And so far everything seems to be in order with the stomach.” If it were possible to materialize a hybrid of creative torment and vicissitudes of fate, it would certainly be exhibited in the Cabinet of Curiosities. Yes, probably, the composer was not a superior person. But he was, because the highest man is the highest in humanity.

Apparently, it was in Frolovsky that Tchaikovskyhe composed, for example, Symphony No. 5, which an unceremonious biographer will stamp with his stigma - “not right”, and the performers will scratch their heads: “how to play?”. Doom submit to joy or celebrate its victory? Interpretations are opposite.

Fiction as real life

Literary images act selectively and are interpreted differently. The terrible moment of death is about the fall of a felled tree. Someone will admire: "Strongly said!". And someone will cringe at the artificiality of the phrase. But the elegance of the style is not essential in an important dispatch: leave to nature its ability to give birth, grow, be perfect and self-sufficient. As for the man… Paustovsky was thinking about an unusual autobiography. Fictional. What kind of people would I meet on the way-roads! How many things I could do!

Fortissimo

Forgetting the noise of the forest, fascinated by the rumble of spaceports and the rustle of silent household appliances, we put up with the creak of shaky floorboards. We fight for ourselves in the macrocosm, where there is no longer harmony. One script. And the floorboards are the burning earth under our feet: so, in the spirit of Paustovsky (his earth only shakes), and let's play the last chord.