"Notes of Samson Samasui" (summary). A novel of social and political foresight

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

Quite often, at exams in Belarusian or Soviet literature in philological universities, the tickets mention the works of the Belarusian writer Andrey Mryi. His most popular work was a satirical sketch, which received the name "Notes of Samson Samasui" from the author. The work was first published in 1929. To successfully pass the exam, it is not at all necessary to read the work in full, you can study the "Notes of Samson Samasui" briefly. With our help, this can be done as easy as shelling pears.

Meet the "author" of the novel

The novel is written in the first person. It is the personal diary of the incompetent head of the cultural department of the district executive committee Samson Samasui. In order to raise the level of culture in the area, the main characterorganizes a lot of random absurd cultural events, which is described in detail in his diary. In parallel with his tireless social activities, Samson is also actively trying to improve his personal life.

Justification for using first-person narration

In his revelations, Samson Samasui (summary) honestly, frankly and without exaggeration tells about the events characteristic of the Soviet reality of the 20s. The form of the "diary" allows you to cover and present a much larger, in comparison with the usual story, field for the expression of personal observations and opinions by Samson Samasui. "Notes of Samson Samasui" (the summary of the novel also reflects this fact) is written in the form of a story about the daily ordeals of the protagonist.

Samson Samasui also expresses his point of view in his reasoning on the choice of the form of narration. He says that he hung a picture in his room depicting a statement by a famous scientist who preferred to think that if people knew everything about the details of the life of a single insect, they could avoid many wrong decisions and actions. From the above, it is clear that from the very beginning of the novel, Andrey Mryi allows the author of the diary not only to narrate, but also to explain phenomena and events.

Andrey Mryy coped with the task so successfully, he portrayed the main character of the novel so vividly that the reader believed: Samasui Samson is a real person. And, as the summary says, A. Mryi "Notes of Samson Samasui" was printed for the first time not onterritory of the union state, and abroad. In his letter “to a friend of the workers I. V. Stalin” the writer tells about an interesting fact: the editorial office of the magazine that published the “Notes of Samson Samasui” received many letters demanding the expulsion of the henchman of the Soviet power Samasui from the party.

The life of the protagonist before the start of the diary

The reader learns very little about Samson's previous life. The author seems to be trying to show that there was nothing significant in it, everything important in the life of the author of the diary will happen in the future. About Samasui's past life, only that which directly testifies to his characteristic behavioral traits is told. Samson comes from a family of peasants, but he treats the work of a peasant with contempt, as something humiliating and shameful.

The head of the cultural department of the district executive committee prefers the search for light bread to labor. Because of this trait of his character, Samson is forced to regularly change his occupation, because there is no easy legal bread, and he prefers exceptionally tasty food and high-quality expensive clothes. So to speak, "sick pansky disease." This is how his father aptly characterizes Samson.

"Notes of Samson Samasui" (summary). Are the phenomena described by the hero absurdity or reality?

Only at first glance, the reality described by the main character looks absurd. Of course, the author could not do without deliberate exaggerations, but they perform exclusivelyartistic function. It is impossible to deny that in the 1920s in the Soviet country there was in fact total control over public and political life and all its phenomena and ostentatiously ideal people, phenomena and facts.

With the help of the carefully created image of Samson Samasui, Andrey Mry sarcastically talks about a whole horde of Soviet bureaucrats who took several positions under their responsibility at once. Moreover, they did it with such strong zeal that in the end they were not responsible for anything at all. The official propaganda of that time explained what was happening by the lack of personnel for the cultural revolution, which they wanted to carry out with a cavalry attack and which eventually turned into ordinary showiness and the replacement of concrete activity with an empty talking shop at various meetings, meetings and rallies.

The same Samasui manages to combine the position of the head of the children's commission, the "Down with irresponsibility" partnership, the district labor inspector and a member of the RVC. The hero's "ebricious activity" does not seem so stupid to him, he has a specific goal - to spin in such a way that the management pays attention and be sure to check it out, and, accordingly, fly up the career ladder of the bureaucratic pyramid.

Samson realizes that the system prevailing in the country is able to forgive him absolutely everything, but not independence and self-willed behavior. The chairman of the district executive committee, Som, characterizing Samasui, says that the system needs people like him at least in order to plug some hole with them in a certain situation. The main thing is to keepman in the hands, and he will turn into an ideal weapon to destroy the trends of the past.

Samasui as a common noun

On the one hand, Samson is a funny and cheerful person, he is cheerful and simply sparkles with energy. But an uncultured, incompetent and uneducated employee of the Soviet bureaucratic machine is still the same Samasui. The whole lot of his vaunted energy is directed solely to destruction, not creation. In addition, he absolutely does not tolerate dissent, is overly self-confident and intolerant of criticism from the outside. And how many such samasuy and samasuychik were in those days, who kept under inquisitive supervision the entire social life in the country of the Soviets! Should we be surprised at the cultural decline we see today?

Such cogs like Samasui were needed by the Stalinist totalitarian machine like a fish in the air, to be such a cog meant to live easily, not to be responsible for anything or anyone. The protagonist of the novel immediately correctly captures the basic principles of the activities of the authorities: everything built earlier is subject to destruction and ruin, and unwritten (including moral) laws should be thrown away as unnecessary; build something new, and it doesn't matter what, or at least portray the activity in the right way.

He even changed his own way of speaking, having mastered the style of clericalism so much that even mentally he talks to himself, using high-flown protocol-clerical vocabulary, among which such expressions were regulars-clichés like "unrelenting energy", "shark of imperialism", "all-Union scale", "battle with temperament", "make a resolution".

Not because, but in spite of

It should be noted that in this work of Andrey Mry there is not a single character that would be positive. Perhaps the author did so deliberately, despite the vulgar criticism of the time, which required the obligatory presence of a positive character in the work. In addition, it was believed that the Soviet system was the golden dream of mankind, that no negative phenomena could exist under it.

"The Notes of Samson Samasui" is a foresight novel. The pinnacle of Soviet satirical prose

The novel "Notes of Samson Samasuy" (the summary of the novel vividly testifies to this) is the pinnacle of not only Belarusian, but also the literary satire of the entire union state in general. The most important features of the work are the power of artistic generalization, a diverse palette of techniques of the satirical literary genre, the choice of satirical material, the way it is presented and stylistic originality.

The work of Andrey Mryi foresees the global problem of the cult of personality, which was still emerging at that time. And it's just amazing how predictive, looking to the future, he turned out to be. Creating his novel at the very beginning of the ill-fated Stalinist repressions in 1929, Andrei Mry seemed to have a premonition of what the construction of communism in the Soviet Union would turn into.

Thus, it is quite fair to call "The Notes of Samson Samasui" (the summary of the novel illustrates this as well as possible) social and political foresight. In its full form, the novel was published for the first time only in 1988, since Soviet criticism considered it a vicious libel on reality. Shortly after the publication of "The Notes of Samson Samasui" were filmed.